#not just his antisemitic behavior and works

[jewishbarbies]

not surprised that the relatively unproblematic green brother is the atheist one

[starwikia]

suicide cw

look i have been in this area before mentally. it sucks and i wouldn’t wish this on anyone. but, and this is going to sound callous, but i don’t feel any sympathy for james somerton. even if i hope he’s like. not dead. But thats all the amount of goodwill im willing to give him. The more i think about this really, the more angry i am. 

ngl this entire situation is another example of how white people weaponize their mental illness to avoid consequences. Im seeing it in real time.

this man has a continuous habit of using self-harm as a get-out-of-jail-for-free card. in both of his apologies, he has worded his supposed attempts in ways that were clearly meant to guilt people who displayed his plagiarism and overall horrendous history of racism and misogyny. i say supposed because, while i’m not saying those are lies and this would he such a fucked up thing to lie about that i don’t want to think he has, unfortunately, it’s been proven again and again that his word can’t be trusted, as he’s known to lie to try get out of consequences. Hes a proven liar. him lying about this is actually the best case scenario, because no one should go through this entire situation, wouldnt wish this on anyone, but you can only do this so often before people stop sympathizing with you. is this callous? Yeah, but like. I’m actually fucking angry he cant straight up take no as an answer. that this is how he reacts realizing he cant be one of the Cool Kidz™️ on youtube anymore. he acts like he DESERVES a career, like its not a privilege hes lost due to his own actions.

He lied about apologizing and forgiving people, he lied about giving the money to hbomberguy to give to ppl he ripped off (yknow, instead of doing it himself), he lied about the jessie gender situation and rewrote the narrative to make it so he isnt the bad guy, and hes the victim all along actually!

you can’t tell me that supposed last message of his isn’t meant to be a 13 reasons why esq attempt to deflect the blame “look i’m going to kill myself and it’s all YOUR PEOPLES FAULT for not letting me achieve my DREAM of being filmmaker IN PEACE!!! I just wanted Nick’s (the guy who I have thrown under the bus again and again) portfolio up!! Im just being a good friend dont you all FEEL BAD” he refuses to take ANY ACCOUNTABILITY of any of his actions and he IS STILL trying to shove the blame over to other people again.

it’s also pretty ironic people are like “uhhh well hbomber’s fans harassed him!!!” like hbomber outright told people NOT to HARASS JAMES!!! ALSO acting as if james doesn’t have a very real documented history of STRAIGHT UP sending his fans to harass and threaten smaller creators, more notably women, trans, and bipoc creators. especially after he’s stolen typically very personal anecdotes so he could profit from them. so why can he do it but the second people are like “hey this guys an actual piece of shit.” and he can’t handle it suddenly people are trying to white knight his shit? like no he doesn’t get that. he doesn’t get that at all just because he couldn’t handle the consequences of his actions. 

what? were supposed to stay quiet about a man profiting off of other minorities because he wanted to be the spokesman for all gay people? people tried to solve this on a smaller, more private scales for YEARS and he kept doing it. it was clear that the giant public video was the ONLY way to get people to notice. HE WOULDVE GOTTEN AWAY WITH STEALING 87 FUCKING THOUSANDS WORTH OF DOLLARS. HE CANT HANDLE THE FACT HE CANT GET AWAY WITH IT. 

am i supposed to feel bad for the guy who basically threatened a trans woman with the police? i don’t care what anyone says, it’s so fucking obvious that he threatened jessie by implying he was getting the police involved in their conflict. what am i supposed to act like that didn’t happen? are we supposed to pretend like he didn’t glorify nazi’s and outright said that gay people made up a good chunk of the nazis? That he didnt say america joined ww2 bc they were jealous of the NAZIS. WHAT WOULD POSSESS YOU TO FUCKING SAY THAT. but then? He gives women (not even women most of the time, he misgenders nonbinary ppl constantly) shit for writing mlm. are we supposed to act like he doesn’t straight-up sees himself superior and better than people of color and steals their works to put himself on a pedestal? Are we supposed to act like he didnt spit on our elders by saying “only the boring gays survived aids” like man! Fuck you! He BLANTANTLY MAKES UP HISTORY TO PUT HIMSELF ON A PEDESTAL!! HE ACTIVELY TRIED TO REWRITE LGBT HISTORY TO SUIT HIS FUCKED UP NARRATIVES!

yes this sucks ! no one deserves this but no one should be making him a martyr. Thats what he fucking WANTS! He wants to be immortalized as a victim!! (again, supposedly, it was reported hes alive but its not confirmed).

The shit he got isnt near the amount of fucking callous behavior hes done again and again. Again, to drill this point, EVEN IF HE DIDNT CALL THE POLICE HE THREATENED A TRANS WOMAN INTO THINKING HE DID!!! The fact he tried to use a head injury to justify years of the outright ghoulish shit fucking astounds me. Why the fuck did anyone in his life thought it was a good idea to let him TRY to come back. in the end, he had options. he didn’t need to try to make a comeback. HE DIDNT NEED TO FUCKING LIE OR IGNORE THE SHIT HE WAS CALLED OUT ON the reality is, he wanted to come back thinking he could shove it under the rug, was told that no dude, you’re not allowed to be a youtuber anymore. you’re done. you need to move on and went full nuclear. it’s not on anyone’s hands but his own. HES BEEN DOING THIS TO HIMSELF!! But nah man we cant call his shit out bc hell may or may not kill himself. Fuck the other minorities who have the same issues but worse and sometimes BECAUSE of him. This is going to SUCKKKK so bad when other ppl, specifically white gays, are going to weaponize this shit to get away with their stuff.

[mariacallous]

Neo-Nazis and white supremacists are sharing Hitler-related propaganda and trying to recruit new members on TikTok, according to a new report from the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD) shared exclusively with WIRED. The TikTok algorithm is also promoting this content to new users, researchers found, as extremist communities are leveraging the huge popularity of TikTok among younger audiences to spread their message.

The report from ISD details how hundreds of extremist TikTok accounts are openly posting videos promoting Holocaust denial and the glorification of Hitler and Nazi-era Germany, and suggesting that Nazi ideology is a solution to modern-day issues such as the alleged migrant invasion of Western countries. The accounts also show support for white supremacist mass shooters and livestream-related footage or recreations of these massacres. Many of the accounts use Nazi symbols in their profile pictures or include white supremacist codes in their usernames.

Nathan Doctor, an ISD researcher who authored the report, says he began his investigation earlier this year when he came across one neo-Nazi account on TikTok while conducting research for another project.

He was quickly able to unmask a much broader network of accounts that appeared to be actively helping each other through liking, sharing, and commenting on each other’s accounts in order to increase their viewership and reach.

The groups promoting neo-Nazi narratives are typically siloed in more fringe platforms, like Telegram, the encrypted messaging app. But Telegram has become a place to discuss recruitment techniques for TikTok specifically: White supremacist groups there share videos, images, and audio tracks that members can use, explicitly telling other members to cross-post the content on TikTok.

“We posted stuff on our brand new tiktok account with 0 followers but had more views than you could ever have on bitchute or twitter,” one account in a Neo-Nazi group posted on Telegram about their outreach on TikTok. “It just reaches much more people.”

Others have followed suit. One prominent neo-Nazi has often asked his thousands of Telegram followers to “juice,” or algorithmically boost, his TikTok videos to increase their viral potential.

An extremist Telegram channel with 12,000 followers urged members to promote the neo-Nazi documentary Europa: The Last Battle by blanketing TikTok with reaction videos in an effort to make the film go viral. Researchers from ISD found dozens of videos on TikTok featuring clips from the film, some with over 100,000 views. “One account posting such snippets has received nearly 900k views on their videos, which include claims that the Rothschild family control the media and handpick presidents, as well as other false or antisemitic claims,” the researchers wrote.

This is far from the first time the role that TikTok’s algorithm plays in promoting extremist content has been exposed. Earlier this month, the Global Network on Extremism and Technology reported that TikTok’s algorithm was promoting the “adoration of minor fascist ideologues.” The same researchers found last year that it was boosting Eurocentric supremacist narratives in Southeast Asia. Earlier this month, WIRED reported how TikTok’s search suggestions were pushing young voters in Germany towards the far-right Alternative for Germany party ahead of last month’s EU elections.

“Hateful behavior, organizations and their ideologies have no place on TikTok, and we remove more than 98 percent of this content before it is reported to us,” Jamie Favazza, a TikTok spokesperson tells WIRED. “We work with experts to keep ahead of evolving trends and continually strengthen our safeguards against hateful ideologies and groups.”

Part of the reason platforms like TikTok have in the past been unable to effectively clamp down on extremist content is due to the use of code language, emojis, acronyms, and numbers by these groups. For example, many of the neo-Nazi accounts used a juice box emoji to refer to Jewish people.

“At present, self-identified Nazis are discussing TikTok as an amenable platform to spread their ideology, especially when employing a series of countermeasures to evade moderation and amplify content as a network,” the researchers write in the report.

But Doctor points out that even when viewing non-English-language content, spotting these patterns should be possible. “Despite seeing content in other languages, you can still pretty quickly recognize what it means,” says Doctor. “The coded nature of it isn't an excuse, because if it's pretty easily recognizable to someone in another language, it should be recognizable to TikTok as well.”

TikTok says it has more than “40,000 trust and safety professionals” working on moderation around the globe, and the company says its Trust and Safety Team has specialists in violent extremism who constantly monitor developments in these communities, including the use of new coded language.

While many of the identified accounts are based in the US, Doctor found that the network was also international.

“It's definitely global, it's not even just the English language,” Doctor tells WIRED. “We found stuff in French, Hungarian, German. Some of these are in countries where Naziism is illegal. Russian is a big one. But we even found things that were a bit surprising, like groups of Mexican Nazis, or across Latin America. So, yeah, definitely a global phenomenon.”

Doctor did not find any evidence that the international groups were actively coordinating with each other, but they were certainly aware of each others’ presence on TikTok: “These accounts are definitely engaging with each others' content. You can see, based on comment sections, European English-speaking pro-Nazi accounts reacting with praise toward Russian-language pro-Nazi content.”

The researchers also found that beyond individual accounts and groups promoting extremist content, some real-world fascist or far-right organizations were openly recruiting on the platform.

Accounts from these groups posted links in their TikTok videos to a website featuring antisemitic flyers and instructions on how to print and distribute them. They also boosted Telegram channels featuring more violent and explicitly extremist discourse.

In one example cited by ISD, an account whose username contains an antisemitic slur and whose bio calls for an armed revolution and the complete annihilation of Jewish people, has shared incomplete instructions to build improvised explosive devices, 3D-printed guns, and “napalm on a budget.”

To receive the complete instructions, the account holder urged followers to join a “secure groupchat” on encrypted messaging platforms Element and Tox. Doctor says that comments under the account holder’s videos indicate that a number of his followers had joined these chat groups.

ISD reported this account, along with 49 other accounts, in June for breaching TikTok’s policies on hate speech, encouragement of violence against protected groups, promoting hateful ideologies, celebrating violent extremists, and Holocaust denial. In all cases, TikTok found no violations, and all accounts were initially allowed to remain active.

A month later, 23 of the accounts had been banned by TikTok, indicating that the platform is at least removing some violative content and channels over time. Prior to being taken down, the 23 banned accounts had racked up at least 2 million views.

The researchers also created new TikTok accounts to understand how Nazi content is promoted to new users by TikTok’s powerful algorithm.

Using an account created at the end of May, researchers watched 10 videos from the network of pro-Nazi users, occasionally clicking on comment sections but stopping short of any form of real engagement such as liking, commenting, or bookmarking. The researchers also viewed 10 pro-Nazi accounts. When the researchers then flipped to the For You feed within the app, it took just three videos for the algorithm to suggest a video featuring a World War II-era Nazi soldier overlayed with a chart of US murder rates, with perpetrators broken down by race. Later, a video appeared of an AI-translated speech from Hitler overlaid with a recruitment poster for a white nationalist group.

Another account created by ISD researchers saw even more extremist content promoted in its main feed, with 70 percent of videos coming from self-identified Nazis or featuring Nazi propaganda. After the account followed a number of pro-Nazi accounts in order to access content on channels set to private, the TikTok algorithm also promoted other Nazi accounts to follow. All 10 of the first accounts recommended by TikTok to this account used Nazi symbology or keywords in their usernames or profile photos, or featured Nazi propaganda in their videos.

“In no way is this particularly surprising,” says Abbie Richards, a disinformation researcher specializing in TikTok. "These are things that we found time and time again. I have certainly found them in my research."

Richards wrote about white supremacist and militant accelerationist content on the platform in 2022, including the case of neo-Nazi Paul Miller, who, while serving a 41-month sentence for firearm charges, featured in a TikTok video that racked up more than 5 million views and 700,000 likes during the three months it was on the platform before being removed.

Marcus Bösch, a researcher based in Hamburg University who monitors TikTok, tells WIRED that the report’s findings “do not come as a big surprise,” and he’s not hopeful there is anything TikTok can do to fix the problem.

“I’m not sure exactly where the problem is,” Bösch says. “TikTok says it has around 40,000 content moderators, and it should be easy to understand such obvious policy violations. Yet due to the sheer volume [of content], and the ability by bad actors to quickly adapt, I am convinced that the entire disinformation problem cannot be finally solved, neither with AI nor with more moderators.”

TikTok says it has completed a mentorship program with Tech Against Terrorism, a group that seeks to disrupt terrorists’ online activity and helps TikTok identify online threats.

“Despite proactive steps taken, TikTok remains a target for exploitation by extremist groups as its popularity grows,” Adam Hadley, executive director of Tech Against Terrorism, tells WIRED. “The ISD study shows that a small number of violent extremists can wreak havoc on large platforms due to adversarial asymmetry. This report therefore underscores the need for cross-platform threat intelligence supported by improved AI-powered content moderation. The report also reminds us that Telegram should also be held accountable for its role in the online extremist ecosystem.”

As Hadley outlines, the report’s findings show that there are significant loopholes in the company’s current policies.

“I've always described TikTok, when it comes to far-right usage, as a messaging platform,” Richards said. “More than anything, it's just about repetition. It's about being exposed to the same hateful narrative over and over and over again, because at a certain point you start to believe things after you just see them enough, and they start to really influence your worldview.”

[am-i-the-asshole-official]

WIBTA if I were to report my ex friend's antisemitism to their university?

So I 20nb have been friends with most my current friend group since we were 11. Two years ago I stopped being friends with a guy in my friend group due to toxic behavior on his part (not antisemitic yet, just giving background info) He would constantly say things like "don't make fun of neurodivergent people's special interests and hyperfixations as they can't help it" and then would go and make fun of my special interests (note: said ex friend has ADHD). Over our friendship he had a lot of double standards like that and one day I had enough. The first time I brought it up he dismissed it as someone else in the friend group did the behaviors I'm accusing him of. I kinda dropped it as I didn't want to deal with that level of denial and thought that if I waited a few days he would have had some time to reflect. So I brought it up again and he continued to blame it being one of our other friends doing it and that I was simply "misremembering". I gave specific examples and rough time frames yet he continued to deny it. All I wanted was a simple "I'm sorry and I will work on that" yet he refused to do that. So I ended our friendship.

Since then we have been on rocky terms. We are still in the same friend group since the issue was between me and him, I didn't want to involve my friends and make people pick sides. He was moving away soon at the time of the end of our friendship so it wasn't like I was going to see him when the friend group all hung our together.

Since we are still in the same friend group, he is in the discord server our friend group has which is just like a massive group chat with things categorized into topics.

Recently there is the current conflict going on in Israel and Palenstine. I am Jewish and vented to the vent section of that discord server about how I have seen people I know irl post online antisemitic things. I am very much against Israels actions and made sure to include that in my vent so no one coukd twist my words. I didn't initially say exactly what I was seeing as I was still processing the fact that I was going to have to cut some people off.

He then replied to my vent saying that he has never seen anything antisemitic online and that if he has, he has seen Jewish people saying that it isnt. I replied that his reply to my vent was weird and that i was talking about people saying that all jews should die. I felt hurt as yet again he was being hypocritical towards me as he has said before that you should say that (what he said) when people complain about seeing hateful things towards a group (eg racism, homophobia, etc).

He then responded that I was only calling him antisemitic because he was arab. The thing is, I never called him antisemitic and I myself am also arab. (Yes I know, most people have never met an arab jew but we do exist).

I pointed out that I never called him antisemitic and I am also arab which he seems to have forgotten. I said that his response was still weird considering what he has said in the past about people who say what he said. I then invited him to dm me privately to discuss things further if he wants to as it's not fair to do this in front of all of our friends.

He did not respond and ended up blocking me on discord.

This irked me quite a bit but in the end I decided that him blocking me was for the better if he stands by his original response. I was talking to my partner about it who is not Jewish and he said that my ex friend's response was definitely weird and the fact that he was so quick to defend himself about being called an antisemite without even being called it was indicative that he probably is. I decided to look at my ex friends tumblr to see if there was anything to suggest that and there was. I saw a few posts which he has recently reblogged which used anti Semitic dog whistles like the echo, example: (((insert text you which doesnt say jew but you are implying jewish people are))).

I was quite appalled to see that and am debating if I should send it to his university. The university he attends has spoken out about antisemitism before and has kicked out people in the past for using racist dog whistles due to a potential danger to POC students so it is likely that he would get kicked out for using antisemitic dog whistles.

In my mind, he fucked around and therefore should find out aka face natural consequences for his actions.

WIBTA if I contacted his University about his antisemitism?

What are these acronyms?

[many-but-one]

What's your opinion on this [https://www.tumblr.com/ratinacoat/764250900023951360/no-one-who-says-ramcoa-isnt-real-is-saying-that?source=share] (highlighted for convenience) post? I came across it and felt a little miffed by it. Though I do see where they are coming from, I suppose. I wondered what ya'll's opinion would be... I just don't feel it's an adequate reason for programmed systems to stop using terms that makes them feel seen and comfortable. Thank you for reading this.

Well Wishes,

Pomegranate O.L.

From what I can gather, they are boiling RAMCOA down to “ritual abuse” and “trafficking” but completely disregarding the “MC” part of the acronym. I understand where they are coming from, as the acronym was unfortunately created by people who are antisemitic, but that is hardly the survivor’s faults, imho. It sounds like they are conflating the MC part of the acronym with conspiracy, when MC is not a conspiracy, even though it is unfortunately riddled with people who are conspiracy theorists.

We’ve said it before and we will say it again—MC is not really done by hyper-secret government orgs, they’re done by the church on the corner, they’re done at daycare centers, they’re done by political cults, religious cults, familial units, and trafficking rings. MC is not complicated on the surface, it’s just conditioning taken to an extreme degree. Not everyone who has MC done to them will develop a dissociative disorder, and adults who go through MC who didn’t prior have a dissociative disorder can then develop one after going through MC traumas. This is OSDD-2, in the DSM-V. MC done to children who have the tendency to dissociate and have disorganized attachments to their primary caregivers will most certainly develop DID, and if they do, it’s not terribly difficult for MC abusers/programmers to learn how to negatively or positively trigger out certain alters to do undue harm to them and manipulate them to have certain beliefs about themselves and behaviors that the part will repeat when triggered out.

Those that wrote books about RAMCOA are shitty people who abused their patients and are antisemitic, but that doesn’t mean we should discount everything they learned. Like we have said before, we don’t discount all research in the medical and psychological field just because the studies or the doctors were abusive. Van der Hart was also a POS who abused his patients, yet his book “The Haunted Self” is one of the best written works for people with dissociative disorders and is consistently recommended to dissociative patients. I don’t know why we excuse him, the Axis powers in WWII (Germany and Japan), and all other horrific human experiments done in the name of science, but suddenly draw the line at RAMCOA researchers/therapists. Yeah, they were bad. Yeah, they are antisemitic. I’m not saying we should excuse their behavior. They were right to be removed from their positions. However, what they learned cannot be completely discounted. This shit isn’t black and white.

As an aside, we made a post about how planting false memories in patients is not possible and talked about why the False Memory Foundation and their supporters pushing this narrative is a detriment to survivors everywhere, but especially those who have been through RAMCOA traumas.

In addition, there is a new acronym out there (though it’s not my personal favorite) which is OEA, which means “Organized and Extreme Abuse.” I feel like it doesn’t quite capture what is necessary under that umbrella, but it is a viable replacement term and has a very broad umbrella that covers a lot of things. What terms survivors use is not up to anyone else but the survivor, and pulling the “conspiracy theory” card is getting old as hell. I do sort of understand where OP is coming from in terms of the origins of the acronym, but survivors are not at fault for where it came from and it should be up to the survivor to choose how they want to refer to it for themselves. My therapist uses the terms OEA and RAMCOA interchangeably because they mean the same thing. If antisemitism is the main complaint, then I think it would be beneficial to consider spreading the term OEA and encourage people to use that term instead rather than being angry at people using the term that they have a problem with and saying it’s all a conspiracy theory when it’s not.

I wish people would stop policing what terms other people use and stop conflating MC with conspiracy, though I doubt that wish will come true anytime soon.

[breelandwalker]

Red Flag Checklist

Okay witches, let's have a round table.

When you're reading or contemplating the purchase of a book on modern witchcraft or paganism, what are some red and green flags that you look for?

I'll start.

Red Flags:

Disreputable Author - If the author is either a known source of bad information or bad behavior, or one of those "house names" that certain companies use, that's a no for me.

"New Age White Witch" Syndrome - If a text has a more-than-incidental or very deliberate focus on culturally appropriative practices ("Use this exotic voodoo doll ritual to hex your ex"), outdated terminology ("black magic," that G slur we don't use, etc), antisemitic bullshit (Lilith is not a pagan goddess), or anti-science rhetoric ("Essential oils are better than pills!") And yes this means the ever-expanding list of racist dogwhistles too.

Poor Understanding or Misrepresentation of History - If someone's repeating Murrayisms or insisting things are ancient that definitely aren't (POTATO GODDESS), that says to me that either the author didn't bother to do their research or they don't know what they're talking about.

Insistence on One Correct Way - If I encounter anything resembling "this is the only TRUE way," the book's going out the window. The more so if the author is citing their personal opinions or UPGs as fact.

Insistence on Gendering Everything - If a book insists on assigning a binary gender to everything (outside of citing a historical context), or is boomboxing ~*SACRED WOMYN'S WOMB MAGYCK*~ throughout, or even if it's just overly preoccupied with fertility and childbearing as part of the "natural" life cycle, I'm immediately putting it down. (This is more of a personal one, in a way? But it's a red flag for TERFy things too.)

Lack of Sources - If there's no bibliography, no works cited, no recommended reading, or just a really flimsy list that's rife with internet links or problematic titles, that's not a good sign.

Green Flags:

Inclusive Language - If the author refers to the reader or an unidentified person as "they" or "them," that's a good sign. Double points if it's in a context that you'd normally expect to see gendered elsewhere. There's always room for gendered language when it's appropriate, but to me, it's refreshing when an author doesn't assume the reader identifies as female.

Health and Safety Warnings - If there are notes for safe handling or harvesting of potentially harmful herbs, or warnings about health hazards (i.e. keep this away from persons who are pregnant or nursing), or reminders to be careful with fire and glass and the like, this is a good sign. To me, it means the author has a practical mindset and is at least keeping real-world limitations in mind.

Lots of Sources...and GOOD Sources - If the book has a nice fat bibliography, especially if there are mundane sources as well as magical ones, and if those sources are solid? A+. Double points if there's an index or footnotes and citations throughout the text.

Lack of "Guru" Mindset - If the author encourages the reader to take what they've learned and continue to do research on their own, that's a good sign. Encouragement of critical thinking is excellent, and also the admission that there is more than one way of Doing The Magical Thing. (Hi Lee)

Good Formatting - A book should be visually appealing, but it should also be easy to read and formatted properly, in a way that makes sense. I like to see clean margins, good spacing, and clear text. Page decorations and pictures and fancy title fonts are fine, so long as they don't make the book difficult to decipher.

(Okay, your turn!)

[menlove]

it's just so wild to me bc if it were literally any other axis of oppression yall would be capable of understanding that a progressive group advocating for one group's rights can still be awful to another group

like if you can understand that a trans activist can still be racist and that calling out their racism isn't being transphobic

or that a gay man advocating for gay rights can still be misogynistic and that calling out his misogyny isn't homophobic

or that a non black person of color can advocate for rights for their group while still being anti black and that calling out their anti blackness is not racist

then how can you not comprehend that someone being pro-palestine can be antisemitic and that calling out their antisemitism is not against palestine?

it's literally the exact same. and of course it works in the reverse! there are jewish people who advocate for jewish rights and are still islamphobic and they should be called out about it!

but calling out discrimination and disgusting behavior in an activist group is not the same thing as being against that group or discrediting the movement or even distracting from it

be pro-palestine. advocate for justice and freedom for palestinians. but also, especially if you are western, LISTEN to jews telling you you have an antisemitism problem. and if you don't, awesome! other people in the movement do and you should probably be backing jews up and calling them out when you see them being antisemitic. bc when you say "well EYEEEE am not antisemitic ! so you're exaggerating and making things up and just trying to discredit the pro-palestine movement" you just sound like any other antisemite. knock it off.

[allycat75]

Other characters in this junior high drama-mystery, that is so bad, CAA would convince our Boston Dumb Fuck it was a smart vehicle for him.

Because let's be honest, the crazy fan narrative is tissue paper thin and frankly uninspired. So who else we got!

The Publicist, who couldn't sell a sweater to a naked man in Winnipeg in the dead of winter and did no vetting of possible partner's problematic behavior. Did she think the fans would be that dumb because they saved him from a dick pic embarrassment? By the way, this is way worse that any dick pic.

The agents, looking for extra revenue streams now that their human trafficking pipeline has gotten too much exposure with the biggest client rotting in prison. Also include some (streaming) studios here who have deals with said agents and need their own additional revenue streams now that they figured out their existing business models don't work anymore, but are in need of a fourth yacht and 3rd private jet.

The ingenue who has been told her value is what is on the outside and how she can make older men feel. They will give her anything she wants and she doesn't have to work hard like the racially inferior, ugly and fat ones. It's not her fault everyone else is jealous. And if she doesn't get her way she acts like a petulant child and throws a tantrum until those around her capitulate.

The clout chasing friends, and possibly family. Whether it is for free trips, social media exposure, acting roles or just plain dickishness, they love taking advantage of their little cash cow, even if he looks sick, over worked, depressed and empty. Just keep smiling in them fancy photos while your "friend" slowly fades away. But then I guess the joke is on them, because, like the destruction described at the end of "The Lorax", "Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It's not."

The lawyers who can't seem to get The Golden Boy out of a super shady contract. No morality clause? No milestone clauses where if it looks like the situation is causing either party damage they could bail? Seems to me some of the requirements reek of illegal behavior- bribery, blackmail/coersion, immigration violations, along with punative emotional damages (just read the GQ article and look at most any picture of him since last November and you can see what I mean).

And finally, we have The Golden Boy himself. The one who could do no wrong. But that was only because he "shushed" all warnings out of his head. Whether it was hubris, greed, carelessness, frivolity, gullibility, obfuscation or just plain stupidity, he got himself into this mess somehow and can't seem to get himself out of it. It has destroyed his relationship with his fans, his ability to find and choose good roles, taken the joy and sparkle out of his eyes, caused him to dissociate from his entire life and career (says it himself in the GQ article), given up to smoke pot and play video games all day like a loser, "married" someone with the exact opposite traits he claimed to desire and is now associated with the antisemitic racists he used to fight against, while displaying some nasty misogynistic behavior throughout the process. And for what?

Yeah, but it's his fans that are crazy.

[cantsayidont]

I think setting STAR TREK: DISCOVERY and STRANGE NEW WORLDS in the TOS era was a questionable idea for a variety of reasons, but one of the more troublesome is their treatment of Spock, which opens some cans of worms I don't think there would have been a good way to handle even if the writers weren't intent on making bad and reactionary creative choices in other areas.

In TOS, most of the Enterprise crew, and really the majority of the Starfleet characters we're shown, are exceedingly racist to Spock with disconcerting regularity. Of the regular cast, I think the only ones who aren't overtly nasty to Spock at least some of the time are probably Uhura and Sulu; they get frustrated with him at certain points, but generally because he's a difficult and inflexible supervisor rather than due to racial animus. A lot of the rest of the crew is openly hostile, and McCoy routinely addresses him with slurs in front of the bridge crew. Kirk tolerates and sometimes participates in this racist abuse, and the only times he seems to take it very seriously are when it threatens to become an operational problem (as in "Balance of Terror"). The main feature that comes to characterize the bond that develops between Kirk and Spock is not that Kirk is significantly more tolerant, but that he will usually (not always) at least listen to Spock's point of view, which the rest of the crew is very reluctant to do (most pointedly in "The Galileo Seven"), and can be persuaded to respect his judgment, which Spock values even though Kirk's attitude and behavior still often make him uncomfortable.

This kind of space-racism toward nonhuman Federation citizens is not necessarily a structural element of STAR TREK (unlike anti-indigenous racism, which definitely is), but it is a structural element of Spock's character. Spock spends a lot of TOS teetering on the brink of a nervous breakdown, and it's tempting (though not canonical) to read his decision to pursue Kolinhar in the beginning of STAR TREK: THE MOTION PICTURE as a response to the stress of being on the Enterprise (fleeing to become a monk!). Even where Spock is not enduring racial slurs and constant microaggressions, you can see how that treatment, both in his youth on Vulcan and as an adult in Starfleet, has shaped his personality. Indeed, this is something I think to which fans of Spock have responded strongly over the years, because his alienation and stress are very relatable for LGBT people, people of color, Muslim and Jewish people (despite STAR TREK's canonical antisemitism and Islamophobia), and autistic people. This doesn't mean STAR TREK stories necessarily have to show Spock being tormented, which is often painful to watch, but if Spock had not been tormented in these ways, he would be a very different person than the character viewers know and love.

Making Spock a regular in DISCOVERY and later STRANGE NEW WORLDS thus presents the writers with a problem: Treating Spock the way he's treated in TOS would be uncomfortable, but avoiding it creates a tension with TOS that the newer shows obviously don't know how to resolve.

Prior to ENTERPRISE, the general presumption about the TOS era (which is stated as fact in some of the novels) was that having mixed-species crews is relatively new for Starfleet, and that the problems Spock faces stem from his colleagues never having lived and worked with an "alien" before and not knowing how to not be weird about it. (ENTERPRISE essentially transferred that idea to Archer's era, where T'Pol gets similar treatment.) In DISCO and SNW, however, we see that many Starfleet vessels have mixed crews, including officers (like Saru) who are much more obviously nonhuman than Spock is, and have for a while. So, how are we to read the events of TOS, with which DISCO and SNW still want to (uneasily) coexist? Is Kirk's Enterprise just a lot more racist than Pike's? That's possible, I guess, but how many STAR TREK fans really want to canonize the idea that Kirk and his crew are unusually intolerant by Starfleet standards? Are we to presume that SNW means to soft-retcon the hostility and constant microaggressions Spock experiences in TOS, shifting the entire onus for his twitchy alienation to his upbringing on Vulcan and to Sarek (who DISCO reiterates is a tremendous dick)? That would be sadly consistent with the disdain with which modern STAR TREK media treats Vulcan (and with the antisemitism of the modern shows), but it's a pretty bitter pill for anyone who thinks Vulcans are neat or cool, which used to be an uncontroversial majority opinion among STAR TREK viewers and writers.

The more sensible answer would have been to just dodge the issue entirely by staying further away from TOS and the period in which it takes place. There are other periods of the TREK timeline that are still largely unexplored (like the early 24th century era of the Enterprise-C), and there's always the option of moving further forward in time, as DISCOVERY eventually did. However, CBS seems very insistent on making heavy-handed appeals to nostalgia that require riding the coattails of TOS, even where that just doesn't seem like a good idea creatively.

My sense with DISCOVERY and SNW is that the producers would really like to simply redo TOS in a manner more consistent with their current vision, but that the decidedly mixed reactions to the alternate timeline JJ Abrams movies has made them gunshy about just declaring that openly. So, it seems they're instead trying to back into it with a kind of death-by-a-thousand-retcons approach, seeking to sand off both the uncomfortable aspects of TOS and stuff the producers and/or the network don't like (like Spock's gay-coding — SNW's determination to no-homo him is pronounced, albeit unpersuasive). I think I would find that vexing even if the producers' vision weren't frequently more jingoistic and racist than TOS, which it often is.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Peter Wade at Rolling Stone:

A FORMER TRUMP Organization vice president recalled a story of a time when Donald Trump once joked about Nazi “ovens” to Jewish executives in the room.

Barbara Res served as lead engineer on the Trump Tower project and is author of Tower of Lies, a memoir about her 18 years working for Trump. Res also participated in a 2016 New York Times article along with dozens of women who called out Trump’s private behavior toward them. [...] Res then said that Trump’s recent comments about “the late, great Hannibal Lecter” (a fictional cannibal from the film Silence of the Lambs) reminded her of a Nazi joke Trump once made toward Jewish executives in the Trump Organization. “It reminds me of a time when we had just hired a residential manager, a German guy,” Res said. “And Donald [Trump] was bragging among, to us executives, there were four of us, about how great the guy was and he was a real gentleman, and he was so neat and clean. And he looked at a couple of our executives who happen to be Jewish, and he said ‘Watch out for this guy, he sort of remembers the ovens,’ you know, and then smiled.”

“Everybody was shocked,” she continued. “I couldn’t believe he said that. But he was making a joke about the Nazi ovens and killing people, and that’s the way he was.” When host Ali Velshi asked Res about Trump’s affiliation with the Christian right, Res said Trump’s “embrace of religion” is “absolute nonsense.” She laughed when remembering how Trump “used to hate Christmas because he had to go to church one day.” “He was an agnostic, maybe he was an atheist,” she continued.

Former Trump Organization VP Barbara Res went on MSNBC’s Velshi yesterday, in which she revealed that Donald Trump make sickeningly antisemitic “jokes” about Nazi “ovens.”

Res is the author of Tower of Lies, which details her 18 years of working for the organization.

From the 06.23.2024 edition of MSNBC's Velshi:

[majaloveschris]

When this contract ends (if there is one), what do you think is next for Chris? For example do you think they will do some positive PR for him to get him back to his "CA image" or do you think he's just going to stay silent and out of public's eye? I really doubt he'd be really happy to show his face to public instantly after this contract ends considering he supposedly would be divorced and he's obviously going to be asked about it somewhere by someone, I think once this ends he might just take a seat and relax for a year or two, or he might instantly start making movies or something like that, again, only if there is a contract here, because I don't want to make concrete statements. Also, if there is a contract, when do all of you (Maja's followers and Maja) think it's going to end? To me it seems like they are going to ride this tide for as long as possible, maybe 2-3 more years? Could be even more, but the hype is already dying down so we'll see I guess!

If it's PR, I think the first should be him working on himself, and then he could start thinking about restoring his image. I think the most important thing would be him getting better and proving he is nothing like them and that he is not okay with racism, antisemitism, and fatphobia. Having a quick cameo as Cap could definitely help him out, but only after the things mentioned above.

If he doesn't want to, he doesn't have to talk about the divorce or their relationship, especially if it's going to be a forbidden topic. I don't think either of them should or will make any clear statements. Something like "They realized they were different people"; "he already wanted to have kids, she doesn't," "their values aren't the same," etc., would be perfectly fine. Making any other comment would make the whole thing worse. Give us the most common reasons, and let's move on.

If there is a contract, I don't think it's going to last 2–3 years. Maximum a year, at least in my opinion. Most people either wouldn't really care about them divorcing and would forget about them after a day, or they wouldn't mind it considering her and her friends's behavior.

We obviously don't know if there is a contract or the contents of it, so we can only theorize about all of this.

[rabbiaharon]

How’s life?

Baruch hashem! Life is life. Truth be told though, it's been a little rough. Antisemitism on the right really spiked during the Trump Administration, especially surrounding COVID, so I got used to keeping my guard up around people on the political right in this country. Because the political right tends to be armed, and I’d had things like “when I’m done with you, if you’re still alive, you’ll be running back to your own damn country”, around 2020 I started carrying… what I needed for self defense, should the need arise. I forgot that anti-Semitism on the left can be just as bad and even more Insidious because people disguise it neatly as being against the government of a country halfway across the world, rather than against the Jews they interact with on a daily basis. I found a lot more friendly behavior among people on the left, and unless I was mamash a Trump supporter (I'm not) it didn't matter whether I disagreed with them on a majority of issues. until about half a year ago I was working for a couple of years as a driver for Uber and Lyft. I got a new car, and got a license plate "Talmud" and set my name in the app as "Rabbi", so that antisemites would see my name and plate and decide they didn't want to ride and cancel their ride with me. Mostly, my shifts were uneventful, and when I picked people up, even from places that had reputations of being not-so-safe, people were mostly surprised about being picked up by an orthodox rabbi, and inquisitive about the differences between our cultures.

And then October 7th happened. Jews are a relatively tight-knit group; usually we pretty much know someone who knows someone, so many of us were personally affected by the attack on innocent jews in Israel. There was anger that so many of our own people were killed while just trying to enjoy themselves, or living in their home. Our friends or family, or friends of friends, or family of family, who were being held hostage by a savage terrorist organization known for indiscriminate violence and the use of human shields — we wanted them back. Most of all, those of us plugged in were asking why Israel, which has a fantastic intelligence gathering operation, was blindsided, and why there was such delay in their response. We wanted accountability from liars like Netanyahu and his cronies, we wanted to know why Israel seemingly let it happen. In the midst of our mourning, most of the non-jews who seemed like they were somewhat supportive and open to us suddenly lost their minds. They showed up to protest at our holiday celebrations (which more often than not have nothing to do with Israel) screaming "from the river to the sea, Palestine must be free" over our prayers. They harass jews on the streets who are minding their own business and threatening Jewish kids on their way to school. This is only the tip of the iceberg, and this is not the place or time to delve into it in all the gruesome detail. All the people who I picked up who I hadn’t had to worry about before were hostile to me, often asking me to justify the Israeli government’s actions as soon as they got in the car, and when I answered that the issue is a nuanced one, and one I have personal connections to (through friends and family who live there, and friends of friends being held hostage by Hamas) I was often assaulted with insults about how I condone genocide and how dare I not side unequivocally with people who want to kill me, and how maybe they’re correct and should be allowed to kill as many jews as they want.

I finally was able to quit driving and rededicate myself to teaching and learning, which was a massive improvement, despite antisemitic goyim coming to protest outside our shuls and schools. Hated by the right, betrayed by the left. In short, I no longer have any trust for goyim. If I see a goy on the street, I regard them with suspicion, as they represent a potential threat to me. That said, working for jews the way I am now, I’m more financially stable, and I get to learn Torah as my primary income, which is amazing, and this is Hashem’s world, after all.

[creature-wizard]

Yes, Gigi Young is literally just another conspiracy theorist.

Since I have this anon who's upset that I made a post awhile back criticizing some shit Gigi Young said, I figured I'd pop into her YouTube channel and see what she's doing these days.

I watched the video titled "The Occult Purpose of War & Satanic Super Technologies," which was uploaded in November of 2023, as well as the video titled The Esoteric Keys To Disclosure: 10.It's a Genetic Modification Cult, which was published back in September of 2023. So just to be clear, these are fairly new videos. This is basically what she believes and teaches right now, as of the time I am making this post. (December of 2023.)

Before I go into what she specifically says, I'm going to say right now that a lot of the stuff she's saying is basically the same stuff pushed by Fritz Springmeier, a far right conspiracy theorist with a history of extremely shady behavior and an undeniable mancrush on Dr. Joseph Mengele. (The guy really liked to talk about how handsome and irresistible this professional Nazi torturer supposedly was. I still feel queasy at the memory of reading what Springmeier said about him.)

Springmeier's work was influenced by the likes of Edith Starr Miller and Alexander Hislop. Edith Starr Miller was into all that Protocols stuff, and basically attacked anything that didn't conform to her ideals of what true Christianity was, claiming it was part of the Evil Conspiracy. Alexander Hislop was the Protestant dude who pulled a bunch of shit out of his ass about Roman Catholicism secretly being the continuation of an ancient Babylonian mystery cult.

Springmeier basically claimed that the world was under the control of thirteen Satanic bloodlines. In terms of what the conspiracy was supposedly up to, it was all a blend of the antisemitic hoax The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion with early modern witch panic and blood libel. He modernized it, of course. Springmeier claimed that the conspirators were experimenting with the creation of human/animal hybrids and developing advanced mind control technology.

It does not actually matter whether or not Gigi Young personally considers herself part of the far right in any sense. What matters - literally all that matters - is that she is spreading their beliefs and their rhetoric.

The impact and devastation is the same regardless of what Gigi Young personally considers herself.

She could hang a trans flag on her wall, wear an "I ❤️ Communism" shirt, spit on Hitler's picture in front of the camera, and it would not make a single iota of difference.

So in The Occult Purpose of War & Satanic Super Technologies, Gigi Young essentially proposes that a reason for Israel's assault on Gaza is that the satanic families supposedly controlling the world want to start World War III, for the purpose of conducting a massive blood ritual to summon the Antichrist. Here's a direct quote:

I absolutely think that they want to create World War III. World War III needs to happen for there to be enough blood in the soul for Ahriman to incarnate or for the Antichrist to incarnate. There needs to be a global war for the Antichrist to come into being.

The idea that there is a satanic cult that wants to bring about the rule of the Antichrist is basically the Christofascist conspiracy theory. The blood ritual element is another permutation of blood libel.

Young goes on to say that she believes that there's a faction within the dark elite that view nuclear bombs not as a weapon, but as an occult ritual.

She also makes indirect reference to the conspiracy theory that CERN was meant to open a portal to hell by claiming that particle accelerators tear a hole in the veil that allows demons to come through.

She repeats other common far right conspiracy theories, including the one where the conspiracy supposedly has Babylonian origins and practices dark rituals for the purpose of mind control over the populace, and that the conspiracy is genetically modifying plants and people for evil conspiracy reasons.

She also referred to elemental beings as "subhuman," which is a eugenicist term - literally a translation of untermensch. The fact that Young uses this word tells you something about the ideological bent among whatever people and literature influenced her beliefs.

In her video titled "The Esoteric Keys To Disclosure: 10.It's a Genetic Modification Cult," she talks more about this alleged satanic conspiracy. She claims that the conspiracy was told by demons and fallen angels that they were descended from alien gods, and that the conspiracy is all about genetic modification in order to become gods themselves.

So first of all, claiming that beliefs you disagree with came from demons and fallen angels is a move right out of the Christofascists' playbook. Normal people just accept and admit that people just come up with shitty ideas sometimes.

Secondly, Young's objection to the idea of alien ancestry and alien genetic modification in this video are very clearly part of her broader antivax and anti-GMO views. She believes that GMO foods are the work of the conspiracy, and that vaccinations were created by the conspiracy to modify people's genetics. She's literally an antivaxxer, y'all.

And like. The way to handle these conspiratorial alien origin myths isn't to reframe them in a slightly different conspiracy theory. The way to handle it is challenging and destroying the conspiracy theory altogether. It literally makes no different whether Young believes humanity is descended from aliens or not, so long as she's pushing this kind of conspiracy narrative.

Her views on GMOs and such this are pretty obviously informed by an attitude that natural = pure = good. What she's trying to pass off as anti-eugenics is actually a kind of belief in genetic purity, which is itself a form of eugenics.

She even claims that the downfall of Atlantis was caused by genetically modifying organisms. She claims that genetic modification actually "degenerates" the form. (For someone who claims to hate Nazis so much, she sure does use their language.)

She apparently believes that the conspiracy has a depopulation agenda. This one's been circulating far right conspiracy theory circles for decades.

She makes some bizarre claims about New Age alien beliefs. She tries to pin the whole thing on Scientology, which she claims was Nazi esotericism. While it's true that Scientology and New Age alien beliefs are similar, the latter were developing well before Scientology was a thing. Scientology, rather, was influenced by the ideas of its time. And while it's true that Nazi ideas have influenced New Age beliefs, Gigi Young cannot actually point to any specific cases; instead, she acts like the entire thing is ultimately a Nazi conspiracy, which is bullshit.

She also acts like New Age spirituality is extremely materially reductive. While I do think that New Age spirituality can be somewhat materially reductive, it's nowhere near to the degree that Gigi Young is describing. She seems to think that New Age ideas will somehow lead to people accepting DNA modification through vaccinations, which is just bizarre given how New Age is also rife with antivax conspiracism.

Her radfemmy gender essentialist shit comes back when she blames the world's condition on the overgrown and distorted male impulse that wants to control the feminine and take over creation, and says that if you're creating something in a petri dish, you're not allowing the holy womb of the woman to create life, which is what it's for.

So yeah, no, Gigi Young is not better than these New Age conspiracy theorists out there, not even a little bit. She's every bit as bad. Don't be fooled by the fact that she's dunking on people you hate; she's still pushing the same kind of conspiracy crap they believe in.

[mariacallous]

Elon Musk may have put the final nail in X’s coffin. On Wednesday, Musk appeared to endorse an antisemitic post by user @breakingbaht alleging that “Jewish communities have been pushing the exact kind of dialectical hatred against whites that they claim to want people to stop using against them.” In response, Musk posted, “You have spoken the actual truth.”

The original post seemed to echo the beliefs of the “great replacement” conspiracy theory, which is popular among white supremacists and right-wing extremists. The backlash has been swift. In a statement earlier today, White House spokesperson Andrew Bates condemned the “abhorrent promotion of antisemitic and racist hate in the strongest terms, which runs against our core values as Americans,” and marquee advertisers have been quick to pull their business. IBM, Disney, Liongsgate, and the European Union have pulled advertising from X in response to Musk’s post. According to a report in Axios, Apple has also paused advertising on X.

At the time of publication, Apple had not responded to multiple requests for comment, nor has it confirmed that it is pulling its advertising from X.

“Advertisers like IBM and Apple aren’t just big names, they’re big spenders on X,” says Angelo Carusone, president of Media Matters, a media watchdog group which has been tracking advertiser behavior on X. Carusone, citing data shared by data insights firm Sensor Tower, says that in July, the top five advertisers on X by spending were Apple, FinanceBuzz.io, Amazon, Mondelez International, and Hewlett-Packard. In the past, Apple has frequently been among the top 20 advertisers on X.

Carusone adds that Apple typically signals a certain level of brand safety to other, smaller advertisers. The company is also known for its stringent policies around controversial content in its App Store and on its own platforms. If Apple has paused, or plans to pause, its advertising on X, it “could have a halo effect,” Carusone claims, scaring other advertisers away from the platform. “It goes way beyond money.”

In August, X CEO Linda Yaccarino emphasized that the company was expanding its brand-safety tools, designed to give advertisers and marketers more control over what kind of content their ads appeared in proximity to.

But this recent spate of antisemitic content on X, and the juxtaposition of big-brand ads next to it, only underscores to advertisers that X is a risky bet, experts argue. “Even with those tools, if you’re an advertiser right now you’re thinking, there’s quite literally nothing I can do on this platform to improve my experience,” Carusone says.

“The problem with X is not only that there's misinformation and antisemitic content on the platform, and other hateful content as well, but that it's being spread by Musk himself,” says Jasmine Enberg, principal analyst for social media at Insider Intelligence, a market research firm.

“The brand safety concern for advertisers isn't just about the content but about the platform and the leadership.” Enberg argues that Musk has treated the company like something he could remake in his own image, not understanding that “what he wants and what he seemingly believes is not necessarily aligned with what users and advertisers on the platform want and believe.”

Under Musk’s leadership, X is expected to see an unprecedented 54 percent drop in advertising revenue, which previously accounted for more than 90 percent of the company’s total.

Even before Musk took ownership of then-Twitter, experts worried that his particular brand of free speech absolutism would lead to a flood of trolls and hate speech on the platform. In his first weeks as owner, Musk laid off nearly everyone working on trust and safety, the teams responsible for ensuring that hate speech, violence, and inappropriate content stay off the platform. (Hate speech did, in fact, increase under Musk’s leadership.) Musk’s lax approach to content moderation also nearly got the platform banned during the 2022 presidential runoffs in Brazil, the platform’s third largest market.

In response, advertisers began to flee, worried about the brand safety risks of their products appearing next to hateful or inflammatory posts. Since joining X as CEO earlier this year, Yaccarino, formerly global advertising lead at NBCUniversal, has seemingly been hampered in her ability to woo back advertisers by Musk’s decisions. And while X has claimed it was regaining advertisers, an October study from Media Matters found that X’s 100 largest advertisers were spending 90 percent less than they did before Musk’s takeover.

[kick-a-long]

Forgot to explain antisemitism to my husband for the hours and months and years required for an interfaith relationship before marriage,

But he believes me unconditionally. I’m lucky I picked a good one. We even talked honestly about where we would run to (and what would happen to his law license) which he usually laughs off. The difference this time? He works at a very leftist ngo and has seen the statements his colleagues have been making.

Not all Jewish/goy unions are like this. I’m very very relieved that I got lucky.

For example:

Alice Walker, deeply and unapologetically antisemitic, was not always that way. her first marriage was to a Jewish man who worked in tandem with black organizations to legally dismantle black discrimination in the south. His family hated her for not being Jewish and for being black. They were awful. But their marriage ended many years later when she became very conspicuously antisemitic and refused to listen about its history.

My own mother converted to Judaism and was FAR more observant than my Jewish father but later in life became what I would generously call “Jewish hostile” when their marriage began breaking down.

I always knew there was a possibility of me becoming more Jewish or marriage related friction causing that same kind of situation. But we’ve been married 5 years and together 13. He has spent his time, body and soul helping poor renters protect themselves from being evicted. He doesn’t have illusions about the poor being “innocent victims” or even expecting his clients to be “worthy of help.” Some of them have threatened to kill him, one spent everyday spending hours yelling at him and then got her mother to call to do the same. He doesn’t need “good” clients to help him. I know that he’s a believer that all people are capable of switching between monsters and humans but that doesn’t diminish his work to help the vulnerable. In some ways he has a more Jewish perspective on humanity than I did.

If you’re Jewish and losing friends because they were easily converted into conspiracies and antisemitism try to keep your partner in the loop without letting your anger and suspicion get between you.

If your partner is Jewish and you aren’t, remember there is no Jewish history about finding lasting safety. Believing that you (Jewish) must be kind and respectful of others culture and defending peoples rights and also that at any given moment you (Jewish to any 1/2, 1/4, 1/8, degree) will have to drop everything and RUN because the people you helped, the people you loved, want you dead, are the twin beings inside almost every Jew.

One of the reasons why you don’t see a lot of Jews attacking the character of “good” anti Zionist Jews, is we all get it. They think they can bargain their way out of antisemitism. Just like house slaves that thought they could escape being a “real” slave by fully buying into racism (and maybe getting off on the power of being the slaves elevated by slave owners for hating blackness.)

It’s a lot to ask of any person to “get” the cultural history let alone the cultural trauma they partnered into. Forgive, forget, but don’t be shocked if either of you sounds a little nuts sometimes. I sometimes go full doomsday prepper on him. And he lets peoples shitty behavior slide when I would go full flaming sword. It’s important to remember the daily reality.

Politics is NEVER as important as deep love between two people. It’s essential to remember that and remind loved ones you want to keep of that. Politics is theory and your life together is reality.

I used to like the idea of relationships as romantic and dreamy, now I thank god it’s reality. It’s hard as a rock and just as flexible sometimes. That has its cons but I’ll take every single one for the pros.

Ride or die for each other is what it means. Be ride or die and expect nothing less from any partners in your life. Ask them for it but only if you can truthfully tell them they have it from you. You can’t be the singular unique person that anyone loves if you are only your identity and vise versa.

[ghostpalmtechnique]

I regret to inform you that prejudice (of the banal traditional kind) is not inherently right-wing

I.

Karl Marx wrote:

...Let us consider the actual, worldly Jew – not the Sabbath Jew, as Bauer does, but the everyday Jew. Let us not look for the secret of the Jew in his religion, but let us look for the secret of his religion in the real Jew. What is the secular basis of Judaism? Practical need, self-interest. What is the worldly religion of the Jew? Huckstering. What is his worldly God? Money. Very well then! Emancipation from huckstering and money, consequently from practical, real Judaism, would be the self-emancipation of our time. An organization of society which would abolish the preconditions for huckstering, and therefore the possibility of huckstering, would make the Jew impossible. His religious consciousness would be dissipated like a thin haze in the real, vital air of society. On the other hand, if the Jew recognizes that this practical nature of his is futile and works to abolish it, he extricates himself from his previous development and works for human emancipation as such and turns against the supreme practical expression of human self-estrangement. We recognize in Judaism, therefore, a general anti-social element of the present time, an element which through historical development – to which in this harmful respect the Jews have zealously contributed – has been brought to its present high level, at which it must necessarily begin to disintegrate. In the final analysis, the emancipation of the Jews is the emancipation of mankind from Judaism...

Iosif Stalin's death, not long after his fabrication of the Doctors' Plot, spared the world from another wave of the great terror specifically against Jews. Even with him gone, discrimination against Jews remained the de facto policy of the USSR until its dissolution. And de jure policy, if one includes the fact that Soviet internal passports featured one's nationality, and Jews (except for the children of mixed marriages) were not allowed to identify as "Russian", "Ukrainian", etc.

If your definition of the ideological Left and Right does not place Karl Marx and Iosif Stalin on the left, your classification system has effectively lost all meaning.

II.

I don't want to pick on Twitter user rev_avocado (who generally writes mostly good things) in particular; this is an example of a more widespread phenomenon. I made this post now after reading the Sam Kriss essay posted by @prudencepaccard and @triviallytrue. I thought the essay was 98% excellent. The one flaw, in my view, is this one. It posits one specific psychological mechanism to explain the bad behavior of some left-wing Westerners on social media. It's not even that it cites a reason to dismiss the possibility that perhaps even a small fraction of these people genuinely don't value Jewish lives; it's that it never even considers the possibility in order to dismiss it. I suspect this is because some people just assume that prejudice against Jews is inherently right-wing.  "My comrades are left-wing; ipso facto they cannot be antisemitic.”

And. It. Just. Isn't. So. [x] (Sadly, I cannot agree with Corey Robin that this is exclusive to Europe. Possibly, if he wrote that post now, he wouldn't either.)

Lest there be any confusion about the point of this post, I emphatically do not think that those like rev_avocado or Sam Kriss are themselves displaying antisemitism.

You know those polls where they asked people how common cheating in school was, and the people who themselves never cheated assumed everyone was like them, and said it was rare, while the cheaters assumed everyone was like them, and said it was near-universal? I think this explains both some of the utterly counterproductive celebrations of civilian massacres and the bafflement of the people marveling at their tactical insanity.

Again, to be as clear as possible about this, the vile people are the ones with an incorrect perception. Antisemitism is obviously much less common on the left (well, the social-democratic left; Tankies are horrible about this, but Tankies are horrible about everything) than on the right. But I would greatly appreciate it if the left-wingers who are ostensibly my friends and/or comrades would stop reflexively assuming that the number of leftists who despise me for my ethnicity is zero. It is a minority, but that is not the same thing as "it is insignificant".