#or was that just something you said to try and cover up your zionism? | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

momowho34 · 4 years ago

Text

Here are some jewish myths you might still believe!!!!

(Pls read and reblog I’m tired of people echoing shit like this)

Jesus was not a rabbi. He lived a hundred years before rabbinic judaism even started to develop. Please stop saying this as if it lends him credence in our religion, because no. It doesn’t.

Yeah, Jesus was jewish, but he also rejected mainstream Judaism and hated it. Stop pretending he means anything to us. Idk if you guys have even read your own books, Matthew is like 60% about how the Pharisees are bad and wrong and evil for sticking to the traditions that have kept them alive for 100s of years. It’s also, y’know, historically inaccurate to the actual behavior of the Pharisees in that time period. Seriously man he is not ours and means nothing to us, keep your Jesus and stop trying to shoehorn him into judaism.

Our god is not yours “minus the Jesus.” In trinity terms; divide the Holy Spirit by the Father and then subtract the Son and that is a bare bones grasp of what god appears as for Jews.

Jews are not white as a whole. Are there white Jews? Yes. Are there jews who are literally every other skin tone? Also yes!! We are all over the place. India, numerous Middle Eastern countries, Morocco, Spain, and a lot more I can’t be bothered to list. You are actively hurting poc jews by pretending that all jews are European, holy shit stop doing that please!!! Most white jewish people are Ashkenazi, which is just one type of judaism.

Actually, the historical relationship between Jews and Muslims is a lot more complicated then you think it is. Sometimes we got along, sometimes we didn’t. Some would argue that Jews were treated better by Islamic caliphates in the Middle Ages then they were by Christian kingdoms. Stop trying to pretend we are and have always been “arch nemeses” or some fucking bullshit (that would be the Amalekites for us, actually, and not the Muslims) Also we’re honestly more similar to them when it comes to traditions then christians so like take that into account thanks

Hey guys listen to Romani when they talk about the Holocaust too!!!!! Please, they have a different experience/perspective and deserve to have their voices heard. Don’t pretend they don’t exist and that it didn’t effect them because uh.... it did. To a degree that I don’t think I can properly explain. Do not overlook them and then pretend it’s just because ur a “jewish ally” or whatever the fuck.

Stop pretending that we’re the same as Christianity. We aren’t. Stop stop stop holy shit stop. That’s not how any of this works at all. Christianity is so so so different, it takes like a handful of jewish beliefs and runs with them. Christianity is its own thing and so is Judaism, stoppp.

Not all Jews are zionists. some are explicitly anti-zionists. Not all zionists are anti-Semitic, but some of them are. Basically, jews aren’t inherently zionists and anti-Zionism isn’t inherently antisemitic. That being said, some people do use anti-Zionism as a cover for their anti-semitism. Watch out for those people, they’re not that hard to spot. That’s all I’m going to say about that, don’t want to start on this issue because it isn’t what this list is about.

Jews never actually lived by the literal laws of the Torah. We did not stone people. There is no archeological evidence of that and actually more evidence pointing to the opposite. jewish communities actually held capital punishment as being inherently immoral and was very very very rarely used in some communities. Understand that. Don’t ever say shit like “but the Jews used to live by the Bible too, and they stoned gay people!!!” No. No we didn’t. Ever. Nobody did that in ancient times.

Guess what, jews are not rich or greedy! what the fuck are you talking about??? Quit it please. This stereotype has literally been used since the Middle Ages to alienate Jews as a more privileged “other” that deserve their prosecution. Stop stop please stop, please!!!!! People actually believe this shit and commit hate crimes, stop, even as a sarcastic joke.

The Old Testament is not the same as the Torah/Tanakh. It’s just not? For one thing, the Old Testament is a translation of a cut down version of a translation of a different modified version, so no. Not the same. Also the books are ordered differently and the sections are mixed up.

God does not abandon the Jews in the Tanakh or the Old Testament for that matter. It’s like... sort of implicated to happen between the two testaments in Christianity. The Old Testament basically structured the books non-chronologically so that the last one would be Malachi because his prophecies are supposed to echo Jesus. We end the Tanakh on Nehemiah, and there is no “New Testament” for us because there’s only one and it ends at the end of the story.

Antisemitism is definitely still a thing. I don’t know who the fuck told you about this one? The Jews got treated like shit after the holocaust, and some of the few survivors 70 years later got reparations so now everybody’s acting like antisemitism doesn’t exist. It does. It really, really fucking does. Please listen to us.

Holocaust denial isn’t “a fringe conspiracy theory,” it’s genuinely awful and dangerous and hurts real people. I’m serious about this one, holocaust denial (and any genocide denial for that matter, whether it’s talking about the Armenian genocide or Holdomer or any others) is legit dangerous. Pay attention to it and have 0% tolerance for that shit

You are allowed to be invited to a jewish event if you’re not jewish! We literally do not care. Respectfully participating in traditions if you’re invited to is fine! The issue is when people take a jewish tradition and twist it into something for them. That’s a no-no, but getting invited to a seder/bar mitzvah/bris is fine. just show respect to traditions you see, even if you don’t entirely understand them. Do that and you’ll be fine.

Jews are a ridiculously diverse group of people with a lot of different beliefs! We all have vastly different ideas of fucking everything from god to the purpose of pomegranates (not a joke). Accept that we think differently form eachother and aren’t a monolith please

These are all the ones I could think of lol, jewish friends add more if you can think of some. Ok and encouraged to reblog for everyone.

#jews and judaism #judaism #jewish #jews #antisemitism #antisemites #christanity #not a shitpost #ok to reblog #ok to rebagel #xtianity #xtian #be respectful in the notes pls #it’s cool if you didn’t know this stuff before I was surprised at how many ppl didn’t #keep it in mind now though #common myths #myths and facts #pls reblog

3K notes · View notes

nevermindirah · 4 years ago

Text

Ok it's Jewish Booker o'clock, I can no longer stop myself, let's do this!

Why Jewish Booker? Dude was born in Marseilles in 1770, which happens to be a FASCINATING time and place in Jewish history, and it adds ridiculous layers to his character (without excusing a damn thing). Alternately just because I think he’s neat :)

Jewish Booker headcanons that make me happy:

not to be all "real Jews do X" but Jews fuck with candles hard. Book of Nile thrives on old/modern analog/digital giggles. Booker lighting Shabbat candles, lighting yarzeit (memorial) candles for his wife and sons (sob), lighting a menorah, lighting candles just because he's feeling emotional even though it's not chag (a holiday) or a yarzeit and Nile thinks he's trying to be sexy but he's really just in his feelings. just like. so many candles.

maybe Booker was the person who punched Richard Spencer at Trump's inauguration, just bringing back that time somebody punched a famous neonazi in the street and said neonazi has all but stopped appearing in public after a few rounds of public punching

were the Old Guard in Charlottesville in 2017? how many times has Booker the Blond Jew infiltrated North American white nationalist / Klan type activities and then stolen their weapons and/or killed them? likewise there's plenty of horrifying white nationalist shit happening across Europe this century, how many Pim Fortuyn types has he been involved in taking down? (I Am Of Course Not Endorsing Violence TM ;) ;) )

SINGING. Mattias Schoenaerts sings in Away From the Madding Crowd but it's church shit, sigh, anyway he has a nice voice. a lot of Jewish prayer is sung/chanted (depending on when/where you are and the gender rules of the community you're in) and there’s been a lot of innovation to Jewish singing in Booker’s lifetime, and I just want Nile to overhear him singing to himself on Friday afternoons

Nile Freeman was four years old when The Prince of Egypt came out, she grew up on that shit, she would want to introduce her new family to that shit. Please join me in picturing Booker, Nicky, Joe, and Andy all shouting "that's not how it happened!!" throughout this beautiful nightmare of a movie with lovely animation and songs but where white people voice most of the Egyptian and Jewish characters, because Booker Nicky and Joe's religious texts all frame the Exodus story a little differently and Andy was probably there when it happened (except for how it didn't actually happen it's an important story but it's just a story pls just let me giggle about Andy being super old)

Read below the cut for sad Jewish Booker headcanons, French Jewish history (mostly sad), context on antisemitism (enraging/sad), and all the way to the very end for a himbo joke.

Jewish Booker headcanons, I made myself sad edition:

he is a forger. who was alive. in 1939. visas. VISAS. V I S A S. how many of us did he save? how many more could he have saved if he didn't sleep that night? how heavily does that weigh?

how do we think he BECAME a forger? most likely he was doing what he needed to do to support his family, which gets extra poignant if he was also trying to help his people, forging documents as well as money even during his mortal life

Booker raised Catholic by crypto-Jews adds ANOTHER layer to the forgery thing, no shit he'd get good at falsifying paperwork and coming up with plausible cover stories

do we know how Booker made it back home after his first death in 1812? his route between the Russian Empire and Provence in 1812 would've been a patchwork of laws about Jews, in case starvation and frostbite weren't enough for him to have to deal with, he's blond and could maybe get away with pretending not to be Jewish if he had to, alternately maybe synagogues and yeshivot took him in on his way home

the structural and sometimes-interpersonal dynamics of antisemitism cause many individual Jews to experience feelings of teetering on the fence between a valued member of a not-exclusively-Jewish community and a scapegoat/outcast/problem. HOLY SHIT BOOKER. "what do you know of all these years alone" is the most Jewish loneliness-in-a-crowd shit I've ever heard. fear that we're not wanted, or only wanted so long as we're useful — that's something that basically all people struggle with under capitalism, but it's especially poignant for many Jews because of the particular way antisemitism operates. (NOTE this can tip from a legit Jewish Booker reading to woobification of the sad white man who couldn't possibly be held responsible for his own actions because he's so sad, which, NOPE. it's very understandable for him to feel left out and misunderstood and not as wanted, as the youngest and not part of an immortal couple and maybe Jewish, but NONE OF THIS excuses his betrayal.)

Crusaders murdered a lot of Jews on their way to the ~holy land~. how many of Booker's people did Nicky kill on his way to kill Joe's people? has Booker ever actually talked to either of them about it?

I read this really beautiful fic about Joe needing to circumcise himself after getting run over by a cart (ouch) — this is a hell of a thing for Joe and Booker to have in common

just generally Jewish Booker adds more layers to him and Joe so clearly being such close friends, ugh that look Joe gives him when they're leaving the bar at the end of the movie, and I very much do not mean this in a gross Arab-Israeli-conflict way because Joe is Amazigh not Arab and Booker is Jewish not Israeli (and also a lot of Jews are Arabs) (but most importantly there's no ~eternal conflict~ between Muslims and Jews) (more about OP Is Not A Zionist below)

like, the UK and France (and to a certain extent Italy) carved up the former Ottoman Empire after WWI; among other things, the UK took Palestine, and they could've worked on eradicating European antisemitism so Jews wouldn't have to leave but instead they used their control of Palestine to encourage Zionist emigration of Jews out of Europe, and France took what is now Iraq, which has some pretty direct implications for US military involvement in that country in Nile's lifetime; France colonized Tunisia in the late 19th century and still held it during the Vichy era which means Tunisian Jews were subject to Nazi anti-Jewish laws which is just layers upon layers of colonial racist Islamophobic and antisemitic nightmares for Joe and Booker to live through

to be crystal clear before anybody gets ooh Muslim-Jewish conflict up in here, antisemitism is an invention of European Christians that they imported to the places they colonized, the European colonial powers encouraged Zionism because it was easier for them to encourage Jews to leave Europe and set us up as middle agents between the colonial powers and the ~scary brown people~, the Ottoman Empire and other Muslim governments historically have had a second-class citizenship category for non-Muslims that rankles my American first amendment freedom of religion sensibility but was very much not targeting Jews specifically, and these two men who've lived for a long-ass time through many varieties of geopolitical awfulness (and alongside a certain unwashed Crusader who has since learned his lesson) would have Things To Say about how our current mainstream discourses frame these things

getting off my soapbox and back to this action movie I'm trying to talk about, the ANGST of Booker's exile, which is simultaneously a very valid decision for Andy Joe and Nicky to make, an extremely long time for Nile who is only 26 years old to be separated from the one person on the planet in a position to really understand the crisis she's going through, and holy shit expelling a Jew from your group when he's already been expelled from mortality and his family and being expelled from places and continually having to start over somewhere new is THE curse of surviving through antisemitism, OUCH MY FEELINGS

Some French Jewish history:

France, like basically all of Europe, periodically expelled its Jews, but Provence (where Marseilles is) wasn't legally part of France during the expulsions up through 1398 so Provence had a continuous active Jewish community; about 3,000 Iberian Jewish refugees ended up in Provence after the expulsions from Spain and Portugal in the 1490s

the 1498 expulsion of French Jews DID apply to Provence but many "converted" to Christianity and reestablished a Jewish community when enforcement of the expulsion chilled out (which was in the government's interest because they were really into taxing Jews at higher rates, so much so that they taxed "new Christians" at higher rates once they realized expelling Jews meant they wouldn't be around to overtax, ffs) — by the mid-18th century Provence had notable communities of Jews and crypto-Jews (forced converts and their descendants who still kept some Jewish practices in secret)

Booker would've been 21 when revolutionary France granted equal legal rights to Jews in 1791 — his mortal life and first century of immortality happens to line up almost perfectly with the timeline of legal emancipation of Jews across Europe

the American and French Revolutions happened pretty much concurrently and took different approaches to religious freedom that make Book of Nile with Jewish Booker and canon Christian Nile extra interesting — French emancipation, at least from my American sensibility, is about secularism and religion not "interfering" (hence French Islamophobic shittiness about banning hijabs), whereas American religious freedom is more of "the government can't stop me from trying to evangelize / religiously harass people at my school/workplace/etc" — to be clear I think both countries' approaches to religious "freedom" are hegemonic as shit and have devastating flaws, but they're different models that emerged at the same time in Booker's youth and Christianity is clearly a source of emotional support for Nile and there's so much to explore here

Napoleon tried to ~liberate~ the Jews of places he conquered for his dumbass French Empire, but liberation from ghettos came with strings attached (like banning us from some of the only jobs we'd been legally allowed to have for centuries, and liberating us for the stated purpose of getting us to assimilate and stop being Jews) and many places that were briefly part of the French Empire reinstated their antisemitic laws after Napoleon was gone, can you imagine being a French Jew forced to fight and die in Russian winter for that jackass and then have to trudge back through a dozen countries whose antisemitism was all riled up by French interference?

Some facts about antisemitism:

antisemitism operates differently than many other oppressions, it doesn't economically oppress the target group in the same way as antiblackness or misogyny or ableism etc — the purpose of antisemitism is to create a scapegoat to blame when European peasants are mad at the king / the church / the people actually in charge, and structural antisemitism encourages a system where some Jews become visibly successful so that those individuals and our whole community are easier to make into scapegoats

one of the historical roots of antisemitism is stuff in the Christian Bible about moneylending as sinful — Jews in medieval Europe were often barred from owning land and Christians barred from moneylending, so some Jews found work in finance and some of us became very visibly successful for working with money — a few individual Jews running a particular bank or finding success as jewelry dealers turns into "Jews control global financial systems" scapegoating — a more recent example of this is the participation of nonblack Jews in white flight and the role of Jewish landlords doing the visible dirty work of non-Jewish institutions in American antiblack housing discrimination, Nile grew up on the South Side of Chicago and would have seen some shit along these lines and might repeat hurtful ideas out of a lack of knowledge, here's Ta Nahesi Coates on some of these dynamics

Booker canonically being a forger (specifically of coins in the comics?) needs a little extra care to avoid antisemitic tropes about Jews and money, I will happily answer good-faith asks about this if you want to check on something for a fic/etc

antisemitism in the United States where I live in October 2020 isn't institutional in the sense of targeting Jews for police violence or anything like that. it IS systemic, however, for example in all the antisemitic conspiracy theories the Trump administration and several other Republicans peddle (ie QAnon), and in how the Trump administration points to support for Israel as if that means support for Jews (it doesn't, it's evangelical Christians who push the US government to support the Israeli government because they think Jews need to be in the ~holy land~ for Jesus to come back that's literally why the United States funds Israel at the level it does). antisemitism also gets weaponized to encourage white Jews (those of us of European descent, who in the United States are definitely white because the foundation of US racism is slavery and antiblackness as well as anti-indigenous genocide, maybe European Jews aren't included in whiteness everywhere but we definitely are where I live) to side with white supremacy instead of building solidarity with other marginalized people (ie a lot of mainstream Jewish groups shit on the Movement for Black Lives because of its solidarity with Palestinians)

the Nation of Islam has a major presence in Chicago and its leader Louis Farrakhan who lives in Chicago has long spread a variety of antisemitic as well as homophobic bullshit but there are genuine good reasons many Black people find meaning/support in the Nation of Islam and Nile would've grown up with that mess in the air around her, this is a good take from a Black Jew about the nuance of all that

the way the Old Guard comics draw Yusuf al Kaysani is HOLY SHIT ANTISEMITISM BATMAN I hate it please summarize the comics for me because I DO NOT WANT to look at that unnecessarily caricatured nose why the fuck did they do that human noses are beautiful there is absolutely no need to draw Joe like a Nazi would

Jews for Racial and Economic Justice is a local NYC group that recently developed a fantastic resource for understanding and fighting antisemitism (pdf) 11/10 strongly recommend

Zionism disclaimer: A lot of Jews feel strongly that we need a Jewish-majority country in order to be safe from antisemitism. I strongly disagree with this idea on its merits (Jews disagree about who is a Jew and making Jewish status a government/immigration matter means some of us are going to get left out; also non-Jews aren't fundamentally dangerous and separatism isn't going to end antisemitism) but I have a lot of empathy for the very valid fear that leads a lot of my people to Zionism. Whether I want a Jewish-majority country or not, what Israel has done and continues to do to Palestinians is a deal breaker. Emotions run very high on this subject — I spend a lot of my not-Tumblr life talking to other Jews about Zionism and I'd rather not have this Jewish Booker headcanons post become yet another place where fellow Jews yell at me in bad faith. Block me if you need to, you're not going to change my mind. Call me self-hating if you want, I know I love us.

Racism in fandom disclaimer: I feel weird about increasing the volume of meta about Booker in this fandom. Nile Freeman is the main character and deserves lots of attention and adoration from the fandom — and she deserves emotional support from as many friends and orgasms from as many partners as she wants. I think Jewish Booker makes her friendship and potential romantic relationship with him even more interesting, hence this post. Ship what you ship, but be aware of the racist impact of focusing your fandom activity on, for example, shipping two white men while ignoring awesome characters of color especially the canon man of color one of those white dudes has already been with for a millennium. Please and thanks don't use my post for shenanigans like sidelining Joe so you can ship Booker with Nicky.

Oh and a non-disclaimer fun fact, Matthias Schoenaerts was born in Antwerp which apparently has one of the largest Jewish communities still remaining in Europe?? ~Jewish Booker headcanons intensify~

In conclusion: Jewish Booker! Just because it's fun! It exponentially increases the angst of his mortal lifetime and it puts his first century of immortality smack in the middle of the most intense changes to Jewish life since the fall of the Second Temple (aforementioned emancipation, also founding of Reform Judaism, the Haskalah, Zionism, and then of course the Holocaust). It makes his relationships with Nile, Joe, and Nicky more interesting and potentially angstier and with more intense commonalities and tenderness about their differences. It's very common for Jews to not believe in God (this confuses the shit out of a lot of Christians) and this would probably have further endeared him to Andy.

One more thing: Booker as golem. (A golem is basically an earthenware robot of Jewish folklore.) He's tall and blond and the most Steve Rogers-looking of all of them and from the Himbeaux region of France. THE trope of Book of Nile is he will do WHATEVER Nile wants or needs him to do. I was today years old when I learned that Modern Hebrew speakers use golem figuratively to mean "mindless lunk" and I'm choosing to squint and read that as "hot kind and dumb as rocks" because it amuses me.

#sebastien le livre #tog meta #jewish booker #book of nile #i couldn't stop myself #antisemitism #genocide cw #antiblackness #european imperialism #us imperialism #antizionism #hi i'm an antizionist jew no i don't really wanna talk about it #except i just did #jewish things #jewish history #tog #mine

109 notes · View notes

revisitingsundayschool · 4 years ago

Text

Introducing Moses - Exodus 1-4

Before I get into Exodus, I want to plug the podcast Biblical Baggage again. They did a great series on Moses/Exodus, so I'd highly recommend giving it a listen if you like this blog and listen to podcasts.

Israelites in Egypt - Exodus 1

Synopsis: After Joseph and his brothers died, the Israelites grew in numbers in Egypt. Then, a new Pharaoh came to rule in Egypt that didn't like the Israelites. The Pharaoh forced Israelites into slavery. Pharaoh ordered two of his midwives to kill all of the Israelite boys when they're born. They refused. When confronted, they said that "Hebrew women are not like Egyptian women; they are vigorous and give birth before the midwives arrive" (Exodus 1:19). The Israelites continued to grow in numbers. God blessed the midwives with families of their own.

There is about a 300-400 year gap between the stories of Joseph and Moses. Israelites/Jewish people have a long history of being persecuted. This is one of the earliest stories in their history that is a part of that. Although the veracity of the Exodus story is questioned by modern historians, there are parallels between this story and many other stories of oppression of Jewish people. This story was also significant for African-American slaves because they saw the parallels between their lives and this story. The story gave them hope that some day, they would be liberated like the Israelites were. The beginning of this story also has parallels to the beginning of Jesus' story.

Early Moses - Exodus 2

Synopsis: Moses was born to Levite (one of the tribes of Israel) parents. The parents hid Moses from Pharaoh for three months. Then, his mother placed him in a basket coated in tar and pitch and placed it in the reeds in the Nile. Pharaoh's daughter found the basket and had one of her slaves retrieve him. Pharaoh's daughter felt bad, so he told the slave to give him to a Hebrew woman for nursing. The slave ended up giving him back to his mother. When Moses grew up a bit more, Pharaoh's daughter took him back as her son. When Moses was a full adult, he went to watch the Israelites working. He saw an Egyptian abusing an Israelite, so he killed the Egyptian when nobody was looking. The next day, two Israelites were fighting, Moses asked why they were fighting each other, and the Israelites said, “Who made you ruler and judge over us? Are you thinking of killing me as you killed the Egyptian?” (Exodus 2:14). When Pharaoh heard what Moses did, he ordered for Moses to be killed, so Moses fled to Midian. Moses retrieved water for a family in Midian to help their flock. Then, he ended up marrying one of the daughters, Zipporah. Moses had a son, Gershom, with Zipporah. While Moses was away, the old Pharaoh died. Then, God heard the groaning of the Israelites, remembered his covenant with Jacob, and was concerned.

It's kind of confusing that Moses went from his parents, to Pharaoh's daughter, back to his parents, then finally back to Pharaoh's daughter. It'd probably be pretty tough for Moses to switch parents as often as he did. The Bible says that the name Moses is Hebrew for "drew out", but it is likely that the name is derived from the Egyptian word for son. Later, Moses tried to do a good thing by killing one of the Egyptians that was abusing the Israelites. In return, the Israelites hated him and he was chased out of Egypt because he was wanted for murder. Then, in typical God fashion, God allowed people to suffer for a long time before trying to do something to help. Fun fact, the name Sephora is derived from Moses' wife's name, Zipporah.

Moses and the Burning Bush - Exodus 3-4

Synopsis: Moses was tending a flock in Horeb when he saw a bush that was on fire, but not burning up. When Moses got closer, God told Moses to remove his sandals and that He was the God of his ancestors. God said that He'd heard the cries of the Israelites and that He is going to rescue them and return them to the Promised Land (a land flowing of milk and honey). To do this, Moses had to go and confront Pharaoh in Egypt. Moses didn't believe he's the right person for the job. God said that that He will work through Moses and that his name is Ehyeh (I am that I am). God told Moses to go to the elders of the Israelites and demand Pharaoh to let the Israelites go to the wilderness for 3 days of worship. God knew that Pharaoh will not let them go. He told Moses that he will strike the Egyptians, and then they will be able to leave with treasures and riches that the Egyptians will willingly hand over. God taught Moses how to turn his staff into a snake, how to turn his skin white and ashy, and how to turn water into blood so Moses can prove that God is working through him. Moses was concerned because he didn't speak well. God scolded Moses for doubting His power. Moses was still unsure, so God appointed Moses's brother to help Moses talk to the Egyptians. Moses left for Egypt with his family. God promised all the people who wanted him for murder were dead now. God ordered Moses to perform the signs for Pharaoh, but said that He is going to harden Pharaoh's heart. Then, Moses and Aaron met up and gathered the elders of Israel to explain God's plan.

Why was Moses' instinct to go toward a burning bush? Maybe I'm just a wimp, but my reaction would be to keep my distance and protect my herd. Horeb is believed to be the same place as Mount Sinai, which will become an important place later in the Bible. This scene was powerful and memorable for me in the Prince of Egypt. Great visuals, great dialogue, great music. Honestly, the "Promised Land" thing makes me uncomfy because of how modern Zionism treats the Palestinians and Manifest Destiny. Kicking people out of where they live is always tragic. God also foreshadows to Moses that Pharaoh will not give up easy and God will strike the Egyptians with plagues (SPOILERS: I don't like the plagues). Also, I hate God brainwashing people. Not only is it icky, but he doesn't even use it in a way where it would allow the Israelites to leave without a conflict. God teaches Moses magic tricks. That's cool. Ultimately though, the Israelites should never have been put in this situation by God. Exodus 4:24-26 is so strange and out of place, I didn't put it in the summary. It's about Zipporah cutting off her son's foreskin and rubbing it on Moses' feet to save Moses' son because Moses didn't keep the covenant of circumcision. Even scholars have a hard time interpreting this passage because some of the pronouns are vague. The beginning of Exodus was going pretty (in my opinion) well until that point.

Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments below or in the Discord. The passage for next Sunday will cover Moses and Aaron talking to Pharaoh before the plagues (Exodus 5-7:13).

#bible #exodus #atheist #ex christian #moses #egypt #zipporah #aaron #circumcision #burning bush

3 notes · View notes

atomicfilm · 4 years ago

Note

Some thoughts:

1) Sadness.

2) The “whatever Mexican catholic means” really got me. Like,,,,I’m pretty sure it means that they’re a Mexican...wait for it....practicing Catholicism.

3) These all really got me, but if the Welsh flag was a pride flag I would care because that would be the hecking greatest LGBT+ flag ever.

4) The Indian vs. Indigenous one really got me too. Like,,,,,,,you’re going to use the correct term for indigenous peoples but then,,,,,,you’re just not? You’re just gonna give up?????

5) I don’t want to talk about the Nazi one. Refer to #1 and add ‘despair’.

6) I want to cover more things.

JUST SO EVERYONE IS AWARE, BANGLADESH IS NOT INDIA. Neither is Pakistan. There have been wars fought over this (and there are still tensions), don’t start another one. ALSO, it’s even more diverse than the United States so try to avoid things like calling everyone Hindu or assuming someone speaks Hindi.

And while we’re at it, Palestine and Palestinian are complex identities that do not necessarily imply religion although a lot of Palestinians are Muslim. In their simplest sense, they are an ethnocultural group arising from Arabia, now living in Israel. Yes, some are Jewish. It does not imply refugee status although many Palestinans are forcibly relocated. And yes, they are facing extreme discrimination and apartheid.

Muslims are people. They are diverse. They can be awesome. They are basically responsible for keeping you alive thanks to the invention of complex medicine and hospitals and almost everything else!!!!!!

And still while we are at it, not every Jew supports the poorly named state of Israel’s militarism. Those people are Zionists. Those people aren’t even long-term generationally Israeli. Zionism is a right-wing movement from Europe that theoretically sounds fair but it’s not. Non-militant Judaism has a pretty darn cool history and you can thank a Jewish man for the fact that you hopefully wash your hands every day!!!!!!!! This is getting ranty, but Hassidic Jews aren’t the “Jews who dress weird”!!!!!!

DON’T EVEN GET ME STARTED ON THE COLONIZATION OF CENTRAL AND SOUTH AMERICA. THERE IS SO MUCH MISINFORMATION. A LOT OF IT IS DRAWN FROM ART CREATED FOR/BY SPANIARDS. AND NO, JUST NO, THEIR CULTURAL HISTORY IS NOT FROM ALIENS.

And stillllllll, Africa, and I cannot stress this enough, is not a country!!!!!!!! There is so much I could say here but I don’t even know where to start. I guess a good one is that if you find yourself saying “but I have a black friend” whatever you just said was something racist. African countries are not culturally homogenous.There’s not just one version of African.

Orientalism is a racist Eurocentric perception of Asian cultures!!!!!! Asian countries are not “all the same”!!!! Again, there’s just so much racism that this should be a separate post!!! AND YES, THEY HAVE THEIR OWN COMPLEXITIES IN TERMS OF ABUSIVE GOVERNMENTS TOO BUT THAT DOESN’T MAKE IT OKAY TO BE RACIST.

ALSO, AND THIS IS HUGE, THE ABUSE OF WOMEN IS NOT REGIONALLY-SPECIFIC. IT IS NOT THE PRODUCT OF ONE CULTURE. IT IS NOT THE PRODUCT MERELY OF RELIGION. IT IS THE PRODUCT OF THE PATRIARCHY. ONE OF THE WORST COUNTRIES IS SWEDEN. S-W-E-D-E-N.

Basically everything you have ever been taught is the product of Eurocentric racism and/or xenaphobia!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

And yeah, racism results in real trauma for people. It results in death. It results in genocide. It results in the perpetual support of states denying basic human rights.

Okay, thanks. I hope you learned something. Even if it’s just me saying that Isaac Newton didn’t invent all of calculus but that it originated in India right now.

Power plays are not okay. Not among individuals, not among religions, not among governments. And yeah, we all start somewhere. So if you don’t know something, ask or look it up.

What does the arab in your carrd mean? Is it like afab and amab?

.. i’m palestinian

#geography #ye old posts of tumblr #me trying to solve the world's problems in one post

535K notes · View notes

kyliafanfiction-archive · 7 years ago

Text

@marxhamill - in the interests of saving Dashboard space (since this will get quite long), I’m starting a new post. For reference and continuity, here is the last response you made on the original post that started this (X)

“If canon doesn’t matter to you “ which canon?? this is Marvel where there are several “canons” at any time. there are multiple recreations of Marvel lore. in the original stories,

No, just the one that’s relevant to the discussion at hand. There’s different continuities that each have different histories - most notably The MCU verses the main 616 Comicsverse continuity (not to mention the Ultimate-verse, but that hasn’t come up yet in this discussion).

I’ve made very clear which canon continuity I’m talking about at any given time. Marvel has just one long continuity that is expanded over time. It isn’t a retcon to build on and expand on previous canon, creating additional backstory. Retcon is when something changes canon. And the retcon in this discussion is when Hydra was backdated to Strucker creating it by co-opting the Japanese organization and Arnold Brown was changed to no longer be the actual leader/creator Hydra. Because 1968 comes after 1965. The Brotherhood of the spear material, etc, is not a retcon because it doesn’t violate the continuity, it expands on it. Providing backstory isn’t the same thing as a retcon,

“I know you haven’t had this argument as often as I have,” how would you know?? and “ you’re using long-debunked arguments” snopes disagrees with you as do many of us.

I already explained how I know you haven’t had this argument as often as I have - because your arguments are nonsense, using points that have been countered many times before. So, as I said, either you haven’t had this much, or that argument has been in a bubble. And as for Snopes, Snopes only has one article that talks about Hydra, that is referring to RL marketing matters and only says that Red Skull and Strucker have ‘at times’ led Hydra, which is ‘Nazi-Linked’, but as I pointed out, there are many things with links to Nazis in the past that aren’t, ranging from countless companies, to the entire country of Germany, (More on that) or, you know, Methadone, or the entire country of France, since it surrendered to the Nazis and was ruled by a Nazi-allied Vichy regime. Or our US Highway System, because Eisenhower (a major supporter for it) was inspired by the Autobahn when he pushed for it, and the Autobahn was made by the Nazis.

So Yeah, Snopes is irrelevant to this discussion.

Hydra is a Nazi organization, because the Jewish creators needed pple to see that. also, Secret Warriors were the (appropriative take over of the Brotherhood of the Spear) was ret-conned. “current day of the comics” they have racists goy like Spencer. and J.M. DeMatteis and Mike Zeck.

1. We’ve already established that Hydra was created without Nazi ties in 1965. And the “Jewish Creators” at Marvel aren’t a monolith either.

2. In what way is Spencer, et al, racist? If your proof for his racism is the comics themselves, then you can’t use the “comics proven” racism to “prove” that Hydra is still (was ever) Nazi. That’s called circular logic. You can’t use the conclusion to prove the premises. So please provide some real evidence - that aren’t the comics themselves - that Spencer is actually antisemitic and racist.

“I love how you’re using ‘goy’ as a pejorative here. Gotta love double standards” you make it sound like you wanna call me a kike….goy isn’t pejorative and I’m simply using it because you are a goy. “Several of your fellow jewish fans” where did I state that we have the same opinion. because I did not. there are many places Jewish pple disagree from comics to Zionism, to how to make matza ball soup (you gotta let the balls rise for 2 hours imo and no schmaltz). that’s an intercommunal issue that has nothing to do with you.

The only thing I want to call you is ‘idiot’. But you are using goy in a pejorative sense. I have never in my life used the word that begins with k that you brought into this, and I have no intention to.

And yes, it has something to do with this conversation, because you are asserting that because you are jewish you are right on this. You started this entire conversation with that assertion:

From your tags on this post #is goy-splaining a term#because acting like a Jewish person doesn't know who a Nazi is is ridiculous#nazi tw

So if your Jewishness makes you an authority on what is and isn’t a Nazi, then the fact that other jewish people, from creators to fans is entirely relevant. (Although since it doesn’t actually make you an authority, unless you also afford Romani people, LGBT people, Black People... and really anyone that isn’t a cisgender heterosexual white Aryan the same rights, as Nazis were trying to kill all of them as well.... and even then, that’s still Appeal to Identity. Either definitions mean something, or they don’t.)

The fact remains and continues to remain that Hydracap hates the Red Skull and Nazism, and has killed and fought the man for exactly that reason.

And you can’t bring back the image you started this whole discussion with without addressing the logical issues with it that I pointed out originally (I’ll repost it here for your convenience)

Moreover, if you actually apply a little logic to those two panels, than something very clear is proven: For Hydra to serve as Red Skulls “Decoy” then Hydra must be something different than Nazis - or else it wouldn’t have been a decoy, just a name change. So Hydra can’t be Nazis. Rather, Red Skull and his allies were using Hydra to rebuild - much as MCU Hydra used S.H.I.E.L.D. to rebuild. Does this mean MCU S.H.I.E.L.D. is completely Hydra?

Further, on the subject of that image you love to very very much -

At no point have I denied that comicsverse Red Skull is a Nazi, nor that comicsverse Strucker was a Nazi. Both are true. But the Red Skull’s relationship with Hydra as an organization is complicated at best in the comics continuity, and he is not the entirity of an organization that does have several prominent PoC in its membership (remember, Nazis are racist and antisemitic, not just one.)

The Red Skull wanted to use Hydra to to rebuild Nazi Germany - yes, no one has disputed that. The key word though is ‘use’. If I want to ‘use’ the resources of one organization to then create or rebuild another one, that’s not actually me serving the goals of the original group.

If I steal money from my employers to start my own company in the same industry, that not only means I’m committing a crime and whatnot, but it also means that my doing so isn’t advancing the interests of my employers. Hydra and Nazi Germany are both fascist groups that want to take over the world. They can’t both do it at the same time, especially not when (as I’ve pointed out several times now) Hydracap and Helmut Zemo, among others, are Hydra leaders that are not only not Nazis, but aggressively anti-Nazi, determined to purge all Nazi elements from Hydra’s ranks.

So if the Red Skull uses Hydra as ‘cover’ for his rebuilding of Nazism, he’s stealing from Hydra to serve his seperate goals. Just apply a little logic - if Hydra was actually Nazi, he wouldn’t need to use Hydra as ‘cover’ to ‘rebuild’ Nazism... because Nazism would have already been around in the form of Hydra to begin with. Hydra is an organization with more money and resources than many countries and is harder to kill than a cockroach. Why would Red Skull want to toss all that aside if there weren’t ideological differences between him and the rest of the organization.

To quote Andartha’s-web:, who said it more succinctly than I just did

That panel seems to be the Red Skull saying that Hydra and Nazis are two different things. He was using Hydra to hide that he was doing Nazi things. He could do that, because Hydra were not thought of as a Nazi organization.

So either, Hydra is Nazi (it isn’t) rendering the whole panel you love so much pure nonsense, or it isn’t, and that’s how Red Skull was able to do Nazi things while pretending to be Hydra.

If Nazis in the Catholic Church Hierarchy use Church resources and use the church as cover to help Nazis, that doesn’t make the whole church Nazi. And indeed, the church couldn’t be Nazi or else the whole point of misappropriating the Church to serve as cover would be defeated.

#Hydra isn't Nazi #Rolling My Eyes #Hydra #Reading Comprehension Fail #Generalized Fail Disorder #The only one breaking out the racial slurs here is you #though granted you just used it on yourself #You Fail Logic Forever

2 notes · View notes

jennyschectersghost · 8 years ago

Text

So I'm mostly over the whole CDM mess at this point, but some of these defenses are truly incredible. I...I really should stop reading them, but I can't fully look away.

In fact, out of morbid curiosity, I checked @projectqu*er's blog to see if they'd said anything further on the matter---and they'd actually posted a statement "in solidarity with Chicago D*ke March" from an affiliated Jew who is attempting to stick up for them, you know, so the white goy running that blog can feel justified in talking over the rest of us.

First of all, it's nothing short of absurd that people are seriously giving CDM the "solidarity" they've been calling for (SOLIDARITY!), as if they are somehow being oppressed or in any way mistreated by being widely held responsible for their antisemitic actions, which they still haven't apologized for or even acknowledged.

Secondly, I'm...I'm really just fucking floored by huge swaths of this statement, wow. I mean, it pissed me off at first, but now I mostly feel sad for this person and all the antisemitism she seems to have internalized, which is pretty easy to do in that sort of environment from what I've seen (sadly). I hope someday she can truly, unequivocally *know* that it is possible to support Palestinians as an unabashedly Jewish person---without forgetting all our Jewishness entails, without rewriting our histories or glossing over so many legitimate realities of the diasporic experience. I hope she can reconnect with her own Jewishness someday. I hope she's okay.

I mean, she basically frames the whole thing as if wanting to exist as a Jew in public is seriously akin to White Fragility, as if *public existence* is actually a thing that fucking white goyim would *ever* have to worry about...ever, in any fucking universe, at least on the basis of being white goyim. Like?! When is the last time anyone was kicked out of an event because of an explicitly pro-LGBT cross, even though white Western Christianity has persecuted and oppressed countless groups of people pretty much since its inception (DEFINITELY including Jews)?

But the MAGEN DAVID is ALSO on THE ISRAELI FLAG!! Yeah, and as much as plenty of leftists (myself included) might verbally shit on the American flag or whatever, CAN YOU IMAGINE a white goy EVER actually being expelled from an event because of an American Pride flag, the likes of which can literally be seen at comparable fucking events constantly, even though this country is itself undeniably violent and imperialistic?

Anyway. She also attacks both Ellie Otra and Lauren Grauer on a personal level, effectively demonizing both of them, characterizing and dismissing both of them as Fragile Whites obviously---acting as if they were both affiliated with A Wider Bridge (and as if A Wider Bridge is something much more insidious than it really appears to be) when only Lauren Grauer is actually affiliated with AWD, and this was discovered after the fact as far as I know, and it was not brought up by her as far as I know, and it definitely had nothing to do with her flag or why she was fucking there---ignoring the Persian part of Ellie Otra's Jewish background and all the ways in which that could further complicate goyische perception of her, especially white goyische perception of her---and mysteriously making no mention whatsoever of Eleanor Shoshany-Anderson, the Iranian Jewish woman who would most certainly be considered a woman of color by anyone's standard, who also had a Jewish Pride flag with a [*gasp*] Magen David on it and was booted precisely the same way, you know, for having *the audacity* to be visibly Jewish. She is just...unnamed, forgotten. Erased. How convenient.

And like...fuck, you know? Fuck.

It's hard to know exactly what to believe at this point, since CDM's Official Story has changed several times now. But this person does also assert that Magen Davids, arguably the mostly widely recognized symbol of Judaism and Jewishness in general, were effectively banned because Palestinian marchers were triggered by seeing them on a few rainbow flags.

Um. Okay. Giving her the benefit of the doubt and assuming that isn't just a bullshit excuse, like assuming there really were Palestinians there who really were triggered by that image, triggered as in legitimately having a *trauma response*...I can think of at least a few alternative means of supporting them without infringing on anyone else's rights (you know, just off the top of my head):

-They could have explicitly reassured the triggered marchers that they were safe and supported there, reminding them of where they were.

-They could have marched alongside the triggered marchers and made space for hearing them out---directly, intentionally making themselves emotionally available to the triggered marchers if they needed to talk through any thoughts or feelings.

-They could have physically helped the triggered marchers stay away from the triggering images---marching around them, in front of them, or behind them as the case might have been, you know, whatever---just making sure the flags weren't especially visible to them or at least trying to block those triggering images from their direct view(s).

Did they even *try* taking any of these sorts of measures, by any of their own accounts? No. Of course not. And as far as I'm concerned, it is still indefensible and completely uncalled for to just...jump right to interrogating and booting people for visibly taking pride as LGBT folks within their own marginalized cultural background, ethnicity and religion, you know, to *literally expel* them for being visibly Jewish. Fuck.

I used to be pretty frequently triggered by people grinning at me the wrong way, bringing me back to a sexually traumatic incident from my adolescence, but I would never tell any of the people around me they're not allowed to smile.

Sometimes I'm triggered by the sight, smell and taste of bananas because my abusive ex forcibly shoved one in my mouth before dragging me across the kitchen floor, but I would never banish anyone for eating a banana.

Sometimes people in ED recovery are triggered by the mere sight of Very Thin or Very Fat bodies; and if you knew this was the case for someone in your space, would you *actually* tell someone else to "cover up or get out" because you knew *their physical form* could be triggering? I would sure as fuck hope not. Because that is no way to behave.

And despite the particular form of hypocrisy that I mentioned earlier, I *could* understand kicking them out if those flags had in fact been Israeli flags at an explicitly anti-Zionist event, if those flags were *actually* supposed to be making any kind of statement about Israel/Palestine or if those flags had been, hm, I don't know, anti-Palestinian in any way.

But the fact remains that they were Jewish Pride flags. They were quite obviously Jewish Pride flags. And goyim have absolutely *no right* to decide what an ancient Jewish symbol means.

That's the thing, though: any awareness of more general goyische/Jewish dynamic seems to immediately evaporate in these sorts of anti-Zionist spaces, if it was ever there at all (which ultimately helps no one). Suddenly there is no discernible memory amongst *non-Palestinian* goyim of the Crusades, the blood libel, the Inquisition, the countless murders, the multiple expulsions, the pogroms, the forced assimilation, the Venetian ghetto, the historical segregation in numerous countries, the Holocaust, the Farhud, the discriminatory laws, the ongoing hate crimes, all the current ways in which our religion most definitely isn't regarded as the default in *every country except Israel,* none of it. None of it at all.

Because having or maintaining any active awareness of that sort of stuff makes all the most accepted narratives too messy, too multi-faceted. So suddenly all Jews (or "Zionists" as thinly veiled code for "Jews," as the case *sometimes* legitimately is) are framed as privileged oppressors in every context *in the world,* and I have literally had this kind of thinking espoused to me by people whose ancestors very likely persecuted mine at some point.

But it's fine in the name of anti-Zionism, right? It's all just anti-Zionism for sure!! Because Jews have ~never~ existed before the contemporary state of Israel and still don't exist outside of it, clearly, except in Evil Zionist Cabals. In fact, I am pretty obviously typing this from the Globalist Zionist New World Order Illuminati clubhouse. Duh.

From this person's statement:

"...Zionism is a system of power and control places Jews in a position of privilege vis a vis Palestinians.

This means that when Jews enter an anti-Zionist space, we accept that we are entering it under certain conditions. As beneficiaries of the system of power and control that those spaces were set up to combat and dismantle, we may be held to a higher political standard. We may be required to affirm certain political positions in order to remain in the space. We may be asked certain questions about our politics because of our positions of privilege. ... That is our role as accomplices, and privileged people in that space. Other privileged groups of people are treated the same way in social justice spaces, and that is the norm in our corner of society."

As beneficiaries. As ACCOMPLICES. I just. Wow. WOW. Other privileged groups of people? That would all be well and good if *all Jews* were in fact "the beneficiaries of the system of power [of Zionism]," (holy fuck), but that is certainly not the case. I mean, *how* are any Jews *here* at all privileged on the basis of "Zionism's" existence, or on the basis of our Jewishness specifically? Name one way! One fucking way! Without relying on those good old antisemitic tropes!!! I bet you fucking can't?!!

Of course some of us *are* privileged on the basis of our (debatably conditional) access to *whiteness* which is important to remain cognizant of, but we're certainly not privileged in any way specifically *because* we're *Jewish*---and the access some of us do have to whiteness is really in spite of our Jewishness, not because of it.

Of course we would have privilege as Jews in Israel. Israel is the one nation-state in the world where we would be privileged specifically on the basis of Jewishness, but we are not living in Israel. This is not Israel. Regardless of how any individual American Jew may or may not feel about it, we are not living in Israel. Even in radical circles, even at an explicitly anti-Zionist American q*eer event, this is still the United States---and the actual implications of our Jewishness here in this "Christian nation" don't magically vanish when we enter an "anti-Zionist space" for one LGBT March or any other kind of event.

Pretending otherwise to suit your agenda, however well-intentioned it might be in regards to supporting Palestinian folks, is really bizarrely dishonest if not outright absurd. It is not just forcibly, violently rewriting our people's entire fucking history, it is also erasing the ongoing context of how diasporic Jews very much do still exist as a marginalized ethno-religious group in the entire rest of the world (including here, unfortunately, as we are being so blatantly reminded of now with the emboldenment of literal Nazis). And would you deny this completely? Or do you somehow truly believe that it can be ignored?

#It's 4 in the morning lol I'm gonna be so tired :/ sry 4 the length but like #fuck #antisemitism #Chicago Dyke March #CDM #fuck them #fucking fuck #personal #:/

7 notes · View notes

wendynerdwrites · 8 years ago

Note

Im glad that u also like archer. Ive been rewatching it (im on s2) and i feel guilty as a feminist for liking it so much :( i know a lot of the jokes are supposed to be ironic but i still feel bad for laughing, and my bf has made comments abt "how can u laugh at that as a feminist" (he isnt one, hes using it as a gotcha). How do u feel about this? Any advice for separating myself from toxic fandom to just be able to enjoy something problematic? Love ur blog btw happy friday 💋💋

Thanks, and don’t worry, anon: You’re not a bad feminist.

It’s funny you ask this, but I used to have an entire essay series on this exact topic, and on Archer, particularly!

My philosophy is: don’t ignore the problematic, examine it. Use it as a springboard for analysis so you can learn more about the issue conveyed. Use your problematic responsibly! Because, let’s be honest, there ARE no unproblematic pieces of media. So just use it to educate yourself instead. For instance: my love of West Side Story (starring Natalie Wood as the Puerto Rican Maria) got me to learn more about the issues of white-washing.

Being a feminist is not about being perfect, it’s about learning and being open to examination and learning. Use your fandom for good!

Laughter is the balm for the soul. And listening to your boyfriend telling you how to be a feminist… less so. Kind of the opposite.

My old articles are lost, for the most part, but under the cut, I’ve pasted them for reference and included a great video on satire that also very easily applies to this discussion (just substitute feminism with the Holocaust)

Our Faves Are Problematic (And So Can You!)

Nothing and no one is perfect, so isnt it about time we learn how to call out the things we love?

We are all familiar with guilty pleasures: those things we like in spite of ourselves, that we are ashamed to admit we enjoy. Usually the term is applied to something we enjoy despite a perceived “lameness”, or because we’re not the right demographic for something. For instance, I still have a deep, abiding affection for Sailor Moon: that colorful, stock-footage-laced Japanese phenomenon that still gets me shouting “MOON PRISM POWER!” when I’m in the right mood. Yes, childhood is over, and yes, the show’s American dub did give me incest panic as a child, but I can’t help but love it.

But then there is the more difficult brand of guilty pleasures guilty pleasures that involve actual guilt instead of “mild embarrassment”. I’m talking about problematic faves the stuff that we love despite it containing clearly objectionable material.

willing18

(Image copyright Vertigo Comics)

…This is a panel from Bill Willingham’s Fables. The character there is Bigby Wolf, one of the main (anti) heroes of the story and the character the writer identifies with most. The person Bigby is waxing poetically on pro-Zionism to is someone literally called “The Adversary”.

Fables also happens to be one of my favorite comic book series on the planet.

Safe to say the issues surrounding Israel, Palestine, and the Middle East are a bit more complicated than that. And my own feelings on the matter are far more complicated. But this glorification of Israeli military policy is… um… in very tame terms… uncomfortable. After reading this, I resolved to only check Fables out of the library: a way for me to enjoy these comics in a legal way without financially supporting these ideas, however indirectly.

There are other problems with Fables: a lack of ethnic diversity, some murky racial and class commentary, and instances of some objectionable tropes, but there is a lot to recommend of these books as well. The stories are fantastic, the art brilliant, the characters well-fleshed out, and there is a definite progressive take on issues like gender and sexuality. But as much as I love this series, there is no getting around the fact that these stories have issues.

No excuses.

But it’s not just Fables that has disappointed me in the past. I am now and forever a Trekker, yet despite how horribly sexist episodes like “The Turnabout Intruder” are, or the very troubling anti-Semitic coding of the Ferengi. The Star Wars prequels famously had racist caricatures with the Trade Federation and the infamous Jar Jar Binks.

In the world of media, there’s no shortage of problematic content. From the novels of Robert Heinlein containing pro-fascist commentary, to HBO’s Game of Thrones misogynistic adaptation decisions, there’s nothing that is quite free of some messed up messages, subtle and blatant alike.

Now, when we talk about such media, we don’t merely mean triggering factors (i.e. the presentation, portrayal, or discussion of potentially traumatizing issues like domestic abuse, racism, hate crimes, substance abuse, or sexual assault), but rather how these matters are portrayed. A piece of media, such as Marvel and Netflix’s excellent Jessica Jones series, can portray certain issues (such as sexual assault, domestic violence, and mental illness) in a respectful, progressive, and sensitive light. Thus, while the content of the show can be triggering, the skill with which they portray these matters keeps it from being problematic.

In contrast, something like Game of Thrones, which portrays sexual assault in a thoroughly insensitive, exploitative, and misogynistic manner, is highly problematic.

Unfortunately, progress has been a slow-moving process, with many issues such as race, gender, sexual identity, mental illness, substance abuse, and violence only being examined in a more nuanced way fairly recently. As a result, almost all media is problematic in one way or another. Especially since even today, the majority of executives crafting, publishing, and greenlighting books, shows, comics, movies, and other forms of media are in fact cisgendered, heterosexual white men.

So what do we do?

Good news: here at Fandom Following, we don’t believe in dropping something you like just because it’s problematic. Why?

Because knowing, examining, and yes, even appreciating problematic content can be incredibly important. While certain content can be damaging, it can also teach us a great deal. Not only about current issues, but also about how to go about discussing these matters, and constructing narratives in general.

The racial issues in things like Star Wars and Star Trek can teach us much about how coding works, and how to avoid reinforcing stereotypes. The exploitation of women and rape on Game of Thrones can open up a dialogue of how to portray these things properly and improperly.

There are three tricks to enjoying problematic media: 1) Recognizing that there is an issue, 2) Being ready for a dialogue, and 3) Not ignoring or silencing the complaints about said issues.

Well, we here at Fandom Following have decided to tackle this issue head on with a series called “Our Faves Are Problematic (And So Can You!)”, where we will be exploring specific media franchises, creators, and works and, specifically, the problematic content they contain. In this series, we’ll be examining the issues, talking about why they’re important, discussing what this piece of media did wrong, how to approach the issue in a more progressive way, and the best ways to go about discussing the issue itself. Various writers will be contributing to this project, and we’re excited to present this feature to you!

So let’s get down and dirty, people. We all have our problematic faves. Let’s talk about them.

My Face is Problematic: Archer

Honestly, doing a post like this on Archer, a show which is deliberate in its dark humor, is a bit hard for me. Not because I like the show, but because I think there’s true validity in the argument that humor and narratives about really messed up, problematic stuff has its place. The show exists to be as outlandish and absurd as possible. The extremes and the awfulness of the characters’ personalities and their actions is the point.

I VUZ BORN IN DUSSELDORF AND THAT IS VY THEY CALL ME ROLF!

Joking about awful things, awful circumstances, and awful people is hardly new ground for comedy to cover, nor does it send a poor message, necessarily. Mel Brooks wrote a movie in which one of the characters was a Nazi, who wrote an overblown pro-Nazi musical produced by men deliberately trying to make a flop. Springtime For Hitler, as it exists in our universe, is not problematic. The Nazis are the butt of the joke, in which any pro-Nazi sentiment can only function if it is wildly fabricated and over-the-top, and even then, it will still be taken for satire. Because Nazis are utterly terrible, they built their movement on total bullshit that they dressed up in shiny boots and Hugo Boss uniforms and German exceptionalism and “glory”. This song-and-dance number about “Don’t be stupid, be a smartie, come and join the Nazi party” only ever deserves to be a joke, as the Jew who wrote it can tell you. Nazis fucking suck and it’s hilarious that anyone would ever suggest otherwise.

There’s justice in reducing Nazis to self-parody, and doubling down on that by making a joke about them being reduced to self-parody. Especially when said self-parody and depiction of it is crafted by the very people Hitler tried to destroy. No one enjoys or masters mocking Nazis like the Jews. Plain and simple.

Joking about awful things and how terrible they are can be a good way to process things and not allow them to hurt you anymore. Comedy, at its core, is a defense mechanism against horror and pain. There’s a reason slapstick is a classic subgenre of comedy that people have built entire careers around. Laugh at terror and pain to make it go away. Unfortunately, some of the things we manage to find humor in can really make you wonder if were all just terrible and have no limits.

Angela’s Ashes is a memoir by Frank McCourt about his impoverished, abusive, dangerous childhood in Ireland. In it, he chronicles his own starvation, life-threatening illness, abuse, and suffering at the hands of alcoholism and brutality from adult authority figures. He was a child laborer who went days without food while his father drank away the family’s money and abused the rest of the family, who often came down with horrifying illnesses as a result of the terrible conditions he lived in, and spent his formative years suffering along with all the people he loved. Three of his infant siblings die within the space of a chapter. We get a glimpse of the time when his father, overjoyed at the birth of his daughter, finds the will to stop drinking, stop mistreating his family, go to work, provide for his family, and just generally be a better person so that his children don’t have to suffer. For a short period, the McCourts have food, heat, and happiness. Then the baby promptly dies and Frank’s father is back in the pubs, once again squandering any pay he manages to acquire on alcohol and returning home at three am to scream at and beat his wife while his remaining children try to cover their ears and sleep on the cold ground.

Along with being praised for it being a both an unflinchingly brutal depiction of poverty and a testament to the triumph of the human spirit, the book is also praised for its humor.

Remember: Angela’s Ashes is a true story written by the very man who suffered through all of these horrible things. And it’s considered a pretty funny book. And the author who, once again, is the person who actually suffered all of these horrible things, actually did intentionally try to make people laugh as they read about that time he was in the hospital with Typhoid Fever and enjoyed it because it was the first time he’d been in a place where he was fed regularly and got to sleep in a warm bed.

Hilarious.

That being said, there’s satire and dark humor, and there’s just gratuitous, shock-jock bullshit. There are jokes that are terrible simply because of what they’re about and how they’re handled. George Carlin said that anything can be made funny, even rape, if you imagine Elmer Fudd raping Porky Pig.

If we can build entire films and musicals about how any pro-Hitler sentiment can only ever be taken as satire, isn’t that proof that you can joke about anything?

Yes, you can, but that doesn’t mean you should try, that the joke is funny, or that it’s alright, necessarily. Maybe Elmer Fudd, Porky Pig, and Springtime for Hitler prove that anything can be made funny and that’s okay. But if that’s true (and no, I’m not saying that it is), that still doesn’t mean every attempt at making something funny is either acceptable or funny.

Springtime for Hitler is not a get-out-of-jail-free card for any attempt to make a terrible subject the object of humor. Standards need to exist.

Unfortunately, the line between good or acceptable dark humor and simply gratuitous, insensitive, inherently problematic jokes can blur. The excuse of humor can only go so far. Yes, make light of Nazis. But there’s still a point where “humor” is used an excuse for people to act like assholes. And it’s an excuse that is used all too often. Radio Shock Jocks have been using that excuse to help reinforce racism and rape culture for quite a while. Whether certain dudebros like it or not, there’s a point where it stops being gross-out and just starts being gross.

Which brings me to Archer, the animated spy comedy on FX that premiered in 2011. Like many comedy series like Seinfeld or It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, a major part of the premise is that certain characters are, quite simply, terrible people. These characters and their abhorrent behavior is the joke. And, as the show is about spies, these terrible people are often put into highly dangerous, outlandish, and traumatizing situations.

So, the main characters, by virtue of their profession, spend a lot of time killing people in cold blood. Or trying to seduce or manipulate enemies. Or engaging in clandestine operations of sabotage that harm a lot of people. Horrible, violent things are going to happen, things violent enough to serve as narratives on their own. But most of the characters are as awful as the situations they encounter, so the horror is amplified. And it’s a comedy.

Indeed, in the first episode of the fifth season, we get the whole main ensemble recounting all of their actions and experiences working for the spy agency ISIS that we’d witnessed over the course of the show’s run at that point. Drag racing with the Yakuza, knee-capping the Irish mob, encountering human traffickers, 30 year affairs with the head of the KGB that only ended when the guy was blown up because one of the ISIS members had choke sex with the victim’s cyborg replacement, actual piracy, paying homeless people to fight for spectators, defling a corpse, defiling a different corpse, sexual assault, kidnapping the pope, blowing up oil pipelines, “smuggling Mexicans”

Yeah.

There are comedic arcs about cancer, illegal immigration, kinky S&M bondage murders, cocaine addiction… a lot of stuff, basically.

Now, take those situations, and add in characters who get aroused by things like homeless people, being choked, sex with food, and the thought of their mother dying. Who spend their weekends starting fires, making hybrid pig-people, rubbing sand into the eyes of their employees, competing in underground Chinese Fighting Fish tournaments, and calling in bomb threats so that they can get a table at a fancy restaurant. You get the idea.

And it’s all totally awesome and hilarious and god damn it I kind of love these characters.

This show has a season-long sub-arc about one of the main characters getting so aggressively addicted to cocaine that she not only consumes (literally) half a ton of it in the space of a few months, but almost gets her head chopped off for buying amphetamines from the Yakuza with counterfeit money. It’s one of the most incredible things the show has done.

Pictured: An absurdly self-centered man feeling genuine dismay and concern over his friend risking her life to achieve an unrealistic standard of beauty.

The title character has a butler named Woodhouse who practically raised him. One of the first interactions we witness between them is Archer not only threatening to rub sand into Woodhouse’s “dead little eyes”, but making him go out and buy the sand himself and check if they grade it, because he wants the sand to be coarse. He’s also done things like make the man eat a bowl of spiderwebs and deliberately keep him in the dark about his brother’s death and funeral.

Another character is a mad scientist and possible clone of Adolf Hitler who kills a young intern by giving him a drug designed to turn him gay. That’s one of the less disturbing things Dr. Krieger has done.

Frequent gags on this show include one guy repeatedly getting shot, another character repeatedly getting paralyzed (it’s complicated), people trying to remember the inappropriate puns that they wanted say as one-liners, the horrific abuse and neglect Sterling Archer has received from his mother his entire life, and basically everyone being a sex-maniac.

There are plots revolving around mind-control, drugging people, and hypnotism. You can imagine the paths some of those episodes go down. Yes, there is a character that has tried to sexually assault one of her sleeping co-workers. And later deposited two unconscious, naked coworkers in a bathroom stall with an octopus, in an episode that has already made tentacle hentai jokes. Yes, the openly gay character on the show is often the target of jokes about him being gay or a woman from his coworkers. Yes, the female lead, a black woman, is referred to as a “quadroon” at one point by one of the characters.

Yes, the following exchange of dialogue does take place in an early episode:

“Oh my god, you killed a hooker!”

“Call-girl!”

“No, Cyril, when they’re dead, they’re just hookers!”

And yet… Oh my god. How it manages to play around with stuff in an amazing fashion. For one thing, it is amazing how often this show skewers micro-aggressions and fucks around with stereotypes. And, despite how unabashedly messed up it is, the writing in it actually manages to be oddly pro-social progress in ways that most modern media doesn’t even seem to be aware of.

I take pride in my sex work and I will not put up with your bullshit!

For instance the “hooker” referred to in that exchange? (spoiler alert: she wasn’t really dead) She’s Trinette, and she an unbelievably refreshing and strangely progressive depiction of a sex worker. While she’s a minor character, every time she shows up, it’s awesome. Trinette is a sex worker who is unashamed of her job, a woman who truly does take pride in and enjoy her work, who does not put up with poor behavior from her clients, and is just generally awesome. She call people out and makes them pay for any mistreatment she receives, from calling out micro-aggressions by insisting on her preferred terminology for her profession (“Call-girl, you puke!”), shaming men for their sexual misdeeds (“How can you cheat on Lana bare-back?!”), demanding restitution for any injuries or threats she’s suffered (Threatening Archer into giving her his car after he fakes her death and stuffs her in a rug to fool Cyril into thinking he killed her), and determining her work and clients (“What about Trinette? She said that? Damn it!”). When she has a baby, she gives it her last name along with his father’s (“Magoon-Archer”) and she unapologetically proud of her Irish heritage. She’s easily one of the most functional characters in the show, and every one of her appearances on the show manage to defy at least one whore-phobic trope a minute. She’s the best.

Then there’s the show’s handling of race, which is mixed. While arguably the most important female character in the series (the show, despite its name, is very, very much an ensemble, especially as the series progresses. But in the early episodes when they focussed on fewer characters, she was the one who got the most screentime) is Lana Kane, a highly-competent (for ISIS) African American woman who is really, really well-developed, there is also the fact that she’s the only POC in the main cast. Granted, part of that IS the point. One of the earliest episodes is “Diversity Hire”, where, aside from Lana, the spy agency is so overwhelmingly white that they hire a “diversity double-whammy!” Conway Stern, a black Jew.

“Sammy Gay-vis Junior!”

Now, granted, that doesn’t sound great the way I describe it, but there are so many great moments in this episode alone. For instance, when Mallory Archer, terrible woman and owner of the spy agency mentions their lack of diversity, Cyril, the tragically white accountant and “nice guy” puts his hands on Lana’s shoulder and says he thinks they’re pretty diverse, a statement Lana finds hilarious. Cue Sterling Archer, other horrible person, telling Lana she’s “black-ish”, then responding to her offense at this with “Well, you freaked out when I said quadroon!”. The framing of this entire discourse is that Cyril and Archer are fucking idiots and Lana is of course taking offense because, duh, she should. The episode proceeds with a lot of references and discussion about racism, highlighting casual racism in a nuanced, funny, and organic way. For instance, Archer’s relief that Conway didn’t sleep with his mother. While Archer freaks out about anyone sleeping with his mother, regardless of race, Conway believes it’s racism on Archer’s fault. And in no way does the narrative act like he’s overly-sensitive or irrational for thinking that. Because the stereotype about black men seducing white women and fear from white men about this is still a very real, pervasive thing that has somehow managed to survive in our “enlightened” times. Of course Conway encountering a guy who displays a downright violent fixation on whether or not his new black coworker is sleeping with his mother will assume it’s a race thing. Because why would anyone be so preoccupied with such an idea? In that situation, it’s almost certainly based on the long-standing paranoia white men have about black men’s sexuality “conquering their women.” It’s one of the most common varieties of anti-blackness in existence.

Of course, since it’s Archer, who has kidnapped a LOT of people under the suspicion that they were having sex with his mom, we know this is the one case that it isn’t racism. It’s Archer’s disturbing, Oedipal relationship with his mother. He even kidnapped and threatened his role model, Burt Reynolds, for dating his mother. When he says “Not in a racist way” to Conway in this episode, it’s actually true. He’s just honestly that screwed up where his mother is concerned.

Conway’s conclusions on this, regardless, are still framed as a totally understandable. To the point where the episodes suggests that it would make no sense for Conway to think otherwise. Part of the joke is that no, Archer isn’t a horrible racist at all. He’s way too screwed up for his actions to be motivated by racism.

And before anyone asks, no, this wasn’t the “episode that acknowledges that racism is a thing.” You know the ones… The episodes that talk about race and why racism is bad to prove to the audience that they’re not racist, then proceed with the rest of the show, which never acknowledges race and racism again. There are frequent instances of highlighting racism, from violent outright bigotry to common micro-aggressions to clueless white people demanding how the thing they just did/said could POSSIBLY be considered racist! They’re not racist! How is THAT racist?! Cue Lana face-palming.

I just really, really like this. It doesn’t just end there, either. Racism is called out pretty frequently on this show, and not in a cliche, strawman way. Nor is it treated like something that only exists in the form of aggressively bigoted bad people shouting slurs and holding cross burnings. Nope. The “heroes” of this show just say shit that you could easily imagine someone saying in real life, shortly before getting defensive about any racism on their part. It’s treated as a common, pervasive thing that Lana and other PoC have to deal with every day, and the offense they take at it is treated as nothing short of sympathetic or justified (even in the cases of misunderstandings, like with Conway). This includes Mallory telling Lana to “put [the race card] back in the deck!” as reminder of how much of an unapologetic douche Mallory is.

It’s made clear: people say and do some super racist shit on a regular basis with realizing it or meaning to, and regardless, it’s still uncool and people have every right to get upset and call you out on it. See: Ray’s bionic hand at the end of season six.

Lana’s reactions and how they’re framed is usually pretty awesome. Mostly they come in the form of small, reasonable confrontations, which are never framed as an overreaction on her part. The fact that she “freaked out” when Archer called her a quadroon is framed as “well, duh, of course, she should.” Then there are instances like when she, Archer, and their child visit a high-end nursery school where they encounter a pretty obvious racist. The guy ignores and dismisses Lana at first, then expresses surprise at the fact that she’s the mother of the child (despite the baby being black), remarking about the “times we live in” and telling Lana “good for you!” when she informs him that yes, she is the mother, not the nanny or the maid.

Not all of the racism stuff stems from Lana being back, either. They skewer bigotry against Latinos on a pretty regular basis. When an Irish mobster rants about Latinos (he doesn’t refer to them by that name) “taking American jobs!”, Archer immediately calls bullshit, recalling actual history of the Irish being accused of that exact same thing during the mass immigration of the Irish to America during the potato famine, and it’s just as shitty and bigoted to say such things about immigrants now as it was in 1842. He is extremely irate about a mission ISIS is assigned to do on behalf of border patrol to arrest people who just want to get a job, and he ends up siding with and befriending the Mexican illegal immigrants he encounters. All of this while aspects of certain Latinx cultures are often highlighted, often very favorably (“Ramone is Latino, so he’s not afraid to express affection.”)

That being said, there are still a lot of issues in the show. The lack of diversity is definitely an albatross around this show’s neck. Especially so many seasons after the “Diversity Hire” episode. While I do praise Archer for not treating racism as a thing that is rare and only needs to be addressed in one twenty-minute block of time, it is telling that the lack of diversity at ISIS is never addressed again.

Then there’s the approach to sexuality. The show loves gross-out sex humor, especially regarding Krieger. And the depiction of sexuality is actually pretty mixed. On one hand, the openly gay character in the show adheres to a lot of stereotypes about gay men: he mocks Lana about her “knock-off Fiacci drawers”, his go-to alias is “Carl Channing”, his free time is spent at raves, and he loves to make effeminate poses. He’s also a frequent target of homophobic jokes and remarks. His outrage at this is treated as being every bit as valid as Lana’s, but it doesn’t change the fact that their main gay character is basically ALL of the stereotypes, as are a number of the other gay characters.

“Alright! Were off to get our scrotums waxed!”

Then there is the sexual assault. Which, once again, is called out for being what it is, in defiance of many common biases (such as the idea that female-on-male sexual assault isn’t a thing). But this show is way too flippant about this.

While I consider Archer to be very sex-positive, allowing every character, regardless of sex, age, or orientation, to be comfortable and expressive about their sexuality without judgment (a lot of jokes, yes, but not any that come off as particularly shaming). Almost every character, male or female spends a fair amount of time naked or scantily clad. We see Archer stripped down just as often as Lana. And the fan service isn’t relegated to just women who adhere to the typical youth and weight obsessed eurocentric standards we all know and hate.

Pam, who is a big woman (and often the target of fat jokes, which the show always treats as nothing short of detestable) is a total sex goddess who grows to be utterly confident in herself as a woman to the point where she’s giving Mallory (one of the most desired women on the show) advice. When she reveals that she keep ingesting cocaine because it’s made her thin with big boobs, Archer is utterly dismayed, telling her she was way better off the way she was, acting horrified that she’d risk her life to be “hot”, and just generally freaking out about Pam’s desire to be thin. It manages to avoid being cliche or empty given that Archer considered Pam the best sex he ever had before she got thin, to the point of blowing off assignments just to have sex with her, because she’s just that awesome. After she gains the weight back in season six, she’s still sexy, making Archer’s jaw drop in the episode “Edie’s Wedding.” She’s also unapologetically pansexual, which is awesome.

Mallory, meanwhile, is still actively sexual and treated as desirable. While sex and sexuality are always sources of gags and jokes on Archer, never do the jokes about Mallory’s sexuality ever come across as ageist. Sure, some characters make ageist comments on the show, but it’s never treated as valid. Mallory is still treated as being extremely sexy and confident about it. While Mallory is generally a horrible person, her enthusiastic sexual agency is never once treated as a flaw or something disturbing or gross. What’s disturbing, gross, and worthy of ridicule is her son being so preoccupied and reactionary about his mother having a sex life. It’s clear: if you have a problem with Mallory having a lot of sex and enjoying it, you’re the one with issues.

Even the one young, thin, white woman in the main cast gets to be unapologetic about her kinks. It’s really only a problem when her desire for choke-sex motivates her to lead a KGB cyborg to the ISIS safehouse. Or when she coerces Cyril into sex. And generally acts like a violent, awful person.

Essentially, there’s no tolerance for shaming women for being sexual. All of it, regardless of preference, age, size, or race, is nothing but fun and should be enthusiastically represented. “Can’t talk, got a pussy to break!”

Being a predator is shameful. Having belly rolls is not.

Who on Earth finds this funny?

But, then there’s the flippancy about sexual assault. There ARE gags about Pam and Ray dropping their pants when encountering an unconscious Cyril. And sorry, but the framing of it is all manner of screwed up. There’s tons of sexual coersion as well. Another one of the most problematic instances comes in an episode of season two, where Archer is repeatedly sexually assaulted by a sixteen-year-old German socialite. The show goes out of its way to make it clear that Archer explicitly refuses consent, that he’s being violated, yet the show treats this as funny.

While I get that this is a comedy show and that in-depth exploration of the trauma of sexual abuse isn’t going to be something they can spend a lot of time on, the option they should have gone with is, you know, not base an episode around a german schoolgirl raping the main character. It’s not funny, guys. It’s not necessary. It’s actually just uncomfortable and off-putting.

The show mentions things like alternative gender identities, emotional triggers, and sexual exploration in ways that treat these things as totally valid, which is good. It also frequently portrays poor people as jokes in and of themselves, which is a lot less good. While materialism is lampooned frequently, it’s not treated as a joke in and of itself the way poverty is.

The way the show often portray legitimate abuse for laughs also often goes overboard. While the show does a good job of exploring and following through on all the ways Mallory’s abuse screwed up Archer, there’s a point where the volume of “abuse humor” gets to just be downright gross. Dark humor is one thing, not being able to go an episode without a “Haha, ten-year-old archer was abandoned in a train station at Christmas!” joke is, uh… Not great.

Archer is an awesome, immensely watchable show. But it’s not one I always feel clean watching. It’s a show that celebrates extremes, yes, but there’s a point where certain lines are crossed and it’s just problematic rather than gallows humor.

Archer is one of those series that really makes me struggle to distinguish the gallows humor from the simple tastelessness. To give pause to the idea of problematic content being the “point.”

The line blurs with Archer. A lot. It often manages to distinguish itself with the things it gets right, especially since they often do well on things that most shows, movies, and books are often terrible at. And that’s enough to buy it some goodwill for when they screw up.

But seriously, guys, please stop treating sexual coercion and child abuse as bottomless gag wells. I would have really preferred to have Pam and her awesome sexuality without her sexually assaulting Cyril and Ray. It’s not funny or clever or edgy. It’s just gross.

youtube

#archer fx #your fave is problematic #anon #feminism

11 notes · View notes

lesbeet · 8 years ago

Note

Hey! so i know that you are pro-palestine, but i also know that you have a lot of experience around people who aren't, so i was wondering why they think that anti-israel people are anti-semitist? because i'm palestinian, thus my land was taken away, and i'm not even allowed inside of israel myself (and if i can't go to a country idk why i should support it). But, I was wondering what a good argument to combat accusations of anti semitism would be? Thanks dude

the reason that a lot of (mainstream, liberal, usually western) jewish people believe that anti-israel sentiments are inherently antisemitic is because of a combination of real antisemitism and of brainwashing done by israel and the jewish community at large

a lot of mainstream jewish kids, especially in the us, for example, grow up learning that israel is the jewish homeland and that we all should strive to make aliyah (relocate to israel). they use examples of real worldwide antisemitism as well as pro-israel, anti-arab/anti-palestinian propaganda to convince jews that israel is really the only safe place for us. we’re taught to support and love israel, even though many of us have never even been there.

we’re also taught that anti-israel sentiments are antisemitic! that people saying unsavory things about israel are lying and spreading propaganda because everyone hates jews. so there are jews who genuinely believe that being anti-israel is antisemitic. i’m not trying to defend them or justify that mindset because of course it’s wrong and so harmful, but to answer your question, a lot of jewish people think that because that’s what we’re taught.

another issue is that sometimes (not nearly as often as people claim, but it does happen enough) people DO use the cover of anti-zionism in order to push antisemitic rhetoric, whether knowingly or not. some anti-zionist rhetoric is antisemitic in nature, and jews who call that out are right in doing so. but a lot of the time, most of the time, it’s just that jews are taught/brainwashed to take anti-israel rhetoric and beliefs as personal attacks on jewish people as a whole.

as far as combating accusations of antisemitism, it really depends on the situation. if you’re just seeing a jewish person say as a blanket statement that anti-zionism is antisemitism, then if you feel comfortable doing so you should absolutely explain to them the realities of your life as a palestinian, and the hardships that you and other palestinian people face directly at the hands of the israeli state.

but if a jewish person is saying “hey, this specific thing you said is antisemitic for such and such reason” then i would take a second to try and take in and understand what they’re saying. if it’s something that insinuates that all jews are somehow responsible for israel’s human rights violations, for example, that’s antisemitic. equating all jews worldwide with israel in general is antisemitic.

but yeah i think honestly like...you don’t owe zionists anything. you absolutely don’t. but in my honest opinion the best way to handle a situation like this is with at least some small degree of understanding. most of the jews you encounter who are pro-israel have been fed lies and propaganda their entire lives. so to approach the situation with the intent to educate, as you seem to show in your question, is the best way to move forward.

i don’t know if this answered your question or if this made sense, let me know if you need clarification on anything

#anonymous #answered

7 notes · View notes

biofunmy · 5 years ago

Text

Israeli Vote Hinges on a Mosaic of Competing Groups

Israeli politics can be tribal, with loyalties to ethnic groups, religious factions and ideologies as strong a factor in voting as views on particular issues. Here’s a guide in words and pictures.

By David M. Halbfinger

Photographs by Sergey Ponomarev

Sept. 17, 2019

JERUSALEM — Tuesday’s do-over election in Israel may not, by itself, decide who will be the next prime minister. That could take weeks of arduous coalition negotiations.

But the vote will almost certainly provide fresh evidence that the United States has nothing on this country when it comes to identity politics.

The April election was the first I’d covered as a foreign correspondent in Israel, and it shocked me that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu openly expressed desperation in the campaign’s final days and hours. At 11:25 p.m. on the night before votes were cast, he even had his American pollster join him on camera to declare, gravely, “Right now, we’re losing the race.”

In the United States, political candidates are programmed never to let the voters see them sweat, no matter how abysmal the poll numbers. In Israel, Mr. Netanyahu has perfected the art of setting his hair on fire and dialing 911 to get his voters to put out the flames.

There’s a reason this works so well for him. Israeli politics in many ways is tribal, and when a member of your tribe sounds the alarm, your instinct is to run to their aid.

Unlike the biblical tribes of Israel, these groups do not spring so much from bloodlines, but from loyalties to ethnic groups, religious brethren or ideology, and they erupt into plain view during election seasons.

President Reuven Rivlin took a stab at defining Israel’s tribes in a landmark speech in 2015, noting that secular Zionist Jews, once a majority, had dwindled to a large minority, as three other groups had grown: the ultra-Orthodox, the national-religious and Arab citizens.

“Israeli politics to a great extent is built as an intertribal zero-sum game,” he warned, urging all four groups to figure out a way to work in partnership. (They haven’t.)

A new book by Camil Fuchs and Shmuel Rosner, “#IsraeliJudaism,” categorizes the Jewish population along two axes: how strictly they follow religious tradition, or how Jewish they are; and how much they embrace Israel’s nationalist symbols and rites, or how Israeli they are. A majority, they find, strongly identifies with both, but many ultra-Orthodox reject nationalism and many secular Israelis reject Jewish religious practice.

What has made Mr. Netanyahu so formidable a force over the years is his melding of nationalists and the religious into a single, right-wing political bloc.

But Rabbi Donniel Hartman, president of the influential Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem, identifies no fewer than 17 tribes in present-day Israel, breaking down the ultra-Orthodox according to their attitudes toward Zionism and modernity, so-called traditional Jews according to how much they adhere to Jewish ritual, and Arabs according to religion and whether they take pride in being citizens of Israel, among other cohorts.

“That’s why coalition government is so important,” Rabbi Hartman said. “Because when you have all of this, each group sees itself as a persecuted minority.”

Mizrahim

Just as President Trump relies on support from white, working-class Americans, Mr. Netanyahu’s Likud party draws much of its political strength from working-class Israelis, many of them Jews living in the so-called development towns on Israel’s periphery, where immigrants from the Middle East and North Africa were resettled beginning in the 1950s. These Mizrahi, or eastern, and Sephardic Jews, who account for around half the Jewish population of Israel, have long harbored resentments toward the European-descended, Ashkenazi liberal elite, who discriminated against them while governing Israel from its founding until the 1970s, when Likud first came to power.

Likud is not the only party that caters to Mizrahim: Shas, the Sephardic ultra-Orthodox party, also attracts some of the many Mizrahi Jews who are “traditional” in their religious practice — a broad range of people who may not attend synagogue regularly but are perfectly at home there when they do, Rabbi Hartman said. And Labor’s Moroccan-born leader merged the party with one led by the daughter of a Moroccan-born former Likud leader, but its politics remain anathema to most Mizrahi voters.

The State of Tel Aviv

To tourists who enjoy Tel Aviv’s beaches and nightclubs and never venture farther afield, Israel can seem a bastion of ultraliberalism that is difficult to reconcile with the country’s right-wing national politics.

And to Tel Aviv’s largely secular population, the election is a battle to stop Mr. Netanyahu from undermining Israeli democracy for the sake of retaining power and from allowing the ultrareligious, through their influence on government agencies, to try to brainwash their children into becoming observant Jews. Secular Israelis have been sounding the alarm to preserve an open-minded, live-and-let-live Israel before it is too late.

A major problem for secular Israelis, who are no longer the political force they once were, is that their votes are being split among too many parties. For the first time, what remains of the storied Labor Party may not clear the threshold to be seated in Parliament. The fledgling left-wing Democratic Union is in similar shape. Both have been threatened by Blue and White, the centrist party that is vying to topple Mr. Netanyahu but is vacuuming up the votes of many on the left.

Haredim

The most outwardly recognizable tribe because of their traditional black-and-white attire, the ultra-Orthodox, also known as Haredi Jews, vote en masse, generally heeding the instructions of their rabbis — which means that Sephardic ultra-Orthodox back Shas and the Ashkenazi support United Torah Judaism.

Their ability to turn out the vote is the envy of other tribes: Bnei Brak, a Haredi city, reported a stunning 77 percent turnout in the April election. And it is the source of their political power, which among other things has given them exemptions from military service, financial subsidies and rabbinical control of marriage, divorce and religious conversions.

In a small country, having a party that represents the ultra-Orthodox means being able to seek help from someone in power who shares a similar worldview, said Binyamin Rose, a U.T.J. voter who is editor at large of Mishpacha Magazine. “If I need something, who am I going to go to?” he said. “If I go to Likud, they’ll take one look at me and say, ‘Why should we help you?’”

A growing number of ultra-Orthodox are stepping out of their insular, yeshiva-centered communities, serving in the army or taking jobs at technology companies, and engaging with broader society. But the current battle between secular politicians and the religious is driving many back to the fold.

“We’re closing ranks,” Mr. Rose said. “They say, ‘This is who represents me.’”

The National-Religious

Perhaps the most interesting tribal warfare of this campaign has been for the votes of religious Zionists, about 12 percent of the Jewish population. These Sabbath-observant Israelis encompass a broad range of views, but most tilt to the right, and include the ideological foot soldiers of the settlement enterprise.

By promising last week to annex a large portion of the West Bank, Mr. Netanyahu was making a play for these voters, whose natural home is the Yamina, or rightward, party. Yamina argues that it needs a large contingent in Parliament to force Mr. Netanyahu to keep his promises.

But Yamina is also having to protect its own right flank from an even more extreme faction, Otzma Yehudit, or Jewish Power — an overtly anti-Arab party whose leaders call themselves disciples of Meir Kahane, the Brooklyn-born militant who was assassinated in 1990 and whose Kach party was outlawed in Israel and declared a terrorist group by the United States.

The leader of Otzma Yehudit, Itamar Ben Gvir, is demanding a cabinet post if the party makes it into Parliament and delivers its support to Mr. Netanyahu.

Arab Citizens

The wild card in this election, Arab citizens of Israel make up about one-sixth of the eligible voting population, and they vote in large numbers in municipal elections. But only 49 percent voted in April, a record low, and turnout is not expected to rise dramatically on Tuesday.

Arabs give plenty of reasons for not participating in the Israeli political system: in protest of Israel’s treatment of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, in reaction to Zionist parties’ refusal to consider including Arab parties in a governing coalition, or out of impatience with Arab lawmakers’ focus on the Palestinians’ problems rather than their own voters’ needs. But Arab and center-left Jewish politicians are at least making an effort to woo them, by promising to address crime, housing shortages and other tangible problems in their communities.

Russian Speakers

For a while, it seemed as if the premiership might be decided in places like Bat Yam, a seaside town heavily populated by immigrants from the former Soviet Union. Mr. Netanyahu has tried to make inroads with supporters of Avigdor Liberman, the Moldova-born leader of the Yisrael Beiteinu party, after Mr. Liberman refused to join Mr. Netanayhu’s coalition after the April election. Mr. Liberman’s refusal to compromise with the prime minister’s ultra-Orthodox allies prevented Mr. Netanyahu from forming a government and precipitated the new elections.

Mr. Liberman’s Russian-speaking supporters, who have backed him for more than 20 years, do not appear to be deserting him. But they are aging, and their children are fully Israeli and vote for a variety of parties, prompting Mr. Liberman to reinvent himself as a champion of secular Israelis, whatever their native tongues.

One hot-button issue, among many: the hundreds of thousands of Israeli citizens, including many former Soviet immigrants and their offspring, who are considered Jewish by the state but not by the ultra-Orthodox rabbinate, meaning they cannot get married in Israel.

Ethiopian-Israelis

Not every tribe in Israel can muster enough votes to gain representation in Parliament through its own party. The roughly 130,000 Ethiopian-Jewish Israelis have yet to wield much muscle in politics, despite the election of a handful to the Knesset since the waves of immigration in the 1980s and in 1991.

But after a string of fatal police shootings, they are working hard to assert themselves politically, with frequent protests against police brutality aimed at forcing a national reckoning with what black Israelis say is a history of racism.

Sahred From Source link World News

from WordPress http://bit.ly/2QeQgWa via IFTTT

#IFTTT #WordPress

0 notes