NOTICE:
I realise now that the main problem here was my post on Hexbear, It was shitty and failed to get across my actual views. I still wish I could’ve been allowed to properly discuss it, but I understand the decision to ban me. Looking at my original post, I can very much get why that is ban worthy, even though that wouldn’t be my decision. What happened happened, as much as I’d like to further expand upon my views, I’ll try not to waste your time by trying to explain my views that I fully do not understand, that I’ve developed throughout the process of arguing with people in the comments. I feel silly for making this such a big deal, sorry. You could look through my replies here to see a further expounded on version of this post here. It really boils down to misunderstanding and semantics, I agree with most of the substance of the comments on this post on their face, it is just that often argued in favour of things I didn’t mean to. My view of anti-Semitism boils down to, yes it is present, but it is not systemic. As I already mentioned, you can look through the replies if you want to see more of that
Click here to view the original version of this post
I recently made a post that, according to the moderator which banned me, “conflated Judaism with Zionism”. The post did not in any way conflate Judaism with Zionism, it was me being tired of people trying to center anti-Semitism and over inflate the presence it has in society.
It had an inflammatory title, “I don’t give a shit about anti-Semitism”, which I can get why people would find problematic. But the text if the post was not in any way conflating Zionism with Judaism. I explained the reasons for the rise in anti-Semitism, the genocide the Israeli state is carrying out, and why I am tired of people acting like it is of most importance.
Jewish people are not systemically oppressed, they’ve been integrated into Western society, into whiteness. What has happened to Jewish people and their assimilation is similar to the experience of Italians and the Irish (in America). There will be no Holocaust 2.0, Jewish people in NYC are not at threat of being lynched. The victim mentality and the centering of the Jewish experience only plays into Jewish supremacism, Zionism. Jews are not special, it shouldn’t be controversial to say that.
I’ll repeat the analogy I made in the original post: Imagine if your main concern was the safety of German minorities after they did the Holocaust. It’s completely ridiculous and shouldn’t be taken seriously.
I suspect the main reason for the “conflating Zionism with Judaism” part is me saying most Jewish people support Israel, which Is a fact. I pointed this out as a reason for the (over-exaggerated) rise in anti-Semitism. I did not even once state anything in opposition to Judaism and Jewishness in in of itself, only gave reasons to the generalisations. I can forgive someone taking this as somehow conflating the two in the context of, I repeat, the inflammatory title, but what I said wasn’t in any way remotely that.
To quote Prof. Finkelstein, on when he asked his mother if she had ever met a decent German:
I remembered one German soldier, he had a kind of a guilty look on his face.
That was all she could remember—one. So it doesn’t surprise me that she loathed all Germans.
This is what I was getting at. A common response to seeing a genocide committed by Jews is, albeit irrationally, to loathe all Jews. Just like, for a time, people hated all Germans. To center the hate towards Germans in the post war years would be seen as ridiculous, rightfully so. Even more ridiculous is to imply this will somehow transfer into violent lynchings.
People like us should know that Zionism and Nazism are not contradictory ideologies, they can coexist and work together (and have historically). So why (I am referencing the replies to my post, not the moderator who banned me) is it that people think Elon throwing a sieg heil is a sign of an imminent Holocaust in the USA? The main donor of Trump is a Jewish Zionist. I repeat, Jews are not at threat. It is ridiculous and, as I already said, plays into Jewish supremacy.
In the brief period where the post was up, I did not receive any real counter arguments, only people flinging insults who clearly either did not understand the text I wrote or didn’t even read through it. I was then of course banned. I expected the forum named @askchapo to be open to discussion. I am sure if I had an actual conversation on the topic with the moderator who banned me, I’d either be able to convince them of the content of the post, or have my own mind changed.
Bans shouldn’t just be thrown around like that, especially considering the content of my post. The text giving reason to the ban was a single sentence, it did not touch on the content of the post. Just “conflating Judaism with Zionism”, that’s it. No specific line of text was noted.
At last I’d like to add that the post was primarily in response to liberal Zionists like Owen Jones and other such figures, not to fellow leftists. Figures who disingenuously over inflate the importance of anti-Semitism, its presence and general effect.
I fully agree that anti-Semitism usually leads right back into far-right ideologies that are in staunch opposition to us, but that is not what I was trying to argue against in the post.
Click here to view the post on Hexbear
I’m sorry if this is not the appropriate place for this. I was not able to respond in depth on Hexbear, for obvious reasons, so I thought this was the next best place.
You can feel free to push back on anything I said.
I think that we all hand out permanent bans too easily. It makes sense for obvious ragebait accounts and spambots, but for users who are socially awkward or in need of reeducation, a permanent ban is just too long. That is a measure much better suited for lost causes. I can ask @[email protected] to consider reducing your ban (maybe to a week or something), but I can’t promise anything.
I agree that something like the Shoah is extremely unlikely to befall Jewish people again, and seeing so many false alarms over antisemitism would make anybody feel cynical. I take antisemitism seriously and even I have to say that they’re wearing down my morale. It’s like attending a hotline but receiving dozens of calls everyday from little kids over trivial problems.
That being said, some Jews (especially the Charedim) face harassment from individuals, and occasionally the violence becomes lethal. Nearly seven years ago a neofascist stabbed Blaze Bernstein to death, and of course there was the Tree of Life Synagogue shooting later that same year. I know that those aren’t the most recent examples, but it is plausible that the ordinary incidents usually go unreported because the victims don’t expect the authorities to do anything.
Personally, though, I think that the focus on antisemitism is too narrow. Jewish people have plenty of problems, and some will tell you that antisemitism is not even in the top five. They have varying responses depending on where they live: pollution, inaccessible healthcare, want of transportation, want of worker’s rights, or even settler-colonialism (it affects one Puerto Rican Jew whom I know), to name only a few examples. Treating antisemitism as Jews’ only problem is inaccurate and uncreative.
anti-Semitism is real and it is rising, narratives that isolate the actions of the Zionist entity from the US are probably the biggest fuel atm. It’s important for anti-zionists to always call the genocide as the US backed and sanctioned genocide.
Red hats/fascists don’t care about human rights, as quickly as they picked up the rhetoric that “Israel has a right to defend itself” they’ll drop it and use Israel (and all Jews) as the scapegoat for US/western failure.
That’s why narratives that the entity controls the US are extremely harmful to Jews as a whole, zionist or not.
One other thing I wanted mention: I don’t care that most Jews are Zionists, it says nothing of Judaism or Jewishness as a whole. It’s senile to use ~100 year old ideology to describe the past, present, and future of Jewishness. As quickly as Zionism became popular, it will disposed by Jews in the future.
My thought process: every group of people has stupid/horrible beliefs (look up how many Muslims don’t want secularism, or how many whites consistently practice white supremacy), you don’t define a group of people by an ideology you define individuals to an ideology.
The vast majority of white people in the US did not want to abolish segregation, look where they are now. People are dynamic and generations change.
That’s why I don’t hold it against Jews (or anyone for that matter) that believe in dumb/bigoted ideas. EVERY group of people has done that, no one is unique.
I don’t have much of a problem with the rest of your post, but this part tickles me the wrong way. I don’t know if you worded it wrong, or something. But it comes off as genocide apologia.
That’s the thing, if you support a genocide, you should very much have it held against you. It’s not okay to be a Zionist. It’s not a matter of “shit happens”, like you’ve made it out to be here. Just because, apparently, every other group has perpetrated a Holocaust, doesn’t make it okay.
I worded it wrong, what I mean is that a majority of Jews being Zionists now is not something to hold against the entire group for the rest of their history. It’s horrible, but people can change. The next generations of Jews will be more and more against Zionism.
What I’m getting at is: it’s a heinous fuck up but it’s not a permanent fuck up. People change for the better. We should continue to call it out for the disgusting hatred it is, and anyone (jew or not) that is a Zionist is a horrible person.
They have dunk culture when it comes to people a lot and you barely have time to respond; my own comments were one or two sentences long sometimes because 1) I was going through a crisis IRL and didn’t always have the time to respond effectively; and 2) they… sometimes made long points but didn’t always have much substance to them; it was basically “CPUSA is revisionist.” “I don’t think anyone in CPUSA is revisionist or believes in such” and then “You’re not giving me any reasons to believe that they aren’t revisionst” and I’m thinking to myself “What the fuck am I supposed to be RESPONDING to?” (Not everyone did this, and some replies were more thoughtful or well-put, and gave me more to work with, but other people just wasted time, looking back, especially during an IRL crisis, and the “he said, she said” fiasco didn’t help), and 3) the replies or comments were sometimes very rude and would spawn off into something else when I tried to call them out on their ad hominems, sometimes, I would mention one point… before someone jumped in and spawned that one sentence into something different, and usually it was rude and didn’t have anything to do with the original point. For example, someone blamed my problems on me being Autistic and justified it with saying “I’m Autistic as well” and I’m thinking to myself “Then you know that in the Autistic community, we say 'If you’ve met an Autistic person, you’ve met an Autistic person.” I do want to add that they were NOT doing it in good faith and were very rude about it too. It’s very rude to just mention that and in such a curt fashion, no matter who you are.
There were a lot of people that, for example, were anti-Autistic or had poor behavior toward Autistic people, such as that mother who made her 3 year old son go to ABA and justified it and… wasn’t reprimanded, especially not banned. She seemed to be quite abusive, but eh, nobody did a thing.
Overall, I could’ve handled things better, but honestly, me mentioning something like “I like CPUSA” before it spawned off into a whole argument while I was dealing with abuse and trauma IRL was really uncalled for.
I’m glad that I was banned, I guess, looking back.
I think my problem is that I catastrophize (such as when I called the other person the other day a PatSoc before thinking about it some more and realizing that they definitely were no PatSoc or MAGA com, bwahahahahaha 😂) a lot and would sometimes, especially then, freak out about something due to my frayed nerves, but honestly, it was a very un-curious and non-understanding community, largely.
And that’s my personal experience.
I understand that people may attack you once again and you’re sort-of risking your peace of mind for the OP above (since people may, and, I think, will likely come and attack you here, either from Hexbear or even, maybe, from Lemmygrad; not judging, but it’s just a prediction), but I’ll try to have your back, comrade.
I hope you can appeal the ban, btw, and get back in, if you really want to.