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
About most Jews being Zionists, I don’t know why they threw a fit over that. That’s a factual statement, most Jews ARE Zionists. I mean, almost half of all Jews globally live in the settler project.
That shouldn’t make anyone reconsider their anti-zionist stance, because genocide, ethnostates, fascism, and colonialism don’t magically become better bc it’s not white supremacy flavored. To me, I accept that most Jews are Zionists. That’s not going to make me support killing babies and blocking aid, bc I don’t care what most Jews think. If something is wrong, it’s wrong no matter the race.
This is why people keep getting called anti-Semitic, they’re banking on you caring that you’re going against the wishes of a majority of Jews which makes you (in their eyes) an anti-semite. If you don’t care and tell them “no matter the race genocide is wrong” they’ll learn to use another argument. Don’t budge, don’t let them use their Jewishness (or someone else’s) as a bludgeon against your values.
Unironically being concerned with being called an anti-semite will only associate Zionism with Judaism/Jewishness. That’s when actual anti-Semitism starts to rise. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen the take that isntrael controls America (and not the other way around) across countless social media sites. Whenever you correct them, they bring up AIPAC, they bring up how people can get deported for bigotry* against Jews but not any other race, the various wars & operations in SWANA for isntrael, etc.
They’re drawing horrible conclusions from actual facts, the days of “Jewish cabals are secretly ruling the US illuminati style!!1!” are gone, now they bring up things that are actually happening or have actually happened.
I think they overreacted, that place is stupidly toxic and doesn’t want to call out/ is very uncomfortable with calling out the mistakes that marginalized people can make. I think you should take the ban as a blessing, there’s nothing to go back to except death threats and mods that want to ignore the user base.
*Bigotry here is any criticism against isntrael. They actually do not care about conspiracy theories and lies against Jews. They have no intention to protect Jews and Jewishness outside of isntrael support.
Pot calling the kettle black…
Yeah, we don’t lose our entire instance over abject moderation failures or have cult of personality mods that hand out death threats… Not really. Try again.
What are you referring to with “cult of personality mods that hand out death threats”?
Edit: No, seriously, there’s clearly a history here and I don’t want to be kept in the dark.
One of the mods before being removed/stepping down (don’t remember name) was gifting out death-threats to a user. There is two mods off the top of my head I can think of that has cult of personalities around them. I believe one of them has been removed or kept as a mod.
At the same time, they are a friendly instance. I’m not here to start drama with them. When brought into comparison though, I’m gonna be honest.
I see. So the first issue isn’t really an active problem anymore since that mod is presumably long gone now, and then the other issue… Well, I can’t really think of any mods or admins with “cults of personalities” around them, or at least I don’t notice such a thing. I do think that people on Hexbear are sometimes too lenient on the mods and admins when they do poorly, “because they’re volunteers”, though — the opposite of being too harsh on a team of volunteers is of course also bad, but many people in any case aren’t at the sort of “golden mean” for relating to the site staff, and I think this is a real issue.
On Lemmygrad, the problem I identify with its culture is really what I’ve heard people call “debate pervertry” — it feels like because Lemmygrad generally takes itself more seriously and is more hesitant to “slap people’s wrists”, that there’s just less of a leveling mechanism compared to Hexbear. People aren’t “insulting the meat” as much here so to speak. So this sometimes ends up enabling, put simply, “sophistry” from Lemmygrad users, that I find very grating and unpleasant. So this is what I mean when I say that Lemmygrad has a toxic culture, but maybe it’s less toxicity per se and more that online cultures are sort of self-selecting, so Lemmygrad probably feels much less toxic if it’s the sort of culture you thrive in, whereas Hexbear is the sort of culture that I thrive in and so that’s my main instance that feels much less toxic to me.
“Insulting the meat” is new to me. That’s a fun one to add to the lexicon.
I think it’s probably kind of hard to have an online leftist space without some kind of “toxicity”. I like your comment about culture - I think that’s fundamental. I really like hexbear, but there’s some bits that give me pause. And I like the grad, but there’s bits that I can understand other people not liking!
I don’t know if anybody else really uses that phrase “insulting the meat”, I was just referencing a !Kung practice which is one of the most often cited examples of a leveling mechanism in a culture.
But yeah, in any case, looks like we’ve reached agreement here.