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
You already admitted your title sucked, but your title alone is worthy of a ban imo. Idk about permanent if you’re willing to to take some criticism, but writing off the rest of your post as going “I guess the title was a little inflammatory” tells me you’re more interested in justifying your pov.
It sucks in without the context I provided here. It was, as I said here, made in the context of liberal Zionist, regular Zionist and “pro-Palestinian” people unnecessarily centering anti-Semitism when it is, realistically, fringe
Can I ask you something here? It seems to be a sticking point for you, this idea of anti-semitism being fringe. If that impression is correct, why is it a sticking point for you and what do you feel is important about insisting on it? Because I can get not liking how zionists co-opt, but taking it a step further, to insisting in such a way that makes it sound like anti-semitism is a non-issue, seems to be what is the crux of the problem here.
My main argument here, that I failed to properly portray in the post on Hexbear and which I probably could’ve expanded on further here, is that anti-Semitism does not take the form of state repression. Anti-Semitism exists in the same sense that anti-white racism exists. There may be some who genuinely don’t like white people, though that does not translate in any meaningful way into the machinations of the state. There is no institutionalised anti-white sentiment, same applies to Jewish people. This is not me saying anti-Semitism doesn’t exist, it does. People do call Jews bad things, slurs, or otherwise. But racism, more generally, is not individual incidents of hate crimes, it is the wielding of state power to repress one group or another, a group which is made to be racially inferior.
I wouldn’t want it to be a sticking point myself. I am trying to, in some vain hope of being unbanned, explain myself properly. I would’ve liked if I was just made a punching bag in the posts comments, then moved on, but I was banned and now I feel the need to defend myself.
I see. I can see how you’d arrive at comparing them, but I think we should make clear here that whiteness is a distinctly “fake” thing. That the reason anti-white racism is not taken seriously isn’t just because there is a lack of a state oppressing white people, it’s also because whiteness derives from white supremacy as a construct. There is no whiteness without white supremacy. But there is Judaism without zionism.
We can also contrast on the fact that Jewish people have had historical periods where they faced mass discrimination enabled by a state and white people never have and by definition, can’t. People can be prejudiced against those who are considered white because of the harm that the institution of whiteness does and the people who act in its name, but there is no threat of a state deciding white people are a minority people to scapegoat. There is still the possibility of Jewish people being victimized in this way again.
This I think is an important distinction that may be part of the problem, if you land on the wrong side of it.
I want to add to my own point a little here, for my own closure of train of thought if nothing else:
That part of why the thing with white supremacy is so unique is because white supremacy is effectively derived from a particular state (or I guess probably multiple of them at this point in history) defining whiteness as a certain thing that exists and defining what constitutes whiteness, which can shift based on their whims over time. For a state to “oppress” white people, we end up going down this contradictory path, where such a state would somehow need to adopt the same views of what constitutes a white person as white-defining states (which would implicitly mean said state is agreeing that white people exist, as such, and are a superior group - so we’re already not off to a start that makes much sense for oppression) and then it would somehow need to discriminate and marginalize them really badly (but they’d also have many places to go in the world that would accept them as white and whiteness has no specific homeland or heritage, unless you count brutal colonization as a heritage, so this wouldn’t really mean much). Jewish people, on the other hand, could pretty easily find themselves in a discriminated place again, including from white supremacy (which is where it came from in the holocaust, no?). And zionists weaponize that insecurity of position by portraying israel as the solution (but it’s not and it’s just a thinly disguised settler-colonial project that is being funded by white supremacy).
what is the base for your analysis here? is the richest person in the world sieg heiling on a national stage not enough antisemitism for you?
I’m sorry I was not able to properly explain it to you, I’ll try to portray it better to you. I did not make it clear in my post on Hexbear and on here, so here is my more “developed” analysis:
I do not think anti-Semitism is present within the state. There is no analogue to the oppression of Black and Arab people’s around the world to be found here. Anti-Semitism exists within the individual, it does not in any meaningful way translate to state policy. Elon Musk is probably an anti-Semite, but his views haven’t been expressed through the use of state repression of Jewish communities. I drew an analogue to anti-white racism here, as in, like in this instance. You can say derogatory things about white men, whiteness, but extrapolating that to mean there is institutionalised repression of white people is false.