Amadan
Letting the hate flow through me
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User ID: 297
Amadan
Letting the hate flow through me
13hr ago
To some degree, it's the euphemism treadmill. But it originated with the well-intentioned desire to treat mentally retarded people more humanely. Telling children not say "retard" did not, of course, cause children to become kinder, especially to retarded people, but since you asked for a steelman, it is now much more widely accepted in society that insulting and abusing the disabled is a shitty thing to do and the status of the mentally retarded is better now than it used to be.
That obviously didn't happen because we made "retard" a no-no word, but it can be argued that the mindset that tabooed the word contributed to greater awareness and sympathy.
I still think tabooing words is retarded, lame, and stupid (no shit, I've been lectured by SJs that "stupid" and "dumb" are offensive and ableist) but you asked for a steelman.
We had a small discussion last week about "Negro" and "Chinaman." Both of those words used to be perfectly acceptable. Now they are considered rude at best. Why? Mostly arbitrary shifts in usage, but those shifts came with improved racial conditions. The one didn't cause the other, but they are associated. Now "Retarded," "Negro," and "Chinaman" to describe a person all sound reductive and dehumanizing.
The advantage, of course, is now you have a power word to use when you really want to be offensive.
Amadan
Letting the hate flow through me
13hr ago
I feel this describes most of the Jewish Americans that I knew in college and highschool. Especially the ethnically and culturally Jewish that did little of the actual religion part.
I think "opposed to the existence of Israel" spans a spectrum. There are people who think Israel in its present form is an oppressive ethnostate and it needs to be reformed ("reform" meaning anything from a one-state solution to a two-state solution to various other proposals that have been floated and failed over the years), and there are people who think Israel should literally cease to exist and if that means Israelis literally ceasing to exist, oh well.
Jews and other progressives who oppose Israel on moral grounds but don't actually hate Jews tend to be more of the former; they don't like Israel, but they also tend to not like the United States, or indeed the West. But they don't want to see a bloodbath, however unrealistic the alternatives they suggest.
The actual anti-Semites, of course, tend to be in the latter category, with their answer to "What about the Israelis who live there now?" ranging from "They can all move elsewhere" to "They should die."
It just seems like a doomed project to have an ethnostate and religious minority in a third world area, and neighbors with one of the most war happy religions out there. I am confused how the Israel project seemed like a good idea ever.
In all seriousness, read a few books on the topic. (I recommend reading both pro- and anti-Israel historians.) It might not convince you the Israel project was a good idea, but there are definitely reasons that made sense at the time, both ethno-religious and otherwise. Of course there were many alternative plans besides Israel itself; Uganda, Madagascar, Venezuela, and Alaska were among the proposals. It was both practical and historical reasons that lead to Israel proper being the location chosen. It may well be that it was doomed from the beginning, but for example, "Let all the Jews who want their own state move to America" was definitely not an option when the Zionist movement began in the 19th century, and it wasn't even an option for all the Jews to flee to the US after WWII.
Amadan
Letting the hate flow through me
13hr ago
I don’t recall anyone online saying a positive thing about that terror attack.
Such a sly rephrasing.
What @FtttG said was:
- sympathetic framing of the perpetrator ("his family were killed in an airstrike in Lebanon")
- claims that such attacks are bound to be expected as a consequence of the war in Gaza i.e. victim-blaming (as if a handful of Australian Jews, many of whom had presumably never set foot in Israel, have the slightest say in Israeli politics or IDF tactics)
- outright suggestions that the attack was staged by Mossad as a false flag attack
This is accurate.
We could perhaps add:
- Pointing out the problematic social media posts of one of the victims.
You're right, almost no one is going to go mask-off and say "I support shooting Jews because I just really fucking hate Jews."
Even the most vehement Jew-haters are more sly than that.
Amadan
Letting the hate flow through me
16hr ago
This is condescending and antagonistic. Don't do this.
Amadan
Letting the hate flow through me
1d ago
Rarely do we say "You're right, that post should have been modded but we didn't notice it because no one reported it."
Instead, we tell people not to publicly demand someone be modded or attack them, but simply report the post if they think it warrants it.
People do over report, but that's because they use the report button to mean "I don't like this." We prefer that to public callouts, but people should really just let things go if they're mad at what someone wrote unless it was truly a bad post. ("Bad" in the sense of being against what the Motte is intended for, not bad in the sense that you don't like it.)
Amadan
Letting the hate flow through me
1d ago
Not every CW post has to fall strictly along tribal lines.
I suggest making use of the scroll button rather than demanding a Motte precisely curated to your tastes.
Amadan
Letting the hate flow through me
2d ago
What are you even saying here? You agree, you disagree, you want to argue but don't have an argument, you just want to express snarky disdain, you understand and acknowledge the point? This is why we have a rule against low-effort posting. It's annoying and contributes nothing.
Amadan
Letting the hate flow through me
2d ago
I think mods should intervene… somehow, because these posts are getting too frequent, too obviously agenda-laden, and aren't even remotely about the culture war (though AI discussion as such is necessary). It's becoming one guy's AI Bad blog.
I could name half a dozen topics that come up again and again, sometimes in tedious fashion, and sometimes by a few individuals who post about little else. Generally speaking, we don't "intervene" because someone is tired of topic, or even because we are tired of a topic.
And everything is "obviously agenda-laden" to people who have an opposing viewpoint.
If you don't like a post, you can ignore it or respond to it. You can even report it if you genuinely think it violates the rules. (Most reported posts are not violating the rules, they are just violating the reporter's sensibilities.)
Amadan
Letting the hate flow through me
2d ago
"Chinaman" is historical usage that harkens back to the 19th century. It may not be a slur, exactly, but it's kind of like calling a black person a "Negro" - it is not plausible that you are unaware that it's no longer considered polite.
I don't know that any of the founders of Israel ever regretted it (though I am not that knowledgeable about all the personalities). Certainly they knew from the beginning that it was a fraught project that might fail. They were definitely aware the Arabs didn't want them there, though the more optimistic ones thought they'd eventually reach an accommodation and normalized relations.
The thing is, they really didn't have a lot of other choices.
Despite the fact that I am usually in the role of "Israel defender" here because the Jew-haters are so tediously disingenuous and ahistorical, I actually am not particularly invested in Israel. I wish them well but I also wish the Palestinians well - my preference would be for an impossible peace. I blame the impossibility mostly on the Palestinians, but not entirely. I also don't think the US should be so heavily invested in Israel. What do they do for us, really?
But I do like to understand where both sides are coming from. For example, I completely dismiss the "This is our ancient homeland" argument because that only plays if you are religious. Otherwise, no one has a right to land just because your ancestors lived there 2000 years ago.
That said, there are a lot of lies about Israel being a "settler-colonialist" project as well.
If you don't want to read books, my favorite current media figure speaking from the Israeli POV is Havig Rettig Gur. He has a YouTube channel and he is a Free Press columnist now. He's unabashedly Zionist, but he's very articulate and a clear explainer, without any of the anti-Arab vitriol you get from some Israel-explainers.
I wish there was an equivalent on the anti-Zionist side, but aside from people like Norman Finkelstein, there aren't many who aren't just antisemites with a coat of paint.
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