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PaperclipPerfector  5mo ago (text post)   30443 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 18, 2024

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Another day, another controversy about what is antisemitism and what is legitimate criticism of Israel.

This time, a German architecture prize was rescinded over the recipient signing a letter condemning Israel.

The Athens-based artist and author James Bridle, [...], was announced in June as the recipient of the Schelling Architecture Foundation’s theory prize, [...]

Bridle was informed in an email that the foundation’s committee had decided unanimously not to award them the prize because Bridle was among the several thousand authors who signed an open letter calling for a boycott of Israeli cultural institutions.

Of course, the Guardian is not quite sure how the founder of the prize is called, oscillating between Schelling and Schilling:

The foundation’s prizes, which have been awarded since 1992, are named after the late German architect Erich Schilling.

The letter in question is here. Key passages:

the most profound moral, political and cultural crisis of the 21st century.

We still have 3/4 of that century to go, but good job being optimistic!

This is a genocide, as leading expert scholars and institutions have been saying for months.

This would at least be debatable.

Therefore: we will not work with Israeli cultural institutions that are complicit or have remained silent observers of the overwhelming oppression of Palestinians.

Fair enough.

the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people as enshrined in international law.

That would be the the general right self-determination of peoples, as mentioned in the UN charter? Does this also apply to the Uighur, the Kurds, the Basques, the Catalans and so on?

Or is the relevant law the limited recognition of Palestine, or the Oslo Accords?

Was the Hamas rule before the Oct 7 a shining example of self-determination?

Personally, I am somewhat sympathetic to calls to stop the IDF from bombing the hell out of Gaza. I am also fine with demanding that Israel should stick to the Oslo accords in the West Bank and dismantle their illegal settlements.

But to demand political autonomy in the context of Gaza is where I get off the train. The force of political autonomy in Gaza is called Hamas. Their primary objective is to sabotage any peace process by murdering random residents of Israel. Asking for political autonomy for Gaza is like asking for political autonomy for Germany in 1946.

Overall, I don't think that the letter is plainly antisemitic. If the author had signed a similar pledge against Chinese institutions for the Uighur genocide, and also demanded self-determination for the Kurds, I would tend to call them a general advocate for oppressed people. If their only political topic is Israel, then that would be a bit dubious.

If, as the right (persuasively) argues, it is racist towards Anglos / French / Germans to flood these countries with migrants, ending their former status as (de facto) ethnostates, then opposition to Israel as a Jewish state is likewise antisemitic. The destruction of Japan by the arrival of a hundred million of the kind of tribesmen who lived there before the ancestors of the Yamato immigrated would be likewise transparently anti-Japanese behavior. I have no opinions on German policy in this area or the awarding of the prize. Nevertheless, advocating a people should no longer be a majority in their sole ethnostate is damning them in a way, whether it’s done to Gauls or Greeks, to Swedes or Serbs, and so on. The Arabs still have many homelands and there was no distinct Palestinian identity before Israeli independence.

The Arabs still have many homelands and there was no distinct Palestinian identity before Israeli independence.

That argument isn't going to convince Arabs, it isn't meant for the jewish population. It is an argument for Europeans meant to justify a massive refugee crisis on Europe's doorstep. The arab states have absolutely no reason in aiding a mass ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. For us in Europe we have zero reason to want to see millions of arabs move. Even if it is to other arab states it is still a disaster as it is destabilizing.

Israel has not only been involved in plenty of wars that has ended up with migrants in Europe. The ADL and plenty of other jewish groups have been pushing hard for mass migration into Europe.

So if not living in your own ethnostate makes it perfectly fine to evict people there is no problem if the rest of the world forcefully evicts all jews?

So it would have been completely fine to ethnically cleanse all Finns and Estonians pre 1918 as they had never had a state? Basques have never had an ethnostate so are they free game?

The ADL

The American ADL has been pushing for .. mass migration into Europe? I don't like it at all, but that seems rather far from its notional remit.

Here is a press release with policy recommendations to criminalize opposition to mass migration, triggered by the Lauren Southern documentary about the NGO ships picking up migrants off the Libyan coast and dropping them in Italy.

Thanks. I mostly know them for getting people to kiss the ring on TV...typically after saying something critical of Israel or more rarely, Jews.

I wonder how many people read that .. it's an exercise in tedium that in the end amounts to basically nothing except "you must censor people" and "pass hate crime laws" and doesn't even try to explain how low or no immigration is bad.

Absolutely. They have put enormous pressure on social media companies. They have also helped many pro migration NGO:s.

On top of that there are several other lobbying groups that have pushed hard for mass immigration.

Do you have some concrete evidence that they put the thumb on the scale about European migration? It would be a bit surprising to see, since one would think the opportunity cost of not investing that money in the American political market would matter more for them.

The overwhelming impact they have had on social media has absolutely played a major role. They have also sponsored multiple NGOs in Europe.

Which ones? Can you provide some concrete data of that and relevant pressure on social media companies?

*Here is an article about the ADL pressuring social media to stop criticism of its agenda.

*Here is an ADL press release with policy recommendations to criminalize opposition to mass migration to Europe, reacting to Lauren Southern's documentary about the NGO-run Libya to Italy boat migration route.

*Here is a more detailed look at the human-smuggling NGOs ferrying migrants from Libya to Italy.

*Here is an animation made from the ship tracking data of the NGO boats in question.

*Here is an ADL press release from 2015 condemning the rise of anti-migrant sentiment in Europe.

*Here is the ADL's propaganda packet made for high school teachers focused on pushing the youth to see migrants to Europe sympathetically using that viral photo of the drowned boy on the beach in Turkey.

*Here is an article from the Daily Forward about the Zionists of America criticizing the ADL for fighting anti-refugee activism in Europe because the mass migration of muslims into Europe was causing increased antisemitism.

I hope this infodump is enough to convince you.

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