Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?
This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.
Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Antisemitism is now completely fine with the left, and has been for a while. If one is skittish about it, they may use the z-word, but many don't even bother anymore. Not that it ever had been entirely out - Marx had been a rabid antisemite, for example - but there were times when it wasn't much talked about. Those times are completely past us. Now any leftist can embrace hating the Joos, and the peers would only cheer.
Which left are you talking about? In no leftist circle I'm present in are Jews every mentioned negatively qua Jews. If Jews are ever disproportionately lambasted in those circles it is only ever as a function of their disproportionate presence among Israeli and billionaires. Should a leftist go "Jews amirite" there, I have no doubt that they would be promptly expelled, given that it doesn't happen.
In some circles they use the z-word. In some, they don't bother anymore. Both sides though know it means "the Jews", and both sides are ok with it. Now defining precisely may be a bit complicated, but I'd say AWFUL crowd would mostly be like "oh of course I don't have Jews, it's just about Israel policies!" while the Muslim and other "historically oppressed" parts would be much more open about what it is about.
Just as university students who literally denied Jews from entering the campus and physically attacked them were expelled, and so did the organizations supporting them?
lolwut? "Disproportionate" to what? Did you expect Israelis to be Chinese instead?
I think what you're missing is that leftists genuinely do put Jews and Israelis in different mental buckets. And, leftists are also very comfortable with the general idea that regular otherwise-good people can be guilty of very-bad apologia. Thus, Zionists and those gullible enough to defend Zionists, even Zionist public opinion manipulators, can be real and bad people without there ever being a whiff of "and also BTW they control the world". Or at least, the Jews specifically controlling the world. "Billionaires" writ broadly and never defined well are assumed to have large de facto control already, so that idea isn't even too weird. And remember, since good people can be manipulated into apologia, it's very easy to motte and bailey most misspoken utterances - ironically, sometimes quite easy to claim.
As such, you usually need to say something pretty explicitly like "Jews control the world" and not merely two adjacent sentences of "Zionists control a lot of the media" and "Billionaires control the world" or even "A lot of Zionists have a lot of money". It's only "Jews control the world" where they go, wait, that's antisemitic. Even Jews have a lot of money jokes are somewhat diluted in effect because too many (often rich, left-wing) Jews made the jokes about themselves.
Thus: Zionists and Jews and Israelis are indeed different mental buckets. No, it doesn't make a ton of sense, but yes, it's a real and widespread perception.
Also, such leftist groups include Jews and never reject Jews based on their origin. The same cannot be said of unironic Jew haters.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I note you aren't claiming that they use the word Jews when hating them. It's easy to believe that Muslims do, but then I also don't really count them as leftists.
When you say "they don't bother", do you mean they say "Jews are disgusting" and things to that effect?
In an event that wasn't targeted against specifically Israel, right? Right?
Again, I define antisemitism as the phenomenon of hatred against Jews as the whole group. Not "Israel", not "zionists" and not "the capitalists". It would include Jews who don't live in Israel, don't support Israel, aren't rich, don't practice Judaism etc. I don't know how you define it, but if it's "students who stage anti-Israel protests" then we aren't gonna get anywhere.
The simpler explanation is that most leftists today hate Israel, most leftists today love Muslims and most Muslims today hate Jews (but hold their tongue when in mixed company). This applies in general to broad groups of people such as "The Leftists" - if you find diversity of opinion, what is most likely is that they actually do not agree, not that they all believe the same thing but some hide it.
That's good, because I said it at least twice :)
Why not? They certainly vote for the same candidates and policies other Leftists do, and participate in the same party, so who are they if not?
Exactly. They couldn't care less if a particular Jew ever been to Israel, what opinion they'd have on Israel and what influence on Israel beating up and throwing out of campus of this particular Jew would have (none). They just hated the Jew.
That's a bad definition. If you hate all the Jews but the one, then you aren't antisemite? If you have all the Jews but Naturei Karta, then you aren't antisemite? Nah, you still are. People are always inconsistent, even Nazis allowed some select Jews to serve in the army and governmental functions, at least for a while. If you're looking for a cop out where you can rule-lawyer some definition of "antisemitism" that excludes people that don't hate every single Jew, then you'd need another word to that describes the same phenomenon, because the word "antisemitism" will cease to be useful. This btw is a common leftist failure mode - they imagine if they all agree certain word means something, then it becomes reality - like, they call themselves "liberals" and "progressives" and automatically all the nice things that used to be associated with these words attach to them. Of course, in reality exactly the opposite happens. If you call antisemites by any other name, that name will start to mean "antisemite".
They do, of course. Because there are a lot of very uppity Jews in there, who arrogantly refuse to behave like the leftists would like them to. But now, as you correctly point out, this also aligns with the Left's embrace of Islamic radicalism, which also conveniently hates the Jews. The match made in hell.
Their anti-Israel tendency - more precisely, a tendency against the Israeli right-wing - derives solely from their overall anti-colonialist tendency. I think you already know that. France and Germany, for example, no longer follow a colonialist national policy, which is why you don't see anti-German or anti-French leftist groups of any significance. (We can nitpick about the former but it isn't really important.) The Russian leadership can reasonably be accused of being imperialists, however, which is why anti-Russian leftists are very much a thing.
Not solely. "Anti-colonialism" is part of it, even though the idea that Jews, who lived in that land literally before recorded history became a thing, are somehow "colonizers", and Muslims, who arrived much recently, many - more recently than Europeans arrived to Americas and Africa - are "indigenous", is supremely idiotic and counter-factual. But that has never been an obstacle for the Left. However, Israel and Jews are subject to a special type of vitriol which is not seen towards, say, Belgians or English or French or Dutch. Who actually colonized and subjugated massive amount of people and countries, and some of them continue to keep colonies (same can be said about the US, tbh, I mean Puerto Rico? Hawaii? Samoa?) - and yet you don't see Belgians demonized around the planet because of that they did to Congo. You don't see Japanese vilified because of what happened in China and Korea. I'm not calling for all that to happen - I am just observing, that Israel is definitely being singled out, and any Jew who is not actively working for the Party - and some that do - is subject to attack for it. And the conclusion is unescapable - the "anti-colonialism" is at best a convenient excuse. The reason must be deeper.
The Belgians, English, French, Dutch or Japanese very markedly are not practicing colonialism anymore and have been in fact doing the opposite (i.e. inviting foreigners instead of invading them) for decades; Israel, on the other hand, is. The different levels of vitriol are not difficult to explain. Also it’s very obviously not the ancient Jews as a people that leftists are accusing of colonialism but the current state of Israel as founded in 1947.
More options
Context Copy link
The Israel-Palestine conflict has also been inflamed more recently even than Russia-Ukraine.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
It's really only among the Hasan Piker crowd. So, Twitch Tankies with Islam overlap.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Interestingly, Marx came from a family of atheist Jews, who had converted to Christianity before his birth.
More options
Context Copy link
Exactly. It wouldn't be surprising to see a mixed up extremist who loved Nick Fuentes and also fucked trannies and loved Luigi and communism or whatever. Another Ernst Roehm or Skorzeny.
I literally watched a clip of Fuentes yesterday explaining how The Order is everything, and if some stupid assholes worry about their rights and freedoms, its nothing, and The Authority of the Powerful State must reign supreme, maintained by the overwhelming power of violence, and if your little individual freedoms get trampled, screw you. I'm not sure what would be a disagreement between him and Joseph Stalin by now. The color of the flags?
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link