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PaperclipPerfector  3d ago (text post)   12078 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 14, 2026

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Jeff Maurer expresses more or less my thoughts on this whole thing more eloquently than I could ever hope to:

Before I get to the controversial parts of the statement, I want to address the funny part. Free Sudan? From who? The fighting in Sudan is an internal conflict. As for the Democratic Republic of Congo, the fighting there is not like the war that tore the country apart in the ‘90s/’2000s, and I’m guessing that most Congolese would rather be known for their historic World Cup run than as a people who need to be freed from…well I don’t know…Botswana, maybe? What I think happened is that once Macklemore listed Palestine, Lebanon, and Cuba, something in his brain went “Whuh-oh, this is getting hot,” so he threw in some other countries as rhetorical bodyguards, guessing that the violence in those countries probably means that the people there need to be “freed” from somebody. He probably could have said “Free Uruguay! Free Saim!” and gotten the same response, because he was really coasting on vibes at that point.

He notes that Macklemore claiming not to be antisemitic is nonsense when he specifically name-checked CUAD and Students for Justice in Palestine, two organisations who openly support Hamas (among other things, the former group defended a member who stated "Zionists don't deserve to live", while the latter has praised the Hamas "martyrs").

I don’t like this. Macklemore is very obviously an idiot — I listened to the song [ed: "Hind's Hall", lyrics here] that follows the controversial intro, and it’s basically dumbass Rage Against the Machine lyrics without the music that made RATM good. The song also puts the “occupation” at 75 years, and I’m not convinced that a person’s problem is with “apartheid” or “genocide” when they see the very founding of Israel as illegitimate. But I’m also not comfortable with powerful venue owners throwing their weight around because they don’t like a guy’s politics. It’s one thing for someone to decide that Macklemore is too big of a douchebag to support — you don’t need to twist my arm to get me to not buy a ticket to this concert! And Kraft can book or not book anyone for any reason — his stadium, his rules. But I’ve long felt that we’re better off letting people say just about any intensely stupid thing that they believe. I didn’t like it when social media companies were aggressively in declaring things “hate speech”, and I don’t like Robert Kraft doing it now.

How far does the association go?

Hamas is obviously antisemitic. Some of their defenders doubtless fall in that category. But I have to believe it’s possible to defend a group without endorsing all its positions, let alone its motivations.

Consider a single-issue antifeminist. He holds no opinions about Jews but wishes that sharia law applied to women everywhere. As such, he approves of Hamas’ actions. Is he an antisemite?

Consider a Westerner conservative influencer. He says things like “Islam is right about women” in an attempt to put progressives between a rock and a hard place. Is he an antisemite?

Or consider a Western zoomer. He repeats edgy proposals he hears from people like the first two. He’s not sure if he’s being ironic, post-ironic, or serious…but is he antisemitic?

I don’t think you can draw a line from Hamas to CUAD to Macklemore and keep the ideology intact.

defended a member who stated "Zionists don't deserve to live",

This would seem to be evidence for anti-zionism, anti-zionism ≠ antisemitism.

Even if I accept your claim that "Zionist" was not being used as a codeword for "Jew", this rather clearly demonstrates that Macklemore is lying when he presents himself as a hippy-dippy peace-and-love dude who is simply innocently horrified by "genocide" and "apartheid". He explicitly supports (by name) groups that support violent resistance against Israel i.e. he is a crypto-Hamas supporter.

Why does opposition to genocide require a "hippy-dippy peace-and-love" attitude?

The Nazis weren't stopped by hippies waving signs but by the Red Army tearing through East Prussia committing enough war crimes to make Hamas look like humanitarian organization.

If you think that Israel is committing a genocide then it logically follows that violent resistance is justified, assuming you aren't a full on pacifist.

I think any other direction has darker implications: to reverse your claim (which, to be fair, is factually accurate to my knowledge), those that would commit mass ethnic cleansing of Jews in the 1940s were stopped by making their cities look like Dresden. Why wouldn't "Never Again" mean turning cities (Rafah) to such in 2026 for the same reason? "Which river? Which sea?". I don't agree with it, but I can at least understand the position.

Ultimately, the cycle of violence is only broken when one side loses or admits defeat — the West Germans were to some extent lucky the Western Allies were more magnanimous than many other historical examples — or when "hippy-dippy peace-and-love attitudes" prevail. In most cases I can imagine, I'd prefer the latter.

By this reasoning, claiming that you want to kill Jews who drink the blood of Christian babies at Passover is only evidence that you dislike Jews who drink the blood of Christian babies at Passover.

Not all Jews are zionist. There are many non-Jew zionists.

Yes, any Jew or non-Jew drinking the blood of Christian or pagan babies at Passover or outside passover should be put to death, after a trial.

The set of those I would put to death is larger but still inclusive of your set.

Not all Jews are zionist. There are many non-Jew zionists.

Not all Jews drink Christian blood either. In fact, a lot fewer Jews do so than are Zionists. Yet Jews would still perceive that as an attack on them.

Yet Jews would still perceive that as an attack on them.

Feeling threatened by a call to try child killers when you aren't one is in-group bias doing you a disservice. Same with Zionism: it's a political ideology, held by plenty of non-Jews and rejected by plenty of Jews. Opposing Iran's theocracy isn't an attack on Muslims.

A rabbi, a Zionist Jew and an anti-Zionist Jew walk into a bar.

The barman says "we don't serve Jews here."

Do we really need to relitigate Weak Men Are Superweapons over the exact same example as the post?

The superweapon only splashes on you if you stay in the tent with the people it's aimed at.

That's why nobody lets Nazis into big tent politics. Scott's point holds for categories you can't leave, and Jewishness is one. Zionism isn't. It's a chosen political position, and anti-Zionist Jews are welcomed in anti-Zionist spaces, not targeted.

The fix isn't to defend Zionists in self-protection. It's to keep the Jewish/Zionist boundary sharp. Blurring it is exactly what Zionists want, since it lets political criticism get filed as bigotry. Antisemites blur it from the other side too, which is one more reason not to help them.

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