This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
I'm really curious how you are defining the word "racist." Mainly because in most circles (but not necessarily on this discussion board) the word is a major pejorative, one of the worst things a person can be accused of. And because it's also one of those social justice words like "apartheid" and "genocide" with strategically flexible definitions depending on who/whom.
How about exhibit A:
I will grant you that it is a mixture of religious and ethnic discrimination (as you can lose your right if you or your grandparent converted to another religion), but this is not "disparate outcome racism" that the wokes like to whine about, but straightforward racial discrimination for the purpose of maintaining an ethnostate.
As a thought experiment, suppose that Iceland guaranteed white people from South Africa a path to become citizens, but not black people. Not through some proxy, but directly. You have two people both of whom apply to a visa, neither has been in Iceland or is likely to have ancestors who were in Iceland within 50 generations, and Iceland decides that it prefers one of them because if his ethnicity, because they want to maintain the "white race" in Iceland.
This Iceland would be about as central of an example of racist as you can be reasonably be. A government has a skin color palette or a DNA origin threshold and explicitly makes policy decisions about individuals based on that, without even the fig leaf of wanting to undo the effects of earlier unequal treatment of ethnicities it did earlier. Whether it decides who goes on a plane to Reykjavík or on a train to Auschwitz or on a overfilled slave ship towards Florida makes a big difference in magnitude but not in direction.
And to be honest, I do not see really much in the way of difference between the fictional Iceland policy and the real Israeli policy. You can make a case if you want that the Law of Return is actually one of these rare cases where racism is good, as apologists of affirmative action make for their cases. But any definition of racism which does not include treating two foreigners different purely because of their ethnic background will struggle to admit any cases of racism, unless you want to go straight for a racially discriminating definition of racism: "racism is racial discrimination done by gentile whites", for example.
More options
Context Copy link
Ethnic supremacist parties, like most of the Israeli mainstream, are pretty uncontroversially racist.
I would have to disagree with this, in the sense that the word "racist" is very ambiguous. (Of course it's not helping that you added another buzzword to the mix: "supremacist")
I take it that you decline to explicitly define what you mean by either word?
Are you seriously disputing that the largest Jewish parties are Jewish supremacists?
The Arabs had exceptionally high turnout because they want the government to actually bother to police Arab-majority areas(which are gang-controlled shitholes with frightening crime rates, because the police ignore them). This is not due to Israelis just loving Arabs too much to bother enforcing the law on them, American leftists on blacks style- see the behavior of the IDF literally anywhere.
I can't really agree or dispute such a claim unless I know how you are defining the term "supremacist."
And yet you decline to define what you mean by "racist" or "supremacist."
I suspect this is because there is no way to define these words in such a way as to be (1) broad enough to cover Israel (and/or the Yashar party); (2) narrow enough not to cover lots of entities which are not normally accused of being "racist" or "supremacist"; and (3) not obviously gerrymandered so as to apply only to Israel (or Israeli parties).
Certainly for Social Justice types in the US, the word "racist" is used in a strategically ambiguous way as Scott pointed out a few years back:
https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/07/social-justice-and-words-words-words/
But in any event, I can't respond meaningfully to your question or your claim if you are unwilling to define your terms.
I'm skeptical of this claim, but I would rather not get sidetracked.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
No matter how high you are setting the bar for what you consider "racist", I can assure you the Israeli right-wing is clearing it with ease.
Well how would you define the term?
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
"We should be free to discriminate against Israeli citizens that are not Jews"
Would you be able to identify 2 policies supported by the Yashar party which would discriminate against non-Jewish Israeli citizens?
So the reason I said that Yashar pretends not to be racist is that they do pretty much commit to treating all Israeli citizens the same. The catch is that Israeli citizenship law is itself quite racist, in the sense that there is an explicit ethnic preference for matrilineally descended ethnic Jews regardless of national origin.
Ok, thanks for clarifying that. And can we agree that under your definition, a political party is "racist" if (1) supports treating citizens equally (or supports treating citizens more favorably than non-citizens); and (2) it exists in a country which the citizenship laws give preferences to people of certain ethnic backgrounds?
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Present_absentee
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizenship_and_Entry_into_Israel_Law
As a threshold issue, I looked at the articles you cited and saw no mention of the Yashar party. Moreover, I don't see how denying citizenship to a non-citizen discriminates against citizens, Jewish or non-Jewish.
Maybe summarize the policies in your own words?
Well, Yashar is sufficiently progressive to suggest Israeli Arabs can serve in the IDF, so they get a point for that.
But they have never even suggested that either discriminatory policy I linked to should be overturned.
Seems to me you are goalpost-moving here.
The policy you point to does not appear to discriminate against non-Jewish Israeli citizens; at a minimum you have not explained how it does. Nor have you shown any evidence that Yashar supports either policy.
I suspect that in this context, accusations of "racism" are fundamentally no different from accusations of "apartheid" and "genocide." In the sense that there is no way to define these words broadly enough to cover Israel (or leading parties in Israel); narrowly enough so that they don't cover lots of other situations which are not normally and widely condemned as "racist"; and not in a way that is obviously gerrymandered so as to apply only to Israel.
For example, lots of countries discriminate in terms of offering citizenship: Japan, Ireland, Poland, just to name a few.
Don't be obtuse. Most Israeli citizens can marry a foreigner and live with their spouse in Israel. Some are not allowed to. Most Israeli citizens can live in any village. Some are not allowed to. In both cases these "some" are Israeli Arabs.
You are free to ask them yourself. Both policies are explicitly opposed only by the Arab parties.
Whoa please tone it down. TIA.
I'm pretty sure that if an Israeli Arab marries a non-Israeli from the United States, they can live with their spouse in Israel, same thing with an Israeli Jew. I'm pretty sure there is an exception if the proposed marriage partner is a non-Israeli from Gaza or J & S, but at the same time, I'm pretty sure that this exception applies to both Jews and Arabs alike. Do you disagree?
I'm pretty sure that any Israeli citizen can live in any village provided that (1) they buy or rent a residence there; and (2) in the case of communities where approval by a committee is required, the committee approves them. Do you disagree with this? Are you saying that some of these committees make discriminatory decisions? Or are you saying that it's "racist" that Arab citizens are not allowed to have real estate handed over to them in situations where that real estate was (allegedly) seized by the state 75 years ago as a the alleged result of their relatives abandoning it?
I don't have the burden of proof here. The claim being made is that the Yashar Party is "racist."
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
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link