Is this anti-semitism?

"likely every group thinks other groups get more attention than them bc none of them see all the behind the scenes work it took to get the establishment to recognize what was at issue, etc."

this is true.

more so today when you have so many different groups living together in a country like the uk (i would go into personal experience of this, but i cant imagine it would come to any good).

perhaps not the thread for it, but it reminds me a bit of the recent MIA comment about saying how it is okay to say #blacklivesmatter, but less so, to say #muslimlivesmatter, and how that angered a lot of people.

The way I read it, he wasn't saying "you would care more if this was Jews," he was saying "if this happened in a Jewish house of worship, it would be obvious that it was targeting Jews, yet this happened in a gay club and you're not recognizing that gays were being targeted."

i gotta run out but i just wanted to add in response to hurting's comment in the other thread that his comment only makes sense if you ignore all the times antisemitism is excused as antizionism, including literal attacks on synagogues (cf that attack on the paris synagogue a couple years ago).

like they were saying "gays were targeted as gays in the broader context of an attack on our freedom in general" which is ignoring the particularistic in favor of the general. the argument that an attack on jews isn't antisemitism but rather anti-zionism isn't the exact same kind of syllogism but it's similar - a deflection into broader terms that ignores the particulars of the victimized group

"likely every group thinks other groups get more attention than them bc none of them see all the behind the scenes work it took to get the establishment to recognize what was at issue, etc."

This is something I think about a lot and that gives me minor head cramps at times. It sort of bumps me up against the limits of liberal/progressive ideology, bc at some point a minority group only gets anything through the use of some channel of power or other. Nothing is given freely.

Like, even though I have problems with the ADL at times, they are partly responsible for me living in an environment where I'm not constantly experiencing obvious antisemitism. We have that partly because we organized and fought for it, or our ancestors did anyway.

like they were saying "gays were targeted as gays in the broader context of an attack on our freedom in general" which is ignoring the particularistic in favor of the general. the argument that an attack on jews isn't antisemitism but rather anti-zionism isn't the exact same kind of syllogism but it's similar - a deflection into broader terms that ignores the particulars of the victimized group

― Mordy, Monday, June 13, 2016 11:08 AM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I understand what you're getting at but the analogy doesn't really work, in fact it kind of goes in the wrong direction. You're comparing a situation where someone wants to over-universalize the victims into a situation where they want to over-particularize them or guilt them by association.

to be able to take offence, and have that offence recognised, is a power of sorts, if a not particularly productive or positive power (though hey, most people will take whatever power they can), hence why even middle class white men want to act as though they can have it bad...

yeah, good post

it's like you have access to the justice system of public opinion

Thanks for the Traub, link Mordy - good piece (whole blog looks interesting actually)

and there is something that I have trouble resolving for myself about the way, once a denigrated minority group gets that power, "progressive" people resent them for it

paradox of always taking the underdog, I guess -- once they start winning they're not the underdog

i think it goes in quite complicated ways, often as a result of how the indigenous/host culture treats them at point of arrival.

old migrant groups view the new/other ones how they were viewed (or its also combined with views from their own culture).

groups that have acquired some power hold on to a collective sense of being an underdog, without accepting how things might have changed for them, broadly speaking as a group. the previous exp of being oppressed becomes a shared part of their identity and becomes internalised. host cultures' 'othering' targets go through fashions, and one group previously hated, ends up being 'tolerated', when a new group arrives to take their place.

"and there is something that I have trouble resolving for myself about the way, once a denigrated minority group gets that power, "progressive" people resent them for it"

liberal types just project all their own shit onto who they see as victims. they live their own sense of victimhood through others. they dont like or dont know quite how to compute when they no longer subscribe to the image they had of them. i remember going to a 'minority' recruitment event at a certain well known organisation once and various people there were a bit pissed off how it seemed that main things the recruiters were interested in were things to do with victimhood (ie the other, but in a way that more or less just reinforces how the majority group are still powerful).

Yeah, and I think really two things have simultaneously happened - many Jews have failed to recognize how things have shifted for them (mostly for the better) *and* a lot of liberals have started to take anti-Semitism less seriously when it actually occurs, because of that perceived shift.

true. good post.

The way I read it, he wasn't saying "you would care more if this was Jews," he was saying "if this happened in a Jewish house of worship, it would be obvious that it was targeting Jews, yet this happened in a gay club and you're not recognizing that gays were being targeted."

Exactly, unfortunately he got emotional and didn't put his argument across very coherently, I think he couldn't believe what he was hearing tbh.

I don't really want to talk about Livingstone, fed up with that, but there really wasn't a lot of pro-Ken stuff in the UK media at the time - I would struggle to recall any mainstream support for him and his efforts at interpreting 20th century history. Online and social media I'm sure there were plenty of idiots weighing in on his side.

yeah IIRC i dont remember anyone in mainstream media defending him.

many Jews have failed to recognize how things have shifted for them (mostly for the better)

I agree, but that's a weird way of couching it, especially the "failed" bit - it implies that Jews should be more grateful that they're no longer treated like subhumans.

(Of course, all Jewish holidays except Yom Kippur are basically about the same thing: "Can you believe we're not dead yet?")

Yeah fair. I just mean that I do run into people with a certain kind of Jewish victimhood tunnel-vision -- often individuals who themselves haven't experienced any severe anti-Semitism but nonetheless perceive a threat lurking around every corner and have a sort of attitude that anti-Semitism is somehow far worse than any other kind of bigotry in the world today. It's hard to walk the line between taking it seriously and not overdramatizing it. Because every individual incidence of bigotry or bigoted violence is as bad and as serious as any other, yet the total threat facing Jews in most places in the world today is relatively small.

Hmmmm, expect Mordy will have something to say about that.

Don't forget you're describing a certain type of Jew - a conservative Jew. Don't get me wrong - they exist - some of them are my family! But you're falling into the generalisation trap again. It's a straw Jew, to some extent.

I don't really think it's a straw Jew. It's a subset of Jews. I think a lot of Jews certainly don't fit that description, especially younger Jews, but it is a phenomenon that exists. I see a decent amount of it in my facebook feed.

And yes it does seem to correlate with more right-wing views, which, in turn, do not represent the majority of Jews in the US.

I too dislike the "Jewish victimhood tunnel-vision" you talk about. But it is honestly earned!

Would very much dispute "often individuals who themselves haven't experienced any severe anti-Semitism" and "relatively small" - though I'll leave that to Mordy, I guess.

paradox of always taking the underdog, I guess -- once they start winning they're not the underdog

― socka flocka-jones (man alive), Monday, June 13, 2016 4:30 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Lately I get exposed a lot to ppl from previously marginalized groups who want to both keep their sense of grievance & oppression AND ALSO justify their right to discriminate against others who are currently marginalized, in TONS of ways. I think with people just being human this is on some level unavoidable unless there's really specific teachings and practices/praxes against it. If your liberation from oppression isn't intersectional, it can't help but become exclusionary & wicked itself.

yeah but I meant that quote to cut the other way too -- once your group is seen as having made it, you're fair game for the progressive masses, but you're still a minority.

I mean idk what "progressive masses" is supposed to mean apart from discussions of anti-semitism wrt BDS/anti-BDS views.

It means that I have definitely seen plenty of looking the other way/giving a pass/justifying of blatant anti-Semitism on the left in order to make sure to side with the perceived underdog.

maybe this is obvious and needn't be said but i should point out that one reason anti-semitism is kind of the "model" form of bigotry to which people make reference to clarify other forms is that it led to the largest genocide in world history, one that is still (barely) in living memory.

Hmmmm, expect Mordy will have something to say about that.

Would very much dispute "often individuals who themselves haven't experienced any severe anti-Semitism" and "relatively small" - though I'll leave that to Mordy, I guess.

Not entirely sure what I'm being asked to weigh in on here -- I guess do I think that world antisemitism today is, like places like Mosaic or Commentary or Tablet might argue, on the rise and dangerous? It's clearly more dangerous to be a Jew in Mumbai or Toulouse or Brussels than in NY. Though even in the US there's a history of anti-Jewish violence. But generally speaking outside the artifacts of an extremely vigilant community (v tight security in day schools & shuls, armed guards) almost all my personal exposure to antisemitism over the years has been things like hate speech (generally shouted from moving cars, or one time having pennies thrown at me from a moving car), or what seems like careless / non-malicious use of language (someone I'm conducting business with saying 'I'm not trying to Jew you'), or online where antisemitism has penetrated social media, comment threads and seems ubiquitous. It definitely better to be a Jew today anywhere in the world (well maybe not like Yemen) than most of the world less than a century ago. There's an older man in my synagogue who is very close w/ my family who spent his childhood in Bergen-Belson - first in the concentration and then in the DP camp they turned it into after the war. He's one of the most gung ho right-wing vigilant about antisemitism people I know - and obv I think he is justified based on his life experiences to feel that way.

So I guess tl;dr version: I think it's better to be a Jew in the US today than pretty much anywhere else in any other time in history. It's not always 100% of the time pleasant or 100% of the time totally safe but life isn't either of those things for anyone really so I try not to let it impact me too much. In terms of how I rank the insecurities and anxieties of my life, fear of antisemitism falls below money problems, climate change, and whether I'm doing a good job raising my children. But I am too educated about history and the world to think that this life I have is anything but ahistorical: a lull in history, or a pause between diasporas. So stay woke vigilant, mitigate the risk you can, keep your passports up-to-date, and try to ignore the assholes on twitter posting death camp memes. I'm not sure what else there is to do except feel gratitude that things are as good as they are knowing how bad they can always still become.

the Jewish perspective on life in a nutshell

yeah the anti-Semitism in my life has primarily come in the form of "microaggressions" -- people asking me a lot of suspicious questions in school, mockery of "funny hats" or holiday traditions, being cornered to answer questions about Bernie Madoff or the Netanyahu administration or something, etc. And that was mostly in my pre-NYC-area life, whereas here there are so many Jews that I think that behavior is less prevalent.

FWIW I only experienced very minor anti-semitism in the USA; when i went to france there were a few jaw-dropping incidents where people confided to me what I felt were obviously anti-semitic views which they (I guess) thought i would accept or excuse because I was "on the left" or "one of the good ones" or something.

to be fair the vast majority of French folks I met would hold such views abhorrent. but i hadn't really heard them out in the open until i went there.

(and FWIW i worked for two jews in paris so it's not like i was surrounded by this stuff. just a few people i met at parties.)

i have to be careful about extrapolating too much from my personal anecdotal experiences tho bc for a number of reasons (my academic + post-academic interest in hate communities, extensive critical reading + thinking about anti-semitism, reading a lot of the jewish press, walking around w/ a kippah on my head) it seems more looming than it may for someone else. my impression is that in the US overt hate or holocaust denial is pretty taboo or at least pretty non-mainstream - online it's almost exclusively anonymous and even in these weird "is it anti-israel or is it anti-jewish" left-wing circuits i think ppl would generally be horrified to be seen as antisemites (whereas the term initially was a pt of pride for its practitioners) judging by how fervently they defend their actions + words on a basis of not hating all jews qua jews. i still think that prof karega ranting about the rothschild family controlling our government is classic enough antisemitism that i don't have a problem citing it as an example of a regressive antisemitic left but even she is trying to square a circle that doesn't close w/ her being a jew-hater -- plus she's pretty fringe. my impression is that in europe it is worse, and that in the middle east it's just over-the-top psychosis. i guess my feeling about antisemitism on the left is that it's more disappointing because i expect more vigilance/care from ppl who cite tolerance/anti-hate as the basis of their politics, but also that they do ascribe to that ideology means that there are more safe guards in place to keep it from ever devolving into what it could on the right.

lol i feel deja vu and i think i must've had this exact same conversation on this exact same thread at some other pt in time.

some interesting thoughts on the antisemitism + marxism nexus:
https://cominsitu.wordpress.com/2016/06/01/reflections-antisemitism-anti-imperialism-and-liberal-communitarianism/

i grew up in a southern town at least an hour's drive from the nearest yeshiva. we were not in any way religious; my folks were raised jewish, sorta and i'm bloodline but that's about it. we were cultural jews and such an anomaly that no one in my small town knew what the hell a jew was. the only time i remember getting into anything with anyone even vaguely anti semitic was when the guy who sold me my first car promised my dad he wouldn't "jew down the price". We sorta winced and paid him.

(xp) Interesting but I do kinda wish he'd spelled Ken Livingstone's name right, if he had to mention him at all, which I wish he hadn't.

Do you think "Jew down" has become kind of like gyp/gypsy where people don't even think about what they're referring to?

maybe similar but the presence of jews in american life far outstrips the role of gypsys so it's hard to believe that they haven't considered where the expression comes from

This doesn't seem to be an expression that's used in the UK, I've never heard it anyway.

I walked up to someone on the phone a few weeks ago and overheard him calling someone a "shylock;" that was weird. After he hung up, I said, "Excuse me, did I hear you correctly? Did you really just call someone a Shylock?" and he said with surprise that it just meant a loan shark. I think he had no idea it was antti-semitic? Otoh that may just speak to how embedded discriminatory thinking is in some circles.

i totally believe dude wasn't saying anything offensive. i grew up playing a less-than-well-thought-out version of pseudo rugby (ball is thrown at a scrum of kids, kid who catches the ball must get to a goalpoint, everyone tries to knock the ball out of kid's hands and run to the opposite goal point) as a grammar school kid in 1981 that the teachers informed us was called "Smear The Queer." Different times.

Yeah we were subjected to smear the queer in grade school gym (1970s). By somewhere in the early 80s it became tackle the bum.

we played smear the queer in the 80s and I did not have the slightest idea what a queer was

was this an everybody thing? thought it was just me.

also had smear the queer

i never played it though, it was sort of taboo, 'unsafe', for older boys, etc. and i also didn't know what queer was even though i was one.

Smear the queer was banned in my school, but there was a brief period where my friends and I played it after school. I was always the queer! I didn't even know it was supposed to be offensive until one day I went home and told my mom what we had been playing. We came from a good progressive neighborhood, so it was obvious we'd have to change it. From there on out, we played Stymie the Hymie.

I didn't learn that name for the game until I moved to Georgia as a teen, by which time I knew that it was a slur. in FLA it was Kill the Carrier.