Is this anti-semitism?

Interesting. I have definitely seen the immigration thing come up a lot in that context, as though Jews are the driving force behind it (nevermind that Sheldon Adelson backs Trump). I haven't seen the Jew-as-confused-white-man thing though, that's a new one. Is that really the dominant white nationalist thinking these days, cuz that's really, really different from the thinking of their Nazi predecessors.

ime the false consciousness argument is a minority opinion in the white supremacist movement and not shared by major figures like david duke or kevin mcdonald. i also think xp you're overlooking the meaning of that goebbel's quote which i think definitely implies my interpretation (that the jews are trying to stay hidden in society) and not merely pointing out the coincidence - though i agree there's an aspect as that as well. also you're leaving out another piece imo which is the idea that while progressive western jews are encouraging miscegenation through mass immigration and racial equality, at the same time right-wing jews are promoting ethno-supremacist ideologies in israel vis-a-vis immigration, the wall, etc. of course this implies that progressive jews and right-wing jews are working together on a hypocritical political platform and aren't just u kno different ppl with different opinions. interestingly tho i do think this anxiety gets to some major faultlines in western discourses that are looming atm in terms of indigenous rights, who has the right to their country, what are a people's obligations to other cultures, etc, so it's not surprising that like other major discourse shifts in the past the Jew finds himself in the middle once again and blamed for it from all sides.

saw a dude on twitter with the dn (((.)))(((.))) lmao

I don't know how popular the false consciousness narrative is, I just recently came across it in a very vivid comment on the Atlantic website from one of the Right Stuff trolls.

I don't want to split hairs over the rationale for the coincidence detector, but I don't think it's a question to them of whether Jews are hiding or out in the open. I really think it's about "red-pilling" people on anti-semitism. If every time you see someone advocating "degeneracy" or "subversion," it is pointed out that that person is Jewish, it's going to have an effect on people. So their line of thinking goes.

A Brief Introduction to Pro Holocaust Twitter

This is so depressing. Jonathan Weisman from NYT left twitter yesterday. In the tweets leading up to the one I linked here, he shows how twitter did not find all this garbage a violation of its terms...

"Cucks", ugh, I hope that never makes it way across the Atlantic.

there's plenty of misogynist fucks in the UK, but that word takes a really special kind of misogynist fuck to apply

The gamer-PUA-neonazi axis is something I never could have dreamed up prior to the internet.

xp term is intensely racialized in what seems a US-specific way, like, it doesn't just mean 'lol ur the type of guy whose wife fucks other men', it always carries sense of 'ur the type of guy who allows his wife to be defiled by animalistic racial inferiors'. For whatever reason, for all that we have plenty racists and misogynists here, that angle doesn't seem to grip so much.

Perhaps the historical lack of actual jim crow/anti miscegenation laws within Britain itself has some effect on the tone of race-hate here as compared with US. Mind you, we copy all our culture wholesale from the US these days, so I'm sure the term will popularize itself here shortly.

cool that Atlantic dude finds time to equate this Streicher level stuff with "the anti-semitism of the far-left which frequently masquerades as 'anti-zionism'" never a bad time to exercise that hobby horse

a ton of the wall-to-wall coverage i saw of the recent livingstone incident was explicitly apologetics about how he was not actually saying anything antisemitic, but i think, as long as we're detouring here for a moment, it's interesting how jews are so often the referent group for what it looks like when bigotry /is/ taken seriously when talking about disparate cases that have nothing to do with them (like someone in connection w/ this case might have noted that jewish places + events have been under extreme vigilance for years now - i've mentioned before on ilx how disconcerting it is dropping yr kids off at a school w/ an armed guard in front bc jewish schools in the neighborhood that week received bomb threats, but instead the discussion is "hey how come those jews get taken seriously" when also 'jewish hysteria' is also v much a serious trope). anyway, whatever.

this is the appropriate place for this conversation i think as posting about it in light of the pulse attack is just more of the same - but anyway i wanted to add that obv this idea has a lot to do w/ the form antisemitism takes which is a conspiracy about the powerful - so it fits that there's an assumption that jews are taken seriously (even while they're simultaneously making it up). schraub makes the pt in one of the links i posted in the other thread that 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. i've definitely heard this before - treesh mentioned oberlin and i've heard ppl say "if there was an associate professor like karega using classical anti-black tropes the way she was using antisemitic ones they'd for sure be fired by now, or at least not defended by the students," which is this entire dynamic running in the opposite direction.

and tom, re livingstone i don't know how to quantify the level of apologetics but the whole havara agreement becoming a major part of the story existed exclusively to justify his comments. "no, you see he was referring to a real historical event," etc while it was obv simultaneously a misrepresentation of the event in question and totally not relevant to whatever nonsense he was saying.

As regards the specifics I mentioned in the other thread, I was completely wrong - I embarrassingly hadn't watched the video of Owen Jones, but now I've read the transcript - it was he himself who brought out the synagogue as the top-of-his-head comparison, which I agree is interesting and a little depressing.

"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.