Is this anti-semitism?

Except that we don't really have to ask "is this anti-semitism" about it.

lol exactly

Another one for the "not really a question" file...

I know where I'll be and what I'll be watching at 6:00 pm EASTERN time today! pic.twitter.com/PdjwJ5ZTbZ

— Cynthia McKinney PhD (@cynthiamckinney) September 11, 2023

Haven't thought about Cynthia McKinney in a long time but I guess she just kept going down the rabbit hole huh.

yeah I guess when you find yourself publicly checking in at the David Duke event, you're not trying to hide anything

just took a gander at her full twitter feed and it's antisemitism all the way down (when she isn't scarfing down whatever other conspiracy theory crosses her path, e.g. cissy houston was not really whitney's mother). she's far gone

She used to be my representative. She used to be crazy like a fox, now she's just crazy.

"She is currently a professor in Political Science at North South University in Bangladesh"

I feel like I could probably become a professor of something at Oxymoron University in Bangladesh

Distinguished Professor of Kook Nonsense at Up-is-Down-and-Down-is-Up College

CM: "And cissy houston was not really whitney's mother."

DD: "Ok, I'm going to have to ask you to leave."

People thought Whiney's mother was Cissy Houston?

https://www.espn.com/espn/story/_/id/38499445/ohio-high-school-coach-resigns-team-nazi-play-call

Oh I thought this revive was going to be about former Mexican President Vicente Fox calling out current presidential candidate Claudia Sheinbaum for being "judia y extranjera a la vez."

I would say both of those are instances of anti-semitism

Wait, so the problematic speaker at the Palestine Writes Festival at UPenn last month was....Roger Waters? Roger fucking Waters? Who is an extreme dumbass and not someone I would have put on the panel, but ... people are shitting their pants over Roger Waters? https://www.ajc.org/news/5-things-to-know-about-the-palestine-writes-event-at-penn-and-antisemitism

He was only there on Zoom because Penn banned him from the campus.

Serious question: "Zionist" in a perjorative sense, as the case has been presented to me that "in the UK it seems fine to talk about Zionism as a thing that has driven the state of Israel to this point."

I think I missed the question part of your question

Is using "Zionist" as a pejorative term (e.g., "Zionist scum") antisemitism?

Regarding Roger Waters, apparently there is a new documentary about it, and Waters vigorously denies the accusations. I'm surprised if there hasn't been robust discussion of it on ILM.

I feel like what is labelled as anti-semitism in those quarters isn't anti-semitism, but for the most part I think isn't really animus towards Israel per se but more so animus towards the US and/or The West (with Israel being seen as its extension or even proxy).

The difference with rightwingers that see Israel as pulling the strings and controlling The West, is that these guys see The West as pulling the strings and effectively controlling Israel

I’m no fan of waters in general and I think he’s gone up his own ass in a major way; having said that, the criticism here centers on that show in Germany which to me seems to be very clearly poking at the Germans, not Jews or the state of Israel. He added Anne Frank’s name to a list of activists killed by oppressive regimes; apparently because her name was followed by a Palestinian who was killed by Israeli stories doing this is antisemitic? That seems to be a purposefully obtuse reading. Likewise he’s been pulling the Nazi uniform for the Walk for some time I think, and that imagery goes back to the film and Scarfes illustrations. I do think he’s crossed a line where this used to be “insightful artistic commentary on the nation of rock stardom” to actively becoming what he used to critique. But I don’t see how it’s antisemitic. Germany bans Nazi looking stuff; they must grant some bypass for art. Waters father was killed by German soldiers. I really don’t think he’s suddenly now a Nazi. He has n love for the state of Israel. Obv most of us here are not reactionary in that way (believing that Israel is beyond reproach and criticism is inherently antisemitic).

Anyway my point being that I can believe this has doners pulling their money and calling for the firing of the school president. I really thought they had Sarsour or something at least.

I'm only a mild Floyd fan - I prefer Syd Barrett - but I thought Waters's politics were inchoate and confused, nothing to pay much attention to, so yeah, I'd never think his presence would be anything to get upset about.

Well, David Gilmour considers Roger antisemitic, so ...

Is using "Zionist" as a pejorative term (e.g., "Zionist scum") antisemitism?

I would criticize the Israeli government, rather than the concept of Zionism. If I were to hear someone say something like "Zionist scum," that would be a strong indicator to me that they are absolutely soaking in antisemitism.

It is a slippery term, some ppl for instance consider themselves zionists but oppose the settlements. Also of course while it is "rooted in nationalism" it is a nationalism predicated on seeking safety for a traditionally oppressed people (far from the only nationalism that does this, obv). Critiques of it are often slandered as anti-semitism when they're not but I think it's a term that's very likely to cause misunderstandings, try to steer clear of it.

I don’t think it’s antisemitic to criticize Israel or even to be against the concept of a Jewish state but “Zionism” gets used in antisemitic way all the time so I’m always a bit wary of it.

I tend to use ‘Israel hawks’ right now because that’s a more accurate description of who I am objecting to.

It’s a useless term at best ito broad critiques, there are people who support the existence of a nation (abstract) and are therefore supportive of the concept of Zionism. At worst yes, it is pretty antisemitic from the context of its usage! There are so many more specific terms to use to critique eliminationist rhetoric/racism towards Palestinians without pissing off people who are broadly on the same side as you.

I was a little blindsided by "zionist scum" in the other thread, although I suppose it was a technically correct description (i.e. it referred to bad/evil people who are also zionist). I presumed in the instance of its use, it was meant tautalogically (and therefore anti-semitically), albeit to demonstrate reasonably held anger.

I suppose I find the word "scum" on its own quite distracting, as it's a strong word I tend to associate with racist abuse, as in "[insert nationaity or race] scum". My grandmother, whose relatives were murdered in camps, was a Zionist who never went to Israel, but was not, as far as I know, "scum". It is possible to be pro-Palestinian, Zionist, and anti-violence at the same time, I think.

Point of order tho "tory scum" is fine.

Ha, yes, 100% agree

especially when used to describe the Labour Party frontbench

Point of order tho "tory scum" is fine.

It is possible to be pro-Palestinian, Zionist, and anti-violence at the same time, I think.

I think it's a strong red flag to look under the mask to see if what the person is really advocating is that Jewish people should not have a state where they feel safe, or that Israel in particular should not exist.

If they are applying a double standard critical of "Zionists" where they are not of other countries like Syria, then, yes, it is probably a strong indicator of antisemitism.

I don't know if it matters that the person using it in a pejorative sense does not self-identify as Jewish. But I have found it is often the case they do not. And like many other things, if they insist oj usong Zionist in a perjorative way over the objections of people who do self-identify as Jewish then it feels like a microaggression.

I don't know where it falls on the antisemitic scale, but there have been posts on the Israel thread that have made me very uncomfortable.

I think it's a strong red flag to look under the mask to see if what the person is really advocating is that Jewish people should not have a state where they feel safe, or that Israel in particular should not exist.

there is a conflation that goes on between a) zionism as a nationalism, which is (these days and usually) supported by US/UK/other imperial powers and b) zionism as a shorthand for the collaboration between that nationalism and those imperial interests - which due to globalised capitalism and the persistence of antisemitic assumptions bleeds way too easily into c) zionism as shorthand for a world system of capitalism or imperialism or whatever else (placing israel at the centre of the world's problems)

b) can be a bit of a lazy shorthand that the UK left in particular is much too fond of for a bunch of different good and bad reasons - but it would help tremendously for the left to have a better understanding of what it's talking about when it's talking about zionism instead of conflating all these things, for several reasons: to prevent antisemitism, to leave less space for bad faith accusations of the same, to gain a better understanding of where the pressure points actually are. as well as some clarity on what zionism actually is. then maybe we can start drilling down into what the tensions are within zionism, whose conflicting interests it's holding together or keeping apart, etc

xp you could be described as a zionist anti-zionist based on those views which speaks to some of the terminological confusion going on here

I believe that Jewish people should have a state where they feel safe.

Maybe if Jews had been safe in every state, not in *a* state, zionism would never have come about.

maybe if the world was nice we could all live in peace

man alive, agreed—

the issue is whether the safety of Jewish people is predicated on a society of exclusion and enmity. i don’t believe it is, but maybe i am naïve

I suppose that hinges in part on how much anti-Semitism is predicated on the existence of (an) Israel versus the existence of Jews.

the issue is whether the safety of Jewish people is predicated on a society of exclusion and enmity. i don’t believe it is, but maybe i am naïve

― butt dumb tight my boners got boners (the table is the table), Thursday, October 19, 2023 8:35 AM (nine minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Well, as I think my long post in the other thread implied, if not made clear, (1) I don't think it necessarily does, since my family has lived relatively safely in the US since as far back as 1865, and (2) on the other hand, my wife's entire family would have been wiped out if they hadn't gone to Palestine. So I'm less interested in that question and more interested in what should we do now. Zionism happened and Israel exists. I am open to the idea that something else can come after it. There remains very little discussion on the table as to whether something else should replace the Muslim states in the region that have either no Jews left or a very tiny, almost invisible minority, such as Tunisia where the Al Hammah synagogue was just burned two days ago (I guess because the Jews who chose to remain in Tunisia must nonetheless be "zionists.")

As the person who came up with the strong wording in the current Israel thread there are a few things to reply to that I'll get to. First is that, as this thread from academic Yair Wallach talks through, Zionism has a history which was not necessarily one of elimination at the beginning.

But as the thread goes on displacement and elimination is where it's ended up xp

1/ It is often argued that the expulsion of Palestinians was written into the Zionist programme from its very beginning. A thread on why this is wrong.
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— Yair Wallach (@YairWallach) April 22, 2021

"It is possible to be pro-Palestinian, Zionist, and anti-violence at the same time, I think."

amen!

I'll posit that posting a big twitter thread to ILX probably isn't the best way to get your point across these days because so many of us deleted our accounts there and you cannot read threads without one now. So posts like this go uninvestigated.