Is this anti-semitism?

I don't think Jews are pushing an educational agenda to whitewash slavery... that's the whole part of this that reeks of anti-Semitic, conspiracist thinking that I specifically am against!

But I do think that it is demonstrable that many schoolchildren learn more about the Holocaust than they do about the genocide of Indigenous people and chattel slavery, not to mention continued colonial venturings in Africa.

All of it should be taught. As should the continued anti-Semitism that runs rampant in the US today.

Left, yeah, a different word would certainly be better.

As would a different world.

philosemitic or antisemitic forms (not mutually exclusive)

"philosemitism" is clearly itself antisemitism as it has nothing to do with actually loving/supporting/allying with the Jewish people

It's a real thing where?

― Mario Meatwagon (Moodles), Thursday, July 30, 2020 6:08 PM (two minutes ago)

I don't know how you'd go about proving this, but ime the Holocaust has definitely been treated like a unique, or nearly so, event. I don't think that's a particularly controversial claim?

^that was an xpost...point taken about the fear of it being repeated, but rarely do I see people cite, say, the British empire inflicting multiple famines on India or King Leopold's actions in the Congo as precedents, let alone anything the USA ever did

NB to the best of my knowledge the prominence of holocaust remembrance was in part the work of Jews of the subsequent generation seeking to mourn and honor the memories of relatives they never knew, sometimes against the wishes of the survivor generation, for whom silence was strongly preferred. If genocide in Congo, India, the Americas, then and now, get short shrift in our collective memory I doubt it's because the Holocaust is taking up all the space.

Idk, maybe I have a skewed perception of this. I worked for years at an educational foundation for holocaust curriculum, and a central point of that curriculum was centering the holocaust and anti-Semitism alongside the history of slavery and racism in the US and elsewhere. Perhaps that is an unusual approach to teaching the holocaust, I always assumed it was pretty typical.

silby, we actually agree then! There's room to teach all of the horrible shit.

"philosemitism" is clearly itself antisemitism as it has nothing to do with actually loving/supporting/allying with the Jewish people

yeah, I agree that the Christian right's fetishization of Judaism is not philosemitism, but we shouldn't be thinking of philosemitism as something positive; it implies othering as much as antisemitism does.

if anything I don't really buy that the Holocaust gets all the attention at this particular moment when Black movements in the US are more visible and influential than any prior point in my life, and Never Again Action is out there working against ICE

i was pretty shocked to see the numbers here particularly re millennials https://www.newsweek.com/one-third-americans-dont-believe-6-million-jews-were-murdered-during-holocaust-883513

(not asking if it's anti-semitic)

― Mordy, Wednesday, January 23, 2019 4:47 PM (one year ago)

https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/06/17/most-americans-say-the-legacy-of-slavery-still-affects-black-people-in-the-u-s-today/

british context:

Why is genocidal antisemite Winston Churchill celebrated as an antifascist hero?
Why does Hitler’s badness automatically become Britain’s greatness?
Why does no one seem to want to know what Britain actually did to make itself so great?
Why do the most publically identified antisemites always seem to be Black, Muslim and/or perceived traitors to empire?
Why do many people only seem to care about antisemitism in the above context?
Why does the UK left dislike Israel so much more than it dislikes Britain?
etc

the education described above does sound atypical in this context

If genocide in Congo, India, the Americas, then and now, get short shrift in our collective memory I doubt it's because the Holocaust is taking up all the space.

― all cats are beautiful (silby), Thursday, July 30, 2020 6:21 PM (six minutes ago)

I just want to be absolutely clear that I agree with this!

An obvious problem with this discussion is we're all reflecting on our own personal experiences of learning history in a range of formal and informal ways. Even in formal education there could be significant differences regionally or over time.

The argument isn't about attention, it's about what is taught in schools. Per Rob's point above, it seems pretty obvious to me that among the main reasons the Holocaust is taught more to school children is that the genocide and its aftermath allow for a more rosy vision of the USAmerican project to emerge, whereas teaching chattel slavery and its legacies as well as Indigenous genocide and its legacies implicates the USAmerican project in two ongoing historical acts that are also deeply despicable and tragic.

I've taught Indigenous history and lit classes to students, and let me tell you, none of them know a damn thing about any of it.

Why do the most publically identified antisemites always seem to be Black, Muslim and/or perceived traitors to empire?

Well, Wiley is a Member of the Order of the British Empire after all.

I still don't get where schools in the US are teaching about the holocaust more than about slavery. Is this a known fact or more of a vague feeling?

The very idea that a historical atrocity so vile as the Holocaust could ever "take up too much attention or time" with regards to classroom education and activism compared to other historical instances of racial genocide that it shares some surface level similarities with is.... antisemitic, or at least very problematic IMO. The fact that we still have celebrities brazenly spewing the kind of unacceptable shit like Wiley/Nick Cannon did every week/month/year, while a depressingly large % of the US population is still misinformed or uneducated about the realities of it as evidenced by stuff like that newsweek article shows that, if anything there is still not enough time or at least proper detail and context devoted to it when it comes to how we educate our people about it growing up. The perceived lack of attention devoted to colonial and indigenous genocide in schools by some ppl in this thread doesn't and shouldn't change that; it's not a competition.

I'd also like to point out, I'm well aware of an effort to whitewash slavery in US history textbooks. What I'm more skeptical about is that the people making this happen are doing so by replacing it with a really awesome unit in the holocaust.

from 2018:

Two-thirds of American millennials surveyed in a recent poll cannot identify what Auschwitz is, according to a study released on Holocaust Remembrance Day that found that knowledge of the genocide that killed 6 million Jews during World War II is not robust among American adults.

Twenty-two percent of millennials in the poll said they haven’t heard of the Holocaust or are not sure whether they’ve heard of it — twice the percentage of U.S. adults as a whole who said the same.

“a historical atrocity so vile”
“other historical instances”
“some surface level similarities”
“perceived lack of attention”
who’s making it a competition?

the point isn’t about the holocaust taking up space it’s about, among other things, the civilisation that perpetrated the holocaust disavowing it by portraying it as outside of history altogether, an atrocity caused by nothing, except maybe free floating hatred and madness. what does this serve?

I'm sorry, I find the idea that the holocaust is generally taught as some contextless blob to be utterly perplexing and pretty much unbelievable.

Especially if we are saying that holocaust studies are stealing oxygen from other valuable tooics.

*topics

Adorno said poetry after Auschwitz was barbaric and so poets the world over just gave up their trade overnight. He also hated jazz. What an asshole.

I wonder how much of this is about schools getting worse in general, curriculum that emphasizes learning to do well on tests as opposed to learning that imparts lessons of history rather than facts that are forgotten as soon as the next unit starts, and the general weakening of the educational system.

I’m probably biased by the current era where many states, with direction from the federal government, are basically making homeschooling and private schooling (especially religious private schooling) enticing options through inconsistent and nonexistent funding.

I have no idea what the hell is going on with the 22% of millennials who have never heard of the Holocaust. I tried to find the original survey questions but only found a summarized version of the results that lacked the questions.

Like I said upthread, 12% of Austrians aged 18-34 have never heard of it either. Austrians.

I’m willing, if horrified, to believe that’s true but I still wonder what the heck the methodology of this survey was

It's absolutely likely that kids are getting shitty educations about the holocaust, slavery, genocide of indigenous people, the whole enchilada. The thing I strongly doubt is that kids are getting way too much education about the holocaust, and that that education still manages to be completely unmoored from a historical context or learning about oppression and genocide in general.

in the 00s I was taught barely anything about the holocaust and nothing at all about any other genocide

The 12% was in reference to a 2018 poll, but a study from last year appears to bear out the same disturbing degree of ignorance:

https://www.dw.com/en/austrians-lack-crucial-holocaust-awareness-study-finds/a-48564260

xps

I was taught about the Holocaust throughout my elementary and middle school years, including reading 'Night' in 8th grade. High school got more into slavery and its afterlives, but nothing about Indigenous people. And while I went to public school until 8th grade, the private high school I went to was a Quaker school with a relatively robust social justice quotient in all courses.

And our study of slavery, Reconstruction, and Jim Crow was very much 'that was in the past, also Malcolm X and the Black Panthers were bad and MLK was good.'

Also worth noting that Austria is currently governed by a coalition between the so-called 'centre-right' and a party founded by an ex-SS-Brigadeführer who also happened to be a member of the Nazi Reichstag.

are all of these polls commissioned by the same organization?

First one (2018) was for CNN, second one (2019) for the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany (Claims Conference).

Polls of adults frequently in the uk have repeatedly shown double-figures not being able to name the current prime minister

Presumably they could name the UK's current president.

I want to clarify that this is me being aghast at these numbers and my skepticism of polls without the original questions and I’m stepping away before I turn into internet detective that accidentally disproves anti-semitism because I sure as hell see enough of it around me that I would not want to give that impression

I assume the questions were fairly straightforward, e.g.

87% of respondents said they had definitely heard or seen the word Holocaust

(Also called 'Holocaust' in German btw.)

Jews should just simpley have walked out

Yup. Every.Word. - having instigated the walk out though as a tiny protest was amazed at how massive it grew. They should have all walked out of Europe on mass 1939. X

— Tracy-Ann Oberman (@TracyAnnO) August 8, 2020

Richard Spencer agrees

Was talking with a friend about vampires. The most sure-fire defenses against vampires are crosses and holy water. As a Jewish kid I thought that was really unfair, since I lacked both, and then "Fright Night" comes along and throws in the notion that you may have a cross but it takes *faith* to work. Factor in decades of blood libel tropes and 'bloodsucker" defamation and ... are vampires an anti-semitic construct?

People don’t take antisemitism seriously because they think of Jews as wealthy, and therefore not vulnerable, which is like saying black people shouldn’t be scared of racists because they’re all so athletic.

Wow Freeman just seems so...not smart.

Freeman is really into anti black racism like all white liberals (and all white transphobes it seems)

xp yes to some extent

ditto a lot of satanic/devil related imagery

Huh. https://eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/monsters/2016/11/08/blood-libel-the-anti-semitic-roots-of-vampirism/

I'm sure Polanski had a Jewish vampire in "The Fearless Vampire Killers" for a reason.

Torchwood’s finest with the ‘on mass’ there. Fucking idiot.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W7xnIzutKm8

ummmm

Protocols of Learned Elders of Zion: https://t.co/BpI5Tc8oKc

— FBI Records Vault (@FBIRecordsVault) August 19, 2020