Is this anti-semitism?

u might have to be jewish to fully understand the joke

.......

what makes you think im not jewish!

i'm with darraghmac. tsk tsk

i like this thread overall because i learned that adbusters was sincerely antisemitic, and not just trading in on lazy "arggh bankers!" tropes, and that gave me another good reason to dismiss them. more than that, i don't have to worry about my generation being the "dead end of civilization."

yeah that was the baby boomers

it's true. and millenial hipsters are going to show us the way out of the labyrinth (subject of the next david brooks column)

as long as they're not muslim, as they're mentally uncapable

http://www.timesofisrael.com/wiesenthal-center-slams-thai-university-for-hitler-mural/

So that article and general idea of Russia (?) constructing something called anti-Zionism as a cover for a no longer acceptable anti-Semitism ...

I sort of think some people on the ground might have had legit reasons for being anti-Zionism. Or are we to see Palestinians as a bit too stupid to understand the ideologies going on around them, the Russians need to weave a magic spell? Has to come from above, from the anti-Semitic powers that be, can't just be that Palestinians know what Zionism is and disagree with it on principle because it inherently means them losing their homes?

Or am I missing like millions of points here.

Is this anti-semitism?

I don't think you can claim that RUSSIA, esp. modern Russia as some monolithic state that needs to invent propagandist terms to deliver anti-semitic narratives. Like, they are pretty upfront about not liking Israel the State as it is currently managed, but if it's bigotry they are after, for instance, they use no euphemisms for the State's disapproval of homosexuals and also radical feminists such as Pussy Riot.

However, I think they do use the cover of anti-Zionism as a shield for their continued trade relations with Iran. Which doesn't really suggest that they hate Jews or something. I don't know that much about the history of Russia but the modern state seems far too realpolitik to give much of a shit about racial or ethnic groups except for those that can be exploited for gains in land control -- in which I mean mostly Balkanized states they wish to once again fold into their country.

Not to suggest that there is any truth to the story, but this was supposed to have happened between the Stalin and Andropov eras when realpolitik would have made it potentially useful.

The Soviet relationship with Israel, and with Jewish Russians, was always enormously complicated.

wouldn't say this is exactly anti-semitism but it is astonishingly clueless and insensitive:

http://www.salon.com/2013/07/23/an_atheist_groups_fight_against_a_holocaust_memorial/

Had there been a separation between religion and state honored and enforced in Germany, ensuring government could not favor the dominant religion and persecute and scapegoat minority religion and other ‘dissidents,’ there would not have been a Holocaust.

not the perfect thread for this, but tangentially related and an interesting read:
http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-arts-and-culture/books/126348/when-feminists-were-zionists

xp ugh, as both an atheist and a descendant of Jews who is not himself Jewish, that's about the most tone-deaf, straining-at-gnats bullshit I've ever heard.

I mean, they actually think the Nazis were killing people because of the Nazis being Christians, don't they?

That's one of the big misunderstandings about Nazism, right? The idea that it ran on a kind of simple-minded hatred solely, and the downplaying of the cynical manipulation of that simple hatred for political ends, which is surely the worst part of it.

you might be surprised to learn that racial mythology was very important to Nazi social + political ideology

Hitler loved Wagner iirc

Yeah, currently reading "Hitler's Willing Executioners," which really delves deeply into the details of the German racial mythology and how their entire cultural worldview was based around a certain conception of "The Jew" which had no basis in reality. It wasn't just cynical manipulation by the Nazis. They really, genuinely believed it themselves.

Plus there was no "favoring the dominant religion" in Nazi Germany. Hitler had no more use for Catholics and Lutherans than he did anything else that was not of the Party.

Trying to take the Star of David out of a Holocaust memorial is point-missing on a "how are you even breathing unassisted?" scale.

Shorter: It really did run on simple-minded hatred. Hitler would and did gladly divert needed resources to killing Jews over supporting combat activities - winning the war and making Europe Judenrein were one and the same.

Okay, was less aware of that, assumed that in the early days there was some PR/manipulation at work

Keep in mind that, when Hitler dictated his final testament before his suicide in the bunker, the last, most important thing he felt he needed to tell the German people -- who were undoubtedly going to lose at that point -- was, "It was all the Jews' fault."

A stunningly original thought on which to leave on

"A big Jew did it and ran away"

I suppose what I want to avoid is the 'safety' of thinking that people who commit genocides are all passionately devoted to abstractions, and think of themselves as performing a duty beyond or above personal gain; sure, many of them are, but you don't avoid the possibility of collusion just by distancing yourself from fanaticism.

yeah hitler's anti-semitism wasn't just honest, it was practically his only idea. everything else (lebensraum etc.) was either pretty standard interwar german conservatism or clever (and not-so-clever) opportunism. the jew-hatred doesn't fall into the second category; he formulated it early and stuck to it forever; it was the animating principle of his life. but as for the possibility of collusion, sure: the one thing everyone remembers from arendt is that you didn't need to be passionately devoted to hitler's ideas to become a supporter, even an architect, of genocide. there's no safety in reason. but i think the seed does have to be there.

of course it was convenient for the german people post-ww1 to have an easy explanation for both the war and the defeat, and very convenient to someone trying to rally them behind him. but he rallied himself with that idea as much as anyone else, i think.

turns out that what everyone remembers from arendt is wrong, too:
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/07/07/misreading-hannah-arendts-eichmann-in-jerusalem/?_r=0

eichmann was a passionate believer in the cause

http://www.timesofisrael.com/un-accredits-ngo-whose-head-is-glad-to-be-labeled-anti-semitic/

The UN Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People

Not to be confused with the Committee on the Exercise of the Entirely Alienable Rights of the Zionist People

Well, it has to be one or the other, doesn't it

Might as well go through the obvious points, anyway:

Mohamad, who served as Malaysia’s prime minister from 1981 until 2003, has repeatedly sparked controversy with his anti-Western and anti-Semitic comments. In a 2003 speech, he said that “the Jews rule the world by proxy” and get “others to fight and die for them.” During the same speech, he further stated, “They invented socialism, communism, human rights and democracy so that persecuting them would appear to be wrong so they may enjoy equal rights with others. With these, they have now gained control of the most powerful countries.”

Then why do you support 'inalienable rights' of Palestinians if human rights are a Jewish plot?

Despite the global outrage caused by his comments, Mohamad did not disavow them. “I am glad to be labeled anti-Semitic,” he stated last year, after an Israeli court ruled that the state was not to blame for the death of American peace activist Rachel Corrie, who was run over by an IDF tank as she attempted to prevent it from demolishing Palestinian homes.

“How can I be otherwise, when the Jews who so often talk of the horrors they suffered during the Holocaust show the same Nazi cruelty and hardheartedness toward not just to their enemies but even toward their allies should any try to stop the senseless killing of their Palestinian enemies,” Mohamad reportedly stated.

Doubt the driver of the tank was a holocaust survivor. As a secondary point, I'm not clear on whether the tank driver in question was acting under specific orders, and if so how high up the orders came from; was this ever proved one way or the other?

It wasn't a tank but a caterpillar bulldozer + there's no evidence that it was intentional, let alone given as an order.

Mind you, reading about the Israel Palestine situation tends to bring on a sort of fatalism. The Israelis don't give a fuck about the rights or lives of the Palestinians and the UN, via the power of the US and the UK, lets them do more or less what they want; inevitably that's going to get all the anti-semites going in to support Palestine. That discredits any supporters of Palestine; and so the Israelis don't give a fuck about the rights or lives of the Palestinians and round and round it goes.

It's incredibly tiresome to have to process accusations of wanting all the Palestinians to be killed every time you critique creeping or blatant anti-semitism among the pro-Palestinian side; it's also incredibly tiresome having to process accusations of anti-semitism every time you critique the pro-Israeli side. You end up with the black spot either way.

Which then brings on notions of wanting to escape from it all with a small handful of 'decent' human beings, which is itself the kind of fantasy that drives the fucking mess you want to escape from.

cardamon, this doesn't seem to be a topic you're particularly interested in. do you have opinions about other territorial disputes too? like what are your thoughts on the TRNC?

really feel like israel/palestine is the king of territorial disputes. trnc is p trifling, prob less interesting than abkhazia, surely a bigger dog like kashmir or tibet wld be a more apt comparison

sure, I'm curious about any of cardamon's thoughts

U never want to talk about NI mordy is this a conspiracy thing or .....

what is NI?

oh wait - northern ireland?

i find talking about the NI situation tends to bring on a sort of fatalism

Probably best to consider my last post a whine and ignore it, tbh

that arendt article mordy posted is really good -- 'eichmann' is one of the most widely misunderstood books i can think of, ppl who criticize it seem to be responding to attacks on the book rather than the actual arendt text.

TRNC/Kashmir/Tibet = equal 'sense of fatalism', fwiw

yeah someone needs to send that article to ron rosenbaum

i want to read this: http://www.upenn.edu/pennpress/book/15161.html