Is this anti-semitism?

I think it's important to keep an eye on what even the tinfoil folk are saying though

100%. Pikers mates Second Thought have 1.6 million subscribers on YouTube and tells their audience the hostages aren't actually civilians. Aaron Mate and Jimmy Dore have both spoken at the UN. Galloway has a large audience.

Whether these people are actually left or not doesn't really matter, they present as left, and they target left-leaning audiences. At the very least they have reach in places Marjorie Taylor Green can't hope to compete in. Saying "these people aren't left" doesnt matter if other people think they are and listen to them. Or if people like Hasan Piker are adjacent to them and present them as left, at which point it becomes a case of who is doing the deciding of what "the left" is or not, and waving them away and saying "they don't count" I don't really think works

This is quite a sleight of hand though, someone said that there were conspiracy theorists “on the left” saying that Israel actually killed its own citizens, which is a tinfoil position and one just as likely to be held by an MTG type. And now Anvil is talking about Hasan Piker and Aaron Mate, neither of whom I’d classify as tinfoil. (Dore is just a moron.)

I went to a Howard Zinn a few months after 9/11 and there was a guy in the audience saying that Israel was behind the attacks, and Zinn just said, “Well, we’ll probably never know who was behind it.” So yes I know there is a strain of conspiracy thinking on the left, but I don’t think of those people as Leftists but rather paranoid thinkers who happened to latch onto the left side of the spectrum.

Its not an intentional sleight of hand!

Where this originated was man alives post which included conspiracy theorists alongside denial, which itself originated out of an earlier post about minimising Israeli pain. I was attempting to address the broader picture of all these things rather than conspiratorial thinking specifically, though other posts in between concentrated on conspiracy thinking specifically, so I think thats partly where the confusion stems from as both conversations were overlapping

So in that bigger picture is where I was including things like "hostages are legitimate targets not civilians" and Hasan authoritative take on the hospital strike based on the sound of a missile.

As to Mate, I've no idea if he is tinfoil or not over Palestine/Israel, but I consider him to be tinfoil over both Syria and Ukraine, as with Max Blumenthal and others in the Greyzone space, which has also leaned into covid conspiratorialism somewhat also

Yes the assertion was that there was minimization of pain on the Israeli side. As well as conspiracy theories.

Someone asked where they are seeing that and it was unclear whether the reference to "the left" was to one or the other.

Don't see a reason to gatekeep that antisemitism exists. Or that bad actors might be motivated to present it as coming from the left.

I've long detected a steady presence of anti-semitism from both the left *and* the right, and often the middle as well. Ignorance is pretty evenly distributed, and there are so few Jews that even ostensible allies or innocents typically don't know much about Jews or Judaism and accidentally fall into anti-semitism. That's the nature of anti-semitism, it's pretty pervasive. Israel aside, the minimization of Jewish suffering is part of the gestalt, as per the "Jews don't count" response to Jewish (mis)representation, in media and elsewhere. Imo.

Can I ask a question of Jewish folks here re: some of what yr getting at, JiC?

Don't worry everyone, Upenn has got this:

https://antisemitism-action-plan.upenn.edu/

https://x.com/RachelJessWolff/status/1719901617305084373?s=20

Apologies for reposting a fed soccer, but is there any reason someone like this shouldn't be "canceled" (also a good callback to the discussion of the overlap between 'the z-word' and just outright antisemitism)

like is it unreasonable to say that this person should not be in a student-facing job in the school of foreign service at Georgetown?

It is sometimes astonishing to me what people who want to have academic careers feel comfortable posting publicly.

her tweets are from 2015....as I found out from this interesting database:

https://canarymission.org/individual/Aneesa_Johnson

here is seemingly every student in America who ever supported BDS:

https://canarymission.org/students

Anyway I'm not shedding any tears for that anti-semite getting fired, but am I wrong to find this campaign creepy as hell?

no

how do you respond to these things - you're asked to condemn something which is unambiguously bad (those tweets) or sometimes more ambiguous but in the former case it seems easy and necessary to condemn - but what agenda does your condemnation serve? or is that even relevant when it should be condemned regardless? but are you helping them pursue a sort of ethnic cleansing in the intellectual sphere by doing so, given that the will and resources to censure this stuff just aren't there for equivalently racist things about (eg) arabs or muslims?

From boycotts to firebombs, Israel-Gaza war brings wave of antisemitism

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2023/11/01/israel-gaza-jews-antisemitism/

It's so weird to me, time and time again, why there seems to be this need to compare hatred of Jewish people to hatred of Muslims. Both are real and both should be condemned.

Left, serious question- do you have a personal connection here? Is this something that is deeply conditioned where you are from?

And sorry, I should have said Muslim people. I was tracking Left's post.

given that the will and resources to censure this stuff just aren't there for equivalently racist things about (eg) arabs or muslims?

― Left, Thursday, 2 November 2023 16:05 (nine minutes ago) link

I mean frankly, why wouldn't there be? I would obviously support removing people from jobs who are openly islamophobic and work with muslim students. Why aren't there "resources" for this sort of thing? That seems like a weird assumption to make.

And why is that an excuse to allow antisemitic professors or college administrators to keep their jobs?

what do you think of this site? https://canarymission.org/students

"zionist jews" now trending on twitter, that's that shit i don't like

I think that phrase is always trending on twitter these days.

people who have publicly posted really disgusting stuff like that should not be surprised that they will face repurcusssions. those statements from A. Johnson are unacceptable and no she should not have that job. wtf I can't even believe that's a point of discussion. I'd say the same if someone said that about any group of people.

Left's post is incoherent to me.

OK

why wouldn't there be?

because there pretty obviously aren't but whatever this is the wrong thread

do you have a personal connection here? Is this something that is deeply conditioned where you are from?

no / sort of / it's complicated

but I take it for granted that my opinions and the ways I express them would be different if my background and experiences were different

if people want to extrapolate an argument in defence of this person from my post I guess they can but that's weird

what do you think of this site? https://canarymission.org/students

― symsymsym, Thursday, 2 November 2023 16:22 (one hour ago) link

Seems gross, but there's a difference between just random students vs people who work directly in a student-facing job, such as professors, instructors, etc.

I think she was a student when she posted that stuff.

man alive, are you saying that supporters of BDS shouldn’t have student-facing positions?

fuck off, you know that's not what I'm saying

i was honestly confused!

I think the problem is that these cancel campaigns are lumping together actual anti-semitism with any public opposition to the govt of Israel. It's good for people who express public anti-semitism to face consequences, but it's part of an active campaign to chill dissent.

it was clear to me that that's not what man alive was saying just ftr

Yeah agreed.

I think students who are calling for a ceasefire or who are opposed to Israeli policies with regards to the Palestinian people are far, far different from those who are actively anti-semitic. And I think the person who is cited upthread definitely falls into the latter category. I just think it's a distraction to gather up anyone and everyone and lump them into the same category, it's a false equivalency and a waste of time. And I'm guessing the vast majority of those people are not remotely anti-semitic.

It wasn’t to me, which is why I asked. I appreciate man alive’s perspectives, even if I sometimes disagree with them, fwiw, and am frankly a little shocked at the reaction.

tbf the conversation got on a bit of a weird tangent - man alive's original complaint was about blatant anti-semitism but then for some reason he was asked to clarify his position on that insane doxxing site

I interpreted it as the insane doxxing site is why this example of blatant antisemitism is being highlighted rn (?)

the doxxing site was the first google hit for that person's name, which I just thought was weird.

The follow up tweet by the Federalist Society president that man alive posted includes a slick graphic of the racist tweets(also created by the doxxing site) which to me seems excessive for 8-year-old racist tweets by someone nobody has ever heard of:

Shameful @georgetownsfs @Georgetown @georgetownmsfs @joelhellman_SFS pic.twitter.com/M7MZ6Z0SDf

— Rachel Jessica Wolff🇮🇱 (@RachelJessWolff) November 2, 2023

please nobody misconstrue my posts as a defence of the obviously horrible and anti-semitic tweets

I don't think anyone is viewing your posts as a defense of that tweet.

Bringing the discussion to the ethics of "doxxing" of people who make hateful posts and tweets on public social media platforms is sort of a topic in itself. In a context where people are already saying there is too much conflation of Israel with Jewish people in general, bringing attention back to this particular doxxing site is perhaps adding to the conflation. I don't know, just a thought.

As far as it being an old tweet or from 2015 or college student days, aren't these kind of social media posts being revived in other contexts for "reasons" other than to do with anti-semitism or chilling political discussion? I am thinking of the instance of the Teen Vogue editor who resigned and apologized because of posts made in high school. I think it's difficult to try to make bright line rules here.

Anyway, it's a hateful tweet, and there were consequences. Becoming ultra-focused on the "fairness" of such consequences and the methods - maybe that's a bigger discussion. Isn't it fairly easy to not to make these kinds of tweets? The problem is that the tweet existed at all, not that someone saw it.

I once saw a comedian joke that having to go back several years to find an offensive tweet or post is proof that the person in question clearly learned their lesson and should be praised for their good behavior.

anvil which conspiracy theories did Hasan Piker endorse?

and

Ok, I have a mate who's a big Hasan fan and if dude was spreading any misinformation I'd want to flag that up for him.

Probably not the thread for it, but I wanted to come back to this as I remembered that he referred to the Crimea referendum results as 'supposedly rigged', and also pushed the story that Boris Johnson (as mouthpiece of US) ordered Ukraine not to negotiate.

I realize this is nothing to do with anti-semitism or Palestine but remembered these and thought I should answer anyway. There were a couple of other dubious things but wouldn't necessarily classify them as coming under the above umbrella

"supposedly" as in disputing the disputedness of the 2014 referendum (there's a weird double negative thing here)

Having reflected on it, I’m not even sure that person should lose their job based on those tweets alone, if they regret them. But maybe it would be good to have them get some kind of training about historical antisemitism, the kinds of imagery and slurs and theories used, etc?

They already seem well versed in it

Someone apparently spraypainted a jewish star on the bakery in my town, which is Jewish-owned and kosher. It's one of only two businesses in town that would really read as Jewish. I'm not at the point where I feel concerned for safety or anything but it is surprising to have it happen here. Town has a significant Jewish population - mostly liberal and reform or unaffiliated.

that's really messed up

Having reflected on it, I’m not even sure that person should lose their job based on those tweets alone, if they regret them. But maybe it would be good to have them get some kind of training about historical antisemitism, the kinds of imagery and slurs and theories used, etc?

― longtime caller, first time listener (man alive), Friday, November 3, 2023 5:49 AM (two hours ago)

don't think there's any public evidence of her disavowing or apologizing for those tweets, but I agree that sincere regret would make a big difference. Ilhan Omar is someone who used anti-semitic tropes in tweets before she was in congress, and did the work of understanding and explaining the problem with the language she used.

absent any regret from A. Johnson, I am OK with her losing her job. My concern is that she'll be the victim of a campaign of harassment and death threats because of her old tweets being un-earthed in this current climate.

As with most cases, I would rather that if she lost her job it was because the students she had dealings with were upset about the tweets, rather than some outside group directing a campaign to get her fired.

I think it was both.

There's an article where she recaps the incident, apparently without remorse.

https://dailynorthwestern.com/2023/03/02/featured-stories/in-focus/community-members-say-northwestern-is-neither-a-safe-nor-free-space-for-conversations-about-palestine-and-israel/

Agree, an apology and acknowledgement can lead to moving on. Don't think she needs to be banned from all jobs. But when the job is some sort of role model for college students, hard to see how to stop perpetuating cycles of hatred otherwise.

Aneesa Johnson (Communication ʼ18), said the University’s reactions to individual students expressing their views has hindered open conversation.

Johnson, who is Palestinian, said that while at NU, she was reported to the University for bias and hate after she posted tweets criticizing Zionism.

kinda buries the actual anti-semitism doesn't it