#ethnostate canard

[notaplaceofhonour]

The Ethnostate Canard

This is a reminder that the framing of Israel as a Jewish “ethnostate” equivalent to what Nazis want a White Ethnostate to be and the claimed moral equivalence of Zionism to White Nationalism came from Neo-Nazis. It is a Neo-Nazi talking point.

Actual ethnostates are defined by restricting citizenship to members of a specific race or ethnicity, and factually, Israel just does not do that; 73.5% of Israelis are Jewish, 21% are Arab (not counting Arabs in Gaza & the West Bank), and an additional 5.5% are other ethnicities. While Israel does define itself as a Jewish nation-state and does extend a special right of return that guarantees Israel will facilitate the immigration of Jews in diaspora, neither of these things are particularly exceptional—most SWANA countries are explicitly Arab nation-states, and many countries, from Ghana to Ireland to Spain to Armenia, have a right of return for members of specific historically displaced ethnic groups, of which Jews are one.

There are absolutely valid criticisms to be made of the Zionist movement (in theory and in practice), the nation-state model in general, and the fact that specifically Israel’s right of return does not cover the primary ethnic group Israel itself displaced: Palestinians. The latter especially is a common criticism of Israel, and it’s one I am extremely sympathetic to—like, maybe I’m off base here, but I feel like the bare minimum Israel can do for the Palestinians they displaced in the Nakbah and Naksa is to guarantee

full citizenship

return of stolen property if possible

reparations, including an allotment of land

fully facilitated immigration to Israel comparable to what is done for Aliyah

and most urgently a ceasefire and a commitment to never bomb a single inch of Palestinian land or kill a single Palestinian noncombatant again

And I don’t think criticism of Israel & advocacy for the Palestinians is at odds with this: Israel’s oppression & myriad injustices against Palestinians just does not a White Ethnostate™️ make, and we need to be able to recognize the facts of Israel’s injustices while being critical of the narratives we slot them into. Specifically in this case, we need to remember as anti-racists & people who care about equity that a common tactic Nazis, racists, and other bigots like to use is to point to things like affirmative action, Historically Black Colleges, Black churches, Pride parades, “safe spaces”, and such that exist to provide special protections for marginalized & oppressed people, and then say “Well, why don’t we get that too? I (a member of the privileged majority) just want what the minorities have!”

It is important in any of these cases to recognize Nazis are doing this in bad faith, and whatever good-faith criticisms a progressive person can have of affirmative action or safe spaces or how they can be abused, not to adopt the Nazi’s framing of these special protections, lest we label affirmative action “Black Supremacy” and queer safe spaces “Gay Supremacy” or such nonsense. Unfortunately, the left dropped the ball with the “Israel is a Jewish Ethnostate” line.

The word “Ethnostate” really didn’t appear outside its strictly literal definition in academic writing before around 2013-2014, when White Nationalists began to use the previously-mentioned tactic, and incorporated it into their propaganda—they even reprinted Herzl’s “The Jewish State” with a foreword about how to co-opt it—where they started to call the Jewish nation-state of Israel an “Ethnostate” & claim they just wanted what the Jews had, for White people. The two main problems with that is that a) a globally oppressed minority (Jews) getting special protections is not the same as a globally dominant one (White People™️) getting further protections, and b) they didn’t want a White equivalent to Israel (they didn’t want a nation-state); they wanted an ethnostate and they projected that onto Israel.

And this is where the left failed Jews. Because the left only started to use the word “ethnostate” after Richard Spencer called Israel one at a Neo-Nazi rally in Florida—at the same time he said he wanted a “safe space” for White people like minorities had. And the left, rather than looking at the man who makes no bones about hating Jews, and asking themselves, “should I maybe be more critical about accepting how the man who loves Hitler and wants to genocide Jews and gay people frames what safe spaces and the Jewish state are?”, turned around and said, “Nah, he’s right. Jews are like Nazis.”

#jumblr #judaism #zionism #i/p #ethnostate canard #antisemitism #antisemitic canard #antiracism

[kendrixtermina]

I encourage everyone to take a look at that one zionist propaganda plaxbook

look at it - this is what they think of you.

Some of it is kinda dated-ish & more specific to 2009 but some of these talking points are still being parrotted by zionist trolls on this very website as well as bought-off politicians.

Highlights include:

Admitting they're saying what they're saying because it polled well in focus groups (ie. not because its true... indeed when you know the reality, it's very infuriating to read. For example, this is the reality for arab-israelis) And no one will believe this depiction of Palestine as a totalitarian cross between ISIS & North Korea after seeing all these videos of all the women doctors & normal instagrammers they have there....

"We know we don't actually want a 2 state solution, but we need to pretend to in order to fool those stupid peace-loving westerners." (obviously not in those words but... that's what they're saying.)

"The side that says peace most wins... so lets blame them for all the war"

"This might be difficult to sell to Americans because it sounds too much like Jim Crow"(!!!)

"Your best allies will be white males. Women, blacks & poor americans disagree with us because they know nothing about the middle east, we must "educate" them" - Yep, according to the israel lobby, women & blacks support Palestine cause they're dumb. * facepalm* Two pages after using the women's rights canard to shill Israel, too...

The biggest threats are "educated young people who are good at smelling propaganda", and "rational, well-informed & calm" Palestinian Activists. It says a lot about Zionism that it considers Education & Rationality its greatest enemy. No one ever became MORE zionist from education & active thinking. They also complain that Jewish uni students don't really identify with israel even though they experience rising antisemitism. That tells you all you need to know. Having a rogue fasho state claiming to be acting in the name of jews doesn't protect anyone from antisemitism... It looks more like Israel & the fash right are partners, like Hitler & Mussolini swapping German- & Italian-Speakers from each side of their borders (after the annexation of austria) so each can have a "purer" ethnostate.

#palestine #free palestine #gaza #free gaza #watermelon #israel #usa #european union #israel palestine war #israel hamas war

[laika-the-bitch]

i don`t know if this is „new“ per se, but the fascists seem to be have syncretized antiblack racism with the old canard about jews being to blame for the transatlantic slave trade to produce „the slave trade was a jewish plot to bring black people to the americas in order to undermine the potential formation of a white ethnostate“.  not looking forward to seeing that one proliferate.

i really need to learn how to avoid hate-reading fash bullshit.

#hwæt #obviously that`s an old lie but i`m used to seeing it from black antisemites using antisemitism to explain modern white supremacy #not from white antisemites using us to explain why white supremacy is unstable

[whetstonefires]

Okay having gotten more than halfway through the first Witcher book, wow this is so very much a book about race.

Like, I thought the show was pretty frank about it, with i.e. Jaskier’s first appearance revolving largely around his finding out his opinion on a subject is based on racist propaganda about a persecuted people, being shown mercy by those people, and then making up a racist lie about what just happened because it’ll sell better. While meanwhile, at another point in time, Yennefer’s mixed-race background almost ruins her career before it can start.

But the book is uh. Much more about race relations.

From a really Polish perspective, too, which is interesting and largely nice--the view of waves of settlement, immigration, and empire washing over the same land again and again and leaving sedimentary layers of peoples behind, and the question of how one is justly to live and identify in the multiethnic society that results, with all the weight of wrongs and losses behind everyone--especially while the government is largely controlled by racists who want an ethnostate.

(Less nice is that the dwarves are about 600% more Jewish-coded than Tolkien ever considered. Kind of cool when it involves digging into the injustice of the no-win scenario that is being pressured to pick a side in every political drama, but never trusted to have really picked it.

Not cool when the text presents as quite literal fact that dwarves are huge sexists and certain everyone’s out to steal their women, even though they’re ugly shrews and no one would want to, which is. Such an old antisemitic canard. 😬)

The issue of collective responsibility got name-dropped fairly early on, with Tris Marigold specifically stating in her narration that she doesn’t believe in it and thus feels no awkwardness as a wizard for the extermination of the witchers by wizards before she was born, and it’s been a sort of recurring looming shadow ever since.

Geralt does believe in it, notably. Even if he doesn’t entirely identify as human, he takes his share of the guilt for being born to a brutally colonizing people seriously.

I like how Geralt is so middle-aged, with his practical concerns and his twelve-year-old and his complex, fraught relationship with his ex and his jaded attitude toward politics that is very much not cynicism, but has a fairly similar practical impact on the surface.

Also he has actually really good manners, in an unpolished way, and gets along with people really well! He keeps running into people he knows and having a casual drink and a chat, about old times and current events and ecology and so forth.

But he’s easily baited into being passive-aggressive at people who talk down to him. 😂 The latter came through on Netflix, but he’s so much less casually social. I suppose it goes with the all-black outfit.

I am also enjoying the hell out of how everyone in this fantasy novel keeps lecturing each other about science. A worldbuilding technique normally restricted to science fiction gives this setting a very distinctive flavor. (Albeit one I have seen elsewhere. I suspect the Castlevania show took inspiration here, tbh.)

Also fun is the realism of the same person in quick succession discussing tariffs, how salty his snack is, and how rumor has it there are credible foretellings of the imminent end of the world. Life goes on. It feels particularly true to life at a time like this one.

Also Yennefer’s only appearance in the book so far is, in scene 4, jumping into a room where Dandelion was being tortured, knifing one man and electrocuting another, and saving his entire ass. He didn’t even know she was in town. She insists she likes him quite a lot now, because he looked after Geralt after the breakup, which is sweet. These weirdos.

She keeps coming up tho. Geralt just received a very snippy letter where she’s absolutely going to help him but is really annoyed about being addressed as ‘dear friend.’ 😂

Also I really need to finish the Netflix show specifically to find out where it leaves Ciri, because when my sister and I were for lulz sketching out a Geraskier Princess Bride AU (which worked way better than it had any business doing considering its whole entire basis was the name Buttercup), she was baffled by the idea that Ciri could be the one to bash the Pit of Despair albino over the head and take Geralt to Yennefer to get un-mostly-dead.

“Isn’t Ciri a child?” she said, running on nothing but tumblr osmosis for Witcher content.

Sitting here with roughly half of the Netflix show under my belt but with the (sole) prior information about Ciri that she was royalty and that Geralt trained her, I was only able to say, “she...grows up eventually.”

Ciri in Blood of Elves is 12 thus far and frankly way overtrained, because all the Witchers could think to do with her was treat her like a Witcher trainee, which involves getting beaten black and blue by machines until you learn to dodge them properly. Though she’s been sent away to boarding school now so she’ll fall out of practice a bit.

She didn’t distinguish herself martially in her first engagement, which was completely correct as she was 12 and it was an awful situation and she has a lot of previous trauma to work through, but she didn’t humiliate herself either.

Even at 12 Ciri could totally bash someone over the head to rescue Geralt. She wouldn’t be able to carry him anywhere afterward, of course.

She’d need the wheelbarrow.

#hoc est meum #the witcher #book review #race #anti-semitism #i'm bad at watching tv #you wouldn't think that was a thing a person could be bad at #blood of elves #the witcher spoilers #the princess bride