#Anti-semitism

[hyperions-fate]

It's genuinely bizarre how many people on here repeat the anti-Semitic conflation of Jewish people with Israel. The latter is a state and a set of colonial institutions; it is no more representative of Jews than the Saudi monarchy is of Arabs. You don't need to defend it to combat anti-Semitism.

#Palestine #Anti-Semitism

[eretzyisrael]

by Jake Wallis Simons

Therefore, the number of women and children killed was likely grossly exaggerated. If that is the case – if, as Prof Wyner suggests, “the casualties are not overwhelmingly women and children, and the majority may be Hamas fighters” – where does that leave western outrage? Has the West fallen victim to a monstrous con?

The true ratio of civilian casualties to combatants is likely to be exceptionally low, “at most 1.4 to 1 and perhaps as low as 1 to 1”. This, Prof Wyner says, is a “successful effort to prevent unnecessary loss of life while fighting an implacable enemy that protects itself with civilians”.

By rights, if the central pillar of the anti-Israel edifice has been discredited, the whole structure should come tumbling down. But don’t hold your breath. The reason why Hamas’s dodgy data is so easily believed is confirmation bias. The drip-drip of Israelophobic propaganda over the years has created a powerful tendency to view the Jewish state, Britain’s democratic ally, as a colonialist aggressor and the Palestinians – even as they butcher children – as the “freedom fighters”. Regardless of the evidence, to many people this has become second nature.

It speaks of millennia of inherited anti-Semitism. A 2012 study by economists Nico Voigtländer and Hans-Joachim Voth found that Germans from towns where Jews were blamed for the Black Death and burnt alive in the 14th century were significantly more likely to vote for the Nazis 600 years later. In his 1945 essay, Orwell recalls a “young intellectual, communist or near-communist” remarking: “No, I do not like Jews. I’ve never made any secret of that. I can’t stick them. Mind you, I’m not anti-Semitic, of course.” Depressingly little has changed.

That is the advantage enjoyed by the jihadis of Gaza. They didn’t even need to keep their strategy a secret. Everyone knows they try to get civilians killed for propaganda gains, aiming to curtail Israeli operations with international outrage. Everyone knows that their censors keep dead terrorists away from the cameras, giving the world the impression that Israel is only attacking civilians (look up former AP reporter Matti Friedman’s seminal 2014 essay, “What the media gets wrong about Israel”, for a sense of how long such games have been played). A gang that murdered and mutilated babies may also, on occasion, be tempted to lie. So much should be obvious. But all this is smoothly eclipsed when a greater narrative is at work.

#hamas #hamas death figures #statistics #gaza #anti-semitism #inherited anti-semitism #jihadis

[hjellacott]

The US component in the TRA fight

Seeing what's happening with Hogwarts Legacy, I've noticed that many of the ignorant people saying goblins repressent Jews have to be non-European (and I'm mainly looking at United States tbh).

For us Europeans, goblins are our folklore, our ancient culture, our history. We've had goblins, ghosts, witches, meigas, wizards, elves, giants, mermaids... Since ALWAYS. Like, have you read Ulysses' adventures? Tolkien? German fairy tales? Celtic tales? These stories have been amongst us for 3000+ years. They're part of our history, our culture... And not really US culture, for example, nor US history, nor US mythology. And it's obvious in the way some of you speak, that you really have not grown-up in this world and had this folklore be part of your blood.

What Hitler did was take goblins, steal this ancient being (which is actually an umbrella term for 20+ types of goblins across Europe, including the famous leprechaum), and turn it into a Nazi tool for anti-Semitism. And we're reclaiming our culture. We're not letting Nazis take that way from us, like they took so much more from us. The previous four generations in my family have all lived wars, I'm literally the first war-free. My parents grew-up in times of conscription and fighting Fascism. My grandparents only ever knew World War II. Another, older set of grandparents, was born in the middle of World War I. All of them here in Europe, my Dad, Granddad and Great-grandfathers all having been forced to fight here and there.

So don't talk to me about anti-Semitism, war, prosecution, Nazism... I know. I've grown up in the ruins and scars left by the war. I'm still trying to help my country recover from the war. My birthplace. And part of the fight is try to undo the damage done by the Nazis, where possible, and you know where it IS possible? recclaiming my culture, my history, my folklore. I can't bring people back from the death, but I can fucking do that.

#goblins #folklore #mythology #war #anti-semitism #hogwarts legacy

[republicansaredomesticterrorists]

I love the smell of Muskrat tears in the morning. Smells like fascism dying.

#elongated muskrat #corporate greed #fascism #hatred #republican hypocrisy #republican party #bigotry #anti-semitism #racist #musk blows dead farm animals #oligarch asshole #right wing propaganda #Republican propaganda #fascist propaganda

[the-garbanzo-annex-jr]

by Daniel Ben-Ami

A man goes into a store to buy a can of Pepsi. The proceeds of the sale go through a chain of cash-thumbing, financial intermediaries. Eventually the money is handed over to someone to pay for the manufacture of a missile. The missile is fitted on to a combat aircraft, which closes in on its target. Eventually the missile locks on to a (presumably) Palestinian child. As it explodes, the word ‘boycott’ flashes up on screen.

This video, distributed on X by Palestine Online, is just one of countless anti-Israel clips on social media. But it bears closer examination as it helps to illustrate the nature of contemporary anti-Semitism. Here, as in many other cases today, Jews are not overtly identified. There is not even an explicit mention of Israel. Instead, the video assumes the target viewer will recognise the not-so-subtle anti-Semitic pointers, such as references to financial speculation and the age-old ‘blood libel’ of child murder. Not identifying Jews directly also gives some degree of deniability to anyone who wants to claim they are not anti-Semitic.

That’s not to downplay the existence of overt anti-Semitism. This has increased dramatically since 7 October. In the past few days alone, an Orthodox Jewish man has been stabbed in Zurich while another was beaten outside a Paris synagogue. But a great deal of Jew hatred still tends to take a disguised form.

Its most common manifestation, as the ‘boycott’ Pepsi video indicates, is an animus towards Israel. An animus that long predates its current war with Hamas. In the warped view of anti-Israel activists, Israel is the epitome of evil. It is said to be manipulating finance for its own ends and slaughtering children. Supposedly, it is a ‘genocidal’, ‘apartheid’ state – morally charged terms that tend not to be applied to other nations.

Seeing Israel as evil incarnate, today’s anti-Israel activists target its every manifestation. They try to cancel Israeli dance companies in New York. They demand Israel’s expulsion from the Eurovision song contest. And they attempt to banish it from the Olympics and the football World Cup. In short, they seek to erase Israel from the world. That is the true meaning of today’s boycott campaigns. To purge the world of any Israeli presence. To eradicate any signs of Israeli culture.

#israel #anti-semitism #boycott #pepsi #israeli culture #erasing Israel

[schraubd]

Opposing Antisemitism is Hard When You Just Assume It's a Political Stunt

The Republican Party of Texas just voted down a resolution that would have barred the state GOP from associating with persons "known to espouse or tolerate antisemitism, pro-Nazi sympathies or Holocaust denial." The internet is having a field day over this, and understandably so. Meanwhile, one of the resolution's proponents is baffled: “I just don’t understand how people who routinely refer to others as leftists, liberals, communists, socialists and RINOs (‘Republicans in Name Only’) don’t have the discernment to define what a Nazi is,” committee member Morgan Cisneros Graham told the Tribune after the vote. Far from raising a question, Graham has in fact answered it. The litany listed here -- "leftists, liberals, communists, socialists, RINOs" -- none of these are, in their "routine" use by Republican officials, terms that are actually meant to carry some sort of principled semantic meaning. They're slurs -- bits of rhetorical seasoning, nothing more. And it's no surprise that Republicans treat antisemitism and Nazism, like all other "-isms", in the same fashion -- as a contentless slur one opportunistically hurls at political opponents. They have genuinely drunk their own kool-aid on this. They really don't think that, when people talk about antisemitism or neo-Nazis, they might be referring to something real and objective in the world. Of course it's meaningless theater.  And if one believes that, then it absolutely makes sense why one would be worried about vagueness and unclear boundaries. The article observes that some committee members "questioned how their colleagues could find words like 'antisemitism' too vague, despite frequently lobbing it and other terms at their political opponents." Again, this bafflement disappears once one realizes that for these Republicans, the vagueness and lack of definition is a service, not a barrier, to the frequent lobbing -- it is because they studiously avoid thinking that antisemitism means anything that they can toss it out to attack everything. This is why one can never trust Republicans to tackle antisemitism. I mean yes, for the obvious reason that they can't even reliably disavow Nazis. But also for the slightly less obvious but still important reason that their entire orientation towards "antisemitism" is that it is nothing more than a gambit in a political game.* They don't take it seriously as an actual, extant phenomenon, and so they'll never be able to respond to it as one. * Somewhere -- I can't find it -- I remarked on how Republicans, shortly after Ilhan Omar's "Benjamins" controversy, tried to gin up another controversy over Omar aggressively questioning conservative foreign policy maven Elliott Abrams. There was transparently nothing there on the Abrams thing, but many conservatives seemed baffled that their antisemitism claims weren't getting traction after so much attention was paid to the "Benjamins" tweet. What was the difference? The possibility that the difference could be explained by actual substance -- the "Benjamins" tweet was plausibly antisemitic, the Abrams questioning was not -- truly, genuinely didn't seem to occur to them. via The Debate Link https://ift.tt/Yj9nldL

#anti-semitism #Jews #nazis #Republicans #texas

[hassibah]

"Accordingly, Germany now sees its post-Holocaust mandate as encompassing not a broader commitment against racism and violence but a specific fealty to a certain Jewish political formation: the State of Israel. Germany has relied on its close diplomatic relationship to Israel to emphasize its repudiation of Nazism, but its connection to the Jewish state goes even further. In 2008, then-chancellor Angela Merkel addressed the Israeli Knesset to declare that ensuring Israel’s security was part of Germany’s “Staatsraison,” the state’s very reason for existence. If asked why it is worth preserving a German nationalism that produced Auschwitz, Germany now has a pleasing, historically symmetrical answer—it exists to support the Jewish state.

...

A network of antisemitism commissioners—a system explored in this issue in a feature by Peter Kuras—has been deputized to monitor such offenses. These commissioners are typically white, Christian Germans, who speak in the name of the Jews and often playact Jewishness on a public stage, posing for photo ops in yarmulkes, performing Jewish music, wearing the uniform of the Israeli police, and issuing decrees on who is next in the pillory. When they tangle with left-wing Jews in Germany, canceling their events and attacking them as antisemites in the pages of various newspapers, they suggest what Germany’s antisemitism commissioner Felix Klein has said directly: That the Jews are not being sensitive enough to what antisemitism means to the Germans—that, in fact, these Jews do not understand antisemitism at all. In a perverse twist, the fact that the Germans were the most successful antisemites in history has here become a credential. By becoming the Jews’ consummate protectors, Germans have so thoroughly absorbed the moral lessons bestowed by Jewish martyrdom that they have no more need for the Jew except as symbol; by the logic of this strange supersessionism, Germans have become the new Jews. This is not only a matter of rhetorical authority on Jewish matters but is also often literal, as this self-reflexive philosemitism has led to a wave of German converts to Judaism. According to Tzuberi, “The Jewish revival is desired precisely because it is a German revival.”"

#germany #anti-semitism #israel #long reads #i need to read up more on german foreign policy projects in mena

[antifainternational]

The Weiners Circle is antifa.

#antifa #anti-semitism #ye #kanye #the weiners cricle #kanye west #kosher dogs

[shadowfellefox]

hey, anyone heard of Jews for Jesus (i.e. Christians pretending to be Jewish for evangelical purposes) going door to door asking for info about the local Jewish community?

There's apparently a couple dudes in kippot doing just that in upper lower Michigan -- where I'm originally from -- and I'm trying to figure out how concerned I should be for my old community.

J4Js suck but can be dealt with. But if these are assholes gearing up for some hate crimes I've got folks I'd like to warn.

(Please reblog, add comments if you have insight!)

(for the goyim: there is absolutely zero chance that they were actual Jews. We don't go door to door for a lot of reasons, including that it generally is not safe for us to be publicly Jewish in my country)

#Judaism #Antisemitism #anti-Semitism

[ironmyrmidon]

The next time someone says "Jews are disproportionately represented in [industry]" I'm just gonna tell them to go fuck themselves. I'm sick of trying to explain the structural problems with whatever industry they're mad about. Anti-Semites blame Jews for the world's problems, because they don't want to think about structural problems!

#antisemitism #anti-Semitism

[racefortheironthrone]

Do you think that fascism arises from economic crises?

It's a bit more complicated than a unicausal explanation, but I would argue that they are a necessary but not sufficient factor.

There is an old phrase on the Left that "anti-semitism is the socialism of fools;" which sometimes results in a kind of vulgar Marxist variety of conspiracy theory in which all forms of hatred and bigotry are the result of malign forces in the ruling class trying to distract and divide and inclulcate false consciousness among the masses.

According to this train of thought, all forms of discrimination and oppression are the result of capitalism, and once the Revolution comes, then racism and sexism and homophobia, etc. will all come tumbling down and we will all live in unity and equality and harmony. I think this particular school of thought is badly misguided and has been responsible for quite a bit of the Left's historical weaknesses and blindspots.

However, I think there is something to the idea of the original saying, in that I think a lot of the impetus for reactionary movements comes from an inchoate feeling that something is wrong with society and culture, that is turned into not just incorrect but malicious explanations of what the problems are and what the causes of those problems are, in order to radicalize people into joining hateful movements. It's not that different from how ideological frameworks function normally in a Geertzian sense, just done for darker and more violent purposes.

Here's where I think the economy comes in. It is true that there are always going to be some people with extreme reactionary beliefs, but how welcoming society is to their recruitment and other activities does I think depend on how many people are feeling desperate and let down by traditional sources of authority and willing to give "alternative" voices a hearing. Often but not always, the state and direction of the economy has a lot to do with this feeling of desperation - it's not an accident that in recent decades, we've seen the flourishing of reactionary politics following major recessions or in places that have been on the economic decline.

Again, this isn't a 1:1 thing, nor are a lot of the converts among the poorest and most desperate in society, but I do think that general impressions about the state of the economy are a major component of the motivating sense of desperation, alienation, and a breakdown of trust in institutions.

#political theory #political ideology #fascism #marxist theory #anti-semitism #social democracy

[wormbraind]

pro-palestine posters please work harder to ward off anti-semitism. you don't call for the death of usamericans because our government has committed genocide and continues to support one, or allow such calls to go unchallenged. don't do the same for israelis.

#free gaza #anti-semitism #i/p #palestine #see this way too much considering i don't seek out pro-palestinian content

[ruminativerabbi]

Anti-Judaism Then and Now

On Sesame Street, they used to sing a song that challenged young viewers to decide “which of these things belong together.” The idea was that the youngsters would be presented with a group of things all but one of which belonged to the same group. But the trick, of course, was that the specific nature of the group wasn’t revealed—so the young viewer had to notice that there were three vegetables on the screen and one piece of fruit, or three garden tools and a frying pan. You get the idea. All of the things belonged together but one didn’t. It wasn’t that complicated. But the tune is still stuck in my head and I don’t think I’ve heard the song in at least thirty years.

In the grown-up world, there are also all sorts of groups made up of things that are presented as “belonging together.” Some are obvious and indisputable. But others are far more iffy.

Languages, for example, are in the first category. Danish, Japanese, Laotian, and Yiddish all belong in the same group; each is an artificial code devised by a specific national or ethnic group to label the things of the world. You really can compare the Japanese word for apple with the Danish word because both really are the same thing: a sound unrelated in any organic way to the thing it denotes that a specific group of people have decided to use nonetheless to denote that thing. Languages are all codes, all artificial, and all each other’s equals. The world’s languages, therefore, really are each other’s equivalents

Other groups, not so much. Religion comes right to mind in that regard: we regularly refer to the world’s religions as each other’s equivalents, but is that really so? In what sense, truly, is Judaism the Jewish version of Hinduism or Buddhism? Is Chanukah the Jewish Christmas? Is the New Testament the Christian version of the Koran in the same sense that the Danish word for cherry is the Danish version of the French word for that same thing? You see what I mean: the notion that the religions of the world are each other’s equivalents hardly makes any sense at all.

But what about prejudices of various sorts? Are racism and homophobia each other’s equivalents, distinguished only by the target of the bigot’s irrational dislike? Are sexism and ageism the same thing, only different with respect to the specific being discriminated against? And where does anti-Semitism, with its weird medial capital letter and its off-base etymology (because it denotes discrimination against Jews, not other Semites), where does anti-Semitism fit in? Is it the same as other forms of discrimination, differing only with respect to the target?

I suppose my readers know why this has been on my mind lately.

Last week I wrote about that grotesque congressional hearing in which the presidents of three of America’s most prestigious institutions of higher learning, including two of the so-called Ivies, could not bring themselves to label the most extreme form of anti-Semitism there is, the version that calls not for discrimination against Jews but for their actual murder—they could not bring themselves unequivocally and unambiguously to say that that calls for genocide directed against Jews have no place on their campuses. The president of the University of Pennsylvania paid with her position for her unwillingness to condemn genocide clearly and forcefully. But hundreds and hundreds of faculty members at Harvard, perhaps the nation’s most prestigious college, spoke out forcefully in support of their president despite her unwillingness to say clearly that calling for the murder of Jews is not the kind of speech that any normal person would imagine to be protected by the First Amendment.

At a time when anti-Semitism is surging, it strikes me that treating different versions of prejudice as each other’s equivalent is probably more harmful an approach than a realistic one. That is what led to the moral fog that apparently enveloped the leaders of three of our nation’s finest academies and made them unable simply and plainly to condemn calls for genocide directed against Jewish people.

I think we should probably begin to deal with this matter in our own backyard. And to that end, I would like to recommend three books and a fourth to my readers: the three are “about” anti-Semitism (and each is remarkable in its own way) and the fourth is a novel that I’ve mentioned many times in these letters, the one that led me to understand personally what anti-Semitism actually is and how it can thrive even in the ranks of the highly civilized, educated, and cultured.

The first book is by the late Rosemary Ruether, known as a feminist and as a Catholic theologian, but also the author of Faith and Fratricide: The Theological Roots of Anti-Semitism, published by Seabury Press in 1974 and still in print. This was not the first serious study of anti-Semitism I read—that would have been Léon Poliakoff’s four-volume work, The History of Anti-Semitism, which also had a formative effect on my adolescent self. But Ruether’s book was different: less about anti-Semitism itself and more about the way that anti-Jewish prejudice was such a basic part of the theological worldview of so many of the most formative Christian authors that the task of eliminating it from Western culture would require a repudiation of some of the basic tenets set forth by some of the most famous early Christian authors. I was stunned by her book when I read it: stunned, but also truly challenged. In think, even, that my decision to specialize in the history of the early Church as one of my sub-specialties when I completed by doctorate in ancient Judaism was a function of reading that book and needing—and wanting—to know these texts (and, through them, their authors) personally and up close. Jewish readers—or any readers—concerned about anti-Semitism could do a lot worse than to start with Ruether’s book.

And from there I’d go on to David Nirenberg’s book, Anti-Judaism: The Western Tradition, published by W.W. Norton in 2013. This too is something anyone even marginally concerned about anti-Semitism in the world should read. The book is not that long, but it is rich and exceptionally thought-provoking; its author describes his thesis clearly in one sentence, however: “Anti-Judaism should not be understood as some archaic or irrational closet in the vast edifices of Western thought,” but rather as one of the “basic tools with which that edifice was constructed.” Using detailed, thoughtful, and deliberate prose, Nirenberg lays out his argument that Western civilization rests on a foundation of anti-Judaism so deeply embedded in the Western psyche as to make it possible for people who have doctorates from Harvard to feel uncertain about condemning genocide—the ultimate anti-Semitic gesture—unequivocally and forcefully. This would be a good book too for every Jewish citizen—and for all who consider themselves allies of the Jewish people—to read and take to heart. Anti-Judaism is deeply engrained in Western culture. To eradicate it—even temporarily, let alone permanently—will require a serious realignment of Western values and beliefs. Can it be done? Other features of Western culture have fallen away over the centuries, so I suppose it can be. But how to accomplish such a feat—the best ideas will come from people who have read books like Nirenberg’s and taken them to heart.

And the final book I would like to recommend is James Carroll’s, Constantine’s Sword: The Church and the Jews, published by Mariner Books in 2001. The author, a former Roman Catholic priest, makes a compelling argument that the roots of anti-Semitism are to be found in the basic Christian belief that the redemption of the world will follow the conversion of the world’s Jews to Christianity. I was surprised when I read the book by a lot of things, but not least how convincingly the author presses his argument that the belief that the redemption of the world is being impeded by the phenomenon of stubborn Jews refusing to abandon Judaism is the soil in which all Western anti-Semitism is rooted. It’s an easier book to read than either Ruether’s or Nirenberg’s—written more for a lay audience and clearly intended by its author to be a bestseller, which it indeed became—but no less an interesting and enlightening one.

So that is my counsel for American Jews feeling uncertain how to respond to this surge of anti-Semitic incidents on our nation’s streets and particularly on the campuses of even our most prestigious universities. Read these books. Learn the history that is, even today, legitimizing anti-Jewish sentiments even among people who themselves are not sufficiently educated to understand what is motivating their feelings about Jews and about Judaism. None of these reads will be especially pleasant. But all will be stirring and inspiring. And from understanding will come, perhaps, a path forward. Any physician will tell you that even the greatest doctor has to know what’s wrong with a patient before attempting to initiate the healing process. Perhaps that is what is needed now: not rallies or White House dinners (or not just those things), but a slow, painstaking analysis of where this all is coming from and an equally well-thought-out plan for combatting anti-Jewish prejudice rooted in the nature of the beast we would all like to see fenced in, tamed, and then ultimately slain.

And the novel? My go-to piece of Jewish literature, André Schwarz-Bart’s The Last of the Just, was published in Stephen Becker’s English translation by Athenaeum in 1960, just one year after the publication of the French original. A novel that spans a full millennium, the book traces the history of a single Jewish family, the Levys, and tells the specific story of the individual member of the family in each generation who serves as one of the thirty-six just people for whose sake the world exists. (The book begins in eleventh century England and ends at Auschwitz, where the last of the just perishes.) I read the book when I was a boy and have returned to it a dozen times over the years. No book that I can think of explains anti-Semitism from the inside—from within the bosom of a Jewish family that is defined by the prejudice directed against it—more intensely, more movingly, or more devastatingly. This is definitely not a book for children. I was probably too young to encounter such a book when I did, but it is also true that, more than anything else, it was that book that set me on the path that I followed into adulthood. (And that is probably just as true spiritually and emotionally, as it is professionally.) I was too young, perhaps, to process the story correctly. But when I was done reading even that first time as a sixteen-year-old, I knew what path I wished to follow. The Last of the Just is not a book I would exactly characterize as enjoyable reading. But it is riveting, challenging, and galvanizing. To face the future with courage and resolve, the American Jewish community needs to look far back into the past so as to understand the challenges it now faces. And then, armed with that knowledge, to find a path forward into a brighter and better world.

#anti-Semitism #anti-Judaism #Rosemary Ruether #David Nirenberg #Andre Schwarz-Bart

[cripple-punk-dad]

anons stop being anti-Semitic under the guide of anti-zionism challenge. impossible because y'all are so obsessed with finding someone to hate (Jewish people) that it seems to short circuit your critical thinking skills. Two things can be true at once. We are allowed to mourn the loss of Jewish lives and also be vehemently against the genocide being enacted upon Palestine. I don't understand why that concept is so fucking hard for most of you to grasp. Stop thinking in black and white for once in your chronically online life.

#palestine #anti-semitism

[hadesoftheladies]

alright, some misogynist and ableist goons on this site keep bothering me about my jkr post because they cannot fathom the fact that calling out bias doesn't necessarily equal endorsing. so i'm going to be super nice about it and put all the facts here for the fact-enjoyers.

let's go over the claims made against jkr by testerical twitterheads, because everything to do with trans politics regarding jkr is just extremist white liberals reaching.

Claim: JK Rowling is friends with Matt Walsh. False!

Claim: JK Rowling is friends with Kellie-Jay Keen. Ambiguous! (She has agreed with Kellie-Jay Keen on several issues and advocated for her based on false allegations about nazism concerning Kellie-Jay Keen. Men-rights activists made shit up about her endorsing nazi salutes at her women's campaign. also, JK Rowling has agreed with many people whose politics she does not wholly endorse, like matt walsh. agreeing with someone on an opinion or fact, does not mean you agree with their politics.)

Claim: JK Rowling denies the Holocaust. False! (For proof, see this thread. JK Rowling does not DENY that the Holocaust happened, but that trans people were specifically targeted by the Nazis. Some argue that this makes her a Holocaust denier based on some German article, but I find the term muddies the water. It can be an offense, a grievous one, to deny the Nazis did something when they did, but calling JKR a Holocaust denier makes people think she doesn't believe the Holocaust happened when she absolutely does.

Additionally, the topic as to whether trans people were explicitly targeted by Nazis has had a fair share of scholarly debate. They may have faced some measure of harassment, but being specifically targeted is also a reach considering how little historical evidence we have of transvestites being outrightly persecuted, at least, to anywhere near the same degree homosexual, black or Jewish people were. Cross-dressing certificates were legal in Nazi Germany, for example, and I have found no record of a transvestite suffering things like forced sterilization. This article briefly mentions a German author who thought that the Nazis would finally take care of "the transvestite problem" because now they could be sent to concentration camps and castrated there, but there is still no record of any transvestite having undergone such a thing. Furthermore, of the examples of transvestites that were taken to concentration camps, both of them were homosexual, so it would be more accurate to say they were targeted for being homosexual, especially when you look at why they were arrested. On the other hand, some transvestites ended up in concentration camps, but it was likely due to the fact that they were Jewish rather than trans.

It is also very significant that in the German Republic, transvestites had permits while homosexuals did not!

JKR might be denying that they burned trans books. Unfortunately for her, she is wrong. Transvestite research WAS targeted by the Nazis. Again, not much is known about transvestites during this time and I have found no solid numbers. It most definitely didn't happen on the same scale as what gay, lesbian, Jewish or Roma people were suffering through--and why would it, transvestites weren't a large population, also i have found no record of transvestites being forced to wear pink triangles, like homosexual men were--, though gay men and transvestites seemed to get more leniency if they were "Aryan." )

Claim: JK Rowling directly funds government suppression. (Which government? Source? I'll make an assumption and guess that you're referring to her 1 million pound donation to the Better Together anti-Scottish independence campaign? Yes, she has. But she respects the opinions of those who disagree with her on the subject. She's also donated to the Labour Party, which is more centre-left politically.)

Claim: JK Rowling has financially supported groups that repress Scotland's right to independence. True! (She also voted "No!" on Scottish independence).

Claim: JK Rowling is gunning to be a Neo-Nazi. False! (She has not expressed any explicit Nazi views! Please tap the source to see what Nazi views actually are! JK Rowling has been explicitly leftist in her politics and anti-racist.)

Claim: JK Rowling is a fascist. False! (She does not identify as fascist and does not have any explicit fascist views. Unlike the people burning and trying to ban her books, which contain very little of her politics.)

i don't worship JKR, i don't even agree with a good chunk of her politics. especially when it comes to her sympathy for israel. she's a millionaire white woman, and i am a born and raised african middle-class person. we won't have many politics in common. but unlike you lot, i don't need to be misogynistic or ableist in order to disagree with a woman. resorting to misogyny, ableism, racism or homophobia just because you hate someone is still misogyny, ableism, racism and homophobia. i wouldn't call a transperson the "t-word" even though i don't profess their gender faith. because i recognize that using the "t-word" on a trans-identified person that's done or said disgusting things like, idk, andrea long chu or hunter schaffer (are these your leaders? seriously?), saying that word will still hurt trans-identified people who didn't do or say those horrible things unnecessarily.

see what i did there? i read things up for myself, added sources from people i disagreed with politically, discussed the valid history of people who i disagree with without resorting to dehumanizing language, and called out the celebrity you lot think are "my hero" without being a hypocrite!

class dismissed.

now fuck off you rancid misogynists and go back to snivelling about how righteous you are to your echo chamber.

also, radblr girlies feel free to reblog or link this for all the anti-jkr posts that make any of these claims or keep trying to bait you with this braindead discourse to save yourselves the effort. love you and muah! :)

#radblr #trans #trans rights #jkr #anti jkr #twitter #harry potter #also #we need to center roma people in holocaust discourse again #they are woefully neglected despite being the second biggest target of the nazi regime #so many roma people were massacred by the nazis #nazism #yes this post is recycled because i cannot spare these goons anymore effort #and i cannot reblog the posts that i initally commented on either #but radblr can reblog and cycle this instead #roma #anti-semitism

[schraubd]

The Holocaust Was Not Summer School; Slavery Was Not Trade School.

Someone -- I can't find who -- once said, in relation to claims that Jews had "failed to the learn the lessons of Auschwitz", that "the Holocaust was not summer school."

The retort there was in relation to claims that Jews had not imbibed the correct moral sentiments following our genocide. But I was reminded of it upon hearing the recent defenses of Florida's "anti-woke" efforts to whitewash slavery by lauding the "skills" slaves allegedly acquired -- apologias which, unsurprisingly, have spilled over to Holocaust minimization as well.

Fox News star Greg Gutfeld, whose latest book debuted on Tuesday, is currently under fire over his recent observation that Jewish people “had to be useful” in order to survive concentration camps, prompting the Auschwitz Museum to rebuke his comments as an “oversimplification” of the Holocaust. 

[....] 

During Monday’s broadcast of Fox News’ The Five, which both Watters and Gutfeld co-host, the panel raged against Vice President Kamala Harris’ condemnation of the Florida curriculum as racist. Watters, for instance, blasted the veep for not wanting “African-Americans and white Americans to know that Black Americans did learn skills despite being enslaved.”

The heated discussion, however, took an uncomfortable turn when lone liberal panelist Jessica Tarlov drew a parallel between slavery and the Holocaust, wondering if Florida schools would also teach that Jewish people received some benefits from the Nazis systematically murdering them in death camps.

Gutfeld, referencing a famous book by Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl, took Tarlov’s challenge and ran with it.

“Did you ever read Man’s Search for Meaning?” Gutfeld wondered. “Vik Frankl talks about how you had to survive in a concentration camp by having skills. You had to be useful. Utility! Utility kept you alive!”

The slide from "anti-CRT" to Holocaust trivialization is nothing new, of course. And here in particular we have one of those moments where an ounce of truth helps generate a ton of falsehood. It is true that, comparatively speaking, a Jewish inmate who had skills that happened to be useful for the Nazi war effort (or otherwise coveted by the local commander) was more likely to survive. Likewise, it's true that having enough wealth to pay for bribes actuarially increased one's life span compared to the destitute. It is not true that "utility kept you alive" (a phrase that is eerily adaptive of arbeit macht frei). Plenty of people with "utility" were murdered by the Nazis. It is not true that having money insulated Jews from the Nazis. Plenty of Jews with means were nonetheless rounded up and slaughtered. The relationship of "utility" to the Jewish experience in the camps was not one of moxie and grit overcoming incredible odds; anymore than the relationship of wealth was one of frugality and financial stewardship steering one to safety. There is no favor done to the oppressed that they can sometimes leverage opportunities to resist.

But again, this is the inevitable byproduct of the anti-woke panic. The obsession with never speaking forthrightly and honestly about oppression and discrimination -- always viewing it as a "both sides" initiative -- means one has to find ways to render Nazism, if not benign, then at least filed down. Others have written about the gentile obsession with telling feel-good Holocaust stories where plucky protagonists show their wiles and skills to secure a happy ending. This is a myth that non-Jews need to tell themselves to evade reckoning with the Holocaust in its full horror; the Holocaust did not come with happy endings.

And the same is true of slavery. Slavery was not a somewhat-unsavorily-run trade school. It was a form of White supremacist oppression. Trying to find the "happy endings" is an attempt to avoid reckoning with its horrors. And the thing is, if we actually took seriously the "nobody should be made to feel guilty based on the color of their skin" pablum, there'd be no quarrel with teaching the history in its full terrible glory. Learning of the horrors of slavery doesn't and shouldn't make White people feel guilty. The guilt comes from learning those facts and then wanting to carry on as before -- no change in affect, no change in politics, as if it never happened. The dissonance between the historical knowledge and the desire to pretend as if the history didn't happen or didn't matter -- that's what creates the guilt. But that's guilt based on one's own choices, and history class needn't and shouldn't have an interest in absolving you of that.

via The Debate Link https://ift.tt/LJUWduZ

#anti-semitism #Florida #holocaust #racism #slavery