#if you don’t understand nazis have painted us as lizard people

[politics-not-my-thing]

Let's go over some anti-Semitism that is still present to do:

First time I read a book with a Jewish main character and Judaism as a central part of the world building was when I was 19 and I have never seen a book like that before or since

We take for granted that "neutral" world building is world building with Christian elements as an unquestioned part of it. Most of the famous writers are from countries that have Christianity as the dominant religion, there will be elements of Christianity that they just see as normal such as the prevalence of Christmas and Easter, lent and Halloween. These aren't secular holidays, these are Christian holidays which we act as if they are secular

The fact that Britain acts as if happy holidays is a weird thing to say, sure it sounds unusual and is American but it is also a clear attempt to be more inclusive which we ignore

The way Jewish people just aren't included in popular media unless it is to talk about their pain, links to the first point, Jewish people are never just neutral characters they are always part of the Holocaust and look how much their people suffered. That is an entirely valid point to make but there is more to Jewish culture than pain

Bagels, Donuts and definitely some other stuff is Jewish in origin, acknowledge

The erasure of Jewish history from Europe and the wider world history, the Jewish people existed in Europe but since the Romans have been treated as outsiders in their own countries, ghettos were not a new thing to Europe, the Nazis were just the only ones in history we have called out for it. It also explains why Jewish communities, in Europe, tend to be closed off from the larger community when you are constantly treated like outsiders you are going to stick to people who respect you

The way Jewish forms of dress are portrayed as comical, it is a religious thing respect it

The way Jewish customs are treated as comical

The fact that schools would rather treat kids about Christianity, a religion they are already familiar with rather than explain to them why their friends are off school for a religious holiday

The fact that we fail to account for anything but Christian religious holidays for school holidays

The use of typically Jewish features to signify a character as evil and the way they never show up on the heroes

The fact that none of us questioned goblins, sure the kids are fine (they should not be expected to get it) but the adults

The way lizard people is actually a racist tropes against Jewish people

The way we use racist tropes to "call out Israel" there is a difference between calling out Israel for the crimes against humanity, it's brutal attacks against Palestinians and colonialism and calling out Israel because it is a Jewish country, the difference. The way to avoid this, is not to use racist tropes to do it. Ask yourself if this was a Christian country would I be phrasing it this way

The way we gave the Jewish people a new country outside of Europe rather than reclaiming their stolen homes and properties from the Nazis, we essentially told the Jewish people that yeah the Nazis were wrong but we don't want you here (in Europe)

The erasure of Jewish contributions to history, the Jewish people keep records which can be incredibly important to historians yet they are never consulted and we never address the fact that they can and do contribute to our understanding of history

The way that we call it judeo-christian or Abrahamic religions rather actually acknowledging that both Islam and Christianity started off as a denominations of Judaism which grew into their own religions and began to reject Judaism

The way the Bible blames the persecution of Christians on Judaism and nobody questions it. At the time, it was actually the Romans persecuting both the Jewish people and Christians but, at that specific point, they were just being worse to the Christians. When the Romans converted to Christianity however they just painted the Jewish people as the problem because they still hated them but had gotten over their hatred of Christianity and this had massive ramifications for Christianity in Europe and Europe as a whole because the Romans held so much of Europe and the spread of Christianity throughout Europe even after the Western part of Rome fell kept this anti-Semitic view

Also defining the Jewish people by the pain the Holocaust caused them and then refusing to accept anything but a sanitised version of events which presents the Nazis as a redeemable and forgivable group. The actions of the Nazis were evil, torturous, horrific and genocidal you do not get to sugar coat that or make it more palatable to a non-Jewish audience who would like to pretend anti-Semitism wasn't that bad and move past the fact that the Nazis rose to prominence off the backs of racism and anti-Semitism already present in Germany and the rest of Europe therefore allowing them to get away with their horrific actions for a long time as the rest of Europe turned a blind eye until they invaded a country we cared about. You also do not get to pretend the final solution was not a natural conclusion to the anti-Semitic practices of the Nazis and like Hitler did not approve of it because we have no record of him doing so. The records were purposefully destroyed by the Nazis, we have no records because they did not want us to

There are more anti-Semitic actions that our society perpetuates so feel free to add on to this

#anti-Semitism #history #racism