#like you can claim to be a leftist all you want

[patricia-taxxon]

there's this trick that racists/queerphobes/etc do, it's really slick. let's just do a little dialogue as an example, the names have been obscured but I've seen this exact exchange happen before.

Stephanie mc. Influencer: "And furthermore, body positivity intersects with black liberation, as black women are often held to unattainable eurocentric beauty standards"

Suave Replyboy Jr: "Lmao, you leftists always tell on yourselves, did you really just say black people are ugly??"

You see the trick here? it's kind of complicated, like, Stephanie is arguing from the perspective that beauty standards are arbitrary and subject to change, Suave understands beauty as an objective hierarchy, so he dunks on Stephanie safely from the inside of that standard. To him, and likely to many people who haven't thought about their own assumptions very much, the only reason black people would want their own body positivity movement is because they're ugly. Bonus points if Stephanie is white, and you can rile her community against her with claims of racism.

I've been getting some replies like this on my posts about sexual trauma, kink, and queerness. Like... I say that sexual deviance of all forms can intersect and correlate with queer identity, and dozens of Suave Replyboy Jrs come out and dunk on me from the other side of the glass, from inside the false universe I'm trying to discredit, the one where "sexual deviance" is immoral and associating queer sexuality with deviancy is an insult. I'm not saying queer people are dangerous perverts, that's you.

#cilantromixture #mini essay

[biblicalhorror]

The most frustrating part of engaging in any of this discourse with pro-Israel people is that they claim there's just something ineffable about "seeing and understanding" how supporting Palestinian liberation is directly calling for the eradication of Jewish people (as if that type of rhetoric isn't exactly how actual antisemitism often manifests in online spaces but that's a topic for another day)

They get through people debunking the "the land belongs to the people of Israel anyway" argument and the "LGBTQ Palestinians are safe in Israel" argument and the "Genocide isn't what's happening here so you should educate yourself" argument and when all of those points are meticulously disproven over and over they still stand with "Well, myself and your Jewish friends see the hate you have in your heart for us" and it truly doesn't matter what you say at that point because even if you yourself are Jewish they will claim that refusing to support the state, government and military of Israel is inherently hateful and bigoted, as if a religious ethnostate is some inherent human right that is being taken away from them. I know many of them are blinded by the relentless propaganda that's been around their whole lives and how hard it is to break free from a belief system that is so tied to your core identity as a human being but it is so frustrating watching people being led straight to the point over and over again and just turning around and refusing to see it.

It's also so frustrating to see people using the momentum of this movement to casually tack on actual antisemitism to these discussions, as if having Jewish people in positions of power is why the US bends over backwards to excuse the actions of Israel and not, yknow, the fact that our government directly benefits from having a military stronghold in the middle east. I've talked to some well-meaning pro-Palestine friends irl who casually use antisemetic talking points because they've ALSO bought into the narrative that Israeli = Jewish and so they blame the actions of Israel and the IDF on Jewish people's "religious values" and ignore the fact that this conflict really has almost nothing to do with religion itself and everything to do with capitalism, imperialism and maintaining the US's status as a so-called "global power".

#dont get me wrong there are lots of people on the pro palestine side who are very much aware of and vigilant against antisemitic rhetoric #but i genuinely worry about some of my non-jewish leftist friends and allies falling down some super shady pipelines because of all of this #i spend a lot of my time on my public facing social media sharing articles and graphics and whatnot about antisemitism #and how careful we need to be when calling out these atrocities and our government's complicity in them #but when one side is genuinely claiming with no evidence or argument that being against colonial occupation is just antisemitism #it makes it so hard to call out actual antisemitism within these spaces bc it delegitimizes antisemitism as a concern #i just want to scream #like. im not even jewish and i vividly remember when we had a special lesson in girl scouts about how wonderful Israel is #and they had us make little mini versions of the israel flag and they told us that israel stood for the safety of the jewish people #and i came home and i told my mom about how cool israel was #and she promptly pulled me out of girl scouts #which at the time felt unfair because she didnt explain why #but also how do you explain the horrors of colonialism and imperialism to your newly zionist 10 year old #anyway the point is that if i as a non-jewish girl scout was exposed to that kind of propaganda #i can only imagine how inescapable it must be for many american jews in the US #and i truly empathize with the amount of unlearning that needs to be done #and how hard it must be to let go of some of these ideas #but that doesnt make it any less frustrating to watch these dynamics play out on such a massive scale #and i hold so much respect for people in white jewish communities re-educating themselves and standing on the right side of history #as well as for all of the people of color and especially American Palestinians standing up and using their voices as much as they do #personal

[idiosyncraticrednebula]

As much as I hate current Disney and what they are doing, I don't like it when people try to do revisionist history or misinterpretations of the classic movies just for the sake of sticking it at Disney. Those movies were made by people with a passion for storytelling and art. I won't allow people to slander them just because they hate what Disney is doing nowadays. Keep them out of this mess.

#disney #disney classics #txt #someone on twitter once said that disney has been spreading “leftist” propaganda since the renaissance. oh please fuck off #and there is woman rachel wilson who made the most asinine claims about tlm. she thinks it was all about “independence” and “girl power” #no bitch it was about forgiveness letting children go letting prejudices go communication problems and love being sacrificial. miss me with #that nonsense. she was reaching for the stars with her takes on that movie #don't bring that bullshit into the renaissance era. nothing about that era was politically-driven #the closest was probably mulan and that story was more about wanting to prove people you can do something right and being loved and #cherished by your parents regardless of what tradition says. she just happened to live in a highly tradionalistic sexist culture but really #her story applies to everybody and that's why everybody likes that movie and her so much. she is very relatable and real

[syssyadmin]

had not won any callout infamy yet but apparently some tme person from my immediate area with a bit of a following on leftblr has very recently blocked me and after some short digging i found them posting “i’m not reblogging any callouts but..” and then reblogs from the person who said they’d tip off the freaks to the police if they could gkjlfdh like. bro i live around the corner from you.. you can block all the trannies you want but all i can do is hope that if these ppl came for me irl you wouldn’t be so quick to label me undesirable and watch me get taken out lmfao

#Real Leftists Hate Tranny Faggots <3 #like. you can call yourself a police abolitionist all you want. and maybe you can claim you didn't see them say that #but the fact of the matter is you're very clearly on one side and not the other #and i think maybe you should examine which one that is. just a thought. #c@ll0uts

[snekdood]

welp, at this point if anyone in the crowd of Bad Faith People Who Stalk Me And Hate Me Bc Of Someone Else's Compulsive Lying tries to accuse me of antisemitism bc i have a vampire whos a villain in my comic, i'm gonna ask them what their take was on allll of this going on. if its anything like "israelis and/or zionists are all evil people" then ik i never have to take their opinion seriously bc they dont even know what antisemitism means.

#i will listen to jewish ppl if they have any critiques or concerns about him in my comic but the rest a yall. lol. lmao. #if you are right now perpetuating antisemitic conspiracy theories about how jewish ppl are in control of all the money n shit #how can you claim you are less antisemitic than me? #its honestly freeing to realize a lot of internet leftists dont know wtf they're talking about ever. #so now i dont gotta over think if i Am being antisemitic bc yall dont even know wtf it looks like! #i was always so worried about this possibly happening but yknow what ive realized through all of this- #a lot of yall dont know wtf you're talking about at all ever. i was worried about being dog piled but like. why should i be now #you want a reason to hate me regardless. you're gonna be bad faith and assume the most uncharitable thing regardless. why #should i care and try to cater to YOUR- a non jewish leftist's- sensibilities? #just say you hate what i make and move tf on. #stop pretending you have a moral reason. also maybe stop pretending you know whats going to happen esp if my abuser on here #gave you their rundown and understanding of my comic bc i kept so much shit a secret from them to begin with. #why tf would i share all of my comic to them. so they can steal my ideas and/or share it to everyone? yeah i already knew ahead of time #that could be something they do. and i know to never reveal anything that spoils the plot anyways. #even if they're right about the tiny amount of stuff i showed them assume they're still wrong bc they just LOVE mixing truth with lies. #its like. their favorite thing to do. #but yeah yknow if any jewish ppl have any concerns ill listen. everyone else can go fuck themselves though. #dont come up in here acting like you know what antisemitism is lmao. #honestly i should've only considered jewish ppls opinions on this to begin with. but yall really gaslit me into thinking you knew just as #much as they do about antisemitism. and now look where we are. you've revealed you dont know shit and i dont need to take you seriously. #while you spent all this time laid back thinking you Know Better bc you call yourself progressive and think thats all the work you need #to do- i was ACTUALLY learning about antisemitism and conspiracy theories so i ACTUALLY know wtf to avoid in my art #and yall are gonna really try and be bold enough to assume you know what it looks like. you havent done shit. you havent reflected on shit #you think you're already above it all when really you're only a couple steps away from regressing into a conservative.

[gingerswagfreckles]

I think people need to understand that when someone says the situation in Israel/Palestine is complicated they are not necessarily saying that the discussion of who the oppressor vs oppressed is complicated. The Israeli government has been oppressing the Palestinians for a very long time, that is clear, and it is not complicated to understand that at least since the 80s they have had dramatically more financial and military power to keep control of the territory in the way they like.

However, it is reductive and dismissive to insist that there is no complexity in the potential ways to move forward to bring peace to the region. Despite what people on tumblr.edu like to believe, "Israel should never have been created" is not a practical solution to an incredibly heated geopolitical situation in the present day. Israel was created and it does exist. 10 million people live there. 74% of the population is native born and the country has existed for 75 years. Hand waving these fact away with the opinion that "they should move back to where they came from" may make you feel good about being a Radical Leftist, but it does not give anyone a road map for how exactly millions of people without dual citizenship are supposed to just up and evaporate. Nor does it acknowledge the reality that 21% of Israelis are Arabs, the very people you are claiming to want to give the land back to.

Insisting that there's nothing complicated about expecting an entire country's population to willingly dissappear with no consequences is not a productive way to think about this conflict. It ignores the many massive superpowers that have an interest in proping up different states in the region, the power dynamics involved in any land back movements, and the inevitably negative consequences of totally dissolving an established state without a plan. It is also completely and almost comically unrealistic, so much so that it makes it hard to believe that anyone who's opinion starts and ends with this idea really gives a shit about anyone who lives in the area as much as they care about their online leftist clout.

There's nothing complicated in understanding that the Israeli government is and has been maintaining an oppressive apartheid state for decades. It is, however, very complicated to come up with a realistic way to resolve some of the most intricately entangled land disputes on the planet without plunging the region into total chaos. Not everyone has to be deeply educated on every geopolitical situation, but it is very hard to take people seriously when they know nothing about the politics or history of a region and yet insist that there is nothing complicated about it at all.

There's a lot of people on this website who are getting dangerously smug about their own ignorance, and are starting to go down Qanon type anti-intellectual paths in the name of being sufficiently radical. Not knowing the details of a very convoluted land dispute isn't something to brag about online as you call for intentionally reductive solutions. You can support the Palestinian cause and be aware of the oppression they have faced while also holding off on calling people trying to do real analysis and de-escalation work bootlickers. We need to get control of the urge to fit every global issue into a simplistic YA novel narrative structure that appeals to Western revolutionary fantasies.

#gingerswagfreckles #israel #palestine #israel palestine conflict #i/p #i/p conflict

[motziedapul]

Perhaps the funniest thing that could have happened lately was that this anticapitalist cafe and community space near my place was shutting down near the end of May - but because so many Texas and Florida conservatives celebrated it online, the place got a huge donation to keep operating

It's a great place. It functions mostly like a regular cafe but it has this free/pay what you want drip coffee for anyone who wants it, free bathroom use, and it stocks indie merch and books on antifascist, queer, leftist, socialist, indigenous topics. I've met a lot of awesome people there.

Its very existence enrages conservatives, and anarchocapitalists who tried to claim it only to be shown the middle finger by its anticapitalist owner, who is an all around nice dude (and a fellow Elden Ring fan)

If you can toss a coin to its continued operation, please do! Upon request from their followers on insta they opened a Gofundme. Even just a few dollars will be a huge help.

#signal boost #The Anarchist #the Anarchist Cafe #the Anarchist Toronto #Toronto #community space #anticapitalist

[familyabolisher]

do you not believe in gendered socialization? not trying to be a bad faith ask btw im a leftist and i generally agree w all ur takes but i do pretty firmly believe in gendered socialization being like a thing w material consequences so im interested in ur take if you’re willing to give it

no. "gendered socialisation" is about a stone's throw away from "sex-based oppression" if we're being real about it. in discourse terms, it gets pulled out to denote an ineluctable state of "womanhood"-subjectivity in those coercively assigned femaleness and ineluctable "manhood"-subjectivity to those coercively assigned maleness; in other words, it gets used as a cudgel for gender essentialism coming from "progressive" types by which the claim that trans women/otherwise TMA people have "male privilege" ("male socialisation") can be smuggled into the discourse; the experiences of cis women and trans men/otherwise transmasc people are privileged as a standardised form of 'female socialisation' that pits them not as agentive within social forms of gender (and as beneficiaries of transmisogyny) but as unilaterally 'oppressed' to the unilaterally 'oppressive' male-socialised. there is no one coherent form of "gendered socialisation"; how gender is coercively socially imposed varies along countless axes that cannot be accounted for under one sole framework. if you want to say that experiences and subjectivities are shaped by misogyny or patriarchy then simply name misogyny and patriarchy as deciding factors. it suffers from the same fundamental issue as many contemporary feminisms ie. that even in its most charitable form, it attempts to present a complete account of "womanhood" and account for transfemininity only after the fact via hamfisted exceptionalism, rather than beginning with transmisogyny as the lynchpin of gendering and developing itself from there.

+ in general i try not to overrely on the language of "socialisation" and "conditioning" to describe behaviours and relationships -- unlike "coercion," which i think identifies the discourses of power + antagonism present in these modes of subject-creation, the language of socialisation and conditioning conjures up this idea of a non-agentive, immutable relationship to gender (one in which gender is not something we do but something that is done to us) which stands fundamentally at odds with what transness should articulate. i guess another way of putting it is that i don't really believe in appeals to what people do or do not "experience" [x does or does not "experience" misogyny etc] as a cogent way of developing an actual theory of oppression + liberation.

#ask

[applesauce42069]

so if people didn't hear what happened in calgary, essentially:

yes, that is a nazi salute. yes, that is the leader of Iran.

what is not visible in this photo is the pro-palestine protestors he was standing with. in the videos that circulated, you can see a blonde woman in a keffiyeh walk up to him, say something, and then walk away. there are people with keffiyehs and pro-palestine signs all around him.

they are the people who concern me the most. they claim to be pro palestine, pro justice and peace and equality. a man, standing in their protest, did a nazi salute, and none of them stopped him.

i'm a jew and the descendant of holocaust survivors and victims. if someone did a nazi salute in my vicinity and it was safe to do so, i would go bat shit on them.

so why did no one stop him?

i feel like is is emblematic of how antisemitism spreads among pro-palestine leftists. they don't set out to be antisemitic. they don't want to be antisemitic because its wrong to be prejudiced. but the antisemitism begins to slip through the cracks. they usually don't know enough about jewish people, jewish history, or antisemitism in general to counter it. the effect is slow, but damning. eventually these antisemitic symbols lose their meaning, become less important. so even in the face of something this overt, people don't stop it.

all i can say is that its truly disgusting that people turned the very real, longstanding oppression of palestinians by the israeli state into an excuse to spread violent, hateful, and harmful rhetoric at the expense of jewish people around the world.

and i would also like to say: my grandmother grew up in communist poland, raised by a holocaust survivor mother who had lost her own mother and sisters, likely to the nazi death squads east of Poland, the Einsatzgruppen, as they were trying to flee. Her father may have never met her, having died in the polish people's army around the same time she was born. all her life she wanted to come to canada, because it was safe and bountiful. she brought her family here, and i've always felt lucky for it. now we have people throwing up nazi salutes in our streets to celebrate the attempted bombing of our family members.

antisemitism is a plague.

#antisemitism #canada #jumblr

[edenfenixblogs]

Thank Your Jewish Friends Trying to Educate You Right Now

If you’re a leftist, and you have had a Jewish friend reach out to you to try and tell you that you’ve said something alarming or harmful or antisemitic: listen to them, learn, and say thank you.

I am VERY lucky in that all the friends I’ve personally reached out to have taken the opportunity to learn and grow and adjust their behavior. I have never told them that they should not advocate for Palestine. I have told them I want to advocate for Palestine WITH them, but I need to feel safe in order to do so. I need to feel like the people I’m advocating with don’t want me and my loved ones dead. Thank HaShem that they have listened to me. From the bottom of my heart, my friends are a blessing.

But I’ve seen an incredibly disheartening number of fellow Jews who have had the opposite experiences—being expelled from their queer communities and activist communities and book clubs and any space they once found community. This is horrid but it’s especially horrid for Jews. It’s a reminder that we are only accepted if we conform. We are only accepted if we accept abuse. Our presence is always tolerated, never wanted. Our views are not to be trusted. Our opinions are always suspect. Our motives are always sinister. Our acceptance is always conditional. And I think that hurts even more for us than you’d imagine, because our own spaces are no longer safe. We are already in diaspora. And now our synagogues and homes and other community buildings are being vandalized and attack. We are cut off from our own cultural community and now many of us are being cut off from our personal communities as well. It is a loneliness that most people outside of a diaspora will never know.

Im willing to bet that if you have/had a Jewish friend who you considered close but who seems to have disappeared from your life, it’s because you either didn’t reach out to them after 10/7 or you have failed to acknowledge the stochastic threat to Jews or the Jewish connection to Israel. Why is it important that you do this? Because we are your friends and loved ones. And when friends and loved ones tell you they are hurting, you should listen. When you say you care about someone, you should be willing to listen to them when they say you’re hurting them and then you should apologize. It is more hurtful than you can possibly imagine to watch people you thought cared about you decide to listen to people across the world who they have never met rather than simply have a conversation with a friend, because they assume that friend will dismiss the pain of Palestinians.

Many of you are assuming what your friends are feeling about Israel and Palestine, but you haven’t actually asked them. Many of you think that expressing sorrow for Israel or jews in the world, that means we cannot care about or want a better future for Palestine.

If you are lucky enough to have a friend who has tried to reach out to you, that means they are willing to forgive you for neglecting them in this time. They are willing to talk with you and try to explain their emotions in good faith. They want to find a way to advocate for progress with you. They want to keep you in their lives. They want you to understand our culture and history—not at the exclusion of anyone else’s culture and history—just at the inclusion of our own.

Because here’s the other thing: they won’t forget that you denied them understanding and respect and the benefit of the doubt. That’s not a threat. That’s a cultural feature of Judaism. We have famously long cultural memories. We remember the people and places we can trust and those who refused to give us peace and safety and basic kindness. We remember the people who targeted us, your friends and loved ones, simply because other Jews who we have never met behaved in ways you don’t understand and of which you don’t approve. You are blaming the sins of others on people you claim to love.

If someone is giving you the chance to undo the damage you have done on this, you should take it. And if you have expelled Jews from a space you once shared or failed to acknowledge their pain in this time—find them and apologize.

I am not Muslim, but I wouldn’t doubt that something similar is happening in Muslim spaces. Islamophobia and antisemitism are at terrifyingly high levels right now. And if you think you can’t support Jews without condemning Muslims or you can’t support Muslims without condemning Jews, you’re not only part of the problem—you’re the biggest part of the problem.

What we all need right now is unity, peace, solidarity, understanding, and education above all else.

#jumblr #antisemitism #leftist antisemitism #islamophobia #jewish muslim solidarity

[boldlygoingtohell]

In a weird way, as a Jew, I can kinda take Normal Antisemitism™️.

I mean, I understand where right-wing racists are coming from when it comes to their antisemitism. At the end of the day, theirs just comes from fear, replacement theory, etc… It’s easily identifiable. 2+2=4. Yea its shitty, but I see how they got from A to B and it’s a straight line.

But left-wing antisemitism?? Like, how does that happen? I thought the left was about supporting minority groups, encouraging them to speak and be heard. But all I’m seeing from leftists these days (I myself being super fucking liberal, left, etc…) is just waves and waves of antisemitism. And yes it has to do with Israel, but these people are incapable of criticizing the Israeli government without going “all Jews are responsible!” in the process. It's infuriating.

Are all the the world’s Jews, millions of which live OUTSIDE of Israel, now responsible for Israel’s actions? I'M a stupid American! I’ve never even BEEN to Israel, much less know the intricate details of a geo-political conflict whose complexities go willfully unlearned by armchair activists in favor of yelling in all caps for 140 characters.

But what really gets me, and I mean REALLY get me about the whole situation, is the hypocrisy.

Remember how awful it was when we saw waves of Islamophobic hate crimes after 9/11, American Muslims with no ties to al-Qaeda being targeted for the faith those terrorists claimed to represent?

Or do you remember standing against the wave of anti-Asian hate crimes that was spurned on by COVID falsehoods? The “China virus” as Trump so eloquently put it? You remember being pissed about that, not blaming Asian Americans but standing with them against hate?

And hell, I’ve heard there has been a rash of Islamophobic attacks again because of the Israeli-Gaza conflict. That’s fucking awful, and I will stand against that bull shit because it does not belong here, end of story.

But now there are also antisemitic attacks, hate crimes, being perpetrated around the world. And who are the perpetrators now? The left that stood against everything else. There's no widespread ally-ship for Jews like me. There's no sweeping social media campaign, no catchy hashtag, no ice bucket challenge.

Why am I allowed to be condemned for what a country on the other side of the world is doing, when I have nothing to do with it? Why can I have the finger pointed at me when I don’t want the fighting in the first place? Why must Jews be allowed to be the target of this ire when it's already been decided that other ethnicities/religions don't deserve it either?

Now, I am PROUD to be Jewish; it is my culture, in my heritage, in my literal blood. It is in my genetics, my bones, my spoken language, it is in the holidays I celebrate, the philosophies I live by.

But it is also in the generational trauma of my mother insisting I have a passport as a young child, not because we were traveling, but in case we had to flee. It is in her inherent distrust of the government; a card-carrying Democrat all her life, she would always remind me, "if you don't think the government can't turn on you, you're kidding yourself." It is her constant reminders that as a Jew, our assimilation is conditional, our acceptance is political. I felt these, but never as strongly as she did. Not until now.

I am third generation American, and yet I feel like an outsider in the only country I have ever known. People who I thought understood, who were my friends, who marched with me against the injustices of the world, are now calling after Jews to answer for Israel's actions.

I say I don't want the violence to persist and I'm told that I'm, "one of the good ones". I'm told hurt Israelis don't deserve sympathy because, "all Jews are rich anyway, right? Who cares." I tell them my fears about the rising antisemitism and wearing my star of david necklace out. I'm told, "it doesn't matter, you're white anyway."

For the first time in my life, the racists aren't just some crazy KKK members. They're not just Nazis marching around with beer bellies and ill fitting helmets. It's not just some screeching street preacher who claims I'm going to hell after he caught the glint off my star of david necklace. If needs be, I can kick and punch my way out of those. They're just idiots. Isolated, concentrated incidents. It'd be a good story to tell at a bar the next day though a gap-toothed smile and a sling on my shoulder.

But now, both sides are coming after me and my people. Now, it's not just idiots who have all of their views backwards; it's people I thought I could trust to have my back, to go down swinging with me against those Nazis. Right. Left. It's everywhere. There's no escape.

It's coming from all sides. It's coming from social media platforms, from dinners with friends, from posters on street lamps.

I live in one of the safest, most Jewish neighborhoods in America, and for the first time in my life I am truly scared.

#jumblr #antisemitism #judaism #jewish #I'm just so tired of it all #I wasn't an anxious person before this #racism #long post I guess #can we go back to the days of punching Nazis? #life was simple

[elder-millennial-of-zion]

I miss the days, way back when before October 7, when I felt like I was part of leftist circles. I miss feeling energised by leftist slogans because I thought they included me, instead of targeted me.

I miss hearing “eat the rich” and not hearing it as a dog whistle for “kill the Jews.” I miss feeling inspired by phrases like “our struggles for liberation are all connected,” instead of hearing its real meaning, “the Jews are the evil puppet masters behind everything and the world must unite against them.” I miss believing that when leftists talked about punching up at their oppressors, it wasn’t just an excuse to punch down at more vulnerable minorities that they decided were their oppressors despite all evidence to the contrary.

I miss the days when the left poured into the streets to protest cops and corporations instead of protesting Jews. I miss updating myself on those protests so I could join them, instead of to know which areas to avoid because they’ll be Judenrein for the day.

I don’t wish my eyes hadn’t been opened. I’d much rather see the truth no matter how painful and disillusioning it is, because the alternative isn’t actually “bliss.” It’s having a perpetual nagging feeling that something’s off but I can’t put my finger on it, or if I can then I must be overreacting or imagining it’s worse than it is.

But that pain and disillusionment is very real. That loss is very real. It was a community I thought I belonged to, a community I put a lot of work and energy into for many years, and there is grief at the loss of it. Grief that it’s gone, grief that it never was what it claimed to be in the first place. I guess I’m grieving the loss of that part of my identity. And grieving the loss of how people I thought were my friends and allies perceive my identity. Grieving the illusion that they were ever my allies at all, that they ever would be my allies if I needed. Because I haven’t really changed, but the way my former circles look at me completely changed. People who thought I was a good person and a good ally on October 6 decided I was the devil incarnate very literally overnight.

The person who privately reached out to me a few years ago to thank me for a Facebook post I made defending sex workers, because as a former sex worker they appreciated it. Now they’ve been posting antisemitic blood libel, the kind of rhetoric that’s already gotten Jews killed, for six months straight. I tried to tell them how much pain it causes me as a Jew to see their posts, and they only doubled down. It truly is their loss. I was a good friend and a good ally, and they threw me away because I’m a Jew. But it’s totally not because I’m a Jew, it’s because I’m the evil kind of Jew, the kind that just so happens to be the profile of ninety percent of the Jewish population.

I’m grateful I have such a strong sense of Jewish identity, because otherwise the loss of identity in this other way would be far more destabilising. I get why so many people cling to their political identities no matter how much cognitive dissonance they have to wave away; why they insist their ideology is righteous no matter how much evidence to the contrary. Without any other solid identity they would feel too adrift. But that doesn’t excuse their behavior. It’s not ok to jump on a bandwagon to persecute and kill Jews because you want to belong to something that badly, because you can’t handle your sense of self evolving with all the growing pains that come with it.

So many progressive Jews like myself have described ourselves as “politically homeless.” (Specifically in the diaspora; I know the political framework in Israel is completely different.) We can let ourselves sit in that grief. Being homeless is painful and uncomfortable, but it’s better than staying in an abusive home.

#antisemitism #leftist antisemitism #anti zionism is antisemitism #politically homeless Jews #israel #jumblr

[max1461]

I have the following Grand Theory of the Twenty-First Century that I would like to put forth. I don't know if it's true, but sometimes I think it's true.

Many of you will have heard of the Flynn effect. This is the observed effect that average performance on IQ tests has gone up since these tests started being administered. On a first glance, it appears that people all over the world have gotten measurably smarter in the past 100 years.

There are a variety of proposed explanations for this. Probably better childhood nutrition and the like has something to do with it. But another proposed explanation is this: IQ tests are known to be trainable. You can practice and get better at them. And you can practice the sorts of tasks that show up on an IQ and get better at those sorts of tasks, which might be why (IIRC?) standardized education seems to improve IQ scores. What sorts of tasks are on an IQ test? Abstract thinking tasks. Tasks related to abstract pattern recognition.

It has been proposed that people today live their lives in a world much more governed by these sorts of abstract tasks. We interface with bureaucracy and paperwork, we manipulate strange little symbols on a computer screen, we internalize the various abstractions we are (explicitly and implicitly) taught in school in order to receive the best grade. Where children 100 years ago were taught by their environment to do physical, concrete things, children today are taught by their environment to engage with abstract systems. And success at engagement with abstract systems is what determines success in life, which was much less true 100 years ago.

There are ways in which I think this is a good thing. Abstract systems have both many uses and many joys, which mathematicians have regaled us with since Euclid, and I think it's a good thing if people are more prepared to engage with abstraction these days. But it's probably not wholly a good thing. After all, there is also much utility and many joys in the physical and concrete, and I suspect that today we live in a world which prepares people markedly less well to succeed at the concrete. This is particularly troubling since many concrete activities make up the very most fundamental bedrock of the human condition (as it has hitherto existed).

In-person social relationships are of a concrete character. Leaving your house and doing shit is of a concrete character. Making and fixing things with your hands is concrete. Fucking is concrete.

I think it is possible, and potentially explanatory of some of the malaise I see among my peers, that we have grown up in a world which has taught us to shuffle symbols instead of to do things. People will blame this on their political opponents, leftists will attribute it to capitalism and rightists will attribute it to this or that form of effeminate progressive ideology, but (at the risk of being immediately dismissed by certain people) I want to suggest that, insofar as this is true at all, it might simply be best understood a consequence of industrial society itself. Abstract tasks simply get more useful and more in demand the greater the complexity of society grows and the more technology expands into our lives.

I don't want to present this sociological theory with too much confidence, and I am certainly not claiming we should burn down all the factories and go live in the woods or whatever. I'm just saying, uh... maybe this is something that's going on. I sometimes look around and think "this definitely might be something that's going on." And if it is going on, we should think about what its implications are.

#society

[femmespoiled]

ID: Video that is a stitch made by @professorneil on tiktok.

The person in the video stitched says: "which is that it seems like quite a lot of people, particularly white liberals, will very often take on all these different queer and neurodivergent labels and feel as if they have to be oppressed by something because…”

And the person stitching said video continues by saying: “so, yes, this is absolutely a thing and not only is it a documented sociological phenomenon, but sociologists have come up with a name for it and it’s called the race to innocence and sometimes also the race to the margins, it’s the same thing. Now when Mary Louis Fellows and Sherene Razack coined this term back in 1998, they were thinking mostly about white feminists within the multiracial feminist movements, so bear that in mind as I read from their article, it is more broadly applicable, absolutely, yes, but that is their focus here.”

The person in the video proceeds by quoting from the article mentioned: “When a woman fails to pursue how she is implicated in other women’s lives and retreats to the position that the system that oppresses her the most is the only one worth fighting and that the other systems (systems in which she is positioned as dominant) are not of her concern, she will fail to undo her own subordination. Attempts to change one system while leaving the others intact leaves in place the structure of domination that is made up of interlocking hierarchies.”

The person in the video continues: “So, Fellows and Razack are implicating and critiquing here that the very second wave feminist, white feminist idea that all women share a common struggle, which it is only possible to suggest if you are ignoring the unique oppressions of queer women, women of color, women in poverty, etc. When faced with that challenge, the people who occupy a position of privilege, so in this example, the straight, middle and upper-class, white women will say “That’s not the issue that we’re talking about here, we’re talking here about being women, we’re talking about patriarchy, misogyny.” They will race to innocence; they will race to their own marginalized identity categories in order to avoid admitting that they have power and privilege and are also the oppressor. And, sometimes, that race to innocence is very calculated (in this part the screen in the video shows text that reads: *and defensive!), it is deliberate, it is strategic. I might be avoiding talking about my male privilege, my white privilege, when I am also discussing being a wave slave because I want to preserve those privileges, while attacking the oppression I feel, but it’s, at least, as often, if not more often, something that we are doing reflexively, uncritically. It is easier to claim solidarity, it is easier to feel empathy, if we are doing it from our own position of marginality, it’s easier to speak credibly from a position of oppression and to do so with authority, if you also possess privileges that allow you to appear unbiased, neutral and to do so safely, if afterward you can retreat to a place of privilege. So, it is certainly possible that, at least in part, this explosion of straight, white, cis men leftists claiming neurodivergence is explained by some sort of desire to claim oppression, to build those alliances, to feel that empathy and to access that credibility, but even if it is sincere, it is still dangerous. Of course, it could be strategic and insincere. When you race to innocence, race to the margins, be mindful of the privileges you’re leaving at the center.”

END ID

- Here is the article mentioned in the video, if you want to check it out (in PDF):

The Race to Innocence: Confronting Hierarchical Relations among Women

#b discusses racism #and other marginalized issues #video #btexts #took me a while and i was supposed to do this yesterday so I'm very sorry but here it is #race to innocence #race to the margins

[qqueenofhades]

Do you think part of what makes people feel like voting isn’t worth it because things don’t get better under democrats is because we can’t see what would have happened? Like I see a lot of people saying “well biden hasn’t made america much better so there’s no point” but it’s like they don’t understand that under a republican they would actively do everything they could to cause more harm. It’s like they don’t understand that 1. The president can’t do much, and 2. IT WOULD BE WORSE. like they don’t understand the possibilities. Idk people just frustrate me

I'm sorry, as I know you're just relaying what these people think and not claiming so yourself, but the whole "things don't get better under Biden/Democrats" line to which we are subjected so very, miserably often is a lie!!! It is demonstrably a lie! It is peddled by people who deliberately live in their echo-chamber leftist misinformation bubbles and either don't read the news, don't accept anything less than the Magical Socialist Revolution Now, and don't think partial or incremental progress (aka the only kind of progress that exists) is valid. "Biden hasn't single-handedly fixed everything wrong with America and the world after the most damaging presidency ever to exist and 250+ years of flaws, while other countries actually are their own actors with agency making complex choices, so we shouldn't vote for him" is a bullshit lie and I'm tired of it!!!

(Again. Sorry. This is not directed at you. This is just my frustration with this entire ridiculous situation speaking.)

We have had multiple elections now where people voted for Democrats, which resulted in abortion protections, protections for LGBTQ people, the biggest climate legislation ever to pass Congress/be signed into law (the Inflation Reduction Act), vast improvements in the job market, executive actions both large and small, improvements in labor and the economy, a general democratic system, a defense of the rule of law, a warning against fascism, and everything else that Trump trampled on in 4 years and will finish the job of doing if this godforsaken country is either right-wing-zealot or left-wing-zealot enough to put him back into office. (Like, people. Google is free. You're welcome to look up the improvements Biden has actually made, but that would harm your Narrative.) So much of this misinformation is also peddled by people who are proud that they don't have a clue how the American government works and/or deliberately lie about it: see all the claims that it was Biden's fault for not magically stopping a Trump-stacked SCOTUS, selected for the express purpose of overturning Roe, from overturning Roe. Because the president could just unilaterally overturn the Supreme Court with no problems at all if He Really Wanted To, I guess. Even if that is literally not the way it has ever functioned in history.

All the noxious Republicans in state legislatures passing anti-trans/anti-abortion/anti-voting laws ARE NOT SOMETHING BIDEN CAN STOP. If you're going to criticize him for not doing something, for God's sake at least make it for something he can do (like not calling for a ceasefire in Gaza, though I would argue he's already taking a more nuanced approach than the entirety of the American establishment during the War on Terror). And then vote for him when/if he follows it up, not just throw your hands in the air and scream about how you Can't Possibly Sully Yourself (especially when there is some very selective support going on here and a deliberate white-washing of how many orders of magnitude worse absolutely everything else in America and the world would be under Trump. So.)

I'm tired of it. I'm really, really tired of it. I've been trying to cut back on my politics posting because my mental health is bad right now and I often feel like a broken record screaming into the void. But. Yeah. Anyway. Whoof.

#plantsandothers #ask #politics for ts

[siryouarebeingmocked]

i gotta say i agree that exposing children to algorithmic content feeds is going to make them grow up with one billion new kinds of mental illnesses and it's a serious societal problem that urgently needs addressing but it makes me v. v. v. uneasy when i see posts going around that identify this issue and come to the conclusion 'this is why it's important for parents to know what their kid is doing online' and uh girls there are a lot of kids out there who would be dead if their parents knew what they were doing online

"yeah this aspect of capitalism is extremely alienating and traumatizing" and im nodding and smiling and then they add "which is why we must retreat to the safety of the family" and i start abruptly high-pitched screaming like a fire alarm

It's really amazing how txttletale almost comes to the right conclusion, and then veers off at the last second.

And is basically asking for validation about their irrational, highly emotional knee-jerk reaction. 

Also, how exactly can one tell that a lot of kids would be dead if their parents knew what they were doing? Hypotheticals aren't proof. 

Even if I assume this is hyperbole, maybe the kid is doing something that's actually harmful, and parents need to keep them from doing that. That;s literally the job.

Why are you just completely ignoring that idea? How can you go "social media is harmful for kids" and then immediately go "parents should have no control over their kids online lives"? 

>capitalism Oh, yeah, clearly it's the algo and capitalism that are the problem, not what people are actually doing with social media. Individuals bear no responsibility at all. 

Couldn't possibly be TX trying to WD-40 a square peg into a round hole. 

Also, notice the lack of any specific measures, just vague "this needs to be addressed". Given her prior leftist leanings, five bucks says most of her ideal solutions involve government regulations. 

You know, the ones that often come from people who are even more out of touch with the internet than your average modern parent. 

Also, it's kind of hilarious that someone who blocks over the slightest disagreement and unironically spouts the "Tolkein's orcs are racist" argument thinks they're opposed to bigotry and know how to deal with massive Internet problems. 

We know that both traditional and social media work closely with the government to shape public opinion, so blaming the harm of social media entirely on capitalism is stupid. 

PPS: , this is coming from someone whose claim to e-fame is being a smug, toxic, insular jerk even by the standards of this infamously toxic social media site. No wonder she wants to blame the algo and capitalism. 

#txttletale #internet #lolgic #stupid