#especially if you're jewish

[council-of-beetroot]

As we see an increase in antisemitism I have reflected on my experiences how many years ago being the token Jew in my eighth grade English class and I have found some aspects about it which lead me to believe are the parts that Holocaust Education in the U.S. goes wrong

Being taught in English Classes

Often such as in my state, the Holocaust is taught as part of English curriculum. English teachers aren't history teachers and they may be lacking in the skills or knowledge required to teach in the necessary depth to discuss the Holocaust.

My mother used to teach English but she had a history degree as well. She would lecture in class about everything leading up to and during WWII. I remember reading handouts she had in her classroom while I was waiting after school about the history of antisemitism. I didn't have any of this in my English class unit, because to put it simply most English teachers aren't my mother who also has the prior knowledge of how to teach history.

Additionally, as it is part of English, there is often more focus on Holocaust literature rather than the topic itself

This is where I think it gets extremely flawed if a person's primary knowledge of a historical period is Anne Frank or the incredibly inaccurate boy in the striped pajamas. A single account or work of complete fiction shouldn't be your main lens to view any topic whether it's the Holocaust, Slavery, Civil Rights movement etc.

You're in short blurring fact and fiction when discussing these things in the context of literature.

Sense of Finality

I feel like in my classes at least there was this idea that was kind of implied that hatred of Jews began and ended with Hitler and the Holocaust. I think this leads to misconceptions about antisemitism.

I feel this is a problem as I remember mistakenly getting that takeaway in school regarding civil rights in America. It was taught that Slavery was a problem, emancipation proclamation, MLK said I have a dream, and the civil rights act was passed and bam no inequality or racism. Later on, I fortunately learned this was flawed for many reasons. But not everyone does.

Not teaching about how the Holocaust happened

If you aren't given the knowledge of how centuries of hatred lead up to the Holocaust, I feel the main takeaway becomes that it was almost a random occurrence.

Many learn the Holocaust is bad without learning the signs of thinking that can lead neighbors to kill neighbors.

So many people don't have the basic facts such as Hitler being elected rather than assuming power.

I think when you learn of an atrocity of such scale without learning the human beliefs that brought about it, you have learned nothing.

I had a girl in my college uni class who was shocked when I said that antisemitism didn't begin and end with Hitler. I can see where she would get this idea if I at ten figured that racism ended with MLK.

Using Simulation

Slavery and the Holocaust should probably not be taught using roleplay. It usually goes poorly and you can find dozens of examples of how this goes wrong.

Sanitizing History

Exactly what it sounds like. But it's a major problem in general with history education in the US. I think we downplay westward expansion, and slavery in the us. When we downplay those it's easy to see how some begin to downplay the Holocaust.

We had a kid faint on the trip to the Holocaust memorial at some of the images. I think it was because they were inadequately prepared to see the horrors in image, my teacher didn't show any pictures in class.

Final notes

I don't blame teachers. Teacher's jobs fucking suck from what I've seen and many don't have the skills or resources or experience. I guess for now I think it's good to recognize those holes in our education and fill them ourselves through self education and life long learning

With the current political atmosphere of education of the unpleasant or difficult to discuss parts of history, i can only see things getting worse if we don't change anything. But like I said in the absence of a solid education which discusses these topics, it's important to educate ourselves and confront our lack of knowledge.

[infiniteglitterfall]

I guess this might be why the UK seemed to go so antisemitic so quickly

I'm researching the 1947 pogroms in the UK. (Actually, I'm researching all the pogroms and massacres of Jews in the past 200 years. Which today led me to discover that there were pogroms in the UK in 1947.)

From an article on "The Postwar Revival of British Fascism," all emphasis mine:

Given the rising antisemitism and widespread ignorance about Zionism [in the UK in 1947], fascists were easily able to conflate Zionist paramilitary attacks with Judaism in their speeches, meaning British Jews came to be seen as complicit in violence in Palestine.

Bertrand Duke Pile, a key member of Hamm’s League, informed a cheering crowd that “the Jews have no right to Palestine and the Jews have no right to the power which they hold in this country of ours.” Denouncing Zionism as a way to introduce a wider domestic antisemitic stance was common to many speakers at fascist events and rallies. Fascists hid their ideology and ideological antisemitism behind the rhetorical facade of preaching against paramilitary violence in Palestine.

One of the league’s speakers called for retribution against “the Jews” for the death of British soldiers in Palestine. This was, he told his audience, hardly an antisemitic expression. “Is it antisemitism to denounce the murderers of your own flesh and blood in Palestine?” he asked his audience. Many audience members, fascist or not, may well have felt the speaker had a point. ...[The photo of two British sergeants hanged by the Irgun in retaliation for the Brits hanging three of their members] promptly made numerous appearances at fascist meetings, often attached to the speaker’s platform. In at least one meeting, several British soldiers on leave from serving in Palestine attended Hamm’s speech, giving further legitimacy to his remarks. And with soldiers and policemen in Palestine showing increasing signs of overt antisemitism as a result of their experiences, the director of public prosecutions warned that the fascists might receive a steady stream of new recruits.

MI5, the U.K. domestic security service, noted with some alarm that “as a general rule, the crowd is now sympathetic and even spontaneously enthusiastic.” Opposition, it was noted in the same Home Office Bulletin of 1947, “is only met when there is an organized group of Jews or Communists in the audience.”

The major opposition came from the 43 Group, formed by the British-Jewish ex-paratrooper Gerry Flamberg and his friends in September 1946 to fight the fascists using the only language they felt fascists understood — violence. The group disrupted fascist meetings for two purposes: to get them shut down by the police for disorder, and to discourage attendance in the future by doling out beatings with fists and blunt instruments. By the summer of 1947, the group had around 500 active members who took part in such activities. Among these was a young hairdresser by the name of Vidal Sassoon, who would often turn up armed with his hairdressing scissors.

The 43 Group had considerable success with these actions, but public anger was spreading faster than they could counter the hate that accompanied it. The deaths of Martin and Paice had touched a nerve with the populace. On Aug. 1, 1947, the beginning of the bank holiday weekend and two days after the deaths of the sergeants, anti-Jewish rioting began in Liverpool. The violence lasted for five days. Across the country, the scene was repeated: London, Manchester, Hull, Brighton and Glasgow all saw widespread violence. Isolated instances were also recorded in Plymouth, Birmingham, Cardiff, Swansea, Newcastle and Davenport. Elsewhere, antisemitic graffiti and threatening phone calls to Jewish places of worship stood in for physical violence. Jewish-owned shops had their windows smashed, Jewish homes were targeted, an attempt was made to burn down Liverpool Crown Street Synagogue while a wooden synagogue in Glasgow was set alight. In a handful of cases, individuals were personally intimidated or assaulted. A Jewish man was threatened with a pistol in Northampton and an empty mine was placed in a Jewish-owned tailor shop in Davenport.

And an important addendum:

I've read a whole bunch of articles about the pogroms in Liverpool, Manchester, Salford, Eccles, Glasgow, etc.

Not one of them has mentioned that the Irgun, though clearly a terrorist group, was formed in response to 18 years of openly antisemitic terrorism, including multiple incredibly violent massacres. Or that it consistently acted in response to the murders of Jewish civilians, not on the offensive. Or that at this point, militant Arab Nationalist groups with volunteers and arms from the Arab League countries had been attacking Jewish and mixed Arab-Jewish neighborhoods for months.

I just think the "Jewish militants had been attacking the British occupiers" angle is incredibly Anglocentric.

Yeah, they were attacking the British occupiers. But also, that's barely the tip of the iceberg.

Everyone involved hated the Brits at this point. If only al-Husseini and his ilk had hated the Brits more than they hated the Jews, Britain could at least have united them by giving them a common enemy.

[lazykurocat]

it honestly baffles me that Transphobes or general anti-LGBT will be pro Israel anti-hamas... it makes no sense, and as glad as I am people support Israel it confuses me... all the people who hate me stand for a place I could be safe. yet all the people who should love me stand for a place we would be killed... we live in a mad world... it makes me feel so lost... I don't want transphobes to have my back in one way and then not in another... because I'm scared of transphobes for how they see me and treat me and how much trauma they've caused... but I'm also scared of my own community for playing into their hands and giving them a valid reason to think we're insane when before they had none... I don't know what to do... I feel like as soon as the world moves on from the war the transphobes will just turn on me as they always have... so I find it hard to accept they support Israel and hate Hamas...

[redtail-lol]

Hey

If you're Jewish, this post is about you

I know it's gotta be shit right now. Antisemitism is on the rise. People are using Israel's genocide as an excuse to perpetuate antisemitic ideas. If you acknowledge that you're Jewish, someone will take that as an excuse to accuse you of Zionism and supporting the genocide. Celebrating your holidays? Same result.

And then on the other side, if you try to speak out against the genocide, to stick up for and show your support of the Palestinian people, your own people label you as an Enemy, and an antisemite. Your own Jewish identity is ignored or denied.

If you say nothing because you've realized nothing you say seems to be the right thing, you're accused by everyone of not caring, or secretly supporting one side - any maybe you do, but you can't say anything because you can't win no matter what side you're on.

The entire world has been equating Judaism with Israel on both sides and it isn't fair. It isn't fair when Jewish people are being arrested for antisemitic crimes in Germany - making up 37% of arrests despite making up a significantly smaller part of the population - because they weren't going to be quiet about genocide after their own people were met with silence during the Holocaust. It isn't fair when Jewish people are vocally denouncing the actions of Israel and calling for an end to the ruthless bombing. It isn't fair when even some Israelis risk everything to speak out against the state and their horrible crimes. It isn't fair when Jewish people are simply existing as Jewish people, either. Even when they aren't "proving" their support, it's still unfair to make such assumptions about someone because they're Jewish

And if you're one of these people who's shown hostility towards Jewish people over Palestine when they hadn't indicated they supported Israel at all, fuck you.

[bonefall]

NGL: Stuff like Brambleclaw being a terrible namer is like. really fun but also kinda hits with the 'he;s not some meglomaniacl villain hes just a shitty guy'. like. you could see squirrelflight finding that really endearing. IDK if this is some mastermind shit, or if i'm just reading wayyyyy to into this, but i like how you give characters that are pretty bad dudes very humanising qualities. Especially when they're silly/cute. Kinda reminds you that like. theyre like. a person. well. cat but yknow. and they chose to do bad shit, with influence from their past, rather than being inherently terrible. 👍

YEAH MAN, that's what I'm SAYING

Abusers, ideologues, and other terrible people are not masterminds. They aren't born evil. They're not inherently smart OR stupid. They can love, they can be funny and polite, they do things they believe are justified and want to be good people. They don't think of themselves as villains.

Evil isn't complex. It's really, really not. I feel like that's the #1 cause of confusion when I get a question like, "Why does this person do this malicious act, when it's bad/inconsistent/mean?" The answer is always simple;

They wanted to control someone.

They wanted something and didn't mind who they hurt.

Spite and short-sightedness.

Look for anything deeper and you will not find it. Heroics are complex, being a good person is ongoing and changes over time. We're in a constant state of growing. Malice is childishly simple; it feels good to get what you want.

With Bramblestar especially... it always goes back to what I said here, when talking about the idea of an Evil!Bramble. He's a person, and you ruin everything that's so interesting about him by stripping away that nuance. Squilf and Bramble loved each other, truly, and legitimately. He can be charming. He can be nice. He still hurts her. Reconcile with this.

He is not wiser for what he went through, as a child. His pain doesn't make him better. Man's just a jerk... that's it.

[shalom-iamcominghome]

For every person I unfollow with weird opinions on jews, I follow a few other jews instead. This has been for the better, even if I was bitter about hitting the "unfollow" button at first (sound off if you want to use this post to self-promo)

[supercantaloupe]

What is the antisemitism in TUC season 1? Does it have to do with Wally the golem?/gen

[ID: an ask from an anonymous tumblr user that reads "would love to hear more about the antisemitism in unsleeping city! was a while ago that i watched it and can't remember what you might be referencing but definitely want to be aware of it.]

no, it's not about willy the golem -- i actually think willy is a great addition to the season (even if i wish we got to see more of him), and an indication to me that brennan/the showrunners were definitely trying to be sincere and inclusive. i want to make it clear that i don't think anything antisemitic in tuc is there intentionally; i think it's there out of simple ignorance, which is also why i think fans don't frequently see/comment on it either. but i don't think that's an excuse, either.

my grief with tuc1 is largely centered around its portrayal of robert moses as the villain. especially by making him a greedy, power-hungry lich working en league with bloodsucking vampires. (also his mini is literally a green skinned skull man in a suit. yikes.) here's the thing; i know robert moses was a real life horrible person, who actually was racist and powerhungry etc etc. and i know that robert moses, the real actual person, was jewish. my grief with tuc1 is not that they chose to use robert moses over literally any other person (real or fictional) to be their season villain (though i'd be really curious to know what tuc1 would have looked like with a different villain), but that they chose to take a real jewish person, turn them into an antisemitic caricature, and then only barely add other portrayals of judaism to balance that out.

like, tuc isn't completely devoid of other jewish representation. as you mention, there's willy the golem -- and again, i really like willy, and i love that it's a portrayal of a golem that's faithful to jewish folklore (ie as a benevolent, guardian construct rather than a mindless destructive monster. i am not a fan of how 'golem' is so frequently misused as a generic enemy creature in other fantasy and ttrpg spaces, including other seasons of d20). but as i said earlier, i wish we see more of him in the season, because he's not around very much, and feels a little more like worldbuilding than a full character to me. also, he's not human. jews are people.

the only other human jewish character in tuc1 is...stephen sondheim. which, again, yeah, that's a real person who really was jewish. but i really wouldn't blame you if you had no idea of that when watching tuc1. maybe from the name you could guess he might be jewish, but i don't think people ought to make a habit of trying to 'clock' someone being jewish by having a 'jewish-sounding' surname. as he's portrayed in tuc1, you'd never know he's jewish, unless you happen to already be pretty knowledgeable about the man in real life. it's far more likely you'll know him as a theater legend than anything else (may his memory be a blessing).

now i'm not saying that brennan or the showrunners should have played up the jewishness of Real Person Stephen Sondheim to counterbalance the depiction of robert moses; that just feels weird to me, especially considering that sondheim was literally alive when tuc1 was filmed and released. it's a tricky thing to portray real people in fiction alongside made up characters, especially when they are contemporaries, and i don't think 'outright caricature' is the way to go about that. nor do i think that moses' jewishness should have been played up at all, because again i don't think that would have been particularly true to the person/character, and also Fucking Yikes. but, c'mon, if you hear the names 'moses' and 'sondheim' next to each other, which one do you associate more with judaism?

and as it stands, these are the only representations of judaism in tuc1. one admittedly nice but very minor nonhuman character; one human character you'd never be able to tell was jewish; and a third human character who, while never explicitly referenced as jewish, plays into some really hurtful antisemitic stereotyping. and it was a choice to not include anything else. maybe not a deliberate one, probably more likely one made out of simple ignorance than anything else, but a choice nonetheless. in a city with one of the largest and most visibly jewish populations in the country, and a culture that is inextricably influenced by that jewish population. a jewish population which has been and continues the target of rising hate crimes for years. i know that nyc means different things to different people, and everyone's nyc is their own -- but my nyc is jewish, and it sucks that that its jewishness is referenced directly in only one very minor way, which is greatly overshadowed by its, in my view, really insidious indirect references.

i don't know exactly how to go about addressing this. obviously, the show can't be changed by now. even if it could, i think the final product would be very significantly different from what it is now if the villain was something/someone else. i think including more references to jews in new york, more (human) jewish characters, hell, even mentioning hanukkah celebrations and menorahs in windows (it takes place in late december, after all; depending on the year it's not at all out of place for hanukkah to coincide with xmas!) would help. having literally any more positive jewish representation in tuc1 would, i think, help balance the bad stuff that's there. because, yeah, robert moses was real and he was terrible and he was jewish. but he's one jewish guy in a city with over a million jews, the vast majority of whom are just normal people. i don't want him to be the only vision of us that people get, in tuc1 alone or in any media. i'm not saying that jews can't or shouldn't be villains in fiction; but especially if you are a goyische creator, you should be really careful in how you're portraying us, and if there are other contrasting depictions in your work, too, in order to not (even accidentally) demonize jewish people as a whole.

[bougiebutchbitch]

wow I've sure blocked or unfollowed a lot of people I used to really like and respect over their absolutely abominable opinions recently

[zaritarazi]

enough of the grace granted to fence-sitting jews, to the jews that are too scared to stand up to their mommies and daddies about palestine, so they come online and tone police. i am humbled by the grace nonjews have shown these jews. as a jew that has never been a zionist, who has no zionist family, and who grew up around many other anti-zionist jews, you have been far kinder to these genocide-abetters than i ever could be. and so as a jew, i see your grace, and i personally respect you and your commitment to equal and social justice.

but you don't owe these cowards a fucking thing. when they come on and say "this is a dogwhistle but this is a legitimate palestinian charity" ignore them. they can get with the right side of history, or they can stay with their congregation. you aren't required to hear them out. you don't owe them a single thing.

these spineless cucks will decry nonjews tokenizing anti-zionist jews to say "antisemitic" things, and then those antisemitic things are literally... things that the iof is currently doing. on video. daily. so tokenize me all you'd like. i have lots of other antizionist jewish friends i grew up with- we're all white jews, tokenize them, too. until palestine is free, until those cowards remember who their fucking G-d is, don't waste your time on them. from the river to the sea.

[oliveroctavius]

To reply to this without cluttering up someone else's reblogs:

I DEFINITELY have my issues with Alan Moore, but that quote has been taken widely out of context to fuel the anger machine. In context, this is commentary on the modern mass-media superhero movie, specifically how far it is from its working-class Jewish roots:

Today’s franchised übermenschen, aimed at a supposedly adult audience, seem to be serving some kind of different function, and fulfilling different needs. [...] The superheroes themselves – largely written and drawn by creators who have never stood up for their own rights against the companies that employ them, much less the rights of a Jack Kirby or Jerry Siegel or Joe Schuster – would seem to be largely employed as cowardice compensators, perhaps a bit like the handgun on the nightstand. I would also remark that save for a smattering of non-white characters (and non-white creators) these books and these iconic characters are still very much white supremacist dreams of the master race.

This is a legitimate criticism of popular superheroes, even early on. An example relevant to this quote: Alan Moore grew up with Marvelman, Britain's homegrown 1950s stand-in for Captain Marvel. Some pretty visible choices were made about who could be superhuman in their version of this story.

Not obvious from this image: Freddy Freeman (left image, in blue) was the one Marvel Family member with a Jewish co-creator (Mac Raboy). He was a disabled boy with a very personal vendetta against the Nazis who had targeted him and his grandfather. All this was left out of his (fully abled) Marvelman counterpart. But even Captain Marvel was a version of Superman made marketable by filing down the anti-establishment edges! (Unlike early Supes, Cap would never talk back to a cop.) All three publishers used racial caricatures in their stories.

All this buries the lede: Mick Anglo, creator of the Marvelman Family, was also Jewish. I don't know why he made the choices he did.

The initial image in the post you commented on is from "Superman is Jewish? How comic book superheroes came to serve truth, justice, and the Jewish-American way" by Harry Brod. It's available on archive.org and while it's ultimately a celebration of Jewish contributions to comics, it touches on a lot of these points: the popular re-capture of the underdog's dreams of righteous violence, the "de-Jewification" of superheroes in the modern movie imagination, and the idea that not all art created by [identity] people will actually express that identity, especially when writing into a different dominant culture.

Alan Moore can be dismissive of the Jewish histories to superheroism, but I don't want to throw out his argument--white supremacy has sunk its hooks deep into the genre's imagery since Siegel and Shuster put pen to paper.

[linoguy]

that little part after felix goes w hyunjin to get the dj snake signature and one of dj snakes crew goes "are you australian?" i love when smth like that is an instant common ground and it makes people feel so much lighter

[selfinflictedgunshotwound]

not my online friend trying to have the "not all zionists" conversation with me rn

[vulpinesaint]

the stephanie sterling video is really good. they make a thousand fantastic points that i agree with 100% but the most concise one is that you can do whatever the fuck you want but if you buy hogwarts legacy you are not a trans ally. easy. simple. you either choose to stand with us or you don't. and this goes for trans people, too. do whatever you want but do not pretend that you care about the rest of the trans community. if you talk about buying it i feel just as safe and comfortable with you as i do with any cis person who bought the game (which is to say not at all).

[transwolvie]

Thinking again abt that post that was like "Judaism so good how did Christianity wind up so bad" and like. Idk man I think of you uncritically call any religion good just based off their main tenets rather than acknowledging the ppl who twist things for their own gain, I think you're not only missing the point, but you're also purposefully stacking the deck. If you look at the core tenets of Christianity none of the shit they were talking abt (like sex being seen as shameful) are actually an intrinsic part of the religion. It's weird to me to both ignore that Christianity's actual canon does NOT involve a lot of the harmful things the religion is known for, and to ignore that Judaism also has sects that have purposefully ignored or willfully misinterpreted the Torah in order to push for things like imperialism, misogyny, etc.

Like..... it just comes off to me as someone who read a couple Tumblr posts abt progressive Judaism and just either doesn't know or doesn't care that conservative sects exist, or that, yknow, fuckin Israel exists. The way ppl have started approaching Judaism as some flawless baseline that can be contrasted against Christianity makes me uncomfortable, especially since it's so obvious that the ppl writing those kinds of posts are uh. Not Jewish.

[misskriemhilds]

i have since finished the metamorphosis but the take i'm the most interested in and feel like i want to find more discussion about is how it's an inherently jewish story

[cashthecomposer]

I may be alone in this, but I fucking hate career opportunities, grants, contests, competitions, scholarships, etc, that are about identity rather than merit. Winning something based on a facet of who I am that I cannot change, that's not okay by me. I want to progress based on the merit of my work, not the fact that your organization wants to check a box off on its quota, nor the idea that I somehow need your help because from your perspective an aspect of my self implies that my work can't stand against that of a cis-straight-white-ablebodied-man, and least of all because there's an imbalance of work in existence representative of a group I happen to be a part of!

I was talking to a place earlier today about potentially collaborating on a project that would further my ambitions with my show. I was very excited, until they mentioned that having a disabled woman led work with a mostly queer cast was something they had never done before, and they'd like to market it based on that premise. Never mind the fact I spent just shy of a decade writing this! Who cares that I spent 20 odd years training in music to learn how! Not important that the story, the music, the people, are all (to toot my own horn) fucking fabulous! No, we care about the PR.

That's what it boils down to, friends. Getting something based on the fact that you happen to be a woman, or happen to be disabled, or happen to be queer, rather than because YOUR WORK DESERVES IT, is not okay, in fact, it perpetuates the idea that our work is somehow different from the work of the 'typical' in the past. When it is not.

This is why a living wage as minimum wage, or better yet universal income, better disability services, women's reproductive rights, are such important things to champion. Were it not for the severe discrepancies between peoples of varying identities, we would be able to just let the merit of an individual's work speak for itself. But, since we live in the worst timeline, I have to accept these opportunities even when I really don't want to based on my moral compass, because on the one hand, if I don't, they'll use it as an excuse to just turn back to the traditional- and biased- path, and on the other hand, I can't fucking afford not to.