#there was some subtle blood libel language in there too

[netherzon]

Was excited to read a book about spirituality this morning

The preface: there are two distinct types of human beings genetically, I elaborate in Ch 9

Me: .....*jumps to Ch 9, suspicious*

Ch 9: The ancient astronauts theories of civilization make sense for explaining how fucked up “Judeo-Christianity” is in its relationship to the natural world, and its a shame academia has disregarded them just because some non-intellectuals have argued in their favor poorly

Me: ._.

[gayhenrycreel]

jesus christ it sucks to have to carefully read every post about palestine to check for american antisemitism, and check posts (note, this is only posts made by gentiles as far as ive seen) on this antisemitism for american islamophobia.

if you're wondering why i dont reblog many posts about palestine, its because they either have zero sources and are just screenshots from twitter (and yes, some twitter account you only know of from screenshots is not a reliable source), or are full of (hopefully unintended) nazi dogwhistles.

you need to learn these dogwhistles. dont just reblog posts about them. actually memorize them, study examples of them, train your brain to recognise them as efficiently as you do a swastika.

trust me, you can train your brain to immediately set off the alarms if you recognise one.

ive trained myself to recognise a lot of dogwhistles, not all of them of course, because theres so many, but thats why its a continuous effort.

this link is a wiki that contains a list of alt right dogwhistles on another page too.

okay, before you set off the fire alarm, read this post first:

this link does discuss extreme antizionism.

i will say first that antizionism AND zionism can both be antisemitic (see; christian zionism and the second coming of christ), but they are not always.

I AM NOT SAYING ANTIZIONISM IS BAD.

i consider myself antizionist. im an anarchist, how could i possibly support a state?

what i am saying is that those who are already antisemitic are using antizionism as an excuse for antisemitism. this can and does occur on the left. leftwing conspiracy theories do exist (some are actually the same as rightwing ones. you think the rich are collaborating together do you? who are those rich people? cause it certainly isnt the billionares who have no reason at all to like each other. whos controlling western media? is it the west? nah it must be that really small country thats basically owned by america, the westernest west to ever west.).

this applies to you.

every single human being carries the antisemitism we learned from society. i am not exempt. you are not exempt.

you may genuinely believe that you are not an antisemite. you hate hitler, right?

but you likely still think big noses are ugly. you think that the trope of a hook nosed greedy trader is just about elon musk dont you?

do you feel threatened by the use of hebrew? i did until just last year.

in western society, its rare for someone to have multiple native languages. you speak english. you hear someone speak words you dont understand. your immediate reaction is to wonder if they are up to something. talking shit about you? maybe even plotting terrorism?

of course you feel threatened by the use of other languages, youve been trained to think its suspicious.

train yourself to just not care when someone casually speaks hebrew, or arabic, or navajo in your proximity. if you dont care when people speak english, you shouldn't care when people speak another language. your not trying to eavesdrop right?

this subtle bigotry is why you are probably antisemitic, even if you are a perfect little leftist.

i want to talk about the blood libel being spouted by way to many leftists.

shockingly few people actually know what blood libel means.

basically, its a 1000 year old conspiracy theory claimng that jewish people steal and eat christian babies. this is all over media. did you see the new doctor who special? it was horrible.

in media this is often tied with goblins, which are historically (and often continue to be) portrayed as an antisemitic stereotype. SURELY YOU CAN RECOGNISE THAT BIG NOSED GREEDY GOBLINS CONTROLLING THE ECONOMY IS ANTISEMITIC.

okay, disclaimer, children are dying in gaza. israel is killing them.

but dont act like this is the only thing happening. they are not actively sending soldiers out to kill children specifically. this is equally affecting adults.

dont believe me that blood libel is being applied?

i saw some tumblr users joking about how the idf is kidnapping children and eating them. i went to their blogs to block them, expecting to see 88 everywhere (88 is code for hh, or hail hitler, btw), but no THEY WERE ALL "ANTIZIONIST" LEFTISTS WITH ACAB IN THEIR BIOS. those jokes are bad for everyone, its blood libel and making fun of actual victims of genocide.

sorry, im just... pissed off that my mutuals will reblog something about how using this as an excuse for antisemitism is bad, but still reblog posts full of dogwhistles.

a mutual of a mutual even reblogged a post claiming that antisemitism has not increased and that its a lie. i wont block you, ive seen your better reblogs, and it only happened once, but i urge you to properly read what you reblog.

i dont blame anyone for not knowing. ive had things to learn too. but please, stop reblogging globalist conspiracy theories.

as i write this its 4:20 sorry you may continue reading.

im not trying to be a dick. i dont blame you. i blame society. and this is not a you thing either.

its also a me thing.

its an everyone thing.

i also hate being challenged (i once punched a teacher for being wrong about the sun).

being challenged is how we learn.

ive also reblogged posts i really should not have reblogged.

i was ignorant. it will undoubtedly happen again.

unlearning bigotry is a lifelong commitment.

oh my god i just remembered how 8 year old me believed in phrenology.

i really hold nothing against you.

remember how most queer people were homophobic before The Realization?

we as a society need to go through that process of acceptance. you will never get everything right. none of us will.

what matters is trying

[ajani]

Could you please elaborate on the Sweet Tooth thing, if that's alright?

There's a LOT to unpack and I'm not Jewish so I want to be a bit careful on it but like. Stuffed to the brim with dogwhistles at the very least. My googling abilities for finding better discussions on these specific tropes is unfortunately not up to snuff so its not going to be as heavily sourced/linked as I'd like. This is long so I'm going to put under a cut. Also please if you have good sources dissecting the tropes/caricature things I am referring to, feel free to add them.

to give a tl;dr: Disease decimates earth with symptoms that echo antisemitic caricatures, weird anti-quarentine/anti-masker vibes throughout, and eventually the plot just goes fully into blood libel.

So "Sweet Tooth" broadly is about The Sick, a virus that has decimated earth's population. After The Sick started, all children born were ""hybrids"" with animal features.

So to start off on the deeply antisemitic shit, the symptoms of "The Sick". There are two tell-tale signs of it in the show, and well. They're both antisemitic tropes! Your nose starts turning red (I think it might even get swollen) and your hands start shaking. While these are both like. Sure things that could actually be disease symptoms, but like thats how you do dogwhistles is having "plausible deniability" (though I feel like thats generous to this). Among the most common things focused on in antisemitic caricatures is noses. While usually this is like having large or hooked noses, the red nose is a bit more subtle and broad of a way to do the same idea.

The shaking hand is a sign of greediness. This is a common visual language for greed, to show hands shaking in anticipation in a deal. Unfortunately, this is very often put hand in hand with antisemitic caricatures and thus kinda blends into being one itself.

I don't want to do episode synposes so im gonna try to do this a bit more truncated.

> Dad lies to titular Sweet Tooth, one of the first "hybrids", about the nature of the end of the world, saying it was a "fire" that nature did to get rid of greedy people who were hurting it, and people blamed the "hybrids" because of the timing of the births. This sequence is very classic ecofascist "Humanity is the virus uwu" shit.

> Dad dying of the virus gives a strong visual for how the virus symptoms are just antisemitic caricatures.

> This might be me reading too much into it, but, there is a few sequences early on that show the kid *hearing noises outside the normal range of human hearing* which in retrospect really feels like a "listen for dogwhistles" scene.

> After dad dies the kid is being hunted on their little safe spot. Kid is saved from two poachers by a black man who had initially planned on killing the kid/turning them in for a bounty, but hears that the kid can talk and realizes "Oh hey, they are human?"

> The above scene establishes that hybrids, which mind you are all children, are hunted, killed, and extremely valuable. This hunting is so thorough that the fact that they can speak is alarming to everyone.

> After this theres some shit that has very big anti-masker vibes, like how there was a very sudden quarantine announced when The Sick first starts and how this one woman ended up living in her own prison because of the evil quarantine and regulations. Theres a present-day bit where the kid and the guy who saved him run into other people, who all wear their masks for their guests, who they havent had in like a decade. The man says "You've been sheltered in place, we don't have it, we don't have to wear the damn masks" or something to this effect.

>There is what appears to be an armed faction that helps run clinics for dealing with the sick that is starkly shown to be all wearing masks when people in the clinic aren't, and very clearly shown by the camera as a power showing excessive force.

>The show has a bit where it follows a man whose been involved in treating it, and has him inherit the legacy of searching for a permanent cure. There has been a way to fight/treat the symptoms and stave the disease off for a while now, though its manufacturing is mysterious.

>Turns out this is why the kids are hunted and killed. To make medicine so that some select people can safely live. This is the point at which I just said "Oh so its fucking flat out blood libel okay" and walked away.

This is speculation, but, given whats been established, I wouldn't be surprised if the plot ends up going in a Plandemic route.

Again, I am certainly not an expert in this shit and am not Jewish, but based on what I've read about dogwhistles and specifically the history of Blood Libel, its pretty clear to me that this show is an antisemitic mess.

Theres other shit in there that sucks and is bad but I dont want to spend any more time on this than I already have.

[girlactionfigure]

Trump Gets it Right about Antisemitism (Updated)

Note: since this post was written, the order was issued, and it was not precisely what was expected. Nevertheless, I think the post is still interesting, if not relevant to the same degree. See the update at the end for a full explanation.

***

President Trump is expected to issue an executive order that Jews should be treated as a “nationality*” as well as a religious group. This means that Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which bans the use of federal funds for programs or activities that discriminate on the basis of “race, color, or national origin,” will now apply to antisemitism. And an administration official has said that the government would use the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism, which the State Department adopted in 2016, as a working definition of antisemitism (a previous working definition in use from 2010 is similar in relevant respects).

This is a big deal, because the extreme anti-Zionism (misoziony) that characterizes the discourse on many Western colleges and universities clearly falls under the IHRA definition, which specifically mentions

Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor.

Applying double standards by requiring of it a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation.

Using the symbols and images associated with classic antisemitism (e.g., claims of Jews killing Jesus or blood libel) to characterize Israel or Israelis.

Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis…

which are all the bread and butter of Students for Justice in Palestine, as well as countless other anti-Israel organizations. Of course, antisemitism in the form of assaults, discrimination, and other more subtle forms of harassment in the guise of “free expression” – incidentally, things that would never be tolerated if their object were other minorities – also will be able to trigger a shutoff of federal funds.

Naturally, the usual suspects are outraged. Some of the outrage comes from those who would be outraged if Trump were to issue an order recognizing motherhood and apple pie, because he is Trump. Halie Soifer of the Jewish Democratic Council of America accused Trump of “hypocrisy,” blamed him for “emboldening white nationalism, perpetuating anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, and repeating stereotypes that have led to violence targeting Jews.” Even if these accusations were true (I am convinced that they are not), they are irrelevant to the reasonableness of this executive order.

But there are more substantive objections. They either deny that Jews are a nationality, or they object to the IHRA definition, usually saying it limits free speech by conflating “legitimate” anti-Zionism with antisemitism. Let’s take the issue of nationality first.

One group that objects to the idea that Jews are a people or a nationality, of course, is the PLO and the Palestinian Authority, who have always insisted that “Jewish” refers only to a religion, not a nation. They have therefore refused to accept the “two states for two peoples” formula or to recognize that Israel is the state of the Jewish people. This is one of the main reasons that the Palestinians have never accepted any of the generous offers of statehood proffered to them. Interestingly, there is also a strong current of “nationhood denial” among liberal American Jews. Some seem to think that attributing nationhood to the Jewish people would mean that they would somehow be “less American.” But of course nobody believes that granting this status to Italian-Americans would make them less American, or that Title VI doesn’t apply to discrimination against them.

This prejudice in the diaspora against the idea of Jewish nationhood goes back to the late 18th and early 19th century when Jews were first beginning to acquire rights in newly-enlightened Europe. The spectre of their “dual loyalty” to their country of residence and to the Jewish nation quickly arose. In 1789, the French Count of Clermont-Tonnerre, in a speech about the treatment of minorities in the new Republic, said “[w]e must refuse everything to the Jews as a nation, and accord everything to the Jews as individuals.” Let them have their religion and their quaint customs, but their national loyalty can only be to France.

Many Jews were happy to agree. In Germany, the newly-created Reform Movement adopted the idea of being “Germans of the Mosaic Persuasion,” nationally identical to their neighbors of the Lutheran persuasion. In America, the 1885 Pittsburgh Platform of the American Reform Movement included this unequivocal statement: “[w]e consider ourselves no longer a nation, but a religious community, and therefore expect neither a return to Palestine, nor a sacrificial worship under the sons of Aaron, nor the restoration of any of the laws concerning the Jewish state.” By 1999, their platform refers to the Jews as “a people.” But many liberal Jews, uncomfortable about the possibility (and often the actuality) of accusations of dual loyalty, take pains to insist that they do not see themselves as anything other than Americans (or Canadians, or Britons). Their Jewishness is only a matter of religion, ethnicity, or some cultural artifacts.

They have a right to say that if they wish, and to distance themselves from the Jewish nation, but they do not have the right to say that there is no Jewish nation. The Jewish people, in fact, are the paradigm case of a nation: if you want to know what the characteristics of a nation are, look at the Jews. The Jewish people have

A common geographical origin and a connection to their aboriginal home.

A shared genetic heritage.

A unique ancestral language.

A unique religion.

A shared culture.

A shared historical experience.

Self-identification as a nation.

It’s ironic that the Palestinian Arabs, who have multiple origins, a relatively short period of shared history, no unique language or religion, a culture based entirely on opposition to the Jews, and who have only self-identified as a nation since the mid-1960s, have the chutzpah to deny nationhood to the Jewish people!

What about the argument that the IHRA definition conflates antisemitism with anti-Zionism and thus limits speech that is critical of Israel? Despite what some say, it is actually quite easy to distinguish between legitimate criticism of Israel and antisemitism. The criteria were provided by Natan Sharansky, who called it the “3D Test of Antisemitism.” I’ll quote him:

The first “D” is the test of demonization. When the Jewish state is being demonized; when Israel’s actions are blown out of all sensible proportion; when comparisons are made between Israelis and Nazis and between Palestinian refugee camps and Auschwitz – this is anti- Semitism, not legitimate criticism of Israel.

The second “D” is the test of double standards. When criticism of Israel is applied selectively; when Israel is singled out by the United Nations for human rights abuses while the behavior of known and major abusers, such as China, Iran, Cuba, and Syria, is ignored; when Israel’s Magen David Adom, alone among the world’s ambulance services, is denied admission to the International Red Cross – this is anti-Semitism.

The third “D” is the test of delegitimization: when Israel’s fundamental right to exist is denied – alone among all peoples in the world – this too is anti-Semitism.

I call irrational, extreme hatred of Israel misoziony. Misoziony is a form of antisemitism, the traditional Jew-hatred raised to a higher level of abstraction. And there is no better test for misoziony than Sharansky’s 3D criteria, which are implicit in the IHRA working definition of antisemitism. There is no reason to oppose the IHRA definition, except to enable antisemites to disguise their poison as legitimate political speech.

The growing phenomenon of antisemitism in Western universities – where it usually takes the form of misoziony – has given rise to a great deal of consternation and hand-wringing on the part of university administrators, who have in general done nothing practical to reduce it. Yet again, Donald Trump has come along and cut what appeared to be a Gordian Knot, just as he did when he finally fulfilled the promise of the US Congress to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of the Jewish state.

And just as they did last May, Jewish progressives displayed their remarkable ability to cut off their own noses to spite their faces.

Update [12 Dec]:

This post was written on Wednesday morning in Israel, after news reports indicated that President Trump was going to issue an order that, among other things, would treat Jewishness as a “nationality” as well as a religious group.

It was thought that this would broaden the applicability of Title VI to prohibit discrimination against Jews, as Jews.

Apparently the reports were wrong. The final version of the order says nothing about treating Jews as a nationality, and reemphasizes that Title VI applies only to discrimination on the basis of “Race, color, or national origin.” It does note – something that the Justice Department already recognized back in 2010 – that belonging to a “group sharing religious practices” does not disqualify someone from being protected against discrimination on the basis of the initial three criteria.

This means that the applicability of Title VI has not been broadened.

However, as Prof. Avi Bell has noted (correspondence), the incorporation of the IHRA working definition of antisemitism into the order is important. The examples in the IHRA definition, in which Sharansky’s 3D criteria are implicit, clearly show what kind of “criticism of Israel” constitutes antisemitism. Therefore a university (e.g.) will not be able to excuse its inaction on complaints of antisemitism by groups like SJP on the grounds that they are “just” engaging in “criticism of Israel.”

The official text of the order can be found here.

______________________________________ * It should be understood that “nationality” is used in the older and broader sense of belonging to a people, or nation, and not in the narrow modern sense of citizenship in a country.

Abu Yehuda