this post was submitted on 30 Dec 2023
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Zionism has had a long and troubled history by this point, and I don't even know much below the surface. I'll tell you right up front I view Israel as an apartheid state and I'm not even a leftist. It's just right out there in the open, for anyone to see.
Here in the US, we have a Christian Nationalism movement that would love to set up exactly what Israel has in "The American Redoubt", also known as "Greater Idaho".
Fucking terrifies me and my property isn't even in their sights for conquest. Building a nation state along ethnic or religious boundaries is wrong in my opinion. I hold that opinion because I'm an American who believes in immigration, mixing of races, and freedom for all. Just the phrase "Jewish nation" makes my skin crawl.
quick edit: of course, all the ethnostates surrounding Israel are immoral in my view also.
Which is the chicken-and-egg problem of ethno/theostates, isn't it? If most/all of a group are isolated to one geographical location, and largely absent from the rest of the world, it becomes easier for hate to spread in that rest of the world, because nobody there has lived experience, can have that moment of "but I know Elsa/Ahmed/Luna/whoever, and they're decent person" to challenge propaganda when they hear it (and anyone who's a minority where they live has at least one story of being the cause of such a realisation). But if you're a group that lives in those little geographical pockets, it becomes that much harder to move out, because you give up your support network and move into an area of potentially hostile people.
And of course, bigots know about this and weaponise it. Speaking as a trans person and noticing the current wave of vile legislation against us in the shit parts of the US, it sure as hell feels like the objective there is to force anyone who can leave to do so, and punish those who can't, specifically to prevent a sufficient mass of trans people building up that those same deradicalising experiences can happen (hence why the use of a stereotypical trans name in above example). But in a way it's both better and worse for us, because we aren't just born into certain bloodlines or cultures, we emerge almost everywhere, so and have to fight to make the whole world queer-friendly, rather than just being able to set up somewhere in a small pocket and let the whole world slowly become most hostile to us in response.