Jews are not systemically oppressed anymore but clearly certain reactionaries sure do want them to be.

Collective punishment is always wrong. You can't just make your whole ideology out of fuckinslammer memes or you turn into this person.

Parenti fucking rolling in his grave rn. You do not get to invoke a foundational modern marxist while doing the opposite of material analysis.

Would you apply the same logic to Christians? Arguably Christians have done far more harm. Or are you defining Jews as an ethnicity? How is that better? Is there something genetic or is it religious?

These may seem like silly semantic differences but they are actually important and the people that make either argument are wrong for the same reason: Collective punishment and collective guilt is always reactionary.

Ironically some of these same people would say I am doing Jewish exceptionalism but are they not doing the same thing claiming this is an exceptionally Jewish form of fascism.

I do not believe such distinctions are productive but rather only serve to excuse one's own participation in similar relations. By invoking some sort of Jewish exceptionalism you are only absolving yourself of guilt and complicity. By definition when you claim there is some sort of Jewish exceptionalism at play you are implying they are a special uniquely bad group apart from the international white supremacist project that enables and requires the existence of Israel.

You claim to be denouncing special treatment of Jewish persecution and overcorrect into actual Nazism. Or to be more accurate I guess Strasserism.

I no longer care if people want to call me a zionist for pointing this out. You are just embarassed white supremacists trying to offload your crimes onto Israel, there is nothing Israel has done that the rest of the west has not done tenfold, all are complicit and blaming it on Jews is just Nazi shit. I will fight to the death for the Palestinian people but I will not tolerate any single person implying collective guilt. This goes for everyone, white, black arab, persian, etc.

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[–] 41 points 2 days ago (3 children)

Please at least link what you are talking about. https://lemmy.ml/post/52069875

you did not understand what they are saying at all it seems like.

Would you apply the same logic to Christians?

a lot of people already do and with good cause! Especially those that have to suffer under christian supremacism. It's silly to try to make a distinction between the colonisation of the americas and christians as if the colonisers weren't explicitly using christianity for genocide. Zionism is a jewish supremacist movement and trying to pretend it has nothing to do with judaism is only muddying the waters. The supposed country is even called "israel" for crying out loud

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  • [–] 33 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (2 children)

    I think something that constantly gets lost in these back and forth arguments is the conditions that those in West Asia are affected by Zionism/Jewish Supremacy.

    Telling them they're being reactionary because they believe in Jewish Supremacy is like telling a person of color suffering under colonialism/neo-colonialism that they're being racist because they believe in White Supremacy.

    Obviously not all Jews are Zionists, but when you start to dictate to a victim of Israel that they are wrong even though the Judaism, as an institution, is responsible for their material conditions then you become the one ignoring material reality.

    We've had West Asian comrades chased off because their perspectives (and material realities) are looked down upon because too often people are quick to react and conflate that with Nazism/White Supremacist thoughts on Judaism. But if we have members here asking those same West Asian comrades to consider that not all Jews are Zionists, would we not apply the same logic and realize that when they speak about Jewish Supremacy it is not in the same way a Nazi would talk about Jewish Supremacy?

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  • [–] 21 points 2 days ago (1 child)

    Telling them they're being reactionary because they believe in Jewish Supremacy is like telling a person of color suffering under colonialism/neo-colonialism that they're being racist because they believe in White Supremacy.

    Unfortunately the same people also love doing that

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  • [–] [S] 8 points 2 days ago

    I'm definitely not here to do that and I frankly don't care if Jewish people are upset about antizionist memes that stray over that line. What i am concerned about is the amount of energy other white people put into making this about Judaism. That is where it starts to raise my hackles.

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    [–] 30 points 2 days ago* (4 children)

    Geneva_Convenience has really gone off the deep end with this Bad Empanada shit. There's zero point to any of this discourse except to stir up controversy and alienate people. I genuinely think people are just bored and looking for hot takes to keep things going. They blocked me for "supporting Zionism" immediately after I explicitly said I'm completely opposed to the genocidal, apartheid state of Israel. It's ridiculous.

    Antizionist Jews exist and are not the problem. Non-Jewish Zionists exist and are part of the problem. This is because the problem is the Israeli state and not the Jewish ethnicity. This is not remotely complicated and should not be at all controversial to say.

    "B-b-but a lot of Jews are Zionists!" Yeah, so? The problem is still the part where they're Zionist and not the part where they're Jewish. Take a Jewish Zionist, convert them to Christianity without changing their political beliefs, you haven't fixed anything. Take a child who is ethnically Jewish and another who is not, teach them both to be Zionists, one is no better than the other. So what exactly is the point?

    It's unfortunate but it always felt like this was bound to happen, to an extent. People watch an ethnostate do genocide for long enough and the lizard brain starts reacting against the ethnicity the ethnostate is based around, instead of the ethnostate itself and it's supporters.

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  • [–] 20 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (2 children)

    "B-b-but a lot of Jews are Zionists!" Yeah, so? The problem is still the part where they're Zionist and not the part where they're Jewish.

    So? So the problem is you're thinking too individualist. As a Marxist, I don't care about passing moral judgement. Here's a cold, factual material analysis instead. Jewish institutions are overwhelmingly Zionist and support the genocide materially. Temples hold auctions for stolen houses and collect money for the IAF. Real existing Jewish religion in the world today has a systemic, structural problem with Zionism. Or rather, the problem is that it doesn't have a problem with it. It has many material benefits and privilegees interlinking it with the imperialists, colonial genocide machine.

    The minority of Jews who aren't Zionists have a hard time finding communities and places of worship, where they feel welcome and aren't excluded based on their principled rejection of the real white Jewish privilege to have the option to be able to move to my families area, kill them, steal their house, steal their land and get lots of state support to build a new live there. They are in the minority, they don't get any funding, they need outside support to affect real structural change inside institutionalized religion. But they are also in the best position to affect this change, to lead the reforms. If they don't take responsibility, there's no hope for institutionalized Jewish religion to move away from it's currently majority fascist, hegemonic class position.

    If we were to ignore this real systemic issue, by focusing only on individual beliefs, we'd commit the error of classic idealism.

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  • [–] 15 points 2 days ago* (1 child)

    I don't disagree with any of that. But I am struggling to figure out what part of that should cause anyone to shift their criticism away from Zionism and towards Jews instead.

    Of course anti-Zionist Jews are a minority. They also happen to be a minority that's on our side. Why on earth should I include them in my criticism? And why on earth would I not include non-Jewish Zionists in my criticism? If I simply talk about Zionists, I am accurately labelling my enemies and not including any allies. If I talk about Jews, I am including only some of my enemies, and also including some of my allies. This is complete and total nonsense. There is literally no upside. It's controversy bait and nothing more.

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  • [–] 10 points 2 days ago (1 child)

    I don't disagree with any of that. But I am struggling to figure out what part of that should cause anyone to shift their criticism away from Zionism and towards Jews instead.

    Not against Jews, but against the majority of Jewish institution.

    They also happen to be a minority that's on our side. Why on earth should I include them in my criticism?

    Exactly. We shouldn't. We should do everything to support them.

    And why on earth would I not include non-Jewish Zionists in my criticism?

    Yes, definitely criticize them too, and it is all one flight. But those two fronts still require different strategies. The fight for reform of zionist Jewish institutions needs to be lead by Jews. Zionist evangelical institutions need to be reformed by Christians. They face different obstacles and circumstance. This makes it necessary to offer tailored strategical critique to each of them, to build and support their struggles.

    If I talk about Jews, I am including only some of my enemies, and also including some of my allies.

    Yes, I completely agree. We should avoid generalizing language. But also avoid a critique that is to broad in its targets to be strategically useful. "Zionists" is to broad. "Jews" is anti-semitic. "Zionist Jewish institutions", is better. I always try to critique institutions, not individuals. Even, for example, capital instead of capitalists. It's not about the moral character of individuals, but about systemic forces.

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  • [–] 12 points 2 days ago

    I have no problem with critiquing Zionist Jewish institutions. This is not at all what genocide_convenience is going around saying, nor does it contradict anything I have said here or elsewhere.

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  • [–] 11 points 2 days ago

    They are in the minority, they don't get any funding, they need outside support to affect real structural change inside institutionalized religion. But they are also in the best position to affect this change, to lead the reforms. If they don't take responsibility, there's no hope for institutionalized Jewish religion to move away from it's currently majority fascist, hegemonic class position.

    why should "change it from the inside" work for these organs when we don't think it works (nor that anyone has an obligation to try) when it's police or democrats etc?

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  • [–] 18 points 2 days ago (1 child)

    There's zero point to any of this discourse except to stir up controversy and alienate people. I genuinely think people are just bored and looking for hot takes to keep things going.

    Yea this is a huge problem with online communities, most of these communities revolve around streamers or YouTubers and the algorithms favor drama over actual content. The end result is everyone looking for dunks instead of actually having a conversation.

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  • [–] 12 points 2 days ago

    Every fucking streamer has to carve out their little niche with hot takes designed to appeal to one specific type of guy and being hostile to everyone else, they're all grifters and opportunists with no interest in contributing to a mass movement or actually accomplishing any material change. It's like Jimmy Dore all over again.

    I wish people would just read a book.

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    [–] 31 points 2 days ago* (2 children)

    why are westerners always clinging to this disgusting zionist narrative that jews are special little gems whose suffering and oppression is worth more than anyone elses? why do they always insist on portraying the anti-jewish portion of the nazi genocide as an evil in its own league, despite it not even constituting the majority of the hitlerites crimes?

    how come that the suffering of jews is considered the crime of crimes, while everything else the fascists did gets either ignored, excused away or even celebrated?

    i'm starting to suspect that many western "leftists" would have had no problem with hitler murdering domestic and foreign communists, as well as waging genocidal warfare on the peoples of the ussr. in fact, i've seen equivalent ideas getting celebrated more and more openly nowadays.

    the slavic or romani victims, or the political prisoners who suffered the same or even worse abuses in the same camps by the same fascist parasites as the jews, do not get to be immortalised in western literature, film, music, or other arts.

    despite the fact that racism against slavic peoples was (and is) at the very core of hitlerite ideology, many westerners never bother acknowledging it, instead celebrating the current death of hundreds of thousands of slavic people in a conflict caused by western capital. and despite the crimes that the nazis perpetrated against the romani population, anti-romani racism remains as common as life itself.

    the role of communists resisting the hitlerite tyranny is also consistently played down, if not outright ignored, with some reactionaries even growing brazen enough to call them traitors. the goal is to portray communism as something foreign, from which "the nation" needs to be protected.

    the average european zionazi apears to be taught from birth to never admit that slavs and communists, not jews, were the primary victims of nazism, both in numbers as well as chronologically.

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  • [–] 9 points 2 days ago

    the slavic or romani victims, or the political prisoners who suffered the same or even worse abuses in the same camps by the same fascist parasites as the jews, do not get to be immortalised in western literature, film, music, or other arts.

    Within Nazi ideology, Jews, Slavs, Romani, and so on are vectors of ideological disease, and their extermination is within the framework of exterminating a population that's a carrier of disease due to greater susceptibility. But the ideological disease itself is communism. If certain members of the carrier population demonstrate that they have not been infected (eg Banderites, Ustashe, various other fascist collaborators), Nazis are more than happy to accept them, albeit within a lower level, of their fascist order. But any blue eye blonde hair German communist has been infected and must be exterminated, Aryan ubermenschness be damned.

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  • [–] 30 points 2 days ago

    Antisemitism is the last refuge for people that treat white genocide like a real thing, treating western Jewish people as if they're exceptional targets for reactionary violence as if they didn't genocide their way into the white privilege pantheon over the last 8 decades

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  • [–] 25 points 2 days ago (1 child)

    You're right we should treat people that follow Judaism the exact same way that we treat Christians/evangelicals. With zero respect.

    squidward-chill

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  • [–] 23 points 2 days ago (1 child)

    We should treat people with the respect all deserve based on a right to religion. I'm a vehement atheist, but we've seen the harm that comes from outright banning or discriminating against people based on religion alone. Christians are not a monolith---I would be much more considerate and patient with a liberation theologist than I would a reactionary, same as I would be for any other religion.

    If you disrespect all religions equally I'm not out here to yuck your yum. But trying to synonimize Judaism with Zionism is doing the Zionists work for them.

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  • [–] 22 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (2 children)

    Internal anti-zionist organizing in Western Judaism is so thoroughly crushed it's basically a non factor not having any more of an effect than a cool parish or two have on Christianity.

    The fact that Jewish anti-zionists can use their identity to protect other anti-zionist protestors from state and non-state zionist violence is a good example of Jewish people not being oppressed by in the West or a vulnerable identity.

    we've seen the harm that comes from outright banning or discriminating against people based on religion alone

    The thing to unlearn is that nobody is suggesting to do any kind of discrimination towards Jewish people. My comment didn't suggest that either. That this feeling gets centered at all and erupts autonomously is a consequence of ambient liberal zionism. Judaism and Jewish people are not under attack.

    Hexbear has not unlearned the fact that Jewish people are just as reactionary as Christians. They are not special - and the fact that saying that can feel like an attack is a symptom of how deeply hegemonic liberal zionism is. Like being fish not understanding water or a liberal not understanding that they also have an ideology, it's hegemonic. 90% support the state of Israel. Wasting precious oxygen on antisemitism during an ongoing genocide when Palestine can can be centered feeds into their genocide.

    As a side note there is no liberation theologist equivalent in Judaism here. Any attempt at doing so would be forcibly mutated into the same reactionary force in the same vein as the Communist Party of America. Jewish people and Judaism are It's not cool or progressive or liberal any moreso than Christians and Christianity are.

    If you are an antizionist Jew every attempt will be made to rip your Jewish identity from you because that identity now thoroughly and materially belongs to reaction. You can post, you can protest, but you're trying to take Catholicism back from the Pope.

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  • [–] 23 points 2 days ago (1 child)

    Can't say I blame them. You are still misrepresenting that conversation.

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  • [–] 21 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (8 children)

    The whole argument about whether or not the Zionist entity is white supremacist or jewish supremacist seems pointless to me. Neither ideology is the cause of the genocide, which is caused by material relationships and conditions. What material condition? European settler-colonialism. So in one way I strongly agree that crying about "jewish supremacy" and focusing on the jewish character of Israel is stupid because it accomplishes nothing but signaling to antisemites that we share common ground, which we do not. But in another way, whining that Judaism is separate and distinct from Zionism, and most Zionists aren't jewish and so on, is centering jewish feelings and crybully behavior that protects Zionist jewish institutions and people from anti-Zionism. There are many jewish institutions in the US and more in the UK that are linked to and materially support the Zionist entity and we can't be whining about needing to protect them from anti-Zionism.

    The synthesis is probably to not worry about whether streamers or youtubers (the source of the argument was Hasan slop) are conflating Zionism with Judaism or centering jewish feelings and to organize with anti-Zionist jews against Zionist institutions, but I know it's annoying to yell "stop listening to streamers and do materialist analysis"

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  • [–] 15 points 2 days ago* (1 child)

    The whole argument about whether or not the Zionist entity is white supremacist or jewish supremacist seems pointless to me. Neither ideology is the cause of the genocide, which is caused by material relationships and conditions. What material condition? European settler-colonialism.

    I feel the need to make a pedantic but necessary correction. Ideology is an objective force, is itself a material condition to the extent that it influences human activity. White supremacy and Jewish supremacy are not only ideology. In the apartheid, they are the social reality. Constructing a Jewish apartheid state creates Jewish supremacist ideology which then reproduces itself through further material and ideological development. It cannot be reduced merely to European settler-colonialism because it is not an abstract European settler-colonial state, but a specifically Zionist one. In my opinion we must take care to understand Ideology, not simply reduce it to material conditions or to class.

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  • [–] 9 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

    This is a good point to think about. You're right that it has its own particular character as the Zionist instance of European settler-colonialism and isn't simply settler-colonialism in the abstract. And you're right that in the apartheid, supremacy ideology is a social force that impacts the oppressed and not a mere belief. Hrm.

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  • [–] 9 points 2 days ago

    I agree, the whole argument between the two of them only made me lose braincells. Of course a streamer like Hasan isn't going to aim for semantic correctness when he's pushing for an election win for a Muslim candidate. So dont put that much weight on what he says.

    The thing is, you do eventually have no choice but to interface with the cultural side along with the material side. Religion and culture are powerful things, and just by taking a side in this conflict for the longest time it meant seeming anti-jew to most of the Jewish and Christian population. This sucked because you then had to answer for bigots and the some of the most bigoted opinions in history. So the recent effort to decouple Judaism from Zionism in the media has been useful for getting around this bs.

    I think the bitterness coming from the geneva_convention and fuknslammer types comes from the electoral candidates piggybacking on this success. They are vindicated by the failure of campaigns like Platner and betrayals of AOC and so making the Palestinian cause less appealing to western leftists is seen to them as "helping".

    They also may be too bitter now from viewing too many settlers videos and when you see that kind of violence perpetrated by mostly one religious group, the conclusion is you become bigoted towards that group. Combating that should be a main priority for Jewish activists. They should be involved in their synagogue and advocate for canceling Zionist activities like going on birthright. If they aren't currently the face of Jewishness, they should start becoming the face of Jewishness. It isn't all on us to forgive and forget.

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    [–] 16 points 2 days ago

    Too much poor quality empanada

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  • [–] 13 points 2 days ago*

    Zionist Jewish institutions are using the fear of rising far-right anti-semitism that they are essentially allied with for the greater isntrael project against anti-zionists, including anti-zionist Jews.

    There's basically a "blue wall of silence" protecting and perpetuating this process in the majority of influential Jewish and Zionist institutions. I agree it is dangerous and sloppy to equate Jewishness with Zionism full stop, but there is also a very real materialist relation between most mainstream Jewish institutions and Zionism in a very significant majority of cases, and it is often obfuscated in mainstream discourse to discredit any anti-zionist perspective that seeks to highlight this.

    I think the resolution of the contradiction has to come from making the oppression of anti-zionists (Jewish and non-Jewish) by zionists (Jewish and non-Jewish) the axis of the discourse. I think highlighting that contradiction deflates the power of the zionists to wield anti-semitism as a cudgel and a shield. The entity works diligently alongside zionists to muddy this distinction. Any input on the discourse from a Jewish person likely needs to include a statement on their position on zionism/the entity. That very quickly can clear things up. Part of the muddying is often a pivot to "two state", equivocating on "ethnostate", etc. This needs to be strongly opposed.

    That's about as simply as I can state my understanding of these things.

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  • [–] 14 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (2 children)

    Aren't a lot of Jews anti-Zionist? Why would I blame all Jews for the actions of Zionists? That would be silly. Hell, there are a lot of Christian Zionists. I see Zionism as more of an oppunistic imperialist offshoot. An excuse for western capitalists to have a stronghold in the east they can use to expand their imperialist interests and threaten the rest of that geographical area with.

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  • [–] 34 points 2 days ago*

    Aren't a lot of Jews anti-Zionist?

    In terms of percentages it's around 10-20 percent of them outside Israel, on the higher end in the US and on the lower end in Europe. Not that many in relative terms - especially when accounting for Jewish institutions being near-universally Zionist - but still hundreds of thousands.

    I see Zionism as more of an oppunistic imperialist offshoot

    Herzl and his successors have gone door-knocking by the British, the Ottomans briefly, the British again, the communists briefly, former Nazi Germans, the Americans and now the far right in general. Usually these alliances have rested on using a Jewish state to inhibit enemies in the regions for the allied partners. If circumstances change and Zionist ambitions become an obstacle rather than an asset, support wanes.

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  • [–] 29 points 2 days ago* (1 child)

    statistically not that many, especially when your definition of anti-zionism is actually anti-israel rather than being a squishy two state, one israel equal rights situation. when it comes to orgs self-IDing as Jewish, the vast majority are explicitly zionist

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  • [–] 9 points 2 days ago (1 child)

    There's a long history of discourse within Judaic studies, history, sociology, and so on, on the multi-level way Jewishness manifests as a social role and identity. It can be a Religion, Ethnicity, A nation (Zionism broadly, as in the Jews need a homeland, or more narrowly---that homeland must be located in current Palestine), or some have even argued a race.

    I'm not going to comment on the validity of all these things, simply remark that it is complicated to at least some degree. There is a long cultural tradition of secular jews wondering where they fit into the picture given the kinds of contradictions that arise from the above overlapping but non-synonymous senses of identity. A Jew may self-identify as culturally a Jew, but not be practicing the faith. They will attend holidays and engage in rituals as a cultural practice, not an explicitly religious one. By way of analogy, many Americans and Europeans celebrate Christmas as a cultural practice, not because they are devout christians. Alternatively, a person may not identify as a Jew themselves, but because of their ancestry or whatever they may be ascribed Jewishness---much like poc are when they have mixed parents---as a social identity imposed on them by outside society. Much like the socially constructed fact of race in general, this conception could be considered a race, but that is imposed from the outside rather than in. I'd argue if Jews start identifying as a race themselves that is a reactionary tendency, as any 'race' conception is a reactionary concept so far as I'm concerned.

    Most orgs self-identifying as Jewish are RELIGIOUS orgs. They're one of the few civil institutions that can survive and replicate themselves under the grinding erosion of capitalism. Only the most devout stay involved because they are willing to live, practice, and participate in the group despite the social and material costs of doing so. Go figure, zealots are willing to commit to the bit, and that bit tends to be reactionary. Jews who are culturally Jewish but not religious likely participate at the fringes in this sense; that is their community and family whether they like it or not. However, they almost definitionally won't be rising to positions of power because they are themselves marginalized within their own community.

    This is honestly a sad phenomenon where people who by all rights should be able to consider themselves culturally Jewish are denied their own identity by a hostile and reactionary in-group trying to impose conformity from within, but they are ALSO put upon by conflation like you seem to be doing in your comment. We are encouraged to simply not be Jews---which is not so simple---for guilt by association.

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  • [–] 8 points 2 days ago*

    Reactionaries of all kinds are most comfortable speaking of abstractions. Culture war is their preferred conflict because it’s untethered to reality and therefore useless for real liberation.

    Simply resist the attempt to reframe the discussion around concepts. Insist on discussing specific events, specific people, specific martyrs. Don’t engage with bait that tries to get you to defend or attack a concept. That includes specious debates over antisemitism.

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  • [–] [S] 10 points 2 days ago*

    @geneva_convenience@lemmy.ml Since you banned me from your comm I decided to make this post because I actually liked you until you kept doubling down on your reactionary nonsense.

    You seem to have internalized the "unlimited genocide on the west" meme as your entire ideology completely devoid of any actually material analysis.

    For the record I did read your articles and watch that video but I could not reply again because you just banned me for pointing out the facts above.

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