|
NOTE: When providing a source, please provide a very brief summary on what it's about and what purpose it adds to the discussion. The supporting statement should clearly explain why the subject is relevant and needs to be discussed. Please follow this rule especially for tweets.
Your supporting statement should always come BEFORE you provide the source. |
On November 14 2025 02:25 mindjames wrote:Show nested quote +On November 14 2025 01:36 Nebuchad wrote:On November 14 2025 00:47 mindjames wrote:
It's funny, you can see how my patience gradually runs out as I go through his post.
For anyone about to "well actually" me, please let me know first if you share the opinions of the above post, so I can know whether I should treat you as an honest interlocutor, or as someone who enjoys reading outrage memes on Twitter and considers it a good way to learn about the conflict. I don't see a ton of opinions in the above post, but in the broad lines I think it describes facts in a way that is similar to how I would describe them, it's pretty good. So I'm letting you know that. Brave! So to recap, you think: * Israel directly controls the economy of the west bank * Abbas is an Israeli puppet * The Israeli government is actively asking Arab Israelis to leave * Herzl was alluding to Arabs when he said the area is "plague-ridden" * Israeli leaders have historically garnered support by promising to make blacks, arabs and all other "inferior races" "subservient" * People in the west are "forced" to align with the pro-Israeli side * The support Israel gets from the west is for the purpose of combating "the Palestinian population" * It is unfair that Israel is being aided by the west while the literal enemies of the west, as well as groups it classifies as terrorist, are not enjoying the same treatment * And my favorite: "the extreme surveillance and control the palestinian population is subject to with the project Nimbus by amazon and google is what is awaiting us all as Palestine is a laboratory of the tool used to control us" Is that the case? At which point in reading that post did you go "man, this guy's cooking"?
I do not agree with your recap of the post, it is written specifically with an intent to discredit it. I am not impressed by that as this is very easy to do, most people are capable of that. I also don't really go "man, this guy's cooking" when I read posts, that's a bit childish.
I think stilt should continue this, I don't want to act as a distraction any more than I already have.
|
On November 14 2025 02:33 Nebuchad wrote:Show nested quote +On November 14 2025 02:25 mindjames wrote:On November 14 2025 01:36 Nebuchad wrote:On November 14 2025 00:47 mindjames wrote:
It's funny, you can see how my patience gradually runs out as I go through his post.
For anyone about to "well actually" me, please let me know first if you share the opinions of the above post, so I can know whether I should treat you as an honest interlocutor, or as someone who enjoys reading outrage memes on Twitter and considers it a good way to learn about the conflict. I don't see a ton of opinions in the above post, but in the broad lines I think it describes facts in a way that is similar to how I would describe them, it's pretty good. So I'm letting you know that. Brave! So to recap, you think: * Israel directly controls the economy of the west bank * Abbas is an Israeli puppet * The Israeli government is actively asking Arab Israelis to leave * Herzl was alluding to Arabs when he said the area is "plague-ridden" * Israeli leaders have historically garnered support by promising to make blacks, arabs and all other "inferior races" "subservient" * People in the west are "forced" to align with the pro-Israeli side * The support Israel gets from the west is for the purpose of combating "the Palestinian population" * It is unfair that Israel is being aided by the west while the literal enemies of the west, as well as groups it classifies as terrorist, are not enjoying the same treatment * And my favorite: "the extreme surveillance and control the palestinian population is subject to with the project Nimbus by amazon and google is what is awaiting us all as Palestine is a laboratory of the tool used to control us" Is that the case? At which point in reading that post did you go "man, this guy's cooking"? I do not agree with your recap of the post, it is written specifically with an intent to discredit it. I am not impressed by that as this is very easy to do, most people are capable of that. I also don't really go "man, this guy's cooking" when I read posts, that's a bit childish. I think stilt should continue this, I don't want to act as a distraction any more than I already have.
No, you don't get to do that. You were trying to poke me and get my reaction. You just got it. Don't run away. Explain how I've misinterpreted the original post. Or at the very least, say which of Stilt's points you agree and disagree with, you don't have to take my supposedly biased recap.
Or maybe you were just trying to signal which side you're on without actually engaging with any of the arguments? Do you think that's a worthwhile contribution?
|
On November 14 2025 02:41 mindjames wrote:Show nested quote +On November 14 2025 02:33 Nebuchad wrote:On November 14 2025 02:25 mindjames wrote:On November 14 2025 01:36 Nebuchad wrote:On November 14 2025 00:47 mindjames wrote:
It's funny, you can see how my patience gradually runs out as I go through his post.
For anyone about to "well actually" me, please let me know first if you share the opinions of the above post, so I can know whether I should treat you as an honest interlocutor, or as someone who enjoys reading outrage memes on Twitter and considers it a good way to learn about the conflict. I don't see a ton of opinions in the above post, but in the broad lines I think it describes facts in a way that is similar to how I would describe them, it's pretty good. So I'm letting you know that. Brave! So to recap, you think: * Israel directly controls the economy of the west bank * Abbas is an Israeli puppet * The Israeli government is actively asking Arab Israelis to leave * Herzl was alluding to Arabs when he said the area is "plague-ridden" * Israeli leaders have historically garnered support by promising to make blacks, arabs and all other "inferior races" "subservient" * People in the west are "forced" to align with the pro-Israeli side * The support Israel gets from the west is for the purpose of combating "the Palestinian population" * It is unfair that Israel is being aided by the west while the literal enemies of the west, as well as groups it classifies as terrorist, are not enjoying the same treatment * And my favorite: "the extreme surveillance and control the palestinian population is subject to with the project Nimbus by amazon and google is what is awaiting us all as Palestine is a laboratory of the tool used to control us" Is that the case? At which point in reading that post did you go "man, this guy's cooking"? I do not agree with your recap of the post, it is written specifically with an intent to discredit it. I am not impressed by that as this is very easy to do, most people are capable of that. I also don't really go "man, this guy's cooking" when I read posts, that's a bit childish. I think stilt should continue this, I don't want to act as a distraction any more than I already have. No, you don't get to do that. You were trying to poke me and get my reaction. You just got it. Don't run away. Explain how I've misinterpreted the original post. Or at the very least, say which of Stilt's points you agree and disagree with, you don't have to take my supposedly biased recap. Or maybe you were just trying to signal which side you're on without actually engaging with any of the arguments? Do you think that's a worthwhile contribution?
I think it's a contribution that is exactly on the same level of worth as demanding to know who agrees with the post so that they can be treated as not honest contributors. The main reason why I have that thought is because it obviously is.
Take it to PM maybe?
|
On November 14 2025 02:44 Nebuchad wrote:Show nested quote +On November 14 2025 02:41 mindjames wrote:On November 14 2025 02:33 Nebuchad wrote:On November 14 2025 02:25 mindjames wrote:On November 14 2025 01:36 Nebuchad wrote:On November 14 2025 00:47 mindjames wrote:
It's funny, you can see how my patience gradually runs out as I go through his post.
For anyone about to "well actually" me, please let me know first if you share the opinions of the above post, so I can know whether I should treat you as an honest interlocutor, or as someone who enjoys reading outrage memes on Twitter and considers it a good way to learn about the conflict. I don't see a ton of opinions in the above post, but in the broad lines I think it describes facts in a way that is similar to how I would describe them, it's pretty good. So I'm letting you know that. Brave! So to recap, you think: * Israel directly controls the economy of the west bank * Abbas is an Israeli puppet * The Israeli government is actively asking Arab Israelis to leave * Herzl was alluding to Arabs when he said the area is "plague-ridden" * Israeli leaders have historically garnered support by promising to make blacks, arabs and all other "inferior races" "subservient" * People in the west are "forced" to align with the pro-Israeli side * The support Israel gets from the west is for the purpose of combating "the Palestinian population" * It is unfair that Israel is being aided by the west while the literal enemies of the west, as well as groups it classifies as terrorist, are not enjoying the same treatment * And my favorite: "the extreme surveillance and control the palestinian population is subject to with the project Nimbus by amazon and google is what is awaiting us all as Palestine is a laboratory of the tool used to control us" Is that the case? At which point in reading that post did you go "man, this guy's cooking"? I do not agree with your recap of the post, it is written specifically with an intent to discredit it. I am not impressed by that as this is very easy to do, most people are capable of that. I also don't really go "man, this guy's cooking" when I read posts, that's a bit childish. I think stilt should continue this, I don't want to act as a distraction any more than I already have. No, you don't get to do that. You were trying to poke me and get my reaction. You just got it. Don't run away. Explain how I've misinterpreted the original post. Or at the very least, say which of Stilt's points you agree and disagree with, you don't have to take my supposedly biased recap. Or maybe you were just trying to signal which side you're on without actually engaging with any of the arguments? Do you think that's a worthwhile contribution? I think it's a contribution that is exactly on the same level of worth as demanding to know who agrees with the post so that they can be treated as not honest contributors. The main reason why I have that thought is because it obviously is.
Right, so my contribution is supposedly limited to asking people who they agree with, never mind the mile-long post before that which goes point by point.
See, this is why I ask these questions. Your opinion means less than nothing to me if you align yourself with the people expressing the most off-the-wall, batshit conspiracy brain rot the internet has to offer, just because they are on the side that you generally agree with. I don't have to be a Kahanist to oppose Hamas, and you don't have to be a Jihadist to oppose Netanyahu.
But nice try, challenging my post and then expecting others to fill in the blanks that you clearly have no idea about. So brave and admirable!
Edit: You can take it to PM, be my guest. I just wanted you to know what I think about your empty callout.
|
On November 13 2025 21:18 stilt wrote:Show nested quote +On November 13 2025 13:31 RvB wrote:On October 27 2025 20:08 Jankisa wrote:On October 25 2025 02:10 RvB wrote:
You're wrong. Uyghurs live in a police state. There are no Uyghur who live a nice and stable life except some of the elite that cooperate with the CCP. See for instance part of the article below. It's long but describes it well.. There is not much there that has anything more then what West bank Palestinians don't have, just a different flavor of repression, and from everything I've read, less violent. Also, another thing that crossed my mind when reading this, China, in general is a police state for most of it's citizens, obviously not to the extent of what is being done to Uyughurs but way more then what Israel does to non-West bank Palestinian citizens. China being a police state in general isn't an argument in favour of your point. Israel's occupation does not take the form of a police state. It has no control over the education system, the press, or civil administration in area A and B. Their control is mostly in area C (largest by landmass but lowest by population), and overall security control of the West Bank. In area A and B that's primarily via frequent raids and checkpoints. You also, haven't really provided any evidence for what you wrote, yes, this city has all this, there is 12 million Uygurhs, going around and providing one article and extrapolating it to "no Uyghur who live a nice and stable life" is quite a leap, especially when you put it after an arrogant "you're wrong".
In general you are trying to project some sort of "factually you are wrong" stance when you are obviously quite ignorant on this outside of "how can this guy say something I disagree with". The article is about Xinjiang as a whole. It uses Hotan as a case study. That's how articles like this are frequently structured. It specifically says so as well. If you want more evidence then there's a lot. China has locked up an estimated 0.9m - 1.8m in the detention camps [1] specifically targetting heads of households and community figures pushing their families into poverty, hundreds of thousands of their children are put into boarding schools and schools are transformed into prisons [2], up to half a million, most of them not detained, are in forced labour [3], birth control via intrauterine devices, sterilization and abortion is forced on hundreds of thousands [4]. That's on top of the 1.1 million government officials living with half of families and grid system as mentioned in the Economist article. Then there's the pomegrenate flower policy that does the same thing for children [5], forced labour where they're sent outside of Xinjiang, and the deaths inside the camps. All of which I could not find numbers for but which are significant. In one camp alone 150 detainees died in a period of 6 months [6]. Xinjiang spans over 1.6 million square kilometers, Uyghur dominated areas are about a quarter of that, still bigger then any European country.
Average GDP for a Palestinian in 2024 according to IMF is $2,440.
Average for Xinjiang is around $10,500. The size of Xinjiang is not relevant. I dont understand why you mention it. The statistics from the IMF are for the West Bank and Gaza [7]. The argument is specifically about the West Bank. It's also not adjusted for PPP. Aditionally, China has a huge rural/urban and Han/minority disparity. E.g. Hotans gdp per capita was 20k yuan [8] (approximately 2.8k USD) in 2023 compared to 74k [9](approximately 10.3k USD) for Xinjiang as a whole. Unless you can adjust for that using an average is meaningless. There is plenty of programs that aren't just incredibly repressive to Uyghurs, such as affirmative action that actually help them, there are plenty of Uyghurs who have a much better chance of a good life then Palestinians.
And then there is the random and state sponsored violence and living under a military occupation.
This is why I'd much rather be a Uyghur. Maybe I don't have a problem with saying fuck my religion or national identity, so it's easier for me to imagine having a better life, but it's very wrong to say "You're wrong" on saying that on average there are both who live normal lives and I'd like my chances in China more.
Again, fuck the CCP for doing this shit, it's a slow roll Ethnic Cleansing and Cultural Genocide, too bad that people like you who attack me for saying it's not as bad as West Bank can't say the same about policies that Israel implements there. I dont see much of an argument to respond here. As to Israel and their violations in the West Bank I've been critical of it in this thread. It's a long thread and you were not there so it's not a surprise that you did not read it but I'm also not going to reiterate them. It's a very weird post. Israel has the whole control over the west bank economy and has a puppet at the head of this administration who cooperates in the repression. How on earth Israel has no control there ? It's not all uyghurs neither just the elites who can escape, it's the ones who reject or accept to totally depoliticize their culture which is very close to the same. It is a political and cultural repression of a central state which can indeed be interpreted as colonial logics. This is what is asked for now not to palestinian citizen but to arabs israelis, the latter however are asked to leave. To be fair, the israeli far right who is gaining more and more traction asks the same to every arab israeli while "moderate" scholar are very ambiguous to say the very least. As for the obvious subtext of this discussion which is why caring for palestine and not the uyghur or others people, basically the good old whataboutism :. Here's what herzl, daddy of the zionism has to say : We... as representatives of Western civilization, would bring cleanliness, order and the well-distilled customs of the Occident." He presented palestine as "plague ridden" which will become then an "outpost of civilization as opposed to barbarism." Herzl is presented as a "paternalist colonist" by scholar like edward saïd but this kind of speech belongs as well to a eugenistic thought. Since him, all the israeli leaders from Ben Gourion, Meier, Begin and of course "Bibi" as he is affectionately called there have constantly used this rhetoric of the "war of civilization" and has constantly ignated all the racists and supremacists dumbfucks who regreat the good old time where blacks, arabs and all other "inferior races" were subversient. The direct consequence is the diplomatic, economic and military support Israel is enjoying from the west against the palestinian population which China, the houthis and the belligerants in Sudan don't enjoy at all. And as to justify this, we are forced to align our views with Israel. Hence, we gave a academic censorships of almost all the western governements, as it is my field I can confirm france is very brutal about it and the judicial repression under false pretext. Furthermore, the extreme surveillance and control the palestinian population is subject to with the project Nimbus by amazon and google is what is awaiting us all as Palestine is a laboratory of the tool used to control us. It's not like alex karp of the surveillance society Palantir is making a secret of it. I hope this is the end of all the "whataboutism".
Your post is the weird one mate.
On November 02 2025 08:21 Liquid`Drone wrote:
My experience is that the genuine anti-semitism I've seen comes from a) nazis and b) muslims, while most criticism of Israel that I encounter comes from a) leftists and b) muslims. The nazis don't like palestine any more than they like Israel, so they hate jews without caring about the conflict. The leftists dislike/hate Israel without disliking/hating jews, and among muslims, a large majority have a negative view of Israel and there, antisemitism is fairly common as well.
*this isn't to say that belief in some tropes or whatnot is entirely absent among leftists, but 'disliking someone for being part of a particular ethnic group' isn't really compatible with being a leftist.
You're a reasonable guy though so your experience is not very representative. The (far) left has always had a significant problem with antisemitism. E.g. The antisemitism of the USSR is well documented [1]. Many of the current anti semetic tropes originated in the USSR. The usage of anti zionist Jews, equating Israeli policy with nazism, and using zionism interchangeably with Jews is still seen today. More recently there was the anti semitism in Corbyn's labour [2]. To Labours credit they took it seriously. That theoretically racism is incompatible with leftist thought does not mean it doesn't happen in practice. Killing millions of your own people is also not compatible, yet it still happened.
To be clear antisemitism is also a huge issue on the right.
|
On November 14 2025 12:59 RvB wrote:You're a reasonable guy though so your experience is not very representative. The (far) left has always had a significant problem with antisemitism. E.g. The antisemitism of the USSR is well documented [1]. Many of the current anti semetic tropes originated in the USSR. The usage of anti zionist Jews, equating Israeli policy with nazism, and using zionism interchangeably with Jews is still seen today. More recently there was the anti semitism in Corbyn's labour [2]. To Labours credit they took it seriously. That theoretically racism is incompatible with leftist thought does not mean it doesn't happen in practice. Killing millions of your own people is also not compatible, yet it still happened. To be clear antisemitism is also a huge issue on the right.
Your link does not claim that many of the current antisemitic tropes originated in the USSR, it connects the origins a lot more to the end of imperial Russia, under the last tsars (for example the Protocols of the Elders of Zion), which is in line with my understanding. Stalin then uses the undercurrent of antisemitism that already exists to consolidate his power.
I had a little Google and found something by the ADL that pertains to your claim and the main bulk seems to be centered around "equating Israeli policy with nazism", as you mentioned yourself. The idea that this is a racist thing to do is quite silly, and it becomes possibly more silly in conjunction with the rest of your sentence because you follow it with something that it is accurate to characterize as racist in my opinion, which is using "Jews" and "zionists" interchangeably. But then if that is a racist thing to do, well, you've just done it. You have just expressed the idea that making a comparison between Israeli policy and nazism is antisemitic, as if it was Jews that were responsible for this policy as opposed to, you know, zionists.
Not for the first time I'll point out that this isn't really a serious conversation because it doesn't have any context in any of these worldviews. None of the people who talk about this are in the Ukraine thread checking posts for russophobia, none of the people who talk about this have links ready to go about the history of islamophobia in liberal circles. Maybe you should, though? It is interesting what we can hear about muslims in a lot of center and center right spaces. Do I think that if the Fourests and Enthovens of France weren't drowning the waves with their islamophobia, if France didn't have actual ministers of Macron speaking positively about islamoleftism, the conspiracy theory in which leftists and islamists are allied to overthrow and destroy Europe, if we didn't have all of that, then maybe you wouldn't have felt last year that "human shields" was a legitimate argument in defense of what Israel was doing? Eh, who knows.
Ultimately using antisemitism like this, not in an effort to make Jews safer but in an effort to discredit cool people like Mamdani or Corbyn or to defend otherwise indefensible practices, is dangerous. It creates more hatred, not less. I and others like me will continue to try and fight antisemitism when we see it in the left (which is not very often at all), but a lot of people aren't leftists, or woke, and they'll be hearing this nonsense too.
|
On November 14 2025 14:29 Nebuchad wrote:Show nested quote +On November 14 2025 12:59 RvB wrote:You're a reasonable guy though so your experience is not very representative. The (far) left has always had a significant problem with antisemitism. E.g. The antisemitism of the USSR is well documented [1]. Many of the current anti semetic tropes originated in the USSR. The usage of anti zionist Jews, equating Israeli policy with nazism, and using zionism interchangeably with Jews is still seen today. More recently there was the anti semitism in Corbyn's labour [2]. To Labours credit they took it seriously. That theoretically racism is incompatible with leftist thought does not mean it doesn't happen in practice. Killing millions of your own people is also not compatible, yet it still happened. To be clear antisemitism is also a huge issue on the right. Your link does not claim that many of the current antisemitic tropes originated in the USSR, it connects the origins a lot more to the end of imperial Russia, under the last tsars (for example the Protocols of the Elders of Zion), which is in line with my understanding. Stalin then uses the undercurrent of antisemitism that already exists to consolidate his power.
There are multiple examples of what I mentioned:
1. The KGB and its subservient Eastern Bloc intelligence agencies also dedicated significant resources to cultivating antisemitic and anti-U.S. hatred in the Islamic world. The primary objective of these campaigns
was to prove “the connection between the U.S.A., ‘American capital,’ ‘American imperialism,’ etc., and
Zionism … using interchangeably ‘Zionism,’ and ‘Jews’ or ‘Judaism’” in their narratives.
2. Resolution 3379 narrowly passed384 on November 10, 1975, with 72 in favor, 35 against, and 32 abstaining.
The Kremlin considered the resolution’s passing a major diplomatic victory and a demonstration of the
Soviet Union’s support for Arab countries.385 Soviet propaganda outlets across the USSR — some of which
still exist in Russia today — hailed the resolution in a slew of antisemitic articles comparing Zionism to
fascism and Hitler’s Third Reich as well as channeling the essence of The Protocols.386 According to Israeli
scholar Baruch A. Hazan, in the mid-1970s, “virtually all instruments of international propaganda [had] been
mobilized to battle Zionism.” The Soviet media spread disinformation equating Zionism with Nazism and
Israeli soldiers with Nazis, dismissing acts of antisemitism as Zionist “provocations,” and portraying Zionists
as spies.387
3. In 1984, the Committee took on an even more aggressive role and extreme rhetoric. State propaganda
outlet Pravda published an article featuring “specialist” commentator on “anti-Zionist questions” Vladimir
Bolshakov’s thesis on Zionism, which formulated Zionism as the overall equivalent of Nazism in terms of its
alleged aggression and Nazi-like subversive ideology. Days after the Pravda article, TASS reported the Committee had denounced Israel and the United States for its aggression and equated Israel and Zionism to
Nazism and Nazi-like policies and practices. The Committee held another press conference in May 1984 at
the press center of the Soviet Ministry of Foreign Affairs. David Dragunsky, the Committee’s head, claimed
to “expose the methods borrowed [by Israel] from the arsenal of Nazi war criminals...”
4. Under Andropov’s occupancy of the Kremlin, on March 29, 1983, the Secretariat of the Central Committee
of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) agreed398 to follow the recommendations of the KGB
and of the Central Committee’s Department of Propaganda to establish the Soviet Anti-Zionist Committee
(“the Committee”). The CPSU appointed399 the Committee’s leaders and directed the KGB and the Depart-
ment of Propaganda to supervise and support it. Headed by anti-Zionist Jews, the organ would serve as a
seemingly credible anti-Zionist propaganda mouthpiece for the Soviet state for over a decade. The deploy-
ment of Jews for such a role was an “intentional choice on the part of the KGB, meant to deflect accusations
of antisemitism.400
I had a little Google and found something by the ADL that pertains to your claim and the main bulk seems to be centered around "equating Israeli policy with nazism", as you mentioned yourself. The idea that this is a racist thing to do is quite silly, and it becomes possibly more silly in conjunction with the rest of your sentence because you follow it with something that it is accurate to characterize as racist in my opinion, which is using "Jews" and "zionists" interchangeably. But then if that is a racist thing to do, well, you've just done it. You have just expressed the idea that making a comparison between Israeli policy and nazism is antisemitic, as if it was Jews that were responsible for this policy as opposed to, you know, zionists.
Even you should be able to figure out how comparing the only Jewish state, who were the main victims of the Nazi's, to the Nazi's is antisemetic. It'd be a different matter if Israel was murdering minorities on an industrial scale.
Not for the first time I'll point out that this isn't really a serious conversation because it doesn't have any context in any of these worldviews. None of the people who talk about this are in the Ukraine thread checking posts for russophobia, none of the people who talk about this have links ready to go about the history of islamophobia in liberal circles. Maybe you should, though? It is interesting what we can hear about muslims in a lot of center and center right spaces. Do I think that if the Fourests and Enthovens of France weren't drowning the waves with their islamophobia, if France didn't have actual ministers of Macron speaking positively about islamoleftism, the conspiracy theory in which leftists and islamists are allied to overthrow and destroy Europe, if we didn't have all of that, then maybe you wouldn't have felt last year that "human shields" was a legitimate argument in defense of what Israel was doing? Eh, who knows.
This forum is full of talk about racism in its other forms. Me posting about it contributes little. Your point is especially ironic considering you've barely posted on the atrocities in other conflicts like Sudan, Yemen, Ethiopia. For what it's worth I absolutely deplore the massive amounts of racism and the rise of the far right in our society.
Ultimately using antisemitism like this, not in an effort to make Jews safer but in an effort to discredit cool people like Mamdani or Corbyn or to defend otherwise indefensible practices, is dangerous. It creates more hatred, not less. I and others like me will continue to try and fight antisemitism when we see it in the left (which is not very often at all), but a lot of people aren't leftists, or woke, and they'll be hearing this nonsense too.
I've only talked about Corbyn in the context of his Labour not dealing with antisemitism. That's a fact. The whole problem is that much of the left is not capable of properly identifying antisemitism. Drone is very reasonable, level headed and clearly not antisemetic. If even he comes to the conclusion that the left dislikes Israel without disliking Jews that gives me very little hope. At the extremes that is simply not the case. Just as on the right criticism of immigration turns into outright racism.
|
Way to shit the post, Liquid Drone pretty much presented the reasonable for the majority of the left. The majority of the left is not the fucking URSS. It's amazing how you fucking love the antisemitism card so much that you need to stir so much shit to fucking stop posting about what's going on Gaza instead.
|
On November 14 2025 12:59 RvB wrote:Show nested quote +On November 13 2025 21:18 stilt wrote:On November 13 2025 13:31 RvB wrote:On October 27 2025 20:08 Jankisa wrote:On October 25 2025 02:10 RvB wrote:
You're wrong. Uyghurs live in a police state. There are no Uyghur who live a nice and stable life except some of the elite that cooperate with the CCP. See for instance part of the article below. It's long but describes it well.. There is not much there that has anything more then what West bank Palestinians don't have, just a different flavor of repression, and from everything I've read, less violent. Also, another thing that crossed my mind when reading this, China, in general is a police state for most of it's citizens, obviously not to the extent of what is being done to Uyughurs but way more then what Israel does to non-West bank Palestinian citizens. China being a police state in general isn't an argument in favour of your point. Israel's occupation does not take the form of a police state. It has no control over the education system, the press, or civil administration in area A and B. Their control is mostly in area C (largest by landmass but lowest by population), and overall security control of the West Bank. In area A and B that's primarily via frequent raids and checkpoints. You also, haven't really provided any evidence for what you wrote, yes, this city has all this, there is 12 million Uygurhs, going around and providing one article and extrapolating it to "no Uyghur who live a nice and stable life" is quite a leap, especially when you put it after an arrogant "you're wrong".
In general you are trying to project some sort of "factually you are wrong" stance when you are obviously quite ignorant on this outside of "how can this guy say something I disagree with". The article is about Xinjiang as a whole. It uses Hotan as a case study. That's how articles like this are frequently structured. It specifically says so as well. If you want more evidence then there's a lot. China has locked up an estimated 0.9m - 1.8m in the detention camps [1] specifically targetting heads of households and community figures pushing their families into poverty, hundreds of thousands of their children are put into boarding schools and schools are transformed into prisons [2], up to half a million, most of them not detained, are in forced labour [3], birth control via intrauterine devices, sterilization and abortion is forced on hundreds of thousands [4]. That's on top of the 1.1 million government officials living with half of families and grid system as mentioned in the Economist article. Then there's the pomegrenate flower policy that does the same thing for children [5], forced labour where they're sent outside of Xinjiang, and the deaths inside the camps. All of which I could not find numbers for but which are significant. In one camp alone 150 detainees died in a period of 6 months [6]. Xinjiang spans over 1.6 million square kilometers, Uyghur dominated areas are about a quarter of that, still bigger then any European country.
Average GDP for a Palestinian in 2024 according to IMF is $2,440.
Average for Xinjiang is around $10,500. The size of Xinjiang is not relevant. I dont understand why you mention it. The statistics from the IMF are for the West Bank and Gaza [7]. The argument is specifically about the West Bank. It's also not adjusted for PPP. Aditionally, China has a huge rural/urban and Han/minority disparity. E.g. Hotans gdp per capita was 20k yuan [8] (approximately 2.8k USD) in 2023 compared to 74k [9](approximately 10.3k USD) for Xinjiang as a whole. Unless you can adjust for that using an average is meaningless. There is plenty of programs that aren't just incredibly repressive to Uyghurs, such as affirmative action that actually help them, there are plenty of Uyghurs who have a much better chance of a good life then Palestinians.
And then there is the random and state sponsored violence and living under a military occupation.
This is why I'd much rather be a Uyghur. Maybe I don't have a problem with saying fuck my religion or national identity, so it's easier for me to imagine having a better life, but it's very wrong to say "You're wrong" on saying that on average there are both who live normal lives and I'd like my chances in China more.
Again, fuck the CCP for doing this shit, it's a slow roll Ethnic Cleansing and Cultural Genocide, too bad that people like you who attack me for saying it's not as bad as West Bank can't say the same about policies that Israel implements there. I dont see much of an argument to respond here. As to Israel and their violations in the West Bank I've been critical of it in this thread. It's a long thread and you were not there so it's not a surprise that you did not read it but I'm also not going to reiterate them. It's a very weird post. Israel has the whole control over the west bank economy and has a puppet at the head of this administration who cooperates in the repression. How on earth Israel has no control there ? It's not all uyghurs neither just the elites who can escape, it's the ones who reject or accept to totally depoliticize their culture which is very close to the same. It is a political and cultural repression of a central state which can indeed be interpreted as colonial logics. This is what is asked for now not to palestinian citizen but to arabs israelis, the latter however are asked to leave. To be fair, the israeli far right who is gaining more and more traction asks the same to every arab israeli while "moderate" scholar are very ambiguous to say the very least. As for the obvious subtext of this discussion which is why caring for palestine and not the uyghur or others people, basically the good old whataboutism :. Here's what herzl, daddy of the zionism has to say : We... as representatives of Western civilization, would bring cleanliness, order and the well-distilled customs of the Occident." He presented palestine as "plague ridden" which will become then an "outpost of civilization as opposed to barbarism." Herzl is presented as a "paternalist colonist" by scholar like edward saïd but this kind of speech belongs as well to a eugenistic thought. Since him, all the israeli leaders from Ben Gourion, Meier, Begin and of course "Bibi" as he is affectionately called there have constantly used this rhetoric of the "war of civilization" and has constantly ignated all the racists and supremacists dumbfucks who regreat the good old time where blacks, arabs and all other "inferior races" were subversient. The direct consequence is the diplomatic, economic and military support Israel is enjoying from the west against the palestinian population which China, the houthis and the belligerants in Sudan don't enjoy at all. And as to justify this, we are forced to align our views with Israel. Hence, we gave a academic censorships of almost all the western governements, as it is my field I can confirm france is very brutal about it and the judicial repression under false pretext. Furthermore, the extreme surveillance and control the palestinian population is subject to with the project Nimbus by amazon and google is what is awaiting us all as Palestine is a laboratory of the tool used to control us. It's not like alex karp of the surveillance society Palantir is making a secret of it. I hope this is the end of all the "whataboutism". Your post is the weird one mate. Show nested quote +On November 02 2025 08:21 Liquid`Drone wrote:
My experience is that the genuine anti-semitism I've seen comes from a) nazis and b) muslims, while most criticism of Israel that I encounter comes from a) leftists and b) muslims. The nazis don't like palestine any more than they like Israel, so they hate jews without caring about the conflict. The leftists dislike/hate Israel without disliking/hating jews, and among muslims, a large majority have a negative view of Israel and there, antisemitism is fairly common as well.
*this isn't to say that belief in some tropes or whatnot is entirely absent among leftists, but 'disliking someone for being part of a particular ethnic group' isn't really compatible with being a leftist. You're a reasonable guy though so your experience is not very representative. The (far) left has always had a significant problem with antisemitism. E.g. The antisemitism of the USSR is well documented [1]. Many of the current anti semetic tropes originated in the USSR. The usage of anti zionist Jews, equating Israeli policy with nazism, and using zionism interchangeably with Jews is still seen today. More recently there was the anti semitism in Corbyn's labour [2]. To Labours credit they took it seriously. That theoretically racism is incompatible with leftist thought does not mean it doesn't happen in practice. Killing millions of your own people is also not compatible, yet it still happened. To be clear antisemitism is also a huge issue on the right.
It is an issue on the left, but it is a way way bigger one on the right.
|
Northern Ireland26225 Posts
On November 14 2025 18:02 RvB wrote:Show nested quote +On November 14 2025 14:29 Nebuchad wrote:On November 14 2025 12:59 RvB wrote:You're a reasonable guy though so your experience is not very representative. The (far) left has always had a significant problem with antisemitism. E.g. The antisemitism of the USSR is well documented [1]. Many of the current anti semetic tropes originated in the USSR. The usage of anti zionist Jews, equating Israeli policy with nazism, and using zionism interchangeably with Jews is still seen today. More recently there was the anti semitism in Corbyn's labour [2]. To Labours credit they took it seriously. That theoretically racism is incompatible with leftist thought does not mean it doesn't happen in practice. Killing millions of your own people is also not compatible, yet it still happened. To be clear antisemitism is also a huge issue on the right. Your link does not claim that many of the current antisemitic tropes originated in the USSR, it connects the origins a lot more to the end of imperial Russia, under the last tsars (for example the Protocols of the Elders of Zion), which is in line with my understanding. Stalin then uses the undercurrent of antisemitism that already exists to consolidate his power. There are multiple examples of what I mentioned: 1. Show nested quote +The KGB and its subservient Eastern Bloc intelligence agencies also dedicated significant resources to cultivating antisemitic and anti-U.S. hatred in the Islamic world. The primary objective of these campaigns
was to prove “the connection between the U.S.A., ‘American capital,’ ‘American imperialism,’ etc., and
Zionism … using interchangeably ‘Zionism,’ and ‘Jews’ or ‘Judaism’” in their narratives. 2. Show nested quote +Resolution 3379 narrowly passed384 on November 10, 1975, with 72 in favor, 35 against, and 32 abstaining.
The Kremlin considered the resolution’s passing a major diplomatic victory and a demonstration of the
Soviet Union’s support for Arab countries.385 Soviet propaganda outlets across the USSR — some of which
still exist in Russia today — hailed the resolution in a slew of antisemitic articles comparing Zionism to
fascism and Hitler’s Third Reich as well as channeling the essence of The Protocols.386 According to Israeli
scholar Baruch A. Hazan, in the mid-1970s, “virtually all instruments of international propaganda [had] been
mobilized to battle Zionism.” The Soviet media spread disinformation equating Zionism with Nazism and
Israeli soldiers with Nazis, dismissing acts of antisemitism as Zionist “provocations,” and portraying Zionists
as spies.387 3. Show nested quote +In 1984, the Committee took on an even more aggressive role and extreme rhetoric. State propaganda
outlet Pravda published an article featuring “specialist” commentator on “anti-Zionist questions” Vladimir
Bolshakov’s thesis on Zionism, which formulated Zionism as the overall equivalent of Nazism in terms of its
alleged aggression and Nazi-like subversive ideology. Days after the Pravda article, TASS reported the Committee had denounced Israel and the United States for its aggression and equated Israel and Zionism to
Nazism and Nazi-like policies and practices. The Committee held another press conference in May 1984 at
the press center of the Soviet Ministry of Foreign Affairs. David Dragunsky, the Committee’s head, claimed
to “expose the methods borrowed [by Israel] from the arsenal of Nazi war criminals...” 4. Show nested quote +Under Andropov’s occupancy of the Kremlin, on March 29, 1983, the Secretariat of the Central Committee
of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) agreed398 to follow the recommendations of the KGB
and of the Central Committee’s Department of Propaganda to establish the Soviet Anti-Zionist Committee
(“the Committee”). The CPSU appointed399 the Committee’s leaders and directed the KGB and the Depart-
ment of Propaganda to supervise and support it. Headed by anti-Zionist Jews, the organ would serve as a
seemingly credible anti-Zionist propaganda mouthpiece for the Soviet state for over a decade. The deploy-
ment of Jews for such a role was an “intentional choice on the part of the KGB, meant to deflect accusations
of antisemitism.400 Show nested quote +I had a little Google and found something by the ADL that pertains to your claim and the main bulk seems to be centered around "equating Israeli policy with nazism", as you mentioned yourself. The idea that this is a racist thing to do is quite silly, and it becomes possibly more silly in conjunction with the rest of your sentence because you follow it with something that it is accurate to characterize as racist in my opinion, which is using "Jews" and "zionists" interchangeably. But then if that is a racist thing to do, well, you've just done it. You have just expressed the idea that making a comparison between Israeli policy and nazism is antisemitic, as if it was Jews that were responsible for this policy as opposed to, you know, zionists. Even you should be able to figure out how comparing the only Jewish state, who were the main victims of the Nazi's, to the Nazi's is antisemetic. It'd be a different matter if Israel was murdering minorities on an industrial scale. Show nested quote +Not for the first time I'll point out that this isn't really a serious conversation because it doesn't have any context in any of these worldviews. None of the people who talk about this are in the Ukraine thread checking posts for russophobia, none of the people who talk about this have links ready to go about the history of islamophobia in liberal circles. Maybe you should, though? It is interesting what we can hear about muslims in a lot of center and center right spaces. Do I think that if the Fourests and Enthovens of France weren't drowning the waves with their islamophobia, if France didn't have actual ministers of Macron speaking positively about islamoleftism, the conspiracy theory in which leftists and islamists are allied to overthrow and destroy Europe, if we didn't have all of that, then maybe you wouldn't have felt last year that "human shields" was a legitimate argument in defense of what Israel was doing? Eh, who knows. This forum is full of talk about racism in its other forms. Me posting about it contributes little. Your point is especially ironic considering you've barely posted on the atrocities in other conflicts like Sudan, Yemen, Ethiopia. For what it's worth I absolutely deplore the massive amounts of racism and the rise of the far right in our society. Show nested quote +Ultimately using antisemitism like this, not in an effort to make Jews safer but in an effort to discredit cool people like Mamdani or Corbyn or to defend otherwise indefensible practices, is dangerous. It creates more hatred, not less. I and others like me will continue to try and fight antisemitism when we see it in the left (which is not very often at all), but a lot of people aren't leftists, or woke, and they'll be hearing this nonsense too. I've only talked about Corbyn in the context of his Labour not dealing with antisemitism. That's a fact. The whole problem is that much of the left is not capable of properly identifying antisemitism. Drone is very reasonable, level headed and clearly not antisemetic. If even he comes to the conclusion that the left dislikes Israel without disliking Jews that gives me very little hope. At the extremes that is simply not the case. Just as on the right criticism of immigration turns into outright racism.
That comparison isn’t necessarily anti-Semitic, it can be many things. Apt, wrong, or anti-Semitic.
So I think you end up with a categorisation issue.
The left’s intellectual tradition is also very influenced by prominent Jewish thinkers, indeed, this is often invoked by prominent anti-Semites.
Many things can be true. I’d agree that the left does have some blind spots. But some criticism of Israel can also be conflated with anti-Semitism and defused or deflected that way.
Corbyn’s stewardship you see both these at work. Definitely some failings on his watch, as the investigation and report showed. And as to your point, yeah I think people have dismissed some of that too lightly. Equally, for many, the punishment didn’t fit the crime, and a general party direction they were enthused about got completely dismantled.
In a crude sense there’s probably some happy medium between not taking it seriously and being over-zealous. Indeed I think the latter can actually be actively counter-productive
|
On November 14 2025 18:20 Godwrath wrote:
Way to shit the post, Liquid Drone pretty much presented the reasonable for the majority of the left. The majority of the left is not the fucking URSS. It's amazing how you fucking love the antisemitism card so much that you need to stir so much shit to fucking stop posting about what's going on Gaza instead. He never said Liquid Drone was antisemitic or extremist? Hes pointing out that the talking points of the USSR are
1) reflected in some of the patterns of thought and opinion within the western left
and not directly stated but I read the implicit into (maybe im wrong but i agree with this take)
2) that leftist antisemitism predates the ussr as well.
You dont have to be an actual fucking ML to be part of a larger cultural milieu where certain opinions are either absorbed directly or indirectly. Culture is malleable and permeable. Its not just these hard lines of 'I am a communist from the USSR' and "I am not and therefore have literally nothing to do with any of their opinions".On November 14 2025 23:59 Billyboy wrote:Show nested quote +On November 14 2025 12:59 RvB wrote:On November 13 2025 21:18 stilt wrote:On November 13 2025 13:31 RvB wrote:On October 27 2025 20:08 Jankisa wrote:On October 25 2025 02:10 RvB wrote:
You're wrong. Uyghurs live in a police state. There are no Uyghur who live a nice and stable life except some of the elite that cooperate with the CCP. See for instance part of the article below. It's long but describes it well.. There is not much there that has anything more then what West bank Palestinians don't have, just a different flavor of repression, and from everything I've read, less violent. Also, another thing that crossed my mind when reading this, China, in general is a police state for most of it's citizens, obviously not to the extent of what is being done to Uyughurs but way more then what Israel does to non-West bank Palestinian citizens. China being a police state in general isn't an argument in favour of your point. Israel's occupation does not take the form of a police state. It has no control over the education system, the press, or civil administration in area A and B. Their control is mostly in area C (largest by landmass but lowest by population), and overall security control of the West Bank. In area A and B that's primarily via frequent raids and checkpoints. You also, haven't really provided any evidence for what you wrote, yes, this city has all this, there is 12 million Uygurhs, going around and providing one article and extrapolating it to "no Uyghur who live a nice and stable life" is quite a leap, especially when you put it after an arrogant "you're wrong".
In general you are trying to project some sort of "factually you are wrong" stance when you are obviously quite ignorant on this outside of "how can this guy say something I disagree with". The article is about Xinjiang as a whole. It uses Hotan as a case study. That's how articles like this are frequently structured. It specifically says so as well. If you want more evidence then there's a lot. China has locked up an estimated 0.9m - 1.8m in the detention camps [1] specifically targetting heads of households and community figures pushing their families into poverty, hundreds of thousands of their children are put into boarding schools and schools are transformed into prisons [2], up to half a million, most of them not detained, are in forced labour [3], birth control via intrauterine devices, sterilization and abortion is forced on hundreds of thousands [4]. That's on top of the 1.1 million government officials living with half of families and grid system as mentioned in the Economist article. Then there's the pomegrenate flower policy that does the same thing for children [5], forced labour where they're sent outside of Xinjiang, and the deaths inside the camps. All of which I could not find numbers for but which are significant. In one camp alone 150 detainees died in a period of 6 months [6]. Xinjiang spans over 1.6 million square kilometers, Uyghur dominated areas are about a quarter of that, still bigger then any European country.
Average GDP for a Palestinian in 2024 according to IMF is $2,440.
Average for Xinjiang is around $10,500. The size of Xinjiang is not relevant. I dont understand why you mention it. The statistics from the IMF are for the West Bank and Gaza [7]. The argument is specifically about the West Bank. It's also not adjusted for PPP. Aditionally, China has a huge rural/urban and Han/minority disparity. E.g. Hotans gdp per capita was 20k yuan [8] (approximately 2.8k USD) in 2023 compared to 74k [9](approximately 10.3k USD) for Xinjiang as a whole. Unless you can adjust for that using an average is meaningless. There is plenty of programs that aren't just incredibly repressive to Uyghurs, such as affirmative action that actually help them, there are plenty of Uyghurs who have a much better chance of a good life then Palestinians.
And then there is the random and state sponsored violence and living under a military occupation.
This is why I'd much rather be a Uyghur. Maybe I don't have a problem with saying fuck my religion or national identity, so it's easier for me to imagine having a better life, but it's very wrong to say "You're wrong" on saying that on average there are both who live normal lives and I'd like my chances in China more.
Again, fuck the CCP for doing this shit, it's a slow roll Ethnic Cleansing and Cultural Genocide, too bad that people like you who attack me for saying it's not as bad as West Bank can't say the same about policies that Israel implements there. I dont see much of an argument to respond here. As to Israel and their violations in the West Bank I've been critical of it in this thread. It's a long thread and you were not there so it's not a surprise that you did not read it but I'm also not going to reiterate them. It's a very weird post. Israel has the whole control over the west bank economy and has a puppet at the head of this administration who cooperates in the repression. How on earth Israel has no control there ? It's not all uyghurs neither just the elites who can escape, it's the ones who reject or accept to totally depoliticize their culture which is very close to the same. It is a political and cultural repression of a central state which can indeed be interpreted as colonial logics. This is what is asked for now not to palestinian citizen but to arabs israelis, the latter however are asked to leave. To be fair, the israeli far right who is gaining more and more traction asks the same to every arab israeli while "moderate" scholar are very ambiguous to say the very least. As for the obvious subtext of this discussion which is why caring for palestine and not the uyghur or others people, basically the good old whataboutism :. Here's what herzl, daddy of the zionism has to say : We... as representatives of Western civilization, would bring cleanliness, order and the well-distilled customs of the Occident." He presented palestine as "plague ridden" which will become then an "outpost of civilization as opposed to barbarism." Herzl is presented as a "paternalist colonist" by scholar like edward saïd but this kind of speech belongs as well to a eugenistic thought. Since him, all the israeli leaders from Ben Gourion, Meier, Begin and of course "Bibi" as he is affectionately called there have constantly used this rhetoric of the "war of civilization" and has constantly ignated all the racists and supremacists dumbfucks who regreat the good old time where blacks, arabs and all other "inferior races" were subversient. The direct consequence is the diplomatic, economic and military support Israel is enjoying from the west against the palestinian population which China, the houthis and the belligerants in Sudan don't enjoy at all. And as to justify this, we are forced to align our views with Israel. Hence, we gave a academic censorships of almost all the western governements, as it is my field I can confirm france is very brutal about it and the judicial repression under false pretext. Furthermore, the extreme surveillance and control the palestinian population is subject to with the project Nimbus by amazon and google is what is awaiting us all as Palestine is a laboratory of the tool used to control us. It's not like alex karp of the surveillance society Palantir is making a secret of it. I hope this is the end of all the "whataboutism". Your post is the weird one mate. On November 02 2025 08:21 Liquid`Drone wrote:
My experience is that the genuine anti-semitism I've seen comes from a) nazis and b) muslims, while most criticism of Israel that I encounter comes from a) leftists and b) muslims. The nazis don't like palestine any more than they like Israel, so they hate jews without caring about the conflict. The leftists dislike/hate Israel without disliking/hating jews, and among muslims, a large majority have a negative view of Israel and there, antisemitism is fairly common as well.
*this isn't to say that belief in some tropes or whatnot is entirely absent among leftists, but 'disliking someone for being part of a particular ethnic group' isn't really compatible with being a leftist. You're a reasonable guy though so your experience is not very representative. The (far) left has always had a significant problem with antisemitism. E.g. The antisemitism of the USSR is well documented [1]. Many of the current anti semetic tropes originated in the USSR. The usage of anti zionist Jews, equating Israeli policy with nazism, and using zionism interchangeably with Jews is still seen today. More recently there was the anti semitism in Corbyn's labour [2]. To Labours credit they took it seriously. That theoretically racism is incompatible with leftist thought does not mean it doesn't happen in practice. Killing millions of your own people is also not compatible, yet it still happened. To be clear antisemitism is also a huge issue on the right. It is an issue on the left, but it is a way way bigger one on the right. Totally agree. I'm more bothered by leftist antisemitism though but only because of this: if theres disease (the right) I rely on my immune system for protection against it (the left), if my immune system is attacking me on top of the disease, then im really fucked. And I probably have to do something about my immune system just to have a hope in hell against the disease.
|
On November 14 2025 18:02 RvB wrote:
Even you should be able to figure out how comparing the only Jewish state, who were the main victims of the Nazi's, to the Nazi's is antisemetic. It'd be a different matter if Israel was murdering minorities on an industrial scale.
I'm not though? We've just established that it would be antisemitic to equate Jews and zionists. Statements that are about Jews can be antisemitic. Statements that are about zionists can only be antisemitic insofar as they use "zionists" to mean "Jews". This statement could easily just be about Netanyahu or about Israel, in which case it could definitionally not be antisemitic. Using "the only Jewish state" to try and say something, that is just cope isn't it? If there was a second jewish state then it would be a fine thing to say but now it isn't? Please.
This forum is full of talk about racism in its other forms. Me posting about it contributes little. Your point is especially ironic considering you've barely posted on the atrocities in other conflicts like Sudan, Yemen, Ethiopia. For what it's worth I absolutely deplore the massive amounts of racism and the rise of the far right in our society.
Moving past me and you because I can't make comments about how you feel, I don't know you. General trends go like this:
We take a leftist, who is typically involved in antiracist struggles, has an understanding of social hierarchies around race and other characteristics. They are expected to care about Sudan, Yemen, Ethiopia, misogyny, transphobia. It would be weird if they didn't. Some don't, by the way, and that's a blind spot that they have. In my experience in my region the worst blind spot is misogyny, it's probably the one where I'm the most guilty as well.
Now we establish that this leftist is talking about Israel more than they are talking about Sudan, Yemen, Ethiopia, and we have to figure out why. Could it be that they have a bias against Israel? Yeah, it could be, it's one of the possible theories. There is a much more likely explanation however, and it's that the reason why they keep talking about it is because they keep getting pushback by interlocutors who espouse the opposing view, in the media, in real life, on a 500-page thread in a gaming forum.
It's the same reason why I know as much as I do about american police killing black people, it's not because I think the swiss police is amazing, it's because I had years of people telling me that actually all the individual black people who were killed by police had it coming for specific reasons connected to the specific circumstances of their deaths. Could it be instead that all of us leftists in Europe who know about this topic, we just hate the police in the United States? Yeah, it could be. It's just not very likely, there is a much simpler explanation.
Now we take some other dude who isn't a leftist, is not involved in antiracist struggles, doesn't talk about racism or social hierarchies on the regular at all, in fact in a lot of cases probably thinks that antiracism has gone too far. Suddenly this guy feels concern that the left is very antisemitic? And they do that not out of the blue, not in the context of talking about racism, but specifically in the context of talking about Israel's actions in Gaza? Again, it could be true, no question about it. That's why I don't want to talk about you personally, I don't and I can't know what's in your heart. I just know that in many cases it is a dishonest endeavor and I know that the dishonesty of the endeavor shapes the discourse that it creates. Going back to the ADL, when they have a manifest ready to publish to talk about how they'll study Mamdani like a hawk to protect the Jews in New York, but it takes them sometimes weeks to tepidly condemn any of the crazy shit Trump says and they'll defend nazi salutes by Elon Musk, clearly this isn't serious at all. Of course we're not directly talking to the ADL here, but you're not talking directly to Stalin either are you. Rhetoric just trickles down like this, and shapes the discourse.
|
The trickier part with anti-Zionists is Zionists make up about 90% of Jews, and then there is a significant part of most other groups that are Zionists. Someone wouldn't be distinguishing much if they said they hate all Zionists vs Hate all Jews.
But I'm also not sure what definition of Zionist these people are using, people seem to create their own definitions
|
On November 15 2025 07:56 Billyboy wrote:
The trickier part with anti-Zionists is Zionists make up about 90% of Jews, and then there is a significant part of most other groups that are Zionists. Someone wouldn't be distinguishing much if they said they hate all Zionists vs Hate all Jews.
But I'm also not sure what definition of Zionist these people are using, people seem to create their own definitions
I think this is somewhat of a red herring tbh.
The more relevant question is whether there is a reasonable, non racist argument for disliking Zionists/Zionism.
Personally I've never really had an issue with Zionism. However, the actions of the Israeli government are the big problem and I don't care what % of Jews support the Israeli government, I will continue to criticise.
|
United States43527 Posts
Zionism is an intrinsically colonial project. The desire to build a Jewish state makes sense, especially in the wake of WW2. But a rational desire is not the same as an ethical desire. Palestine was not a Terra Nullius to be built upon. You can’t go around building your state on the graves of the people who were already there. I mean hell, that was one of the central questions of the whole WW2 argument. Germans wanted a cool new homeland and didn’t really like the people already living in it.
There was a point in time around when the US finished killing indigenous people where if you didn’t already have an ethic homeland then you’d missed the cutoff. After then it became the bad kind of genocide and not the “it’s history now what can we do” kind. It’s not fair that others got away with murder but others getting away with murder doesn’t somehow make it okay to do.
If they were space Jews turning the moon into a new kingdom of David I would be all about it though.
|
On November 15 2025 08:12 Jockmcplop wrote:Show nested quote +On November 15 2025 07:56 Billyboy wrote:
The trickier part with anti-Zionists is Zionists make up about 90% of Jews, and then there is a significant part of most other groups that are Zionists. Someone wouldn't be distinguishing much if they said they hate all Zionists vs Hate all Jews.
But I'm also not sure what definition of Zionist these people are using, people seem to create their own definitions I think this is somewhat of a red herring tbh. The more relevant question is whether there is a reasonable, non racist argument for disliking Zionists/Zionism. Personally I've never really had an issue with Zionism. However, the actions of the Israeli government are the big problem and I don't care what % of Jews support the Israeli government, I will continue to criticise.
I do not know if there is. There are plenty of Zionists who are against what is going on in Gaza. Maybe if you just believed that no nation should be tied to religion, but then you would need to be similarly mad at many of the countries in the world.
Criticizing the Israeli is of course reasonable, and to my recollection, everyone participating in this thread has done that. Even those branded "Pro-Israel".
|
On November 15 2025 08:30 KwarK wrote:
Zionism is an intrinsically colonial project. The desire to build a Jewish state makes sense, especially in the wake of WW2. But a rational desire is not the same as an ethical desire. Palestine was not a Terra Nullius to be built upon. You can’t go around building your state on the graves of the people who were already there. I mean hell, that was one of the central questions of the whole WW2 argument. Germans wanted a cool new homeland and didn’t really like the people already living in it.
There was a point in time around when the US finished killing indigenous people where if you didn’t already have an ethic homeland then you’d missed the cutoff. After then it became the bad kind of genocide and not the “it’s history now what can we do” kind. It’s not fair that others got away with murder but others getting away with murder doesn’t somehow make it okay to do.
If they were space Jews turning the moon into a new kingdom of David I would be all about it though. Reality is more complicated than that simple narrative; its a colonial project by the intellectual and political instigators of it when they demanded a jewish state for jews exclusively (as opposed to Aliyah where jews could have self determination and harmony, which was a competing understanding of zionism and still is), but for the vast majority of jews it was a refuge. Nothing political, just run there or die. And given its been numerous generations since then, its also just basic nationalism, self determination and survival: like referring to America as having colonial roots is valid, but if your talking about the destruction of the state today by calling it colonial you are:
1) missing the social reality
2) fucking crazy
3) calling for mass violence
So falling back on israel is a colonial project misses out on all the complexity and nuance: that the notion of zionism is and has always been contested, that the context of its settlement was safety for hundreds of thousands facing potential death, and that the utility of condemning zionism as a colonial project is flimsy given that its existed for decades and is surrounded by hostile forces. Just whistling and looking the other way and choosing not to understand the implications of the phrase as it is used socially or the material consequences of the desire behind it is idiotic and shallow.
You cannot reduce an entire multi-generational national reality to a single moral category (‘colonialism’) without misleading yourself about what the situation is now.
Theodor Hertzl: "It is founded on the ideas which are a common product of all civilized nations … **It would be immoral if we would exclude anyone, whatever his origin, his descent, or his religion, from participating in our achievements. For we stand on the shoulders of other civilized peoples … What we own we owe to the preparatory work of other peoples. Therefore, we have to repay our debt. There is only one way to do it, the highest tolerance. Our motto must therefore be, now and ever: ‘Man, you are my brother.’
another “In our New Society, … Arabs would be better off than at any time in the past. … They would support themselves decently, their children would be healthier and be educated. … Their religion and ancient customs in no wise be interfered with. They would have become more prosperous — that was all. … I believed that they would say: The Jews have enriched us. Why should we be angry with them? They dwell among us like brothers. Why should we not love them?”
another “Let me tell you that my friend and I do not discriminate between humans. We do not ask what race or what religion he is from. He has to be a human being. That is all that’s important for us.”
sure sounds like a through and through simple black and white narrative to me? oh wait im not a thirteen year old child.
|
United States43527 Posts
That’s a lot of words to write without acknowledging that people already lived on the lands that Zionists built Israel upon.
|
On November 15 2025 12:15 Ze'ev wrote:
Reality is more complicated than that simple narrative; its a colonial project by the intellectual and political instigators of it when they demanded a jewish state for jews exclusively (as opposed to Aliyah where jews could have self determination and harmony, which was a competing understanding of zionism and still is), but for the vast majority of jews it was a refuge. Nothing political, just run there or die. And given its been numerous generations since then, its also just basic nationalism, self determination and survival: like referring to America as having colonial roots is valid, but if your talking about the destruction of the state today by calling it colonial you are:
1) missing the social reality
2) fucking crazy
3) calling for mass violence
So falling back on israel is a colonial project misses out on all the complexity and nuance: that the notion of zionism is and has always been contested, that the context of its settlement was safety for hundreds of thousands facing potential death, and that the utility of condemning zionism as a colonial project is flimsy given that its existed for decades and is surrounded by hostile forces. Just whistling and looking the other way and choosing not to understand the implications of the phrase as it is used socially or the material consequences of the desire behind it is idiotic and shallow.
You cannot reduce an entire multi-generational national reality to a single moral category (‘colonialism’) without misleading yourself about what the situation is now.
Theodor Hertzl: "It is founded on the ideas which are a common product of all civilized nations … **It would be immoral if we would exclude anyone, whatever his origin, his descent, or his religion, from participating in our achievements. For we stand on the shoulders of other civilized peoples … What we own we owe to the preparatory work of other peoples. Therefore, we have to repay our debt. There is only one way to do it, the highest tolerance. Our motto must therefore be, now and ever: ‘Man, you are my brother.’
another “In our New Society, … Arabs would be better off than at any time in the past. … They would support themselves decently, their children would be healthier and be educated. … Their religion and ancient customs in no wise be interfered with. They would have become more prosperous — that was all. … I believed that they would say: The Jews have enriched us. Why should we be angry with them? They dwell among us like brothers. Why should we not love them?”
another “Let me tell you that my friend and I do not discriminate between humans. We do not ask what race or what religion he is from. He has to be a human being. That is all that’s important for us.”
sure sounds like a through and through simple black and white narrative to me? oh wait im not a thirteen year old child.
All of this is very standard for colonialism. The West also had a bunch of migrants to its colonies that were not motivated by some kind of grand political colonization plan, a lot of them were poor and looking for economic opportunity, or had the wrong kind of christian beliefs and were fleeing religious persecution; and the West also had a bunch of people who explained that we would civilize Africa and that the Africans would be better off because of our influence, a thought pattern that is now described as "paternalism". As is always the case when someone wants to bring complexity and nuance to a political topic, they're actually describing the simplest thing you have ever heard.
|
On November 15 2025 08:30 KwarK wrote:
Zionism is an intrinsically colonial project. The desire to build a Jewish state makes sense, especially in the wake of WW2. But a rational desire is not the same as an ethical desire. Palestine was not a Terra Nullius to be built upon. You can’t go around building your state on the graves of the people who were already there. I mean hell, that was one of the central questions of the whole WW2 argument. Germans wanted a cool new homeland and didn’t really like the people already living in it.
There was a point in time around when the US finished killing indigenous people where if you didn’t already have an ethic homeland then you’d missed the cutoff. After then it became the bad kind of genocide and not the “it’s history now what can we do” kind. It’s not fair that others got away with murder but others getting away with murder doesn’t somehow make it okay to do.
If they were space Jews turning the moon into a new kingdom of David I would be all about it though.
I will challenge you once again in the hopes that you stop evading criticism by writing short, snide posts like you've done over and over ITT. Stand on business if you claim to know what you're talking about.
Please understand that saying the word "colonial" is about as worthless as "Israel has the right to defend itself", in that you could try to show how it's technically the case, but you are conveying very little by doing so.
Let me be clear: you are not providing real analysis, but are just substituting the word "unjust". Zionism is "unjust" because other people in the past have moved into places and built nations, and that involved a forced takeover, often violence, and now Zionism is supposedly doing the same thing over again.
It's the exact same ivory tower "analysis" as comparing I/P to the holocaust and saying oh, how the tables have turned; an attempt to reduce and simplify the circumstances in order to be able to have an easier time identifying the "bad guys" of the story and casting quick judgement.
A more honest engagement with the conflict would be to explain which things are unjust given the full picture, and why.
Palestine was not a Terra Nullius to be built upon. You can’t go around building your state on the graves of the people who were already there.
Bart, during detention you are to write 10 times on the board: "Mandate Palestine was a British administrative territory and not a Palestinian state". Jews were guaranteed a state by the brits, and acted upon that guarantee by migrating to the area.
You can say the brits made a mistake. You can hate it. But that is what happened.
The point of Zionism - the widely understood and agreed upon part - was simply to have a country for Jews in some part of the historic land of Israel. You can call that what you want, but it's a solution that every persecuted Jew from Europe, Africa, and the Middle East was ready to accept, and so that is where they all headed; again, legally and with the promise of a state. Also understand the duress they are under to actually leave where they all were - either freshly holocausted or forcibly being pushed out of Muslim-majority countries.
At some point the brits realized the tensions between the different populations are way too high (to the point of a civil war). The pan-Arab world was incredibly anti-Jew and the idea of Jews having a state in the heart of the middle east was the worst and most shameful thing that could happen to their vision of the region. So the Jews and the Arabs eventually came to torch each other, one side thinking this is their newly-promised land, and the other thinking they're going to lose any prospect of Arab control.
If you use your "colonial" analysis here, you could make it seem like a British Empire-style "come in with muskets and massacre a bunch of dudes before settling into your new sofa". You could make it seem like a bunch of rich Europeans taking over a brown man's country. What it actually was is a massive migration of disenfranchised Jews of all backgrounds, skin complexions and socio-economic statuses, followed by growing tensions with the local Arabs, who now felt they are being disenfranchised because of some British decision they weren't a part of.
In your analysis, there are clear "bad guys"; in reality, there are these pesky things called "circumstances" and "details", and not every new conflict is exactly like some other conflict in history.
There are civilians yearning for a safe home, and ones who are feeling left out or pushed out. There are diplomats who try to smooth things over and make everyone happy, there are populists who instill hatred, there are subgroups that engage in violence, and all of these things happen on both sides when two populations with different ideas and goals clash.
If we are to take your position that it was a day 1 genocidal movement meant to conquer and rule by any means necessary (silly Jews, didn't they know they were past the historical cutoff for doing that?), then we are casting aside every bit of justification Jews had to pursue their goals, and simultaneously wholesale justifying any action taken by the Arabs, no matter the intent, form, or scale. It's not analysis, it's vilification.
If they were space Jews turning the moon into a new kingdom of David I would be all about it though.
I don't know if this is what you meant to imply, so I'm not going to use it as a strawman, and instead ask you: in your eyes, was there ever anywhere Jewish people could go to form an asylum state for themselves, which would both be a place Jews anywhere can agree on (which historically was a fucking nightmare for the movement), and not infringe on anyone's existing borders? Did you jokingly name the moon because there isn't someplace like that?
Can you think of ANYWHERE better than a non-state territory in a transitional status that all Jews happen to regard as their ancestral homeland? A place where THE DE-FACTO ADMINISTRATOR IS LITERALLY WILLING TO PROMISE YOU A STATE? In what WORLD do they pick any other option?
In the end, if you care to read and understand the reasons for each action taken by either side, there is a lot to learn and analyze. Why Jews made so and so decisions, why Arabs did, why Brits did. Trying to rush your way to the finish line with some pseudo-academic language just to narrow everything down to "yep, ya shouldn'a gone there" is not intellectual, it is lazy and detached. It's an easy and risk-free way to grab points, while people on the other side of the world are struggling because public opinion has become tainted with the most unproductive garbage imaginable.
You're not promoting a realistic end to the conflict, you're waving the magic wand of blame and saying the bad guys should just stop being bad.
Looking forward to your next one-line banger.
|
|
|
|
|
|
EPT
