The people I know IRL who consider themselves "great political minds" but also have opinions consisting entirely of "repeating something from Twitter".
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The people I know IRL who consider themselves "great political minds" but also have opinions consisting entirely of "repeating something from Twitter".
Ngl some of you are way too comfortable spreading Russian propaganda about Ukraine to have reliable takes on any international conflict.
Listen, before you say something like âJim Crow laws were the template for the Holocaustâ make sure you know the answer to this question: whatâs the etymology of the word ghetto and when and where was it coined?
This isnât to say that Germany got no ideas from the American Eugenics movement âthe American Eugenics and European Scientific Racism developed side by sideâ but I get tired of people acting like Europe isnât on the cutting edge of racial and religious discrimination.
We've had a few decades now of this thing where Americans of a certain age and financial comfort cohort (And Euros of same) like to do a dance where they both glaze the inherent moralness and civilisation and refinement of 'notional europe' (Scandanavia and Canada included of course) where all the good, socialist things are what Europe is while all the bad, right wing things Europe are ignored and brushed aside as 'not representative' of "Europe" and frequently pawned off on eastern/central/slavic Europe (again Europe expressed as a whole 'country' and not a bunch of countries with their own blood-soaked histories) are presented as a or THE thing we should all be aspiring to. And it's frankly fucking insulting. The US is messy as shit. And we keep a lot of that messiness right out front because at the very fucking least we are having the conversation about it. Not pretending it doesn't exist while hatecriming Rroma because they've killed most of their Jews. The US hasn't killed most of its Jews yet.
Listen, before you say something like âJim Crow laws were the template for the Holocaustâ make sure you know the answer to this question: whatâs the etymology of the word ghetto and when and where was it coined?
This isnât to say that Germany got no ideas from the American Eugenics movement âthe American Eugenics and European Scientific Racism developed side by sideâ but I get tired of people acting like Europe isnât on the cutting edge of racial and religious discrimination.
We've had a few decades now of this thing where Americans of a certain age and financial comfort cohort (And Euros of same) like to do a dance where they both glaze the inherent moralness and civilisation and refinement of 'notional europe' (Scandanavia and Canada included of course) where all the good, socialist things are what Europe is while all the bad, right wing things Europe (again Europe expressed as a whole 'country' and not a bunch of countries with their own blood-soaked histories) are presented as a or THE thing we should all be aspiring to. And it's frankly fucking insulting. The US is messy as shit. And we keep a lot of that messiness right out front because at the very fucking least we are having the conversation about it. Not pretending it doesn't exist while hatecriming Rroma because they've killed most of their Jews. The US hasn't killed most of its Jews yet.
Listen, before you say something like âJim Crow laws were the template for the Holocaustâ make sure you know the answer to this question: whatâs the etymology of the word ghetto and when and where was it coined?
This isnât to say that Germany got no ideas from the American Eugenics movement âthe American Eugenics and European Scientific Racism developed side by sideâ but I get tired of people acting like Europe isnât on the cutting edge of racial and religious discrimination.
Europe definitely had no need for feedback on how best to do racism from the Americans, especially not racism against Jews. Theyâve been confining and killing Jews since well before any European even knew there was an American continent
Listen, before you say something like âJim Crow laws were the template for the Holocaustâ make sure you know the answer to this question: whatâs the etymology of the word ghetto and when and where was it coined?
This isnât to say that Germany got no ideas from the American Eugenics movement âthe American Eugenics and European Scientific Racism developed side by sideâ but I get tired of people acting like Europe isnât on the cutting edge of racial and religious discrimination.
Europe definitely had no need for feedback on how best to do racism from the Americans, especially not racism against Jews. Theyâve been confining and killing Jews since well before any European even knew there was an American continent
the way white queers ascribe sainthood to Black trans women and completely ignore Black trans men and Black nonbinary people has convinced me more than anything else that they really truly donât care about any Black trans people beyond wearing us as a little badge they can show off to prove theyâre The Good Ones
alright and hereâs the follow upâ so much anti-Black racism (in the us, at least) is hypermasculinization of Black people of all sexes and genders, cis or transgender, peri or intersex. white society ascribes a certain type of masculinity to us and then villainizes itâ Black people are more violent, more sexual, angrier, less in control of ourselves, more animalistic.
when i say white queers are engaging in racism by pinning the âBlack trans women built the lgbtq community!â badge to their chest without passing so much as a word of acknowledgement to Black trans and intersex people of any other gender, this is why. to not engage with the intersection of anti-Blackness and anti-masculinity is to damn all Black trans people to violence by a system that will see everything we do through the lens of violent and agressive masculinity.
What's super getting me abt the Flotilla situation is...why do people *want* Greta and co to be in danger so bad? Obv it's an extension of the pre existing tendency for maximum catastrophization to win the Emotional Appeal, but likeâidk I don't want people in danger, so I'm glad Greta is not and her government agrees that she's not, but apparently her government assessing the situation and seeing no need to intervene is them "abandoning" her???
Literally this.
It is good that she was prevented from entering a blockade, without being harmed. It's good that she was fed. It was good that she was offered a choice to voluntarily be deported, on the Israeli tax payers dime too as she didn't pay for that flight, or wait the 96 hours to go in front of a judge.
I think the reason people think her government is abandoning her is because of their statement
Because people are likely viewing the government going, "we told you so, you aren't in any danger, don't be stupid next time" as abandonment. Which is just an inaccurate interpretation of the statement.
And the interpretation is bad because people assume Israel is this big bad evil who only does the worst tm.
Which like, yeah there is a lot to criticize Israel about. Blowing things way out of proportion takes away from talking about the real issues
just a friendly psa
not everything that is bad is the holocaust
not everyone who is bad is a nazi
Never again doesnât mean ânever again for everyoneâ
Things that happened in the context of antisemetism happened because it was uniquely antisemetic. It was uniquely Jew hate
bad things happen. And theyâre bad things. Stop using terms that denote Jewish history and trauma and generalizing it to mean âeveryone.â Especially when youâre the same people to speak over Jews pointing out antisemetism, or to be general antisemites.
and for gods sake. Please let Anne Frank rest.
just a friendly psa
not everything that is bad is the holocaust
not everyone who is bad is a nazi
Never again doesnât mean ânever again for everyoneâ
Things that happened in the context of antisemetism happened because it was uniquely antisemetic. It was uniquely Jew hate
bad things happen. And theyâre bad things. Stop using terms that denote Jewish history and trauma and generalizing it to mean âeveryone.â Especially when youâre the same people to speak over Jews pointing out antisemetism, or to be general antisemites.
and for gods sake. Please let Anne Frank rest.
American hypocrisy is something else. Because for months people have been saying "There are no innocent Israelis" whenever Israeli civilian deaths are reported, but everyone wants to moralize jokes about how Iran should only retaliate against red states, because "there are innocent people in those states who had nothing to do with electing Trump."
Do you...hear yourselves????
And to be clear, I do not support Israel at all (free Palestine, period). However, to try to act like every single Israeli is guilty of what the government is doing makes about as much sense as trying to say Iran should only drop attack red states (the states that won Trump his second term). Just like how there are people who didn't elect and/or don't support Trump, POC, and LGBTQ+ people in red states, there are people who don't support Netanyahu, don't support the actions of the Israeli government, are Arab/Palestinian throughout "Israel proper."
This is why dehumanizing your enemies does not work. All you end up doing is lose the ability recognize similar behaviors in yourself and justifying it, because when it happens to you or people around you, it's "different," when it is fundamentally or otherwise, the same.
NOTE: I put "Israel proper" in quotations because I don't want to legitimize that term. It implies that the West Bank and Gaza are just rogue areas of Israel just waiting to be annexed and absorbed by Israel, which is not something that should ever be legitimized.
As I was pondering the recent development of western leftists now supporting the IRI because they are at war with Israel, thus abandoning the actual people of Iran to this brutal regime, and their earlier abandonment of Ukraine in favor of Russia, and their support for the Houthis, Hezbollah, and even in some cases the Taliban, I was trying to figured out how the hell one gets there from the starting place of supposedly supporting human rights. And the only unifying thing I can figure out is that it seems to come down to supporting anyone and any group that acts in opposition to "the West."
But why?
What's wrong with "The West"âąïž? What sins have been committed in the West that haven't also been committed in the East (and in plenty of cases are actively still ongoing)?
Because to my recollection, the problem that leftists theoretically have with the West is that it has been built on and amassed wealth based on colonialism, imperialism, slavery, wars of aggression, genocide, and mass human rights abuses. Many take issue with Christianity (particular in its evangelical fundamentalist iteration) as a major driving force and weapon of Western imperialism.
Those are all objectively terrible, horrifying things and good reasons to hate the West and Western hegemony â you won't get any disagreement from me there! However, none of that, no matter how deeply baked into the DNA of the West it may be, is (a) inherent to the West, or (b) unique.
In fact, the East is full of (and in large part also built on) colonialism, imperialism, slavery, wars of aggression, genocide, mass human rights abuses, and fundamentalist, expansionist religions. All of these same issues exist there too! The groups and countries western leftists are stanning are themselves guilty of these same things! So where is the value in being anti-West when the East contains the same problems?
I know I'm asking a dumb question here but: have the people supporting these groups actually thought through why they're so anti-West lately? Because I really don't think they have. There is nothing ontologically or uniquely evil about the West; if the justification for hating the West and everything that flows from it (or that they associate with it, correctly or not) is this list of egregious evil acts, surely they should hate any country or group that engages in that same evil act, no?
And I realize that there are a large number of this sort of person who are just ignorant of history and the facts on the ground outside of the West, or they have been made aware and choose to ignore it as "propaganda" or lies. Even if we rule those people out, I've encountered folks who still just have a burning hatred for the West even if they have accepted the reality of atrocities outside the West committed by non-Westerners against other non-Westerners. And that's something I just truly do not understand; like what's up with that? What gives?
The West has more power globally, so they can see non-Western dictators and terrorists as the underdogs, the oppressed, who's actions can be painted as justified self-defence or "resistance."
There is an element of truth to this, but its grossly over-simplified- certainly Russia certainly has less power in various respects than the US, for example (though still a nuclear arsenal potentially sufficient to depopulate most of the Earth, and a propaganda and political subversion apparatus that has frankly run circles around the West), but it's government has far more power than the countries it has invaded, or the people and minority groups within its territory that it oppresses (a Western Tankie may sidestep this by simply treating Ukraine as an extension of NATO/the West/the US, thereby erasing its underdog status- and also dovetailing with Russian propaganda which denies Ukrainian sovereignty).
Likewise, Israel has more power than Gazans- but worldwide Jews are still a tiny, widely-persecuted and highly vulnerable marginalized group (this is erased through the blatant antisemitic canards of portraying Jews as "white European colonizers," and claiming that they secretly control the world).
Another factor is the seemingly common human tendency in conflict to divide the world into a binary of Good Guys, who are justified in everything they do, and Bad Guys, who deserve everything done to them and are subhumans with no rights. And, usually, to draw those distinctions on racial/ethnic/national/other demographic lines. So, if a nonwestern country is oppressed by western corporations and governments, then West=Bad, Nonwestern=Good, and the nonwestern dictator or terrorist can do no wrong.
Then there's the fact that most Western Leftists are, well... raised in the West. It is the West that they have experienced. It is the West, where the Western Establishment (however you define that) holds most of the power, that they are familiar with, and the status quo in the West that they are angry with. They have largely never experienced the oppression of Russia or Iran or China. So they tend to equate power and oppression with The West.
In other words, anti-Western Leftists have an (ironically) Western-centric perspective that they are imposing on the rest of the world.
This is a HUGE fucking issue with Israel and Palestine, because its a situation where you have multiple ethnic and religious groups sharing a homeland, who have been and still are subjected to colonization, expulsion and oppression and have fought to return home, and both have a legitimate claim to be there and deep historical and ongoing trauma. But Western Leftists, by and large, insist on trying to fit it into the mode of oppression and conflict that they are familiar with- one of white European colonizers (how they frame Israel/Zionists/Jews) oppressing and committing genocide against non-white indigenous natives.
So, take an initial Western-centric worldview which they simultaneously hold and are rebelling against, throw in the human tendency to simplify conflict into Our Side (above reproach) and Them (subhumans who deserve whatever is done to them), and you get "The West is the sole source of all evil in the world, anyone opposed to it is completely justified and heroic Resistance who can do no wrong, and anything to the contrary is just another evil Western plot."
Aka, the Tankie.
I'll also add that for all their hatred for the West, a lot of anti-Western Leftists have still deeply internalized the biases of the West, in ways that they refuse to admit. For example, the basic Marxist accelertionist narrative, that capitalism must get worse and worse until it leads to an inevitable violent revolution followed by a classless utopia rising from the ashes, is textbook apocalyptic thinking. Its basically Revelations with The Communist Manifesto in place of the Bible, The Revolution in place of Armageddon, and the classless post-revolutionary society in place of the Kingdom of Heaven.
Same with antisemitism. Leftist rhetoric about billionaires running the world is often virtually identical to old conspiracy theories about a cabal of rich Jews running the world. Sure, a Leftist may not mean "Jews" when they say "billionaires," but a few euphemisms ("global elites," focussing on AIPAC over other lobbying groups, etc) makes it very easy to make the transition, and for a Leftist to start seeing Israeli/Jewish money as the root of all evil (this, and conspiracy theorism in general, relates to another unfortunate but well-known human tendency- that of seeing patterns that aren't there).
And at that point you're already halfway to saying "Hitler Was Right."
Yall can't act right so here is a reminder:
If you are happy in any way about the war between Israel and Iran, you are not anti war. You do not hate war. You do not think war is hell. You like war when it benefits your interests.
If you think you're still anti war, do some introspection and ask yourself why you're happy a war has been started and if you actually understand what that means.
"When you're trying to have a hot girl summer, but the governments decide to start WWIIIđđ"
Location: Bumfuck, Oklahoma
"Dying in WWIII wasn't on my 2025 bucketlist đđ«Ł"
Location: Sydney, Australia
"Look at the strawberry varenyky I made"
Location: Kyiv, Ukraine
Idk if it's just me, but the way people are so quick to try to replace the holocaust and Anne Franke by saying "this is the new holocaust" and "this person is the new Anne Franke" makes me think that people just want to erase jewish suffering from the publics memory of big fucked up events.
Like what is happening in Gaza can be its own fucked up thing. It doesn't have to be labeled the new holocaust. The world can think of more than one thing when it thinks of fucked up history.
There is literally almost no explanation other than antisemitism or parroting others antisemitism without thinking, that explains why people are so pressed and so quick to try to erase jewish suffering from the world's collective memory
It's eurovision this week!
Reminder that Yuval Raphael is not the Israeli government. Any hate towards her is at best xenophobia and at worst antisemitism. It is not criticism of Israel as she is not the government of Israel.
You can have conversations on whether or not israel should be allowed compete without veering into bigotry.
tbh I donât even know that there is, because when we say a country is in Eurovision, what that actually means in practice is that a broadcasting organization from that country is part of the European Broadcast Union.
Netanyahuâs government is not in Eurovision; the IPBC/Kan is. And Kan is a public broadcaster like PBS or NPR; yes, itâs funded by the government, but it is and always has been independent. It has about as much to do with the actions of Netanyahuâs government as Yuval Raphael does. In fact, Netanyahu has literally been trying to shut Kan down because the government doesnât have control over it.
Banning Israel (Kan) from Eurovision would be like punishing PBS or NPR because of the Trumpâs administrationâs anti-immigrant, anti-immigration policies. Itâs just collective punishment of unrelated individuals & organizations (which have even been critical of the actual offending party) for no other reason than their country of origin.
Yep. Same with their ally Belarus, and theyâre the only two countries whoâve been suspended from Eurovision.