y'all aren't immune to propaganda

political sideblog bc fuck you I'm not gonna let you harras me on main

[bdalak]

thats a really long and roundabout way of saying that you think synagogues should be attacked

[bdalak]

reminder that anti-zionist jews deliberately exclude themselves from jewish spaces btw, not the other way around. i was never more disconnected from judaism than when i was staunchly anti-zionist. i was ashamed of being israeli and didn't want to be "complicit" in the "occupation" so i engaged with my extended family, who entirely live in israel, less. i spoke less hebrew. i surrounded myself with goyische antizionists and didn't interact as much with jews. i didn't go to seders, or shabbat dinners, or other jewish events. and it's no coincidence that my anti-zionist phase strongly coincided with my depression and mental health in general being incredibly poor.

even when i was telling my parents that i didn't believe israel should exist, they didn't shun me. neither did my extended family, who almost certainly recognized that i was more distant from them. i was welcome to engage the more open-minded members family in dialogue about israel, even though it didn't work because i rejected any of their accounts of israeli and jewish history as "zionist propaganda." i could have been as openly anti-zionist as i wanted at synagogues or passover seders or shabbat dinners so long as i was not actively antagonistic or hostile to anyone.

but the anti-zionists? i was expected not to bring up where i was from around them, and if i were to bring it up then i would have to performatively self-flagellate enough to satisfy them that i was one of the good ones. if i ever wasn't certain about something, like perhaps where my "settler" family members (who came to israel as refugees from iraq) would go should it be dissolved, because i was intimately aware of how much the palestinians Would in fact mind living around jews (my aunt was caught in a bus bombing during the second intifada), nevermind the fact that i knew how much being a minority in the middle east has sucked for jews by virtue of that being the entire reason 50% of my family even came to israel, the best answer i would get was "i don't know," with the silent implication that i was not to go against the grain and bring it up again. there was no opportunity for dialogue. jews lived in peace across the middle east until the zionists came along, even though i had still-living family members who could tell me that wasn't the case. if israel ceased existing, there's no reason to fear for the well-being of my family, despite all the evidence to the contrary. and when i eventually decided that it was a little insane for these people to expect me to be fine with october 7th, considering that my family members very well could have been killed or kidnapped if hamas had made it even a little further north, i get lambasted for being brainwashed and cut off.

anti-zionist jews that complain about how isolated they feel from jewish communities did so to themselves. even accepting their premise; that all jews bear responsibility for the Cardinal Sin that is israel's existence, they are even worse, considering they won't even use their privilege to try and change jewish communities from the inside. they're met with even a little pushback when they show up to their family's shabbat dinner at a keffiyeh, or when they insist upon saying "next year in al-quds" during pesach, and they immediately tuck tail and run to their goyische friends for comfort. all this talk about de-zionizing and you won't even do the bare minimum of trying to convince your local community members of your positions. these people are so pathetically useless that it viscerally disgusts me

[girlactionfigure]

[bitchbrisket]

[crunchbuttsteak]

[emptymanuscript]

Transcription, because it is worth reading:

There’s a phenomenon I actually see extremely commonly when literature is used to teach history to middle school and high school students. Let’s call it “pajamafication.”

So a school district nixed Maus from their curriculum, to be replaced by something more “age-appropriate.” IIRC they didn’t cite a specific replacement title, but it will probably be something like John Boyne’s “The Boy in the Striped Pajamas.”

The Boy in the Striped Pajamas is tailor-made for classroom use. It’s taught at countless schools and it’s squeaky-clean of any of the parent-objectionable material you might find in Maus, Night, or any of the other first-person accounts of the Holocaust.

It’s also a terrible way to teach the Holocaust.

I’m not going to exhaustively enumerate the book’s flaws—others have done so—but I’ll summarize the points that are common to this phenomenon in various contexts.

First, obviously, the context shift. Maus, Night, et al are narrated by actual Jews who were in concentration camps. The Boy in the Striped Pajamas is narrated by a German boy. The Jewish perspective is completely eliminated.

Second, the emphasis on historical innocence. Bruno isn’t antisemitic. He has no idea that anything bad is happening. He happily befriends a Jewish boy with absolutely no prejudice.

Thus we’re reassured that you too, gentle reader, are innocent. You too would have have a childlike lack of prejudice and you too would be such a sweet summer child that you would have no idea the place next door is a death camp.

In Maus, by contrast, the children are not innocent. They are perpetrators of injustice just like adults.

[ID: Picture of part of a page of Maus where children run away yelling “Help! Mommy! A Jew!! - the next panel says “The mothers always told so: ‘Be careful! A Jew will catch you to a bag and eat you!’ …So the taught to their children.”]

Maus also smashes the claim that people just didn’t know what was going on in the camps.

[ID: Picture of part of a page of Maus where a Nazi truck is arriving at Auschwitz guarded by men with sticks and a pointing, growling dog, the boxes say “And we came here to the concentration camp Auschwitz. And we knew that from here we will not come out anymore…” “We knew the stories that they will gas us and throw in the oves. This was 1944… we knew everything. And here we were.”]

Third, nonspecificity. The Boy in the Striped Pajamas turns a specific historical atrocity into a parable about all forms of bigotry and injustice. I’m sure Boyne thinks he’s being very profound. But the actual effect is to blunt and erase the atrocity.

There’s the too-cute-by-half way it avoids terminology: “Off-With,” “the Fury.” Harsh language becomes “He said a nasty word.”

Notice how “it’s a fable” ties in with the goal of eliminating anything parents might object to.

And that’s our fourth point. Bad things can happen, but only abstractly. Someone’s dad disappears. He’s just…gone. How? Who knows. People stand around looking hungry and unhappy and saying “It’s not very nice in here.”

The ending is sad, but it’s sad like a Lifetime movie. It’s sanitized, it’s quick, there are no details, it’s meant to poke that bit of your heart that loves crying.

Maus’s description of the gas chambers, meanwhile…

[ID: Picture of part of a page of Maus where the process of gassing and then taking out the bodies are described in detail as inmates are working. That it took 3 to 30 minutes to gas people. That the largest pile of bodies was by the door. The worker telling the story mentions “We pulled the bodies apart with hooks. Big piles, with the strongest on top, older ones and babies crushed below… often the skulls were smashed…” “Their fingers were broken from trying to climb up the walls… and sometimes their arms were wera as long as their bodies, pulled from the sockets.” Until the narrator says, “Enough!” “I didn’t want to more to hear, but anyway he told me.”]

A historical atrocity can never be a metaphor for all bigotry because the specifics are what makes it an atrocity. The Nazis didn’t just do “bad things, generally,” they did THESE things. And leaving out the details is simply historical erasure.

Finally, fifth: Fiction.

However much poor little Bruno and Schmuel might rend your heartstrings, you can ultimately retreat into the knowledge that they aren’t real and they didn’t really die.

Now, I write historical fiction, and obviously I believe it has a place, in the classroom and out. But no Holocaust education can be complete without nonfiction that teaches about real people who genuinely did experience it.

One of the striking things about Maus is how big the cast is and how few of them survived.

[ID: Picture of part of a page of Maus where one character describes to another many other people who didn’t make it. Eventually covered over in lower panels by pictures of the dead.]

Because it’s a true story, Maus can also explore neglected aspects like the intergenerational trauma, which simply vanish in a pat fictional story that is just finished when you get to the end.

[ID: Picture of part of a page of Maus where the illustrator sits at the drawing desk above the pile of bodies. The artist says: “At least fifteen foreing editions are coming out. I’ve got 4 serious offers to turn my book into a TV special or movie. (I don’t wanna.) In May 1968 my mother killd herself. (She left no note.) Late’y I’ve been feeling depressed.” Someone calls from out of panel, “Alright Mr. Spiegelman… We’re ready to shoot!…”]

Thus, books like The Boy in the Striped Pajamas are not an age-appropriate equivalent way to teach the Holocaust, but a false construction of history.

This ends the first part of the thread. But there’s more…

The Maus incident is not an isolated case. It’s part of a broad trend of replacing the literature used to teach history with more kid-friendly, “appropriate” alternatives.

And outside of the Holocaust, it usually doesn’t meet with much controversy.

It might mean replacing Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave or Solomon Northup’s Twelve Years a Slave with modern historical fiction, for example.

Wars, the Civil Rights movement, Apartheid: any “icky” part of history can be a target.

But it plays out along the same general lines: Primary sources replaced with modern fiction, victim perspectives replaced with perpetrators, specificity replaced with Star-Bellied Sneetch-style “Why can’t we all just get along?” metaphors.

[still-searching-for-something]

This is Holocaust universalization, and it’s one of the most direct contributors to the wave of antisemitism which began after October 7th. Viewing the Holocaust as a parable, or some checklist of tyranny widely applicable to all forms of injustice across the world strips away the reality of what happened and how antisemitism works.

It’s the same cognitive dissonance that leads to leftists announcing ICE is a modern day Gestapo and then turning around and justifying pro-Hamas chants in front of a synagogue. This is not to say ICE is above reproach (obviously not) but to always jump at the Holocaust comparisons, to go on about how there’s a Hispanic Anne Frank hiding somewhere in the U.S. right now, is incredibly tasteless and just obscene.

The Holocaust is a real event that really happened to real people, perpetrated by real people. The U.S. needs to do a better job teaching it, not as a fable, but as a real thing.

[unsolicited-opinions]

Hello, I am Iranian.

Everyone keeps asking the same question over and over: what's wrong with the leftists? Why are they so noisy, why do they support the Gaza Strip, but remain completely silent when it comes to Iran? The answer is simple: because the truth exposes the lie. Because acknowledging Iran destroys the ideological fantasy they have built. Let's be clear: the Islamic Republic of Iran is not a victim of Western imperialism. It is a theocratic authoritarian regime that exists by exporting violence, funding Islamist groups, and suppressing its own people. Yes, it funds Hamas. It funds Hezbollah.

All these small proxy groups in the region and worldwide are financed with Iranian money — not government or regime money, but stolen funds: money taken from workers who today in Iran cannot even afford bread; from families destroyed by inflation; from women who are beaten, imprisoned, tortured, and raped for refusing religious submission. And that is exactly why the leftists are silent: because Hamas feeds their narrative, but the Iranian people do not. Because Islamist violence against Israelis can be turned into "resistance," but Islamist violence against Iranians reveals the truth. At this very moment, as you read this, Iran — a country with over 92 million people — is being destroyed in real time.

Almost a complete blackout for more than 24 hours: no internet, no phone connection, no communication at all. And — silence. No "urgent protests" at Western universities, no hashtags, no statements of solidarity, no megaphones. Because the suffering of Iranians does not fit their agenda.

Because modern leftist movements are no longer driven by human rights — they are driven by selective outrage and ideological loyalty.

They will scream about censorship — unless it is done by an Islamist regime.

They will condemn state violence to the fullest — but will never say a word if that violence is wrapped in religious language. They chant "Free Palestine," but will never say "Free Iran," because that would require one difficult admission: that political Islam is not liberation — it is domination. And, by the way, this is happening in the West today as well. The Islamic Republic is not anti-imperialist; it is imperialist toward its own people. Hamas is not an isolated resistance group; it is part of a broader Islamist ecosystem funded, trained, and supported by regimes like the Islamic Republic of Iran. Here is the part they do not want to hear: You cannot claim moral superiority while justifying a regime that kills women and punishes them for refusing the hijab, kills protesters, cuts off the internet for a 92-million-strong nation, and uses foreign proxy groups to cover up its own internal collapse. You cannot pretend to care about Palestinians while ignoring Iranians who are being shot, tortured, and killed by the Islamic Republic. This is not solidarity — this is ideological blindness.

The Iranian people are not silent — they are forced into silence. The silence of Western leftists is their choice: a choice to defend ideology, justify Islamism, and turn a blind eye to the suffering of millions because the pain of the Iranian people complicates the slogan. History will remember this moment. It will remember who spoke about universal freedom and who decided that some lives are less important than preserving a narrative. Long live Iran."

[skyptical-deactivated20251018]

I love seeing all these posts that are like “yeah the (((evil Zionists))) are stealing all our money for Israel and have a lust for the blood of children – wait no, I didn’t mean like that!!!”

And do you want to know why Neo nazis think you’re on the same side?? BECAUSE YOU ARE. You spread the exact same rhetoric as them, you give legitimacy to their hateful views towards Jews, the only difference is that you dress your antisemitism up in “progressive” language but you’re fundamentally saying the same thing.

The only difference between leftist antizionists like you and a Neo Nazi is that the Neo Nazis are honest about their intentions whereas you’re in denial.

[prickly-porcupine-memes]

[mylight-png]

I just saw a video of the protests for the release of the hostages on tiktok.

The comments?

Asking why there were no Palestine flags. So many comments asking, how dare Jews put themselves first?

This isn't an isolated issue.

Why are Jews, why is Israel, expected to put self-preservation below all else?

If your house and the house next door to you are on fire, naturally you'd put out your fire first, especially if your neighbors keep throwing lit matches and gasoline at you to disrupt your efforts.

To carry the allegory, it appears as if the expectation is for us to let our home burn to the ground while putting out every other fire.

In what world is this fair? What other country, what other nation, is being held to this same insane standard?

When you expect Jews to sacrifice ourselves at the altar of your false justice, your expectation is shaped from the dehumanization of us that you have allowed yourself to subscribe to.

Jewish blood is not a cheap currency for you to spill.

[mossadspypigeon]

[edithsweetith]

huda kattan claiming that israel was behind the world wars (despite not existing until 1948) should reeeeeally be a wake up call to how many people say "israel" when they really just want to say "jews"

[historicallyspeaking]

One thing I've noticed with the "Zionism = Nazism/Israel is an EtHnoStAtE" crowd is that they just don't seem to know or think much about the rest of the world. Like I'm starting to think the average leftist thinks that the world is composed of the US (pluralistic but racist), Israel (an "ethnostate") and then... "Normal Countries" that are like the US but less racist. Even people who really ought to know better like international law expert Ralph Wilde will talk about how one of the horrors of Zionism is that Palestinian citizens of Israel have to live in a country built for another people. And yeah, if we lived in a world composed entirely of liberal pluralistic societies where everyone was treated equally regardless of religious or ethnic differences, then Israel would be a weird, fucked up outlier. The idea of a Jewish state specifically for Jewish people would be pretty weird. Even a Jewish state like Israel, where there is a large and enfranchised non-Jewish population would be kinda problematic in a world composed of pluralistic democracies. Even the Nazi comparisons would be somewhat coherent. (There would still be issues with those comparisons because the Nazis attacked like 20 countries in five years and started a war that killed tens of millions of people whereas Israel hasn't done anything remotely like that. But if Zionists and Nazis were the only people ever to think that a particular people were entitled to their own country then comparing them would be more understandable.)

The thing is... we don't live in that world. In fact, we live in a world largely comprised of ethnostates. We live in a world where more than 80 countries, including Mr. Wilde's home country of the United Kingdom, have an official state religion. And yes, Mr. Wilde, we live in a world where Jews have spent 2,000 years having to live in countries built for other people, and the only reason more Jews aren't living in other peoples' countries today is that those other people decided kill or expel their Jewish populations.

I remember once explaining to a leftist friend that early Zionist leaders, including the now villainized Theodor Herzl and Ze'ev Jabotinsky, actually envisioned a Jewish state with a large and fully enfranchised non-Jewish population. And he was like, "well if Israel had equal rights for Jews and non-Jews, then how would that be different from any other country?" And I was just like... "well it would be different from every other Middle Eastern country because none of them give equal rights to Jews." Edit: Since I got a little pushback on the "the world is comprised largely of ethnostates" part of this, I guess it depends on how you define the term. If "ethnostate" means "country that sees itself primarily as the state for a particular people" then the world is largely comprised of countries like that. Israel's two biggest neighbors are the Egyptian Arab Republic and the Syrian Arab Republic and almost every other country in the Middle East is part of the Arab League. If you're defining "ethnostate" as a country where citizenship is limited to a particular ethnicity then it's patently false to apply that definition to Israel which has millions of Arab citizens.

[spacelazarwolf]

“i don’t understand why you guys keep bitching about leftist antisemitism. i’m a leftist jew and i NEVER experience antisemitism!! all i had to do was reject all religious aspects of judaism that couldn’t be weaponized for ActivismTM, not wear any religious garb unless it’s to make a point, be white or white passing, lie about my family who lives in israel or talk loudly and frequently about how i hope they all die, allow my gentile comrades to make holocaust jokes and comparisons, and harass other jews who haven’t put their identity up for auction like i have. it’s literally that easy so if you’re complaining about it it’s probably because your a baby killer pedophile subhuman zionist scumbag, just like my friend stalinworshipper42069 said.”

[jewish-sideblog]

Queer goyim will accuse you of Holocaust Erasure for not centering the orange bar and then never in their entire lives mention the blue bar

[jewish-sideblog]

This is the orange bar btw. Seems like a lot of people are having trouble seeing it which definitely helps make my point at the expense of coherency

[notaplaceofhonour]

I’d also like to point out that every single other bar in that graph is deaths, and the orange bar is arrests. The other bars would be even higher and the disparity only increased if they were all tracking arrests.

[jewish-sideblog]

This post is picking up notes again so I want to put it into perspective a different way:

If, starting in 1945, the Queer community took one day to mourn for every gay man killed by the Nazis for being a gay man, they would stop mourning in 1969.

If the Jewish community did the same thing for every Jew killed by the Nazis for being Jewish, we wouldn’t stop mourning until the year 18,383. Eighteen Thousand, Three Hundred and Eighty Three.

That’s far enough into the distant future for the Sahara Desert to have turned into a lush tropical forest, and the summer and winter months will have fully swapped places.

The Queer community would mourn for a quarter century. That’s nothing to scoff at, and it represents a genuine tragedy and loss of life. But the Jews would be mourning for, in all likelihood, the rest of human existence. There is no reasonable comparison between the two. And there is no reasonable explanation for why Queer goyim so frequently center the holocaust on themselves instead of on Jews.

[tchiyya-deactivated20250929]

Right well see the thing is that if the antisemitism is just words on the internet and irony, then it's just a joke and you're overreacting if you say anything about it.

If the antisemitism is just words even if said to your face in person, then it's just words and you shouldn't let them rile you up.

If the antisemitism is just microaggressions and people taunting our kids in public schools, then it's just bullying and you should just ignore the bullies.

If the antisemitism is discrimination by not getting holidays off or having kashrus respected or having religious clothing banned, then it probably affects other religious groups just as much or more than us, so you should really be fighting for and centering them.

If the antisemitism is people using slurs or blood libel or other canards, it could be worse, you're just being a neurotic Jew; it's still just words, at the end of the day.

If the antisemitism is Jewish shops or establishments or synagogues being vandalized or threatened, then it's just a little broken glass and spray paint, it's not like anyone actually got hurt, y'know?

If the antisemitism is people shouting out genocidal rhetoric in their slogans and seig heiling in the streets at protests, well really what do you expect when Israel is committing a holocaust of their own?? (If the antisemitism is holocaust inversion then fuck you for trying to control the narrative; dontcha know lots of other people were targeted and killed by the Nazis too? How dare you try to monopolize this tragedy??)

If the antisemitism is violence-inciting rhetoric from religious or political leaders, that's just, like, free speech man.

If the antisemitism is stochastic terrorist shootings at synagogues and JCCs and day schools (etc.) then it's just lone wolf actors and it's part of a larger conversation on mental health and/or gun control; it's still too early to say we should address it on its own terms.

If the antisemitism is individual Jews being physically attacked for looking Jewish in public, that's really unfortunate but also are we sure they aren't Zionists? Because even if not they might have been asking for it by looking like Zionists.... and if they were, well can you really even call that antisemitism? Anyway it's not like it's a widespread problem and there are more pressing issues than antisemitism that we should address first.

If the antisemitism is widespread violence, discrimination, and an inability to safely express Jewish identity, then we should maybe issue some meaningless platitudes about how that's bad, but make sure to include how Islamophobia is also bad too even if it's not at all relevant to the conversation.

If the antisemitism is individual Jews being killed, it's still too early to intervene, because can we really call that systemic violence? We should be focusing on the groups experiencing systemic violence first.

If the antisemitism is pogroms, make sure to ask which side of the political aisle it's coming from first to determine whether it's worth using as additional tar for our enemies, and if it's not, best to sweep it under the rug in service of The Cause. But it's still not the right time to actually take a stand on it.

If the antisemitism is groups of Jews being attacked and killed, that's deeply unfortunate, but it still really can't be our priority when there's a genocide going on. (Also have you considered that maybe those groups of Jews deserved it or are lying?)

If the antisemitism is state-sponsored repression, expulsion, concentration camps, and/or attempted genocide, well, it's kinda too late to do much about it, you know? Why didn't you say something before now?? Why did you let it get this bad? No way can we do anything about it at this late stage; it's not worth risking our people over people who won't even speak up for themselves.

If the antisemitism is a successful genocide insofar as it seriously reduces the Jewish population for several generations, then really the question we should be asking ourselves is why didn't they stand up for themselves? Why didn't they fight back? Why did they go like sheep to the slaughter?

[2peachy]

“We” “execution” “no country would want them”.......... “Thoughts?” 😇

[the-catboy-minyan]

average antisemite antizionist: omg thank fuck israel got second

average israeli: omg thank fuck we got second

[transmasc-israeli]

Omygod thank FUCK Israel didn't win

We don't have money to host next year lol😅