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The Left's Blind Spot: Antisemitism (The New Republic)
- Thread starter Kin5290
- Start date
As a Jewish person I have to say I rarely encounter any anti-semitism from the left. I think it is mostly a non-issue. To the extent it exists, I think Ogodei captures it perfectly here.
RedAssedApe
Banned
yeah seriously. the only way i'd be able to pick one out if they were wearing one of those yamaka hat thingies.
dragonfart28
Banned
Well fuck, why would anyone be surprised?
Nazis were actually called 'the left' not long ago.
Nazis were actually called 'the left' not long ago.
.....what?
The Nazi's were facists, which is a far right ideology. The "socialists" part of their name was to make them look like there were "for the worker" like real socialists.
dragonfart28
Banned
Both of those require authority, but that's just my opinion of what left / right should mean.
Left being the appeal to authority and Right being liberty.
Me neither, but they most likely exist. There are crazy people every where. The main problem is that you will be labeled an antisemite as soon as you criticize the state of Israel.
Okay, well please start using terms in a way someone other than you understands. Someone can say that our two parties are the "Hegemons" and the "Populi" because "to me those are the Republicans and the Democrats" but it makes that person pretty hard to have a conversation with.
edit: cleaned up my grammar
Morrigan Stark
Arrogant Smirk
Uh, a lot of alt-right pricks are atheists... that should tell you something.
AntraxSuicide
Banned
This is stupid.
That's not how the political spectrum works. The political spectrum has an x and a y axis.
dragonfart28
Banned
I agree, left / right are such loaded, ambiguous terms now that they are just used to generalize some hated group of the day.
Might be better if we look at someone's political philosophy based on an autonomy scale and have better descriptors for the extremes.
Sooooo
Pro-life activists: left wing
Bathroom bill writers: left wing
Iraq war supporters: left wing
Slavery: left wing
Nudists: right wing
Anarchists: right wing
Antifa: right wing
Punk rock: right wing
The article isn't calling the Jezebel writer antisemitic. It is calling her lack of acknowledgement of nazi antisemitism her blind spot. She is criticizing the other person for speaking up because she is a white woman, even though Jews were the main target of an extermination campaign by nazis. Jews are as much a target of white supremacists as any other minority.
The article is saying, don't forget about antisemitism alongside racism/homophobia/etc
dragonfart28
Banned
Some of those would appear to be correct if we wanted to redefine the ideologies as I've mentioned already.
CannonFodder52
Member
Somewhat unrelated. Has anyone here ever seen /leftypol *Do not go there*
It's like /pol, but filled with communists and anarchists. The few times I stumbled in there, I saw threads on race realism and heavy anti-semitism.
It's irrelevant to the overall discussion because that place is definitely not a microcosm of anything, more so just a trove of idiots. But I find it amusing that the leftist version of a pol user is just about as vile, just in the opposite direction.
It's like /pol, but filled with communists and anarchists. The few times I stumbled in there, I saw threads on race realism and heavy anti-semitism.
It's irrelevant to the overall discussion because that place is definitely not a microcosm of anything, more so just a trove of idiots. But I find it amusing that the leftist version of a pol user is just about as vile, just in the opposite direction.
It's not anti-semitic to criticise Israeli policy.
Psychoward
Banned
Byakuya769
Member
Lol. Honestly was thinking the same.
radios shipping overview
Member
As much as people claim /pol/ is a joke (but actually is serious), I think leftypol actually is a joke forum where people try to out-edge each other with rhetoric they think is left wing. Not surprising that antisemitism is part of that toolset.
Trojita
Rapid Response Threadmaker
This whole thread is based on an article where the basic gist of it was that Kelly Stout is either dumb or ignorant, couldn't see that Dana could belong to another group affected by the Neo-Nazi's. She sounds like a typical "woke" person who ends up missing context.
Hashmal_Bringer_of_Order
Member
I know American politics are special, but over here i consider myself relatively left leaning but i have no sympathy, tolereance or compassion for Israel and it's government. Wanting my government to boicott or otherwise hamper them may hurt "Jews in general" by proxy but i honestly couldn't care less. Anti-Israel Jews are totally cool though.
That's my "confession."
/leftypol/ is surrounded by nazis. But its generally pretty okay. I would say most people aren't even aren't race realist.
Chairman Yang
if he talks about books, you better damn well listen
It's definitely true. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_under_Muslim_rule
I agree that Jewish people were typically better off under Muslim rule than Christian rule, but that's a terrible standard, and Jewish people were still subject to second-class status at best and mass pogroms at worst, as the Wikipedia link describes.
For actual tolerance, you had to look to the small Jewish communities in China and (non-Muslim and non-Christian parts of) India.
I don't know - this just seems like it's about a woman who thinks it's in poor taste to capitalize on the events that transpired, who didn't take into consideration the... 'Religious ethnicity' (?) of the author, for who knows what reason. I mean we can get into whether or not the author being Jewish should have anything to do with the critique of the content she wrote here, but I think it's a stretch to say that this is some reflection of the lefts blindspot.
I think it's just a lady who thinks an article was written in poor taste, and someone saying that it wasn't in poor taste because the author is Jewish.
I'm not saying this shouldn't be a thread - but don't you think the degree of purity testing happening is a bit much?
I think it's just a lady who thinks an article was written in poor taste, and someone saying that it wasn't in poor taste because the author is Jewish.
I'm not saying this shouldn't be a thread - but don't you think the degree of purity testing happening is a bit much?
CannonFodder52
Member
I should say, I have only been on there twice. So I shouldn't cast too large a net.
I also know I follow a couple people on Twitter, that are from that site and not that unreasonable.
The better question is why should it matter? There was nothing reactionary in what the original essay was saying and yet there's still this checking of bona fides by "the left" of the person writing the article, as if to say if she were merely white and not Jewish as well that she should leave it to others to comment, despite the woman criticizing the original essay also being a white woman, and the writer of this New Republic article also being a white woman. I don't understand where that comes from that you have to pass a litmus test to have an opinion these days, especially when it's coming from people who are clearly on the same side (e.g., in this case, Nazis = bad).
As for the left being blind on Antisemitism, my guess is that in part it relates to the fact that you have, maybe moreso than ever, a lot of conservative Jews aligned with the political right, even if they are a minority of Jews. David Frum, Sheldon Adelson, Bill Kristol, et al.
RE: Where antisemitism stems from in all of it's varieties, I'm honestly baffled. Western antisemitism probably has roots in "but they killed Jesus" but if that's the motivation anymore, it seems to be only among the most mouth-breather of antisemites. It truly seems today that it mostly stems from their belief that "Jews control the media/banks/government" and that, presumably they think the Jewish agenda is to keep the white Christian down, which is probably why they identify with Hitler's ideology. That and the unspoken portion of that accusation is that it's unearned, although I've never heard a convincing argument for why it is unearned. Mostly it devolves into "because they're Jews" which is a particular brand of stupidity I like to call 'circular stupidity'.
As for the left being blind on Antisemitism, my guess is that in part it relates to the fact that you have, maybe moreso than ever, a lot of conservative Jews aligned with the political right, even if they are a minority of Jews. David Frum, Sheldon Adelson, Bill Kristol, et al.
RE: Where antisemitism stems from in all of it's varieties, I'm honestly baffled. Western antisemitism probably has roots in "but they killed Jesus" but if that's the motivation anymore, it seems to be only among the most mouth-breather of antisemites. It truly seems today that it mostly stems from their belief that "Jews control the media/banks/government" and that, presumably they think the Jewish agenda is to keep the white Christian down, which is probably why they identify with Hitler's ideology. That and the unspoken portion of that accusation is that it's unearned, although I've never heard a convincing argument for why it is unearned. Mostly it devolves into "because they're Jews" which is a particular brand of stupidity I like to call 'circular stupidity'.
Just to add to that, in France the King had various ways of raising money for the crown.
One of them included just taking money from some communities, mostly jewish.
Think about that, one of the legal way to raise money was basically taking the resources of the Jewish population.
It's basically the law between something like the XIIIth and the XIVth century.
Philippe Auguste before and Saint Louis after are also fairly known for that.
Medieval Europe is all kinds of fucked up.
That might be the small seed at the center of the crystal, but the bigger reasons is the success the Jews have had historically in the commercial and banking sectors, largely as a result of the Christian prohibition on usury and the barring of Jews from other professions and trades..
When capitalism developed this put Jews in prime position to succeed far beyond the Christian populations, leading to suspicion and resentment. This shit is all over the place from the Merchant of Venice to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, to the Nazis, and it even continues today with all the Rothschilds/bilderberg/illuminati conspiracy theories.
I don't know enough about the situation in the Islamic world to know if Islamic usury laws had similar effects, but you can see a similar situation in the modern world with the Malaysian Chinese.
OG Shaka Zulu
Member
I'm a little Bible rusty, didn't the Romans kill him?
/leftypol/ definitely has its problems. But being that the neo-nazi board, /pol/ is the biggest board on 8chan and anyone can post on /leftypol/ anonymously doesn't help. I think a good rule of thumb is that if a post is about Jews or ethnic people whatsoever, it's a neo-nazi spamming.
Why am I not surprised that, just like every other thread mentioning Jews and the left, this has become a topic about Israel? The article isn't even talking about people on the left being antisemitic for crying out loud. It is talking about how people on the left can tend to miss or fail to call attention to anti-antisemitism, and gave a pretty great example of the Jezebel author taking umbrage with a Jewish woman writing an anti-Nazi essay. And I have to say I saw pretty much no attention called to the antisemitism on display in Charlottesville. As the article in the OP says, it is possible to criticize the blatant racism on display as well as the antisemitism, but the left tends to completely ignore one for the other. I know it can sound silly to think it might need to be said that Nazi's have a problem with Jews, but if it never gets mentioned it looks the same as if all the hatred on display towards Jews either wasn't happening or is somehow acceptable. Not every topic about Jews is about Israel, no matter how much people want to turn it into one.
Some people who are strongly anti-corporations sometimes have anti-semitics views because of what you explained.
In the end since Jews tend to be over-represented in "powerful" positions (media, finances) they are an easy target for conspiranoics.
It's hilarious because what these Christian-right folks complain about is essentially a result of the stupidity and xenophobia of their forefathers, and their solution is yet more stupidity and xenophobia.
Yeah, this is the core issue. European monarchies, especially in Spain and the German states, used the Jews in a way that permanently destroyed their reputation by turning violence into systemic ritual for fiscal reasons.
That's necessary but not sufficient. I'm not seeing much violence towards Protestant dissenters in England after 1715.
A key element was the intentional political aspect of the Jewish policies of, mostly German and Spanish, European states. Anti-antisemitism justified with the position of many Jews in finance predates capitalism by a fairly significant amount of time.
The Jewish cultural premium and emphasis put on education is part of this. Due to their history as a marginalized minority, investing into physical capital (land, equipment, etc.) for traditional labor jobs like farming and blacksmithing was a very bad idea. If the local population turned on you and you needed to run, you couldn't take a forge with you. However, if you learned how to practice medicine, suddenly you had a skillset that required nothing more than a replaceable toolset that you could immediately put to work in the next town you settled down in.
Historically it actually worked for them though.
Let's be real, Jews are kind of the wiping boys of the West for the last 2 millennia at least.
Most powerful countries could just literally steal any kind of wealth any jewish community amassed without any pushback from the majority of the population because they were kind of trained in not giving a fuck.
Heck in most countries not being of the state religion was reason enough to be killed on sight.
I think that's coincidental outside of eastern Europe relatively recently. A traditional focus on education is probably religion-cultural in nature. Judaism is much more predicated on the training and the education of an individual than non-Calvinist forms of Christianity.
After the reformation the Genovean, Dutch, and Scottish rates of education also skyrocket.
The bible itself very clearly places the blame on the Jewish Elders.
It's actually a fairly big controversy as Pontius Pilate as a character is often accused of essentially being a device solely for throwing Jews under the bus in order to increase the legitimacy of Christians.
It's probably one of the more interesting parts of the bible as well.
Quid est veritas?
No, that would restrict it to religious fundamentalists. I'm sure that's a factor but the answer is even more stupid than that: jews were the only ones who were allowed to give loans with interest(Usury) and so culturally jews became the bean counters because Usury wasn't a sin for them. This lead to a long long history of the jews being the banks that commit the sins that others were not willing to.
The muslims had the same set up with the jews, though, ironically their faith would actually allow a jew to go to heaven and a christian to not.
The origin of the left right spectrum comes from the french revolution. The right were the nobles that were for keeping the monarchy.
I don't know looking at the map of jewish expulsion during the middle age, feels like they would certainly benefit from being quick on their feet rather than try getting stuck plowing the fields.
And_Gignac
Member
They did carry out the execution but the story in the Bible goes that the angry mob pressured them into doing it. Those excerpts were then often used to justify anti-semitic believes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_deicide
I don't know looking at the map of jewish expulsion during the middle age, feels like they would certainly benefit from being quick on their feet rather than try getting stuck plowing the fields.
At most that probably amounted to a move every generation or two for a specific population. In eastern Europe Jews had to be more concerned about Pogroms that weren't ritualized, planned, and controlled. Being aware of the possible need to move would have been a much greater part of life fairly clearly.
It's a stupidly common misconception. The spectrum itself is useless except as a relative scale, mind, but you'd think people would at least look up how the spectrum even came to exist with the french revolution.
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