| ▲ | pagade 5 days ago |
| Antisemitic. Every time I hear this word, I can’t help but think of its irony—a term used exclusively for describing discrimination against one community, as if prejudice against them carries more weight than against any other. Perhaps, though, it serves as the best reflection of our hypocrisy. |
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| ▲ | havelhovel 4 days ago | parent | next [-] |
| It's incredible that a term was coined in the 19th Century to describe demonstrable hatred toward Jews, that the term was happily adopted and popularized by people who hated Jews, and now over 150 years later the term itself is pointed to as "proof" of Jewish privilege or conspiracy, perpetuating the cycle of ignorance and hatred under a new guise. |
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| ▲ | glassounds 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
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| ▲ | yread 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Not to mention there are more semitic people than Jews. And Holocaust targeted more people, too. And there were pogroms against other poeple, too. |
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| ▲ | glassounds 5 days ago | parent | next [-] | | The word has never, in its history, been used for anything other than racism against Jews. There are Semitic languages, not people. > Due to the root word Semite, the term is prone to being invoked as a misnomer by those who incorrectly assert (in an etymological fallacy) that it refers to racist hatred directed at "Semitic people" in spite of the fact that this grouping is an obsolete historical race concept. Likewise, such usage is erroneous; the compound word antisemitismus was first used in print in Germany in 1879 as a "scientific-sounding term" for Judenhass (lit. 'Jew-hatred'), and it has since been used to refer to anti-Jewish sentiment alone | |
| ▲ | culi 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | The Romani people for example (derogatorily called "gypsies". The term "gyp"—to scam—derives from stereotypes of Romani people) faced some of the most gruesome programs in history before facing the Romani Genocide in WW2. Yet we rarely talk about antiziganism the way we talk about antisemitism and people still casually throw around terms like "gyp" | | | |
| ▲ | edanm 4 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | [flagged] |
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| ▲ | dlubarov 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
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| ▲ | Hikikomori 4 days ago | parent | next [-] | | Does Israels actions over the years have any impact on how Jews are treated elsewhere? | | |
| ▲ | dlubarov 4 days ago | parent [-] | | Why would it matter? I don't think we should ever justify Islamophobia based on the actions of Islamic states or other Islamic groups; by the same token we should never justify antisemitic hate crimes regardless of our views on Israel. | | |
| ▲ | Hikikomori 4 days ago | parent [-] | | It does as its also a goal of Zionists. They want more Jews to move there and if they don't feel safe elsewhere they are more likely to do so. |
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| ▲ | newspaper1 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | [flagged] | | |
| ▲ | glassounds 5 days ago | parent [-] | | [flagged] | | |
| ▲ | newspaper1 5 days ago | parent [-] | | How could that possibly be true when the only people perpetuating this word are groups like the ADL, Israel... If what you said was true, all of these Zionist institutions wouldn't be promoting it. | | |
| ▲ | thomassmith65 5 days ago | parent | next [-] | | I checked wikipedia, and actually it states the same as the parent comment. That sentence has five references. It doesn't shock me, given the era, but rather than speculate and squabble, someone could check the references and see if they really do support the statement in the wiki. | | |
| ▲ | newspaper1 4 days ago | parent [-] | | So all of these Jewish institutions are promoting an anti Jewish word? Please explain why they would do that. | | |
| ▲ | thomassmith65 4 days ago | parent | next [-] | | I assume hardly anyone remembered, or payed much mind, to the origin of that word by the 1920s. I don't know who coined 'homophobia' or 'feminism' or many other concepts; they're just common words we use. | | |
| ▲ | newspaper1 4 days ago | parent [-] | | Right, so the word as it's used today is what we're talking about. It's being used as a weapon to silence criticism of Israel and Zionism in general. | | |
| ▲ | thomassmith65 4 days ago | parent [-] | | I dunno. Regardless of the exact words one uses, one can always accuse one's opponent of bias. If the word 'antisemitic' didn't exist, the accusation, phrased in different words, would still carry weight. | | |
| ▲ | newspaper1 4 days ago | parent [-] | | And I would complain about the false accusation if that was the case. As it stands "antisemitism" is what's being used to label people who oppose Zionism. It's just like how "communism" was used during McCarthyism. | | |
| ▲ | thomassmith65 4 days ago | parent [-] | | I think the accusations are sometimes unfair, and other times accurate. I wouldn't like for the world just to dismiss hatred towards Jews, or any other group, out-of-hand. More than anything, I would like to see measured and humane discussion in the media about the Middle East; but sadly I don't expect that will happen. | | |
| ▲ | newspaper1 4 days ago | parent [-] | | The amount of unfair accusations dwarfs any real ones. For instance many in the VC world have accused Paul Graham of being antisemitic for simply showing concern about Palestinians. To be clear no critique of Israel including that you don't think it has a right to exist is "antisemitic". Israel is a state not an ethnicity and it was formed under what most consider to be illegal and unethical circumstances and it grew through ethnic cleansing. It's official religion is of no consequence when judging its actions. | | |
| ▲ | thomassmith65 4 days ago | parent [-] | | One way to address that is to become cynical about 'antisemitism', but I hope that doesn't become prevalent. We've already entered an era in which majority groups resent minority grievances. Seems like that could lead to a lot of backwardness. I alluded to this already, but it's so rare to hear public figures discuss Israel/Palestine without distorting and filtering what they say to promote one or the other side, it makes resolving things impossible. | | |
| ▲ | newspaper1 4 days ago | parent [-] | | I think the only backwardness we're going to see is censorship and accusations of "antisemitism" to quiet criticism of Israel. The US House of Representatives literally passed a bill last night equating criticism of Israel with "antisemitism". If people want that word to mean something, the need to start using it for a purpose other than silencing critics. | | |
| ▲ | thomassmith65 4 days ago | parent [-] | | The fact that people use 'think of the children' as justification to pass terrible bills doesn't mean we should take issues affecting children lightly, right? A bad bill that weaponises 'antisemitism' is a good reason to oppose the bill's authors and supporters. It is a bad reason to minimise actual cases of antisemitism directed at people who had no involvement with the bill. | | |
| ▲ | newspaper1 4 days ago | parent [-] | | No one is minimizing antisemitism though, we're saying that it's being used, often and illegitimately to censor people standing against apartheid, ethnic cleansing and genocide. I'm genuinely curious if you think there's any antisemitism in this thread, because I don't think there is. | | |
| ▲ | thomassmith65 4 days ago | parent [-] | | Apologies if I worded things poorly in my previous comment. What I was driving at is that it's easy for a society, once there are widespread complaints about the weaponisation of some problem to slip into dismissing actual occurrences of the problem. |
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| ▲ | glassounds 4 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | They're using the current common terminology for the phenomenon, which does not have the roots you claimed it has. | | |
| ▲ | newspaper1 4 days ago | parent [-] | | That's the point, it doesn't matter what the origin was, how it is being used now is what is being critiqued. |
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| ▲ | glassounds 5 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | I can promise you that "the ADL and Israel and the Zionist institutions" are not the only ones using the term "antisemitism". I'd personally prefer that it'd be called anti Jewish racism. | | |
| ▲ | newspaper1 4 days ago | parent [-] | | They are the main institutions using the term as a weapon, and the discussion here is based on Netanyahu's own words. |
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| ▲ | throw310822 5 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | [flagged] | | |
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| ▲ | ada1981 5 days ago | parent | prev [-] |
| Especially when you consider "semites" are a member of an ancient or modern people from southwestern Asia, such as the Akkadians, Phoenicians, Hebrews, or Arabs. It can also refer to a descendant of these peoples. So, many Palestinians are Semites as well. And one may conclude when Ovadia Yosef, a former Chief Rabbi of Israel, says: “It is forbidden to be merciful to them. You must send missiles to them and annihilate them. They are evil and damnable. The Lord shall return the Arab’s deeds on their own heads, waste their seed and exterminate them, devastate them and vanish them from this world.”* That this is "Anti-Semitic" speech as well. It's amazing how buying off 98% of US Representatives can change a cultural and media narrative. *https://adc.org/racist-incitement-by-israeli-leaders-must-en... |
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| ▲ | aguaviva 4 days ago | parent | next [-] | | The thing is, the term "Semite" is (except in very archaic contexts) pretty much dictionary-only. It exists, and has semantic validity. But it does not in any way describe a group that has ever had any kind of common identity. Or as Wikipedia (itself a kind of a dictionary) puts it: The terminology is now largely unused outside the grouping "Semitic languages" in linguistics.
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| ▲ | edanm 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | [flagged] | |
| ▲ | glassounds 5 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | [flagged] |
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