NOTICE:
I realise now that the main problem here was my post on Hexbear, It was shitty and failed to get across my actual views. I still wish I could’ve been allowed to properly discuss it, but I understand the decision to ban me. Looking at my original post, I can very much get why that is ban worthy, even though that wouldn’t be my decision. What happened happened, as much as I’d like to further expand upon my views, I’ll try not to waste your time by trying to explain my views that I fully do not understand, that I’ve developed throughout the process of arguing with people in the comments. I feel silly for making this such a big deal, sorry. You could look through my replies here to see a further expounded on version of this post here. It really boils down to misunderstanding and semantics, I agree with most of the substance of the comments on this post on their face, it is just that often argued in favour of things I didn’t mean to. My view of anti-Semitism boils down to, yes it is present, but it is not systemic. As I already mentioned, you can look through the replies if you want to see more of that
Click here to view the original version of this post
I recently made a post that, according to the moderator which banned me, “conflated Judaism with Zionism”. The post did not in any way conflate Judaism with Zionism, it was me being tired of people trying to center anti-Semitism and over inflate the presence it has in society.
It had an inflammatory title, “I don’t give a shit about anti-Semitism”, which I can get why people would find problematic. But the text if the post was not in any way conflating Zionism with Judaism. I explained the reasons for the rise in anti-Semitism, the genocide the Israeli state is carrying out, and why I am tired of people acting like it is of most importance.
Jewish people are not systemically oppressed, they’ve been integrated into Western society, into whiteness. What has happened to Jewish people and their assimilation is similar to the experience of Italians and the Irish (in America). There will be no Holocaust 2.0, Jewish people in NYC are not at threat of being lynched. The victim mentality and the centering of the Jewish experience only plays into Jewish supremacism, Zionism. Jews are not special, it shouldn’t be controversial to say that.
I’ll repeat the analogy I made in the original post: Imagine if your main concern was the safety of German minorities after they did the Holocaust. It’s completely ridiculous and shouldn’t be taken seriously.
I suspect the main reason for the “conflating Zionism with Judaism” part is me saying most Jewish people support Israel, which Is a fact. I pointed this out as a reason for the (over-exaggerated) rise in anti-Semitism. I did not even once state anything in opposition to Judaism and Jewishness in in of itself, only gave reasons to the generalisations. I can forgive someone taking this as somehow conflating the two in the context of, I repeat, the inflammatory title, but what I said wasn’t in any way remotely that.
To quote Prof. Finkelstein, on when he asked his mother if she had ever met a decent German:
I remembered one German soldier, he had a kind of a guilty look on his face.
That was all she could remember—one. So it doesn’t surprise me that she loathed all Germans.
This is what I was getting at. A common response to seeing a genocide committed by Jews is, albeit irrationally, to loathe all Jews. Just like, for a time, people hated all Germans. To center the hate towards Germans in the post war years would be seen as ridiculous, rightfully so. Even more ridiculous is to imply this will somehow transfer into violent lynchings.
People like us should know that Zionism and Nazism are not contradictory ideologies, they can coexist and work together (and have historically). So why (I am referencing the replies to my post, not the moderator who banned me) is it that people think Elon throwing a sieg heil is a sign of an imminent Holocaust in the USA? The main donor of Trump is a Jewish Zionist. I repeat, Jews are not at threat. It is ridiculous and, as I already said, plays into Jewish supremacy.
In the brief period where the post was up, I did not receive any real counter arguments, only people flinging insults who clearly either did not understand the text I wrote or didn’t even read through it. I was then of course banned. I expected the forum named @askchapo to be open to discussion. I am sure if I had an actual conversation on the topic with the moderator who banned me, I’d either be able to convince them of the content of the post, or have my own mind changed.
Bans shouldn’t just be thrown around like that, especially considering the content of my post. The text giving reason to the ban was a single sentence, it did not touch on the content of the post. Just “conflating Judaism with Zionism”, that’s it. No specific line of text was noted.
At last I’d like to add that the post was primarily in response to liberal Zionists like Owen Jones and other such figures, not to fellow leftists. Figures who disingenuously over inflate the importance of anti-Semitism, its presence and general effect.
I fully agree that anti-Semitism usually leads right back into far-right ideologies that are in staunch opposition to us, but that is not what I was trying to argue against in the post.
Click here to view the post on Hexbear
What are they supposed to self crit about though? Bad analysis? From what I’ve read on this so far, it comes across like substituting talking things through instructively with a permaban. If it is the case that thorough attempts were made to talk things through and they doubled down, or that they were being hostile toward others and not taking hints to back down, then that seems more fair to do a ban. But in general, expecting someone to go off in their corner and work things out is not a solution to ignorance. I would love for it to be that easy, but it takes sometimes painful, patient, and prolonged effort instead. None of us has the “correct” take all of the time. Hell, maybe I’m jumping to conclusions too quickly myself. But it would be kind of absurd if I were to be banned from somewhere for saying this, wouldn’t it?
I know there’s a fine line sometimes where it’s important not to be permissive of BS and draw lines, but at the same time, sometimes you can get far just trying to connect on the spirit of what someone means while disagreeing with the content. For example, when I read the original post they made, the tone sounds abrasive and hasty to me, but the general sentiment of being tired of zionists calling upon anti-semitism and playing up being victims is nothing new. People can get tired of pre-empting every statement with a big thing about the difference between zionism and Judaism, and trying to word it all just right so nobody gets the wrong idea, like Jewish people are the main characters of world oppression, while Palestinian children are being slaughtered en masse. And it’s not like it’s just internet posting struggling with this kind of thing, I remember Gabor Maté mentioning something in passing along similar lines when he came on a podcast his son co-hosts. How, if I remember right (hopefully I am not misrepresenting him), he was tired of dealing with the centering of generational trauma and how that related to zionism. I see what appears like an echo of the same theme in OP’s post. I do think OP’s original post is being somewhat dismissive of how Jewish people can and do still suffer, but any frustration behind it is understandable.
Jewish people are not made of porcelain. We should do what we can to combat prejudice and discrimination against them, but they can handle a bad take now and then. And someone pointing out, albeit harshly, that there’s a clear source of continuing prejudice against them, is not itself the problem; it’s the zionist state that is the source of that problem.
People on the Internet are oftentimes able to find information about a topic without needing to make a post about it, and people on the Internet are further able to stop for a moment and reflect on how they come across to others before they post. When someone then posts a “question” with a post body that’s just a very abrasive and confident ramble, about a topic which could easily be searched, and that person decidedly should know better, then it doesn’t really come across as a genuine question — it rather comes across as someone demanding their bad analysis be heard, someone speaking without investigation, someone with an irrational sense of pride, someone who isn’t actually interested in learning.
Jews are not made of porcelain, no, nor am I, nor are most people. But I doubt the “now and then” of bad antisemitism takes is nearly as infrequent as you might believe it to be, and you might also be misunderstanding who aside from Jews themselves might be disturbed by such nonsense. Responding to people being confidently incorrect in any case takes emotional labor, and I’m not going to charitably interpret the “frustration” of a white man from one of the most reactionary countries in Europe, who self-reports as largely only engaging in activism through arguing with strangers on the Internet, just because he calls himself a Marxist-Leninist.
Jews are certainly not the main characters of world oppression, and Zionists’ crying wolf about antisemitism is frustrating, but recognizing that anti-Zionism is a pursuit of both Palestinian and Diaspora Jewish liberation doesn’t actually require buying into the narrative that Jews are somehow a special and unique people, or that condemning a genocide requires Jews’ express permission. It doesn’t even require watching one’s wording. Jewish anti-Zionism is in fact a political tradition that should inspire all diasporic peoples and all “traitors to settlerdom”.
Most of the positions we have on places like these are not easily searched. In fact, searching independently can easily lead you to reactionary information. Have you forgotten how fringe we tend to be in the English-speaking internet? Why we ended up on a place like lemmy in the first place?
It takes time and energy, “emotional labor” is a nonsense term here and this kind of excuse-making is a bad example to set for people who want to make a difference in liberation.
So let me get this straight. You are invested enough to have taken the time to personally assess who this person is, where they are from, their gender, whiteness, and their history of what they are doing with their life, all of which you have apparently acquired over the internet, which on a platform like lemmy is no easy thing to do unless they put all of them in an easy summary (unlikely). But taking the time to discuss the issue is too much? Again, it just sounds like excuses.
It clearly does though, as evidenced by how OP’s take is being taken to task, and has acquired a permanent ban elsewhere. The whole thing is frankly embarrassing, as is this insistence of an easily-made accurate assessment of bad faith and therefore a justification of reactive dismissal.
Efforts toward liberation are fucking hard sometimes. They shouldn’t have to be, but they are. And I’m not going to sit here and kowtow to this attitude that says “not my problem, go in your corner alone and figure it out.” We can do better. You don’t have to differently personally, of course, we are not in an org or anything like that and not on a basis of putting each other in check, but as a whole, it’s a bad example to set and so I’m going to push back against such an attitude. It’s not the first time I’ve seen it and when I was earlier on in learning about all this stuff, I kinda just ignored it, figuring I didn’t know enough to speak on it.
But now I feel confident in saying that it is a counter-revolutionary attitude when it is defended as a normal thing to do. When it is simply a passing thing, I expect it is born of frustration from dealing with sealioning, concern trolls, and other forms of deceptive time-wasting. But as a whole position to take on and defend, it is little more than indulgent individualist thinking. People cannot go off and figure out how to be the proper revolutionary alone and then come back, and be ready to be heard. That’s nonsense. They will learn many of the wrong things and have no idea what to do when they actually engage. It is exactly the encouraging of this individualism that causes more bad takes, not less.
We have not one but two leftist, anti-Zionist communities for Jewish issues in our federation, one on Hexbear (Judaism) and one on Lemmygrad (Jewish Quarter). Both of these communities are loaded with discussions, articles, and other resources. So it’s not nearly as hard to find good information independently as you might think. Hell, I’m not even opposed to people asking strange, silly or even offensive questions, I’ve done so on Askchapo many times without any issue — as long as someone can show that they’ve made an effort to understand on their own as well, then I think that’s the most important thing. The effort should be, put simply, reciprocal, the respect should be mutual. This is how we avoid wasting people’s time and energy, yes, their emotional labor.
I learned he was white by checking his modlog on Hexbear to see if this was the first time he’d gotten a post or comment removed — turns out he actually has had over the past 9 months a total of 20 (technically 22) posts or comments removed prior to the one that got him banned, including one comment removed four months ago in which he said, “Nah dude. He has a white exterior, but that doesn’t make him white automatically. For example, I’m white on the exterior but my soul is Chinese. It’s the inside that matters” (removal reason: “Inappropriate”)
I learned he was a man by checking his pronouns, which are in his bio — it is perhaps bad form to equate he/him pronouns with being a man, alas I did so anyways, also bearing in mind that his profile picture is a man, and I was evidently correct.
And I knew from before that he’s from Estonia and that he’s not very active in organizing, because I saw the post he made about the lack of opportunities to organize in Estonia in my feed one week ago, and remembered it. He’s a prolific user with a memorable name and picture. People are going to remember stuff he’s said about himself.
It is in any case easy enough for me to figure from his writings that he does not get regularly accused of being a succubus agent of the Jewish conspiracy to emasculate White Christian Men on the basis of his gender identity; that he has in fact probably never actually met a single Jew in his life, and has probably internalized a number of harmful attitudes in his society about the “Hypothetical Jew” that he pictures in his mind’s eye, if Estonia’s (lack of) reckoning with its antisemitic history is anything like Norway’s; and he evidently feels qualified to make confidently incorrect sweeping statements about who is and isn’t harmed by racism in a way that only white people really tend to do.
I always try to be open to being proven wrong about my assumptions about people, but evidently I was on the money this time. Those who are closer to institutional power time and time again also tend to be the leftists with the worst takes and the worst attitudes.
To be clear though, I’m also “broadly white”, I’m also from a reactionary European country with a minuscule Jewish population that I’ve never personally met to my knowledge, and I’m also not super involved in organized advocacy (I am part of an org but I’ve only been to like 4 meetings in a year). So I’m not trying to shame borschtisgarbo for any of these things, in fact I welcome people to look at me with suspicion. And I know that borschtisgarbo is trying to get better organized and I wish him luck in that, but getting upset about being personally cried as antisemitism’s wolf over arguing with Internet strangers anonymously about Palestine, is not the same as tiring from having to defend a whole organization from baseless accusations from bourgeois media, or actually being put in danger by Zionist lunatics.
But he doesn’t believe that Diaspora Jewish liberation is the same struggle as Palestinian liberation, though!! If he did he would already care about antisemitism!! The fact that he doesn’t care about antisemitism is what caused this issue!!
It is.
Thanks for taking the time to explain further. The prior history seems to me like a very important point here. I was operating under the impression that the ban had been out of nowhere, simply because of what he posted. If he is a repeat offender on hexhear’s rules, that is much more understandable. To be honest, we might have avoided this whole back and forth if that had been pointed out in your original post in the thread; I don’t mean that as any kind of blame, simply that had I known, I might have responded differently. The way it was worded originally, it was coming across to me like the offense was essentially having a bad take in a bad tone one time and that this was worthy of a permaban and a need to go reflect in the corner.
I can respond in more detail to what you’ve said if there are any points you’d especially like addressed. For the moment, nothing else jumps out at me as something I feel a need to comment on.
Welp, glad that this has been resolved in a comradely manner then, sorry for getting a bit heated.
Likewise, I don’t know if it came through in the text, but I got kind of intense myself at points. I’m glad we could reach something of an understanding.
What is the point of an internet forum, one named @askchapo, if not to discuss things? My post was, as I’ve already mentioned in another reply here, not much if a question. Though still I put it in @askchapo. Why? Because I felt I wanted to share my views, talk about them. I know my post was not the best, to say the least. It was because I was expecting to be able to discuss it openly and further develop them. A forum named @askchapo should allow you, through conversation, to correct your views rather than banning you
Again, I do not want to be callous, but consider my analogy again. Would you not find it off-putting if, during the 1940s, you heard people center the conversation on whether or not anti-German sentiment was too wide spread? You would not be an anti-German xenophobe for intervening, to say so is ridiculous.
Also, I find it very disingenuous of you to try and psycho analyse me here. It has nothing to do with what I am saying here, and comes off wrong. Would you enjoy me going through your posts, to try and find something I can use against you? It wouldn’t be very nice, I am sure you agree.
If you don’t want people to factor in information you’ve previously shared about yourself when interacting with or talking about you, then don’t share that information. You are in any case acting like you’re entitled to other people’s time and energy over something you could easily investigate on your own any time you want. I will not reply again.
Also, as much as I don’t want to indulge in your attempt to make this some interpersonal drama, I feel like I need to defend myself here. The post you referenced as evidence for me not doing real life activism was literally me asking for help in finding outlets for activism. There are no real organisations here, besides the one pro-Pal org. I’ve been to one of their meetings, though they mostly do film screenings and such, not protests or anything like that. They occasionally do, just I haven’t know of them for that long to have gone to them earlier. I do not have the capacity to start a communist party all on my own, that was the whole point of the post. I was looking for answers on how to get to the point at which I could do that, or participate in something like that. I was looking for ways to build contacts and such You clearly extrapolated a lot without really reading through the post(s).
Sorry, but searching through a person’s posts to smear them isn’t a nice thing to do. What you pointed out was completely irrelevant to the topic of the post. I am not entitled to people’s time, but a forum specifically advertised as a place to discuss things should allow you to talk about things without being banned. What is the point of an @askchapo forum if you can’t ask things?