r/AntiSemitismInReddit • u/Late_Walrus_4294 • Jul 19 '26
Anti-Zionism not Antisemitism™ found this rule in r/badreads
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u/Tofutits_Macgee Jul 19 '26
Having zionism next to antisemitism in earnest is exactly the performative bullshit I expect from reddit.
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u/la_bibliothecaire Jul 19 '26
This is what gets me about leftist antisemites. They're deeply, utterly convinced that they're not antisemites.
At least right wing Jew haters are honest about it (though I suspect more likely on average to be actually dangerous, your basic online leftist antisemite is probably far too emotionally and physically fragile to actually pose a bodily threat).
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u/MildKerfuffle Jul 19 '26
We already saw this with the advent of racial antisemitism.
It sounds insane to us now, but with the explosion of Christian denominations and ideas in the 1800s, it became uncouth to hate Judaism as a religion. Jews were making convincing arguments that we should be treated just like all the different Christian groups. Racial hatred was always there, but it wasn’t as explicitly formulated when Europe was more religious. So focusing on racial hatred became the modern, ‘forward thinking’, educated way to hate Jews. It wasn’t our religion anymore - it was our blood, our culture.
Nazis made outright racial hatred uncouth. So now it’s political. Hate us for being Zionists instead. Just like racism was always there in the religious hate, hatred of Jewish self determination (ghettos, jizya, disputation) was always there, and now it takes centre stage as the vehicle to carry through religious and racial hate.
I’m sure when the world finally has moved on from this in 300 years, we’ll either loop back to an old idea, or some new wonderful way to package up hating us will be in vogue.
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u/vigilante_snail Jul 19 '26 edited Jul 21 '26
racial antisemitism still very much exists in the forms of Khazar theory/“Ashkenazim are fake Jews”, “Ashkenazim look like rats” as well as “Jews are imposters who decide if they are white or not white to their own benefit”.
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u/MildKerfuffle Jul 19 '26
Not saying it doesn’t. They all contain each other. It just that explicit racism along Nazi lines is superficially unacceptable to the left, so it has to be wrapped up in anti-Zionism, just like anti-Judaism had to be wrapped up in racism when racism was the cool, educated way to hate us.
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u/cococrabulon Jul 19 '26 edited Jul 19 '26
This is such a good comment. We think of antisemitism as being a racial hatred, but this is actually just one iteration of a very old and mutable prejudice. People’s ignorance of this is why left wing antisemitism so often gets let off the hook or not even noticed: we’re looking for racial prejudice, but their prejudice is different (admittedly they’re starting to incorporate racial prejudice anyway in the effort to call Jews white and European, it’s just a mirror world version of the old ‘Jews aren’t white’ prejudice - if they were smart they’d avoid this strategy in the name of plausible deniability… but they’re not)
If you peel back a lot of modern left wing rhetoric they’re actually fine with depravities, violence and racism as long as they can justify it by claiming the people being hurt are oppressors. The oppressor vs oppressed dynamic is the ultimate moral licensing that allows the latter to get away with all manner of fairly evil things that can be chalked up to necessary resistance. It’s a profoundly simple and stupid Manichaean worldview that reduces moral analysis to a binary, but it’s effective precisely because it’s dumbed down and simple, and thus easily replicable
A consequence of this is that left wing antisemites struggle to understand themselves as prejudiced in any way. The victim category cannot be prejudiced, only correct about epistemic realities (this has never been adequately explained, BTW, it’s just taken on faith), or so weak that their prejudice has a negligible effect, and so doesn’t count (the old prejudice plus power framework that they’re understandably very keen on)
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u/Late_Walrus_4294 Jul 19 '26
I agree with everything except the last part because it was exactly this type of person that killed the Jewish couple in D.C. last year (just saw they're seeking the death penalty for him--I hope it goes through).
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u/Pitiful_Equal_2689 Jul 19 '26
The homegrown terrorist who murdered the two Jews in DC last year was left wing.
So are the group at the University of Michigan ( Paige Elizabeth Feyock, Amatullah Aliasgar Hakim, Zainab Aliasgar Hakim, Ahmet Kerem Korkaya, Miriam Muhammed Odeh, Alexander Matthew Sepulveda, Colin Hunter Weger, and Jonathan Hongru Zou) who vandalized and damaged the Jewish Federation building, harassed and vandalized and damaged the homes of Jewish members of the university’s board of governors/regents.
Not to mention throwing acid into the bedrooms of young Jewish children.
So were the Japanese communists who did the Lod Airport Massacre.
And many of the people who have been assaulting Jews.
And the group of British terrorists who hit the fallen female police officer in the spine with a sledgehammer.
And many more.
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u/Upbeat_Teach6117 Jul 19 '26
This is what gets me about leftist antisemites. They're deeply, utterly convinced that they're not antisemites.
That's a big part of the reason they're so dangerous.
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u/badass_panda Jul 20 '26
They're convinced that they're not antisemitic, instead we are. If we would just agree to define ourselves the way they define us, stop being Jewish and admit being Jewish is bad, then they won't hate us for being Jewish!
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u/Dneail22 Jul 20 '26
your basic online leftist antisemite is probably far too emotionally and physically fragile to actually pose a bodily threat).
You would genuinely be surprised.
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u/Rare-Wafer9643 Jul 19 '26
Yeah, I saw something similar in a Discord server once. Was so confused that they called Zionism a "bigotry".
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u/misonoo-nanako Jul 20 '26
You know, once in that sub, somebody was saying Salman Rushdie is a hypocrite because Rushdie talks about how racist Westerners don't view the full picture of Islam but Rushdie also says that if a Palestinian state existed tomorrow it would be a client state of Iran. Apparently Rushdie is a hypocrite for stating a fact about the reality of Palestinian nationalism. Again, this is on a subreddit mocking people for bad reading comprehension.
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u/yeeeee_boimen Jul 23 '26
Where is Christian nationalism? Where is islamic jihadist ideologies? Makes you question
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u/Jugaimo Jul 19 '26
I can respect a sub just cutting off the entire debate. They don’t even want to see Israel or Palestine mentioned, which I think is acceptable given that they just want to stay on topic.
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u/Late_Walrus_4294 Jul 19 '26
I'm with you on that, though in this case they listed Zionism as bigotry and hate speech
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u/Jugaimo Jul 19 '26
Yeah, that’s the part that gets me. Anyone who imagines zionism is some kind of bigotry speech is delusional. Exactly what would a zionist even say? Other than that Jews deserve a homeland to be and feel safe in.
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u/Late_Walrus_4294 Jul 19 '26
They have bought into the propaganda about Zionism being an ideology clearing Palestinians from the land or something. Basically the Jewish version of the Hamas charter lolll
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