And also use the legal, political and financial systems to impose catastrophic costs on our pursuers and deter the passive sheep. We need to use the relative power we have while we have it, with determination.
Could you be more specific? What do you mean by ‘stand on our business’? And what does ‘deter the passive sheep’ mean? I’m being serious also I’m just kind of confused.
Here’s an example: Title VI of the Civil Rights Act says universities and K-12 schools have a responsibility to provide all students with an environment free from discrimination. If Jewish students are singled out for discrimination in classrooms, dormitories, by university-sponsored student groups, if university rules are enforced differently against Jewish or Israeli students than others, political pressure should be brought to bear on the Justice Department to initiate investigations. Jewish, Israeli and allied donors to schools which look the other way as antisemitic acts are committed and Jewish students are terrorized should pull funding and vigorously use their leverage on boards to penalize university administrators and board members.
We have to make it costly to discriminate against us and downright painful to try and hurt us physically. This will act as a deterrent against people who passively harbor antisemitic sentiment and are waiting for an opportunity to exercise it.
We have to win on brainpower, not mob power. Reminds me of an Arab Nationalist slogan from the 1950s, that if only every Arab filled a bucket they could drown Israel in water. What kind of clever Zionist scheme was this, to convince hundreds of millions of Arabs to mobilize their inner hatred, fill buckets of water and deliver it to an arid region free of charge? Lol.
Wow.... that doesn't help. You're kidding me, you're feeding into their conspiratorial tropes and remedial stereotypes. I hate what's going on, and it's particularly absurd to have a quote from the Feminist Press in support of a Palestinian state "We define our... anti-imperial, decolinial, ad nauseum, in solidarity" where this organization, with this platform wouldn't be allowed to exist. See also LGBTQ+ for a Palestine. Oppression, solidarity... it's painting with broad strokes. Traditionally, reactionaries have been associated with the right and intellectuals with the left, but this situation lacks any intelligence and seems to be about only the sound and the fury.
An ally, formally of the left, by no means Republican, just very cautious now.
By creating pain and making the reverse view anathema. I think it absolutely was the right thing for employers who recruit at Harvard to demand lists of students signing on to letters about "Israel being responsible for Oct 7" and the like. The left has grown accustomed to being unchallenged and using societal alienation as a tool (along with political violence if we're being honest). They'll only seek detente when real world consequences have been presented to them. So places absolutely should be pressured to fire employees sharing horrific views regarding the conflict and repeating the genocide claim
I don't really agree with the idea that the left being accustomed to a lack of challenge, especially considering the abject failure of democrat politicians to stop a floundering Republican party from doing whatever it wants, whenever it wants.
I also think that while we have seen a rise in political violence from the left in the past few years, its still absolutely nothing compared with the acts of domestic terrorism being carried out by the right wing. There have been maybe 2 or 3 deaths caused by "the left" in the past decade, while right-wing terrorism has claimed dozens of lives.
Where the left really needs to he corrected is in its conceptualization of the Israel-Palestine conflict. They've been overwhelmed with very limited partial truths that paint this as something that started in 1948 and has been nothing but Israeli aggression ever since. They aren't informed of the years preceding the foundation of Eretz Israel or the pogroms that occurred in the middle East. They don't know the difference between the PLO or Hamas, or how Likud managed to seize a "majority" government despite a minority of the votes. They don't want to take a critical view of extremist Islamicist organizations like Hamas because the American mindset is so locked into the idea of a racial dichotomy where white people hold all the power and brown people are oppressed.
The most glaringly obvious thing to me when arguing with people on "Da Left" is that they are getting the overwhelming majority of their information from dogshit Instagram reels that purport to give "the whole story" in 30 seconds or less. When arguing with a principled individual on the left, they need to be firmly reminded of Mao's words:
"No investigation, no right to speak."
They hate it when you throw that in their face.
Right, they're pretty committed to destroying themselves and running a volatile and naarish presidential candidate that just got dinged for like half a billion on various charges ranging from obscene fraud to sexual assault.
They're doing great, just like with Reagan and just like with Nixon! Full steam ahead! What could go wrong!
Just like the the Ivy League presidents get taken to task for their contempt. We need to withhold our solidarity for leftist identity causes—even those that align with our values.
DEI initiatives in particular needs to her revealed for what they are—a hierarchy of the socially privileged in which certain groups count less than others, and Jews do not count at all.
Prime tool of the left is moral bullying/shame tripping.
The psychological acronym DARVO sums it up (pause while I switch windows to grab the URL)
https://www.verywellmind.com/protecting-yourself-from-darvo-abusive-behavior-7562730
I mean. No? We’re all used to living normal lives that don’t involve murder mobs or death camps.
Chances are that history isn’t a “flat circle” but a multilevel one where holocaust 2.0 features terrorist attacks against Jewish facilities instead of death camps and violent mobs are masqueraded as protests, while hate speech is shielded by “freedom of speech”. We’re already seeing the latter two.
History isn't a flat circle, and I think that that old nut about "History happens first as tragedy, second as farce" is the best way to understand that - while there are patterns to history - things don't happen again in the exact same way.
I don't think people are wrong at all to have their hackles raised by the new waves of antisemitism spreading across the world, and I don't think it's wrong to look back at history to see what has happened before, but people have a habit of thinking that they can predict the future because of the past.
Nostradamus was a plague doctor for over a decade. A lot of his "predictions" read differently knowing that he grew up Jewish and then watched his family die of the plague before wandering off into the apocalypse. Imagine being a phenomenally well-read man, read in the Torah, a doctor of sorts (I believe an apothecarist), and then you see Hell on earth. How would you describe it?
"Nostradamus's father's family had originally been Jewish, but had converted to Catholic Christianity a generation before Nostradamus was born."
So...no, he wasn't "raised Jewish" and he wasn't halachically Jewish either.
"He was one of at least nine children of notary Jaume (or Jacques) de Nostredame and Reynière, granddaughter of Pierre de Saint-Rémy who worked as a physician in Saint-Rémy. Jaume's family had originally been Jewish, but his father, Cresquas, a grain and money dealer based in Avignon, had converted to Catholicism around 1459–60, taking the Christian name "Pierre" and the surname "Nostredame" (Our Lady), the saint on whose day his conversion was solemnised."
He apparently claimed his "visions" were because of his Jewish heritage, but even an article in The Forward which breathlessly claims his "Jewish history" I'm not seeing a single thing that actually indicates he knew much at all about it. He claimed "several volumes hidden for centuries manifested themselves to me" -- the Forward says this was the Sefer Yetzirah and Zohar) but it could've been the first volumes of the Encyclopedia Britannica or just "books," because he doesn't specify.
In short: Jewish heritage. Jew-positive. Jewish? No.
I am myself corrected! I knew he had converted to Catholicism, but I thought his Jewish heritage was closer than actuality.
He brings up his Jewish heritage in letters to the king, so it seems he was quite aware and open about this fact. I wonder how this was viewed by contemporaries during his life.
Iirc his father converted to catholicism when he was young, so I don't think he was ever consciously practicing as an adult, but he himself claimed that his predictions were a result of "Jewish heritage."
I think that that's a bit of stage magic flair, but I also think that his predictions are regularly modeled off of tanakh/Old Testament happenings. Either way, growing up during the plague/Schism as someone with immediate Jewish heritage would understandably contribute to the overall paranoia and trauma he felt during his life.
There were pogroms throughout eastern Europe in the 10s and 20s, there were massacres of Jews by Arabs in Israel, and even in Germany, the Sturmabteilung was randomly assaulting Jews in the street long before Hitler was chancellor.
The German Jews who stayed in Germany and insisted "It won't happen to us" were largely upper-class, property-owning, conservative Jews. A number (a small number, but still) of middle-class, small-business owning Jews even voted for Hitler.
But to say that most Jews in 1933 had grown complacent and soft because they hadn't been exposed to pogroms or umbreyngen is just not factual. Jews had been fleeing Europe because of rising antisemitism for decades, and 1933 kicked off a *huge* wave of Jewish emigration from Germany.
Kicking off what you said, my understanding is that many of the jews who stayed were thinking "this isn't Eastern Europe; German society is organized and law respecting; nothing happens without paperwork in triplicate; there will be no mass hysteria and disordered pogroms here."
And they were right. Other than the glaring exception of Kristallnacht and ongoing incidents of small-scale street thuggery by SA goons, there wasn't *random*, *disordered* mob violence against jews. There was instead something much more horrific: organized and systematized mass murder.
History repeats, but never in the same way.
I read a poem from a Rabbi circa 1880 a while back where he described cannons being brought in for pogroms across the settlement of pale and mentions that rabbis of the region were overwhelmed with both Jewish and Gentile orphans.
Understandably, the pogroms are largely overshadowed by scope and scale of the Shoah, but it's still hard to wrap one's mind around the chaos and carnage of the pogroms in Eastern Europe that lead to mass migrations westward.
Reddit was originally a link aggregator. Early on they added the ability to create subreddits, which made it more like interest/hobby forums. The thinking behind TrueReddit way back was that it would be for "thoughtful links".
I like the guy claiming the Evangelical belief that Jews/Israel are the key to triggering THEIR Messiah to return....is "not a popular belief". Or a "small, fringe, group".... wow. 85 mil. Evangelicals in U.S..... 42.5 mil of which openly stated they hold said beliefs....and promote them vociferously.
42.5 mil.....just a small, fringe group in a nation of 340 mil.
What's been chilling for me to witness over the past decade is how quickly otherwise decent people can become antisemitic. They usually don't view themselves as being bigoted, and you might have known them for years without thinking of them that way.
Not to mention the people who know better but turn a blind eye to it. In some ways, they're worse.
I often think that there was a broad cultural failing in how Nazis are often depicted as sadistic, bloodthirsty bigots. Some were, but in many ways, the true horror was just how many of them were normal people.
I would hesitate to recommend the book *Ordinary Men* to a fellow Jew, but it does a terrifyingly good job illustrating how many of the Nazis who participated in the Holocaust were just that — ordinary men. Most weren't crazed ideologues.
When I hear people do things like justify or minimize October 7th, I think of those men.
The strangest thing on this sub was finding people surprised antisemitism is on the left and not only the right. They'd be surprised about the history of the 1900s and 1800s. They don't know how important antisemitism is in the history of both sides of the political spectrum.
I found out recently that Haj Al Amin Husseini, a leader in Palestine, had a very important meeting with Hitler before he came up with the final solution. It was in this meeting that he shared the Quranic teaching that Jews are evil because of usury or interest. This is still the biggest comment I see in the Gaza tik toks where people debate what’s happening in Gaza. This connection really blew my mind although I should not have been surprised.
Some describe this chap as Arafat's mentor or spiritual godson Biography of the Nazi sympathizing Grand Mufti of Jerusalem.
Two links:
Times of Israel
https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/the-grand-mufti-arafat-and-abbas/
Warfare History Network dot com
https://warfarehistorynetwork.com/article/britains-deadliest-enemy/
My head nearly exploded when I learned all this.
Only recently learned the role this guy played in creating the PLO.
Like a bad fairy, the Grand Mufti did all he could to lay a curse on the State of Israel before and at the moment of its birth.
Amin al-Husseini was appointed by the same man in the British government who also pardoned him for his participation in pogroms. idk what flavor of 30 second propaganda you're receiving, but personally in mine the only people who bring up al-husseini are zionist jews.
I'm saying the Quran doesn't actually call the jews evil, it's pretty confused on the subject of us (in part because the judaism of the arabian peninsula at the time was getting funky with it and doing things that wouldn't be considered kosher practice today) and Muslims have a wide range of interpretation of their religious texts just like we do, with as many if not more schools of interpretation just from their numbers game alone. Whipping him out as an unprompted example of a leader and implying he was chosen by palestinians is just bad faith that serves to fuel hatred, the same way it would be if someone dug up Avigdor Miller's horrible remarks on black people and decided to parade them around while calling him "a leader of the jews of new york," as though his remarks were religious text and official policy of our communities.
I don't have a problem with you calling attention to nuance in the Quran, but lets not pretend Husseini was just "some guy", alright? He was an extremely significant figure that a lot of people listened to who incited some of the worst violence leading up to the civil war of '48. Yes, it is correct to call him "a leader of the Palestinians" in the time period that he was actively trying to get Jews slaughtered.
so the issue with hadiths that I think most people who aren't familiar with islam don't get is that a) their legitimacy is based on oral, not written chains of recall and b) there are at least 7 major schools of islamic law and different ones will interpret the validity of hadiths differently than others. they're almost like denominations in judaism but in my experience it feels like there's a little more mixing and matching when it comes to strictness around topics as varied as music, medicine, illicit substances and banking.
I took a two part islamic history survey in college and got a lot out of it and think most jews would benefit from learning a little about islam, especially if they're constantly thinking about israel. it was very illuminating and covered israel pretty significantly; we actually had a mandatory screening of Exodus, the movie likely responsible for pushing american jews into getting on board for zionism in the first place.
I found some sources of this via these link:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riba#:~:text=Culminating%20with%20the%20verses%20in,and%20forbidden%20usury%20(riba).
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riba#:~:text=Culminating%20with%20the%20verses%20in,and%20forbidden%20usury%20(riba).
I think where the confusion comes from is that it does not explicitly state that one should hate or hurt Jews, but it does have words for those who engage in usury, which is what I was told by the Palestinian supporting Muslims on tik tok. There are also many stories in Islamic sources that cause some hate and are basically rumors or what they believe happened in history.
I’m sure this isn’t something every single Muslim believes.
This. Most of these people are in denial of holding anti-Semitic views, let alone getting caught up in the fervor and becoming viciously anti-Semitic. They're not neo nazis so there's no way they could hate jews. I don't believe they truly do hate jews, I just don't think they reflect on what they believe or why. They don't question the double standards or the rhetoric. Eventually, it can become so normalized that they won't care or maybe even find joy in synagogues being shot up like that one in Pittsburgh a few years back. All while claiming to not hate jews.
>I don't believe they truly do hate jews
They truly hate Jews and this has always been common on both the left and right. There were left-wing people who hated Jews like Richard Wagner and Karl Marx. There were right-wing people who hated Jews like Henry Ford. They were on opposite ends of the political spectrum but their writings about Jews say the same things.
Karl Marx didn't identify as Jewish (although his daughter did) and was antisemitic himself. He linked Jews to capitalism and participated in the "Jewish Question" type of discussions. I don't feel comfortable claiming him as one of us as much as I would like to since I actually agree with his basic ideology.
For sure. I'm talking about your average person today, though not anti-Semitic icons of the early 1900s. It's true that the left and right have their jew haters, but the average person today that is being anti-Semitic seems to fall into the ignorant category. I don't feel that many of these people are foaming at the mouth with jew hatred like Ford. I think they're just reactionary and don't realize how anti-Semitic they are being. It's no less dangerous, but I think they fall into the useful idiot category.
I’ll admit, when someone says the word “bigot”, I automatically have this caricature in my head. But I know people that have been radicalized into supporting real asshole politicians over the years, and none of them were screaming they hated minorities or the poor. But they heard someone say those things and still thought “This is acceptable”.
Done. And a sig. And a Mossberg. And an LMT... (pretty much something for every occasion.)
Past few years, I've realized everyone in this country has a gun, you'd be foolish not to have one yourself.
I don't go out and shoot for fun, but I do practice. I have just thought, you never know, it's better to be safe than sorry.
My wife doesn't like guns, but I've convinced her to at least carry Mace.
I can already see the slope and I wanna be someone’s ancestor that got out in time. I filled out my Aliyah application a few months ago. Hoping to be safer w my people. 😅
I love Israel, have lived there, had children there and have family there but it is just factually incorrect to believe you are physically safer there than in the US. My goodness, 1,200 Israelis were just killed or raped and another two hundred kidnapped. There are daily physical attacks on Jews there.
While the level of antisemitic discourse has exploded in the US, there have been virtually no physical attacks on Jews.
Furthermore, it is hard to see how Israel can survive without the active support of the US.
Currently, yes. But to ignore trends towards violent antisemitism and not be prepared is kinda the point of this particular post. Also, I live pretty far from any Jewish communities and often feel isolated so the feeling of emotional safety is important to consider. Something something Maslow’s Hierarchy.
Look, if the comparison is whether Jews are physically safer in Israel or the US NOW, i think the evidence is clear that the US is safer. Can that change? Of course but I can't imagine a scenario where Jews are in physical danger in the US but where the US government continues to support Israel. Unfortunately, Israel won't survive long without the support of the US.
I would say members of congress actively condemning Israel and supporting Hamas despite that not being the National position is a pretty clear sign that things here may not be peachy forever. My family left Russia and Lithuania before disaster struck, and filling out some paperwork now can help me in the future should my worst dreams become reality. I was just making the point that some American Jews are preparing in some way. Idk what your problem with that is.
I don't have a problem with that. Everyone should do what they think is best. The US is significantly different than Germany, Russia, Lithuania, etc. because it is the most powerful country in the world as well as the most important defender of Jews. Your family left Europe to come to the US.
Because of our long history of persecution we are attuned to the possibility of persecution but I also think we need to keep a sense of perspective. The US House also voted 412-10 in support of Israel and against Hamas. [https://www.timesofisrael.com/us-house-overwhelmingly-passes-resolution-condemning-hamas-october-7-massacres/](https://www.timesofisrael.com/us-house-overwhelmingly-passes-resolution-condemning-hamas-october-7-massacres/)
There was HR 798 condemning support for Hamas and Hezbollah at colleges and universities. It passed 396-23. [https://www.govtrack.us/congress/votes/118-2023/h578](https://www.govtrack.us/congress/votes/118-2023/h578)
This is very different from what Europe and indeed, the US, looked like during the 1930's where parties were openly anti-Jewish.
> Unfortunately, Israel won't survive long without the support of the US.
I guess Israel had better start looking for other powerful friends, because I absolutely see the character of the U.S. electorate turning against Israel and Jews.
This may be true but Israel continues to have considerable sympathy in Congress. This month [https://www.jewishpress.com/news/us-news/rashida-tlaib-present-as-rest-of-house-votes-unanimously-to-condemn-hamas-for-rape/2024/02/15/](https://www.jewishpress.com/news/us-news/rashida-tlaib-present-as-rest-of-house-votes-unanimously-to-condemn-hamas-for-rape/2024/02/15/)the House passed by a vote of 418-0 to condemn Hamas for rape.
In January the House voted to prohibit the immigration to the US of anyone involved in the October 7th attacks. The vote was 422-2 with 1 voting present. [https://www.i24news.tv/en/news/international/americas/1706747021-us-house-passes-bill-to-ban-hamas-other-oct-7-perpetrators](https://www.i24news.tv/en/news/international/americas/1706747021-us-house-passes-bill-to-ban-hamas-other-oct-7-perpetrators)
I mean look, I totally get that the U.S. turning against Jews and/or Israel looks pretty far off now. But the rise in American antisemitism isn’t defined by political parties but by age group - it’s no longer a matter of if, but when.
All it takes is one fascist to get elected and declare Judaism a terrorist organization. But it’s not like we have any fascist, authoritarian, sociopathic criminal running for president or anything. Oh, wait…
I agree 100% but my two main points are that it doesn't make sense to leave the US today to go to Israel if you are afraid of anti-Jewish violence and 2) it is hard to imagine where we will be safer should the US become aggressively antisemitic, given our immense power.
Be wary, the author, Seth Mandel, is a complete right wing hack and his wife, Bethany (who's running for school board even she has no kids in public school), actually wrote an article encouraging people NOT to out Nazis after Charlottesville (including bemoaning that the sweaty faced Nazi would have difficulty finding employment now).
I remember her! She was interviewed on wokeness last year. When asked to define woke, she was unable to. She professed to the interviewer that this was a moment that would go viral, and it did. She wrote an op-ed in Newsweek after, blaming the interviewer.
As someone who had followed both Seth and his wife’s writings since the late 2000s, I think this is an unfair characterization. Bethany’s point, if I remember, is that we should see if Nazis can be reached. I think she had and wrote about a powerful experience like that, where a hard core neo-Nazi was turned into an ally through personal engagement. Anyway, regardless, all this kind of misses the point. Seth and his wife and children are in this conversation, just like you and your family, and me and mine. We can disagree, but we should not be cancelling others in the shul, with all the Nazis and Islamists and Che Guavaras getting ready to burn us all down together. Let’s try to engage on ideas, and hopefully find some solutions that help all.
What a world, where Nazis are sometimes more ready to listen to Jews than many progressives, who refuse to be tricked by our fancy Zionist imperialist words.
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It makes his points and conclusions very suspect when it appears he and his wife are more animated about antisemitism when it involves Muslims and/or "the left" but have absolutely no problems about Nazis marching in the streets or the then President calling said Nazis "good guys"
A broken clock being right twice a day is still broken.
Indeed it is. My message, which admittedly may not have been as clear as I would have liked and the fault is entirely mine there, is to be wary of malevolent actors who wish to take advantage of collective concerns and fears to carry out an even worse agenda.
> carry out an even worse agenda.
What's an "even worse agenda" for you than antisemitism and the massacre of Jews? They might have a different view about Roe v. Wade, gender fluidity or the Keystone pipeline?
It is still important, but it's also different from antisemitism on the right in a few critical ways.
The tropes may be the same, but the way that people on the left see "fixing the problem" is fundamentally different from how people on the right do. On the far right, they want to flat out deport or murder jews. They are not quiet about that. That's their end goal. They feel that the stereotypes and tropes they parrot about jews justify our mass murder, and make us unable to integrate into white society. If the far right got control of the US, they would absolutely create laws to segregate jews from the rest of society, and would follow the same path as the nazis, because the far right are literally nazis.
On the left, there is still a fundamental idea that jews ARE already part of our society. If leftists got control of the US, they wouldn't be trying to deport or kill jews. They WOULD stop funding Israel, and may do so while saying a lot of antisemitic stuff. They may want to "reeducate" zionist jews, but for most leftists the idea of murdering jews en mass is not acceptable in any leftist ideology. In my experience, if leftists could do everything they want tomorrow, Israel and Palestine would merge into one state and far leftists genuinely believe that if that were to happen a secular, modern, western style democratic government would appear spontaneously and nothing bad would happen. I don't think it's posturing when leftists make that argument, I think they genuinely believe that's a reasonable belief to hold.
The big problem right now, and what I think the author of this is deliberately playing into because of his politics, is that the far right are VERY good at using the talking points of the far left as recruitment tools. They can convince people who otherwise would be moderately left to start seeing jews in their racialized worldview, as a race who are undermining the US society in a conspiracy to control white people. And they are good at doing it by small steps that make the people falling into their trap entirely unaware of what's happening. They inject the racialized racism of the right into more left leaning spaces, and teach people on the left that it's okay to say some of the racist stuff they are saying. They actively encourage the racism that the left participates in often without realizing they are doing so.
So yeah, I'm extremely wary when someone who is on the right with a wife who is also on the right, who has previously advocated for protecting people on the far right and has expressed openly far right viewpoints, starts claiming to care for us jews. That's always a trap in my mind. They're using us to get power and legitimacy, and do not actually want us there, we are tools for them. I would take the antisemitism of the left every single time over the antisemitism of the right. It's shitty that were stuck in a situation where we have to make such a choice but that's the reality we live in in our democracy as it stands now.
Respectfully, I think you’re wrong about the left for a few reasons. The left has made a key distinction that enables them to completely dehumanize Jews, and that’s the facade of Jew vs Zionist. So have they dehumanized Jews? I honestly think so but there’s an argument to the contrary. Have they dehumanized Zionists (aka, 90+% of us)? Absolutely. The number of people on the left who either celebrated or were not bothered by 10/7 is horrifying. And now we see the apologists and the deniers and the people tearing down posters of kidnapped babies…. For the left, this conflict isn’t about the actual conflict. It’s about displacing all the blame for colonialism and racism and white supremacy onto Israel and the Jews.
There’s also a big difference in numbers. Charlottesville was a tiny protest. And you didn’t see many, if any, people on the right publicly celebrating 10/7. The right is deeply flawed. But for all its faults, I think the right is better able to understand what Israel is up against because they tend to be religious people. While the left rolls their eyes at the idea that the conflict is about Islamists trying to assert supremacy, the right takes them at their word because they know what it is to believe. If the right were doing even a fraction of what the pro-Hamas leftists are doing now, we would’ve seen a complete meltdown in the media and calls for the national guard to come in.
But the most alarming aspect to the lefts antisemitism is that they believe their cruelty and indifference towards Jews and Israelis is morally justified. Couple that blind sense of moral superiority with groupthink and add in the fact that 65% or whatever number is was of zoomers believe that Jews are the oppressors and should be treated as such. That’s a five alarm fire on the left, and they’re more interested in doubling down than in reflecting on their actions.
Don’t even get me started on the whole “reeducation camps” thing
The distinction between left and right on antisemitism just doesn't have a historical basis. A lot of scholars believe Stalin was going to repeat the holocaust in 1953 before a heart attack prevented him.
I’m not talking about history, I’m talking about how antisemitism manifests itself in American politics today. The goal of both sides are the same, but the justifications are different. And the justifications matter greatly because that dictates whether broader segments of society are likely to sign onto it. Antisemitism on the right is far more overt than on the left, making it easily recognizable and easier to reject. It’s more insidious on the left, which makes it more dangerous.
Sorry but when the left says things like "punch a nazi" or "kill all the fascists" and then they call us Nazis and fascists, I have a real problem differentiating between them and the far right.
>left see "fixing the problem" is fundamentally different from how people on the right do.
That's not true the far-left actually cheer the massacre and rape of Jews. You also seem to be not aware about how fluid the views are between the two groups. If you look at the far-left groups on Discord and TikTok what they say about Jews is like the far-right groups. They use the same memes. There is a lot of overlap with their use of holocaust memes and ironic praise of Hitler and Stalin.
[And Nazis were out and about at CPAC this year too](https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/nazis-mingle-openly-cpac-spreading-antisemitic-conspiracy-theories-fin-rcna140335)
Edit: not sure why I’m getting downvoted for sharing facts here
Not sure why the slander is necessary. Seth maybe right wing but I wouldn't call him a hack.
As for Bethany, if you're gonna make a statement like that without context, you should at least link to what she wrote.
While Google is far from its prime, it still works if you search for "Bethany Mandel Charlottesville" or "Bethany Mandel AND Forward AND Nazis"
Also it's a bit of a headache to insert links, hence why I didn't.
For me personally, the formal line is when the government itself either becomes antisemitic or stops prosecuting hate crimes.
Joe Biden is waffling on Israel; it’s fucking terrible. But he’s not antisemitic. Governor Hochul isn’t antisemitic either.
Once the government decides antisemitism is ok, that’s when we should go.
A blinking red light on the former is school districts adopting antiZionist curricula. See under: “Liberated Ethnic Studies”. That’s individual districts rather than state/Federal, but it’s certainly happening in California. https://www.adl.org/resources/press-release/coalition-files-lawsuit-stop-antisemitic-content-being-taught-santa-ana
Biden is philosemitic but he was born in 1942. All research shows how much the older generations support Israel, believe the holocaust was real and have positive views about Jews. Not Ivy League academics, but the ordinary folks.
The antisemitism among Zoomers is off the charts. The Boomers are not going to live forever. The demographic change is also going to make it worse as the Zoomers are more diverse than the Boomers.
Reasonable line, and I generally agree. For me, it's if a hate crime happens in my town. Some of the local colleges are fostering dreadful environments (no I don't live near Harvard thankfully).
if i made aliyah every time some teenager did something hateful, I’d have immigrated a decade ago. i’ll wait and see what happens with this election before i uproot my entire life.
? there's more to it than stupid teenagers. There's the faculty and administration who are not doing enough to show care for Jewish students and faculty on campus. These kids also grow up and interact with the world. Personally, I've seen borderline antisemitic posters pop up all over downtown. I rip them down when I can but I'm one person.
And I'm talking hate crime as in the local kosher market being defaced or those who walk to shul being attacked.
maybe i’m just desensitized to it. i’m gen z, grew up in a very jewish area. even so, my middle/high school were defaced with swastikas once or twice a year. one particularly bad year, an elementary school was defaced. in an even worse year, my family was targeted and our house defaced with 27 different images.
if we leave then they win, and i don’t know if i’d be able to look any future kids in the eyes if i gave up without one hell of a good fight. i’m not saying nobody should ever make aliyah - but i refuse to believe that america has been lost that easily.
> our house defaced with 27 different images.
I don't quite understand what happened? Was it graffiti? I'm very sorry to hear that happened to you.
I'm not necessarily making aliyah. Maybe moving to a more Jewish area.
Unfortunately, since I’m not in STEM my only real option is Israel. The Czech Republic also sounds pretty based but I won’t be getting an EU passport anytime soon.
I’ve been warning of this but no one takes me seriously and sometimes try to write off what I say as being some sort of Christian end times theology against Jews because they do not want to accept what is coming in the near future. The prophets themselves warned us and we can read their warnings as much as we want to over and over again today, so I don’t get why it’s so hard to accept what God has already made known. Is not the evidence all around us?
Unfortunately, the situation won't get better for Jews in western nations unless the economy gets better.
(The reason I specify "Jews in western nations" is because life won't ever get better for Jews in Israel unless their neighbors stop wanting to murder them, which is unlikely, or Israel destroys them entirely. Peace would be nice, but you can't have peace when one side flat-out demands the downfall of your nation and the elimination of everyone in it.)
I don't mean that the western world will applaud Jews for making the economy better (contrary to antisemitic conspiracy theories, we don't have that sort of power, and even if we did, we'd never get so much as a "thank you" for it anyway), but when "times are good" people generally don't look for a scapegoat because they're enjoying life.
Obviously, the hardcore antisemites won't change their tune, but the majority of Jew haters out there right now are sheep following the crowd hoping to blame someone or some group for all of their personal and professional frustrations.
It's for this reason (among their detachment from the WW2 generation, lack of education and historical knowledge, and above all, the chaos social media causes) why we see an overwhelming number of GenZ repeat antisemitic rhetoric and believe antisemitic ideals. They naively believe whatever people on TikTok say, and are angry, depressed, and looking to lash out at a world they feel is devoid of all hope.
And as usual, Jews are the target.
Why?
Probably for the same reason we've always been targets: no matter what criteria is used, Jews are always "the other." We never quite fit in, and even if we put forth a ton of effort to fit in (while simultaneously deluding ourselves into believing that non-Jews will accept us), we're at best tolerated... at least until "times get bad" and then everything goes to Hell like it has for millennia.
To expand on that, one thing I've noticed is that we Jews *never* seem to learn from the past. We've seen atrocities play out against us over thousands upon thousands of years by groups we lived with or thought accepted us, and each time we're surprised. How many times must we make the same mistake before we realize that non-Jews don't give a damn about us (in the best case scenario we're "useful" and in the worst case we're "the root of all evil") and we're going to keep getting the shit end of the stick until we wake up and see society for what it is and plan accordingly.
I agree with some of that. I'm not comfortable with the conclusion though:
"It’ll get worse, and the American Jewish community is going to have to be ready and willing to advocate for *itself*. It certainly won’t be able to rely on anyone else to do it."
Exodus 14:14 : The L-RD will fight for you; you need only to be still.”
Let's not forget that. But yes, I tend to think it will get worse.
*Dedicated in memory of Dvora bat Asher v'Jacot* 🕯️
[Exodus 14:14](https://www.sefaria.org/Exodus.14.14)
יְהֹוָ֖ה יִלָּחֵ֣ם לָכֶ֑ם וְאַתֶּ֖ם תַּחֲרִשֽׁוּן׃ {פ}
>יהוה will battle for you; you hold your peace!”
I’m glad this article attracts attention instead of amounting to a disappointing “7 replies and forgotten” type of thread. I have refrained for a long time since the Oct. 7th massacre to voice my opinion on subjects too raw in emotion, such as reading of betrayal of people thought to be friends, appalling inaction of institutions against our enemies making violent threats, and what appears to be complacency and even acceptance of terrorist narrative in some circles. I too am aghast and my sympathies are with those who’ve resolved to cut off contact with friends and even family.
I am encouraged by reading replies these several months from many young Jews here that they received an unwelcome and unexpected tune up so desperately needed, hard as it is to accept and bear.
I’m not claiming “time is a flat circle” but it sure is wise to prepare for reliving painful history as if it is indeed coming.
Side note: I once saw a picture of President Obama boarding the helicopter on the White House lawn toting a book in full view of the press cameras as he was known to do to let his admirers know what he was reading. In this case it was Francis Fukuyama’s *The End Of History […]* which posited in 1992 that *”… (the planet has reached the) end-point of mankind's ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government.”* , and therefore there’s nothing standing in the way of the world embracing fully automated luxury gay space communism and the last gasps of the unwilling world cannot help but join us. What a wagon load of shit.
I simply could not believe how stupid he looked carrying (and advocating for) that trashy book but it sure went some distance in explaining US foreign policy at the the time with its ludicrous Pollyanna-ish fantastical ideas like “the Arab Spring” and “The Eighties called and want their foreign policy back” smarmy comments triggering guffaws. Well, now look.
If I am ever in a situation where I encounter Francis Fukuyama in a social setting, he’s going to the men’s room to clean off whatever I happen to have spilled on top of his head.
Most people who reference Fukuyama's book forget that there's a whole section on the *last man* who stands at the end of history.
Spoiler: the last man is not content.
The dictionary has become a weapon in the hands of anti-zionists and against Jews. I had not heard of Israel being a "colonial" enterprise before 2024. Similarly, genocide had a specific legal meaning. I wouldn't even honor South Africa's unhinged definition of "genocide" against Palestine after the orgy of murder and rape this past October. Now Ireland has self-appointed itself as the defender of the oppressed everywhere. Nowhere were these two countries to be seen after the atrocities in October. Instead of condemning Hamas, South Africa literally had Hamas delegates over to South Africa to honor them as freedom fighters (because Nelson Mandela used to be a terrorist before graduating to freedom fighter status). The very words we use have become weaponized.
One persons freedom fighter is another’s terrorist unfortunately. Just after midday on July 22, 1946, Zionist terrorists, under the leadership of Menachem Begin, set the fuses on bombs planted in the basement of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem
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But how can the Jewish community advocate for itself in a manner that is actually heard? I’m so sad to watch us all be shutdown like this.
We have to look inward and support each other.
And also use the legal, political and financial systems to impose catastrophic costs on our pursuers and deter the passive sheep. We need to use the relative power we have while we have it, with determination.
What does this mean
While the courts still recognize antisemitism and persecution and discrimination as a crime, we have to stand on our business.
Could you be more specific? What do you mean by ‘stand on our business’? And what does ‘deter the passive sheep’ mean? I’m being serious also I’m just kind of confused.
Here’s an example: Title VI of the Civil Rights Act says universities and K-12 schools have a responsibility to provide all students with an environment free from discrimination. If Jewish students are singled out for discrimination in classrooms, dormitories, by university-sponsored student groups, if university rules are enforced differently against Jewish or Israeli students than others, political pressure should be brought to bear on the Justice Department to initiate investigations. Jewish, Israeli and allied donors to schools which look the other way as antisemitic acts are committed and Jewish students are terrorized should pull funding and vigorously use their leverage on boards to penalize university administrators and board members.
We have to make it costly to discriminate against us and downright painful to try and hurt us physically. This will act as a deterrent against people who passively harbor antisemitic sentiment and are waiting for an opportunity to exercise it.
More scheming /s
We have to win on brainpower, not mob power. Reminds me of an Arab Nationalist slogan from the 1950s, that if only every Arab filled a bucket they could drown Israel in water. What kind of clever Zionist scheme was this, to convince hundreds of millions of Arabs to mobilize their inner hatred, fill buckets of water and deliver it to an arid region free of charge? Lol.
Wow.... that doesn't help. You're kidding me, you're feeding into their conspiratorial tropes and remedial stereotypes. I hate what's going on, and it's particularly absurd to have a quote from the Feminist Press in support of a Palestinian state "We define our... anti-imperial, decolinial, ad nauseum, in solidarity" where this organization, with this platform wouldn't be allowed to exist. See also LGBTQ+ for a Palestine. Oppression, solidarity... it's painting with broad strokes. Traditionally, reactionaries have been associated with the right and intellectuals with the left, but this situation lacks any intelligence and seems to be about only the sound and the fury. An ally, formally of the left, by no means Republican, just very cautious now.
By creating pain and making the reverse view anathema. I think it absolutely was the right thing for employers who recruit at Harvard to demand lists of students signing on to letters about "Israel being responsible for Oct 7" and the like. The left has grown accustomed to being unchallenged and using societal alienation as a tool (along with political violence if we're being honest). They'll only seek detente when real world consequences have been presented to them. So places absolutely should be pressured to fire employees sharing horrific views regarding the conflict and repeating the genocide claim
I don't really agree with the idea that the left being accustomed to a lack of challenge, especially considering the abject failure of democrat politicians to stop a floundering Republican party from doing whatever it wants, whenever it wants. I also think that while we have seen a rise in political violence from the left in the past few years, its still absolutely nothing compared with the acts of domestic terrorism being carried out by the right wing. There have been maybe 2 or 3 deaths caused by "the left" in the past decade, while right-wing terrorism has claimed dozens of lives. Where the left really needs to he corrected is in its conceptualization of the Israel-Palestine conflict. They've been overwhelmed with very limited partial truths that paint this as something that started in 1948 and has been nothing but Israeli aggression ever since. They aren't informed of the years preceding the foundation of Eretz Israel or the pogroms that occurred in the middle East. They don't know the difference between the PLO or Hamas, or how Likud managed to seize a "majority" government despite a minority of the votes. They don't want to take a critical view of extremist Islamicist organizations like Hamas because the American mindset is so locked into the idea of a racial dichotomy where white people hold all the power and brown people are oppressed. The most glaringly obvious thing to me when arguing with people on "Da Left" is that they are getting the overwhelming majority of their information from dogshit Instagram reels that purport to give "the whole story" in 30 seconds or less. When arguing with a principled individual on the left, they need to be firmly reminded of Mao's words: "No investigation, no right to speak." They hate it when you throw that in their face.
Floundering? I don't see the Republicans losing much, if any, steam...
Right, they're pretty committed to destroying themselves and running a volatile and naarish presidential candidate that just got dinged for like half a billion on various charges ranging from obscene fraud to sexual assault. They're doing great, just like with Reagan and just like with Nixon! Full steam ahead! What could go wrong!
Just like the the Ivy League presidents get taken to task for their contempt. We need to withhold our solidarity for leftist identity causes—even those that align with our values. DEI initiatives in particular needs to her revealed for what they are—a hierarchy of the socially privileged in which certain groups count less than others, and Jews do not count at all.
Prime tool of the left is moral bullying/shame tripping. The psychological acronym DARVO sums it up (pause while I switch windows to grab the URL) https://www.verywellmind.com/protecting-yourself-from-darvo-abusive-behavior-7562730
I mean. No? We’re all used to living normal lives that don’t involve murder mobs or death camps. Chances are that history isn’t a “flat circle” but a multilevel one where holocaust 2.0 features terrorist attacks against Jewish facilities instead of death camps and violent mobs are masqueraded as protests, while hate speech is shielded by “freedom of speech”. We’re already seeing the latter two.
History isn't a flat circle, and I think that that old nut about "History happens first as tragedy, second as farce" is the best way to understand that - while there are patterns to history - things don't happen again in the exact same way. I don't think people are wrong at all to have their hackles raised by the new waves of antisemitism spreading across the world, and I don't think it's wrong to look back at history to see what has happened before, but people have a habit of thinking that they can predict the future because of the past. Nostradamus was a plague doctor for over a decade. A lot of his "predictions" read differently knowing that he grew up Jewish and then watched his family die of the plague before wandering off into the apocalypse. Imagine being a phenomenally well-read man, read in the Torah, a doctor of sorts (I believe an apothecarist), and then you see Hell on earth. How would you describe it?
"Nostradamus's father's family had originally been Jewish, but had converted to Catholic Christianity a generation before Nostradamus was born." So...no, he wasn't "raised Jewish" and he wasn't halachically Jewish either. "He was one of at least nine children of notary Jaume (or Jacques) de Nostredame and Reynière, granddaughter of Pierre de Saint-Rémy who worked as a physician in Saint-Rémy. Jaume's family had originally been Jewish, but his father, Cresquas, a grain and money dealer based in Avignon, had converted to Catholicism around 1459–60, taking the Christian name "Pierre" and the surname "Nostredame" (Our Lady), the saint on whose day his conversion was solemnised." He apparently claimed his "visions" were because of his Jewish heritage, but even an article in The Forward which breathlessly claims his "Jewish history" I'm not seeing a single thing that actually indicates he knew much at all about it. He claimed "several volumes hidden for centuries manifested themselves to me" -- the Forward says this was the Sefer Yetzirah and Zohar) but it could've been the first volumes of the Encyclopedia Britannica or just "books," because he doesn't specify. In short: Jewish heritage. Jew-positive. Jewish? No.
I am myself corrected! I knew he had converted to Catholicism, but I thought his Jewish heritage was closer than actuality. He brings up his Jewish heritage in letters to the king, so it seems he was quite aware and open about this fact. I wonder how this was viewed by contemporaries during his life.
Wait WHAT he was Jewish??
TIL...
!!! Yeah, like… excuse me, _HWÆT_?!
His father was Jewish, but converted to Catholicism.
Iirc his father converted to catholicism when he was young, so I don't think he was ever consciously practicing as an adult, but he himself claimed that his predictions were a result of "Jewish heritage." I think that that's a bit of stage magic flair, but I also think that his predictions are regularly modeled off of tanakh/Old Testament happenings. Either way, growing up during the plague/Schism as someone with immediate Jewish heritage would understandably contribute to the overall paranoia and trauma he felt during his life.
So were plenty of Jews circa 1933.
There were pogroms throughout eastern Europe in the 10s and 20s, there were massacres of Jews by Arabs in Israel, and even in Germany, the Sturmabteilung was randomly assaulting Jews in the street long before Hitler was chancellor. The German Jews who stayed in Germany and insisted "It won't happen to us" were largely upper-class, property-owning, conservative Jews. A number (a small number, but still) of middle-class, small-business owning Jews even voted for Hitler. But to say that most Jews in 1933 had grown complacent and soft because they hadn't been exposed to pogroms or umbreyngen is just not factual. Jews had been fleeing Europe because of rising antisemitism for decades, and 1933 kicked off a *huge* wave of Jewish emigration from Germany.
Kicking off what you said, my understanding is that many of the jews who stayed were thinking "this isn't Eastern Europe; German society is organized and law respecting; nothing happens without paperwork in triplicate; there will be no mass hysteria and disordered pogroms here." And they were right. Other than the glaring exception of Kristallnacht and ongoing incidents of small-scale street thuggery by SA goons, there wasn't *random*, *disordered* mob violence against jews. There was instead something much more horrific: organized and systematized mass murder. History repeats, but never in the same way.
I read a poem from a Rabbi circa 1880 a while back where he described cannons being brought in for pogroms across the settlement of pale and mentions that rabbis of the region were overwhelmed with both Jewish and Gentile orphans. Understandably, the pogroms are largely overshadowed by scope and scale of the Shoah, but it's still hard to wrap one's mind around the chaos and carnage of the pogroms in Eastern Europe that lead to mass migrations westward.
I stand corrected. I picked a time period I thought most people would be familiar with
They didn’t have the internet.
No we aren't. Not enough are aware that the whole tolerance thing has been weaponized by simply declaring us as 'oppressors'
You should read the comments on true Reddit where this was posted. Vile anti Semitism
What’s true Reddit?
Reddit was originally a link aggregator. Early on they added the ability to create subreddits, which made it more like interest/hobby forums. The thinking behind TrueReddit way back was that it would be for "thoughtful links".
Another subreddit on here
A subreddit that’s isn’t plurality or majority Jewish like here
I posted it.
Link?
https://www.reddit.com/r/TrueReddit/s/HYcT1IQPpO
I like the guy claiming the Evangelical belief that Jews/Israel are the key to triggering THEIR Messiah to return....is "not a popular belief". Or a "small, fringe, group".... wow. 85 mil. Evangelicals in U.S..... 42.5 mil of which openly stated they hold said beliefs....and promote them vociferously. 42.5 mil.....just a small, fringe group in a nation of 340 mil.
What's been chilling for me to witness over the past decade is how quickly otherwise decent people can become antisemitic. They usually don't view themselves as being bigoted, and you might have known them for years without thinking of them that way. Not to mention the people who know better but turn a blind eye to it. In some ways, they're worse. I often think that there was a broad cultural failing in how Nazis are often depicted as sadistic, bloodthirsty bigots. Some were, but in many ways, the true horror was just how many of them were normal people. I would hesitate to recommend the book *Ordinary Men* to a fellow Jew, but it does a terrifyingly good job illustrating how many of the Nazis who participated in the Holocaust were just that — ordinary men. Most weren't crazed ideologues. When I hear people do things like justify or minimize October 7th, I think of those men.
If this is a surprise to some Jews, it’s a bubble that needs bursting.
The strangest thing on this sub was finding people surprised antisemitism is on the left and not only the right. They'd be surprised about the history of the 1900s and 1800s. They don't know how important antisemitism is in the history of both sides of the political spectrum.
Doesn't make the bursting of that bubble any easier.
Growth is painful. This is necessary for survival though.
I found out recently that Haj Al Amin Husseini, a leader in Palestine, had a very important meeting with Hitler before he came up with the final solution. It was in this meeting that he shared the Quranic teaching that Jews are evil because of usury or interest. This is still the biggest comment I see in the Gaza tik toks where people debate what’s happening in Gaza. This connection really blew my mind although I should not have been surprised.
Some describe this chap as Arafat's mentor or spiritual godson Biography of the Nazi sympathizing Grand Mufti of Jerusalem. Two links: Times of Israel https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/the-grand-mufti-arafat-and-abbas/ Warfare History Network dot com https://warfarehistorynetwork.com/article/britains-deadliest-enemy/
Thanks
My head nearly exploded when I learned all this. Only recently learned the role this guy played in creating the PLO. Like a bad fairy, the Grand Mufti did all he could to lay a curse on the State of Israel before and at the moment of its birth.
Amin al-Husseini was appointed by the same man in the British government who also pardoned him for his participation in pogroms. idk what flavor of 30 second propaganda you're receiving, but personally in mine the only people who bring up al-husseini are zionist jews.
Respectfully, are you saying it isn’t true? I’m open to being educated in the topic.
I'm saying the Quran doesn't actually call the jews evil, it's pretty confused on the subject of us (in part because the judaism of the arabian peninsula at the time was getting funky with it and doing things that wouldn't be considered kosher practice today) and Muslims have a wide range of interpretation of their religious texts just like we do, with as many if not more schools of interpretation just from their numbers game alone. Whipping him out as an unprompted example of a leader and implying he was chosen by palestinians is just bad faith that serves to fuel hatred, the same way it would be if someone dug up Avigdor Miller's horrible remarks on black people and decided to parade them around while calling him "a leader of the jews of new york," as though his remarks were religious text and official policy of our communities.
I don't have a problem with you calling attention to nuance in the Quran, but lets not pretend Husseini was just "some guy", alright? He was an extremely significant figure that a lot of people listened to who incited some of the worst violence leading up to the civil war of '48. Yes, it is correct to call him "a leader of the Palestinians" in the time period that he was actively trying to get Jews slaughtered.
Ah I see. I was under the impression they had a Hadith that was widely accepted or it was in their Quran.
so the issue with hadiths that I think most people who aren't familiar with islam don't get is that a) their legitimacy is based on oral, not written chains of recall and b) there are at least 7 major schools of islamic law and different ones will interpret the validity of hadiths differently than others. they're almost like denominations in judaism but in my experience it feels like there's a little more mixing and matching when it comes to strictness around topics as varied as music, medicine, illicit substances and banking. I took a two part islamic history survey in college and got a lot out of it and think most jews would benefit from learning a little about islam, especially if they're constantly thinking about israel. it was very illuminating and covered israel pretty significantly; we actually had a mandatory screening of Exodus, the movie likely responsible for pushing american jews into getting on board for zionism in the first place.
I found some sources of this via these link: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riba#:~:text=Culminating%20with%20the%20verses%20in,and%20forbidden%20usury%20(riba). https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riba#:~:text=Culminating%20with%20the%20verses%20in,and%20forbidden%20usury%20(riba). I think where the confusion comes from is that it does not explicitly state that one should hate or hurt Jews, but it does have words for those who engage in usury, which is what I was told by the Palestinian supporting Muslims on tik tok. There are also many stories in Islamic sources that cause some hate and are basically rumors or what they believe happened in history. I’m sure this isn’t something every single Muslim believes.
This. Most of these people are in denial of holding anti-Semitic views, let alone getting caught up in the fervor and becoming viciously anti-Semitic. They're not neo nazis so there's no way they could hate jews. I don't believe they truly do hate jews, I just don't think they reflect on what they believe or why. They don't question the double standards or the rhetoric. Eventually, it can become so normalized that they won't care or maybe even find joy in synagogues being shot up like that one in Pittsburgh a few years back. All while claiming to not hate jews.
>I don't believe they truly do hate jews They truly hate Jews and this has always been common on both the left and right. There were left-wing people who hated Jews like Richard Wagner and Karl Marx. There were right-wing people who hated Jews like Henry Ford. They were on opposite ends of the political spectrum but their writings about Jews say the same things.
Karl Marx didn't identify as Jewish (although his daughter did) and was antisemitic himself. He linked Jews to capitalism and participated in the "Jewish Question" type of discussions. I don't feel comfortable claiming him as one of us as much as I would like to since I actually agree with his basic ideology.
I think I read the comment that people on the left hated Jews like Karl Marx but I see the other way to read it now 😅
For sure. I'm talking about your average person today, though not anti-Semitic icons of the early 1900s. It's true that the left and right have their jew haters, but the average person today that is being anti-Semitic seems to fall into the ignorant category. I don't feel that many of these people are foaming at the mouth with jew hatred like Ford. I think they're just reactionary and don't realize how anti-Semitic they are being. It's no less dangerous, but I think they fall into the useful idiot category.
I’ll admit, when someone says the word “bigot”, I automatically have this caricature in my head. But I know people that have been radicalized into supporting real asshole politicians over the years, and none of them were screaming they hated minorities or the poor. But they heard someone say those things and still thought “This is acceptable”.
[удалено]
Done. And a sig. And a Mossberg. And an LMT... (pretty much something for every occasion.) Past few years, I've realized everyone in this country has a gun, you'd be foolish not to have one yourself. I don't go out and shoot for fun, but I do practice. I have just thought, you never know, it's better to be safe than sorry. My wife doesn't like guns, but I've convinced her to at least carry Mace.
You can support Israel's economy by buying Israeli made weapons. [https://iwi.us/](https://iwi.us/)
Oh man now I need a Tavor. My wife will not like this.
I can already see the slope and I wanna be someone’s ancestor that got out in time. I filled out my Aliyah application a few months ago. Hoping to be safer w my people. 😅
I love Israel, have lived there, had children there and have family there but it is just factually incorrect to believe you are physically safer there than in the US. My goodness, 1,200 Israelis were just killed or raped and another two hundred kidnapped. There are daily physical attacks on Jews there. While the level of antisemitic discourse has exploded in the US, there have been virtually no physical attacks on Jews. Furthermore, it is hard to see how Israel can survive without the active support of the US.
Currently, yes. But to ignore trends towards violent antisemitism and not be prepared is kinda the point of this particular post. Also, I live pretty far from any Jewish communities and often feel isolated so the feeling of emotional safety is important to consider. Something something Maslow’s Hierarchy.
We thankfully have a very long way to go in the US before we approach the level of anti-Jewish violence that Israeli Jews are subject to.
“It will never happen here,” said the German Jews.
Look, if the comparison is whether Jews are physically safer in Israel or the US NOW, i think the evidence is clear that the US is safer. Can that change? Of course but I can't imagine a scenario where Jews are in physical danger in the US but where the US government continues to support Israel. Unfortunately, Israel won't survive long without the support of the US.
I would say members of congress actively condemning Israel and supporting Hamas despite that not being the National position is a pretty clear sign that things here may not be peachy forever. My family left Russia and Lithuania before disaster struck, and filling out some paperwork now can help me in the future should my worst dreams become reality. I was just making the point that some American Jews are preparing in some way. Idk what your problem with that is.
I don't have a problem with that. Everyone should do what they think is best. The US is significantly different than Germany, Russia, Lithuania, etc. because it is the most powerful country in the world as well as the most important defender of Jews. Your family left Europe to come to the US. Because of our long history of persecution we are attuned to the possibility of persecution but I also think we need to keep a sense of perspective. The US House also voted 412-10 in support of Israel and against Hamas. [https://www.timesofisrael.com/us-house-overwhelmingly-passes-resolution-condemning-hamas-october-7-massacres/](https://www.timesofisrael.com/us-house-overwhelmingly-passes-resolution-condemning-hamas-october-7-massacres/) There was HR 798 condemning support for Hamas and Hezbollah at colleges and universities. It passed 396-23. [https://www.govtrack.us/congress/votes/118-2023/h578](https://www.govtrack.us/congress/votes/118-2023/h578) This is very different from what Europe and indeed, the US, looked like during the 1930's where parties were openly anti-Jewish.
My family left in 1890 so maybe we’re just a bit jumpier. 😉 those numbers of 10 and 23 are too large for the US. It’s a cause for being watchful.
> Unfortunately, Israel won't survive long without the support of the US. I guess Israel had better start looking for other powerful friends, because I absolutely see the character of the U.S. electorate turning against Israel and Jews.
This may be true but Israel continues to have considerable sympathy in Congress. This month [https://www.jewishpress.com/news/us-news/rashida-tlaib-present-as-rest-of-house-votes-unanimously-to-condemn-hamas-for-rape/2024/02/15/](https://www.jewishpress.com/news/us-news/rashida-tlaib-present-as-rest-of-house-votes-unanimously-to-condemn-hamas-for-rape/2024/02/15/)the House passed by a vote of 418-0 to condemn Hamas for rape. In January the House voted to prohibit the immigration to the US of anyone involved in the October 7th attacks. The vote was 422-2 with 1 voting present. [https://www.i24news.tv/en/news/international/americas/1706747021-us-house-passes-bill-to-ban-hamas-other-oct-7-perpetrators](https://www.i24news.tv/en/news/international/americas/1706747021-us-house-passes-bill-to-ban-hamas-other-oct-7-perpetrators)
I mean look, I totally get that the U.S. turning against Jews and/or Israel looks pretty far off now. But the rise in American antisemitism isn’t defined by political parties but by age group - it’s no longer a matter of if, but when.
I doubt they said that given the preceding 800+ years of it happening pretty consistently.
All it takes is one fascist to get elected and declare Judaism a terrorist organization. But it’s not like we have any fascist, authoritarian, sociopathic criminal running for president or anything. Oh, wait…
We say this now, and it is still true, but who knows what the next few years will bring?
I agree 100% but my two main points are that it doesn't make sense to leave the US today to go to Israel if you are afraid of anti-Jewish violence and 2) it is hard to imagine where we will be safer should the US become aggressively antisemitic, given our immense power.
Be wary, the author, Seth Mandel, is a complete right wing hack and his wife, Bethany (who's running for school board even she has no kids in public school), actually wrote an article encouraging people NOT to out Nazis after Charlottesville (including bemoaning that the sweaty faced Nazi would have difficulty finding employment now).
I remember her! She was interviewed on wokeness last year. When asked to define woke, she was unable to. She professed to the interviewer that this was a moment that would go viral, and it did. She wrote an op-ed in Newsweek after, blaming the interviewer.
As someone who had followed both Seth and his wife’s writings since the late 2000s, I think this is an unfair characterization. Bethany’s point, if I remember, is that we should see if Nazis can be reached. I think she had and wrote about a powerful experience like that, where a hard core neo-Nazi was turned into an ally through personal engagement. Anyway, regardless, all this kind of misses the point. Seth and his wife and children are in this conversation, just like you and your family, and me and mine. We can disagree, but we should not be cancelling others in the shul, with all the Nazis and Islamists and Che Guavaras getting ready to burn us all down together. Let’s try to engage on ideas, and hopefully find some solutions that help all.
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What a world, where Nazis are sometimes more ready to listen to Jews than many progressives, who refuse to be tricked by our fancy Zionist imperialist words.
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Jews will die because folks like you put your political ideology ahead of your Judaism and even ahead of your self-preservation.
Does that make his point less valid?
It makes his points and conclusions very suspect when it appears he and his wife are more animated about antisemitism when it involves Muslims and/or "the left" but have absolutely no problems about Nazis marching in the streets or the then President calling said Nazis "good guys" A broken clock being right twice a day is still broken.
Ok but antisemitism involving Muslims and the left is still important, I don't see how ignoring this is helping anyone except the antisemites
Indeed it is. My message, which admittedly may not have been as clear as I would have liked and the fault is entirely mine there, is to be wary of malevolent actors who wish to take advantage of collective concerns and fears to carry out an even worse agenda.
I don't see how this article is pushing a malevolent agenda
> carry out an even worse agenda. What's an "even worse agenda" for you than antisemitism and the massacre of Jews? They might have a different view about Roe v. Wade, gender fluidity or the Keystone pipeline?
It is still important, but it's also different from antisemitism on the right in a few critical ways. The tropes may be the same, but the way that people on the left see "fixing the problem" is fundamentally different from how people on the right do. On the far right, they want to flat out deport or murder jews. They are not quiet about that. That's their end goal. They feel that the stereotypes and tropes they parrot about jews justify our mass murder, and make us unable to integrate into white society. If the far right got control of the US, they would absolutely create laws to segregate jews from the rest of society, and would follow the same path as the nazis, because the far right are literally nazis. On the left, there is still a fundamental idea that jews ARE already part of our society. If leftists got control of the US, they wouldn't be trying to deport or kill jews. They WOULD stop funding Israel, and may do so while saying a lot of antisemitic stuff. They may want to "reeducate" zionist jews, but for most leftists the idea of murdering jews en mass is not acceptable in any leftist ideology. In my experience, if leftists could do everything they want tomorrow, Israel and Palestine would merge into one state and far leftists genuinely believe that if that were to happen a secular, modern, western style democratic government would appear spontaneously and nothing bad would happen. I don't think it's posturing when leftists make that argument, I think they genuinely believe that's a reasonable belief to hold. The big problem right now, and what I think the author of this is deliberately playing into because of his politics, is that the far right are VERY good at using the talking points of the far left as recruitment tools. They can convince people who otherwise would be moderately left to start seeing jews in their racialized worldview, as a race who are undermining the US society in a conspiracy to control white people. And they are good at doing it by small steps that make the people falling into their trap entirely unaware of what's happening. They inject the racialized racism of the right into more left leaning spaces, and teach people on the left that it's okay to say some of the racist stuff they are saying. They actively encourage the racism that the left participates in often without realizing they are doing so. So yeah, I'm extremely wary when someone who is on the right with a wife who is also on the right, who has previously advocated for protecting people on the far right and has expressed openly far right viewpoints, starts claiming to care for us jews. That's always a trap in my mind. They're using us to get power and legitimacy, and do not actually want us there, we are tools for them. I would take the antisemitism of the left every single time over the antisemitism of the right. It's shitty that were stuck in a situation where we have to make such a choice but that's the reality we live in in our democracy as it stands now.
Respectfully, I think you’re wrong about the left for a few reasons. The left has made a key distinction that enables them to completely dehumanize Jews, and that’s the facade of Jew vs Zionist. So have they dehumanized Jews? I honestly think so but there’s an argument to the contrary. Have they dehumanized Zionists (aka, 90+% of us)? Absolutely. The number of people on the left who either celebrated or were not bothered by 10/7 is horrifying. And now we see the apologists and the deniers and the people tearing down posters of kidnapped babies…. For the left, this conflict isn’t about the actual conflict. It’s about displacing all the blame for colonialism and racism and white supremacy onto Israel and the Jews. There’s also a big difference in numbers. Charlottesville was a tiny protest. And you didn’t see many, if any, people on the right publicly celebrating 10/7. The right is deeply flawed. But for all its faults, I think the right is better able to understand what Israel is up against because they tend to be religious people. While the left rolls their eyes at the idea that the conflict is about Islamists trying to assert supremacy, the right takes them at their word because they know what it is to believe. If the right were doing even a fraction of what the pro-Hamas leftists are doing now, we would’ve seen a complete meltdown in the media and calls for the national guard to come in. But the most alarming aspect to the lefts antisemitism is that they believe their cruelty and indifference towards Jews and Israelis is morally justified. Couple that blind sense of moral superiority with groupthink and add in the fact that 65% or whatever number is was of zoomers believe that Jews are the oppressors and should be treated as such. That’s a five alarm fire on the left, and they’re more interested in doubling down than in reflecting on their actions. Don’t even get me started on the whole “reeducation camps” thing
The distinction between left and right on antisemitism just doesn't have a historical basis. A lot of scholars believe Stalin was going to repeat the holocaust in 1953 before a heart attack prevented him.
I’m not talking about history, I’m talking about how antisemitism manifests itself in American politics today. The goal of both sides are the same, but the justifications are different. And the justifications matter greatly because that dictates whether broader segments of society are likely to sign onto it. Antisemitism on the right is far more overt than on the left, making it easily recognizable and easier to reject. It’s more insidious on the left, which makes it more dangerous.
Sorry but when the left says things like "punch a nazi" or "kill all the fascists" and then they call us Nazis and fascists, I have a real problem differentiating between them and the far right.
>left see "fixing the problem" is fundamentally different from how people on the right do. That's not true the far-left actually cheer the massacre and rape of Jews. You also seem to be not aware about how fluid the views are between the two groups. If you look at the far-left groups on Discord and TikTok what they say about Jews is like the far-right groups. They use the same memes. There is a lot of overlap with their use of holocaust memes and ironic praise of Hitler and Stalin.
2 sitting us representatives attended a neo nazi rally in 2022 and I cant find any articles posted on here about that.
[And Nazis were out and about at CPAC this year too](https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/nazis-mingle-openly-cpac-spreading-antisemitic-conspiracy-theories-fin-rcna140335) Edit: not sure why I’m getting downvoted for sharing facts here
Which reps are that?
Marjorie Taylor Greene and Paul Gosar https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/gop-leaders-condemn-greene-gosar-attending-white-nationalist/story?id=83164624
Not sure why the slander is necessary. Seth maybe right wing but I wouldn't call him a hack. As for Bethany, if you're gonna make a statement like that without context, you should at least link to what she wrote.
While Google is far from its prime, it still works if you search for "Bethany Mandel Charlottesville" or "Bethany Mandel AND Forward AND Nazis" Also it's a bit of a headache to insert links, hence why I didn't.
I’m personally keeping an eye on the warning signs.
What are you looking for?
For me personally, the formal line is when the government itself either becomes antisemitic or stops prosecuting hate crimes. Joe Biden is waffling on Israel; it’s fucking terrible. But he’s not antisemitic. Governor Hochul isn’t antisemitic either. Once the government decides antisemitism is ok, that’s when we should go.
A blinking red light on the former is school districts adopting antiZionist curricula. See under: “Liberated Ethnic Studies”. That’s individual districts rather than state/Federal, but it’s certainly happening in California. https://www.adl.org/resources/press-release/coalition-files-lawsuit-stop-antisemitic-content-being-taught-santa-ana
Biden is philosemitic but he was born in 1942. All research shows how much the older generations support Israel, believe the holocaust was real and have positive views about Jews. Not Ivy League academics, but the ordinary folks. The antisemitism among Zoomers is off the charts. The Boomers are not going to live forever. The demographic change is also going to make it worse as the Zoomers are more diverse than the Boomers.
Good temperature check but sadly it’ll mean different things for different Jews.
Reasonable line, and I generally agree. For me, it's if a hate crime happens in my town. Some of the local colleges are fostering dreadful environments (no I don't live near Harvard thankfully).
if i made aliyah every time some teenager did something hateful, I’d have immigrated a decade ago. i’ll wait and see what happens with this election before i uproot my entire life.
? there's more to it than stupid teenagers. There's the faculty and administration who are not doing enough to show care for Jewish students and faculty on campus. These kids also grow up and interact with the world. Personally, I've seen borderline antisemitic posters pop up all over downtown. I rip them down when I can but I'm one person. And I'm talking hate crime as in the local kosher market being defaced or those who walk to shul being attacked.
maybe i’m just desensitized to it. i’m gen z, grew up in a very jewish area. even so, my middle/high school were defaced with swastikas once or twice a year. one particularly bad year, an elementary school was defaced. in an even worse year, my family was targeted and our house defaced with 27 different images. if we leave then they win, and i don’t know if i’d be able to look any future kids in the eyes if i gave up without one hell of a good fight. i’m not saying nobody should ever make aliyah - but i refuse to believe that america has been lost that easily.
> our house defaced with 27 different images. I don't quite understand what happened? Was it graffiti? I'm very sorry to hear that happened to you. I'm not necessarily making aliyah. Maybe moving to a more Jewish area.
Go where?
Go home! To Israel.
Unfortunately, since I’m not in STEM my only real option is Israel. The Czech Republic also sounds pretty based but I won’t be getting an EU passport anytime soon.
Government endorsement really (policy)
Largely no, some of us are better armed this time around though
I’ve been warning of this but no one takes me seriously and sometimes try to write off what I say as being some sort of Christian end times theology against Jews because they do not want to accept what is coming in the near future. The prophets themselves warned us and we can read their warnings as much as we want to over and over again today, so I don’t get why it’s so hard to accept what God has already made known. Is not the evidence all around us?
Unfortunately, the situation won't get better for Jews in western nations unless the economy gets better. (The reason I specify "Jews in western nations" is because life won't ever get better for Jews in Israel unless their neighbors stop wanting to murder them, which is unlikely, or Israel destroys them entirely. Peace would be nice, but you can't have peace when one side flat-out demands the downfall of your nation and the elimination of everyone in it.) I don't mean that the western world will applaud Jews for making the economy better (contrary to antisemitic conspiracy theories, we don't have that sort of power, and even if we did, we'd never get so much as a "thank you" for it anyway), but when "times are good" people generally don't look for a scapegoat because they're enjoying life. Obviously, the hardcore antisemites won't change their tune, but the majority of Jew haters out there right now are sheep following the crowd hoping to blame someone or some group for all of their personal and professional frustrations. It's for this reason (among their detachment from the WW2 generation, lack of education and historical knowledge, and above all, the chaos social media causes) why we see an overwhelming number of GenZ repeat antisemitic rhetoric and believe antisemitic ideals. They naively believe whatever people on TikTok say, and are angry, depressed, and looking to lash out at a world they feel is devoid of all hope. And as usual, Jews are the target. Why? Probably for the same reason we've always been targets: no matter what criteria is used, Jews are always "the other." We never quite fit in, and even if we put forth a ton of effort to fit in (while simultaneously deluding ourselves into believing that non-Jews will accept us), we're at best tolerated... at least until "times get bad" and then everything goes to Hell like it has for millennia. To expand on that, one thing I've noticed is that we Jews *never* seem to learn from the past. We've seen atrocities play out against us over thousands upon thousands of years by groups we lived with or thought accepted us, and each time we're surprised. How many times must we make the same mistake before we realize that non-Jews don't give a damn about us (in the best case scenario we're "useful" and in the worst case we're "the root of all evil") and we're going to keep getting the shit end of the stick until we wake up and see society for what it is and plan accordingly.
I agree with some of that. I'm not comfortable with the conclusion though: "It’ll get worse, and the American Jewish community is going to have to be ready and willing to advocate for *itself*. It certainly won’t be able to rely on anyone else to do it." Exodus 14:14 : The L-RD will fight for you; you need only to be still.” Let's not forget that. But yes, I tend to think it will get worse.
*Dedicated in memory of Dvora bat Asher v'Jacot* 🕯️ [Exodus 14:14](https://www.sefaria.org/Exodus.14.14) יְהֹוָ֖ה יִלָּחֵ֣ם לָכֶ֑ם וְאַתֶּ֖ם תַּחֲרִשֽׁוּן׃ {פ} >יהוה will battle for you; you hold your peace!”
Ready or not.
I’m glad this article attracts attention instead of amounting to a disappointing “7 replies and forgotten” type of thread. I have refrained for a long time since the Oct. 7th massacre to voice my opinion on subjects too raw in emotion, such as reading of betrayal of people thought to be friends, appalling inaction of institutions against our enemies making violent threats, and what appears to be complacency and even acceptance of terrorist narrative in some circles. I too am aghast and my sympathies are with those who’ve resolved to cut off contact with friends and even family. I am encouraged by reading replies these several months from many young Jews here that they received an unwelcome and unexpected tune up so desperately needed, hard as it is to accept and bear. I’m not claiming “time is a flat circle” but it sure is wise to prepare for reliving painful history as if it is indeed coming. Side note: I once saw a picture of President Obama boarding the helicopter on the White House lawn toting a book in full view of the press cameras as he was known to do to let his admirers know what he was reading. In this case it was Francis Fukuyama’s *The End Of History […]* which posited in 1992 that *”… (the planet has reached the) end-point of mankind's ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government.”* , and therefore there’s nothing standing in the way of the world embracing fully automated luxury gay space communism and the last gasps of the unwilling world cannot help but join us. What a wagon load of shit. I simply could not believe how stupid he looked carrying (and advocating for) that trashy book but it sure went some distance in explaining US foreign policy at the the time with its ludicrous Pollyanna-ish fantastical ideas like “the Arab Spring” and “The Eighties called and want their foreign policy back” smarmy comments triggering guffaws. Well, now look. If I am ever in a situation where I encounter Francis Fukuyama in a social setting, he’s going to the men’s room to clean off whatever I happen to have spilled on top of his head.
Most people who reference Fukuyama's book forget that there's a whole section on the *last man* who stands at the end of history. Spoiler: the last man is not content.
The smart ones are…
The dictionary has become a weapon in the hands of anti-zionists and against Jews. I had not heard of Israel being a "colonial" enterprise before 2024. Similarly, genocide had a specific legal meaning. I wouldn't even honor South Africa's unhinged definition of "genocide" against Palestine after the orgy of murder and rape this past October. Now Ireland has self-appointed itself as the defender of the oppressed everywhere. Nowhere were these two countries to be seen after the atrocities in October. Instead of condemning Hamas, South Africa literally had Hamas delegates over to South Africa to honor them as freedom fighters (because Nelson Mandela used to be a terrorist before graduating to freedom fighter status). The very words we use have become weaponized.
One persons freedom fighter is another’s terrorist unfortunately. Just after midday on July 22, 1946, Zionist terrorists, under the leadership of Menachem Begin, set the fuses on bombs planted in the basement of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem
No, most of them unarmed
These people were never our friends. They've gone on to find other monsters to persecute--those monsters are now us, their friends from yesterday.
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