Anti-semitism thread: onwards from 2023

inclined to agree with table here tbh. Any country where there's a state religion and/or explicitly priveleged ethnic class... the track record is not good. With Israel being created with this *specific* goal, is it really any surprise things turned out the way they did.

― famous instagram dog (Shakey Mo Collier), Thursday, May 9, 2024 9:27 AM (six days ago) bookmarkflaglink

perhaps this was a point that was extrapolated out during the conversation about democracy and Israel as mentioned in Hillel's charter, but still.

yeah that is not related to the Hillel charter, was agreeing with you more broadly that ethnostates are fundamentally undemocratic

otherwise I agree w man alive's assessment of the Hillel charter

You don't need to agree with every last thing in this thread, just have a little bit of awareness of how it comes across when you repeatedly feel the need to use it as a platform to aggressively debate and insult people posting about their discomfort with various antisemitic tropes and declarations. Perhaps winning your point isn't as important as you may think.

I will be more mindful.

Fwiw, I can see the point— that repeating antisemitic tropes as a form of levity can merely reinscribe the antisemitism of the tropes— but the accusatory tone is a bit too much for me.

This was all you had to say.

Now why don't you try keeping my name out of your accusatory mouth. People can read for themselves what my posts say.

I will be more mindful.

― butt dumb tight my boners got boners (the table is the table), Wednesday, May 15, 2024 4:50 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

Thanks. I really try not to spend a disproportionate amount of time focusing on this, but Jews feel very much in the world's fishbowl right now. There are only 15 million of us in the world (roughly the same # as pre-Holocaust) and half live in Israel. A huge percentage of us have family in Israel or family who took refuge in Israel at some point. I'm well aware that there are people who "weaponize" accusations of antisemitism, but I also think that we are hypersensitized to antisemitism. I don't necessarily have the same reactions as Shakey or Felicity, but I can understand them. The glibness with which a lot of non-Jewish people are now weighing in on what is and what isn't antisemitic and who the "real" antisemites are and which side they are on disturbs me. There *is* real antisemitism on the pro-Palestinian side. I'm not sure that calling it "left" is necessarily accurate, because a significant part of it comes from reactionary Muslim sources or conspiracy kooks that are merely aligned with the left on this issue. But it is real. Not to mention that, while anti-Zionism is not per se antisemitism, "zionist" has been used as a code word for Jews/Jewish conspiracy by antisemites for a very long time. So it can be easy to fall into paranoia about what people are really saying or thinking.

So I get it, forked tongue, what's next, horns? But when I'm reading tweets from supposed pro-Palestinian activists (who admittedly I don't actually know who they are IRL) about how "Zionists" control worldwide organ theft, it does feel a bit less funny.

fwiw I'm not sure anyone was trying to be funny. Just acknowledging the lineage and persistence of the tropes. But fair points.

Sure. And I didn't take offense at the posts themselves, fwiw, I was more using them as a jumping off point. And also, fwiw, I'm not familiar with "forked tongue" being an antisemitic trope, other than just I guess having some general evocation of devil? It seems like evangelical GOP folks accuse people of speaking with a forked tongue all the time.

Yeah, I think of "forked tongue" as a Biblical reference, the Garden of Eden and all that. I'm also not aware of it as specifically antisemitic — and a quick Google bears that out — but it is ascribing Satanic characteristics that feel close to horns etc. I would think best avoided under the circumstances, but I agree it's not a blatant invocation.

fwiw I'm not sure anyone was trying to be funny. Just acknowledging the lineage and persistence of the tropes. But fair points.

― a man often referred to in the news media as the Duke of Saxony (tipsy mothra), Thursday, May 16, 2024 7:05 AM bookmarkflaglink

tipsy, thank you.

I said "I wonder" since I wanted to leave open the possibility of mere thoughtlessness. You answered that.

What for you is "just" hypothetical abstract, language is for the target, when repeated, circulated, and shared online on a massive scale, especially with "we" and "them" in-group-out-group signaling, something that causes real psychological and emotional harm. It's dehumanizing language which has been used for centuries to justify violence against Jews. It's a mark of privilege that you don't need to consider it after you made your post whereas here I was carrying it around a week later wondering whether it's worth the typical ILX knee-jerk backlash to register my objection.

Antisemitism is in the air we breathe. It wears a deep groove in the history of Western thought. Antisemitism offers many pleasures: the lure of tradition, the thrill of transgressiveness, the high of moral superiority. I understand a lot of this is passed on thoughtlessly or without conscious bad intent. The way to respond is to make people aware of what they are doing and ask them to be more conscious.

You'd think lawyers would have evolved, but this is the crap we are still dealing with in my profession:

Two ex-Lewis Brisbois partners were pushed out of the boutique they started after their former firm released racist, sexist and antisemitic emails the partners wrote while employed there.

The remaining leaders at the boutique, which was formed by John Barber and Jeff Ranen, will start a new firm, said Tim Graves, chief executive officer at the operation that had been named Barber Ranen.

“Effective immediately, the firm has requested and accepted the resignations of John Barber and Jeffrey Ranen,” Graves said in a statement Monday. “The remaining equity partners express their disappointment and disdain for the language Mr. Barber and Mr. Ranen used.”

The partners’ former firm, Lewis Brisbois, shared a tranche of emails spanning more than a decade that show Barber and Ranen making disparaging remarks about female associates, clients and others, as well as using racist, antisemitic and anti-LGBTQ slurs.

“We are resigning from Barber Ranen effective immediately in order to allow our friends and colleagues to continue on without the cloud of our conduct hanging over them,” Ranen and Barber said in a joint statement.

They added, “We are ashamed of the words we wrote, and we are deeply sorry.”

Barber and Ranen were California-based leaders of Lewis Brisbois’s labor and employment group until last month, when they broke off from firm and took nearly 140 lawyers with them.

Lewis Brisbois opened an investigation into the two partners after receiving an “anonymous complaint” following their departure, the firm said in a statement Monday.

“Because the vast majority of these emails were sent in private between John Barber and Jeff Ranen, neither the Lewis Brisbois HR department nor the executive committee were made aware of their behavior until after the anonymous complaint first came in,” the firm’s statement said.

In one email, after Ranen complained about a female colleague’s overtime request, Barber told him to “kill her” through a sexual act. In another, Ranen mocked the religious practices of a Jewish attorney who asked not to be emailed during the sabbath.

Many states have training mandates for lawyers that require them to complete continuing education courses to topics related to ethics and bias. California requires lawyers to complete at least 25 hours of training every three years.

Emails from Barber and Ranen demonstrate the little quality control that state bar associations perform on these trainings, said Rima Sirota, a Georgetown University law professor.

“This kind of stuff is unethical,” Sirota said. “Most companies wouldn’t want to be associating with a firm with that kind of atmosphere.”

https://news.bloomberglaw.com/business-and-practice/ex-lewis-brisbois-partners-quit-firm-after-racist-sexist-emails

These weren't some white collar criminal defense attorneys. They were leaders of the labor and employment law group.

It really pains me to see this being taught to younger generations.

Yep, totally hear you. My own comment about drinking blood was a shorthand nod toward the way QAnon has updated and recirculated blood-libel slander and that all of these things are connected. But I realize that things that sound one way in conversation can scan differently in text. The point of all it being that antisemitism remains endemic in our social and political rhetoric.

The point of all it being that antisemitism remains endemic in our social and political rhetoric.

Thank you. And my point is we don't need to see a demonstration of the dog whistling to see that antisemitism in the air like wild yeast.

You can refer to "blood libels" and tropes, like the N-word, without inhabiting the role of a person who says slurs yourself.

I hear and affirm.

I am glad that we can all be gracious about this. The jokes actually did make me feel uncomfortable in the context of this thread… says the goy with a Jewish best friend

curious about this author, haven't read this one, plot summary gave me pause
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_Hallows%27_Eve_(novel)

reminded me of weird antisemitic tropes popping up in Chesterton's (who I don't otherwise like) "The Man Who Was Thursday" (which was still v entertaining)

a Jewish magician, born in Paris at the end of the 18th century, with an urge to master the world

truly vintage reaction

what can I say, the peculiarities and specific manifestations of UK anti-semitism often take me aback.

but obviously it's basically impossible to imagine a context where valiant Christian theologians combatting an evil Jewish magician bent on world domination is not anti-semitic