I see Herzlians say this about Jews all the time, and it really doesn’t impress me. Aside from being an argumentum ad populum, it is a worthless assertion because the overwhelming probability is that very few of these Jews know better. None of these people have any idea just how brutal the settlers were to the Palestinians in the late 1940s, nor are they likely to be aware of Theodor Herzl’s and Ben-Gurion’s nauseating remarks about other Jews, nor are they likely to have a deep understanding of Haavara, to name only a few facts from which Herzlians shy away. The upper classes don’t want to teach anyone about any of that, so they give the Jewish public a Disneyfied oversimplification of Zionism instead.
The reasons that many Jews approve of Herzlianism are similar to why most diasporic Italians approved of Benito Mussolini. Many Italians were casually profascist because the Fascists made them look tough and offered them obvious examples to cite proving that Italians weren’t weaklings or failures. They were desperate for role models, so they could hardly afford to be picky. In any case, probably only a minority of them were deeply interested or committed to Fascist politics anyway, so it would be an overreaction to ‘hate’ all of them. Most of them simply didn’t know better.
In sum, I don’t care all that much if most Jews believe that it’s ‘wrong’ to oppose Herzlianism, since I find it extremely unlikely that they support the movement being fully aware of all its horrible history. Sooner or later they’re all going to outgrow it, just like many Italians outgrew Mussolini. Every day the apartheid regime moves closer to collapse.
Remind them that the vast majority of Zionists are not Jewish
since I find it extremely unlikely that they support the movement being fully aware of all its horrible history.
Reminds me of something I read the other day, on bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/poppyhaze.bsky.social/post/3lea2lmvmg22j
About how the final Emperor of China was rehabilitated by the communists. I found it fascinating and such a contrast to how anti-communists portray communism as brutal and unforgiving.
A section of that uncannily reminds me of A Christmas Carol, just with a whole country full of Ghosts of China Past.
Oh wow I did not know that
Are most Jews even Zionists? Like sure I imagine most Israeli Jews are but outside of that it doesn’t seem true.
Nah, Crucifix, I think yer getting it twisted, are most Zionists even Jews? Most of them are Evangelical Christians, who think it not only miltarily strategic, but religiously just for the ‘Israelis’ to do ethnic cleansing and genocide, since they’re settler-colonial birds of a feather
The same survey reported that 35% of white evangelical Protestants feel the U.S. is not providing enough support to Israel, higher than the 20% observed in the general population.
Younger ones tho are not as enthusiastic
You’re not gonna catch me sticking up for evangelicals, if my username wasn’t enough to give it away.
How can you be ashamed of it while also supporting it? What the fuck is that all about?!
If you can think about it, think about it like liberals who support Amerikkka, even under Trump, against their foreign adversaries.
tl;dr: “They don’t disagree with NetanYahoo that ethnic cleansing is the way to go. They just disagree on how it’s implemented, whether it’s too harsh, or too soft”
“Most X have Y position” is tokenizing logic that can be used to launder liberal positions under the guise of liberationist rhetoric. Liberal positions are dominant under capitalism, they are the propaganda of the ruling class. Every X group can be polled to find liberal / reactionary positions and this is not a justification for supporting those positions.
Re: polling, it costs money, you should ask who paid for the poll and why and check its methodology in order to know what meaning, if any, can be gleaned. Were only college students polled? Was it a landline poll? Etc etc.
Finally, don’t underestimate the propagandized’s capacity to have incoherent positions, plastic positions, or nuanced positions that don’t square well with the question. Particularly when it comes to plasticity, this is why the liberal propaganda apparatus is weaponized against social movements. If the people could not be moved, the ruling class would not spend so much time and effort on social control. This is a primary function of the Democrats, for example: to appropriate, oppose, and defang social movements, funnel them into nothingness and their own capital-directed apparatuses. BLM’s trajectory is an example of this.
Returning to Zionism, also be aware of this tokenizing logic when applied to other groups. If you poll various states’ populations in the region you would probably find a liberal zionist position to be very popular, maybe even majority. Likely with a “but we feel for Palestine” sentiment, but still one that tolerates the Zionist entity, that legitimizes it. So someone can come to you and tell you that “most people from [Arab country] don’t even reject Israel, how do you know better than them?” That person may even be from that country! They will weaponize this tokenization to support a genocidal racist apartheid project. And you must at least expect it and have a strategy. The best strategy being: prevent this possibility from disrupting your project from the get-go by enumerating it as a possibility and how your organization will reject it.
MLs living under liberal hegemony already know that “most X are Y” is no kind of argument. We already know that Gramscian common sense is not an argument.
Yes, but I don’t think it should be a taboo subject to mention. It is of course terrible to refer to any group as a monolith, it should still be discussed.
As a Muslim, the same can go towards members of my religion and homophobia. I think it should be discussed, but it should not be discussed in a way where people mention it to defend their hatred.
I’ve lived through that my entire life to be honest, any hate towards my religion hasn’t been given any pushback for racist reasons. Sacha Baron-Cohen can be openly racist on live television to a cheering crowd, but it’s okay because of our backwards culture.
I know I’m ranting like a buffoon but I do think discussions around any of these things shouldn’t be taboo as long as they are not said in order to justify racist beliefs. If so, we would be no better than the groypers who think the 13% number is worth mentioning any time they see a black person on the internet.
You must have interpreted what I said in… some way, but I’m at a loss as to what way. I didn’t say nor intend to imply that anything was out of bounds for discussion.
No no you said nothing I disagreed with, I just see it a lot in lib areas
