Antisemitism

[fredtoast]

(07-16-2020, 04:26 PM)Sociopathicsteelerfan Wrote:   I merely stated, correctly, that we must treat all racism as unacceptable if we're going to confront the problem.  A black supremacist should be just as unacceptable as a white supremacist.  It honestly seems like you're arguing with me just to argue with me.

Actually what you said was that you "found it odd" that we treat them differently.

I then explained why we treat them differently.

If you want to disagree with my position then explain to me why YOU think we treat them differently. 

How can you even say I am arguing with you if you have not even given your reason for why we treat them differently?

[Sociopathicsteelerfan]

(07-16-2020, 04:30 PM)fredtoast Wrote: How was Howard Stern oppressed by minorities?  What minorities had power and control over him that they abused?

Oh, I see.  You have to oppressed by a system to be a victim of racism.  Being beaten on a daily basis for the color of your skin doesn't qualify.  Interesting set of parameters you have there.

(07-16-2020, 04:32 PM)fredtoast Wrote: You did when you compared racism to being the victim of a crime

No, I didn't, that's how you're choosing to interpret it.  As we are now firmly in the grounds of the semantic argument I will call it a day as far as this particular line of discussion is concerned.

[Sociopathicsteelerfan]

(07-16-2020, 04:43 PM)fredtoast Wrote: Actually what you said was that you "found it odd" that we treat them differently.

I then explained why we treat them differently.

Sure, and I disagree, we must treat all hatred as unacceptable if we are to move forward.

Quote:If you want to disagree with my position then explain to me why YOU think we treat them differently. 

My position requires no such declaration, thank you.

Quote:How can you even say I am arguing with you if you have not even given your reason for why we treat them differently?

Oh, so you haven't been arguing with me?  You have an argumentative way of agreeing with someone then.

[fredtoast]

(07-16-2020, 04:44 PM)Sociopathicsteelerfan Wrote: Oh, I see.  You have to oppressed by a system to be a victim of racism.  Being beaten on a daily basis for the color of your skin doesn't qualify.  Interesting set of parameters you have there.

I still have no idea what this means.  I am not a Stern fan.

Who should Stern sue for racial discrimination?  Who violated his rights or oppressed him? 

[fredtoast]

(07-16-2020, 04:46 PM)Sociopathicsteelerfan Wrote: Oh, so you haven't been arguing with me?  You have an argumentative way of agreeing with someone then.

How can I argue with your position when you have not even stated your position as to why we treat them differently?

All you have said is that we should not do it.  You have not said why you think we do it.  That is all I was trying to help y0u understand.  

[Sociopathicsteelerfan]

(07-16-2020, 04:55 PM)fredtoast Wrote: I still have no idea what this means.  I am not a Stern fan.

Who should Stern sue for racial discrimination?  Who violated his rights or oppressed him? 

You don't know what being beaten on a daily basis for the color of your skin means? I'm a little concerned now.

[fredtoast]

(07-16-2020, 05:04 PM)Sociopathicsteelerfan Wrote: You don't know what being beaten on a daily basis for the color of your skin means? I'm a little concerned now.

It is clearly 100% illegal to beat someone for the color of their skin.

Why doesn't he just call the police and report it?  If the local police will not help then Trump will probably step in.

Is there a video?

I am not going to call you a liar ubtil I see your evidence, but surely you understand my confusion over these claims considering the fact that an overwhelming percentage of radio and TV personalities have white skin and none of them are getting beaten for it every day.

[Dill]

(07-16-2020, 11:39 AM)BmorePat87 Wrote: The last few years saw a number of stories about antisemitism from the right, but with the growth of BLM in the last two months, we have seen a new form of antisemitism occur within those groups.

From celebrities like DeSean Jackson, Stephen Jackson, and Nick Cannon, people have been pushing antisemitic rhetoric, including globalist conspiracy theories, fake quotes from Hitler, and quotes from the Nation of Islam to promote anti-semitism as a fight against racism and black identity. The typical message seems to be pushing the narrative of Black Hebrews being the true chosen people and White Jewish people fighting to keep them done and joining with racist Christians to keep that fact hidden. Sometimes it also includes imagery of powerful and rich Jewish people controlling global events, which includes racial inequality. I've also seen cases where Henry Ford's antisemitic The International Jew literature is pushed.

Here you are alluding to a grouping of religious sects called Hebrew Israelites or Black Hebrew Israelites, or Nation of Yahweh Their base belief began in Kansas and spread to Chicago, New York, Liberia and Israel, where they claim a right to natural citizenship as the real Jews. Their beliefs are (to me at least) reminiscent of the Cargo Cults of New Guinea and Borneo, some of whose inhabitants believe that they were God's chosen but white missionaries tricked them by ripping the relevant pages out of the Bible. In both cases, powerful magical thinking constructs a narrative which explains current oppression/low status in terms of a stolen rightful identity, and a focus on reinterpreting and redefining the false reality peddled by those who dominate them.

Anyway, their central belief is that Black people were "the Jews" of the Old and New Testament, and their international enslavement during the Modern period is punishment for their disobedience of God. Jews, along with whites, conspire to obscure this truth. A few decades ago there was a big dust up in Israel about this as they were likening Israelis to Nazis and Hitler.

According to a 2008 SPLC report, Black Hebrews are not generally racist, but noted there was a growing percentage who openly hate whites and Jews, etc. Easy to understand as a reaction to white racism. Jews they attack as "fake" Jews, whom they hate for misrepresenting themselves as real Jews. The most extreme want to kill all Jews and gays. https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/intelligence-report/2008/racist-black-hebrew-israelites-becoming-more-militant

I first encountered them in 1994 when I went on a trip to Manhattan with my family. There was a group of four men with bushy afros and large beards dressed in black tactical outfits and black combat boots; they had a big sign about "Israelites" and were handing out literature to select passersby.  I attempted to speak with one; he told me blacks were the real Hebrews, but didn't want to engage further.

There numbers are not great, but it is interesting that some of these ideas are now being absorbed and spread by celebrities. In the post truth era of Trump and Alex Jones, we oughtn't be surprised if some minority communities mirror the conspiracy mongering and magical thinking we see among some sectors of the white population.

Here is a pic of Israeli Black Hebrews standing in front of the Knesset, and an article about them:

https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/b42ad8800bc449aaa415e05a8087bbe6

[Dill]

(07-16-2020, 04:07 PM)fredtoast Wrote: That is not "using my analogy" because I clearly stated that white people have NOT been victims of oppression.

If there is a hate crime committed against a white person by a black person based on race then I agree that the black person should be punished.

If a black person oppresses a white person in some way based on race (housing discrimination, employment discrimination, lending discrimination, etc) then the black person should be punished.

But one of the privileges of being a white person is that we don't have to deal with systemic oppression based on our race.  We control a grossly disproportionate percentage of the wealth and power in this country.  So that is why I don't cry about being a "victim of racism".

LOL with you on that. "Black racism" is, at the moment, pretty low on my list of concerns about the U.S. and the world.

[*michaelsean*]

So one question. Are fake Hitler quotes better or worse than real ones?

Also I recently discovered I am 4% Jewish. Please tell Mrs Pat I get it.

I think, and this is very broad, that a lot of anti-semitism in Middle Ages Europe was fostered by kings wanting to take their money.

[BmorePat87]

(07-17-2020, 10:44 AM)michaelsean Wrote: So one question. Are fake Hitler quotes better or worse than real ones?

Also I recently discovered I am 4% Jewish. Please tell Mrs Pat I get it.

I think, and this is very broad, that a lot of anti-semitism in Middle Ages Europe was fostered by kings wanting to take their money.

That could be a reason. Most of it did stem from the way Christianity, particularly Catholicism, played in politics, dominating the power structures. The idea of the Jewish people killing Jesus was a good motivator to incite violence against them and use them as an excuse for any issue, especially since they were a minority and it kept the lowest class of citizens under the control of the church ideology. The use of religious zealotry against Muslims also played into that fervor against Jewish people. 

[Dill]

(07-17-2020, 10:44 AM)michaelsean Wrote: So one question. Are fake Hitler quotes better or worse than real ones?

Also I recently discovered I am 4% Jewish. Please tell Mrs Pat I get it.

I think, and this is very broad, that a lot of anti-semitism in Middle Ages Europe was fostered by kings wanting to take their money.

Well, I'd say everyone wanted to take everyone else's money in Middle Ages Europe. Except maybe some Franciscans.

You probably know that Christians were forbidden to lend money for interest, as Muslims still are to day. That practice was viewed as parasitical--as was much merchant activity which involved selling what one did not oneself make, then charging a middleman's fee. Because Jews were not forbidden lending at interest, they were valued as bankers, but treated also as parasites. 

Also, because of the ways religion intersected with the guild system, Jews were denied access to many sectors of Medieval town economy. E.g., they could be jewelers but not blacksmiths, merchants but not farmers. To protect Christianity from their influence, they were generally required to live in ghettos. They could not be rulers or court advisors, of course, nor military leaders.

Occasionally, a Medieval prince would impound a Jewish banker's wealth on some trumped up charge, but most Medieval rulers WANTED Jews because of their industry and economic talents, and protected them. Without that protection they could not have successfully immigrated in most places. E.g., when Spain was reconquered, every effort was made to keep Spanish Jews on the penninsula so they wouldn't retreat with the Muslims. (Until the Inquisition, when Jews were expelled or fled from Spain to enrich other European economic centers like Holland; but that's the early Modern period.) Rulers in backward northern Europe especially welcomed Jews, though local populations regarded them much as some Americans regard brown immigration.  (Public Medievalist has a good basic over view of this migration, if you are interested in the history of 4% of your genetic make up. https://www.publicmedievalist.com/arc-of-jewish-life/.)

Sometimes thriving Jewish communities aroused resentment to a level rulers couldn't ignore and they would be expelled from a principality. All, about 3,000, were expelled from England in 1290 (while it was still a French vassal). https://www.history.ox.ac.uk/::ognode-62416::/files/teaching-resources-expulsion-jews.

Really nasty persecutions, like the mass slaughter in some European cities which accompanied the First Crusade, were set off by social dislocations, economic depression, and natural disasters. (On the other hand, later Crusades were one of the main movers of Jewish migration to Catholic Europe--to the point where eventually Europe held the greatest portion of world Jewish population.) Tulsa-style massacres in Jewish ghettos followed the Bubonic Plague in the 14th century. The Protestant reformation heightened religious anxieties about "purity" in both the Catholic and Protestant camps, though the consequences fall out in the Modern, not Medieval period.

In short, Jewish persecution was mostly driven from the bottom up, by fear of the "Other" and of religious/cultural difference, and by jealousy and the incentive to plunder. Sometimes it could be used by rulers; most of the time it could not be controlled except by military force.

[BmorePat87]

(07-17-2020, 03:47 AM)Dill Wrote: Here you are alluding to a grouping of religious sects called Hebrew Israelites or Black Hebrew Israelites, or Nation of Yahweh Their base belief began in Kansas and spread to Chicago, New York, Liberia and Israel, where they claim a right to natural citizenship as the real Jews. Their beliefs are (to me at least) reminiscent of the Cargo Cults of New Guinea and Borneo, some of whose inhabitants believe that they were God's chosen but white missionaries tricked them by ripping the relevant pages out of the Bible. In both cases, powerful magical thinking constructs a narrative which explains current oppression/low status in terms of a stolen rightful identity, and a focus on reinterpreting and redefining the false reality peddled by those who dominate them.

Anyway, their central belief is that Black people were "the Jews" of the Old and New Testament, and their international enslavement during the Modern period is punishment for their disobedience of God. Jews, along with whites, conspire to obscure this truth. A few decades ago there was a big dust up in Israel about this as they were likening Israelis to Nazis and Hitler.

According to a 2008 SPLC report, Black Hebrews are not generally racist, but noted there was a growing percentage who openly hate whites and Jews, etc. Easy to understand as a reaction to white racism. Jews they attack as "fake" Jews, whom they hate for misrepresenting themselves as real Jews. The most extreme want to kill all Jews and gays. https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/intelligence-report/2008/racist-black-hebrew-israelites-becoming-more-militant

I first encountered them in 1994 when I went on a trip to Manhattan with my family. There was a group of four men with bushy afros and large beards dressed in black tactical outfits and black combat boots; they had a big sign about "Israelites" and were handing out literature to select passersby.  I attempted to speak with one; he told me blacks were the real Hebrews, but didn't want to engage further.

There numbers are not great, but it is interesting that some of these ideas are now being absorbed and spread by celebrities. In the post truth era of Trump and Alex Jones, we oughtn't be surprised if some minority communities mirror the conspiracy mongering and magical thinking we see among some sectors of the white population.

Here is a pic of Israeli Black Hebrews standing in front of the Knesset, and an article about them:

https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/b42ad8800bc449aaa415e05a8087bbe6

It's easy to see how that ideology mixed with rampant globalist conspiracy theories can evolve into a new, easily digestible conspiracy ideology to combat white racism by once again using the Jewish people as a scapegoat, linking both the control of money and enslavement and theft of identity to them. 

[Dill]

(07-17-2020, 12:02 PM)BmorePat87 Wrote: It's easy to see how that ideology mixed with rampant globalist conspiracy theories can evolve into a new, easily digestible conspiracy ideology to combat white racism by once again using the Jewish people as a scapegoat, linking both the control of money and enslavement and theft of identity to them. 

Yes, and I could add that this belief set enters Atlantic trade history where it is claimed that slave shipping was owned mostly by Jews and Jews were the primary owners of slaves in the South. The latter point is nonsense, given their minuscule numbers, but for reasons given in post #32 above (Jews in banking and merchant trade), they did play a predominate role in 16th-17th century origins of the slave trade, when volume was small. They are muscled aside in the 18th century, when the greatest mass transportation occurred.

The main contemporary source for such views is Tony Martin's The Secret Relationship (1991), which supposedly sets the task of re-examining the Black-Jewish alliance forged during the Civil Right Era.

What mystifies me about this project is its motivation. When you've had whitey on your neck for 400 years, why single out this also persecuted subset thereof, a fellow Klan target, and make them the drivers of Black oppression?  Finding the answer to that question would teach us a lot about current race relations and their history. Why take Klan/Nazi narratives of Jewish threat as your research guide? Or at least the 19th century sources of those narratives?

[fredtoast]

[BmorePat87]

(07-17-2020, 12:24 PM)Dill Wrote: Yes, and I could add that this belief set enters Atlantic trade history where it is claimed that slave shipping was owned mostly by Jews and Jews were the primary owners of slaves in the South. The latter point is nonsense, given their minuscule numbers, but for reasons given in post #32 above (Jews in banking and merchant trade), they did play a predominate role in 16th-17th century origins of the slave trade, when volume was small. They are muscled aside in the 18th century, when the greatest mass transportation occurred.

The main contemporary source for such views is Tony Martin's The Secret Relationship (1991), which supposedly sets the task of re-examining the Black-Jewish alliance forged during the Civil Right Era.

What mystifies me about this project is its motivation. When you've had whitey on your neck for 400 years, why single out this also persecuted subset thereof, a fellow Klan target, and make them the drivers of Black oppression?  Finding the answer to that question would teach us a lot about current race relations and their history. Why take Klan/Nazi narratives of Jewish threat as your research guide? Or at least the 19th century sources of those narratives?

Because anti-semitism is relatively accepted by the broader white culture.

[Dill]

(07-17-2020, 02:47 PM)BmorePat87 Wrote: Because anti-semitism is relatively accepted by the broader white culture.

Sure, but it's "worse" when "Blacks do it too," setting up deflections of white racism and the like. Someone like Martin, teaching in the Africana area, should know that.

So I am curious as to why some Black scholars would go that direction, given they supposedly get more history and are held to higher professional standards than laypersons. It's understandable that people with little secular history and a lot of fundamentalist religion might be subject to more magical narrative making. If Pat Robertson and millions of followers think that Hurricane Katrina was punishment for feminism and tolerance for gay rights, then no surprise some of their minority counterparts could buy into claims that slavery was divine punishment upon the "real" Jews.

This phenomenon suggests to me there is a subculture influencing Black politics I know little about and whose appeal is broader than I expected. Perhaps it is enabled by the same breakdown in social authority that enables birther and truther conspiracies to flourish.

[BmorePat87]

(07-17-2020, 06:01 PM)Dill Wrote: Sure, but it's "worse" when "Blacks do it too," setting up deflections of white racism and the like. Someone like Martin, teaching in the Africana area, should know that.

So I am curious as to why some Black scholars would go that direction, given they supposedly get more history and are held to higher professional standards than laypersons. It's understandable that people with little secular history and a lot of fundamentalist religion might be subject to more magical narrative making. If Pat Robertson and millions of followers think that Hurricane Katrina was punishment for feminism and tolerance for gay rights, then no surprise some of their minority counterparts could buy into claims that slavery was divine punishment upon the "real" Jews.

This phenomenon suggests to me there is a subculture influencing Black politics I know little about and whose appeal is broader than I expected. Perhaps it is enabled by the same breakdown in social authority that enables birther and truther conspiracies to flourish.

I don’t think education will always insulate you from being influenced by prejudice. We’ve had centuries of scholars push white centric and sometimes openly racist history and scholarship. You’re bound to find a small minority within black scholarship that will go this route.

I think your remark on birther popularity holds truth too. These fringe ideals can spread so much further with the internet, and combined with the social upheaval, people are going to be attracted to antagonistic ideas.

I think identity plays a big role too. Diverse African identities were stolen because of the slave trade and reforged in the US out of survival and necessity. There’ll always be a draw to this ancestral identity, and it’s the same with white nationalists drawing on a shared European identity. White identity only exists to serve as an “us” against “them”, having been a foreign concept until recent centuries as almost any white person wpuod have identified with their ethnicity rather than the concept of race. 120 years ago, Italian wasn’t “white”.

So I think the need to forge a unifying identity led to adopting this mythology of the original chosen people of the Abrahamic god, and while it seems counter intuitive to then vilify a similarly subjugated people, it was a necessity to hold that identity

[masterpanthera_t]

(07-17-2020, 11:52 AM)Dill Wrote: Well, I'd say everyone wanted to take everyone else's money in Middle Ages Europe. Except maybe some Franciscans.

You probably know that Christians were forbidden to lend money for interest, as Muslims still are to day. That practice was viewed as parasitical--as was much merchant activity which involved selling what one did not oneself make, then charging a middleman's fee. Because Jews were not forbidden lending at interest, they were valued as bankers, but treated also as parasites. 

Also, because of the ways religion intersected with the guild system, Jews were denied access to many sectors of Medieval town economy. E.g., they could be jewelers but not blacksmiths, merchants but not farmers. To protect Christianity from their influence, they were generally required to live in ghettos. They could not be rulers or court advisors, of course, nor military leaders.

Occasionally, a Medieval prince would impound a Jewish banker's wealth on some trumped up charge, but most Medieval rulers WANTED Jews because of their industry and economic talents, and protected them. Without that protection they could not have successfully immigrated in most places. E.g., when Spain was reconquered, every effort was made to keep Spanish Jews on the penninsula so they wouldn't retreat with the Muslims. (Until the Inquisition, when Jews were expelled or fled from Spain to enrich other European economic centers like Holland; but that's the early Modern period.) Rulers in backward northern Europe especially welcomed Jews, though local populations regarded them much as some Americans regard brown immigration.  (Public Medievalist has a good basic over view of this migration, if you are interested in the history of 4% of your genetic make up. https://www.publicmedievalist.com/arc-of-jewish-life/.)

Sometimes thriving Jewish communities aroused resentment to a level rulers couldn't ignore and they would be expelled from a principality. All, about 3,000, were expelled from England in 1290 (while it was still a French vassal). https://www.history.ox.ac.uk/::ognode-62416::/files/teaching-resources-expulsion-jews.

Really nasty persecutions, like the mass slaughter in some European cities which accompanied the First Crusade, were set off by social dislocations, economic depression, and natural disasters. (On the other hand, later Crusades were one of the main movers of Jewish migration to Catholic Europe--to the point where eventually Europe held the greatest portion of world Jewish population.) Tulsa-style massacres in Jewish ghettos followed the Bubonic Plague in the 14th century. The Protestant reformation heightened religious anxieties about "purity" in both the Catholic and Protestant camps, though the consequences fall out in the Modern, not Medieval period.

In short, Jewish persecution was mostly driven from the bottom up, by fear of the "Other" and of religious/cultural difference, and by jealousy and the incentive to plunder. Sometimes it could be used by rulers; most of the time it could not be controlled except by military force.

I'll piggyback on this history lesson, by just adding this blurb:
India is cited as another center of Jewish migration, although niether the volumes, nor the time period are known to me. They were welcomed and never persecuted at all to the point that IIRC, the Israeli constitution (not sure of the exact document, maybe it's something else) specifically mentions it and Bibi Netanyahu supposedly thanked the Indian head of state on his visit owing to the historical welcome given.

[Dill]

(07-17-2020, 07:37 PM)masterpanthera_t Wrote: I'll piggyback on this history lesson, by just adding this blurb:
India is cited as another center of Jewish migration, although niether the volumes, nor the time period are known to me. They were welcomed and never persecuted at all to the point that IIRC, the Israeli constitution (not sure of the exact document, maybe it's something else) specifically mentions it and Bibi Netanyahu supposedly thanked the Indian head of state on his visit owing to the historical welcome given.

Yeah, there is a five-story building in Mumbai called the Nariman House. I remember when it was attacked in the Mumbai massacre.

If I remember correctly, some Jews from Germany and Eastern Europe escaped to India during WWII.