The New Anti-Semitism

[Sam]

Here's an article I read yesterday on the same incident.

[Flynnie]

It strikes me that Israel is one of the most anti-semitic countries out there. Not, clearly, in the sense that it hates and rejects Jews. But in its rhetoric and use of anti-semitic tropes, repurposed. That "Palestinian puppetmasters" thing yesterday was straight out of the anti-semitic conspiracy theory cupboard.

One of the reasons that it's always been impossible to imagine an international far-right movement is because they all hate each other racially. But if they are starting to bond on the level of rhetoric and overlooking the mutual loathing (as Israel appears to have done in working with the anti-semitic Hungarian government), things start getting scarily joined up. (Can't see it being remotely sustainable though)

The now very bad Sam Kriss and the former Forward cartoonist Eli Valley have argued quite persuasively that Israel basically loathes Seinfeld-and-brisket diaspora Judaism as weak and unmanly.

Kriss:

Diaspora could only ever mean suffering; the Jew in exile – in other words, the Jew as such – became an object of near-pathological loathing. Every antisemitic slander was repeated: the Jews really were weak, ugly, etiolated, usurious; the goal of zionism was to put a spade in one hand, a rifle in the other, and turn them into something else. With bullets and bloodshed they would get rid of the cringing Jews of the past: it was an article of faith among those zionist pioneers that, before long, all Jews would become the New Jew...

The Israeli state doesn’t regard diaspora Jewry as its progenitor, or as a community in which it is embedded; it sees us as a colonised population under its command. Our leaders are its hostages. Our institutions are its instruments. It imposes its taxes: we have to give to the JNF, volunteer in its army or on its kibbutzim, sign its petitions, share its propaganda. We have to dive gleefully into the supermarkets and fill our trolleys with houmous to break the boycott. We have to suffer, out here in the desert, trapped with a strange people, so that it can have its reason to exist. We are unable to speak, and so the state of Israel will speak for us: it knows what we want better than we do ourselves, and what we want is war.

Valley's Diaspora Boy:

[ad hoc]

US Government is trying to label Amnesty, Oxfam, HRW as anti semitic
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/1...semitic-430882

[Nefertiti2]

Thread on this

https://twitter.com/larafriedmandc/status/1319283022101766145?s=21

[ursus arctos]

They are burning the house down on the way out

[Nefertiti2]

meanwhile the Jewish Chronicle keeps getting penalised, or forced to pay libel damages for false accusations of anti-semitism

https://twitter.com/RivkahBrown/status/1319303109496143877?s=20

[Nefertiti2]

See for example Nada Al Sanjari

and Audrey White

[Nefertiti2]

https://twitter.com/jrc1921/status/1319601188589928448?s=21

[S. aureus]

I'm probably missing something here, but what's the deal with your last post Nef?

[NHH]

I presume it's Riley celebrating the victory of Johnson

[S. aureus]

Ah, OK, that explains the connection I was missing.

[Toby Gymshorts]

I presume it's Riley celebrating the victory of Johnson

Which has gone terribly well for everyone.

[Nefertiti2]

yes it's Riley suggesting someehow it was a great victory. for Britain and its Jewish population to elect an open antisemite with policies that condemn many children including Jewish children to poverty and destitution

https://twitter.com/jewdas/status/1319678458545512449?s=20

[Nefertiti2]

This report is important and quite scary-how the far right are ( pretending to Love Israel

https://twitter.com/emtravelodge/status/1326549454518804480?s=21

[Nefertiti2]

Excellent thread by Barnaby Raine (again)

https://twitter.com/BarnabyRaine/status/1326859667042078725?s=20

[MsD]

I've had a ridiculous spat with David Hirsh today. Actually another person was accusing me of a/s and challenged me as to whether I'd read the most important work on antisemitism in the last 50 years. I reeled off a few of my favourite political/cultural theorist authors and asked him to whom he was referring, and he came back with David Hirsh's book on Contemporary Left Antisemitism (is that the title?). I responded immediately, "oh, David Hirsh of Goldsmiths", but then said "he's no Adorno, is he?" and another fairly dismissive comment (I honestly don't rate the book), not realising Hirsh had been tagged in. He sulkily accused me of "smearing" him as a "second rater", which means that in his head, he is indeed a first rater up there with Adorno, Fisher, Arendt, Benjamin, Levi and whoever else I'd mentioned.
Anyway he's blocked me now. :-)

[Nefertiti2]

I've had a ridiculous spat with David Hirsh today. Actually another person was accusing me of a/s and challenged me as to whether I'd read the most important work on antisemitism in the last 50 years. I reeled off a few of my favourite political/cultural theorist authors and asked him to whom he was referring, and he came back with David Hirsh's book on Contemporary Left Antisemitism (is that the title?). I responded immediately, "oh, David Hirsh of Goldsmiths", but then said "he's no Adorno, is he?" and another fairly dismissive comment (I honestly don't rate the book), not realising Hirsh had been tagged in. He sulkily accused me of "smearing" him as a "second rater", which means that in his head, he is indeed a first rater up there with Adorno, Fisher, Arendt, Benjamin, Levi and whoever else I'd mentioned.
Anyway he's blocked me now. :-)

David Hirsh is vile

[MsD]

Yes. Even allowing for the fact that we're never going to agree, politically, he's happy to encourage out and out trolls, as long as they pretend to have read his fucking book. It was quite amusing in retrospect that they kept snitch-tagging him into spats with me, which just guaranteed that he was going to get more and more insulted - apparently, saying someone is "no Adorno" is "abuse" so his skin must be thin as a Rizla.

Nothing much to see, but I had a bunch of them on me last night, trying to ridicule the fact that I currently have a picture of my bookshelf in my profile. I've had various things there but I find books pleasing, and yeh, it is partly to deter people from thinking I'm stupid. But for supposed educated men - QCs, no less - to be trying to ridicule me for reading is kinda weird. It seems none of these proud Jewish scholars have ever heard of Walter Benjamin, one of my favourite theorists. One disappeared for a while, which makes me suspect he was Googling book titles to throw at me and then accuse me of not reading; well, tough shit because I'd included one in a paper I'd written.

What a pathetic bunch.

[Nefertiti2]

https://twitter.com/joshualeifer/status/1354452980909568000?s=20

[Nefertiti2]

https://twitter.com/jdportes/status/1355237755240984587?s=20

[Gangster Octopus]

Corbyn!

[MsD]

R*ch*l R*l*y is one of several people sharing a bullshit rightist story about Ethnic Studies being taught in California and the curriculum erasing some aspects of Jewish experience, whilst promoting other groups.

I’ve responded by quoting 3 Jews who disagree strongly, and there are many people who’ve countered the story point by point. My Tweet’s here if you want to trace back the story, or the people I quoted.

[Nefertiti2]

Riley and co were always far closer to the far right than was plesaant.

If you are a Zionist to Rileyesque proportions then you are in bed with Trump, Netnyahu and Kahane.


thanks for doing that MsD

[Satchmo Distel]

Baddiel has just brought out a book called 'Jews Don't Count' - 'How identity politics failed one particular identity.'

Review: ‘Just so brilliantly argued and written, I was completely swept along’ - Hadley Freeman

[Nefertiti2]

Riley thinks it’s great

as does Baddiel’s daughter

https://twitter.com/rachelrileyrr/status/1354570697717252097?s=21

they are so oppressed aren’t they? Baddiel able to have a post. Cambridge comedy career without ever having to apologise for his blackface racism