antisemitism

Hannukah

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On the first day of Hannukah, 15 people including a child and a Holocaust survivor were killed for being Jewish. A Muslim man intervened to save lives which is good but the situation is still horrible, horrible, horrible.

On the second day of Hannukah Jewish-American film director Rob Reiner and his wife Michele were murdered by their own son. More horror. “President” Trump reacted to this with a post so obnoxious, crude, nasty and egocentric it boggles the mind. Nothing will happen, and he will face no consequences.

I had a busy weekend. I gave most of my old Barbie dolls to a child of my acquaintance (kept Mermaid Barbie), saw The Muppet Christmas Carol in a historic building, put the Christmas Tree up. When I was a kid my family used to celebrate Christmas over several consecutive days, which I think was a leftover from the Hannukahs my mum used to have. But who knows?

Roald Dahl family sorry for author’s anti-Semitic remarks — BBC News – Home

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The family have apologised for “prejudiced remarks” made by the writer, who died 30 years ago.

Roald Dahl family sorry for author’s anti-Semitic remarks — BBC News – Home

So this is kind of an interesting story. They said,

“Those prejudiced remarks are incomprehensible to us and stand in marked contrast to the man we knew and to the values at the heart of Roald Dahl’s stories, which have positively impacted young people for generations.

“We hope that, just as he did at his best, at his absolute worst, Roald Dahl can help remind us of the lasting impact of words.”

And I’ve seen people say it’s too little too late, and I can see why, but man… I suppose the anti-Semitism must have been bafflingly hard to reconcile for his family since he seemed to be quite anti-prejudice in some of his works. And fought against the Nazis in WW2.

It’s one of those depressing reminders that some people will just have inexplicable hatred for a whole group for absolutely no reason, I guess.

Burying the lead here

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“Nearly two-thirds of young Americans do not know that six million Jews were murdered in the Holocaust.” Don’t get me wrong, that’s really bad. But what’s much worse is the rest of the data:

….more than one in 10 believe Jews caused the Holocaust, a new survey has found, revealing shocking levels of ignorance about the greatest crime of the 20th century.

[…]

Almost a quarter of respondents (23%) said they believed the Holocaust was a myth, or had been exaggerated, or they weren’t sure.

From The Guardian

And (to me at least) that’s the really terrifying thing here. Ignorance of how many Jewish people were murdered, that’s the sort of thing that can be fixed reasonably easily. And a generous interpretation this may be, but also I suspect there’s a lot of young people out there who can’t really even conceptualise six million people being killed in one go. So there’s that, but the rest – the fact that people believe Jews caused the Holocaust even – that’s not ignorance. That’s spite, malice, brainwashing, lies.

That can’t be easily fixed. That’s the part we should be focusing on.

(Names are not blurred out)

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I had this interaction on Reddit a couple of days ago, on a post about the story of a Holocaust survivor. That was all it was, just a video about a Holocaust survivor’s story. First came this (deleted now):

Then a long list of links to Jewish-related Reddit posts from him, then-

Jean Paul-Sartre, 1944:

“Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.”


…

Here’s the video in question. And… you know, that first string of garbage wasn’t even it, the first comment chain beneath this video involved a Holocaust joke, a few comments down and there was more deleted outright fascist-sounding stuff. All because a Jewish person was talking. I’m only part Jewish but man I’m always appalled to see things like this, out in the open, intimidating and disconcerting.

Do watch the video if you can. Suzanne Ripton (who is still alive, as far as I know) deserves so much better than to have her story shouted down.

[sigh]

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Today there was some rather bleak news regarding a culture of antisemitism at a family member’s workplace. As in, people doing the kinda stuff you would absolutely be fired for if someone found out. (The offenders don’t know my family member actually is part Jewish, and now they never will.) So – yeah, a depressing snapshot of life right now I guess. And that’s without getting into the news headlines from the past two days.

Paper drops columnist after article described as anti-semitic and sexist

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Paper drops columnist after article described as anti-semitic and sexist

chaotic-good-milk-hotel:

sarah531:

sarah531:

In case you’re wondering what it said:

Well surely no-one investigating his past for other instances of anti-semitism will come up with anything else that bad!

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Oh.

How the hell was he not sacked after writing that first article? Just what the actual fuck?

That’s the part that infuriates me the most, too. Apparently the gist of it (it’s been taken down now in the wake of the other one) is something along the lines of “fine I’ll concede that SOME Jews were murdered but you can’t call it a Holocaust because blah blah blah irrelevant pedantry” and I just. Can’t. I want the editors who okayed it raked over the coals as well.

 

Paper drops columnist after article described as anti-semitic and sexist

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Paper drops columnist after article described as anti-semitic and sexist

sarah531:

In case you’re wondering what it said:

Well surely no-one investigating his past for other instances of anti-semitism will come up with anything else that bad!

image

Oh.

 

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