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So basically the usual zionist hostility towards logical conclusions based on mountains of credible evidence. Except taken to 11.
Extremely unfun fact: Zionism and the aggressively counterfactual defense of it is the number one cause of ACTUAL antisemitism in the world.
Some people who have never been bigoted before start at justified outrage at the atrocities committed by the fascist apartheid regime in charge of Israel and go down rabbit holes conflating Israel and all Jewish people, leading to some of the most disgusting conspiracy theories in existence.
Militant zionism is also great at creating terrorists
Absolutely!
All kinds of violent suppression is, but the sheer scale, audacity and inhumanity as well as the complicity of most of the richest and most powerful countries in the world makes for an especially potent recipe for the kind of trauma and feelings of helplessness that leads to the extreme radicalization of oppressed people
I have found myself wondering if Israel's actions are causing Hamas to grow faster than they can kill its members. Where's the saying come from, "one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter"? Were my family and friends being killed just for existing, with the sole excuse being that there might possibly have been terrorists in the area maybe, I can't say I'd be content to sit idly by to watch others suffer the same. And I suspect I'm not alone in that.
It absolutely is creating more terrorists than they kill members of Hamas.
But, also, Hamas is the government. Being Hamas doesn't mean you're military. There's loads of people who work for Hamas that are not terrorists, just like there's loads of people working for the US government who are not terrorists. Hamas includes social workers, doctors, sanitation workers, etc
Both through direct recruitment and by radicalizing their enemies.
Do you have a source about the Zionism thing? Because antisemitism was alive and well for most of western history. And for me personally seeing Israel starve a bunch of children in Gaza make me hate Israel / IDF, not the Jewish baker down the street.
So was anti-Teutonism and anti-Sinoism and anti-Americanism for that matter. I'm not sure you can absolve the Jewish state of its crimes by pointing to a rival clan of bigots.
Part of the problem with Zionism (and other ultra-nationalist movements), is how it deliberately works to draw sharp lines between people globally in order to justify horrifying colonial violence locally. I've got Jewish neighbors and family who are very weird on Israel specifically, because they've considered a Jewish State a source of pride for so much of their lives. You can't really address the Gaza Genocide without getting an earful about how Palestinians started it and Arabs deserve it.
In the same way, seeing my state government persecute trans people and black/hispanic minorities can't mentally be divorced from a Texas baker down the street waving a little Trump flag.
Well, the Trump flag changes a lot. It's like the Jewish baker having "death to Arabs" on his window. But then your feelings are not about race or ethnicity, it's about the beliefs that person have.
Given the state of Israeli foreign policy, it's not hard to read their flag that way.
Beliefs informed by the family race and ethnicity
So... racism?
I don't know if it's the number one cause, but it has definitely caused me to have some antisemitic thoughts before I caught myself doing it and started making a serious mental effort to always distinguish between Zionism, Judaism, and Jewish ethnicity. Nothing else has ever caused me to give credence to racist ideas.
It also seems pretty obvious to me that it contributes to antisemitism when monsters like Netanyahu are allowed to get away with claiming they represent all Jews.
gestures vaguely at every Zionist conflating Israel with all Jewish people
You can't just pretend that committing a laundry list of atrocities is acceptable while calling yourself representative of a wider group of people without some of the less discerning and/or more conspiracy-minded people taking you at your word and resenting the people as a whole.
Not saying that antisemitism is in any way acceptable, of course, but just like brutal oppression breeds terrorism, committing or defending things that should never be accepted while saying that you represent all of Jewdom is going to teach some people the wrong lessons.
Yes, and it has traditionally been mostly caused by the othering of Jewish people by conservative clergy or politicians trying to keep their "flock" in check, but that's not the main cause anymore.
While the "traditional" causes still exist, in a world where most people can read about and watch atrocities on TV, the Hasbara talking points meant to mollify and deceive the masses are no longer working, so instead of convincing people that the atrocities are necessary for Jewish people to be safe, some people are being convinced of another lie: that the atrocities are the kind every Jewish person would do if given the chance
Same here, but not everyone is able and willing to make that distinction while the war criminals themselves and their most ardent defenders keep insisting that there's no difference.
Oh, Antisemitism is still used for that.
Especially from the christian and muslim right.
The thing is, gesturing vaguely at something we thing is obvious, is not really a source. Even 1+1=2 has to be proven. I suspect that Zionism is just used as a pretext to be antisemitic by people who were going to anyways. But I also don't have any data to back it up.
Disclaimer: This is off-topic.
How do you prove this? Through definitions? An appeal to authority is not valid proof.
This line of reasoning reminds me of when people were saying the "square root of 2 isn't 1 because mathematical scholars say so"...No, it's by definition not one. Count one thing one time, how many things have you counted? One.
I don't need a source or an authority for that nor for 1+1=2. I need to understand the basic definitions and concepts.
The proof is something like 300+ pages long and they needed to invent a few new branches of mathematics to reach the end, because it's strictly not based on appeal to authority. I didn't even try to understand it, but it's a cool piece of trivia.
It's a basic property of counting though, right?
I mean I understand that there are academic standards of proof, but the idea that those are necessary for casual conversations about easily understood concepts is pretty ridiculous.
It seems like one of those bojack memes where the drooling person at the one end and the Jedi at the other end would both say just count a couple of rocks and the nerd in between would be saying write a 300-page proof.
Things like basic property of counting are not mathematical strict definitions.
Relying on "dude, it's obvious" doesn't work in science, you need to prove things. Otherwise you'd think a feather and a cannonball always fall a different speeds, for instance.
Mathematics isn't an empirical science.
And you're trying to prove that mathematics works the same way as physics weirdly with regards to proof? It doesn't. You do proofs in precalculus and none of them involve dropping cannonballs and feathers from the ceiling.
But again, we're not talking about an environment where formal proofs are necessary. This is social media, we're a link under cat photos.
My point is broader, you need data and rigor, not "dude, just look at it".
And my point is that you don't need data and rigor for every single discussion.
For something so sensitive, I like to have it. I won't accept any broad generalization unless backed by a reputable study.
You're kinda sensitive about everything. You want a 300-page thesis before acknowledging that 1+1=2.
Which it's kinda funny, this whole thing has been an aside but like...you said you tried to read it and didn't really understand it. Is that really what you need to have a casual conversation about something? A proof, study, or document too long or complicated for you to be able to prove it's wrong?
I don't want it, I said that it exists and it was needed because science it's an exact thing that requires proofs, experiments and data. What I want is any data that shows that Zionism causes a rise in Antisemitism, because I haven't seen any change. I only got "trust me bro" so far.
I also use electricity without knowing how a nuclear reactor works, if you want to criticize that.
I'm not quite sure that belief in zionism is measurable, but I'm sure you can find a source about antisemitism and zionist actions by Israel.
Anecdotally, I haven't seen as many "stop the hate" campaigns that are basically about antisemitism as I have since the major military actions started in the Gaza in my lifetime.
I'd look it up if I really cared anything about the outcome of the discussion but it really doesn't interest me that much to be honest.
Fair enough. I did look for sources (one Google search to be precise) and haven't found anything, so what we have is a bunch of anecdotal data that hardly serves as basis for any wide-reaching conclusions.
There is no "source" for the claim that zionism drives anti-semitism. It's outside the realm of objective science. But it seems pretty obvious that a bunch of genocidal wackos claiming to represent judaism is bad for jews.
It is often used by antisemites to disguise their antisemitism as valid criticism of zionism.
That validity ends, once you attack any Jew for their Jewishness, attribute any wrongdoing of Jews to their Jewishness or straight up insult other people as "Jews".
That's an option article, same as we are writing here. There could be statistics relating anti-semitic attacks to Israels activity, for instance. Claiming something is outside of objective science is a very lazy cope-out.
Yeah, it's not like there's a lot of people honestly and precisely detailing how they developed their bigoted attitudes. That doesn't mean that you can't reason your way to a logical conclusion, though.
This is a place where you need data, not reasoning to a plausible conclusion.
No, this (ascertaining the underlying causes of bigotry) is a place where definitive data by definition can't exist and thus logically reaching the most probable conclusion based on what IS known must take its place.
I'm trying to assume that your demands for the impossible are in good faith, but it's getting difficult .
As I said before, claiming data can't exist is a lazy cope-out. I also presented an example of data that could work: antisemitic attacks per day vs activity of Israel in Gaza, plotted over time. Just an example, I'm no sociologist.
As far as bad faith reading goes, ignoring the word "definitive" to make your strawman fit is up there 🙄
Nobody ever told you the difference between correlation and causation or the fact that bigotry consists of SO much more than just overt violence, did they?
It's clear that nothing good will come from continuing to indulge you, so I'm gonna go now. Have the day you deserve.
I repeat: just one example.
Expect the accusations of antisemitism to extend to pedophilia, anti-white racism, and communism soon.
You mean like they haven't already? I've been hearing it for at least a few years now unfortunately.
Counterpoint. It's the latest entry point to indoctrinate new bigots and the millionth scapegoating.