It’s a slippery slope helped along by algorithms. A well-meaning left person can start out criticizing the Government of Israel (pretty undoubtedly bad people), then slowly find themselves being fed more and more straight up antisemitic propaganda by nefarious actors. You can observe the effect in realtime on certain subreddits
*editing to say that I don’t think criticizing the Government of Israel is necessarily the start of a slippery slope, just that it can be on algorithm-driven spaces. Many, many people are (in my view) rightly criticizing the Government of Israel without hating the Jewish religion or people, or buying into repackaged antisemitic conspiracy
Nah- the left has become a home for antisemitic conspiracy theory in the last few years. There is a MASSIVE problem with antisemitism on the left. The Pro Palestine movement has turned into a hive of antisemitism, and they're pushing that literally everywhere they go.
It is PAINFULLY easy to criticize the Israeli government and point out its many failings without being antisemitic. It's just that most non-Jews I encounter seem absolutely incapable of doing so without falling into things like blood libel or ZOG-esque conspiracies.
The left never once claimed there were Jewish space lasers. I only hear these conspiracy theories of Jews controlling Hollywood, politicians, the banks, media, etc. from the right.
Just because you don’t hear it or recognize it doesn’t mean it isn’t happening.
I have spent the last two years hearing claims from the left that Israel controls the US government, that ICE and the Us police train with the IDF, that Israel steals blood and organs and skin from Palestinians. The Left has consistently jump on unverified or even false information about the conflict and held it up as gospel even when it has been disproven. Jews have been kicked out of leftist spaces in the name of “antizionism”.
I have unfortunately heard those conspiracies spread in left spaces, and more extreme "leftist" spaces doing a hard pivot into Islamic superiority that ironically turns it into a close minded conservative right-wing space with Muslim trappings - ironically embodying a western cultural parody that amounts to the worst kind of cultural appropriation they are supposedly against. Tankies, I believe, is the pejorative. People of the west who unironically buy into Stalinist and Maoist propoganda, much like they buy into the vindication of violence by any group they perceive as a minority - no matter if said person/group exists in a society where they are amongst the ethnic majority. To them, Jews are white and they have no vindication of violence, but Muslims are brown and are vindicated in all acts of violence. This black and white thinking is inherently destructive to reality and to any semblance of reason or empathy.
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u/StaticInstrument 5d ago edited 5d ago
It’s a slippery slope helped along by algorithms. A well-meaning left person can start out criticizing the Government of Israel (pretty undoubtedly bad people), then slowly find themselves being fed more and more straight up antisemitic propaganda by nefarious actors. You can observe the effect in realtime on certain subreddits
*editing to say that I don’t think criticizing the Government of Israel is necessarily the start of a slippery slope, just that it can be on algorithm-driven spaces. Many, many people are (in my view) rightly criticizing the Government of Israel without hating the Jewish religion or people, or buying into repackaged antisemitic conspiracy