I’ve never thought it fair or reasonable that the Jews have their own word for racism or supposedly committing racist actions against Jews is worse than committing the same act to others.
Tbh, it used to be justified, and in some circumstances it still is justified.
Jews used to be the biggest “live-in” minority in Europe. So, a minority that lives in the same country and doesn’t have a separate homeland. Kinda similar to black people in the USA. Contrary to regular migration, groups like that can’t return home and they can’t just assimilate.
If you look at regular migration, if someone’s family has lived in the country for 4 generations, they aren’t foreigners any more. Someone might say they have a Polish grandma, or they might say they are of Italian ancestry, but they aren’t Polish or Italian themselves any more.
Jews, especially before WW2, couldn’t do that. They were a discriminated against minority that was kept separate of the rest of society. A bit like black people in the USA after slavery was abolished.
So racism against them was a whole other order than the regular racism/xenophobia faced by other immigrants.
WW2 showed how bad that special kind of racism turned out to be, but WW2 wasn’t an isolated event in time or location. Anti-Semitism had been rampant for centuries if not millennia before that, and it wasn’t just localized to Germany. Just read up on e.g. Henry Ford, just to pick a random name from the bucket.
That said, things have shifted after WW2. Specifically antisemitic laws are pretty much gone in the western world, religion in general is not nearly as critically important as it was and there are now more than enough people of Jewish descent in the western world who don’t identify as Jews or who aren’t noticeable as Jews. And for a large part, society has accepted a special “protection” status for Jews to prevent a second Holocaust.
In consequence, the hate against Jews has mostly shifted into hate against Muslims, and many far-right/right-extremist people are now arguing that they can’t be Nazis because they now don’t hate Jews but instead hate Muslims. As if the problem with the Nazis wasn’t genocide and suppression of minorities, but instead genocide and suppression of Jews specifically.
But yeah, Nazis will be Nazis, and they will argue in bad faith to justify themselves. Nothing new there.
The person you are responding to characterized antisemitism as “supposedly committing racist actions” which is an ignorant and hateful thing. You are arguing whether or not the existence of a word “still is justified”. Words don’t need to be justified or not; they go in or out of favor based on utility.
As if the problem with the Nazis wasn’t genocide and suppression of minorities, but instead genocide and suppression of Jews specifically.
This holocaust denialism. One of the major and specific problems with the nazis was their attitude regarding jews. They didn’t have a problem with “minorities”. They used long standing conspiratorial intolerance to consolidate power into the hands of their minority.
One of the reasons israel thinks it can keep riding the “everything is antisemetic” horse is because of how comfortable people clearly are with actual anti semitism.
This holocaust denialism. One of the major and specific problems with the nazis was their attitude regarding jews. They didn’t have a problem with “minorities”. They used long standing conspiratorial intolerance to consolidate power into the hands of their minority.
I think you missed my point. For one, Nazis didn’t only want to exterminate Jews. Roma, Sinti, homosexuals, communists and disabled people (just to name a few other groups) were also on the chopping block.
But my main point here was that if the holocaust wasn’t about killing Jews but instead about exterminating the French, it would have been just as horrible and Nazis would have been just as horrible.
You are arguing whether or not the existence of a word “still is justified”. Words don’t need to be justified or not; they go in or out of favor based on utility.
No, I’m not arguing about the justification of the existence of the word, but of the applicability of the concept. Slavery is still a word and we still all know the word, no question about that, but at least in Europe, legalized slavery isn’t really a concept we need to put a lot of political effort into, because it doesn’t exist any more.
The concept is not applicable to today. We don’t need to have laws governing how slaves are treated, how the process of freeing slaves go, how former slaves are treated in society. We don’t even need to have discussions about that topic, because there’s no legalized slavery any more.
And in the same vein I think it’s justified to think about whether Jews really still need this protected status over e.g. Muslims or refugees. At least over here, it’s not so rare that e.g. refugee homes are set on fire by right-wing extremists. All sorts of Jewish institutions in my city have a permanent police guard stationed outside of them to protect them from potential attacks, even though they haven’t really happened in decades, while mosques or refugee homes usually don’t have that.
A similar thing is happening on a grander scale with Israel and its neighbours. They’ve been squashing Palestine under their heels for decades, but in false anti-antisemitism the governments of countries like Germany have been agreeing with everything Israel’s government does, because Jews are the better minority and Muslims are sub-human, or something like that.
So my point is not “does the word antisemitism has a place in the dictionary”, but instead “do Jews need this higher protection status over everyone else, or is there maybe another group that could need protection as well/more?”
I’ve never thought it fair or reasonable that the Jews have their own word for racism or supposedly committing racist actions against Jews is worse than committing the same act to others.
the existence of a specific term is due to pervasive and long standing existence of antisemitism in Europe.
Tbh, it used to be justified, and in some circumstances it still is justified.
Jews used to be the biggest “live-in” minority in Europe. So, a minority that lives in the same country and doesn’t have a separate homeland. Kinda similar to black people in the USA. Contrary to regular migration, groups like that can’t return home and they can’t just assimilate.
If you look at regular migration, if someone’s family has lived in the country for 4 generations, they aren’t foreigners any more. Someone might say they have a Polish grandma, or they might say they are of Italian ancestry, but they aren’t Polish or Italian themselves any more.
Jews, especially before WW2, couldn’t do that. They were a discriminated against minority that was kept separate of the rest of society. A bit like black people in the USA after slavery was abolished.
So racism against them was a whole other order than the regular racism/xenophobia faced by other immigrants.
WW2 showed how bad that special kind of racism turned out to be, but WW2 wasn’t an isolated event in time or location. Anti-Semitism had been rampant for centuries if not millennia before that, and it wasn’t just localized to Germany. Just read up on e.g. Henry Ford, just to pick a random name from the bucket.
That said, things have shifted after WW2. Specifically antisemitic laws are pretty much gone in the western world, religion in general is not nearly as critically important as it was and there are now more than enough people of Jewish descent in the western world who don’t identify as Jews or who aren’t noticeable as Jews. And for a large part, society has accepted a special “protection” status for Jews to prevent a second Holocaust.
In consequence, the hate against Jews has mostly shifted into hate against Muslims, and many far-right/right-extremist people are now arguing that they can’t be Nazis because they now don’t hate Jews but instead hate Muslims. As if the problem with the Nazis wasn’t genocide and suppression of minorities, but instead genocide and suppression of Jews specifically.
But yeah, Nazis will be Nazis, and they will argue in bad faith to justify themselves. Nothing new there.
The person you are responding to characterized antisemitism as “supposedly committing racist actions” which is an ignorant and hateful thing. You are arguing whether or not the existence of a word “still is justified”. Words don’t need to be justified or not; they go in or out of favor based on utility.
This holocaust denialism. One of the major and specific problems with the nazis was their attitude regarding jews. They didn’t have a problem with “minorities”. They used long standing conspiratorial intolerance to consolidate power into the hands of their minority.
One of the reasons israel thinks it can keep riding the “everything is antisemetic” horse is because of how comfortable people clearly are with actual anti semitism.
I think you missed my point. For one, Nazis didn’t only want to exterminate Jews. Roma, Sinti, homosexuals, communists and disabled people (just to name a few other groups) were also on the chopping block.
But my main point here was that if the holocaust wasn’t about killing Jews but instead about exterminating the French, it would have been just as horrible and Nazis would have been just as horrible.
No, I’m not arguing about the justification of the existence of the word, but of the applicability of the concept. Slavery is still a word and we still all know the word, no question about that, but at least in Europe, legalized slavery isn’t really a concept we need to put a lot of political effort into, because it doesn’t exist any more.
The concept is not applicable to today. We don’t need to have laws governing how slaves are treated, how the process of freeing slaves go, how former slaves are treated in society. We don’t even need to have discussions about that topic, because there’s no legalized slavery any more.
And in the same vein I think it’s justified to think about whether Jews really still need this protected status over e.g. Muslims or refugees. At least over here, it’s not so rare that e.g. refugee homes are set on fire by right-wing extremists. All sorts of Jewish institutions in my city have a permanent police guard stationed outside of them to protect them from potential attacks, even though they haven’t really happened in decades, while mosques or refugee homes usually don’t have that.
A similar thing is happening on a grander scale with Israel and its neighbours. They’ve been squashing Palestine under their heels for decades, but in false anti-antisemitism the governments of countries like Germany have been agreeing with everything Israel’s government does, because Jews are the better minority and Muslims are sub-human, or something like that.
So my point is not “does the word antisemitism has a place in the dictionary”, but instead “do Jews need this higher protection status over everyone else, or is there maybe another group that could need protection as well/more?”
Maybe don’t commit hate crimes?