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Everything is black and white, gray is for apologists, then?
"It's complicated"
-Every fascist defending fascism
Ah yes, calling a stranger a Nazi on the Internet. A compelling point
Maybe you should get a new playbook if you don't like it
I am not a Nazi, but you are a caricature of an internet argument
Just to reflect that a bit, I didn't call anyone a 'nazi'. I said that "it's complicated" is a fascist talking point.
The parallels between Fascism/Nazism and 🇮🇱 Zionism are indisputable @AntiOutsideAktion but not really relevant. Zionist hasbara introduces complications as distraction.
For example; arguing about, who was "there" "first", then introducing ancient mythology (which actually tends to disprove their arguments).
It's pretty cut and dry that the original Zionists were anti-yiddish anti-Communist anti-semites that allied with prominent anti-semites against diaspora in order to pursue their settler-colonial project, which the Nazis gleefully worked for.
You see, many of the original Zionists were Jewish, it's literally not so cut and dry.
Yes, antisemetic Jewish people living in different countries deliberately spreading antisemetic lies that they can't integrate and need an ethnostate. The fact that they were Jewish doesn't make settler-colonial genocide "not cut and dry."
So, your argument that it's not complicated is that Israel was founded by antisemitic Jews? I'm not even saying that you're factually wrong, but you keep insisting that this isn't complicated. It is complicated, and the more you insist that it's simple, while giving increasing amounts of fine details is not particularly convincing
The fact that Germany is supporting Zionism as they always have even under the Nazis is uncomplicated.
I think you'll find that all of the "original Zionists" were Christian @GarrulousBrevity
What we now call "Zionism" grew after the Protestant Reformation, and is rooted in 17th-century English Puritanism.It had two significant streams:
- the return of Jews to Palestine (basically, a way to rid Europe of its Jews - a form of antisemitism, a couple of centuries before that term was coined);
- the second coming of Jesus (Jews who want to survive don't remain Jewish).
At the time, Jewish communities weren't impressed. In the 19th century, Herzl and his friends exploited the movement to their own ends.
@CowbeeTheodor Herzl, considered the grandfather of modern zionism, was an atheist
I think you're conflating being Jewish with Judaism. His religious beliefs aren't really what's in question here, @[email protected]'s comment sums the idea up well. Herzl was, with no ambiguity, a member of the Jewish community.
I'm not conflating at all.
A common theme with zionists, that Herzl himself also said, is that the land was promised to them by God
I don't want to sound like a contrarian, but I'm struggling to figure out how this relates to the previous comments.
I will say, as much as I am being argued with for saying that the history of Germany's history with Israel is complex, and the history of Zionism is complex, no one is really responding in a way that doesn't sound like the Charlie Day red string board meme.
When I look at the current state of Israel and Palestine, I see a lot of people backed into corners. Netanyahu knows that if he loses power, he'll be arrested for corruption, so will do anything to support his base, who are the worst of the Zionists this thread is about, so he only has an incentive to continue butchering Palestinians.
I see the US not wanting a nuclear armed Israel to feel that they are out of defensive options against their neighboring countries, and as such feels a need to keep supplying weapons and intelligence so that Israel is only, merely, butchering Palestinians, instead of something worse.
I see the Palestinians being sacrificed, which is causing some of them to need to fight back, so they're radicalized, and join Hezbollah.
And I see the rest of the region wanting to punish Israel for their heinous actions.
And looking at this as a US citizen, my experience is that the people who want to make it look like the solution to solving this is easy, are also usually trying to get you to vote for Jill Stein, and I'm not convinced that it isn't an astro-turfed movement to push for spoiler votes to get Trump in office.
I would like it if we could say the situation is nuanced, and then talk about the nuance, rather than scream that it's cut and dry
@Tangentism
It was Ilan Pappé, I think, who quipped:
"Zionists don't believe in God, but they'll all tell you that God gave them Israel."
🇮🇱 Zionists are as Jewish as is convenient at any moment.
@GarrulousBrevity
When it comes to settler-colonialism --- it literally is black and white. Both in the "epidermalization" of colonial dehumanization unfolding in history as white supremacy vs black and brown inferiority; but also in the fabric of colonialism and colonial relations in general. The colonizer makes the colonized into the embodiment of all evil, so the colonizer can be the embodiment of all good in oppressing them. "Civilization vs barbarity" as espoused by all European colonialists and likewise espoused by the earliest (explicitly settler-colonial) Zionists like Theodor Herzl, who wrote in such terms to arch-racist and settler-colonial genocidaire Cecil Rhodes asking for support; as well as stated explicitly now by Netanyahu in public international forums and to US congress.
Those "civilized" colonialists engage in worse barbarism than any of their victims could have imagined; and need necessarily for their victims to be made into an effigy of irredeemable unsolvable-but-through-violence evil to escape the dissonance and contradiction. And this contradiction between the inherent inner-demand of the colonized to embrace, embody, and express their humanity against the inherent and inherently violent colonial dehumanization perpetrated and perpetuated against them by the colonizer sharpens itself, by the resistance of the colonized producing fear and anger in the colonizer, and indignation that the "civilized good" would be challenged and assailed by the "barbarous bad," and as such this is taken as PROOF of the inhumanity and savagery of the colonial subject; and so reprisals are carried out to reestablish the existing exploitation and dehumanization and further deepen and entrench it. And in doing so, the colonialist becomes more the embodiment and executor of the 'barbarism and inhumanity' that they project onto the colonized, which then spurs more resistance in the colonized against their own dehumanization.
In this way colonialism and the colonial relationship dehumanizes both the colonized and the colonizer, in very black and white ways. The colonized only regain their humanity by realizing and embracing the truth of their own humanity in defiance to the colonizer's violence-backed assertions (in word and deed) of the inhumanity of the colonized. And in doing so, the colonized realizes that it is infact the colonizer who lacks humanity, by engaging in violently stripping and denying the humanity of the colonized for their own gain; and it is the colonizer who is the embodiment of the evil that is projected onto the victim; and hating them is righteous because to embrace and assert the colonized subject's own humanity is to accept and express-in-full the total intolerability and grotesque violent reality of the colonial relationship. And the full expression of this acceptance means the full-frontal challenge and assault upon the very core structures of colonialism and the colonizers in the only language it and they understand --- which is violence. The colonized is only able to embody and express their full humanity when they cease to be colonized; which means the ceasing, through any means necessary, of the colonizer and the colonial relationship. Which is and has always been maintained through extreme violence; and as such can only be overcome by more extreme and greater violence which is sufficiently organized and strategically, tactically, and politically educated and disciplined to overcome the immense power imbalance arrayed against them. This is a material reality, and a historically borne-out reality.
The colonizer likewise can only regain their humanity through being destroyed as colonizer. Whether that is through:
- destruction of the individual (in which they bleed and die like any other human being, they regain their connection to humanity, and to their own humanity; death being the great equalizer)
- or through surrender to the terms of the colonized and abolishment of the colonial relationship which means abolishment of the pre-existing power dynamic and total unequivocal submission to the new rule of the previously-subjugated, in which by accepting surrendering of any and all special privileges over another human being, they become equal to other humans, reconnected to humanity and to their own humanity
- or otherwise fleeing or being expelled in sufficient numbers that the colonial regime collapses, in which the previous-colonizers, in their new places of refuge, will not and can not maintain the same differential of violence and power that they had left behind over the local population, their new neighbors. The local population, established and entrenched with sovereign governance, would not tolerate those welcomed in to wage a violent colonial dehumanization campaign for exploitation, and the previous-colonizer, understanding this, accepts their new station as equal to other human beings, and so the previous-colonizer, is a *previous-*colonizer ie not any longer a colonizer, and as such regains their connection to humanity and to their own humanity.
As the colonizer, benefiting immensely in material terms from being the colonizer in the colonial relationship, is loathe to give it up, this can only ever be done through organized violence against them, combined with sufficient threat of its expansion and continuation out-competing and out-stripping the total capability for the colonial military, police, and settler-militias to continue on in the way they had previously, and out-stripping the ability for the colonizer's foreign sponsors to maintain or justify domestically maintaining the colonial project which itself necessarily requires wildly disproportionate and extreme violence, oppression and repressions, in order to enforce the implicit understanding of "the proper place" of the colonized, and make the colonizer and the colonial relationship seem to the colonized as unassailable and eternal as if it were a fundamental law of nature.
This is also why historically, in independence and decolonization struggles and uprisings, for every 10 colonizers killed, 400 colonized are killed and entire villages burned or bulldozed in reprisal, and their bodies made symbols of "what might happen to you if you raise your head like they did." It is a deliberate reassertion of the colonial relationship of the superior vs the inferior, the human vs the inhuman, the powerful vs the weak. But the reality of this relationship is ineffable, can not be spoken of in these clear (real) terms, because the implication of its naked reality inherently proves the inhumanity of the colonizer and undermines their basis of being the 'eternal good against the eternal bad;' but and even more urgently, this real reality of the colonial relationship being known is damning for the colonizer, as it proves the necessity on the part of the colonized to engage in violent armed struggle with extreme severity against the colonizer to win the humanity that is denied them, and which will otherwise never be won. In all of this, it is very black and white.
I highly recommend reading Frantz Fanon for more understanding of colonialism and settler-colonialism in these ways; and the dialectical nature of the relationships and psychologies between the colonizer and colonized. Right now resources are up on the Internet Archive. The Wretched of the Earth (which should be required reading for anyone in the west to be honest); and Black Skin, White Masks are essential to speak with knowledge on these relationships if you're not subject to them, and so live the experiences; though the texts can give language and concrete materialist analysis to those lived experiences and so are valuable regardless. Fanon was writing about the Algerian independence struggle but the concepts are as universal as European colonialism is. It has inspired many anti-colonial revolutionary struggles since his time, including as a core inspiration for the Black Panther Party and Black Liberation Army. It is necessary to engage with these works to understand colonialism.
If you then feel inclined to broaden understanding of the material interests of organized society and build out understanding of the underlying economic systems and frameworks behind the evolution of these colonial and imperial states coming into being into a 'wider picture,' Marx and Lenin can help; but I don't think they are at all necessary precursors, as Fanon does an immense deal of his own unique legwork to illustrate everything cohesively without need for external resource; and does an excellent job of encapsulating and expressing his own analyses in a concrete historical and dialectical materialist methodological framework himself without additional work of the reader, and simply "stretching" Marxist conceptions where it didn't reach far enough or grip the road enough in order to encompass colonialism and independence struggles in its actual internal relationships-between-peoples --- as Marx mostly spoke of colonialism in broad terms of how it served the primitive accumulation of capital on which the industrial revolution was built and so followed the division of society into bourgeoisie and proletariat classes; and that the self-liberation of proletariat could only happen through first the liberation of slaves, as a necessity of historical evolution of societal social relations. Lenin wrote about nations' right to self-determination and the capitalist evolution into capitalist-imperialism; though with a more external and structural perspective in broad political conceptions relevant to the revolutions in Europe and Eurasia during his time. Exceedingly incisive and still-valuable information, but is less focused and relevant to the topic of the relationships themselves. But if you struggle with Fanon, some basic Marx and Lenin might help lay a foundation.
There is nothing inherently correct or false when it comes to black and white vs. gray. These are not real moral or epistemological quantities. Sometimes there are salient and clear-cut characterizations and this is the better way to think of a topic. Sometimes it is better to adopt multiple angles because no single view is usefully capturing a topic.
Instead of being indirect and appealing to false logic, why not just say what you actually find objectionable?