Fooling our immune system against fascism? 'Philosemitism' and other far right tactics
Louise
Epiphanies Host
How do we protect ourselves against clever weaponisation by fascists of our own liberal ideas to fool us and promote fascism and attacks on their targets?
'Philosemitism' of the sort we see in American far right circles as discussed on the war in the middle east thread is in fact antisemitic (as multiple Jewish writers point out) and is also deliberately used as a strategy by the far right to fool people into not seeing the far right as the Nazis and fascists they are and recoiling immediately from them.
This is about disguising what the far right and fascists are and enabling their attacks on Muslims and others, but represents itself as being about protecting Jews.
It's a similar tactic to using 'freedom of speech' as a dogwhistle for what are actually blatant harassing attacks on women and minorities or pretending attacks on trans people are about 'women's rights'
These are ways of beating liberal/ centrist media 'immune systems' against fascism by disguising aspects of it as benign liberal concepts. It strategically wraps itself up in women's rights, freedom of speech and defending Israel's current far right government - representing that as defending all Jews.
Here's a key part of the executive summary from Hannah Rose of King's College London's long report on 'Philosemitism' Jews and the Far Right (it's a PDF). I've bolded some bits
https://icsr.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/ICSR-Report-The-New-Philosemitism-Exploring-a-Changing-Relationship-Between-Jews-and-the-Far-Right.pdf
It certainly beats our political immune systems quite well as people who'd never stand for Nazis will rush in to defend their 'freedom of speech' if someone puts a MAGA hat on it or pretends it's just 'being a conservative', despite the regime not only following the philosemitic antisemitism play book but also giving crucial posts to old school conspiratorial antisemites.
Being raised on WW2 history, as those of us of a certain generation were has, I think, in some ways backfired - fascism has become so popularly identified with swastikas and genocide of Jews that when it wraps itself in an Israeli flag, even when it already has concentration camps (in their original pre final solution form) and is pursuing expansionist war and media take-over for propaganda for a supreme leader it seems to succeed in many cases in fooling a democratic/liberal immune system which is meant to be primed against it into not recognising it as needing the same fight-back as Nazis.
At what point do we acknowledge that Trumpism is a modern day fascism? If we oppose platforming Nazis why do so many of us defend platforming Trumpists, and via that their attacks on women, minorities in our societies, people of colour elsewhere ( hit by DOGE cuts in aid) and Muslims who arent their petrodollar pals?
What's the difference, apart from they've not enacted a 'final solution' for American minorities yet? Do we have to wait for actual genocide when we see the precursors? Isn't the whole point of 'never again' to stop it before it gets to that point?
And where is our line for platforming them? At what point do you just say 'hell no' I'm not giving them a platform to spread these dehumanising and deadly attitudes and ideologies?
'Philosemitism' of the sort we see in American far right circles as discussed on the war in the middle east thread is in fact antisemitic (as multiple Jewish writers point out) and is also deliberately used as a strategy by the far right to fool people into not seeing the far right as the Nazis and fascists they are and recoiling immediately from them.
This is about disguising what the far right and fascists are and enabling their attacks on Muslims and others, but represents itself as being about protecting Jews.
It's a similar tactic to using 'freedom of speech' as a dogwhistle for what are actually blatant harassing attacks on women and minorities or pretending attacks on trans people are about 'women's rights'
These are ways of beating liberal/ centrist media 'immune systems' against fascism by disguising aspects of it as benign liberal concepts. It strategically wraps itself up in women's rights, freedom of speech and defending Israel's current far right government - representing that as defending all Jews.
Here's a key part of the executive summary from Hannah Rose of King's College London's long report on 'Philosemitism' Jews and the Far Right (it's a PDF). I've bolded some bits
https://icsr.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/ICSR-Report-The-New-Philosemitism-Exploring-a-Changing-Relationship-Between-Jews-and-the-Far-Right.pdf
• This new wave of Philosemitism is not a genuine and sincere positioning, but a strategic tool used by the far‑right in order to present itself as liberal and mainstream, gain support and engage in a ‘divide and conquer’ tactic among minority communities.
Far-right Reframings of Jewishness
• A shift from antisemitism to philosemitism has originated from a fundamental re‑imagining of Jewishness, where Jews and Judaism are understood through far‑right framings in order to legitimise existing ideologies. For example, by seeing Jews as European, pro‑Israel and anti‑Muslim, the far‑right allows itself to align philosemitism to its own interests.
• In this way, deliberately positive sentiments of Jews based on stereotypes are rooted in the same processes as antisemitism, whereby the two phenomena are two sides of the same coin.
• Strategies of ‘Collective Action Framing’ are used to impose a Christian‑derived framing of Jewishness onto Jewish people
• ‘Frame Extension’, in the case of the radical right’s understanding of Israel as a European frontier against the Arab world, is used to expand far‑right ideology beyond its primary interests in order to appeal to a wider audience.
• ‘Frame Bridging’ sees Jews as anti‑Muslim and therefore an ally in the war against Muslims.
• ‘Frame Transformation’ has generated a shift from ethnic to cultural nationalism. Towards a New Wave of Philosemitism
• A new era of far‑right relations with Jews has emerged in a specific political context, where the growth of identity‑based politics has generated a new notion of nationhood, based on the concept of a shared culture, which includes Jews as part of an imagined Judeo‑Christian civilisation.
• As collective consciousness of the Holocaust emerged towards the end of the 20th century, it has been necessary for the radical right to attempt to distance itself from historical antisemitism and avoid association with Nazi and neo‑Nazi elements in order to achieve relevance. Four coping mechanisms can be identified: guilt comparison, victim reversal, Holocaust revisionism, and erasure.
• Processes of reciprocal radicalisation shared understandings of Israel as European, anti‑Muslim and militaristic between the far‑right and the far‑left and Islamist ideologies – have resulted in the entrenching of pro‑Israel narratives into the far‑right.
It certainly beats our political immune systems quite well as people who'd never stand for Nazis will rush in to defend their 'freedom of speech' if someone puts a MAGA hat on it or pretends it's just 'being a conservative', despite the regime not only following the philosemitic antisemitism play book but also giving crucial posts to old school conspiratorial antisemites.
Being raised on WW2 history, as those of us of a certain generation were has, I think, in some ways backfired - fascism has become so popularly identified with swastikas and genocide of Jews that when it wraps itself in an Israeli flag, even when it already has concentration camps (in their original pre final solution form) and is pursuing expansionist war and media take-over for propaganda for a supreme leader it seems to succeed in many cases in fooling a democratic/liberal immune system which is meant to be primed against it into not recognising it as needing the same fight-back as Nazis.
At what point do we acknowledge that Trumpism is a modern day fascism? If we oppose platforming Nazis why do so many of us defend platforming Trumpists, and via that their attacks on women, minorities in our societies, people of colour elsewhere ( hit by DOGE cuts in aid) and Muslims who arent their petrodollar pals?
What's the difference, apart from they've not enacted a 'final solution' for American minorities yet? Do we have to wait for actual genocide when we see the precursors? Isn't the whole point of 'never again' to stop it before it gets to that point?
And where is our line for platforming them? At what point do you just say 'hell no' I'm not giving them a platform to spread these dehumanising and deadly attitudes and ideologies?
Comments
Legalising it quite literally legitimises it.
I'm also against banning NAMBLA, insofar as they confine themselves to advocating changes to the law(rather than inciting people to break the law as it exists), because I don't trust the state to regulate debate about sex-related laws. And yes, I realize that "creates a space" where their opinions can opinions can be expressed, if not thrive, but I think there are other ways to prevent sexual crimes than by banning extreme opinions about them.
What exactly does "legitimise it" mean here? That if I don't want to ban an idea from being expressed, I'm outright telling people it's correct? To take an example that came up another thread...
There seems to be a general consensus in Scotland that Orangemen should not be stopped from parading around Glasgow on the Twelth of July. Does this mean that everyone in Scotland who doesn't push for a ban is legitimizing anti-Catholicism? Or is it possible that many of them DO oppose anti-Catholicism, but for whatever reason have concluded that a ban is not the best way to go about fighting it?
I’m afraid I don’t buy that as an apt analogy. Banning speech as “hate speech” doesn’t “prevent it” or make it go away in the same that banning things that cause air pollution might prevent air pollution. Banning speech as hate speech just means that the speakers of that speech will make sure not to express that speech where “the wrong people” will hear it. Meanwhile, everyone else can go about thinking that the speech and the odious ideas it represents have been prevented and are no longer a problem.
I’m afraid I think the idea that banning certain speech avoids creating a space where that speech can thrive is illusory. The world is a place where all kinds of speech can thrive, regardless of what governments try to control. Banning certain kinds of speech might keep that speech from thriving in some other contexts, but it will act like fertilizer in other contexts. Some things thrive in the dark.
There is no perfect answer, and we fool ourselves if we think there is. But on the whole, I’ll take allowing and publicly countering hateful speech over bans that don’t and can’t actually ban speech, much less ideas.
There is a tendency to treat legal as a synonym for socially acceptable, and to equate "not illegal" as "not morally wrong". "Free speech" is used as a shield against social opprobrium as well as government action, and thus the Overton window can be dragged indefinitely.
So, if we don't want something to become socially acceptable, our only option is for the government to ban it as a crime, lest the legality of it eventually leads people to think it's okay?
Depends how many Nazis/fascists are around, how much media and political power and money they have and whether they're using opposition to hate speech laws/ weaponised 'freedom of speech' as a focus to organise around, the better to attack eg. Muslims and people who have immigrated here.
If there are a lot of open Nazis and far right groups openly campaigning against and misinforming and scaremongering about very mild hate speech laws and using that for racist purposes like we had in Scotland recently then yes, basically supporters get to see who they would be platforming and would have to reckon with their own consciences what they feel about that.
And it's a much wider question though. I'm asking if tactics like these (weaponising freedom of speech, hiding antisemitism under philosemitism etc.) work to lead to people classifying fascists as being more harmless and to be tolerated in many more areas than they should be.
I encountered a conspiratorial antisemite a while back - a taxi driver who tried a few racist dogwhistles on me which I countered and who then went into full on 'Rothschilds' mode to me. I terminated the journey early, and told him why. And yes! He cited 'freedom of speech' to me and was furious when I got out! Freedom of speech = I get to say horrific antisemitic stuff and I expect you not to object to it or it not to have any consequences for me.
This was a tactic to legitimise spouting far right views and to delegitimise opposition to them.
And yes I do think it and other 'liberal washing' tactics like philosemitism work with a lot of people to make them defend, under free speech, fascists who are equivalent to Nazis in a way they wouldn't if they actually stuck on the armband and sang the Horst Wessel song and called themselves Nazis and not GOP or MAGA or Patriotic Alternative etc. ( I forget what the local 'Hotel Shouters' are calling themselves at the moment)
Free speech maximalists will say they would defend even that, so it doesn't make a difference, but I think for a lot of people it does - and there's also a practical aspect.
If the actual Nazis and fascists have huge sums of money that allow them to outspend opposing views, massive media ownership and also state power which allows them to intimidate the media, then once their free speech for Nazi/fascist ideology is allowed then what results is a dangerous preponderance of the kind of mass racist, xenophobic, misogynist etc. propaganda that we know leads to authoritarian regimes that murder and commit violence.
In effect I think even if not intentionally that maximalist 'free speechers' can end up handing the well- funded Nazis/ Fascist/ MAGA their licence to kill and they can then legally use the huge firepower the money and media ownership gives them to obliterate the most vulnerable first and then the rest of us, including the free-speechers later.
Leopards eating faces and all that.
And no, the driving it underground argument doesn't work - that horse has bolted. Go look at the huge well-funded moral panic against trans people and the thousands of propaganda stories pumped out by the media and the results it has had on stripping trans people's rights and endangering them.
It's a nice story people like to tell themselves that these kind of hugely well funded blanket propaganda megaphones don't work and dont squash and crush the more vulnerable.
Yes that kind of thing is much less successful and dangerous 'underground' and it would be good if it went back there and couldn't show its face in the mass media and social media.
I would certainly agree you had the right to get out of the cab in protest of what the driver was saying. Just like a newspaper has the right to refuse to print racist letters, the Ship has the right to ban anti-LGBTQ posters etc.
But since you bring up the old Rothschilds canard...
Would you be comfortable with an actual CRIMINAL LAW specifying criticism of "the Rothschilds" as being automatically considered an antisemitic dog-whistle, punishable by the courts?
And what do you do when society as a collective entity decides to protect itself from dissent, or, say, from pro-immigrant speech? If government can ban “hate speech,” and if society as a collective entity gets to decide what speech qualifies as “hate speech,” then where are the limits?
Meanwhile, @Louise, your racist cab driver—yes, you were quite right to get out and tell him why—appears to have been making the conflation discussed recently on the Ship of freedom of speech and freedom from consequences for speech. Freedom of speech means the government cannot punish speech it doesn’t like. But it doesn’t protect anyone from other consequences of their speech, including loss of business.
In a way, I think Christian Nationalism, which is a form of fascism, appeals to some ideals that have been ingrained in American history: the promised land, manifest destiny, the city on the hill (one of Reagon's favorite lines).
My son has a favorite trick beginning with a true statement, then build off that with something that is slightly off, then say something that sounds somewhat reasonable yet slightly suspicious, eventually ending up with a whopper of a story. gets Mrs Gramps every time he does it.
Christian nationalism can pull people away from commonly shared reality because it replaces evidence‑based understanding with a mythic narrative, frames disagreement as spiritual warfare, and interprets events through a pre‑decided story about God, nation, and enemies. This creates a closed information loop where facts are reinterpreted to fit the ideology rather than the other way around.
To me it trivialises conspiratorial antisemitism to try to reduce it to merely criticism of a tiny group of people sharing a surname. It's much more than that.
Its purpose is to demonise and 'other' Jews in ways that legitimise violence against them and ultimately to legitimise deportation and murder. It's falsehoods - designed to frame violence against Jews as 'punching up', as legitimate criticism or self-defence to a Jewish 'threat' when it absolutely is not.
I think there ought to be legal/ regulatory penalties against broadcasters and publishers and disseminators of conspiratorial antisemitism because spreading it is very well documented as a threat to Jewish communities - it stirs hate and legitimises violence and prejudice.
I don't recommend looking up the 'Protocols Of the Elders of Zion' but a friend had the misfortune to encounter it in the wild being quoted on the Facebook page of a local political candidate some years back.
And yes, Facebook should be regulated and the regulator should fine the Hell out of Facebook for not deleting that - making money off endangering British Jews. In fact I think technically they are regulated in the UK but that Ofcom are timid and dont act.
I probably should have reported the antisemite but I wasn't together enough to get the details.
In an extreme case where they had a Jewish person in the cab - maybe someone who unlike me wasn't physically able to bail and grab a bus, and who said 'excuse me I'm Jewish could you stop that?' and then they didn't, I think that starts to hit the threshold for going to the police - maybe with a phone recording for evidence.
It's something that could happen to anyone from a group with a protected characteristic and on balance I'm happier with LGBT+ people, Muslims, Jews, disabled people, women and people of colour being able to freely take a cab without fear and alarm than with defending the rights of fascists to spout off to them in a moving vehicle where they are driving and can lock the doors. So yes, I'd be comfortable with someone who was put in genuine fear and distress in that way going to police and if what was said was something a court found was serious enough to amount to harassment then I'd probably be comfortable with that - if what was said would reasonably frighten or distress someone or cause them to feel threatened because of their protected characteristic, but it would need to be quite serious. More than was said to me and said to someone who was directly affected.
But I'm not an expert on where the actual legal threshold is. I'd definitely be OK with the guy I encountered being sacked or losing their cab licence though, in case they did do that to a Jewish passenger. There are lots of options - it's not a criminal prosecution or nothing situation. How we deal with fascist ideology being spread to us or disseminated in our communities depends on the context.
Yeah, assuming the cabbie knew that his ranting about the Rothschilds was antisemitic(I've known at least one person who repeated that particular canard without really understanding it), I could see a strong argument for him losing his license. Just as I'd want a daycare worker to lose their job if they started advocating the NAMBLA position to parents at coffee hour, to go back to my earlier example. But that's a very different thing from giving the state the power to legally prohibit any expression of the ideas in question.
And FWIW, I remember back in the 1990s, there was some minor controversy back in my hometown about the public library stocking books published by NAMBLA, and I know they also carried The Talmud Unmasked, a Protocols-adjacent screed. Personally, I didn't neccessarily oppose the inclusion of those books in the catalogue, given what I take to be the library's mandate, though I wouldn't consider it an act of coercive state censorship were they to be removed in response to public outrage.
A book like The Talmud Unmasked should be preserved as a historical artifact. But a librarian would have to classify it accurately. A librarian would need to ensure that the book is cataloged in a way that signals its nature. It could be put under antisemitism, or under propaganda, or under pseudohistory or under religious polemic. This should prevent it from being shelved alongside legitimate Jewish scholarship.
Here in the US, though, we have groups like Mom's for Liberty which are campaigning to remove or restrict so called "woke" books--especially those dealing with LGBTQ+ identities, race, or social justice. Many of those type of books are actually found in juvenile reading section, This is a coordinated effort to reshape cultural narratives by restricting access to ideals.
The question of permitting views in discussion forums is more complicated it seems to me. The presumption should usually be in favour of allowing them. The problem is when they amount to a denial of service for other viewpoints. The justification for banning would be if they amount to harassment of other views, or if arguments over those views take space from more fruitful arguments, or I suppose on a small forum if people just get heartily sick of rebutting the same talking points repeatedly.
I think it's more important to affirm liberal values when powerful voices are being illiberal. One cannot win am arsekicking contest with a centipede - one has to reaffirm the need for common values.
The easy one to see how this plays out is "Freedom of Speech". The big question is always "For whom?" If it is true freedom of speech then they should defend people's right to criticise them. If they do not then it is a false "Freedom of Speech".
Now let's get to Anti-Semitism. The classic question would be, does it apply to Mizrahi Jews (Middle Eastern) or just to Ashkenazi (European)? However, I would say that at the heart of Antisemitism should be a refusal to orientalise the Jewish religion and people. Philosemitism still Orientalises Jewish people and religion, but projects onto it a "good" set of properties, so it is in fact a form of Semitism. The risk is that as it is othered, it is easy to switch to negative stereotyping when required.
In other words, we are called to understand more deeply what Liberal values actually are and look below the surface jargon.
Radio and television audiences, IMHO, lean more conservative because conservative media built a parallel media ecosystem decades earlier, talk radio rewards emotionally charged opinion formats, and conservatives tend to cluster around a small number of trusted outlets—especially Fox News—while liberals fragment across many sources.
Then too, in the US, money talks. We have some very conservative people buying up what would be considered mainline broadcasters just a few years ago. Case in point. David Ellison, very conservative, was the main inverstor in Skydance, a small network of stations. Skydance acquired Paramount, the owners of CBS., and many viewers are complaining its quality has gone down.
With all the media acquisitions it will likely push the news industry toward a more pro administration environment
I think that's a good point I hadn't thought of and I've seen this happen to some extent with a US Autism newsletter I like because of the RFK jr situation. Instead of lots of new helpful research they have to waste bandwidth dealing with PRATTs (points refuted a thousand times) because Kennedy has dug up from the grave debunked stuff we thought buried with Andrew Wakefield's career.
I dont think being dragged back to the land that time forgot for those of us who aren't the white male etc. supremacists is all that fruitful.
I think it just diverts productive discussion into dealing with misinformation and badly-aged prejudice. And refuting things for the thousandth time gets old - especially for those who are the targets of the prejudice regurgitated yet again.
I'm not sure having fascist viewpoints on repeat is some great liberal cause either.
There are lots of places to get those views, they often headline the news. And I've just cross posted with Gramps49 who's outlined the US media environment- indeed the difficulty is going to be escaping those views not hearing them in the first place.
But everytime a fascist comes into a space that wasn't fascist, the discussion quickly revolves around the latest steaming 'offering' they've deposited on the carpet and the space to have conversations which aren't dragged back to the 'Woman/ disabled person/ furriner - know your place!' era is narrowed.
The space for those of us who are marked as inferior by fascism to have conversations free from discrimination against us is narrowed.
In my opinion people can get fascist talking points very easily, but holding space for people targeted by the now almost ubiquitous fascists with their grip on so much media and so much access to traditional 'both sides' media is much more rare valuable and important.
I think I’m a convert! 10 years ago I think I would have just said “the Truth doesn’t need protecting. It protects itself”. But I now believe that I underestimated the danger. There is a war going on against truth which will not be defeated by underestimating the power of that offensive.
So again, if the government has the authority to proscribe speech deemed harmful or undesirable, what limits that government from proscribing speech that challenges the government’s absurd or fascist positions?
As I recall, in Edmonton, The Talmud Unmasked was just housed in the religion section, alongside more conventional books on Judaism. There appeared to be no effort to segregate it as antisemitism or propaganda etc.
And would the "antisemitism" category see The Talmud Unmasked shelved alongside an academic historian's peer-reviewed book on The Dreyfus Affair, with nothing to indicate the latter as being a more credible piece of writing than the former? Or is it divided into separate "advocating" and "about" sections(*)?
(*) Either of which policy, just to be clear, is fine with me, and, like I said, is the way I recall it in the libraries of Edmonton. I will say I think you might be slightly overselling the salutary implications of separating crank books from respectable books on the same subject, since, at the end of the day, the librarians have no control over how a patron interprets or uses the books. Heck, if the hate-text in question contains the disclaimer "This author asserts no copyright over this book", anyone is free to splash passages all over the internet, for all the library can do about it.
And "religious polemic" as a separate category? I don't see how that has any meaning more descriptive than just "opinionated writing about religious disputes". Like I say, it doesn't really bother me, because no author has a right to have his books available in a public library anyway.
Some historically democratic governments are attacking truth. Unfortunately, it’s not just governments who are attacking truth.
I remember reading, some 60 years ago, Vance Packard’s “The Hidden Persuaders” and wincing about the implications for the future. But I didn’t foresee just how far both culture and technology would become such a danger, how powerful the means of manipulation would become.
I don’t have any general
answers. Wish I did.
As I pointed out above, our government too has powers to limit speech and uses them. It's not something they dont have.
The stuff RFK is spouting on vaccines and autism actually comes from the UK and wasn't spread by government. It originated in a bad mistake to publish an article by Andrew Wakefield in a medical journal which then was crusaded upon by our lousy irresponsible badly-regulated press. It did lots of damage without any help from government and then got a second lease of international life mostly through algorithmic social media spread, I think.
Once the media and social media and their lack of responsible regulation have done the damage, people like this do get into government but it doesn't mean we should feel obliged to keep giving them platforms we dont need to give them, so that everywhere (including here in the UK where RFK jr isnt the government) has to go back to where we were over 25 years ago in the conversation when Wakefield was at the height of his fame.
It's a possible option to say no - that in places where we have editorial control or a say over things that we won't be giving oxygen to those ideas and we will be telling peddlers of them to sling their hook. They shouldn't have access to every space.
Well, I certainly don't think that any reputable medical journal is obligated to publish anti-vax stuff now that a scientific consensus in favour of the safety of vaccines has emerged.
Nor, I would say, were they obligated to publish anti-thalidomide papers after the scientific consensus emerged that THAT was a safe drug. However, given that the scientific consensus turned out to be very wrong in that instance, I think it was a good thing that people were allowed to dissent from that consensus, even if it was just at the level of handing out mimeographed pamphlets in Hyde Park.
And I'm suggesting that PR strategies and different branding by the fascist right including crying 'freedom of speech' when they actually want to harass and marginalise people are leading to them often not getting boycotted when they should be - because we sometimes are slow to see them as the modern day Nazi equivalents that they are and to take actions against them that we can take. This includes their brand of antisemitism which presents itself as philosemitism- it can put people off the scent so they're sometimes not correctly identified as far-right fascists when that's what they are.
My answer to you was based on how my wife would have handled the question if it had come up in her profession. As it was, she worked as a college librarian and it had such books in their collection.
No, no one has the "right" to have their book in a library collection. Libraries are not public bulletin boards. They are curated collections. If the library should decide a given book contributes to the general knowledge of the community, or, in the case of a college library, of a discipline studied at the institution it will likely add the book to their collection or at least have access to it through the interlibrary loan system.
What is protected in the library system is the public right to access ideas. The public is entitled to information without viewpoint discrimination. The public has the right to read what they choose. BUT, as in the case of Moms for Liberty, they do not have the right to demand books be removed for ideological reasons.
The difference between philosemitism and "philosemitism"? I presume the distinction between Mizrahi and Ashkenazi Jews is also relevant here.
If you're saying what I think you're saying, then yes.
I have read this comment a few times and I do not think I understand it.
I understood the original comment to be suggesting that the neo-fascists are aligning themselves with Jews they would previously have hated, the mechanism being that they divide the Jews into "good Jews" (those with antecedents in Europe, Russia etc) and "bad Jews" (Arabs, Persians etc).
So the neo-fascist framing is less about "The Jews" and more about non-whites no matter which religion they might be.
I am unclear whether in your comment you are supporting or refuting this analysis or whether I have completely misunderstood both.
My view is that neo-fascists are fundamentally dishonest and they use whatever stick is available to beat those that they dislike. In the current instance, Israel militarily has the upper hand against certain groups of upstart non-whites and the brutality of wars in Gaza, Lebanon and Iran.
The irony being that Jews of all kinds often do not see themselves as white whereas Persians and some Indians and others do. Complexity is hard for the neo-fascists to understand, what with their low brain function.
The most violent of the most radical Jews in Israel take whatever assistance they can get from whoever is offering it, including Russians, American Christian Zionists and even perhaps neo-fascists.
I have no doubt that were the neo-fascists to see an opportunity to reposition themselves as enemies of Jews to protect western civilisation they would.
Which is not like other political viewpoints, even when others think they are correct there is rarely violence embedded within it to the extent that ultra masculinity is shown by destroying others.
You just have to stamp it out wherever you see it with whatever tools you have available. Meaning you never give it the time of day, you never give it the oxygen of publicity, you never enter a debate with it, you never do anything except repeatedly and stonily refuse to engage with it.
Not sure why you felt the need to tell me this, as my comment made clear Jews can as easily have antecedents in Russia as Persia. And a lot of other places.
And historically, Jewish people from Russia, Persia or wherever are ethnically Jewish, not ethnically Russian, Persian or whatever.
Well no. Russian Jews are clearly Russian and Jewish. There's a large number of them in Israel, as an example.
This does not mean that all Jews in Israel recognise all other Jews as the same. There are still intercommunity difficulties. Russian Jews are still Russian.
https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/rift-or-renaissance-israels-russian-community-four-years-after-war-in-ukraine/
In the sense of ethnicity, they are typically Ashkenazi (or occasionally other) Jewish, with relatively little Slavic ancestry due to often legally mandated separation between Slavic Russian and Russian Jewish communities and relatively little intermarriage between Slavic Russians and Russian Jews.
https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/article-885597
What other sense is there of "being Russian"? They are from Russia, they speak Russian in Israel. They are also Jewish.
It's not nationality in the sense that most people understand it. Many were persecuted in Russia (alongside widespread persecution in Arab countries, Persia and pretty much everywhere else) so were literally refugees from the countries they left.
There is ethnicity within Judaism, and unfortunately, something that looks very much like racism within it as well, at least within Israel. I am not well enough read up about it to definitely pronounce it as that.
Slavic/Rus' ethnicity (which some in Russia would say is necessary to be truly Russian).
From my first post on the subject, I’ve been talking about ethnicity, not nationality or language or the like. Jewish communities in Russia and elsewhere in Europe historically were, both by a desire to maintain their distinct identity and by discriminatory laws, closed communities, with relatively little mingling outside things like commerce. This meant that while they lived in the same country, spoke the same language, etc., they remained ethnically distinct. And traditionally in Jewish culture, where the determining fact of Jewishness is being born to a Jewish mother, that distinction has mattered.
In reality the lived experience of many Jews in these contexts was rarely in any sense separate. Yiddish is essentially a dialect of German written in a Hebrew script and 85% of the Jewish victims of the Holocaust spoke Yiddish.
But the reality is that for the most part, at least until recent decades in multicultural societies like the US, the majority of people who identify as Jewish (as opposed to the descendants of Jewish people who converted to Christianity and assimilated into the majority community) don’t have multiple ethnicities. Their ancestry will be almost exclusively Ashkenazi Jewish, Sephardic Jewish or some other distinctly Jewish ethnicity.
That doesn’t mean they’re not Russian or wherever else their families lived for centuries. But if you do DNA comparisons of those Jews with their non-Jewish Russian neighbors, you’ll typically find little commonality.
That’s not a value judgment, nor is it an accusation of “not a real Russian” (or whatever).
It’s simply an acknowledgement that, for the most part and for various reasons, many of which are rooted in the prejudices of non-Jewish people, Jewish people have been distinct communities within the larger communities of which they were also part.
Good thing I didn’t claim that, then.
And to be very clear, I’m not othering Jewish people. I am trying to honor Jewish self-understanding of what it means to be Jewish, a self-understanding that is the basis for things like who has a right to come to Israel under the Law of Return. It is a self-understanding rooted in the concept that the Jewish people—the people of Israel (in the non-political meaning—are the descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob/Israel.
When Disraeli was abused in the British House of Commons because he was a Jew, he claimed it as his heritage even though he converted at 12 to Christianity. Only a fool would say Disraeli, Moses Montefiore, Ed Miliband and others are not ethnically British.