We live in a time that people are more inclined to obey an unlawful executive order than they are to follow a court order 🤦🏾♀️.
Dictators are created due to cruelty, cowardice, & compliance! IF THEIR ASSES will ignore the Supreme Court, we can definitely IGNORE HIM!
I’m going to say something that shouldn’t be controversial but will be. If you are a Christian, you can support border control and immigration being legal vs illegal. You CANNOT celebrate deportations and get off on the cruelty, and be a real Christ follower. Period
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The elevation of Pope Leo XIV is a profound and historic occasion. Like so many around the world, I am praying for him and wishing him and the Church well as his papacy begins.
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Anti-Semitic artwork? You mean, those people of any ethnicity who do not support Zionism, which is an ethno-centric form of identity politics? FAIR is supposed to be against identity politics, so this bizarre exception made for Zionism by some in our organization is just bizarre, and it is going to cause a lot of internal fighting.
Since Zionism is only "an ethno-centric form of identity politics" by an extremely tendentious reading, the organization is making no exception here. It is adhering to a liberal view of tolerance that suffers more than one view on the matter to exist. FAIR will be fine, but as an avowed enemy of liberalism, it may not be for you.
Here's the thing, Franklin. I'm not a liberal. I'm an egalitarian socialist who is very much against identity politics. Any ideology that favors a specific ethnic and/or religious group over others, demands exceptional treatment for said group(s), and justifies/rationalizes any type of behavior any organization or government allegedly enacts on said group's behalf, and then dismisses all criticism of said behavior to hatred/bigotry against that demographic, is a textbook example of identity pol…
I have been involved in this organization for years, and Zionism has only today become a source of conflict because a self-described socialist with a worthless definition of Zionism - that would be you - showed up and started one. Since the vast majority of Jews support Israel, this organization recognizes that much anti-Zionism is in fact second-order antisemitism, that even principled anti-Zionists would have no business antagonizing and deplatforming Zionists in the manner chronicled above b…
Zionism has been largely accepted for years in an organization dedicated to combating identity politics and demands for exceptional treatment by a certain demographic based on past injustices until I started critiquing such an obvious disparity and conflict of interest? I find that hard to believe, Franklin.
The great majority of Jewish people who are subject to constant propaganda about Zionism and Israel obviously feel obliged to support it, but a significant minority do not. Just because the majority of any specific demographic supports identity politics that they believe offers them certain privileges based on calling the Victim Card doesn't make it right any more than any other group who may be doing it for other forms of identity politics or ethno-centric or theocra-centric reasons.
That should *not* be a reason for an org with the mission statement of FAIR to support any type of identity politics just because the majority of a certain demographic supports it. The majority of the world population outside of Jewish people do not support Zionism, which is also important to consider. What Israel does in the name of identity politics, which is identical to what other groups do in favor of such ideologies, should be enough for the org to condemn it, not support it.
Secondly, Franklin, no one here is talking about deplatforming Zionists. Opposition to Zionists having political & economic power to wage war on its behalf and de-platform or arrest people on its behalf or write support for it into the actual legal framework of nations is not the same thing as demanding silence on the issue. And we have every right to insist that an organization that purports to be against identity politics not to promote any form of identity politics because that calls the validity of their entire mission statement into question.
As for not having the right to "antagonize" Zionists? Sorry, but people should have every right to criticize what we disagree with, both publicly and especially within an organization that is supposed to be against identity politics in general. It is Zionists and all proponents of any form of identity politics that demand people be de-platformed or penalized legally or fired from jobs etc for critiquing identity politics.
And "socialism" as you describe it is not the same thing as what was promoted in its classical form by Marx and Engels. We are entirely in favor of civil liberties, which is what a classless economy would provide -- no bureaucrats or capitalists to control and regulate speech or decisions. And which would be bereft of the forms of material-based competition that results in identity politics. Classical Marxian socialism in no way dovetails with identity politics, because the latter is a creature of class ruled society, the proof being that it is promoted and financed by uber-capitalist firms like BlackRock, State Street, J.P. Morgan, and Disney... and yes, ultra-wealthy lobbyist groups like AIPAC. It doesn't matter if said sources claim to espouse left-wing or right-wing values of any sort... both the Left and the Right have their own iterations of identity politics that one favors but the other does not.
So no, I do not think that criticizing Zionism is tantamount to second-order antisemitism any more than trying to connect liberalism and its forms of identity politics is indicative of being racist or sexist or homophobic. Latching an ideology onto a demographic of people and demanding no criticism of the ideology because of it is what identity politics are all about.
