While the christofascists and white supremacists and misogynists and the rest of the reactionary pieces of shit that make up so much of Trump's base get most of the press, they aren't the real threat. The real threat is the people who are bankrolling him - the wealthy few who don't have a stake in any of that bullshit and just want to take advantage of whatever opportunity they can get to transform the US into an autocracy in which their rule, and our subjugation, will be absolute.
I didn't realize that this was headed to a frustratingly pointless disagreement about a label until it was too late.
You'd think I'd learn. I try to explain myself - to provide enough context that people can grasp the point I'm trying to make - and over and over, it's all for naught because someone just grabs onto a label, substitutes the strawman that label's attached to inside their own brain , then responds to that instead of what I've actually said.
But young people — especially the college student protesters — seem to mostly use it to mean modern, expansionist Israel annexing land for settlements, keeping Palestinians stateless, etc.
Though anything but young, that's the way that I use it. And it's even the way I use it historically - not to refer to the broader set of people who favored the establishment of a Jewish homeland, but specifically to refer to, for example, Begin and those Irgun assholes, who paved the way for Netanyahu and Likud and all of the overt evil in which they engage.
And again, I should know better. Likely the best solution is to just stop using the term entirely - add it to the list of emotive terms that have been rendered useless, alongside "fascist" and "capitalist" and "socialist" and "libertarian" and, most recently, "liberal."
I don't think we disagree fundamentally. Somehow, and I didn't see it coming (but probably should have), this has devolved into what you interpret as a dispute about a label.
For the record, I think labels are impediments to clear thought, and that there are few things that humans do that are more irrational, destructive, asinine and plain old stupid than substituting labels for ideas.
And I should've caught that that was where this was headed, and clarified to prevent it.
My point was never about the label "zionist" specifically. It was a broader point about the perception of the proper grouping of people.
Proactively grouping those Jews who support the state of Israel and wish to cooperate with its neighbors to ensure its survival with those who support the state of Israel and intend to murder and pillage in order to forcibly impose its existence on everyone else with no regard for their own desires is rather obviously not only contrary to simple human decency, but to logic and reason as well. It's wrong morally AND logically AND strategically.
I could not possibly care less what labels, if any, anyone might wish to use to distinguish between groupings. That doesn't matter in the slightest, or more precisely shouldn't matter in the slightest. The only thing that does matter is where the divisions are seen to lie. And that's a very simple matter - are we going to divide between Jews and non-Jews? Or are we going to divide between reasonable people who seek peace and raging assholes who seek war?
Like it or not, Israel exists. Much fault can be found with the way it came into existence, and much more with its conduct since, but that doesn't alter the fact that it does exist, and its citizens are human beings, exactly as deserving of consideration as any other human beings.
As the hard right in Israel so clearly demonstrates repeatedly (and likely cynically deliberately), when one sets about punishing an entire people for the evil of a few among them, one actually empowers those evil few, since the people rightly feel oppressed and rightly condemn you for their oppression, and those evil few are ready and willing to stand forward and promose to lead the people in their just quest for retribution.
The surest way to hamstring those evil few - to eliminate the excuses by which they come to power - is to eliminate the oppression - to recognize and respect the humanity of the many. And that can never be accomplished by proactively declaring the many to be indistinguishable from the evil few.
No - quite the opposite. Using the term to refer to all supporters of a Jewish state without distinguishing between those who wish to cooperate and those who simply intend to forcibly impose their wills "alienates the very people who might be able to make peace."
The simple and unavoidable fact of the matter is that the state of Israel existing on part of the land it occupied in antiquity is a fait accompli. It's not a question of whether or not such a state should exist, because one already does. And that's not a pholosophical point - it's a practical one. It's not that its existence somehow justifies everything about its past (it rather clearly does not) - it's simply that its existence is a fact.
The only pertinent questions are how things should work going forward, and that's exactly the context in which Jews who support its existence but call for cooperation with its neighbors and most notably with Palestinians are arguably the best possible allies we can have. No matter how determined and petulant they might be, those who call for Israel's dissolution will never succeed, so the only question is whether those who oppose them will be rational actors who wish to settle the conflict through cooperation or vicious demagogues who intend to settle it through murder and pillage.
Unfortunately, the clear reality here is that the groups protesting Shapiro really are antisemitic. Just like any other bigots, they proactively assign negative qualities to anyone and everyone of a particular ethnic group solely based on the fact that they're a part of that group.
The vast majority of Jews, clearly including Shapiro, are not zionists. If you treat them as if they are, then you're part of the problem. And it's not even just that you're a bigoted piece of shit, but that you're depriving yourself and everyone else of a potentially very valuable ally, so you're a fucking dumbass as well.
I'm not sure if I've ever seen that much projection in a single article before.
Essentially every single thing that he accuses the left of planning to do is actually something that the right has already done, and is in fact one of the reasons that reform is necessary.
The most frustrating part of it is that it's not simply that he self-evidently has no integrity and no principles, but that he's a short-sighted moron. Like every useful idiot in every authoritarian coup ever, he's defending the autocrats simply because their actions currently align with his shallow self-interest, and is completely oblivious to the fact that they could just as easily (and sooner or later will) oppose his interests, and by then, in part specifically because of his shallow stupidity, it'll be too late to do anything about it.
More precisely, we got that you're a desperately insecure loser who's terrified of the prospect of a world in which women are allowed to do anything other than service the fragile egos of pathetic manchildren like yourself, and who therefore haplessly resents and desperately wants to belittle any and all women who might dare to do anything else.
We may long with hope and optimism for a future when statesmen will make a comeback over today’s bankrupt ethos of selling your soul if that’s what it takes to win.
Well, Trump's already promised that if he's elected, that future's never going to come, because we'll never be allowed to vote again at all.
So there's really only two possibilities - either you're going to abide by the honor and integrity and morality you claim to champion and against the partisanship you claim to condemn and stand against the plain and obvious threat to American liberty and democracy, or you're going to reveal that you're a lying piece of shit.
Since Trump has an unbroken record of bowing and scraping in the presence of autocrats, I think we can safely disregard anything he might say about anyone else's attitude towards them.
Not to downplay the utter loathsomeness of the far right, but this is neither new nor important.
They've been banging that "DEI hire" drum for months (years?) now, and yes - there's a segment of the population that responds to it. But those people don't matter in the slightest. They're already Trump voters and they'll never be anything else, so they can and should be entirely ignored.
Somewhere along the way here, the Republicans, and likely Trump himself, are going to hand us some vivid and grotesque and new and juicy example of their deep and abiding and utterly hateful racism and/or sexism, and at that point, we don't want to be the party who cried wolf - the people who have pointed fingers of racist/sexist accusation so many times that it just seems like yet more of the same tired rhetoric when we point to that one.
Just cool your jets, let the old and weak ones slide, and wait. The time for truly effective righteous indignation will come.
All the way through this ordeal of Biden possibly, then actually, stepping down, I've been sort of lukewarm about the idea of Harris replacing him for one and only one reason - because I assumed that, since she's the VP and the obvious first choice for a replacement, the Trump campaign would already have a complete hate campaign against her primed and ready to go, so could potentially catch her and the Dems flat-footed.
While the christofascists and white supremacists and misogynists and the rest of the reactionary pieces of shit that make up so much of Trump's base get most of the press, they aren't the real threat. The real threat is the people who are bankrolling him - the wealthy few who don't have a stake in any of that bullshit and just want to take advantage of whatever opportunity they can get to transform the US into an autocracy in which their rule, and our subjugation, will be absolute.