Does saying "he is jewish" make you a rascist ?
Do you believe pointing out someone’s ethnicity/religion is a valid rebuttal of their arguments?
Or..... Just jump to pitchforks!
More of that exchange if you do want context instead of pitchforks...
[2016-08-23 01:21:32] <WISE Up Action> Satter is desperately trying to make smoke.
[2016-08-23 03:01:11] <M> Interesting to look through his past tweets re WL. He covered Saudi Cables when they came out, but I didn’t see any mention of personal info concerns (however, I only skimmed his tweets). He seemed to turn against WL after AKP, DNC and has attacked them since.
[2016-08-23 03:11:41] <M> Also note that he is trying to make this a new, recent story (“in the past year”) but Saudi Cables where 95% of claims stem from are over a year old.
[2016-08-23 04:46:09] <WikiLeaks> He’s always ben a rat.
[2016-08-23 04:46:27] <WikiLeaks> But he’s jewish and engaged with the ((()))) issue.
[2016-08-23 05:28:35] <WikiLeaks> http://Govwaste.co.uk*
[2016-08-23 05:35:50] <Emmy B> surprising I don’t see any archived links from there, I thought I had archived some pages*
[2016-08-23 06:04:49] <Emmy B> Last wayback machine capture: https://web.archive.org/web/20160811212406/http://govwaste.c...
[2016-08-23 07:23:25] <M> Looking into it*
[2016-08-23 09:15:15] <WISE Up Action> Satter is keeping going in general and wide-ranging attacks on WL /JA
[2016-08-23 12:58:54] <WikiLeaks> Bog him down. Get him to show statements of his bias.
[2016-08-23 13:03:28] <WikiLeaks> He’s the son of David Satter, who is mentioned in our cables. DS is a senior member of the Hudson institute and a well known Russia basher and NSA apologist. He was expelled from Russia in 2008 and 2014. Rafael grew up in Washington DC
So... is WL being racist? No, it doesn't seem it. Is WL using ((())) in any sort of racist way? No, not at all. What is wrong with some of you? Please leave your nonsense at Reddit.
1) Where is this magical context you keep pointing towards? 2) How is his ethnicity related to the article he wrote? 3) How is this not judging this reporter solely on the basis of his ethnicity?
I understand you may have a preference for not calling anyone or anything racist regardless of the circumstances, but I work differently. I’m more than willing to reevaluate the context if given more information, but you seem to be telling me that it’s fine to judge reporters work by their ethnicity, irregardless of whether that ethnicity is related to the subject matter at hand.
No, but one might refer to such slang, you just did it yourself, and nothing more can be seen in those particular tweets.
> [2016-08-23 04:46:27] <WikiLeaks> But he’s jewish and engaged with the ((()))) issue.
then please provide a source to that other thing, who you are referring to with "he", and maybe a reason for not making what you are referring to more clear as well.
It's also very nice that because of the barrage of downvotes, or maybe moderator action, I can't respond 13 minutes after you posted your comment when I actually had finished this reply, but have to keep the tab open and submit later... so I'll respond to another comment here as well:
> Do you consider referring to racism to be the same as being racist?
No I don't, which was my point. Saying "$someone is Jewish and engaged with the ((())) issue" isn't using that dog whistle, but referring to it. Without context it's really hard to judge why the Jewishness is mentioned; I don't know what the ((())) issue refers to in that specific context, what "engaged with" means, nothing. Could easily be bad, could be benign, but the claim was they "used" ((())), and that's false. Even if they're actually antisemites, they did not use the brackets in that tweet from 2016-08-23 04:46:27. Fact.
I mean, calling him also a "rat" kind of makes it moot in a way, that's not good, antisemitism or not. But if they are antisemitic, I want more than hearsay and being sloppy about something like "referring to X" and "using X". This is not acceptable. For one because it would be important in light of WL, but even more importantly because of antisemitism.
Generally, that some antisemites might like WL would never surprise me. With almost anything that criticizes society and the powerful in it, you often can find antisemites who are superficially interested in the subject so they can re-route it to Jews being the root of all problems. So in a vacuum, tweets "at" WL that seem antisemitic are to be expected -- the question is how WL deals with them, and what they themselves put out. I do not consider that question settled, mind you, but those who raise it, and those who approach it, have no right to be this sloppy.
Remember when that Google guy was fired and people said he "posted a memo to the internet"? He posted a memo in an internal discussion group devoted to the issue he posted about, and others leaked it on the net. Yet the lie is still out there in people's heads. And that wouldn't be acceptable even if he was a total red pill chauvinist. When it was cool to be dishonest about Jews, to exclude them inevitably leading to violence against them, some people did that. Now it's cool to be dishonest about and violent to Jews in some milieus, sexists, racists or antisemites in others -- as if the methods don't matter at all, just who wins, as if using certain methods doesn't make you something, too. Or to put a very sharp point on it, as if putting racists into concentration camps would actually end once you killed all racists, as if it could.
The “He’s always ben a rat. But he’s jewish and engaged with the ((()))) issue” bit is clearly intended to both impugn his character and suggest that he is influential because he is Jewish and actively engaged in anti-anti-semitism.
So, yeah, I'm going to say that sending a message that amounts to “He’s a rat, but particularly dangerous because he’s a Jew rat engaged against anti-Semitism” is pretty starkly anti-Semitic.
Not everyone agrees with that characterization of the Israeli Palestinian conflict, but to smear anyone even mentioning the conflict as anti-semitic is dishonest and partisan.
If one is anti-globalist, one is inherently anti-semitic?
What then does it mean to be a globalist?
And further, if defending being a 'globalist' automatically implies 'defending jews' what does this implicitly imply 'all jews' actually believe geopolitically?
the faulty logic runs deep in this line of thinking; the allegedly racist term then becomes 'the reality', which should then be protected..
Picking a dog whistle term that happens to sound like a reasonable position is a standard political tactic. Another example: "family values" which is a euphemism for theocracy. Who would actually oppose "the family"?
edit: Lol. Thank you for validating my theory.
For an example of A) most people think the word "perverse" means something like "sexually sick" i.e. they think a "perverse depiction" literally means a "sexually sick depiction". This is because we learn the word at a young age, and that is how most people use it, and we didn't bother to use dictionaries the first time you started using the word on the playground. In fact perverse comes from per- (away) and vertere (to turn), i.e. to turn away, or to turn a blind eye. For example a policeman approving of a crowd attacking a minority without intervening would be a true act of perversion as he "turns away" from the matter, similar with "perverse incentives" etc
This however is a clear example of B) in my view: notice how the tweet is NOT some triple parentheses, if you count carefully you will see 7 parentheses in total. The author of the tweet probably encountered the symbol before in the context of Judaism and thought through his prior domain knowledge that it signified a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Menorah_(Temple) which is a Jewish candelabra holding 7 candles. So while the triple parenteses meme could perfectly have an alt-right origin, the author obviously associated no racist or discriminatory connotation (btw religion is not a race). IMHO he simply refers to some unspecified "jewish issue"
That is an absolutely massive stretch. Come on.
We may all use the word "perverse" incorrectly, but it's a word we all hear. Not everyone hears/sees the ((())) denotation for Jewish people - in fact, it's almost exclusively used in alt-right circles. So if you're aware of it at all it is highly suggestive of the kind of company you keep.
I had never seen before neither the triple parentheses nor the 7 parentheses. Its the first time I see empty nested parentheses. As I read the tweet, the first thing that entered my mind was the Menorah, (actually I thought it was called a candelabra, but after looking that up, I saw a 3-pronged candelabra on wikipedia, then somewhere in the page the Menorah was mentioned and I realized I was visualizing a Menorah...).
Then I clicked the link to see how the triple parentheses could offend anyone, and I am now up to date to avoid using them (I never did, never even saw them anywhere else than the mentioned wikipedia page). Since my experience was one of recognizing the Menorah, I considered it entirely plausible that the author made the same association whenever he first encountered triple parentheses.
So if my first reaction was seeing an ASCII Menorah, then to me no that is not "an absolute massive stretch" at all!!
Once I saw the confusion I checked back on the number of parentheses and behold, unbalanced, exactly 7...
So it's safe to say you wouldn't have used them, surely? Especially when you're talking about a Jewish person - it would be an incredible coincidence to have done so.
Which of these two scenarios seems more likely:
- When referring to a Jewish person, the WikiLeaks account just spontaneously decided to surround text in parentheses, as opposed to literally any other way of communicating (why not just say "the Menorah issue"?)
- The WikiLeaks account knew of, and used, terminology common in alt-right circles?
The only modern use of the 7 candle menorah today is the state symbol of Israel which if we takes the GP tin foil hat theory to heart makes it even more racist.
I'm afraid I am unable to understand what you are saying? until today I was unaware of the 9-candle version. Do I understand correctly this would mean the WL tweet might instead refer to "Israel issue"?
https://www.google.com/search?q=menorah
"The Hanukkah menorah, also chanukiah or hanukkiah is a nine-branched candelabrum lit during the eight-day holiday of Hanukkah, as opposed to the seven-branched menorah used in the ancient Temple or as a symbol."
And no, the WL tweet does not refer to anything other than to WL using anti-semitic symbolism to attack a Jewish reporter, stop grasping at straws.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Menorah
Menorah may refer to:
Menorah (Temple), a seven-lamp candelabrum used in the ancient Tabernacle in the desert, the Temple in Jerusalem, and synagogues
Menorah (Hanukkah) or ḥanukkiyah, a nine-lamp candelabrum used on the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah
Knesset Menorah, a bronze monument in front of the Knesset in Israel
Menorah Medical Center, an acute care hospital in Overland Park, Kansas
Menorah church, a fundamentalist congregation in Switzerland founded by Bruno Meyer
So pretty hard to see how one would miss this by chance.....
So I went to my goto source wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Candelabra
Find the following sentence, the only one that references "menorah":
"In Judaism and the Philippine church Iglesia ni Cristo, the menorah is a special kind of candelabrum. "
this links directly to the menorah temple version... if you think this should be changed go BE BOLD!
I perused the wikipedia page on Menorah (Temple) some more, and learned that the 7-candle one is considered more sacred, and should only be used in the temple (or perhaps synagogues?)
If it was intended anti-semitically I consider it possible to be chosen over the 9-candle version which Judaism allows to be used outside of temples, since depicting a 7-candle version might "violate" this self-imposed rule.
When the personality cult president of turkmenistan quit smoking, he banned it nationwide.
Similarily an ex-alcoholic doesn't like to see people drink in his vicinity.
Similarily some muslims might not appreciate people around them showing off how they are eating during daytime during the ramadan.
While I can empathize with their feeling of annoyance, a self-imposed rule is a self-imposed rule.
That said I now can interpret depicting a 7-candled Menorah outside of their holy places, can sometimes be done to piss off jews...
But I don't believe others should be held to self-imposed rules of one group. Even if it is bad taste of outsiders to shove it in their face.
We are not all required by law to be friendly to each other.
If I had seen someone use an ASCII Menorah to depict something jewish, in a way that I thought it innocuously depicted a Menorah, I still probably wouldn't use it, not because it would be bad form (as I would be still under the impression it simply depicts a jewish object), but because I don't think ASCII art beyond smileys is a clear form of art, even smileys are routinely misinterpreted as sarcasm smiles when intended as honest smiles etc...
Which of these seem more likely?
I don't do non-intrinsic polarization. I usually don't mind selecting between 2 statements if they are each others mathematical negation (intrinsic or benign polarization, I believe a statement is either true or false). But being forced to choose between 2 options that are not mathematical negations of each other is extrinsic polarization AKA a false dilemma...
No, that's "life".
Except... WL didn't do that. They never surrounded text like that at all.
They said on guy who was trying to antagonize them was involved with the ((())) issue. That's REALLY FAR from them saying something antisemitic.
So, you are saying that instead of saying he was a rat that was of particular concern because he was both Jewish and involved in anti-anti-Semitism action, the pair of closely-timed tweets from the WL account were intended to say he was a rat that was of concern because he was Jewish and involved in...some kind of “Menorah issue”?
Even accepting (for the sake of argument) that that explanation is somehow plausible, how does it make the message any less anti-Semitic?
No, I am saying that since he uses 7 parentheses, the authors intended message probably has nothing to do with the anti-semitic triple parentheses.
"Not intended as anti-semitism" is not the same as "intended as anti-anti-semitism."
Intention and negation do not commute...
He simply always incorrectly interpreted the anti-semitic banter of others (the triple parentheses) as simply referring to Judaism, without any anti-semitic connotation...
Not sure what is so hard to grasp here?
Honestly a fresh account with low karma trying to push some conspiracy theory on this is also suspect as hell.
I can assure you I am not some anti-semitic sockpuppet ok?
No one is using ((()))) to describe an ASCI Menorah, and even if they did it makes no sense, there are no Menorah issues.
On the other hand ((())) Is a symbol used by the alt-right and white-supremacist to define any subject as "Jewish" this can be a place, a person, an event a cause or w/e.
Adding an extra ) is easy by simply fat fingering it
So yes you do look like an anti-semitic sockpuppet to me, or at least someone that has a clear agenda in gaslighting this issue simply because of the tenacity that you push this "theory" with and the fact that you clearly ignore Ockham's razor.
I sincerely interpreted it as ASCII art conveying simply "Jewish" and hence "Jewish issue". I do NOT claim my interpretation is representative of how the majority interprets it. I simply faithfully report my sample size 1 experience of honestly interpreting it as a Menorah signifying "Jewish"... I just had an instant flashback to highschool class -more than 15 years ago- on different world religions, where symbols of different religionns were discussed... as I said I even incorrectly thought the Jewish name was candelabra...
My point is thst even if you accept that implausible interpretation of the cluster of parentheses—that the “((()))) issue” phrase refers to some Menorah-related issue and not the controversy over a particular brand of online anti-Semitism—the pair of tweets is still clearly anti-Semitic (but also considerably more bizarre.)
Heck, it's still anti-Semitic if you remove the reference to an issue involving whatever it is that the parens signify so that the pair of tweets becomes just “He’s always ben a rat. But he’s jewish.”
It's not the parens that are the issue, though they do confirm the message of the rest of the text.
That is, unless you're referring to something else, but with accusations as serious as this, and antisemitism being as sadly pervasive and serious as it is, I would like to see a source. If you actually are referring to the DM's on that page, just no, and wtf, since it's only time "(((" appears in all of it, the only other time Jewishness is mentioned seems not to be by Wikileaks.
So, where's the meat?
Well... now you've done it! You've made hackernews and all of us altright extremists! According to some of the "logic" here.
It's not necessary racist in and of itself. But the only reason to use it is to trigger anti-Semites. Normally people don't general care about a person's religion unless it's contextually relevant.
Does saying ...”but he’s white” mean someone is racist for bringing up race? I think it depends on context and intent.
"He's a rat, but he's British and engaged with the ((( ))) issue."
"He's a rat, but he's Spanish and engaged with the ((( ))) issue."
"He's a rat, but he's Bulgarian and engaged with the ((( ))) issue."
"He's a rat, but he's a black American and engaged with the ((( ))) issue."
None strikes me as particularly racist, just that someone is disliked, and is now engaged with an issue to do with their origin.