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Comment by CydeWeys | Hacker News Reader

Read the original blog post they're trying to cancel this guy over and then make up your own mind: https://www.kamaubobb.com/hidden-blogs/2007/12/if-i-were-a-j...

Speaking as a Jew, the worst thing about it is the atrociously thin font choice. The "If I were a Jew" framing is a little strange (I would never in a million years write an "If I were a black man" essay), but I find myself agreeing with everything he's saying. This was also written 14 years ago, and a lot has changed in the cultural discourse since then. I suspect he wouldn't again use this framing if he were to write said post now.

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I'm Jewish too.

I tend to think the last few thousand years have given us well-honed antisemitism detectors. I definitely see this as antisemitic.

Would anyone dare to say about literally any other group "If I were x I wouldn't be able to live with myself because..."?

I'm not saying everyone who says something like that 14 years ago should be fired. But a head of diversity?

Addendum: Unfortunately, and very sadly for me, my antenna is also beeping at the fact that every post related to this story is getting flagged to death here on HN.

> Would anyone dare to say about literally any other group "If I were x I wouldn't be able to live with myself because..."?

Muslims. Since 9/11 the West has demanded that all Muslims publicly decry the actions of other supposed Muslims for actions they had no control or influence over. If they don't, they risk being labelled extremists themselves.

Externally, we monitor them because of their religion. They end up on watch- and no-fly-lists for sharing a name and skin colour with somebody else.

I'm not comparing, it's not a competition. It's all awful.

And yes, it's a crying shame HN can't face frank discussions on racism.

Yeah, definitely seen a lot of “If I were a Muslim, I would’ve ...” sort of nonsense in my pretty short life.

>>Would anyone dare to say about literally any other group "If I were x I wouldn't be able to live with myself because..."?

I see x=white everywhere these days. Still almost no one calls it anti-white sentiment

Had the same reaction, my spidey sense spiked reading this. Definitely full of anti-Semitic tropes and discourse.

I hate the 1. "let's stick our heads in the sand and not talk about something important because of what could happen" and the 2. "I'm going to flag this, dv, and silence you because I'm in a different group who's going to punish you collectively for you being you."

Is there unintentional antisemitism in the sense of conflating all Jews with the subset of Israel/Likud/Israeli military/extreme settlers vs. the intentional antisemitism of "all Jews are X"?

How should we distinguish, treat, and respond to this to make such instances teachable moments and interrupt the lack of nuance and/or the othering conspiracy theories/hate?

(I think hate is taught or memetically-acquired in the absence of sane reasonableness and the Golden Rule; and ignorance is the lack of experience, knowledge, or wisdom. The Nature of Prejudice by Allport and Anti-Semite and Jew by Sarte are good reads.)

I'm also Jewish, and I have to say the last paragraph at of that blog at least is blatantly antisemitic. On the other hand, it is from 2007, so I don't think we need to destroy this guy's career over it. An apology would go a long way.

I came to same conclusion. The last paragraph switched the blame from the country’s action to the generalized individual. An apology would be appropriate.

I agree with you that it's the worst part, though I'm not quite willing to call it "blatantly antisemitic". I'm curious to see what if anything he says publicly in response. I suspect there might be some kind of apology forthcoming.

I'm sure there will be. People will say practically anything you ask them to if their six or seven-figure job depends on it.

But it seems racist. Because there are even Jews that do not live in/have connection to Israel/Palestine but he is putting it as 'if I were a Jew'.

The General feeling of his blog is to Mark Twain it and switch logic from post to post(this post bunches all Jews thinking together then his follow-up post is how black society and white society cannot be defined by the best /worst individuals) so a simple explanation would be in order and if those were his opinion and not just devils advocate an apology.

"If I were a Jew", I'd be fed up of people demanding I personally answer, distance or apologise for a country that calls itself Jewish, irrespective of my lack of link to it.

Seriously, the whole thing is based on this trope that all Jews answer for the failings of other Jews. Yes, we also frequently demand the same of Muslims whenever somebody does something in the name of Muhammad, or an "Islamic" country.

It's racist.

If I say I support Israel, or more traditional terrorism, come at me for that. But this nonsense is racist.

You’re asking a mob to engage in objective textual analysis prior to forming a conclusion about someone? Sounds like a good idea, but recent events might suggest not getting your hopes up.

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