Well worth the read

quote:

Like other forms of racism, anti-Semitism provides a variety of satisfactions for those who endorse it, and it’s worth trying to analyse these pleasures, so that we may better understand and combat the whole phenomenon.

yes it is. I am going to share it. Thanks.

Apropos of the pleasures ...

Don't cry, Perri, but ... the kids are NOT alright.

"Ceasefire Now" at Sundance

I don't know how the interviewer kept it together during the questioning.

I have seen credible polling that 20% of under 25s think the Holocaust never happened and another 30% think it has been greatly exaggerated. The percentage of the over 50 crowd who think such horrendous and ignorant things is much smaller.

quote:

I don't know how the interviewer kept it together during the questioning.

I have seen credible polling that 20% of under 25s think the Holocaust never happened and another 30% think it has been greatly exaggerated.

How did we get to this point? (I watched the interview btw, appalling.)

quote:

The percentage of the over 50 crowd who think such horrendous and ignorant things is much smaller.

Is part of it bc young people are getting their news from Tik Tok?? Probably that's too simplistic, but the continual decrease in length and quality of media formats that people (primarily young people) use to access information is beyond distressing.

I'm sure that the interviewer carefully curated the film to generate the impression that the crowd was mostly emotional undereducated people, so I don't view clips like that as dispositive (even if it supports my viewpoint). Combined with the polling data on attitudes, however, it's fair to think that substantial numbers of young protestors are indeed enjoying the pleasures of anti-semitism described in the article.

They're enmeshed with a supportive group of likeminded (mostly) age peers, doing something that makes them feel good, and morally superior. These young "righteous" also have something to direct their hate against, a group (white European jews) easy to target because that group has been targeted for centuries by people just like them ... i.e. by their grand, great grand, and great great grandparents on backward in time. And now we have the new overlay of current ideological fervor -- the anti-colonialism narrative. Their great grandparents may well have nodded in agreement with Henry Ford's "The International Jew."

The fact that many Israelis are browner than most Palestinians, and from places far from the power centers of "European Whiteness" would just provoke cognitive dissonance, if they had the wit to actually think about the ideological pap they have been fed.

quote:

Originally posted by Piano*Dad:
Apropos of the pleasures ...

Don't cry, Perri, but ... the kids are NOT alright.

"Ceasefire Now" at Sundance

I don't know how the interviewer kept it together during the questioning.

I have seen credible polling that 20% of under 25s think the Holocaust never happened and another 30% think it has been greatly exaggerated. The percentage of the over 50 crowd who think such horrendous and ignorant things is much smaller.

Unreal.