I’m not talking “death to the IDF” or whatever Zionists consider antisemitism, I’m talking actual antisemitism that uses Happy Merchants and 👃✡️🧃 emojis.
What’s even more disturbing is that a lot of these posts are getting well over 10,000 likes, including from people I actually know in real life. This obviously has a lot to do with the Israeli government and Zionists portraying Judaism and Zionism as the same thing, but there are a concerning amount of actual Nazis and Holocaust denial on the site as well hijacking the Palestinian struggle in order to spread actual bigotry against Jewish people.
It’s upsetting to me because I actually am Jewish, I want nothing to do with the Israeli apartheid regime and yet I’m automatically associated with it thanks to both Zionist and Neo Nazi propaganda. Antisemitism is very real and is an issue in online spaces.
Sorry for another long vent, but at this point I feel like this site is the only real safe haven for me online as an anti-Zionist Jew. I wish I could delete Instagram but unfortunately that isn’t possible for me at this time. I have already deleted everything else that isn’t Lemmy and I’m better off for it.
This is going to continue to be a problem until the entity is dealt with I think. It’s intentional.
Myself and people in my org have also reported that urban areas in Norway have been getting covered in “Nordic Resistance Movement” stickers saying shit like “LOVE NOT HATE”, where the O in LOVE is replaced with the rune-ligature that is the NRM’s logo, and the A in HATE is replaced with a Star of David. I’ve torn these down whenever I’ve seen them.
Instagram is of course already known to be a haven of bigoted nonsense, so it doesn’t surprise me to hear that this is an issue there.
I really feel like this stuff is evidence that the education system is beyond broken. How can you be active at all in any kind of political discussion and misunderstand things so badly? Every lefty Jewish person you’ll meet, IRL and online, will quickly tell you that Judaism has nothing to do with Israel! Even I, who live somewhere with few Jewish people, have talked with anti-Zionist Jews (actually the only Zionists I’ve met are old Christian right wingers).
Moreover, why don’t people feel more shame, especially people who are more on the lib side of things, about posting or sharing memes that are clearly racist? Are they all just a few bad news cycles from posting the same things about other minorities if they see other people doing it?
Are they all just a few bad news cycles from posting the same things about other minorities if they see other people doing it?
Yes. It’s their biggest weakness. They believe in what “institutions” and “mainstream media” tell them.
They believe in what “institutions” and “mainstream media” tell them.
You can add “social media political commentators” to that list too.
Unless they’re on Hexbear or a few other niche online spaces, how are they supposed to learn anything true about Israel? It’s practically illegal to speak the truth about the Entity.
I would be shocked if Israel was not boosting this stuff directly. “Anyone against us is an antisemite” is their main defense, and they’re very active in manipulating social media, seems obvious they would combine these strategies
It is an unfortunate but an expected (maybe even planned?) consequence of Israel’s actions. Everyone called that if Israel is willing to weaponize accusations of anti-Semitism to silence dissent against its ongoing genocide it will trivialize and normalize actual anti-Semitism, especially in West where anti-Semitism has been mostly driven outside social acceptability institutionally if not completely societally as a concentrated effort since WW2. Israel was willing and perhaps depending on this taking place when they started calling university students protesting blood libel and frankly milquetoast articles criticizing Western weapons sales to Israel as anti-Semitic.
I don’t know what is the solution to this, a lot of people lack nuance even with good intentions when they have to discern overlapping problems, hence for example people highlighting the issues in Palestine about LGBT rights or whatever as if killing them solves that even when not being cynical about such.
They latched onto any wave to try and justify their hatred.
The zionists constantly say that genocide is an inherently Jewish thing. And at some point, when someone tells you who they are, you believe them.
Isn’t instagram a site so censored of any progressive politics, yet unfiltered of any reactionary politics?
Explains a lot that while actual anti-semitism, misconstrued as anti-Zionism, does persist, progressive pro-Falastini presence is hidden away from much of the platform cuz it’s ‘political’/
Loads of that on Facebook recently as well, scrolling through Facebook shorts you’ll get all sorts of videos about Jews controlling the world and the comments are filled with people saying “noticing” “small hats” etc, it’s really disturbing.
People were already unironically referring to Instagram as the racism app, the stuff there is just guaranteed to be messed up
Isra*el is well aware that this is happening; the oppositional reactionary assumptions feed off each other. Without a thorough education, people will revert to simplistic, surface-level analysis of “Group A causes outcome 1”. When Europeans (and to a lesser extent people in MENA) blame “the Jews” for things, it strengthens the Isra*elis’ argument to diaspora Jews that they are the only safe haven. They benefit from antisemitism today just like they did in the 1930s.
The correct position is to say “Yes to Jews, No to Isra*el” and treat people’s class and political status as more important than their nationality, ethnicity, or religion. But this does not benefit anyone in power.
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