Tag: antisemitism

kosherqueer:

i’ve said this before but i want to repeat that i believe there’s a strong case to be made that holocaust denial is far more widespread, multifaceted, and insidiously institutionalized than it is often depicted. 

the way we are taught about the holocaust, the way the narrative is constructed by states to alter the story and diminish and negate the experiences of the actual victims, the way the suffering is externalized from those who faced it, the way we are taught to focus in on the tragically flawed character of hitler and restrict the theatre of genocide to germany and german state actions, the way all of this is depicted in a way that pays no respect or recognition to all the players in this horrific atrocity of atrocities, is nothing short of holocaust denial. and it’s a denial that is played out in mainstream culture daily and diversely. 

make no mistake, the holocaust was much bigger and much scarier than anything you have been taught, and its effects will likely continue to be felt for generations to come. this was a cataclysmic process with many components, and the way it is taught makes it easy for those who are not effected by it to forget and to silence those who are.

anti-faschismus:

“Jews did not join the partisans as a normal act of choice. We were forced to fight the Nazis to save ourselves from extermination. We took the gun in our hands in a desperate situation, when our parents, brothers and sisters were murdered, when children were grabbed from their mothers and sent to their gruesome death. We fought in order to survive; we fought against fascism, which was our enemy, the enemy of all democratic forces and the enemy of Lithuania.

The activity of the Jewish partisans was self-defense — in the face of the most overwhelming instance of genocide in human history. In contrast to Lithuanian collaborators, who volunteered to put to death their unarmed civilian Jewish neighbors, and Soviet collaborators, who also volunteered to kill and oppress the Lithuanians, the Jewish partisans’ aim was not to kill anyone, not to ‘inherit’ the property of a murdered people, but to fight our common enemy.”

–Sara Ginaite, a native of Kaunas, was incarcerated in the Kovno (Kaunas) Ghetto and lost almost her entire family in the Holocaust. She escaped into the forests and joined the anti-Nazi partisans. After the war, she was a professor of political economy at Vilnius University for almost twenty-five years before emigrating to Canada in 1983. She published ten books in Vilnius and another two in Toronto,where she taught social science at York University. She was instrumental in arranging for Yad Vashem to honor a Lithuanian family that saved a Jewish child during the Holocaust and has recently negotiated exchange student agreements between Vilnius and Toronto Universities. Her best-known work on the Holocaust is Resistance and Survival: The Jewish Community of Kaunas, 1941-1944 (2005).

maxximoffed:

I feel like there’s something ironic about Marvel starting out as anti-nazi propaganda and ending up not only tiptoeing around hydra’s nazi affiliation in the movies but erasing the jewish-romani background of two character’s that now work with them, as well as getting half the fandom to fanboy over nazi and nazi affiliated characters 

and by ironic i mean fucking terrible

adhdtommyshepherd:

if u are white and u hold up the holocaust as “proof” that white people can be discriminated against

  • the holocaust uniquely targeted Jewish and Rromani populations
  • we’re not one of you
  • if you had been in europe you would have survived but we would not have
  • stop using the genocide of our people for your racist white supremacist bullshit 
  • go fuck yourself

But even here, the story is not complete, since portraying the Farhud as a pogrom against helpless Jews ignores the fact that Jews in Iraq fought against the Nazis and their influence. They wrote articles – in Arabic – about the crimes of the Nazis in Germany and of the Fascists in Italy. They collaborated with anti-Nazi Arab liberals and socialists. They voiced their opposition against teachers who spread Nazi propaganda at school and demanded they be fired. Germany was not able to screen propaganda films in Baghdad because the movie theaters – which were owned by Jews – refused to screen them. Jews resisted during the days of the Farhud as well. They poured hot oil on the rioters, threw stones, and hopped from rooftop to rooftop to save their lives.

And there’s another story from the Farhud that deserves telling: the bravery of Muslims during the crisis. The wealthy Jewish neighborhoods were not targeted in the onslaught. Those who were hurt were the poor Jewish neighborhoods. Those who were saved lived in mixed neighborhoods – often because their Muslim neighbors risked their lives to save them. Recollections of Jews, letters by Zionist emissaries, and police reports praise those neighbors and friends. A 70-year-old woman who called on all her Jewish neighbors to stay with her; Muslims who pretended to live in Jewish homes to protect Jewish property; a neighborhood hoodlum who not only hid Jews but also forced the grocer to bring them food; Iraqis who bribed rioters and threatened them with weapons – all in order to rebuff the mob. The stories show the Farhud was not only characterized by looting, murder and incitement but also by the keeping of certain social norms by which Jewish friends and neighbors were seen a precious family members, as well as by heroic and touching stories of rescue.

Orit Bashkin’s foreward to “The Farhud” on +972

hiccupkin:

i want you all to look very closely at queer coding and villains in fiction and realize how often it coincides with jewish coding.

jewish culture produces what gentiles perceive to be unacceptably “bossy” (behaviorally dominant/”masculine”) women and unacceptably “feeble” (behaviorally gentle/”feminine”) men.. our deviation from white gentiles’ gender binary standards is treated as an aberration.

and (hopefully) we all know that jews have basically been stereotyped as the very notion of evil in western literature. idk i would just really like for my goyische friends to take extra care to notice stereotyped jewish coding in fiction

“Races” in France

anotherfrankiewarrior:

yngvildr:

indigobullshit:

Ok so apparently in America using the word « race » is normal but in France it isn’t and i’m going to try to tell you why.

So the notion of race was created in France in the 18th century. It was used to classify all the subdivisions of mankind according to some biologic differences (described in…

The first time I saw an American TV Show without dubs (about the time I entered French high school at almost 15 nine years ago), and heard the phrase “an individual of the [caucasian/black/asian] race”, I was convinced it was racist.

Because acknowledging that there is “races“ within the human race (see what i did there?) in French is racist (again, ethymology is important) because even putting different kinds of humans in different boxes because they have a certain genetic trait that makes them produce more or less melanin is WRONG. Later a French-American friend showed me her passport where there was litterally a “race” field on (which said “mixed” in her case).

This is strictly forbidden in France because of the post WWII legacy: this kind of taxonomy when used on an administrative level can lead to dire, dire consequences for any ethnic group that is one day both in the category “minority” and “scapegoat”.

Everytime a new law was trying to pass that would collect, and list anyone by any criteria, there was a huge outcry in France because it would remind us of how Jews were treated during WWII.

Now that the Godwin Gods have been appeased, I can conclude with what is my opinin and no one else’s (for now…):

To me, even using this kind of word, the word “race” which is the root of the word “racism” that we’re supposed to fight, is strange and foreign and offensive.

I grew to accept it because as a Frenchwoman who learned to speak French before speaking any other language, I can’t change English. It is your prerogative to make it grow in a direction or another and being offended because a word in a language that is foreign to me is wrong, because as a foreigner I do not know the actual context and history of this word.

It would be cultural appropriation to try to change it to suit my needs, something which is a capital crime on Tumblr, so I guess it’s not something you do in the US…

SEE? I RESPECT YOUR LANGUAGE AND CULTURE BY TRYING TO UNDERSTAND IT IN ITS CONTEXT OR AT LEAST ASSUMING THERE IS ONE!

Thanks to both of you.

That’s something I thought about this night. Our differences of langage and culture. I remember seeing this post about Raven (we all know Raven). She was telling that she wasn’t an afro-american girl, she was an american girl.

And people were offended by that! I didn’t understand at first. Then I learned how America especially were considering their roots, their “races” (I don’t like saying that neither) etc etc… I learned why people were offended. In france people would have congratulated her.

And I’m not talking about white people (it’s also really weird for us to talk about “white people” because it’s separating people in function of the color of their skin and of course we cannot do that), I’m talking about everyone, black people in first! I saw it in another post, and it was true: what is more important for us, is that we are french.

"Je suis français avant tout!” (“above everything I’m french”) that’s what you can heard if you dare talking about race to a POC person generally following by a “Comme toi!” (“like you” and I agree because it means we’re equal, because of the law, they’re french so they’re under this law too). 

I think it’s a different way of thinking than in America (if I’m wrong, tell me of course). It’s not better, it’s not worse. Racism still exists for both of our countries. But it’s the way we’re thinking in France.

The ‘using the word race a lot makes you sound like a neonazi’ thing and dividing people into races implies there’s a ranking system going on (particularly with ‘the whatever race’ wording) applies to a lot of europe in my experience to greater or lesser degrees in various countries. But in general white french people seem to be more aware of this than white british people, to an extent at least (particularly than white british people who’ve picked up how to talk about racism from americanised contexts like tumblr – who seem to start using the word race with less discomfort comparatively)

britain mostly deals with this by using ethnicity for most things, like forms will ask for your ethnicity etc, thats absolutely just dividing into very similar categories as you would if you were saying race and calling it something different (hence terms like white british its kind of a hybrid system almost?) because ethnicity is seen as a more neutral word? that doesnt have the implied superiority inferiority connotations that race does. but from what you’ve said even that wouldn’t be a thing in france? and certainly not a census question

So I think its not necessarily an english-language thing? but maybe an american english thing, more so at least. I would say here using the word race and saying groups are races is becoming more normal mostly because of american influence (partly also because shared language) and because there isn’t the same legacy of occupation during ww2 so its an easier foundation to shake perhaps – people being grouped into races never went well before is an idea that exists but possibly less prominantly. It’d be interesting to know if american influence for this has less of an effect in france because of those two things? I imagine it does

thats possibly partly to do with france being not brilliant at acknowledging nazi collaboration and other crimes under the vichy government? (“what happened to” is incredibly passive, being reminded of what you did to jewish and roma people is what you dont like). Whereas britian was never occupied so doesnt have that same relationship to the holocaust (equally bad at acknowledging the whole not taking refugees and/or sending them to internment camps thing though it just has different impacts today than the french experience)

“Races” in France