maybe it’s because I’m a woman so this doesn’t apply but I’m comfortable being white Jewish diaspora—sure I have to reckon with my social privilege being a cracker straight out of suburbia, and I do feel absolutely rancid and ashamed every time I enter my synagogue on my parents’ behest and am confronted with the loud communal fascism problem in the form of the bold lettered עם ישראל חי painted on the window, but I don’t regret growing up as I did.
On the Jewish part I’ve met some really cool anti-Zionist Jews through my community. A lot of my formative values that caused my sharp turn left after actually being exposed to Israel and Israelis in my senior year of high school were taught under a Jewish banner at my Sunday school. My Holocaust education was very thorough relative to other Americans, which is part-and-parcel why I had the jumping off point I did. Unfortunately for the Zionists that used to be in my orbit, I was also taught pattern recognition. I don’t regret it.
On the white part, I really think there is this disgusting tendency amongst white liberals to fetishize adversity. It really is some Get Out shit—they’d rather become black—of course while not giving up the socioeconomic racial benefits that they’ve experienced, they’d clearly just pull themselves up by their bootstraps to make it where they are today—and feel like they earned their position rather than reckon with the social privilege that plays a part in their everyday life. When a capital-WL White Liberal comes into contact with critiques of systemic racism, their only way of coping with that is to performatively distance themselves from whiteness rather than, you know, using their privilege to act as poor little cracker in-between body-blockers with families and lives and hopes and dreams in situations where marginalized comrades would be unceremoniously domed and tossed aside by the Golden Arches Hitler brigade because viowence scawy
white Liberal Zionist but wants to disown their Ashkenazi Jewish heritage in an attempt to be more socially-marginalized and thus, to them, more worth listening to, not realizing how disgusting they sound in admitting that. Many such cases
starting to come around to the idea that ‘self-hating Jew’ is a confession wrapped in an accusation because the most self-loathing people I have ever met are white Liberal Zionists. they’re constantly three steps away from dying on a failed morale check due to pure unalloyed cognitive dissonance and I have never met more people who have confessed mid-conversation (I went to a Jewish summer camp for a decade) that they wished to be further marginalized in some way (usually literally just in the “I want to be seen as more socially under attack than people see me as” selfishness that crackers who peddle this commonly have as their underlying belief). It’s happened enough times that I legit think it’s an enshrinable guy™
that they wished to be further marginalized in some way (usually literally just in the “I want to be seen as more socially under attack than people see me as”
They should become Haredi then? Forgive me for saying that but it comes across to me like Haredi jews have a significantly harder time. If they genuinely desired this they could accomplish but they choose not to.
Yeah my thought is that they want it as a tool to push their political goals (often variants of settler brained supremacy), without any of the consequences.
maybe it’s because I’m a woman so this doesn’t apply but I’m comfortable being white Jewish diaspora—sure I have to reckon with my social privilege being a cracker straight out of suburbia, and I do feel absolutely rancid and ashamed every time I enter my synagogue on my parents’ behest and am confronted with the loud communal fascism problem in the form of the bold lettered עם ישראל חי painted on the window, but I don’t regret growing up as I did.
On the Jewish part I’ve met some really cool anti-Zionist Jews through my community. A lot of my formative values that caused my sharp turn left after actually being exposed to Israel and Israelis in my senior year of high school were taught under a Jewish banner at my Sunday school. My Holocaust education was very thorough relative to other Americans, which is part-and-parcel why I had the jumping off point I did. Unfortunately for the Zionists that used to be in my orbit, I was also taught pattern recognition. I don’t regret it.
On the white part, I really think there is this disgusting tendency amongst white liberals to fetishize adversity. It really is some Get Out shit—they’d rather become black—of course while not giving up the socioeconomic racial benefits that they’ve experienced, they’d clearly just pull themselves up by their bootstraps to make it where they are today—and feel like they earned their position rather than reckon with the social privilege that plays a part in their everyday life. When a capital-WL White Liberal comes into contact with critiques of systemic racism, their only way of coping with that is to performatively distance themselves from whiteness rather than, you know, using their privilege to act as poor little cracker in-between body-blockers with families and lives and hopes and dreams in situations where marginalized comrades would be unceremoniously domed and tossed aside by the Golden Arches Hitler brigade
because viowence scawy
white Liberal Zionist but wants to disown their Ashkenazi Jewish heritage in an attempt to be more socially-marginalized and thus, to them, more worth listening to, not realizing how disgusting they sound in admitting that. Many such cases
starting to come around to the idea that ‘self-hating Jew’ is a confession wrapped in an accusation because the most self-loathing people I have ever met are white Liberal Zionists. they’re constantly three steps away from dying on a failed morale check due to pure unalloyed cognitive dissonance and I have never met more people who have confessed mid-conversation (I went to a Jewish summer camp for a decade) that they wished to be further marginalized in some way (usually literally just in the “I want to be seen as more socially under attack than people see me as” selfishness that crackers who peddle this commonly have as their underlying belief). It’s happened enough times that I legit think it’s an enshrinable guy™
They should become Haredi then? Forgive me for saying that but it comes across to me like Haredi jews have a significantly harder time. If they genuinely desired this they could accomplish but they choose not to.
90% of the time they don’t really want this. they want this to happen to them without any effort on their part and without losing anything.
Yeah my thought is that they want it as a tool to push their political goals (often variants of settler brained supremacy), without any of the consequences.