by Dreams End » Wed Aug 17, 2005 11:10 am
Why is it so hard to understand that when you say "Jews" you cannot be interpreted any other way than people of the Jewish religion, thus implying they are all part of this plot? It's the same logic that allows the right to condemn all Arabs and all Muslims do to the actions of a few (alleged) Arab Muslims. <br><br>Israel, on the other hand, is a country, with a government and a very effective military and intelligence network. As such, they are fair game for criticism, protest, etc. And don't get me wrong...certainly they, especially the current government, are up to no good.<br><br>If my Jewish friend can get upset about PNAC, this would be but one example that I shouldn't have to waste my breath giving, that Jews are not some monolithic group. And if you want to do some "racial profiling", you can start by noticing how many Jews have historically been in peace and justice movements here in the US. But of course, when you have the "jews are behind it all" ideology, you will simply see those Jews as part of a wider plot as well.<br><br>Spies for Israel are obviously likely to be Jewish considering the makeup of the population of Israel and the social and family ties here in the US, although if the Mossad is any good at what they do, and they are, they'll have non-Jewish spies as well. I am guessing the current crop of "spies" were getting nods and winks all along anyway, as the US agenda in so many ways involves Israel.<br><br>Is Israel complicit in 9/11? I would bet that just about ANY dirty tricks involving the Middle East involve Israel. They are pretty much partners of the US, and have an extremely sophisticated intelligence network in the Arab world. They hold out their support to get the things they want from US, and the US does the same to keep Israel serving the role for US imperialism that it does in the Middle East (actually, not just in the Middle East...the US often turns to Israel for tasks it doesn't want to dirty its hands with, such as arms sales to questionable regimes.) Mutual interests, mutual coercion...hell, probably mutual blackmail. However, the balance of power, given population, wealth and military, certainly is in favor of the US. And I hear the US has some intelligence agencies as well. They've even overthrown a government or twenty.<br><br>I see US/Israel very much as US/Britain. Britain, too, has a powerful intelligence agency and military, but is much smaller than the US. Still, there are probably times that we let them "drive" and probably times the US does things that are more in Britain's interest than the interests of the US just to keep Britain in that lovely "special relationship." There are many more times when the US just tells them what to do.<br><br>Besides the factually incorrect and intellectually sloppy use of the term "jew" when discussing these issues, it should be quite apparent that there are many out there who are, in fact, anti-Semitic. The extreme right takes much of the same information we discuss here, simply adds a dose of "the jews are behind it" and voila, you have anti-Semitic fascism. Why it's not obvious that putting out the idea of a "Jewish conspiracy" would be offensive is beyond me. Perhaps you should study Nazi Germany or something to get the message. The Nazis saw Jews behind everything, too. Subtly of thought was not a strongpoint of Nazi ideology.<br><br>And I"m not in favor of banning, but is it because DU is banning people that we are all of a sudden getting so many "the Jews are behind it all" posts? People should also be aware that, although I hope our friend who started this thread is not on of them, there will be trolls here with anti-Jewish posts to see what they can stir up. If they can make enough smoke, then they (under their real names) can point out that there must be anti-Semitic fire behind this site. <br><br> My friend who I mentioned earlier also complained of anti-Semitism on the left as if it were co-equal with anti-Semitism of the right. I think what he's actually seeing (not to say there is no anti-Semitism on the left) is how the extreme right uses some of this conspiracy material to peddle an agenda that sometimes isn't obvious at first. Perhaps he sees posts like the one from DU mentioned in this thread and thinks because it was on DU the poster must be "left". However, there is nothing "leftist" about analysis that condemns a group by race or ethnicity. That, in fact, is the very heart of fascist ideology. (Actually, I think you can be fascist without necessarily focusing on race...but that's another topic...in any event, fascism is very much helped by the use of racial scapegoats...)<br><br>Well, beyond the traditional left, the conspiracy "community" has much more of this thinly veiled anti-Semitic fascist ideology within it. Well, not always even veiled. Because conspiracy theory (a term I hate, but we'll use it for now) wants to look behind the curtain and see who the actual people are controlling various events and because the causality of events is often murky, these theories become like Rorshach tests, in a sense. Sophisticated analysis will admit the limits of our knowledge and also the extreme complexity of these formal and informal relationships going on behind the scenes. Less sophisticated analysis will simply proceed a certain ways along the path and then say, "(insert group here) is behind it all." This is sloppy thinking and, when the group you've inserted is "Jews" it is anti-Semitic and plays right into the hands of those promoting a more overt racialist agenda. <br><br>I would not even bother with this rant if I weren't seeing more of these posts on RI discussion boards for some reason. I would encourage all of us to be on the lookout for this and to make your voice heard so that new visitors to this site do not assume this is yet another site that sees Jews behind everything. That discredits us and it discredits Jeff...which, in fact, may be the very motive behind some of these posts in the first place. <br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br> <p></p><i></i>
