American Dream said:
I have done a good deal of progressive activism around Palestine/Israel. I think that not being clear about "anti-Semitism" and its relation to overblown theories of Jewish global domination, is like going before the ADL, ZOA, WJC and all the rest, and taping a giant "Kick Me!" sign to your back.
No. First, the ADL, ZOA, the WJC and all the rest have neither the moral nor intellectual authority to impose their interpretation of reality on me. In fact, they are the very last people I would ever entrust with my brain, even if I were inclined to hand it over to anyone, which I am not. Forgive me for being blunt, but your thinly-veiled threat that if I know what's good for me, as one self-described "progressive" buddy to another, I'd better not stray outside the boundaries drawn by these cretinous intellectual bully-boys, is not only insulting to my intelligence, but profoundly hypocritical.
I wonder if you're capable of appreciating the irony: "American Dream" is advising "Alice the Curious" not to be too curious, not to think too freely, and to watch what she says, for fear of what "the ADL, ZOA, the WJC and all the rest" will do. First, if I understand you correctly, you're saying that regardless of what I'm actually arguing, and regardless of the evidence I present in support, all you are capable of hearing is "World Jewish Conspiracy".
Second, you seem to be warning me: "There is no 'World Jewish Conspiracy' but you'd better not talk about it or The Jews will Get You." Orwell used the term double-think to describe that sort of thing. Deeply embedding two irrational, mutually exclusive, emotionally-charged archetypes in people's minds (the Holocaust Victim and the Omnipotent, Wrathful Jew), and programming them as an automatic response to any mention of Jewish people, is a powerful method of short-circuiting rational thought about anything involving the action of any individual or organization that uses the "Jewish" label.
It seems the American Dream is turning into an Orwellian nightmare. How sad for you.
This reminds me of something I once heard, about how elephants are trained. When they're still babies, one leg is chained to a post driven into the ground. After struggling in vain to free itself, the baby eventually learns to give up even trying. The lesson is so deeply embedded that long after the elephant becomes huge and powerful, all it takes is the thinnest of chains around its leg to keep it still, no post necessary.
The reason I bring this up, is that I've looked everywhere, even under the bed and behind the door, and haven't found any evidence of the "ADL, ZOA, the WJC and all the rest", coming to get me. Furthermore, as far as I can tell, you're the one who's been trying to tape a giant "Kick Me!" sign on my back, by gratuitously introducing the Protocols and dishonestly framing my arguments as "World Jewish Conspiracy" theory, waving them like a giant red cape to call forth the bull.
This is the kind of tactic that prevails in the 'real world' outside the RI board, where all too often ideas and evidence are suppressed with violence and threats, where slogans and the parroting of second-hand thoughts have replaced intelligent discourse and where conditioned responses have replaced reason. No wonder it's such a mess.
I do feel that all ideas should be able to be considered rationally, and not ruled out a priori. Problem is, I've been looking at the arguments for a Zionist conspiracy ruling the world for a long time now, and it seems to be crap.
Well, goody for you. You've examined
all the evidence, you've made up your presumably superior mind, you've neatly labeled and filed it all away, and now you're generously trying to save the rest of us from going to the trouble of figuring things out for ourselves. How very...big brotherly of you.
