A New Europe: Anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, Nation-State

[Searcher08]

POSTING THE SAME POST A FEW DAYS LATER IN THE SAME THREAD, WITH ADDED COPYPASTA?

My opinion? this is just spamming behaviour and should be pointed out.

[American Dream]

Of course it has nothing to do with the content whatsoever.

In fact, it never does..

[Searcher08]

Of course it has nothing to do with the content whatsoever.

In fact, it never does..

This is one of those rare time I find myself agreeing with you.
My primary issue with you is about your posting process, which has become very contentious on General Discussion.

A simple rule to apply is
"How would it be if everyone did it?"

And if everyone adopted your posting process, General Discussion would turn into context-free, solipsistic (little discussion happening)islands of CopyPasted articles, disconnected images.

In other words, a collection of Tumblr sites, but with none of their popularity.

Regarding the jewdas site, I think that site has lots of funny and insightful articles and is much closer to my way of thinking than 90% of the (probably unread by you) reactionary self-regarding anarcho-bollox / neoliberal globalist scary quotes "antifa".

I am interested in your personal first-hand experiences of anti-Semitism.

When I shared mine, you attempted to do a smear job on what I said, framing it IIRC as a "typical anti-Semite cover story", which was useful input into my project of smear modelling, but little else.
From this stance I took that your mental map of anti-Semitism was based on theory and abstraction rather than real-world experience. I acknowledge that I could be quite incorrect about that and would be happy to be so.

[coffin_dodger]

The stuff of these myriad, desperate, proliferating threads - the swastikas, the burly gangsters, the tattoos, the angry faces, the salutes, the black and red, the constant violence and threat thereof - coming to a town like yours, soon - these are waining tools of fear. Wielded as rigid truth by a System now so sickly it cannot hide it's ghastly secrets any longer.

[American Dream]

Searcher, as you know full well, I am extremely weary of trying to engage with you.It seems like you don't/can't/won't accept this. I will give you a short response here, without any guarantees whatsoever that I will continue:

1. I am not convinced at all that you care so much about people posting articles and other copied content as a general principle. If you did, I would see you complaining about it consistently, if not equally, across the board. Of course you do not, and conveniently ignore it when it suits your purposes. As I've said many times before if you can implement a reasonable change in protocols across the board, then I think that's great.

2. You do and have over the years endorsed many, many ideas which 99.9% of the people I know in the English-speaking world would consider far right and/or racist. I object to that on principle and because I still believe in muckraking, in conspiracy expose's as a (potentially) effective means of promoting positive social change. I see your posting pattern as fairly negative, in this light.

3. I claim no particularly egregious experience of "anti-Semitism" and never did. This is rather besides the point. In fact, I do reject and strongly critique the whole "privilege politics" paradigm which is so common on tumblr, reddit subfora and elsewhere in the various realms of liberalism.

4. We've been over this ground many, many times before and there is really not much common ground about this. Apparently you find this impossible to accept and have resorted to a variety of what I would call "dirty tricks"- some of them egregiously reprehensible, for which you have never taken responsibility. This seems to be in large part because you can not accept that I no longer want to engage with you.

Why not just choose to live with the reality that I am going to post libertarian/left-oriented critiques of the far right and of racism- especially as they relate to the history and praxis of conspiracy investigation? As you know full well, that is what I have chosen to do for many years now and it has now been quite a while that I have soured on the potentials of engaging with you.

Why not just accept these realities and move on?

[American Dream]

This one's for you, coffin_dodger:


http://www.nigelparry.com/issues/shamir ... etter.html

E-mail: SERIOUS CONCERNS ABOUT ISRAEL SHAMIR

Date: Mon, 16 Apr 2001 13:53:12 -0500
Title: SERIOUS CONCERNS ABOUT ISRAEL SHAMIR

From Ali Abunimah & Hussein Ibish (acting solely in his private capacity)

Dear Friends:

In recent months, many people have been reading the writings of Israel Shamir, who describes himself as a Russian-Israeli journalist. Many have been impressed by these writings, and Shamir has been embraced in many places in the US on his current speaking tour. From early on, some of Shamir's writings struck us as straying beyond criticism of Israel and Zionism, and crossing into the territory of implicit anti-Semitism. We have discussed this with many people privately, but now feel compelled to raise some of these objections publicly. While there are many passages in Shamir's rhetoric that cause serious concern, it is sufficient to cite these three:

1) Yesterday we received an "Easter Message" from Shamir in which he repeats the most odious characterizations of Jews as "Christ killers," the staple of classic European Christian anti-Semitism. In the message, which originates from Shamir's own email address, he writes:

"Jesus taught, love your neighbour as yourself, even if he is a traditional enemy of Jews, a Samaritan. That is why he was hated by the Jewish supremacists of his time. He said: you can not worship God and Mammon, the god of greed, you have to choose. That is why he was hated by supply-side economists and bankers of his day. They sentenced him to death and the Empire obliged and carried out the execution, in order to keep peace with these all-important forces. Our fathers did not dare to speak against their leaders. The spirit of domination scored a victory, but the spirit of brotherhood did not vanish."

Shamir continues: "The Jewish supremacy forces and the greed worshippers united again to crucify Christ. The US, this New Rome, again gives hand and agrees to become the executioner. Now it is our turn to decide."

Palestinians, Shamir argues, are today's Christ, and history has given the Jews a "second chance" i.e. a chance to redeem their earlier crucifixion of Jesus by not crucifying the Palestinians. "If we keep our mouth shut," Shamir writes, "we deserve to be called 'Christ killers.' If we stop it, we shall change history. The scarlet as blood sins of past will become white as snow. [sic]"

We cannot agree that Jews "deserve" to be called "Christ killers," or that this kind of rhetoric has anything whatever to offer of value to the movement for Palestinian liberation and human rights. All this sort of rhetoric does, no matter who it comes from, is paint the Palestinian movement as one which includes, requires, or embraces a discourse which vilifies, or threatens to vilify, Jews as "Christ killers." What could be more counterproductive to building the community of conscience, the powerful moral stance, which is and must be the goal of those of us in the United States who support Palestinian rights, than the introduction of this kind of rhetoric into our conversation? How could we do more to discredit ourselves than by allowing such ideas to proliferate in behalf of a movement that has no need whatever to stoop to vilifying others to justify itself?

2) Shamir recently gave a speech at Tufts University. He is quoted as saying at that speech: "Palestinians are perfect mammals; their life is deeply rooted in the ground...Israeli people represent a virus form of a human being because they can live anywhere." ("Israel at fault for Middle East violence, Jewish journalist says," The Tufts Daily, April 10, 2001) The quote appears to be verified and accurate.

This is, if anything, even worse than the "Christ killers" language drawn from traditional European Christian anti-Semitism. The "Jew-as-parasite" analysis recalls the even more vicious political and racial, rather than folkloric and religious, anti-Semitism which emerged during the 19th century in Europe and culminated in the Nazi genocide of World War II. This description of Jews as 'parasites' or "viruses" cast them as immutably alien to all societies in which they lived, and contrasted the 'international Jew' with the supposedly 'authentic' volkish people, who have deep connections to the land of the nation and who are the creators of social and economic value. The 'inauthentic' Jews were always 'foreigners' and "viruses" because, as Shamir puts it, "they can live anywhere," and are not rooted to the land as the non-Jewish population supposedly is. They are cast as parasites and diseases that feed off of the productivity and creativity of the authentic people, without ever contributing anything themselves.

It is disturbing to see the Palestinian people cast as the 'honest volkish people' of what is, in effect, racist rhetoric about why Jews are a fundamentally different and dangerous type of human being. Palestinians are not "perfect mammals," they are human beings like everyone else. No better, and no worse. Israeli Jews are not "a virus form of a human being," they are a human form of a human being, whose government and state is engaged in a brutal oppression and dispossession of another group of human beings. Our battle is for human rights and human dignity, and against racism, colonialism and oppression. It should be obvious to everyone that this statement by Shamir crosses all lines of decency, and could not be better designed to damage, denigrate and bring into disrepute the movement for Palestinian human rights.

3) On March 30, the Jerusalem Post published an op/ed that reported: "Two weeks ago, Russian-language journalist Israel Shamir told a largely Jewish audience: 'Jews only exist to drip the blood of Palestinian children into their matzas.'" ("The Jewish student - a minnow among sharks," March 30, 2001)

If this is an accurate quote, it is another example of the repetition of the worst kind of anti-Semitism. Shamir has privately denied saying this, but does not appear to have taken any action to correct the record publicly or to be in any way upset about the attribution. Obviously, we have no trouble believing that the Jerusalem Post might have mischaracterized someone's words. However, if the report is not accurate, one has to ask why Shamir has allowed such a gross misquotation to stand unchallenged. If he is indeed working in the interests of Palestinian liberation, surely he has an obligation not to let such a mischaracterization go uncorrected. Moreover, given the "Christ-killers" and "Jews-as-viruses" statements, the Jerusalem Post quote seems increasingly less out of character.

Many people have welcomed the contributions of Israel Shamir in good faith, but we feel they may not be paying close enough attention to what he is saying. Perhaps this is because many of us welcome criticism of Israel from someone who appears to be an "insider," that our hunger for validation from Jewish Israelis sometimes allows us to proceed without the requisite skepticism or overlook excesses we otherwise would not tolerate. Perhaps some are ready to overlook statements that appeal to anti-Semitic sentiments because the person making them identifies himself as a Jew. But the identity of the speaker makes such statements no less odious and harmful. We do not have any need for some of what Israel Shamir is introducing into the discourse on behalf of Palestinian rights, which increasingly includes elements of traditional European anti-Semitic rhetoric. Such sentiments will harm, not help, the cause. We urge all our friends in the movement for Palestinian rights to seriously consider the long-term effects this rhetoric will have on the cause, and act accordingly.

Ali Abunimah (http://www.abunimah.org)
Hussein Ibish (acting solely in his private capacity)

April 16, 2001

Source: The above e-mail was circulated widely on the Internet.

[coffin_dodger]

^ that's the first I've read about Shamir. (just noticed it's not exactly current, but that's got nothing to do with it anyway - it's a mechanism to smear me with him, right?) I'm guessing he's regarded as abhorrant by The System. The same System that lies to cover the true intention of wars; that offers us a binary choice of left or right; that controls the scarcity or abundance of the most powerful tool of any armoury - money; that corrupts any politician; that covers up paedophile networks for blackmail gain; that runs a militray as well as a prison industrial complex; that seeks to control it's subjects' thoughts (and consequent actions) through co-opted media; and a System whose main export is military occupation or death and whose powerless inhabitants are deeply troubled, many on psychiactric medication (including millions of infants) and thoroughly frightened by a bleak present and future.

No stone should be left unturned in confronting this System. But certain stones are impossible to even talk about, let alone lift and see what's underneath.

I don't give a fuck who is at the top - I just want it radically different.

[American Dream]

You know, if I were to venture a guess, it would be that you're much more ok, than not ok with Israel Shamir, and his line...

[seemslikeadream]

Israel Shamir is published at CounterPunch

apparently that is why AD calls CounterPunch vile....

[American Dream]

That was somebody else who said that, but it is true that I am deeply critical of the Red-Brown Alliance...

[seemslikeadream]

That was somebody else who said that, but it is true that I am deeply critical of the Red-Brown Alliance...

yes you just posted it as an OP

[Searcher08]

Searcher, as you know full well, I am extremely weary of trying to engage with you.It seems like you don't/can't/won't accept this. I will give you a short response here, without any guarantees whatsoever that I will continue:

Yes, for myself spending my time and attention doing this is as much fun as having a root canal, but like a root canal, has an end point and there will be a positive outcome for the board.

1. I am not convinced at all that you care so much about people posting articles and other copied content as a general principle. If you did, I would see you complaining about it consistently, if not equally, across the board. Of course you do not, and conveniently ignore it when it suits your purposes. As I've said many times before if you can implement a reasonable change in protocols across the board, then I think that's great.

That is a fair point which deserves to be expanded on.
First, FWIW I have no objections to anyone posting an article on any subject within the letter and spirit of RI. What each person posts is up to them.

Do you AD agree, American Dream, that this is what RI General Discussion is for - discussing articles and/or personal thought pieces and / or relevant experiences with optional fun and humour? And that that is best served by maximising the throughput, keeping conversations fresh? And that posting processes should aim for encouraging conversation as much as possible.

My issue is with de-facto 'gaming' behaviour where multiple different topics ends up having long strings of posts, week after week, WITHOUT REPLIES.
My objection is this is being done IN GENERAL DISCUSSION, not Data Dump.
This is not about 'my' implementing anything. It is about the community addressing a community issue. If you have an issue with others doing your behaviour and you think I am avoiding it, please point to an example. Be specific. Who is it? Myself? Willow? Slad? Wombat? slim?
If you are negotiating on the basis of fairness, with the same principal applying to all, why on Earth not? I take that for granted.

Your evidence criteria of me pointing out OTHERS doing this process ASSUMES that others ARE.
The nearest poster in number to you is slad. I did an analysis of HOW each of you post.
She posts many more threads than you although less posts. They will tend to fall off page 1 within two weeks, replaced by new ones. Some of the threads have a one post, with zero replies.
Why do you avoid a simple mathematical point - if each person at RI followed your process of posting behaviour, conversation and discussion would tank.
The process is no different than the Cafe thought experiment I used previously.

2. You do and have over the years endorsed many, many ideas which 99.9% of the people I know in the English-speaking world would consider far right and/or racist. I object to that on principle and because I still believe in muckraking, in conspiracy expose's as a (potentially) effective means of promoting positive social change. I see your posting pattern as fairly negative, in this light.

Sorry, need to get a bit heavy with this. Cos if you had said this to me in a pub over here, I would be suggesting we 'go outside'.
Are you familiar with PLOSTFU?
It is an invocation to back up a very strong claim with specific link(s).

When a person invokes PLOSTFU, if the receiver of this DOES NOT REPLY, then they are to be universally derided. They are either a) spot on or b) a troll
Post a Link Or Shut The F*** Up.
Your assessment has the same veracity as
"I strongly object to American Dream's strident consistent advocacy at RI for pedophiles as an oppressed minority deserving rights and respect"
in other words, it is utterly evidence-free, invented nonsense.
Post a Link Or Shut The F*** Up.

3. I claim no particularly egregious experience of "anti-Semitism" and never did. This is rather besides the point. In fact, I do reject and strongly critique the whole "privilege politics" paradigm which is so common on tumblr, reddit subfora and elsewhere in the various realms of liberalism.

Far from being beside the point, this is bang on the money. I suspect that your most egregious experience of anti-Semitism you have had has been the horror of... reading discussions about David Icke at RI. May I politely suggest that you go and get some real-world experience of it before potty-mouthing people who actually *have* had? And had to deal with it in the flesh? Because, not to put too fine a point on it, I don't want to be harangued by someone who admits to NOT having had an egregious experience of real-world anti-Semitism in the UK, when I F****** HAVE.
Can you understand how that might make for a less than stellar atmosphere going forward?

4. We've been over this ground many, many times before and there is really not much common ground about this. Apparently you find this impossible to accept and have resorted to a variety of what I would call "dirty tricks"- some of them egregiously reprehensible, for which you have never taken responsibility. This seems to be in large part because you can not accept that I no longer want to engage with you.

Yes, I have been bombarded month in month out with people complaining about my posting behaviour.
My approach has been very consistent and has been to metamodel your words.
This is a process of making language LESS ambiguous, LESS conceptual and MORE sensory.
Going from
"Everything is screwed!" -->
SCREWED, WHAT SPECIFICALLY IS SCREWED?
"The second production line is fucked" -->
HOW IN PARTICULAR IS IT FUCKED?"
"All the women operators in the Fanbelt Section of the second Production Line, since lunchtime, have walked out
"WHAT SPECIFICALLY IS DIFFERENT?
The toilets have run out of toilet paper"

Thus we will have gone from
Everything is screwed!! (which means different things to everyone who hears it)
to
John, deliver 36 rolls of soft toilet paper to Ladies Toilet, Fanbelt Section, Line 2 at once
(which means very similar to everyone who hears it)
For example - even in this paragraph - you frame me as a person 'dirty tricking' someone into engagement and some of these approaches are 'egregiously reprehensible', a very full-on phrase.
Who wouldn't wonder about my "egregiously reprehensible" behaviour.
PLOSTFU
For your credibility here, please point to a SINGLE of these "dirty tricks".
Otherwise, I suggest you are offended at being challenged and having a person (me) repeatedly seek CLARITY from your language and ownership of it from YOU.
Because RI IS THAT SORT OF PLACE.

Linguistic 'Dirty Tricks' operate in the direction of INCREASING ambiguity and fog.
Such as your saying
"I'm not *really* saying slad and you are anti-Semites, but..." and similar gambits.
and
"You do and have over the years endorsed many, many ideas which 99.9% of the people I know in
the English-speaking world would consider far right and/or racist."
Do you notice how that excludes YOU? And what YOU think? It gives you an out.
It is talking about what OTHERS, the 99.9% think, not about what YOU think.

PLOSTFU

Why not just choose to live with the reality that I am going to post libertarian/left-oriented critiques of the far right and of racism- especially as they relate to the history and praxis of conspiracy investigation? As you know full well, that is what I have chosen to do for many years now and it has now been quite a while that I have soured on the potentials of engaging with you.

I really really dont mind object to you posting in that area. Why should I??
You tenaciously conflate my objections as being about content rather than primarily your posting process in General Discussion.
Whether you engage with me, your opinion of me, and what you post, is your business.
On the other hand, unethical posting process and behaviour on GD as a member of RI is EVERYONES business.

Why not just accept these realities and move on?

I WAS going to say "why don't you stop being such a patronising 1-up d***", but that would have been very rude, so I'm glad I didn't. I prefer to maintain an honest AND constructive tone. Must admit and would really prefer to not be doing this.
Surprisingly positive, I would say
There is a new reality.
De-facto forum gaming behaviour is present here at RI; however the resulting slow decay of General Discussion into an undiscussed, context-free, cross-posted, Tumblr-esque CopyPasta garbage dump has been halted and now, in the coming weeks days and months, vanishing and fading away. Completely. Think of it like "Peak R.I." and bad posting practice... like running the forum economy on oil. Creating a better way of using forum energy will be like both a step towards sustainability and more effective energy usage. Which I think may lead to some delightful outcomes.
General Discussion will be a lighter faster clearer faster friendlier place, with more new people and a more constructive atmosphere, which are qualities I'm sure all of us with take a deep breath and breathe a sigh of relief.
Hope. Like this...

[seemslikeadream]

Yea what searcher said.....and you're just no fun to read either
If you could only lighten up ....just a little bit

The earth is 4.5 billion years old everything is going to be fine

[American Dream]

Searcher, as you know full well, I am extremely weary of trying to engage with you. It seems like you don't/can't/won't accept this. I will give you a short response here, without any guarantees whatsoever that I will continue:

Yeah- there is no other message that you really need to "get". Because that's it.

[American Dream]

The English Far-Right's War On Anti-Fascist Football Ultras

February 13, 2015
by James Poulter

The past few seasons have seen the emergence of the UK's football ultras scene. Across the country, fans are reacting to the anaemic, sanitised and expensive "match day experiences" on offer by getting behind their teams in as rowdy a manner as they can get away with, and exerting their collective power to protest against the commercialisation of the game.

Ultras culture is mainly associated with Italy, emerging while the country was gripped in the major social upheaval of the "Hot Autumn", where millions of workers supported strikes and occupations as a violent conflict raged between forces of the extreme left, extreme right and the Italian state. As such, ultras are often known for their political leanings as much as their fanatical support.

An increasing number of people are going to non-league clubs where you can pay less than a tenner to watch football, drink larger tins and smoke by the pitch, and you may be able to get away with letting off some flares. The culture has worked its way into the Premier League, too, most famously with Crystal Palace's Holmsdale Fanatics who chant relentlessly during games. They can't really be placed in terms of a left/right political spectrum, but they've done a lot of campaigning over ticket prices. They also forced a Sky Sports news presenter to abandon his live reporting on transfer deadline-day last year, setting off flares and chanting, "Sky Sports, we fucking hate Sky Sports" at him.



Clapton fans at an away ground

The UK's biggest non-league ultras group, the Clapton Ultras – followers of Clapton FC in Newham, East London – have explicitly left-wing, anti-fascist politics. They have left-wing and anti-fascist iconography and slogans on their flags and banners. Support for their games tends to be super-raucous, but with nasty agg kept to a minimum. The Ultras sing songs all-game long, but the lyrics never include any sexism, racism, homophobia, or any of the other casual prejudicial bullshit you'd hear on many a football terrace. This week, Dulwich Hamlet FC – which has its own left-wing fan group, the Rabble – hosted an anti-homophobia friendly against Stonewall FC – the world's most successful gay football club. The Clapton Ultras made the Wednesday night trip to South London to support Stonewall.

But while a left-wing football culture has been emerging, the far-right have taken notice and become determined to ruin their fun. For over a year, the right-wing hooligans have been waging a low level war against the left-wing ultras, one which recently flared up into punch-ups. One ultras group had to stop completely. Now, things look like they're on the brink. Is the conflict coming to an end or is the violence set to spread to the Premier League, with a threat to Brigada 1874, an anti-fascist ultras group at Aston Villa?

Things began in December 2013 at Mangotsfield United, based on the outskirts of Bristol. An Ultras crew calling themselves the Inter Village Firm attached themselves to the club, getting behind the team with smoke flares and anti-fascist flags. This came to the attention of a group of people once known as Casuals United, who have links to football hooliganism and the far-right English Defence League.

http://www.vice.com/en_uk/read/is-engli ... league-181