4:34pm September 7, 2014

➸ July breaks record for antisemitic hate

theskaldspeaks:

glegrumbles:

theskaldspeaks:

472.

Am I wrong to speculate if this were about hate crimes against any other group, it would have at least a couple thousand notes by now?

I wouldn’t say any other group. There are many groups who, when posting about serious issues, don’t get much notice or support. (Like, for instance, when I was talking about the Saami and got a lot of crickets, but then Frozen came out and suddenly everyone knew about the Saami and had an opinion. But only related to Disney and didn’t care about the mining protests in Gállok or recent hate crimes or the like.)

But I have noticed that a lot of people who would otherwise reblog and signal boost or discuss other instances of hate crimes and racism decide not to when the focus is anti-semitism.

Yeah, okay, I see what you mean. I wonder why that is…. I mean one possibility is that a lot more of us are kind of antisemitic than we think, and another is that fewer people understand that antisemitism is still as real and destructive as ever? Or maybe an effect of the myth that jews are all white, and so people don’t think they’re actually oppressed? Could it be that jewish people make up a smaller share of tumblrs user demographic? (That doesn’t really seem likely).

(Disclaimer: I’m not Jewish.) From what I’ve seen, it’s a combination of the first two. People are anti-semitic or buying into anti-semitic falsehoods (they’re rich, they control the media and the government, etc) that cement an idea in their heads that Jewish people have privilege and power and so they cannot be an oppressed or targeted group. Or they see pictures of white or white-passing Ashkenazim, ignore the Mizrahim and Sephardim and non-white-passing Ashkenazim, and think all Jewish people are white… and thus have white privilege and cannot be oppressed or targeted. Completely disregarding the fact that Jewish people get coded as non-white and recognized as a non-white minority all the time, but particularly when someone wants to target them. (ie, comments that you “look Jewish”. I understand this is a weird and difficult thing for USA-oriented Tumblr to understand, but throughout the world having a certain shade of skin doesn’t mean you get “coded as white” by people local to that area and get the accompanying white privilege. People in other areas look at physical features or last names or various things, code them racially, and then take bigoted or oppressive actions on that basis. So you get people who think that, say, conflicts between the Chechens and their neighbors is “just religious”, because Americans look at everyone in the conflicts and decide they all look white, while people involved in the conflicts see definitive ethnic or racial boundaries and these are factored into the conflicts and tensions.)

Getting back to the original question, people also seem oblivious to the fact that anti-semitism is still around. It’s not reported on as widely. It’s often treated frivolously when it is. Obvious hate crimes are not labeled and treated as hate crimes.