ngl, I didn't realize just how toxic German anti-anti-semitism was until a German gentile called me - a Jew - an antisemite on the basis that criticizing the finance sector was "structurally antisemitic"

https://jewishcurrents.org/the-strange-logic-of-germanys-antisemitism-bureaucrats

The Strange Logic of Germany’s Antisemitism Bureaucrats

An army of antisemitism commissioners was supposed to help Germany atone for its past. Critics say it is evidence of a memory effort gone haywire.

Jewish Currents
@pluralistic i'm curious, what were your exact words about the finance sector?
Pluralistic: Leveraged buyouts are not like mortgages (05 Aug 2024) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow

@pluralistic actually, some stuff can be seen as antisemitic indeed.
First, the picture. It is a version of a common antisemitic trope (compare pic below)
Second, the distinction in "productive" vs. "grubbing" capital is a continuation of "the money-lending jew" trope dating back for centuries.
Third, from all capitalists doing shady businesses, you name exactly one (1) as example: Zuckerberg.
I give you the benefit of doubt if it was conscious, but i cannot blame others who see intent.

@Dingsextrem @pluralistic

That's a very different picture, though. That uses a blatantly racist caricature, unlike the image @pluralistic used.

@Dingsextrem

> First, the picture. It is a version of a common antisemitic trope (compare pic below)

No, it isn't. It's a caricature of the Gentile banker JP Morgan, from a 110-year-old editorial cartoon about the first billion-dollar bank merger.

Just because antisemites depict *Jews* as dominating the world, that doesn't make *all* images of *all* forces - abstract or personified - that dominate the world antisemitic.

@Dingsextrem

> Second, the distinction in "productive" vs. "grubbing" capital is a continuation of "the money-lending jew" trope dating back for centuries.

No, it is not. This is you restating the idea that "critiques of finance capital are structurally antisemitic."

@Dingsextrem

That is a fundamentally unserious proposition that is *very* antisemitic in that it both erases the monumental contributions of Jewish radicals (Marx, Luxembourg, Graeber, Hoffman, Trotsky, etc) to this critique, and - far worse - gives credit for their work to the Nazis who would have exterminated them.

@pluralistic Oh, clever, the "the real antisemite is YOU!"-Argument. Never heard that before, really gives me sth. to think about. Not.
@pluralistic i retract my former benefit of the doubt. Very convinced now your dogwhistles were fully intentional.

@Dingsextrem

Going into a Jewish person's replies and telling them they are anti-Semitic is a choice. Totally avoidable own goal.

@Dingsextrem Uh.... so you mean to tell me you think the guy whose grandparents fled Nazi Germany's conquest and whose father was born in a refugee camp in Azerbaijan is being antisemetic?

What the fuck?

@scien There's a fine difference between 'saying something antisemitic' (or racist or sexist) and 'being antisemitic' (or racist or sexist).

@Dingsextrem One would think someone jewish could attest to what is and isn't, in fact, antisemetic?

Not sure how your arguments are supposed to be seen as credible with: A. The rebuttals given & B. The fact that he is *literally* jewish.

But I guess I'm supposed to just shake my fist at him anyways bc some random guy decided to stretch his statements into a pretzel to try to contend that a jewish person is saying something antisemetic? Right. That makes sense.

More importantly *intentional dogwhistles*. You think he's *intentionally* putting *antisemetic dogwhistles* into his writing? What? What the fuck?

I mean, surely you could take a step back and see that vast swaths of people see this as utterly absurd, yes? Good god.

@scien @Dingsextrem

One would think someone jewish could attest to what is and isn't, in fact, antisemetic


Jews are not infallible. If you ask Netanyahu what's antisemitic and what isn't, he'll probably tell you that anything that questions or limits Israel's right to kill Palestinians would count as antisemitic.

In this particular case @pluralistic is obviously right, but that doesn't mean that every Jew in every discussion about antisemitism is always right, because they're people and often disagree with each other. Ultimately you've got to look at the arguments, and not blindly accept authority or dogma.

@mcv @pluralistic @Dingsextrem Well yes no shit, despite being born to Jewish parents, Murray Rothbard used antisemetic slurs and supported historical revision of WWII that erased the slaughter of jews, instead pretending it was for the purpose of "slaughtering the Germans and Japanese" - as if that made any sense.

My point is that of *credibility*. It's a very high ask to propose I defer to some random person about this rather than the *literal jewish person*. It's an absurd proposition in its own right but apparently I'm supposed to choke it down because "look at this clearly antisemetic image that even emphasizes the nose; clearly your choice of imagery is the same" and "saying that banks or capital interests can extract capital instead of aid genuine expansion is structurally antisemetic" - because apparently banks & capital interests are synonymous with jewish people.

I understand what you're saying but the point I'm trying to make clear is the base situation is already a high bar and then he pulls the most nonsensical shit.

@scien @pluralistic @Dingsextrem

Oh, absolutely. In this particular case, random internet person does not hold more authority over the definition of antisemitism than a than a thinker and writer whose family survived the holocaust.

But the argument "you're not X therefore you're wrong" is a fallacy and dogma I see too often, and I just wanted to point that out.

But Cory's real authority here doesn't come from the history of his family, because someone with a similar family history could still disagree, but from his arguments and sources, perhaps combined with the experience and understanding of that history.

@Dingsextrem @pluralistic in this case that argument is entirely accurate.
@pluralistic critique of capitalism is not antisemitic. Read again, i'm talking about the distinction between "good" and "evil" capitalists. Marx didn't differ in 'good' or 'evil' capitalists, he's about the system, not individual actors.

@Dingsextrem

> Marx didn't differ in 'good' or 'evil' capitalists,

This is literally the most wrong thing I have ever seen anyone write about Marx.

The *first chapter* of the Communist Manifesto distinguishes between finance capital and productive capital. This is also critical to Kapital I, and it's the heart of the Grundrisse.

@Dingsextrem

Mate, I was raised by Jewish Marxists who were also survivors, WWII refugees who received reparations checks all their lives.

I speak Yiddish, and I had both a bris and a Bar Mitzvah.

I promise you: I understand the consequences of the Holocaust, the nature of Judiasm, the Jewish critique of capitalism, and the nature of antisemitism.

The crude equivalences of "all caricatures of bankers" or "all critiques of finance capital" with "antisemitism" are factually *wrong*.

@Dingsextrem

Sure, Nazis depicted Jewish bankers as a force for evil - but the salient aspect of those images that made them antisemitic was that the bankers were coded as Jewish.

If you understood Jewish radicalism, you'd know that at the *very same time*, Jewish radical newspapers (e.g. The Forward) were running editorial cartoons that *also* depicted bankers as dominating the world - just not coded as Jewish.

@Dingsextrem

The Jewish Bund sang radical Yiddish songs filled with bawdy, vicious, hilarious digs at the finance sector - we play them every year at our seder.

Gentiles do not get to tell Jews how we are allowed to feel about finance capital in the name of preventing antisemitism.

Period.

"Gentiles do not get to tell Jews how we are allowed to feel about finance capital in the name of preventing antisemitism."

🔥 🔥 🔥 QFTMFT 🔥 🔥 🔥

@pluralistic @Dingsextrem

@pluralistic @Dingsextrem Cory, I need some of those songs! Point me in a direction.
@pluralistic The problem when you grew up in Germany and went through its (re)education system from the 70s onwards, is that it is often a hop, skip and a jump in your brain from George Grosz’ “Pillars of Society” critique of the Nazis and capitalism in the 1920s to the Nazi’s own antisemitic imagery. Often, the only difference is how the nose of the “fat banker” is drawn (which is why the goblins in Harry Potter quite justifiably attracted criticism for antisemitism).
@pluralistic Not trying to excuse the “jewsplaining” here. Just saying that, as a German, I can relate to the reaction to the image you used. I have that too wrt a lot of anti-capitalist imagery that triggers a memory of the antisemitic imagery I was asked to analyse in school (leading to hours researching the origin of an image). The differences are often smaller than I would like and - again, as a German - I am worried about people being conditioned to seeing one by use of the other.
@pluralistic Of course, in an ideal world, people should be able to distinguish between the two. But if I’m finding this difficult despite having had to study it in three different subjects in school (history, art history, and social science) I’m not convinced that other people will do any better. Particularly not in these days of GenAI mash-ups.
@TheCybermatron @pluralistic I know what you mean. During the financial crisis here (Ireland) some of the left's denunciation of "fatcat bankers" did feel like it was unconsciously recycling unpleasant tropes.
@TheCybermatron @pluralistic This is the difficulty with anti-hate speech laws, so much is open to interpretation, including honest misunderstanding, & we've seen hatemongers choose their words to stay just on the allowed side of rules.
It's why I think lawmakers need to err on the side of allowing speech.
We mustn't stop legitimate criticism, for example the Israeli government's violation of human rights, such criticism isn't bigotry even if bigots use those real issues to hit their 'enemy'.
@Dingsextrem @pluralistic I mean, I saw several examples named: the people who bought Red Lobster, Armark, Toys R Us, The Olive Garden and Pet Smart.

Just because you can see things that might, in isolation, be anti-semitic (or more accurately in this case, might be *similar to* things which are *associated with* anti-semitism), does not make a work, with those things in context, anti-semitic.

I can blame anyone whether they see intent or not. Oh, something is pointing out uncomfortable truths? Better attack it on identity.

Oh wait, what kind of people do we know who attack things on identity?