sovay | I don't want to be a fascist, I'm not Aryan

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I don't want to be a fascist, I'm not Aryan

In general I don't think that I have experienced a lot of anti-Semitism in my life. There was the famous time in high school when a student asked me if my family celebrated Christmas or Hanukkah and I started to give her a serious answer about my parents' concept of both-ways children before it turned out that she just hadn't wanted to sound racist by saying that she thought I was Jewish because of my nose (I got to tell her that the nose was from my father's Welsh-Irish Catholic side of the family) and the awkward time at Yale where I found myself being consulted as an authority on Judaism despite coming from a minimally observant family and having absolutely no ability to explain the decision-making process behind Israel's foreign and domestic policies (yes, technically I could apply for Israeli citizenship under the Law of Return, but I certainly don't have it now and anyway it wouldn't make me an automatic member of the Knesset) and the intermittent, unsurprising displeasure of encountering stereotypes in various media (never do things like a Nazi Assyriologist, E. Nesbit!). I've had slurs applied to me, of course, but never by anyone who had power over me or whose opinion I valued. I've never found swastikas drawn on my door. No one ever dropped by my office hours to see if I had horns.

And yet somewhere I seem to have picked up the idea that to talk about anti-Semitism as a Jew is somehow in bad taste. It is tacky. It is greedy. It is in some essential way false. It is taking attention away from people who are really marginalized and making the conversation all about my people and their special pleading. Seriously, why do Jews always need to make themselves out as the victims? There hasn't been a Holocaust for more than seventy years. The world said never again. You've had all the privilege ever since. Can't you let it go? But Israel! And so despite all the recent and blatant fuckery like the White House's soft-pedaled Holocaust denial (Deborah Lipstadt literally wrote the book on that) or the vandalization of the Chesed Shel Emeth Cemetery in St. Louis (Linda Sarsour and Tarek El-Messidi have raised $115,000 and counting in repair money) or Sean Spicer scolding the Anne Frank Center for not being impressed by 45's quarter-assed admission that anti-Semitism is bad (the Anne Frank Center drilled him a new one), I realized that every time I post publicly about some manifestation of anti-Semitism in America, I am waiting to check my comments and find someone deploring me for characteristically calling out only Jewish causes and ignoring all the other, more pressing forms of racism in the world. I am waiting for friends to write me off and feel a little sorry that I turned out not to be capable of intersectional social justice after all.

derspatchel listened to me and said, "You're afraid they're going to All Lives Matter you."

Which I think means that I have actually experienced quite a lot of anti-Semitism in my life. Just in a sort of sideways, impersonal, radioactive way, where nobody said any one thing and I still got sleeted through with this sense that being a responsible Jew in a majority non-Jewish society means behaving as though anti-Semitism is not a living problem or exists only in parenthesis of the many ways people can be horrible to one another. It's all right to agree if a non-Jew draws attention to it; it's letting the side down if you say something yourself. On no account suggest that anything is uniquely experienced by Jews. Nobody wants to hear that Chosen shtick. I am pretty sure this is pernicious bullshit. (Now that I write it out, it is pernicious bullshit that reminds me strikingly of the Obama-era figment of a post-racial America, where God forbid anyone should suggest that the presence of a Black man in our highest elected office was not in fact a magical panacea for ongoing centuries of institutional racism.) It's just pernicious bullshit that kicks up my blood pressure on a basis that is more frequent than it should be and I am annoyed that it's in my head. I don't even know that I can blame it on Tiny Wittgenstein. Real-life Wittgenstein went around Cambridge one night after the institution of the Nuremberg Laws apologizing to his colleagues for not having told them that he was Jewish (according to the Nazis, anyway: he had three Jewish grandparents, but since the non-Jewish one was his mother's mother, the rule of matrilineal descent put him out of the running as far as halakhah was concerned), but I've always had the sense that confused them more than anything else.

Nota bene: this post is not in any way informed by my experiences at the trans youth support rally last night. Everyone there was awesome. I started noticing the anxiety shortly after the election when swastikas started flying like wild blueberry muffins, but it took until a few days ago for the specific issue to articulate itself. I spent a couple of days wondering if I should put up a post at all or if that would only let me in for exactly the kind of criticism I've been afraid of—who died and left you a persecution complex? I finally decided that my friendlist is not composed of terrible human beings.

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*support support*

*support support*

Thank you.

Hugs.

I admit I'm kind of amused by the image of assorted Oxford dons sleepily answering the knocks at their doors and trying to figure out what their colleague is apologizing for this time.

Hugs.

Thank you.

I admit I'm kind of amused by the image of assorted Oxford dons sleepily answering the knocks at their doors and trying to figure out what their colleague is apologizing for this time.

"That's nice, Ludwig."

"Ludwig, we already kind of knew."

"For God's sake, Ludwig, it's three in the morning!"

I'm sure it would have weirded out Wittgenstein that I find him adorable, but the fact remains that I frequently do.

And yet somewhere I seem to have picked up the idea that to talk about anti-Semitism as a Jew is somehow in bad taste. It is tacky. It is greedy. It is in some essential way false. It is taking attention away from people who are really marginalized and making the conversation all about my people and their special pleading. Seriously, why do Jews always need to make themselves out as the victims?

I've had other Jewish friends who said they felt like this, too, and it sounds like it feels really shitty and I'm sorry. //offers hugs

It's likely that when one belongs to a victimized group, cause to complain arises so frequently that one starts to worry about sounding as though one is overstating things? (Meanwhile abusers likely encourage this feeling, or at least take advantage of it.)

Probably also true of people with chronic illnesses.

It's likely that when one belongs to a victimized group, cause to complain arises so frequently that one starts to worry about sounding as though one is overstating things?

I really think the country I live in—and many other countries, I suspect—want to believe that progress is just as good as a solution. We elected a Black president? Racism is over! The gender pay gap is down to eighty cents on the dollar? An end to misogyny! We have high-profile trans actors? Marriage defined more inclusively than one cis man and one cis woman? Celebrities revealing themselves as non-straight? You can put down the pride flags now, the need for gay liberation is past. (And they probably would say "gay liberation," even though I believe that now refers to a specific historical movement rather than the contemporary front of queer/GLBTQIA rights.) It is breaching the social contract to disturb this fiction, just as it is ruder to call someone a racist than it is to express a racist sentiment. Are there university quotas on Jewish students? Can a golf club legally refuse you membership? No? Then anti-Semitism isn't a thing anymore! I'm sure it all goes back to privilege and resentment and zero-sum games, the conviction that a marginalized group cannot gain rights without the dominant group losing them in equal measure; it's what we saw win the election. If the problem is solved, then no further ground needs to be ceded, so let's agree that everyone is satisfied and we live in the best of all possible worlds. If you persist in pointing out that all these forms of marginalization and oppression still exist (plus a few not covered by this paragraph), then not only are you troubling the dominant group's self-image of magnanimity and tolerance in having made the concessions that they have, you are triggering their fear that they'll have to accommodate even more, which is just terribly demanding and unreasonable. This is how we get male audiences interpreting movies whose gender ratio is two-thirds in favor of men as wall-to-wall-ladies, because anything more than one woman with a speaking part is a feminist takeover. All of which is a long-winded way of saying that I agree with your theory that repeated complaints become unbelievable to people who never wanted to admit the persistence of the problem in the first place, but I think there are issues even before we get to the stage of belief. The reportage itself is bad enough.

(Meanwhile abusers likely encourage this feeling, or at least take advantage of it.)

After I had made this post, it did occur to me that Sean Spicer specifically accused the Anne Frank Center—metonymically, Jews in general—of never being satisfied with the addressing of anti-Semitism, always moving the goalposts, always making other people keep apologizing to them. Not letting it go. Which is pretty much what I was talking about, so, yes, I think so.

Probably also true of people with chronic illnesses.

Yes.

It's also just occurred to me that *any* complaint of anti-semitism can be claimed, by someone who doesn't wish to hear it, to fall under the popular formulation* of Godwin's Law.

*as opposed to Godwin's original version

It's also just occurred to me that *any* complaint of anti-semitism can be claimed, by someone who doesn't wish to hear it, to fall under the popular formulation* of Godwin's Law.

I'm actually pretty sure I've seen this happen.

I've had other Jewish friends who said they felt like this, too, and it sounds like it feels really shitty and I'm sorry. //offers hugs

Thank you. Appreciated and accepted.

While it is not exactly cheering, it is actually useful for me to hear that you know other Jewish people who feel similarly, because that removes any chance of it just being me. I didn't think it was, but my impostor syndrome appreciates the check-in.

*supports*

*supports*

Thank you.

We're not terrible and neither are you.

We're not terrible and neither are you.

I appreciate you not being terrible. It's a reality check.

Yes, deniable bigotry is, in and of itself, very tiring, because aside from its actual effects, the questioning of one's self /never ends/.

Sometimes I think the most annoying thing about anxiety/fear/hypervigilance takes up so much *processing time*. (And then I regain some proportion.)

Yes, deniable bigotry is, in and of itself, very tiring, because aside from its actual effects, the questioning of one's self /never ends/.

I've heard it argued that this is one of the definitional and most draining aspects of micro-aggressions: it's always theoretically possible that it might in any particular instance have been an innocent mistake or coincidence (or or or), so it forces you into that position of suspecting but not ever knowing for sure, wondering if you're just being paranoid or over-sensitive, not being able to raise it because it's deniable (or choosing to raise it knowing it will be denied).

All of which is hugely draining of mental resources and undermining of confidence and sense of self.

I've heard it argued that this is one of the definitional and most draining aspects of micro-aggressions: it's always theoretically possible that it might in any particular instance have been an innocent mistake or coincidence (or or or), so it forces you into that position of suspecting but not ever knowing for sure, wondering if you're just being paranoid or over-sensitive, not being able to raise it because it's deniable (or choosing to raise it knowing it will be denied).

Please enjoy this excellent article on microaggressions, which agrees with you. "I suggest that ambiguity is not a bug, but is in fact a key feature."

*fist-bump*

I have some particular weirdness coming from being partly-Jewish on my dad's side; depending on which rules one applies (and which of assorted insincere conversions one counts), I am somewhere between 0% and 50% Jewish (3/8 would probably be somewhat accurate).

So I sometimes have issues about whether I'm "allowed" to take anti-Semitism personally, because I'm not "really" Jewish, just "of Jewish heritage" ...

When I was young, I used to joke that I didn't consider myself Jewish, but that Hitler would have wanted me dead. Lately, this doesn't seem funny.

My dad once explained to me that I'm "Jewish for purposes of persecution".

(Which I've found surprisingly helpful as a rule of thumb for dealing with all sorts of identity politics about who is a "real" X.)

My dad once explained to me that I'm "Jewish for purposes of persecution".

My mother has non-jokingly had this conversation with my brother about his daughter. Though my niece's mother is not herself observant, she was raised French-Canadian Catholic and my niece was baptized because it was very important to her side of the family. If she goes through with confirmation when she's the relevant age, I'm pretty sure that puts her out of being considered anything but ethnically Jewish even by Reform and Reconstructionist Judaism. That will change nothing if people want to be racist at her.

(Which I've found surprisingly helpful as a rule of thumb for dealing with all sorts of identity politics about who is a "real" X.)

Agreed.

When I was young, I used to joke that I didn't consider myself Jewish, but that Hitler would have wanted me dead.

Because of patrilineal/matrilineal descent, or the distance from your generation, or personal observance, or what?

My mother was raised Jewish, my father was raised Christian. As a sort of compromise, I was raised Unitarian, though I *now* joke that I am a "lapsed Unitarian".

My mother was raised Jewish, my father was raised Christian. As a sort of compromise, I was raised Unitarian

That's an interesting decision. I think of Unitarian Universalism as much more in the direction of Christianity than anything else, given its origins, although I know many modern Unitarians (including one of my cousins) who don't.

though I *now* joke that I am a "lapsed Unitarian".

Does that mean that you define yourself by some other religious tradition or by none? (The latter is entirely reasonable; I just can't tell from your phrasing.)

While I suppose it would be technically accurate to say that UU is "more in the direction of Christianity" than any other religion, the "more" is very small. If there was such a thing as the Church of Secular Humanism, UU would be closer to that than Christianity.

Even UU churches exist on a spectrum; the congregation I was raised in was quite liberal. I got a church-run sex ed course before hitting puberty, for example. Quite a lot of Sunday School was the equivalent to a college-level course in Comparative Religion.

As a young adult, I viewed this education as having been successfully vaccinated me against religion. While UU has only one official piece of dogma, "belief in God", and our own congregation wasn't likely to even insist on that, I *didn't* believe in God.

I viewed the 'family church' as providing (for the adult congregation) the functions of social contact and, when needed, moral support. I had lots of friends outside of church, and enough arrogance to believe I needed no support, so as soon as I was allowed to, I walked away. (I discovered, many years later, that I left just before the youth field trips that functioned, unofficially, as the *practical* round of sex ed...)

These days, I have significantly more respect for spirituality than I once did. And I know many people who manage to be part of an organized religion without falling into prejudicial fallacies. But I'm still very dubious about organized religion on principle, and don't foresee ever joining one.

I really value having had this 'vaccination', and think it was a good way to have been raised. But at the same time, I definitely don't consider myself to *be* a Unitarian. Hence, 'lapsed Unitarian' feels accurate. At the same time, I like using the descriptor because it makes most *actual* Unitarians laugh :-)

So I sometimes have issues about whether I'm "allowed" to take anti-Semitism personally, because I'm not "really" Jewish, just "of Jewish heritage" ...

Yes, of course you're allowed to take anti-Semitism personally! The people who are serious about being anti-Semitic don't draw much of a distinction, anyway.

[edit] I had this window open for a while, so I see that the conversation had already reached this point, but just in case you need more data: yes, you are.

Edited 2017-02-26 08:44 (UTC)

The people who are serious about being anti-Semitic don't draw much of a distinction, anyway.

I once had the edifying experience of accidentally finding out that my dad was listed on a neo-Nazi site as being part of the international Jewish conspiracy, so yeah.

(As is traditional, he complains that the Conspiracy have still not gotten round to sending him his membership card.)

(As is traditional, he complains that the Conspiracy have still not gotten round to sending him his membership card.)

If we really controlled the media, I'd like to think this last election would have been less of a shitshow.

I am pretty sure this is pernicious bullshit.

Be 100% sure. It is absolutely pernicious bullshit.

Be 100% sure. It is absolutely pernicious bullshit.

Thank you.

Oh, the Oppression Olympics. What a way to mess with your own mind.

Nobody has to prove their oppression is unique or worse than anyone else's before it can be taken seriously. Anti-Semitism is a problem, and has been for millennia. We don't need to hit Third Reich levels of horror before we say, hey, this is bad. And it is totally okay for people both outside and inside the affected group to talk about it. Intersectionality does not mean ignoring one of the sections.

This. This is what I wanted to say.

I don't have much to say... but I think you are pretty great. And that pernicious bullshit sounds a lot like... social gaslighting? I don't know. Anti-Semitism is a thing, you have every right to call it out as a thing, the fact that other prejudices (and Israel!) are also things doesn't make it less a horrible thing.

I maybe make no sense. I have had beer.

I maybe make no sense. I have had beer.

You make sense. I hope it was good beer. Thank you.

It was grapefruit tea pale ale. Can recommend.

I don't have much to add, except my sympathy. There absolutely has been a tide of anti-semitism since the election, though it equally has been around for my entire life. (I should say that I myself am not actually Jewish, but have spent most of my life surrounded by Jewish people.) So, I guess: *hugs*.

Edited 2017-02-25 17:08 (UTC)

There absolutely has been a tide of anti-semitism since the election, though it equally has been around for my entire life. (I should say that I myself am not actually Jewish, but have spent most of my life surrounded by Jewish people.)

I'm not saying non-Jewish people can't point anti-Semitism out! It's even useful if they do. I just don't want a double standard and I really don't want it in my head.

So, I guess: *hugs*.

*hugs*

Thank you.

Yeah, I feel you on this one. I very much had the "Anti-Semitism is over, it's not as bad as other oppressions, Jews are white and so shouldn't be complaining," thing very firmly in my head. And since the only kind of Anti-Semitism I've had pointed at me was microaggressions, ("Oh, the Jews are a really ancient and beautiful people!" said my Wisconsin Catholic step-mother's best friend, to which 16-year-old me responded with a confused, "Uh... thank you?"), it's seemed pretty true, overall.

Until this year. When it's clearly really, really not. And therefore, presumably, hasn't been for years.

Still trying to figure out what to do with that. But yeah, us doubting (and since Anti-Semites surely wouldn't consider me UU in this regard, I don't think it makes sense for me to) our own reactions probably isn't it.

Sigh. *hugs*

I very much had the "Anti-Semitism is over, it's not as bad as other oppressions, Jews are white and so shouldn't be complaining," thing very firmly in my head.

For me it feels like a kind of cognitive dissonance. I didn't believe it. (Less active anti-Semitism in this country than other forms of racism, yes. Zero anti-Semitism, do I look like I'm stupid? I got called a kike and a big-nosed bitch in high school in a town with a high enough Jewish population to support two synagogues, though I only ever interacted with the one where the community youth theater met. Ditto the part about Jews being white. I understood that Jews of the right ethnicity could pass for white and/or share in its benefits—I understood, once I knew the term, that I had white privilege working in my favor in any social situation that didn't fracture along lines of my religion/ethnicity—but actual factual unrevocable whiteness was a unique privilege of non-Jews.) But I was still convinced that if I voiced my disbelief, everyone would pile in telling me I was wrong. Even with all the recent and blatant fuckery. Even telling myself that my friendlist was not composed of terrible people. And that's why it feels like background radiation, because I can't trace it to any single origin, but I still got sick.

And since the only kind of Anti-Semitism I've had pointed at me was microaggressions, ("Oh, the Jews are a really ancient and beautiful people!" said my Wisconsin Catholic step-mother's best friend, to which 16-year-old me responded with a confused, "Uh... thank you?")

To be fair, it's a confusing thing for a person to say.

Until this year. When it's clearly really, really not. And therefore, presumably, hasn't been for years.

In the time it took me to answer this comment, the man who currently occupies the president's office declared recent incidents of anti-Semitism false flags. Those Jews, always desecrating their own graves. Crazy, right?

Sigh. *hugs*

Thank you.

*hugs*

[edit] It seems this is a popular feeling right now.

Edited 2017-03-04 04:12 (UTC)

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I don't want to be a fascist, I'm not Aryan

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