There were some good replies in there, but mostly I thought it was disappointing. I guess it's probably fine to just tell someone to fuck off because it's a community management issue, but I think it's good to try to have some engagement with arguments to both understand your own positions and to be ready to refute things when it actually matters. I tried responding, but in the time it took me to write something, the thread was deleted.
You probably won't find this compelling, but I think that it's good in cases where someone seems sincere and shares several of our values that at least a little effort is made to re-educate them. It's simply to our advantage for more people to agree with us. The OP was antisemitic, but it got worse in the comments, where they assigned collective guilt to Jews in general because there were a number of Jewish Nazi collaborators before the Nazis really started with the Holocaust. I think this is a stronger indication that the poster was unsalveagable as far as a forum is concerned, because I think they are just motivated by a seething resentment of Jews, but I'm curious how they would respond to the self-evident charge of them assigning collective guilt to an ethnicity, something that is really fucked.
Anyway, I don't mean this as an indictment of people who aren't the aforementioned antisemite, I just wanted to mention a thought I had and also make my comment from before:
useless comment
Why are you still centering the "uncomfortable" feelings of a group that overwhelmingly supports genocide?
This is a deranged argument that, on its own, merits your banning. The popularity of Zionism among Jews does not negate the question of ethnic discrimination, and the logic that you are using here could easily be pogromism. "Why aren't we taking violent action against a group that overwhelmingly supports genocide? Never mind that the "group" being talked about isn't a coherent political entity or even a coherent community, but an ethnic group!" Also, even if we counterfactually said that directing antisemitism against zios is okay (it is not!), there are still many Jews who closely identify with their Jewishness and are ardent anti-zionists!
Because you're using an inversion of a common zionist argument, let me use the inversion of its counter: The vast majority of people who are uncomfortable with the burning of a Star of David are not Jewish, and I'm willing to bet that the majority aren't Zionists either (or they at least oppose the genocide but may or may not understand that it's the inevitable expression of what Israel is). A lot of people object to the inciting of ethnic hatred, and you yourself recognize that the Star of David is different in this respect from a cross, because you single out Jews as an ethnicity to tar and trample on, but when discussing the burning of St. George's cross on the English flag, you relate us to the KKK because of their burning crosses in front of black churches (etc.). Those two things (England's flag and KKK rituals) have nothing to do with each other and are just superficially connected by the floating signifier of the cross, with no specific connection to something like an ethnicity because it is being extended very cross-ethnically (pun not intended), and hypothetically also applies to Arab Christians, to LatAm Christians, and so on. Regardless, around the world in many different countries, many people object to inciting ethnic hatred and they also object to genocide, e.g. in China, so the idea that the objectors are all Jews is completely false.
Also obviously this shit gets used as a cover for antisemitism, like in your case as you reveal by assigning collective guilt to Jews because like 70% of them according to some polls support Israel, as though that means the other 30% are chaff! (Never mind the other problems with this logic)
Communication isn't just about intention, it is also about reception, and the imagery of ritually burning a Star of David -- regardless of the context -- is a rhetorical hazard. Obviously if you're blowing up a Merkava, no one is saying you're doing a hate crime by incinerating a Star of David that the IDF painted on it, but if you're dragging out ritual symbols to destroy as effigies, then including the Star is undesirable. That in no way concedes that Israel is a proper representation of Judaism. The symbol is appropriated, and like any appropriated symbol, the real concession is treating it merely as a symbol of the appropriator.
This is the most embarrassing lib-left tut-tutting I've ever received.
The flag itself has the symbol in it. I and others know the difference between just burning a Star of David and burning the Israeli flag. Thinking otherwise is reactionary, like believing you'll make God angry by deposing Tsar Nicholas, that the Tsar truly represents The Lord's command for him to rule over Russia. It's just wacky.
So tell me, Will you be tut-tutting the Iranians next?
How about cancelling these Palestinians too? They included the symbol, tell 'em off! Fuck em! Someone from the ADL should tell Johnathan Greenblatt that it was this easy to bring the left in line all along, just show them what the real 3rd world practices.
This is a pathetic argument and you should feel embarrassed that you feel the need to resort to such a profound level of bad faith.
I specifically, explicitly said that destroying actual politically meaningful things with the Star of David on it is a different story, and made no reference to politics being constrained by religious doctrine. Even if it was explicitly allowed in Judaism to treat whatever symbol like garbage, I would have the same position, because the point is not that there is blasphemy involved but the nature of what is being communicated as a political message. I furthermore hope that you can understand that if I said you can blow up a tank with the Star on it (obviously), then I wouldn't object to deposing a theocrat.
Surely you agree that "A curse upon the Jews" is a bad thing to say, something we should disallow, but that doesn't mean the Houthi pirates haven't been engaging in heroic actions and deserve support. I won't be ""tut-tutting"" the Iranians because I have no voice to speak to them, very little shared understanding and reference, and no connection to them. Who would listen to me? Why would they listen to me? Not one of them will ever ask me, so I don't really have a reason to speak with them. I still believe the practice is wrong, but I also believe that they should obtain nuclear weaponry as quickly as possible and defend their sovereignty from the zionist menace
Seriously, how pathetic do you have to be to resort to the idea of "canceling"? I have made no judgement about the people who promote these symbols -- even here! (aside from mentioning that a small minority would inevitably be fash) -- and have said literally nothing at all about casting out such people or refusing to work with them, because I don't believe that such people should be cast out over this offshoot aspect of a symbolic gesture when they are materially fighting for liberation. I am arguing that a symbol should not be promoted on platforms where we actually have the ability to decide such matters -- and, you know, aren't preoccupied with fighting for our fucking lives in active military conflict.
We're clearly in agreement then. I only want an emoji to burn the Israeli flag. Not the Star of David which happens to be on the flag.
Again, in agreement. But there is nuance. Take the slogan "there is only one solution, Intifada revolution" that is a little more ambiguous. If I was to believe what you said: "communication is about intention and reception" then we should be getting rid of this slogan, no? It's not being received well. No one knows what an Intifada is in the west and thinks it means something like a Jihad. It's a pain in the neck correcting people, but I do it anyway. Because it's what the Palestinians want to say.
It's annoying how often it comes up, but you have to admit it's staying power throughout the decades in the forms of "PC" and such has to mean something. ADL and Canary mission wouldn't be given loads of resources to root out resistance if it didn't do anything. That's why I and Norman Finklestein (who also had issues with the "there is only one solution, Intifada revolution" until corrected by a nearby protester, IIRC) talk about cancelling.
You see, this backing off of strong rhetorical positions of support to move to weaker ones is exactly how we get weaker figureheads in the Left, ones that don't fully back a Palestinian state until its too late like Bernie (or i guess he's a downright Zio now I honestly haven't been following him), or ones that are forced to say in interviews "Israel has a right to exist, but here's a catch" like Mamdani. Soft Language is the first domino that leads to a lack of commitment to strong positions that the general public supports.
That's just the nasty thing about it, because you can't just burn the flag and not burn the Star. Incidentally, unlike the current orthodoxy, I'm fine with burning a white flag with blue bars and no star, that's whatever to me.
Let me start with:
How can you possibly dispute this? It's the only way to define communication. If you didn't have regard for reception, then why bother with language? Language is useful because it is a system of ordering and articulating ideas so that someone else can have the idea in their head that you have in yours, even if, for example, their attitude toward that idea is very different. If you were to disbelieve what I said, why not save energy by writing "vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv" while thinking about your opinion? It's because you want me to understand ideas that you have and so you are using a system of common reference to do that.
Regarding the broader point, I think whether a slogan is worth using is entire contingent on the social situation.
I don't actually think "Intifada" has been that bad a term to use, because obviously many reactionaries say it's a call for the Islamist Jihad slaughter of every Jew on the planet, but most people just understand that it's a foreign word that they aren't familiar with and are at least somewhat receptive to the very simple explanation of what it is. Even when he was "standing his ground," I think that Zohran was kind of a coward on this issue, because the Intifada is not merely a "struggle," it is a specific group of anti-zionist movements. If you want to support these movements, I don't think there's a way around using their actual name, so it is therefore necessary to defend the use of the name and explain its meaning if that is part of your political project.
That necessity does not carry over to flag-burning, because unlike needing to name a group to support it, it's not necessary to burn a country's flag to call for its government to be completely dismantled and its politicians and military imprisoned (etc.) You can a) just say those words, b) say things like "from the river to the sea," etc. and you can even c) pick other extremely provocative messages that don't involve burning religious symbols, like "Death, Death to the IDF". That's one that is not just worth defending but, from what I can tell, important to defend, because the destruction of the IDF really is critical to the movement's success and we can't pretend that it doesn't need to be destroyed. "From the river to the sea," likewise, I view as necessary to defend, even more so, because it expresses the need for all of historic Palestine to exist freely and not as just a pair of ethnostates like liberal zionists suggest. It expresses the necessity that the zionist ethnostate not just retreat, but stop existing completely. If you cannot say "from the river to the sea," you cannot express anti-zionist ideology almost at all.
Flag-burning is not remotely critical in the manner of these slogans. That doesn't make the people who do it antisemites (mostly they are not), I just think it's not the best route for anti-antisemites to communicate their correct desire for the annihilation of Israel.
You're jumping at shadows, because nothing I have said is consistent with "canceling" anyone, and I have rejected moralizing and totalizing notions like that at every instance where it even vaguely came up. The idea was contained nowhere in my writing, it existed in your head and then you accused me of it, and that's shitty behavior.
I think that I have made it clear by the foregoing statements that my problem isn't about language being softened, I completely agree with you that we need strong language, stronger than what is even in the mainstream pro-Palestine protests currently. My argument is that with this strong language, we need to be very deliberate and very precise with what we say, and to pick our battles correctly because we only have so much time and capacity for dealing with stupid bullshit. If you think debates like this are a waste of time (and I kind of agree with you), using defective messaging at a huge scale entitles also doing a huge amount of labor to litigate with potentially tens of millions of people about the stupid fucking flag. It's much better to use extreme language that, when explained, is an open-and-shut case without room for squishiness like is introduced by attachment to the Star of David here, and we have no shortage of that, as discussed earlier.
Is a blue star of David between 2 blue bars entirely distinct, for all relevant purposes, from a star of David outside of those contexts? I'm genuinely not yet convinced of a position, but have not gotten clarity on this point
In my mind yes. Just as a white cross on a red background is entirely separate from a red on on white, and both are separate from a normal cross. The blue bars turn the star of David from a religious symbol into a national one
Does it make a difference because the bearers of the symbol for the cross have never been the oppressed class in the last 200 years? I think part of the argument is that the star of david is a symbol of a class which has faced extreme oppression and is fairly unique in that way relative to the cross or Hindu or Buddhist symbols.
Or is that another facet of Jewish supremacy expressed?
A blue Star of David on white background with horizontal blue bars above and below it has never been a symbol of the oppressed class. The Zionist entity has never and will never represent Judaism. Sure, the Star of David represents a historically oppressed class, but that symbol has a similar relationship to the Israeli flag as the Buddhist Swastika has to the Nazi one.
I agree with all this for sure. The crux of the argument though is whether the star of david as a general symbol can be separated from the flag, and the other poster disagreeing with you would say that, for communications, it effectively isn't. I don't think I'm convinced of that, because most people can recognize the difference at a glance, but it seems some very well read and informed comrade's disagree.
I personally would like to settle at whatever the PFLP says about it, but idk what that is
A symbol is a symbol. I don't think that the bars completely change how the flag-burning is received, though they do change it significantly. But I think there's overlap in the reception because it is still a Star of David. I think over time, if we can communicate to the relevant audiences that the Star of David is literally used in Israel as a hate symbol in a way extremely similar to the Swastika (tagging buildings, carving it into stolen fields, carving it into people's skulls), then that might change things.
Honestly, I'm not as deeply invested in this general subject (burning Israeli flags) as it might come off from me making this thread and bickering with people, I just hate the bad arguments people make for it. Go burn it at a rally if you really want, I will neither call you an antisemite nor even think it, I just don't think it's a good way of communicating what you want compared to other slogans and symbols already in use.
"other slogans and symbols" by this, do you mean the IOF flag burning? Because I think people don't just want to communicate "death to the IDF", they want to communicate the destruction of Israel as an apartheid, jewish supremacist state, in which case it is literally communicating something else. Or do you see that also differently?
Is it also not part of our tasks as communists to be a few steps ahead of the masses of the oppressed classes, who are seemingly already quickly coming to see the distinction?
If it seems like I'm taking a clear side, it's because I feel like I understand the side who is for burning the flag better, but want to fully understand the other side before making a real position
No, that's not what I mean (though burning that flag is cool and good). Slogans and symbols include "from the river to the sea" and images of all of historic Palestine with the Palestinian flag projected on it, both of which I believe are clear in communicating the desire to eradicate Israel. "Globalize the Intifada," also, communicates this, but it's not the same as the OOP issue because a coherent pro-Palestinian movement must support the Intifada, and so if there is miscommunication (or more likely misinformation) on what it is, that must be explained anyway.
I do think also that destroying the IDF is basically tantamount to destroying Israel because they're a necessary part of Israel's survival, but I don't really care and obviously it is vulnerable to becoming a shitty deflection the way complaining about Netanyahu is.
This isn't a policy point. This isn't a dispute about what the actual state of the world when this is over should be like. This is a dispute about communication, and the particular method in question is plainly not necessary for the advancement of the project of eradicating Israel (unlike with "Globalize the Intifada"). It's silly to call me a tailist for that when I am arguing for the necessity of Israel's destruction by sanctions and military resistance and intervention.
As much as those are clear to us, because we see the way that Israel can only exist with the IOF, or that "From the River to the Sea Palestine Will Be Free" is only realizable with the destruction of Israel, this isn't clear communication about our intentions to anybody less familiar with the material conditions of an apartheid colony. At least I know of people who argue that the one doesn't necessitate the other, and so believe that there is a distinction which they see that communication as upholding. This means constantly communicating that instead of using the symbol which would more clearly communicate it, that being the burning flag. So what justifies requiring more circuitous communication constantly? Does this come directly back to the argument that it's a Jewish religious symbol which shouldn't be used for this, which you've already made elsewhere?
And is posting a picture of a whole Palestine really communicating the same as a burning of the Israeli flag? The one being a constructive and the other destructive seems to me to be communicating separate claims, which are connected sure, but requires 2 concrete different sorts of actions which we would sanction.
Im sorry if my communication is upsetting you, I'm not trying to accuse you of being a tailist. I'm wanting to know your defense against that accusation, which you gave a fine answer to and I don't think you are one.
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
Huh, you also do the two minus signs with a space before and after as an em dash. I'm not trying to insinuate anything, just something I noticed.
Who else does that? I don't follow. For the record, this is definitely not my first account, but I have never used two at a time on the same instance (and I know you weren't insinuating otherwise, I'm just clarifying).
The person who made the post this is all about also used that style of em-dash.
Ah, I see. Well, I can't imagine what I'd be accomplishing with this performance by playing both accounts, since I don't think this is that powerful of a wedge issue.