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this post was submitted on 21 Apr 2024
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the_dunk_tank
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Both can essentially be the case.
In media especially, the popular use and meaning of antisemitism has been so thoroughly degraded and twisted that it's not only largely useless, but I think should actually be a watchword for 'more investigation of this claim is needed'.
But that doesn't mean that the original and accurate meaning and the thing it actually describes does not exist or is not a problem, or that we should accept it's shameless misuse and attempted perversion.
Wasn't the original meaning/usage nazis trying to sound smart and scientific? Maybe this is wrong of me, but I think the word needs to be scraped for something more accurate.
Similarly, I am extremely grossed out by the common usage of the term "ethnic cleansing" to describe acts of violent displacement and genocide of people. It's uncritically accepting the framing and language of the perpetrator of the crime, that they are doing a "cleansing" act by killing "unclean" people. That even leftists use the term gives me big heeby-jeebies.
idk that compound always made the "cleansing" part sound really gross to me, like a nazi was saying it and winking, rather than any association with cleanliness. If you don't hang out with newage crystal healing weirdos you probably don't even hear the word "cleanse" outside of the genocidal context.
the term is not used with a wink though, as a satirical critique of perpetrators of genocide. It is used straight, as a flat description of the process of "genocide lite". Like even international legal documents will call it "ethnic cleansing" which is not appropriate whatsoever in my view, to accept the Nazi phraseology in such explicit ways
It's weird, I have too had issues with the term, but never really thought of it in the sense of accepting the language of the perpetrator. I just hate it in the context of Palestine, where it is sort of used by libs to, as you say, soften the accusation of genocide. This of course rests on the false premise that the Israeli don't want to outright genocide Palestinians, but simply "drive them out", as if Palestinians were just generic "arabs" who will immediately assimilate and become Egyptians, Jordanians, Syrians etc. if they flee, and not a unique people with a unique culture and a homeland - which the Israelis want to destroy and build fucking beach resorts on. It's kind of a bullshit term for people too chickenshit to call a genocide what it is.
Anyway, not sure I added anything to your point, I just thought your almost etymological objection to the word was interesting. Just another reason to call a genocidal spade a genocidal spade.
It always struck me as weird how the word calls Jews "Semites"... like what's that about? We call bigotry against Muslims islamophobia so I don't understand why we don't call bigotry against Jews judeophobia.
Where it gets really weird for me is there are other semites, but you would never hear someone being called anti semitic for hating Arabs. It kinda feels like erasing them.
Definitely agree with you on judeophobia being a better word.
quite interesting there's no word in English that's commonly used for hatred of Arabs. There's islamophobia for Muslims, but not all arabs are muslims and not all muslims are arabs (See: Iranians, Chechnyans, Uighurs, Christian Palestinians, etc)
This is something quite relevant to me as a non-practicing secular Arab Muslim (effectively an atheist). If someone were to commit a hate crime against me for looking Arab, would it be called “islamophobia”? Doesn’t seem quite accurate to what is actually at play since I don’t have a beard, don’t wear traditional Muslim garb or signifiers, if someone attacked me it’s because I’m Arab/brown/leftist not because I’m Muslim most likely.
As far as i understand it, the usage of "semitism" originates in the accusation that jews as a diaspora organize completely separately from the nations they live in for their own benefit, basically that they are only loyal to themselves.
This is also why it's suggested that you never hyphenate "antisemitism", as one word it only describes the beliefs of antisemites, while hyphenated it treats "semitism" as a legitimate force.
Whoa really? So "antisemitism" is itself antijewish, that's fucked up
the -phobic suffix is used much like the -phillic suffix in sociology, it generally means "averse to X" or "attracted to X" respectively. It's not used in the sense of an actual psychological fear, but as a sociological flat amoral description of a group being anti-X and averse to it.
Think Hydrophobic and Hydrophillic. Rightwing groups are homophobic because they are averse to homosexuality and don't want to interact with it, and when they come into contact with it they react negatively. Hydrophobic molecules are not "afraid" of water in a literal sense, it's a description of their reaction to water.
where do you think any of these terms come from? They all originate in academia in a more scientific and rigorous setting, and then leak out into the mainstream ideology. Specificity and rigor is lost when strict control over the definition is lost and the word enters the public zeitgeist and takes on a meaning of its own.
This type of non-moralistic descriptionist language is what Marxists should seek to use when describing society, our role is to do a cold autopsy not to sit in moral judgment. We will never be able to control the public usage and steer language and how it develops, but we can control how we describe the world scientifically to each other. What others do with it later is their problem.
I don't recall this personally, I recall instead it being framed not as fear but as ignorance and lack of understanding and willingness to understand. The 90s common knowledge among the more social-liberal portions of the public was that racism and bigotry were finished as powerful forces in the West, that they only existed in vestigial corners where education and diversity had not yet reached. It was not shown as innocent fear, but as a regrettable silly superstition that would be flushed out by history's end if we all just keep being polite to each other.
i'm not sure what your point is though. That we shouldn't use amoral descriptionist language when describing social forces? That we should seek to control public common language with an iron fist (something historically not very realistic)?
That a white supremacist society coopted a revolutionary idea and blunted it is not surprising, it's what it does to all revolutionary ideas it gets ahold of. Is that any reason to stop having revolutionary ideas?
I thought you were getting at the point that "homophobia" is a problematic and not useful term because it isn't inherently loaded with enough moral judgment against homophobes (compared to something like 'gay hate' or 'anti-gay bigotry'), or that the colloquial definition that has been adopted being less accurate means we should retroactively change our own descriptions and accurate usage of the term within sociology and left-politics.
Personally, I'm completely fine with the -phobia and -phobic suffixes to describe tendencies among populations and think it's better than using moralistic terms when it comes to understanding social forces at play correctly. It just depends on the context. If you're hurling invectives at a specific reactionary, go for the moralist jabs if it is effective with your current audience. If you're trying to do a sociological description of the forces of society among fellow comrades I think we should stick to the cold autopsy approach.
You're right. These words don't describe fear, they describe persecution. Framing it as fear absolves people of their active and purposeful involvement and makes them sound like victims. As if transphobia or homophobia or whatever is akin to agoraphobia. And as if targeted harm can only be done by the mentally ill.
It also leads us to falsely conclude that the solution to bigotry is individual - reaching out and educating bigots one by one. It totally ignores the systemic causes that motivate such bigotry and how oftentimes, it's not even bigotry! It's just people rationally working within the ghoulish constraints that capitalism imposes which is honestly worse.
See my comment, it’s a phrase that is scientific and comes from the social sciences. It’s not about “absolving people” of sins, that’s moralism and unscientific and Liberal idealism. It’s a scientific description of a relationship between forces. You will never defeat the forces of reaction if you believe they stem from inherent evil in the souls of people instead of a materialist framework describing and addressing the root causes of the reactionary ideology
What's different about the academic term from the colloquial word? I don't see the distinction that you're referring to.
And yeah we're in agreement: reactionary ideology is rooted in material reality. And oftentimes what we call bigotry isn't bigotry per se, but rather people making calculated decisions, intentionally and purposefully.
Read my comment below, the correct original use is akin to hydrophobic. IE, Y can be described as X-phobic if it shows an adverse reaction or rejection of X. It has nothing to do with fear in the psychological sense, which is the colloquial definition that you are attacking.
Describing reactionaries who don’t like gay rights as “homophobic” is 100% correct and accurate and has nothing to do with baggage you are bringing in about fear or morals
I see. "Aversion to gay people" and "fear of gay people" is a distinction without a difference imo but whatever. I still don't like the parallel this jargon implies between panic disorders and persecution. They are nothing alike so our language should reflect that.
(also who cares what the original use is if people don't mean it like that. Also also I'm not talking about morality? Kinda feels like you're reading things into my comments that I did not say)
Your original comment was talking about morality when your issue with the term is that it ‘absolves homophobes’. Absolution is a moral term related to sin.
You take issue with their term because of a moral stance. You don’t like the term homophobia because it is amoral when you want it to be moralized and loaded with moral sentiment.
You should care about the original definition, because the original definition derived from Marxist analysis of societal factions. That’s like saying “who cares what MLK or Lenin or Marx actually said and meant, what matters of how modern pop-culture understands their theories” which is obviously stupid and wrong
I meant absolve as in excuses/removes culpability. The same way you wouldn't be too hard on a claustrophobic person for panicking in a small room.
It makes it sound like homophobes have a mental illness and it's that illness which is the cause of their actions. But bigotry phobias aren't at all comparable to fear phobias so we should use different words to describe them. That's what I'm saying and that's what the OP was saying too, I'm pretty sure.
Culpability in what? An immoral act or sin. Again you are upset that the term isn’t moralistically loaded. You want it to aggressively impose guilt, this is a moral position and not a descriptive one.
Claustrophobia relates to psychological fears. Homophobia comes from a different source, from sociology and scientific descriptions of reactions between two parties. You are again using the incorrect definition, again in relation to how much moral blame to assign.
This is a fundamentally flawed way of analyzing society
What? I don't know what to say to you anymore. Goodnight dude
You know the scientific terms hydrophobic and hydrophilic used to describe various kinds of mechanical and chemical interactions? That is how sociology used the term “homophobic” when it created the term, describing that a certain group is anti-homosexuality.
What you are doing is akin to going up to a chemist and saying “I don’t like how the term hydrophobic lets phospholipids off the hook for their bigotry”. It’s adding morality into what should be a cold mechanical description of forces