#but if I'm on any 'side' it's certainly not the side of the western 'activists'

[smhalltheurlsaretaken]

if you're wondering why I kind of abandoned this blog, there's several reasons (fandom just doesn't feel fun anymore, I'm trying to cut back on screen time, I've been feeling like my faith is in contradiction to what I see/read/interact with on here is for years and years now) but the final straw has been what I see on my dash every day about Israel/Palestine.

I keep seeing people I used to interact with and used to like now peddling conspiracy theories, debunked claims, inflammatory headlines, and even bloodthirsty rhetoric with tens of thousands of notes (when corrections of those posts get ~500 notes at best), and reacting to nuanced conversations like they're calls for hatred, all while turning a blind eye to the very literal vicious hatred or sheer ignorance in many of those big posts. The level of black-and-white thinking is so strong that we are wayyyy past 'us-vs-them,' we're in the kind of discourse where even 'know thy enemy' (being interested in understanding the opposing arguments even just so you can dismantle them) is considered hatred - people can't be bothered to know what they're arguing for or against, nothing short of plugging your ears and screaming for the death of the Bad People is enough. This is a wave of just about the most hypocritical, callous and uninformed 'activism' this website has ever been guilty of and it's too much. I'm done with this.

And yes, this is about antisemitism. You can all shout 'not antisemitic, just anti-zionist' all day long but you have done jack shit to prove you don't hate Jews beside chanting 'punch a nazi' in the same breath you use KKK slurs and cheer for groups that have 'curse the Jews' in their slogan. I trust none of you anymore.

#israel palestine conflict #israel hamas war #antisemitism #I should have taken a stand from the beginning and I was afraid to. makes me a pretty shitty ally I guess #I also didn't want to talk about current events on a fandom blog bc who am I to give my two cents? #and how can I justify having an opinion unless I back it up with constantly up to date and rigorously examined info #and how can I stop talking about current events once i've started? making my fandom blog no longer about fandom #I still don't know what the right thing to do is #I still don't think it's my place to speak out on much of what's going on in I/P because of how hard it is to be accurate and objective #but if I'm on any 'side' it's certainly not the side of the western 'activists' #i'm on the 'side' of the innocent people suffering in both countries and on the side of the jewish people you've made feel afraid #i'm on the side of life #you GLORIFIED TERRORISM AND SUICIDE

[kendrixtermina]

I have officially lost all belief in human progress or that western civilization is anything other than a fraud

all these people are basically livetweeting their deaths and no one DOES anything

So much for the UN, the long arc of history or 'never again'.

videos of ppl outright mocking the victims like "we have water and you don't"

so much propaganda it puts the WWI meat factory thing to shame, no wonder no one knows what to believe

the constant shaming and actionism and guilt-tripping as if panicking helps anyone

How many babies to need to be killed till it's no longer "self defense"?

RIOTS ARE ALWAYS A FAILURE OF THE AUTHORITIES. It doesn't matter if anyone 'condones' killing (I don't), but, you mistreat people, some of them WILL riot. I'm not saying it's great, or they should, but they WILL. Human fucking nature. Israel had all the power there; They created conditions where ppl will riot.

Who is dumb enough to believe there's always conveniently a base under everything they bomb? Even if there was, I assume Hamas have legs & can walk away, whereas the civilian infrastructure STAYS destroyed.

And even if you get all the baddies, what then? In 5 seconds you'd have a new, worse group out for vengeance for their slaughtered family members, burning with the same "rightheous" fury as you

We can debate about labels all you want, but there's no way cutting off water to a large city isn't an attemt to kill-em-all. Same for bombing the place they were told to go

On the other hand... Ppl's tendency to shove everything into the currently popular framework... the colonization thing certainly applies in many respects and it was in some ways smart of the activists to frame it that way, but, you can send the British back to Britain, where are you gonna send the israelis? You realize you're not getting them moved anywhere without yet more atrocities? So big side eye when ppl go putting 'Israel' in quotation marks, I do wonder what course of action they're implying. I can't in good conscience tell ppl not to be triggered or scared over it.

I get that it's not just to expect anyone to 'be the bigger person'. But someone has to. They pulled it off in Rwanda. Do you want "justice" or peace? You can't have both. How about no more killing of anyone.

Biden was kinda coming near to saving himself with the union stuff he's been doing, but now he's shat the bed bigtime which is a problem cause there's no viable replacement. If only a competent person with a spine were in his place. I mean, China & Russia doing shit? Ok, they're nuclear powers, no one can stop them. But Israel? If the west threatened to close the money faucet they'd play ball. They're all just too gullible, too chicken, or perfectly happy with the outcome. Biden blew it; I think out of incompetence more than malice, but they're functionally indistinguishable at this point.

Europe doesn't believe in free speech apparently. Ashamed to live in Mitläufer-Land and the spineless peninsula union, apparently.

The spikes of islamophobia and antisemitism all over the world

ppl trying to use this to push antisemitic conspiracy theories or hindu-nationalism, (wasn't collective punishment and category brainrot exactly the problem? I guess some are just looking for any excse to terrorize ppl)

ppl too busy for-us-or-against-us-ing celebrities and making yet another orthodoxy discourse out of it, like that won't do the opposite of convince ppl

Did I mention DEAD BABIES GALORE?? That oughta dwarf everything else, really. It's bad enough on its fucking own. There shouldn't be anything left to say. They all look like my siblings to me. But those are all alive in a warm house with food in the fridge and I' gonna see them tomorrow.... and their families won't.

entire bloodlines wiped out. Not even people left to remember them

I lived in a small village with 10 thousand inhabitants once. When I see the death toll, I picture that entire village wiped out, or multiples or fractions of it. Everyone one would interact with every day, the teachers, the neighbor's kids, the croissant lady. 'cept ppl in Gaza were so piss poor they probably ain't seen a croissant in their lives.

So this is what it's like, to see something like that happening

there are all those posts of one person after another being wiped out, families whittled down till there's nothing left

Yes, you could drag Netanyahu to the hague, and they should, but will that even matter? That won't un-kill those ppl or un-destroy the infrastructure.

Something irreversible has been done.

Something irreversible is done each time one of those lives is casually snuffed out

#feelings #current events #politics #gaza

[automatismoateo]

I'm left-wing, progressive and I'm very concerned about Islam and our estimation of it. via /r/atheism

Submitted February 23, 2017 at 03:36PM by theivoryserf (Via reddit http://ift.tt/2l3GwZM) I'm left-wing, progressive and I'm very concerned about Islam and our estimation of it.

I'll preface by saying: I don't support Trump, his autocratic cronies or the Muslim ban. Muslims should not be discriminated against.

Nevertheless, I'm very disturbed by the position my own 'side' holds on Islam. Progressives, believing they're being compassionate, now increasingly conflate all criticism of Islam with racial bigotry and torpedo this conversation with ad hominem and deflections (if I have to hear a version of "Christianity ain't so good neither" one more time...).

The Qur'an, and certainly the Hadith, are in fact more worrying than the Bible for a few reasons; for example because they promote Islam conquering the kafir (non-believers) with militancy and they encourage the fusion of church and state rather than their separation, the repressive results of which we can see in the Middle East and elsewhere. There are fewer ways to interpret Islam as a peaceful religion than any other major faith, in my opinion. As the final and perfect word of god, it is extremely resistant to any sort of progressive reform.

Ironically, for all our championing of being multi-cultural, the dominant progressive opinion of Islam is a very western-centric view. Immigrants from Muslim countries (like my ex-girlfriend) often have the least trouble calling out the negative results of Islam. Yes, conservative Christians in the US often believe quite horrible things, but they've been tempered by the ability of science to prosper, and are generally restrained by secular law in a way that zealots in Muslim countries are not. Protesting against homophobic churches but turning a blind-eye to gays being stoned to death is hypocrisy of a frankly abhorrent degree.

We're beginning to tolerate intolerance. I myself have caught myself trying to justify Muslim friends' vaguely homophobic remarks, where perhaps I wouldn't give others such leeway. It's not just a right-wing talking point: there are very real concerns about integrating Muslim communities into western societies, with many leading so-called 'parallel lives'. I see it in London and I worry for young Muslims, especially women, that live in communities that restrain them from fully participating in Western life. If the left doesn't discuss it in a level-headed way, the right will see the trouble with integration through the lens of opportunism and use it to whip up a xenophobic fervour. And they are doing so.

With the left completely shutting out these criticisms, preferring only to confront western religions, and progressive activists tied ever closer to Muslim activists, we leave this conversation to one group: those who don't care about cultural sensitivity at all, the far-right. This misapplication of political correctness is playing a part in their current rise, I'm sure (as well as genuine bigotry, misinformation and economic disparity).

To make it clear, I don't harbour any dislike for Muslims as people and a great many are doubtless better people than me, on the whole. My issue is with the most problematic doctrines themselves and the way they're translated into thoughts and actions.

I don't want to see our own far-right rise in the West: neither do I want Islamic repression to flourish here or continue to do so elsewhere in the world.

My question to you all is: what should the enlightened left-wing position be? I'm very uncomfortable making arguments alongside the far-right, even when they occasionally make salient points on Islam, because I find the rest of their positions disgusting and think they're making them for the wrong reasons.

Should we continue pushing secularism and knowledge about atheism? Should we promote progressive Islamic reformists, however difficult their goal might be? I'd be really interested to hear all of your thoughts. Thanks y'all.

#reddit