Finklestein had a good take on this. Said that ”the Israelis are the only Jews that the Yemenis have ever known. How could you blame them?” I’d find a link but I’m on mobile, it was at some college forum with Christopher Hitchens iirc
Also the liberal focus on stuff like that literally empowers people like Trump and neo-nazi’s. Because average people get annoyed by it.
The average person thinks: “I’m worried about maintaining my quality of life.”
A Nazi says, “It’s the jewish elite making your life bad!”
In a vacuum the average person hears that and thinks, “That’s a weird thing to say.”
But then when the liberals come out and start losing their minds about “Antisemitism is the greatest threat to our society right now!” While not even trying to speak to that average persons concerns the average person goes back to the Nazi and says, “Alright, so what were you saying again? I’m actually curious now.”
That is exactly how liberalism breeds fascism. It refuses to acknowledge the real world suffering of everyday people and so they turn to fascism because fascism DOES acknowledge those things. It just deflects blame to some other group of people, but in the eyes of the average person atleast, the fascist is validating their concerns.
That’s why it’s so important as socialists that we have to be out there speaking to those real issues and telling people what the real problems are. And why it’s so important that we NEVER cave in to liberal framing. Because any association with liberals poisons our own message.
It’s at least one mechanism of how liberalism breeds fascism. Another mechanism would be liberalism’s disproportionate focus on suppressing socialist and labor movements, meanwhile fascist movements are allowed to fester and grow strong enough to “overthrow” a liberal state designed from the beginning to be impotent against that sort of attack. I compare this to lions playfighting with their cubs and deliberately losing. And there are other mechanisms through which liberalism sows its own replacement by fascism, too, I’m sure.
This being said, disingenuous translations that play into ethnic stereotypes are a genuine tool of imperialist propaganda, and I think there is a fine line between doing language policing and playing into liberal framing, versus pointing out inaccurate or unnuanced translations to show liberal propaganda for what it is. The North Korean word for “hamburger” stands out as another example: there’s this whole urban myth about Kim Jong-il claiming to have invented the hamburger and calling it “double bread with meat”, but this literally never happened! It’s just a telephone game of sensationalized bad translations. What actually happened is that Kim Jong-il proposed trying to popularize hamburgers in the DPRK as a way to help feed the people, and hamburgers just ended up being called “meat sandwiches” in North Korean, because North Korean is a more conservative lect with fewer loanwords than South Korean — the North Korean word for “sandwich” itself literally meaning “double bread”, hence the deliberately stilted translation of “double bread with meat” in WaCkY MyThS NoRtH KoReAnS AcTuALLy BeLiEvE clickbait articles.
Finklestein had a good take on this. Said that ”the Israelis are the only Jews that the Yemenis have ever known. How could you blame them?” I’d find a link but I’m on mobile, it was at some college forum with Christopher Hitchens iirc
Also the liberal focus on stuff like that literally empowers people like Trump and neo-nazi’s. Because average people get annoyed by it.
The average person thinks: “I’m worried about maintaining my quality of life.”
A Nazi says, “It’s the jewish elite making your life bad!”
In a vacuum the average person hears that and thinks, “That’s a weird thing to say.”
But then when the liberals come out and start losing their minds about “Antisemitism is the greatest threat to our society right now!” While not even trying to speak to that average persons concerns the average person goes back to the Nazi and says, “Alright, so what were you saying again? I’m actually curious now.”
That is exactly how liberalism breeds fascism. It refuses to acknowledge the real world suffering of everyday people and so they turn to fascism because fascism DOES acknowledge those things. It just deflects blame to some other group of people, but in the eyes of the average person atleast, the fascist is validating their concerns.
That’s why it’s so important as socialists that we have to be out there speaking to those real issues and telling people what the real problems are. And why it’s so important that we NEVER cave in to liberal framing. Because any association with liberals poisons our own message.
It’s at least one mechanism of how liberalism breeds fascism. Another mechanism would be liberalism’s disproportionate focus on suppressing socialist and labor movements, meanwhile fascist movements are allowed to fester and grow strong enough to “overthrow” a liberal state designed from the beginning to be impotent against that sort of attack. I compare this to lions playfighting with their cubs and deliberately losing. And there are other mechanisms through which liberalism sows its own replacement by fascism, too, I’m sure.
This being said, disingenuous translations that play into ethnic stereotypes are a genuine tool of imperialist propaganda, and I think there is a fine line between doing language policing and playing into liberal framing, versus pointing out inaccurate or unnuanced translations to show liberal propaganda for what it is. The North Korean word for “hamburger” stands out as another example: there’s this whole urban myth about Kim Jong-il claiming to have invented the hamburger and calling it “double bread with meat”, but this literally never happened! It’s just a telephone game of sensationalized bad translations. What actually happened is that Kim Jong-il proposed trying to popularize hamburgers in the DPRK as a way to help feed the people, and hamburgers just ended up being called “meat sandwiches” in North Korean, because North Korean is a more conservative lect with fewer loanwords than South Korean — the North Korean word for “sandwich” itself literally meaning “double bread”, hence the deliberately stilted translation of “double bread with meat” in WaCkY MyThS NoRtH KoReAnS AcTuALLy BeLiEvE clickbait articles.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BxKHNr590Wo&t=35
The video you speak of. Simple and excellent argument
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
Same in Poland in 1945, anti-german sentiment and hatred was strong because to be german was to be nazi.
Finklestein’s parents notably HATED Germans lol. Also can’t blame them.