Texas Border Convoy Descends into Antisemitism

gedaliyah@lemmy.worldmod to News@lemmy.world – 432 points – Texas border convoy descends into antisemitism
newsweek.com

The video shows Michael Yon making false claims regarding so-called "terrorists coming across the border being funded by Jewish money." Yon was speaking at a "Take Back Our Border" convoy in Texas.

In the video posted on X, formerly Twitter, the man can be heard claiming that HIAS, a global Jewish nonprofit that works to protect refugees, is responsible for funding terrorists coming to America.

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Descends into?

Are you sure they weren't there all along?

Indeed. We need a new version of Godwin's law. Something like

The odds of xenophobia, homophobia, transphobia, or antisemitism appearing in a conversation is directly proportional to the number of conservatives participating in that conversation.

Hence forth this will be known as “Billiams law”

Godwin's law was always more harm than good. Basically stating that despite a long history with fascism, it was inappropriate to compare Republicans to fascists/Nazis. Sure not everyone who votes Republican is a fascist. They're just okay with fascists. But if you are a fascist or modern Nazi, if you vote you vote Republican and always have.

What you're putting forward is much more like a razor anyway. See Occam's or Hanlon's.

...my dude, the only people who are okay with fascists are other fascists. Like, that's not even a debatable question.

Godwin didn't say it wasn't okay to call Republicans Nazis, he warned that one shouldn't make such comparisons lightly because it risks desensitizing everyone to the atrocities the Nazis committed and numbs the impact being called a Nazi should have. And to an extent he's still correct, as much of the Republican party thinks the issue with Nazism is branding (The Boys summed it up perfectly when Stormfront said "People love what I have to say, they just don't like the word 'Nazi' ".)

He also said it's perfectly fine comparing Trump to Hitler.

I agree with you. Though perhaps I was being too subtle. Yes, if you are okay with fascists and fascism then you are one of them. The whole point was that it isn't better to support it than it is to outright claim to be it.

As the proverb says, the road to hell is often paved with good intentions. That may have been what Godwin intended. But that wasn't the result. The result was we were loathe to even discuss the Republican party's enduring fascism problems In general. Especially in recent times. Because someone would shout out "Godwin's law!" as a discussion-ending cliche. Simply because Republicans hadn't slaughtered millions recently.

We lost all focus on how it starts, over defference with how it ended. Leaving many many people to wonder where the fascism that has existed for most of the last 100 years suddenly came from.

Look man, I'm gonna need you to stop being so reasonable and polite when debating on the Internet, or I'm gonna have to call your ISP and get your internet privileges revoked.

"descends into," "reveals undertone of," tomatoes, tomahtoes

Idk about you guys but I hate Nazis more than I hate illegal immigrants.

Hopefully their power grid can keep up this winter.

I hate Nazis

"Especially Illinois Nazis"

~"Joliet" Jake Blues

Don't need to hate anyone tho.

except nazis. we need to hate them.

Hating a group because they hate?

Hate is damaging your character.

So should we accept them? Be tolérant of their intolerance?

Punish by law, prohibit groups that fulfill the terms of extremist, teach to prevent, etc. Hate against hate never worked.

One thing a lot of countries get wrong is integration of immigrants.

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Jesus fuck I'll never understand these people. So now the Jews are sending Mexicans? Do they hear themselves when they speak? How incredibly fucking stupid that sounds?

Republicans, bruh. They’re dumber than dogshit.

Less so dumb, more so easily swayed by validation of their internalized racism and homophobia. We gotta remember there are smart assholes out there.

I mean, being easily swayed by someone stroking your ego is a kind of stupidity.

It's not that confusing. You figure out who you hate, and then find any possible reason for them to be the cause of all your life's problems, no matter how thin or tenuous.

Luckily, there are always people to tell you both of the above.

This is not a new theory. This was the motivation for the 2018 Tree of Life shooting, which is the deadliest anti-semitic attack in American history.

My uncle-in-law is convinced that the CCP is sending spies and sleeper agents in droves across the border. There's just no way to reason with this level of delusion.

They get their spies in legitimately or turn people. The fuck would you use a border? You want someone with a legal job.

Well yah, because the space laser didn’t work!

Except they still believe that one... They even know what color it is.

It's blue, apparently, and you can protect your home from it by painting your roof blue... Doesn't matter what shade of blue, just so long as it is blue.

True to form... Someone began advertising their blue paint as protection from the laser.

Yea, this crap is making it harder and harder to make jokes. It’s like someone installed a mod in the simulation that makes reality go bonkers.

I kinda wonder if it had been said the Russians are sending the Mexicans if people around here might have bought into it despite the ridiculousness.

Right? It's still the Jews? Really? WTF? East Indian Americans are rapidly outpacing "the Jews" in terms of elite professionalism, but it's still all somehow about the Jews?

What planet do these people live on?

What planet do these people live on?

Flat Earth

It’s because of their stereotypes. They see Jews as shifty underhanded masterminds. There’s no other minority group that they see that way so everything they don’t like they blame the Jews for.

Well there's a shock.

Who's funding *this *rally??

The asshole who tells you that you just need to work harder to get that $2 raise, after purchasing himself a new super truck with the money he definitely earned by working hard.

Yet this is the same party attacking the left for being antisemitic, and the media never contextualizes their attacks with things like this or their Jewish space laser actual antisemitism.

Socialists have an antisemitism problem because of the whole Wealthy Capitalist Jew stereotype. They hate wealthy people, they hate capitalists, so on an emotional level they have predisposition towards hating Jews. Not enough to kill Jews, but just enough to look the other way when someone else is killing Jews.

The right wing has an antisemitism problem because of religious bigotry.

This common hatred allows for strange coalitions to form between fascists and socialists. ie. National Socialism.

Of course socialists tend to be so certain of their ideological superiority they feel like they can win over the fascists in time. But then there's a night of the long knives and guess who are the ones holding the knives?

Socialist spend so much time debating the minutia of ideology they become ignorant of emotional manipulation and how power dynamics work. This makes them susceptible to being duped into joining fascist causes and when they're no longer useful to the fascists, they're promptly disposed of.

Socialists have an antisemitism problem because of the whole Wealthy Capitalist Jew stereotype.

I've never met a socialist who believes that stereotype though

The nature of emotions is that you can have a feeling that is contrary to how you think. That feeling may not influence how you think about Jews directly, but it can influence how you think about issues related to Jews. Just ignore a few details here, fixate on some other details there, and suddenly you think a group whose goal is to kill Jews might be right about a lot of things. You might think it's wrong to destroy that group because they're right about some things. You might attend their rallies and not think too much about the people at that rally cosplaying as people that murder Jews.

See fascism isn't really an ideology. It's just emotional manipulation that exploits people's predispositions. The goal of fascism is to get power through any means necessary. Socialists tend to think they're immune to these manipulations, but that makes them all the more susceptible to certain kinds of manipulation. And a fascist will accept a socialist into their movement, so long as the socialist is useful in their goal of gaining (or maintaining) power.

Issue with your first premise about Socialism... I have never heard leftist and Socialist circles take specific issue with Jewish people. Quite frankly the stereotype of the rich Jewish person is tied into the idea of Usury being a sin in Christianity but not the Jewish faith... But when was the last time you heard of the church full of fire and brimstone proclaim participating in the stock market is a sin? Answer is, you don't. Because it doesn't happen anymore. As dogma goes it was subtly retired from popular consciousness over a lengthy process about 300 years ago. The concept of "the Rich Jew" being a distinct issue for having any kind of advantage over anybody else is just the lingering unexamined myth of an era where any loan made where interest was charged had limited sources. There is no bogeyman money lender anymore when secular short term loan businesses dot the landscape.

The factor the main branches of Socialism all agree on is that the super rich should be taxed and measures made to put checks on monopolies. The faith of the people in those positions has zero relevance to that discussion. The common denominator is the amount of money made and the social ills that are perpetuated when that wealth is allowed to be unambiguously hoarded. Assuming that targeting the rich unfairly targets the Jewish people is buying into the antisemitic stereotype that paints them as the only rich predatory bogeymen of consequence.

What Conservatives often don't realize about hate speech is that there are protected and unprotected grounds. Israel is a political construct, a country. Becoming mega rich through exploitation is a choice anyone can make. Neither of these things are beyond criticism because they are both institutions independant of the body of religion. You have Jewish people who hate what the body politic of Israel is doing and you have rich exploitative people who are not Jewish.

The near complete lack of understanding of the actual hard boundries of what counts as hate speech versus legitimate targets of criticism leave a lot of moderates in your position where they are out to sea and unable to pick hate speech properly out of the dialogue and are subject to false equivency propaganda that there's hypocrisy when there's not. In rhetoric there are solid rules about what counts and until you learn them you are sailing without a compass or stars.

So in your first paragraph are you saying that the Jews have all the money?

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The only part that surprises me about this is that the convoy isn't called "Take Back Are Country."

I disagree with the word "descends." Aren't their previous racist and otherwise positions equally low? This is a lateral move not a descent.

When does free speech descend into incitement?

Technically there is a legal answer but unfortunately in the States it has different possible definitions at the State and Federal level.

In a very general sense one in part looks at intention and also all the factors around in the environment. If I were to go "we should kill the !" in a forum such as this where generally speaking we are all just people talking and hyperbole is more or less the norm it's probably not going to meet the criteria of a chargeable incitement. If I as a speaker at a podium where I have been marketed as some kind of authority - even if that is just implied by the fact I am on the podium - start winding up a crowd with the intention of setting them loose to a criminal purpose or start yelling at someone who is already weilding a gun to shoot then that's a pretty strong case for incitement. Your intention is made fairly clear and you are in a place to directly influence in an outsized fashion how events might play out.

A lot of the harmful rhetoric that goes on, while priming the stage for individual people to become aggressive and more predisposed to take out their aggressions on the target (stochastic terrorism) has been leaned on quite heavily in modern times it does so basically cheating the system. If you start low and slow and let the water appear to boil itself then it generally protects you from a incitement charge.

In a separate video of the same event posted by Ryan Matta, he also claims that Hamas and Hezbollah "are coming across" the U.S. border. "Venezuela is filled with Hezbollah," he said. "Our borders are wide open, it's our government that's doing it." Yon reposted the video with the caption "Allahu Akbar!"

So is it Jews or Hamas/Hezbollah?

They can’t even keep their shit straight that they are telling people. 🤦🏻‍♂️

They probably don't know the difference. They're from the same place after all LoL. These people aren't smart.

These people don't know whether to hate or love Jews depending on what their talking heads told them that morning

They generally hate Jews unless Fox News tells them that Arabs are scarier.

When it's not involving Arabs, then Jews are scarier.

I don't quite understand the hierarchy of fear that's so present in these communities though, but I assume there's sub gradations within the groups like an Israeli Jew isn't as bad as a wall street Jew and a wall street Jew is scarier than a Mexican but not a taxi driver?

I'm probably not racist enough to grasp the nuances of their thinking but I'm among the scary people so I try to catalogue where I am in the moment on the hate scale LoL. Rising the ranks quickly is my current experience.....

For many of them the role Israel plays in their eschatological fantasies drives a lot of that complication and nuance.

I was told that 21 year old college students advocating that less children get blown up were the antisemitic ones?

You're telling me they're not defending Jews they just like the cruelty‽

these morons just need someone to hate, 24/7

Calling Weird Al: There's a Queen parody to be had here.

Weird Al doesn't do mean spirited parody. Let me clarify, he doesn't use his music to tear someone else down.

However, there are plenty of other artists who would be happy to make such a song.

Been hearing about terrorism in the US for years. Why are they all homegrown?

I feel like we need to stop using the term antisemitism and split it into two categories. You have the Nazi's hate speech vs the Israeli government wants to justify killing Palestinian children.

You literally have to read the articles to figure out in which way it's being used.

And I really wish the Israeli government would stop making me feel I need this distinction.

No, we don't need to split it into two categories because only one of those is antisemitism. If there were an organization of Latino Americans, even a powerful one, who announced that anyone who doesn't support Mexico's war against the cartels is racist, no one would say that there are two kinds of anti-Latino racism. There's racism and then there's bullshit that a group might claim is racism but isn't.

(Sorry, I know that's not a 1:1 example, but I can't think of an equivalent one to make my point. I think my point still stands.)

No, I get you. I even agree with you. Unfortunately it's being used both ways, and I honestly think it would help to differentiate the two, because it's being diluted by the people that need protection from it the most.

I am one of those people and as a Jew I cannot disagree more. People need to know what is and is not bigotry against Jews. They need to know the difference between calling out Israel for its genocide and blaming an American Jew for that genocide. It is absolutely vital for people to understand that there is nothing antisemitic about criticizing Israel because it is vital for people to understand that American Jews are not Israelis. You have no idea how many people essentially consider us to be foreigners in our own homelands. On my mother's side, my Jewish ancestors in America go back to the 19th century. Many decades before Israel even existed. I have absolutely no affiliation or association with Israel. I am American. I was born in Indiana. I'm completely steeped in American culture. I know almost no Hebrew or Yiddish. And yet so many people, both pro-Israeli and anti-Israeli assume that because I am a Jew, I must hold allegiance to Israel. And a big reason for that is because Israel wants it that way. What you are suggesting still gives them what they want.

Edit: Needed to add 'in America.'

The number of American Jews I know that are backing Israel in this are not insignificant. There's a lot of I stand with Israel out there It like to throw around anti-Semitism when people disagree with them.

The muddying of the term is deliberate and political. And I agree that it is important that people know the difference, which is why I'm against leaving it muddied. If you walk up to a thousand people screaming it's anti-Semitism and scream back at them that's not anti-Semitism there's no movement. You're telling them that you don't think what they're doing is right and they're telling you you're a Nazi.

How do you fix that?

People used to claim all kinds of things like blackface weren't racist when they are racist. Meanwhile, there are black writers who claim hip hop is racist., which implies that you're a racist if you listen to it. Such writers are wrong and 'but they're black' is not a justification. Blackface is racist because it's white people pretending to be black. Hip hop is not racist because it is part of black culture. And the way you fix that is you keep insisting one thing is bigotry and the other isn't. Which is why people do not accept blackface today but do accept hip hop.

You have a fairly large group of people here that are making every argument possible to validate genocide. If someone calls me a racist for listening to hip hop there's nothing really hurt in the balance. The one person in a minority view or even the 000 1% wouldn't bother me.

25% of the Jews I know on social media are still flying the I stand with Israel flag. These are not normally sociopaths. If you get into an argument with them they say you just don't get it they did this and they did that and they do this and they do that. They start quoting scripture, You say yeah but none of that validates genocide, then they change their argument back to what are the white man do to the Indians.

The term anti-Semitic is being flown as a flag and watered down. I think it would be useful to have a secondary term that means I'm against supporting the genocide of Palestine.

25% of the Jews I know on social media are still flying the I stand with Israel flag.

How many Jews do you know and how many of that 25% claim that any criticism of Israel is antisemitism? Because otherwise, I'm not sure why that's relevant.

I always hate fighting with you. It's tiring.

How many is a good number, 5, 10, 20, 50 where's that line exactly that makes it right versus wrong? There are certain number that makes it worth it for you?

The industry I'm in has a fair amount of Jewish people. We get a lot of employees from friends and family.

It's not until this most recent conflict that we've had problems in a point of view.

You gave an anecdotal example that gave a statistic which didn't actually support your point.

Asking you for a number based on that statistic doesn't seem out of order.

Your claim, if you have forgotten, was that 25% of the Jews you know support Israel, therefore we need to differentiate between two types of antisemitism even though one of them isn't antisemitism.

So, again, I think 'how many people is that and how many of them actually believe that critics of Israel are antisemitic' are fair questions.

If you do mean to suggest that any Jew that supports Israel thinks any non-Israel supporter is antisemitic... well that is an antisemitic stereotype in and of itself. That is real antisemitism, assuming what Jews believe without them making it explicit to you. And I can tell you for a fact that there are Jews who support Israel and accept that others do not and also aren't antisemites.

I think what they're saying is, there does NOT need to be a distinction because those claiming it means anything anti-Israel ... are wrong. Pure and simple.

It does not need clarifying from the perspective of people saying antisemitism. It needs clarification in that the morons who insist anti-Israel is antisemitic need to be slapped across the face, because they're wrong.

The muddying of the term is a political attack. How do you stop that? You tell them they're wrong they tell you you're a fascist?

And if you ask what exactly a fascist is, they mumble some shit about woke leftists.

The dumbing down of people all over the world will be what kills us all.

While your post isn't wrong, it's not suggesting anything to help.

I have tried multiple ways to talk to my son about this stuff, and the only thing that works is we just don't talk about this stuff.

I can't force people to see truth. Nobody can.

It's one of their tactics They co-opt words phrases and symbols and turn them into their grandstanding.

We don't do that.

We don't have any terms for any of it. Woke in the vernacular is derogatory. Liberals is derogatory. I'm afraid the best we come up with in retaliation is boomers which is utterly insufficient and in many/most cases outright incorrect.

People are driving around with desecrated flags and punisher logos on their cars. No no those don't mean the things that they've meant forever They mean this now.

We need to be unified in calling them hatemongers or selfish cowards. But we take the high road and we just kind of let it go when we don't interact with them because it's f****** exhausting. And they sling their s*** at us and keep going.

Oh this is good.

Maybe we'll see some of that censorship put to good use, now.

Referring to every brown person as a terrorist is just making the word meaningless

That was fast. Fucking antisemites. If they don’t like the land of religious freedom they’re free to leave to wherever wants them.

I’m getting worried.

I planned a vacation to TX for my birthday in early April, because it happens to coincide with the eclipse, and Dallas will be one of the best places to view it from.

So, since I had a lot of points to splurge on, I extended the vacation a bit and we’re going to fly into Houston, hang there for a bit, then spend my birthday weekend in Austin, then Dallas for the eclipse, and back down to Houston to fly home.

Lots of stuff I want to do in each city, and I know the cities are generally lean a bit more liberal, but I’m getting more concerned each day about actually spending my birthday and a monumental celestial event inside an actual civil war.

You’ll be fine. The average Texan isn’t even aware of this stupid shit and the cities you listed are way more left-leaning than a small town in whatever state you’re from.

This is a few hundred idiots in a state with a population of 30 million people. I saw more people at Costco yesterday.

Some articles have misrepresented it as 1,000 people, but that was a concert in Dripping Springs, a small town outside of Austin (not the border) with Ted Nugent and Sarah Palin. 1,000 people turning out for a musician with Top 40 hits is actually a very poor turnout for being near a city with 1,000,000 people.

This is all just media hype. Edit to add: And politician hype. I’m not sure which one I’m angrier at. They both suck for trying to “make fetch happen.”

I live on the border, and you really don't need to worry unless you're pregnant.

Unless some kind of armed violence and wide scale conflict actually breaks out, you'll be perfectly fine. Especially in the cities, most of those people are just as aghast as you.

I'm sure it's like Florida and the cities are fine. Inside the cities here it's tolerant and more progressive, in the country and even now the suburbs it's different.

Dallas, Houston, Austin, even San Antonio, Galveston I wouldn't worry about visiting.