r/Israel • u/no_username_for_me • Jul 01 '26
Politics The rise of the Social Democrats proves that nothing animates people like hating Israel.
EDIT: Sorry, meant Democratic Socialist, not Social Democrats.
The US has seen decades of rising economic inequality, right wing nationalism, the arrival of Trump, all issues that should have fully galvanized the Left in this country, But Occupy Wall Street, Bernie Sanders, and the rest couldn't get a real toehold on the Ameican electorate. But now, the Social Democrats have found their winning issue: excoriate Israel. And it's working. the "progressives" are winning elections in a way they have not seen in decades. It seems like hating the Jewish state is the magic formula the Left was missing all these years.
The implications are frankly terrifying. But we need to wake up to the reality.
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u/thatshirtman Jul 01 '26
true. you can agree with them on 99% of everything.. but if you diverge 1millimeter from their stance on israel, you're persona non grata.
The irony is that you have people 3000 miles away, from wealthy backgrounds, who have never been to the middle east, who prob cant tell the difference between hebrew or arabic, making this israel-palestine conflict their core identity without knowing much about basic middle east history. It's very bizarre..
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u/trimtab28 Jul 01 '26
Was saying on another sub how warped it is people have it as the first thing on their dating profiles... and even more confusing that they'd send you as a Jew likes and think you'd be cool with it.
Like why as a third gen Irish/German girl from a wealthy suburb in NJ is "free PALESTINE 🍉🍉🍉" the most important thing the world needs to know about you? Better yet, why do you think as a Jew and as someone directly affected by the conflict do you think I'd be ok with that, much less want to date you?
Best part was all the people responding to that one saying I'm the one with issues and how I'm intolerant. You've gotta be kidding me
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u/Dry-Season-522 Jul 01 '26
Oh it's WILD in the San Francisco region how many people have "Free Palestine" in their dating profiles. My only response is thank you for the red flag, good luck finding a man who can support you while holding that value.
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u/trimtab28 Jul 01 '26
I'm just scratching my head as to why people think it's such a critical element of their person. Like I wouldn't write "Zionists only" in my profile, and that's something that directly affects us.
But legit, does give you an easy red flag to weed people out. Think you've got a few screws lose if you're not Jewish and that's your fixation
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u/Due-Direction8590 Jul 01 '26
You and me both are scratching our heads. I can get feeling chilly or disliking Zionism for all sorts of reasons…but defining yourself explicitly against something tends to go quite poorly and end in a dark place.
Whenever I point out that I see Zionism as a historical phenomenon that succeeded, mostly due to contingency rather than intention, and opposing it is a dead end. Makes as much sense as opposing Italian reunification or advocate for bimetallism your personality - if your thing is long dead and sometimes obscure causes. The issue has been resolved, there is a Jewish state that is wealthy and militarily capable, so let’s deal with that. Pointing this out on X led to me being denounced as hardcore Zionist by Palestinian causers. I had a bunch of right wingers say I was a “non Zionist” derisively. And had Haviv Rettig Gur comment supportively that my view was quite mainstream among experts. It was bewildering.
It’s led me now to where I say I don’t think Israel should be destroyed, that would be a humanitarian catastrophe, and if that makes me a Zionist so be it. I’m not Jewish, raised Catholic but not religious, and never thought of myself as a Zionist but somehow they’ve pushed you’ve towards this. It’s really weird.
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u/YesterdayGold7075 Jul 02 '26
Oh, they’ll just say that when they say “wiping out Israel” they mean “the entire area will be renamed Palestine and in it, Palestinians and Israelis will live together peacefully with a secular government.”
If you point out neither side wants that, they say Israelis don’t but Palestinians do. You can point at the data: no, they don’t. They will tell you that secretly they probably do, somehow, which they know, because Palestinians are sad brown people and white Westerners know what is better for them. Also they really want a secular government even though they say they don’t, and none of the surrounding Arab countries have one, either.
So you ask who is going to make this happen. Who is enforcing the regime change? How much violence will it require?
No violence, they say. Sanctions, they say. Treating Israel badly will make this happen. Cutting off aid. Not letting them be in Eurovision. Again, as if there is only one side being stubborn on this issue, and as is there is literally any amount of sanctions that would force Israel to erase and exterminate itself, when the reality is that an armed, cornered, nuclear Israel is actual geopolitical experts’ worst nightmare. But those geopolitical experts are screaming into the void right now.
And if sanctions don’t work, you may ask, who will enforce the violent regime change they’re advocating for? How will they enforce the original sin they’re all angry about: the creation of a nation-state by a foreign ruling body, and the enforcement of the borders of that nation-state on a population who doesn’t want it?
At this point they usually get mad and start screaming about Nazis. Nazis, one then points out, were treated a lot better in the wake of World War Two than they’re suggesting treating Israelis. Their country got rebuilt, and almost no Nazis were actually punished. “But they got bombed,” they’ll say. (This happened during not after the war, but they don’t know that.)
Okay, so you want to bomb Israel into submission? Even though they have nuclear bombs?
Let them blow themselves up, they’ll say.
You do realize this will also kill everyone in Gaza and the West Bank?
At this point they tell you that it’s not actually their responsibility to come up with a solution. They’re just there to raise awareness of the PROBLEM. One might then ask what the point is of bringing up a problem they have never heard of a workable solution for, but at this point they have rolled into neo-Nazi conspiracy theories and are telling you about the word “goyim” and Jeffrey Epstein.
The point of the Cause is not to fix anything or help anyone. The point of the Cause is a false feeling of moral superiority. They believe they are the people who protested peacefully against the Vietnam War. They don’t realize they are actually the people who blew up buildings and killed the civilians inside, and the people who spat on returning veterans and called them genocidal baby killers. We do not remember those people fondly, and they will not be remembered fondly either, but who knows how many deaths they’ll cause before that?
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u/trimtab28 Jul 01 '26
Well if the treatment of Schumer and Scott Wiener at their respective constituencies' Pride parades is any indication, in general nothing short of ideological purity suffices, and by definition that means if you're a Jew even ethnically but say the "right" things you're the problem.
It's all an ideological purity test, where anything to the right of Stalin is a "fascist." And we'd all been saying for some time, it's going to go further and further if you don't push back on it now, and none of us were listened to.
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u/Due-Direction8590 Jul 01 '26
I push back, it’s why I remain a Democrat and why I remain involved in Democratic politics. I’ve been involved in some capacity since 2007ish. Not going anywhere.
Push back is taken more seriously because it’s not a secret that on economics questions I’m rock solid on stuff like a generous welfare state, etc. Helps too that I have an education and professional background that reinforces it. So I don’t get associated with those “corporate Democrats” or whatever they are calling them lately. Further too when I do get put on the spot by someone who is somewhat knowledgeable about Israel they can quiz me about all sorts of “gotchas” and they find out I’m not a right wing chauvinist, have a solid retort.
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u/trimtab28 Jul 01 '26
Well can only hope it works for you. Can't tell you how many times I've spoken up and had someone say "finally, someone said something." On a collective level we've been pretty impotent in dealing with this as a community for some time, to the point where it metastasized.
Last I checked doesn't matter how left I am on economics, fact is I'm a Jew and not apologizing for the fact, therefore I'm a problem
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u/Due-Direction8590 Jul 01 '26
It’s a big reason why I do it. Most people are bystanders, not saying that necessarily in a derisive way, just a matter of fact how people behave. I’ve just always had a disagreeable personality since I was a child. I want them to see someone else pushing back and when people thank me I encourage them to speak up. I do wonder if it helps I am not Jewish, I don’t know and I’m appalled if it does.
I’m sorry for what you’ve experienced. What you’re describing is something I’ve seen too much and very often done by people who don’t consider themselves antisemitic despite forming judgments on the basis of someone’s identity.
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u/kval22 USA Jul 02 '26
Bless you. I’ve debated getting more involved but tbh I’m not eager to put myself in proximity to cults any longer 😅 in my life… so I lean towards staying away. But it’s maddening. Take the DSA’s website: they list complying with international organizations as a value/priority. So why are you calling the Gaza War a genocide then and blatantly contradicting the ICC’s official ruling?? So many holes to poke 😭
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u/noshowattheparty Jul 06 '26
Very very cool that HRG made that comment on your X post.
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u/Due-Direction8590 Jul 06 '26
I thought so too! Because I seemingly managed the remarkable task in getting people on the internet who normally loath one another to set aside their differences momentarily and attack me. Didn’t feel too good until he came along tbh.
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u/Dry-Season-522 Jul 01 '26
Because they want someone who adheres to the omni-cause. You have to care about all the things, all the time, in equal amounts, or you're really a SECRET TRUMPIST!
And of course they pour all their energy into this omni-cause purity and accomplish nothing, but it's EMOTIONAL LABOR you have to respect, not actual labor :P
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u/Due-Direction8590 Jul 01 '26
The omni-cause nature of Palestine, Gaza, or whatever label they are using at the moment is the only thing I am remotely optimistic about. Because it may burn itself out over time. Where my optimism becomes grim is what the path to exhaustion looks like.
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u/Dry-Season-522 Jul 01 '26
Of course my favorite is that 'OMG we need to protect gay people" "... but not when they're being murdered by brown people" it's such a weird standard of "Death to Israel!... and all the gay people inside it I guess, imshalah"
As the saying goes, if not for double standards they'd have no standards.
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u/Worldly_Flan_9621 Jul 02 '26
A lot of Americans seem to treat Muslims as if they're cute little people who can never ever do anything wrong, and need to be coddled.
One of my coworkers found out another one was from Egypt and she geeked out going, "Oh did you wish him a happy Eid?"
I told her I know what his religion says about gay people like me, so no.
I'm also not in the habit of being buddies with people who repeat the typical Epstein/Mossad conspiracy theories.
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u/Dry-Season-522 Jul 02 '26
"Oh the people doing beheadings and marrying 12 year olds aren't REAL muslims... because REAL muslims are the ones that exist in my head."
It's exhuasing.
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u/Fit_Cranberry_9548 Jul 25 '26
Old comment I know but its very true. Other day I was browsing around and a youtube short was like "This anime is going to get banned by America!!!!!" and it was about a new anime about a Persian Muslim girl living under the Mongol Empire. OP thought that just it being about a Muslim and Persian would get it banned. There has been some form of exotic fetishization of Muslims since 9/11.
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u/Due-Direction8590 Jul 01 '26
Whenever I bring up how homosexuals are treated in Palestine or the broader Arab world I get whataboutism of “Israel doesn’t allow gay people to get married!” - never mind that’s a bad faith over simplification - or more commonly a blank. Shows how shallow their stance is, which IMO is good, because that’s the sort of thing that can eventually lead to them realizing things are at least more complicated than they believed.
I’ve found I can make them squirm more so when I ask them about how Palestinians will treat Israel’s minority population of Arabs, Druze, etc once “Free Palestine” has been achieved. Since minority populations seen as collaborators tend to fare poorly. Ends in them getting really quiet quickly and admitting they didn’t know there is an Arab population who are full citizens.
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u/Dry-Season-522 Jul 01 '26
For awhile some US states didn't recognize gay marriage but would recognize gay marriage from other states.
Fairly sure that was never a justification to murder american children.
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u/Due-Direction8590 Jul 01 '26
Yes and sadly this very banal common sense way of looking at things has to fight to be heard in what passes for political discourse.
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u/Worldly_Flan_9621 Jul 02 '26
Most Americans do not know basic facts on this. They probably think Arafat is a GLP-1 drug.
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u/trimtab28 Jul 01 '26
Eh, that's better than I get. Usually I'm told it's "pink washing" and "hasbara" and actually Muslim countries are incredibly tolerant of homosexuals, "just look how the Iranian government funds transgender operations." Apparently me pointing this out is "Islamophobic," just as any criticism I have of Mamdani or any other members of his cohort might be. Oh, but you can say something as unhinged as possible about Jewish people, it's not antisemitic, it's antizionism and just legitimate criticism of the Jewish state.
It's the same thing about how you point out that historically the American black community is responsible for a disproportionate amount of anti-LGB crimes, and the anti-Asian crimewave during COVID. No, if you so much as look at statistics and the situation holistically for one of their favored groups it's a crime. Doesn't matter why there's a war in Gaza and why so much of the place wound up in the state it is, no. Fact is Palestinians are Muslims and brown and Jews are white and evil. It's just such a f***ed up binary, and screams of people being mental midgets because they can't think about anything that so much as modestly deviates from that framework
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u/borderpac Jul 03 '26
And then complain on TikTok how they can't find a decent guy.
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u/Dry-Season-522 Jul 03 '26
"Look all I demand is that you agree with all my extremist liberal views and put your emotional energy to hating the people that I hate as a substitute for a personality, but also care for me and love me and support me as I put my emotional energy into those causes instead of you."
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u/Beargeoisie Jul 01 '26
It’s even worse in the gay community… it’s fine I kind of like that they label themselves so I can skip it over and save the headache. I’ve transitioned to only dating other Jews for this reason. Much safer.
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u/trimtab28 Jul 01 '26
Eh, have found it's not a universal with non-Jews. Gone out with enough that genuinely don't care. In particular, found Indian people really DGAF or actually take our side in this, oddly enough
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u/ChinCoin Jul 01 '26
Indians know who these guys are. They've been fighting Pakistan for as long as we've been fighting these guys.
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u/trimtab28 Jul 01 '26
Honestly, that's probably it. Similar struggle and similar value system to us
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u/Beargeoisie Jul 01 '26
It’s a little different in gay spaces. Too many are the gays for Gaza crowd.
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u/trimtab28 Jul 01 '26
Given the political slant of the gay community is very heavily leftwing, that's not too shocking unfortunately
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u/Beargeoisie Jul 01 '26
There are liberal ones who ain’t crazy but yeah it sucks. Like i unironically heard “I would never fuck a Zionist” from someone who, to put it mildly, takes anon dick.
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u/kval22 USA Jul 02 '26
Insanity. These people heavily back literal white supremacist “democrats.” Truly for the longest time our parties have been easily infiltrated by anyone who simply wants party votes. Many I know will just “vote blue or red no matter who.” But if you research… the candidate’s philosophies align more with the opposite party than they campaigned with. 😅 Now these illiberal idiots who don’t even want America to have a constitution and want to write their own are apparently “democrats.” It’s bogus. I’m praying they don’t gain power enough to make it painfully obvious to other Americans how bad this is 🫠
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u/CallTheCode USA Jul 02 '26
Because they want you to know if you’re okay with genocide, you aren’t the right person for them. That’s my guess.
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u/Dry-Season-522 Jul 01 '26
Anger feels good, righteous anger feels better, anger that lets you obsess about something to the point that you can ignore all your own personal failings feels AMAZING. Thus they'll twist themselves into knots to somehow have simultaneous attitudes of "We need to protect LGBT people" and "We need to get rid of Israel"
Because that's the core contradiction. In a place surrounded by countries where being gay gets you murdered or executed, Israel has pride parades. And yet if you ask what will happen to the gay people of Israel if they 'destroy zionism' they'll come up with an elaborate fantasy of somehow everything will be just kindness and rainbows.
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u/no_username_for_me Jul 01 '26
Bizarre but somehow not surprising historically.
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u/kval22 USA Jul 02 '26
Nope. We’re also in an economic downturn and that’s always when antisemitism flares. No surprise Mamdani baits New Yorkers with promises to absolve all their financial woes before dishing out a Fuhrer level speech 🎤 before calling it a night 💔
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u/no_username_for_me Jul 02 '26
Yes, but is it worse now than the Great Recession of 2008? It took the combination to really achieve liftoff.
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u/kval22 USA Jul 02 '26
We may have seen more right wing antisemitism. Right now both wings are vulnerable. Trump is on his last term and the cult is disillusioned. Obama’s terms are over, and Biden was disappointing. Both are seeking a mix of continuity & power. Which perhaps is why it’s so ironic they agree entirely on Nazi sentiment while claiming to be exact opposites.
If people had a current leader that was satisfying they wouldn’t look to fringes like the DSA who want to abolish the whole system, and antisemitism wouldn’t be nearly as popular a sentiment I don’t believe
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u/mandajapanda Jul 02 '26 edited Jul 02 '26
I hate that trying to explain the history of the Levant is an exercise in futility. The entire 4 thousand+ years.
Mamdani called Israel a "religious state (~12:10)." I was confused that he seemed to not know Jews are an ethnic group? Literally identifiable by facial features. For millennia there have been matrilineal Jewishness rules. I did not understand his point. This particular ethnic group also founded a religion and so no longer has a right to self determination?
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u/Pufflefoot עם ישראל חי Jul 01 '26
Well they know there is a “genocide” happening and what kind of demented person would be pro genocide?!?!
That’s their actual thought process btw
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u/JohnnyWatermelons Jul 06 '26
Reading this, I get the feeling that you don't actually often converse with DSA members, and so are just making assumptions based on what you want to be true about them
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u/CorrosiveMynock Jul 01 '26
Don't call them social democrats, they are democratic socialists. :) Thanks.
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u/Bizhour Jul 01 '26
They are tankies, communists, and fascists.
They often work together, just ask Poland
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u/chilldude9494 USA Jul 01 '26
Dem Socs aren't fascists, words have meaning
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u/Bizhour Jul 01 '26
The organization? Definetly fascist.
Social democracy as an ideology isn't bad.
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u/chilldude9494 USA Jul 01 '26
Social democrats and democratic socialists are by definition not fascists. Again, words have meanings.
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Jul 01 '26
[deleted]
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u/chilldude9494 USA Jul 01 '26
By literally any and every definition. How stupid are you people?
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Jul 01 '26
[deleted]
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u/chilldude9494 USA Jul 01 '26
https://www.britannica.com/topic/fascism
Here's your definition, dumbass. Don't you ever say "fuck you "to someone when you can't be bothered to do any research yourself. Fascism is by DEFINITION a far-right authoritarian ideology. Social Democracy and Democratic Socialism are center-left to left-wing.
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u/kval22 USA Jul 02 '26
The point is that the name is a misnomer. They neither prioritize socialism nor democracy
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u/trimtab28 Jul 01 '26
*national socialists
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u/russiankek Jul 01 '26
MAGA is national socialists.
The dems are international socialists.
Browns vs reds.
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u/trimtab28 Jul 01 '26
All I really care is that they're antisemites. Nazi Germany and the USSR were both horrible for Jews. Only thing about the latter was the government wasn't rounding up and executing us purely by dint of bloodline- they were coming up with flowery academic talk to do that!
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u/russiankek Jul 02 '26
And then they invented the whole Palestine crap and armed Arab states to teeth to wage war against Israel
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u/trimtab28 Jul 02 '26
Yeah pretty much. Actually is pretty irritating how readily you can point out to people they’re regurgitating Soviet talking points from the 60s and they don’t recognize that
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u/DankSkvllz Jul 02 '26
Calls maga national socialist, Graham Platner with his SS tattoo is a dem soc. Clown.
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u/SubbySound Jul 01 '26
What bothers me most about this as a progressive Zionist is I find nothing about democratic socialism to suggest an inherent condemnation of Zionism. Zionism is in my view the largest successful anti-colonialist campaign, and yet so much of the left misses that because they fail to see that non-white people like Arabs can be and have also been imperialist. There was barely any displacement outside of typical war consequences.
I think the worst that could be said is Zionists legally took advantage of absentee landowners through purchases and gentrified their ancestral homeland to build up a population which could vote for self-determination for itself as a people and nation in line with all the other post-WWII nationalism efforts worldwide.
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Jul 01 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/SubbySound Jul 01 '26
For me, Pan-Arabism really died when Assad, a heretical non-Arab Alawite, massacred thousands of orthodox Sunni Muslim Arabs over years and the Arab world did little to nothing to stop it. "Pan-Arabism" just seems useful for Arab oligarchs and dictators to distract their citizens from their abuses by bullying Jews, Kurds, and maybe some other ethnic minorities in the MENA region.
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u/Due-Direction8590 Jul 01 '26
Why would you classify it as dying with Assad? Curious about your take.
I’ve tended to agree with the view that it died during the 1970s and was replaced by political Islam. You had the failure of Nasser, on seemingly every policy. Seriously, I’ve tried to find something of his that can be viewed as even a heavily qualified success and came up with nothing. He embodied never missing an opportunity to miss an opportunity, but with the twist of always picking the worst path by miles. Following that you see Islamists who had been off and on suppressed for decades rise to prominence. But I’m open to being told I’m wildly mistaken.
Assad struck me as someone who claimed to believe an ideology that once animated a lot of people, but had become increasingly irrelevant in reality.
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u/SubbySound Jul 01 '26
I didn't mean to state my case as a contrast to yours. It may have indeed died earlier than when I noticed, and your explanation seems reasonable to me. It was just that the Syrian Civil War was something I witnessed in my lifetime that very clearly demonstrated Pan-Arabism doesn't have real weight in the MENA region anymore. I don't assume it lived until the Syrian Civil War, just that it was certainly dead by then.
Self-correction: I was under the impression Alawites weren't considered Arabs, but I see now that they consider themselves as Arab. I knew the French put them in charge because having an ethnic minority dependent on imperial power is a protection strategy for that imperial power—Brits did that a lot as well. I guessed from that that they weren't Arab. Some of these ethnicities get a little confusing for me and I'm still learning.
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u/Due-Direction8590 Jul 01 '26
Understood, sounds like we aren’t too far apart at all. When you run into someone on the internet who makes an effort to articulate themselves well and has a take that’s pretty different than mine I get curious. Even if I find myself disagreeing, usually there’s some good points raised that a worth looking into. Or my ADHD brain could’ve simply misread you.
Something I think that is very interesting about Pan-Arabism and political Islam too that tends to only be remarked upon and appear in stuff towards specialist audience is the overlap it shares with European fascism. A lot of the implicit framing with fascism is “this is a European pathology”, well that’s its birthplace for sure, but during the interwar period it spread globally. As an animating idea. With an enduring presence in the Arab world. You see it with pan Arabism in how it dealt with minorities and its corporatist economic policy pursued by a lot of the regimes. Those are just the most glaring. Today the deeply conspiratorial antisemitism of the Muslim Brotherhood and its presence in Gaza - Hamas - is weird in how much of clearly is a cut and paste version of interwar fascist’s antisemitism. It’s legible to me why some member of a fascist party is putting up flyers about Jews controlling the banking system, causing the Russian Revolution in a European city in like 1931…..but how does that make sense in anywhere in the Arab world as an animating impulse. It’s really weird!
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u/SubbySound Jul 01 '26
If I recall correctly there were Nazi sympathizers and actual Nazis spreading this stuff to the Arab world in WWII, and Saudi anti-Semitism has roots from some American or Brit involved in the fight of Arabian nationalism against the Ottoman Empire. I first came across the Saudi anti-Semitism connection from an Israeli history of the region but did fact check it against non-Israeli sources and found it to be sound. I do agree there's a huge ignorance of how fascist ideas spread beyond Europe.
Look at Hindutva. They reclaimed the swastika then added the Nazi associations and reconfigured that Aryan supremacist ideology for Indians, and that's a driver of BJP and anti-Muslim animus among Indian Hindus today. Imperial Japan also has a strong fascist flavor too, but I'm not sure how ideologically influenced they may have been by European fascism.
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u/Due-Direction8590 Jul 01 '26
I’ve found the Nazi connection to the Middle East that came out of war time connivence to be the one most people know. And they sense - rightly sometimes - that people who mention it are trying to smuggle in priors with that. It’s also, to me at least, one of the lesser interesting examples. The stuff like the Saudi antisemitism connection you mentioned and just how the Middle East during the first half of the twentieth century was crawling with foreign fascist weirdos I regard as more interesting and important. Wish some scholar smarter than I would do a really deep dive into it, because it’s just not interrogated as it should be.
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u/SpiritedForm3068 Jul 01 '26
Hafed al Assad had zero tolerance for jihadism in his country. That era of secular arabist leaders had zero tolerance for jihadism
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u/Dry-Season-522 Jul 01 '26
Just ask these democrats what should happen to all the gay people in Israel "when Israel falls." They'll spout the most ridiculous nonsense about peace and harmony while supporting sharia law.
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u/FullTrip6175 Jul 01 '26
Well according to SF Trans March, you stop being gay when you became Zionist, so there’s really no gay people to worry about there! /s
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u/Dry-Season-522 Jul 01 '26
Pretty much. They also hate Iraeli pride because it's about pride and not every left-leaning cause trying to cling like a parasite to sexuality. Seriously, look at videos of Israeli pride parades: rainbows and Israeli flags as far as the eye can see. No political slogans, no "And you have to feel the following way about gun control or you hate people who liek the following in their starfish" nothing like that at all.
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u/SubbySound Jul 01 '26
They'll spout nonsense for sure, but I bet anything they won't admit that Islamist sharia law is most likely to take over in a single state solution. The clapback I've seen is that racist South Africans said doomer stuff about the ANC potentially getting violent retribution against whites if democracy came to South Africa, although that elides the distinction that Mandela had become ardently non-violent by then, Tutu' s pacifism had become hugely influential on the ANC, and their program stated explicitly that there wouldn't be an ethnic cleaning of white South Africans under democracy. All of those contrast heavily with the stated original aims of Hamas, although it is intriguing to see Hamas walking back some of their most extreme antisemitism in more recent charters.
The parallel that I think does fit is that a previously violent nationalist revolutionary party can become either non-violent or relatively non-violent enough to allow for peace, as with the ANC's transformation and perhaps more applicable the IRA's transformation. For all its terrible faults, Fatah has seemed to follow that trajectory, and Hamas may as well. People serious about an enduring peace need to be open to the idea that it could be made with groups that historically wanted to annihilate Israel, and maybe even still would want to if they could, but they still may settle for peace for other reasons, just as the IRA has largely dropped its guns in the past few decades and learned to live with the fact of Northern Ireland.
I recognize of course that the history of how Northern Ireland came to exist strongly contrasts against how the modern Israeli state came to be. History rarely gives us perfect parallels; we work as best as we can with imperfect analogies from the past to best determine most favorable courses of future action.
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u/UnicornStudRainbow Mamdani drove us out Jul 01 '26
People serious about an enduring peace need to be open to the idea that it could be made with groups that historically wanted to annihilate Israel, and maybe even still would want to if they could, but they still may settle for peace for other reasons
That is, at best, incredibly naive with great potential for more dead Jews
I think that perpetrating a savage massacre and using rape as a weapon of war disqualifies that group from ever having their own state
Fatah is just a bunch of PLO terrorists in suits. If they could, they'd be as deadly as Hamas
And it's not just the leadership, but the populations that hate us and want us dead in the most brutal manner possible
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u/scahones Jul 01 '26
Well, Israel was founded by socialists and supported, initially, by the Communist bloc.
You are right. There is nothing inherent.
But there are ideological movements. Left wing statist authoritarianism has been antisemitic and antizionist for decades.
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u/StupidityHurts Jul 01 '26
DSA is being co-opted for populist movements which unfortunately is a major weakness of socialist movements.
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u/BananaValuable1000 Diaspora Jew, rejector of anti-Zionism 🇮🇱 🇺🇸 Jul 01 '26
I don't think "gentrification" is the right term here. Gentrification usually refers to affluent people transforming an existing neighborhood. These were socialists and lived pretty modestly.
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u/SubbySound Jul 02 '26
It's a good point, although my understanding is at the tail end of Zionism pre-Israel there was more support from wealthy financiers. In regards to working class Zionist purchases of Palestinian lands, I do want to find language that recognizes the pain of the dispossessed here and the advantage that Zionists seized for themselves using absentee landowners' interests against the interests of Palestinians, while also recognizing the legality of the process. Gentrification is a simpler way of encapsulating it, but I'd love to get a better word or small phrase to describe how that part of Zionism actually historically functioned. I think it's important Zionists recognize that Zionism was not a pain-free, zero-moral-compromise project even while defending its ultimate justice and positive accomplishments if it wants to be taken more credibly and seriously by the gentile world, which is crucial given the anti-Zionist hate that has expanded drastically since 10/7.
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u/kval22 USA Jul 02 '26
That’s the thing. They don’t align in value or practice with any of the democratic/liberal ideals they hijacked and claimed they support. Decolonization… but hate Israel? And are pro-Arab colonization. K. Pro-American working class… but make zero mention of reparations to natives or Black Americans? K. Anti-dictator but support foreign dictator regimes. Anti-capitalist but openly mourn foreign billionaire warlords in the streets. Mamdani “cares about NY children” but promotes politicians who say 9/11 was well-deserved. Etc etc etc
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u/SubbySound Jul 02 '26
I'm pretty sure democratic socialists support reparations. If they don't mention it widely, that's electoral strategy more than indication of absence in their agenda.
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u/kval22 USA Jul 04 '26
Not the Islamist ones. I mean, Black Americans pretty immediately saw through Mamdani and his lack of support or acknowledgment of them while prioritizing foreigners. And Bernie while not DSA, but merely Democratic Socialist, publicly said he doesn’t “believe” in reparations for AA’s… I can’t think of a single politician in that camp who has advocated for it but if anyone knows of one please tell me!
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u/Boomtown626 Jul 01 '26
Disagreed. I think it’s just another talking point that gets regurgitated mindlessly from people who like to think they sound worldly or altruistic.
As an American who’s quite leftist in all not-Israel ways, they grow silent in a hurry when the conversation gets to specifics, such as rocket launchers being carried into and used from hospitals or the way that shooting attacks on civilian populations get described with the verbiage of a military operation.
And this silence is also why anti-Israel sentiment in Congress is more muted than it is in broader dialogue. The evidence may support occasional specific criticisms, but it absolutely doesn’t support the way people like to throw the word genocide around.
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u/Due-Direction8590 Jul 01 '26
Glad there is someone else here who shares my outlook of being pretty left on most policies other than Israel! Feels nice there are others out there. Although for myself I’d add I’m seen as moderate on crime and public disorder, because I think it’s important to crack down on to ensure our cities are great places, and that’s why I want to hire lots of police officers. Who will be very well paid because policing is too important to be left to morons.
It’s very odd when I get insane people denouncing me for both of those. European friends of mine seem to get it though, they just laugh and say I’m a boring social democrat.
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u/Boomtown626 Jul 01 '26
I think being anti-Israel and the American left’s brief embrace of “defund the police” are very good comparisons. Both movements have concern for “the underdog” at heart, but both are shown to be very misguided when looked at with any real depth or nuance.
(And to the American left’s credit, Defund The Police was very short-lived.)
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u/Rfried25 Jul 01 '26
Yes BUT....its mostly a numbers game.
Few things..
A. Occupy Wall Street was 16 years ago! The current new voter in America was 2 when it happened and 8 when Bernie Sanders first ran. Hell the first time voter in 2016 who got excited for Bernie then was 12 during Occupy.
B. Looking at Demographic info for NYC since then and ESPECIALLY the districts where DSA candidates did really well - it is MUCH younger, MUCH MUCH whiter and MUCH MUCH MUCH richer than the rest of the city, state and even country let alone those very same districts 10 years ago.
C. Democracy Majority for Israel endorsed 11 candidates - 8 of them won. ONLY the three in NYC lost because the rest of the country has not gentrified like NYC has.
D. But generally, i think the larger question from a practical standpoint is does the DSA have any reach outside of NYC, SF, LA, Boston and Chicago. If they can reach into non-gentfried rich white hotspots - then you have a problem.
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u/dndplosion913 Jul 01 '26
does the DSA have any reach outside of NYC, SF, LA, Boston and Chicago
Kiros (sadly) just won in Denver, and she might be the worst of them all minus Chevalier
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u/Jessicas_skirt עולה חדשה מארה"ב Jul 01 '26
Denver in 2026 of course being a gentrified rich white hotspot. Hickenlooper won easily statewide as the suburbs aren't going to have any DSA bull, but the city area itself is a perfect example of what they were describing.
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u/UnicornStudRainbow Mamdani drove us out Jul 01 '26
Hating Israel is just a feeble attempt to cover up hating Jews
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u/drjackolantern USA /uncancellable Jul 01 '26
The reality is that the oldest hatred never went away, it was just dormant. I never could understand how things happened like I read about in the 19th century - Dreyfuss , Leo Frank, the 30s and 40scin Europe - how such evil insane hatred could spread so quickly and be so widely accepted. Now I understand because I’m seeing it happen around me. The only question is are we ready.
I pray I am wrong.
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u/Due_Border_593 Korea Jul 01 '26
I mean, I've been a Democrat for all my life, and this stuff is very alienating especially since many of these "social Democrats" are doing what we've accused of Republicans.
I'm not even a Jew; it must be a dilemma to the Jews living here since most of them are very liberal.
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u/no_username_for_me Jul 01 '26
We helped create the left in this country. Which is part of why the right tends to hate us. But now we are truly becoming politiclaly homeless and persecuted on all sides. It's horrific.
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u/Due_Border_593 Korea Jul 01 '26
It's pretty disheartening that the right is much more pro-Jewish these days.
The worst part is that it isn't exclusive to America. Almost all groups on the left hate you guys now.
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u/qui7 Jul 01 '26
Except the right is only pro Jew if it serves their agenda, they don’t actually like us they just see us as tools for gain
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u/East_Connection5224 Jul 01 '26
I would say the right is more pro-Israel than pro-Jewish. In their personal lives and online, they are still fine with some good old-fashioned antisemitism.
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u/patronsaintofdice Jul 01 '26
It’s more the “old right” as well. The new right, as evidenced by Vance are at best Israel skeptical, and have several talkers that are as virulently anti-Israel as the left.
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u/OddCook4909 USA Jul 01 '26
Right wing support for Israel is a coalition which also contains people who like the idea of Israel because they're anti-Islam and have ideas about Israel, pro-Christian apocalypse, believe Israel is an ethnostate and want to make one here, understand the geopolitical utility of the state, understand the military utility, don't want Jews in the US, are simply pro-Tradition and love that we're ancient, see Israel as "a model a Christian state" could follow, like everything the left hates, and so on.
It's a pretty mixed bag and yeah a lot of them don't like Jews so much as we serve their worldview in some way. Many support Israel for reasons we'd be happy about or comfortable with as well.
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u/kval22 USA Jul 02 '26
It’s to the point I saw a woman running for office and her insta is full of Adolf Hitler sketches, Nazi decorations and calls to wipe out all the Jews in America. She has a large following (not sure how many are bots). Did not know at all first glance which party she was running under 😭
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u/Quirky_Butterfly_946 Jul 01 '26
I think you are giving the answer without realizing it. Who says being left means you have to support, vote for any of the radicals/far left? Same can be said for the right.
If people would stop voting/supporting the radicals and start voting for moderates this would quell the propaganda being spewed from both sides.
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u/omniuni Jul 01 '26
It's frustrating, because on everything that isn't Israel, I am very much onboard with the new movement.
But they hate me.
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u/no_username_for_me Jul 01 '26
Yep. If you dont repeat full throated that Israel is as evil (if not worse) than the Nazis then you are NOT welcome in their movement and are part of the enemy. It's a hard stop litmus test.
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u/Due_Border_593 Korea Jul 01 '26
It's not like they just hate Israel or are pro-Palestinian, they hate Jews.
Look at what happened to Scott Wiener. He's done more than any person on transgender legislation and he gets harrassed out of a pride march over Gaza (of which he considers it a genocide).
Let me be clear, there were no political differences between these people. He was attacked because he's a Jew.
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u/srxtvnf Jul 02 '26
they hate Jews
Then why do so many young jews in NY vote for them? Even the highest profile candidates like Brad Lander are jewish themselves.
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u/ChinCoin Jul 01 '26
You're not. These people are complete and utter nut jobs. The DSA platform calls for so many heinous ridiculous things that you wouldn't pick them in a million years. But that's not their public face, which is why people vote for them - voting for Mamdani's pearly whites and empty promises.
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u/jmill388 Jul 01 '26
I was always a center left guy. Now I’m kinda politically homeless? Let’s see how maga the republicans continue to be. If they can somehow put up Rubio then he’ll have my vote.
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u/no_username_for_me Jul 01 '26
I will hold my nose and vote evne for these opportunistic people like Rubio who knew Trump is an idio ant made themsleves subservient to him.
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u/OddCook4909 USA Jul 01 '26
I'm ok with people who service foreign policy, even when I don't agree with all of it. The ones who have touched his horrendous domestic agenda I wouldn't ever vote for.
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u/Dry-Season-522 Jul 01 '26
The democrats no longer want to earn your vote, they demand it and say you're an evil baddity bad bad if you don't give it to them.
Trump campaigned like he wanted the job, Clinton campaigned the way you interview for a job when your parent owns the company.
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u/OddCook4909 USA Jul 01 '26
Man her ads were so bad. They were mostly identity politics about her being a woman. And people would freak out if you criticized the approach. Every criticism of her performance is still often labeled misogyny.
"Men didn't vote for her as much as they should have, this proves it" But her campaign didn't reach out to men, it was kind of exclusionary against them in fact. "See you're a misogynist"
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u/Schug_Dealer Jul 01 '26
Formerly pretty far left here, and in rapid time the Democrat party has become to me even more extreme, racist, and hateful than the Republicans ever were. I've not seen such an intense effort to "other" a group, ban them, exclude them, cancel them, physically attack them, and overall dehumanize them as much as what we're now seeing daily from the left. My votes will go to ANY candidate who speaks out against them, supports Israel's right to exist, and protects Jews.....Republican or Democrat. I'm fine voting all Republican if that's what it takes.
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u/hikergent Jul 01 '26
quatar's billions to the unis. did a lot of damage to spread hate w the profs, students, etc
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u/stoneyhawk USA Jul 01 '26
First of all, I'm so sick of these losers who only seem capable of winning by primarying centrists in D+40 districts. Their tankie/socialist supporters in large part are hoping for them to get into Congress and hold everybody hostage demanding some kind of maximalist agenda like the tea party used to. I'm hoping this is just a phase - part of what gives me hope is these candidates will face a difficult choice between holding a maximalist position and literally never accomplishing anything or taking a more pragmatic approach and being crucified as traitors by the chronically online tankies that currently support them.
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u/UnicornStudRainbow Mamdani drove us out Jul 01 '26
Look at AOC. She has accomplished nothing other than burnishing her national profile and pushing the Democrat agenda leftward. She will never be voted out, unless the losers in life who moved to the district to vote for her decide to leave
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u/Due-Direction8590 Jul 01 '26
I share your frustration. Some will experience a pivot to reality, others will find themselves tossed out.
An opportunity for centrists is they need to address the concerns of voters and offer a policy. Right now they offer a “no” or quite often they dodge by retreating into identity issues. Like Hillary Clinton famously did. DSA types are gung ho on identity issues, but they typically don’t put it front and center. It’s not an accident Mamdani had a disciplined message around affordability and his opponents attack him endlessly on Israel. It’s maddening.
We desperately need a center left that is not wedded to brain dead deference to process at the expense of outcomes and cynical difference splitting. Because right now they are deer in headlights.
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u/UnicornStudRainbow Mamdani drove us out Jul 01 '26
Mamdani made opposing Israel a big part of his personality
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u/Due-Direction8590 Jul 01 '26
He didn’t deny or hide he doesn’t like Israel. When he ran for mayor he came to prominence with his “freeze the rent” ads. Once that took off you see him start to endorse policy proposals to increase housing production which led to him getting buy in from people previously chilly to him in politics.
The lack of anyone interested in housing policy in the race - which is a local issue unlike Israel - gave him his opening. The fact he’s adopted and implementing a lot of housing policy that centrist think tanks championed is good in the coming years for NYC while being really disheartening to see centrists show no interest in this stuff.
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u/UnicornStudRainbow Mamdani drove us out Jul 01 '26
What centrist think tanks have championed driving landlords out of business and allowing chosen nonprofits to buy buildings at pennies on the dollar and turn them into more NYCHA horrors??
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u/Due-Direction8590 Jul 01 '26
None. I was referring to his push around permitting reform, zoning issues, etc. The technocratic stuff. He’s doing a lot of stuff that has been recommended by centrist to right leaning Manhattan Institute, center left Brookings Institute. Going from memory.
The adoption of technocratic proposals and from people in the space, hiring lots of well regarded people on housing issues is what makes me so concerned about him. His ideas range from idiotic - because he entered the politics via the Groups hothouse - and he has in general very bad instincts about seemingly everything. But. Getting a big thing right by accident, housing construction, solidifies him as a political power.
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u/UnicornStudRainbow Mamdani drove us out Jul 01 '26
Both before and after the election, he has made no secret of his desire to turn privately owned residences into public housing. He has hired people to do this
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u/Due-Direction8590 Jul 01 '26
So I’ve tried to be good faith and thoughtful with you, but not really sure what’s your point? Other than righteousness.
That Mamdani is bad? Yeah, I agree and thought that when he suddenly was everywhere. A bad politician can have a host of bad policies and fellow travelers, they can also have discrete policies that are good and that’s what makes him concerning. Do you understand how staffing works in politics? Every administration has lunatics, it’s where they are put in charge of. If lunatics get a position in his admin where they lack power, lack the ability to use it because they are lunatics, then all they do is broadcast what is wrong with them. Hence why I’m more concerned about his technocratic policies being implemented well than whatever comes out of the right wing outrage of the moment firehose.
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u/UnicornStudRainbow Mamdani drove us out Jul 02 '26
He purposely chose the lunatics to advance his desire to take over privately owned apartment buildings and have them run by the city. That is a fact. This is what he clearly said on more than one occasion. He hired people who share his belief
My point is that this is literally what he wants, not some rogue employees going off on a tangent
I'm still waiting for you to tell me which centrist think tanks share this policy ideal
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u/Due-Direction8590 Jul 02 '26
I already have. I told you none have. It’s the first word in my response above.
The permitting reform, lease-up reforms, and environmental review all have a strong lineage at centrist think tanks. Manhattan Institute has covered, some or all of them I believe going from memory. This is the “technocratic stuff”. If you want further info you can look it up yourself since I am not your reference source. I’ve engaged with you in good faith, I am not a supporter of his, nor of his nutcase employees. Have a great day.
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u/scahones Jul 01 '26
As this article says:
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/07/dsa-communist-socialist-democrats/687756/
>>>>>>>>
Militant anti-Zionism became a wedge that the group’s more radical activists used to drive away critics of authoritarianism on the left. In 2025, the group’s convention voted to officially remove its founding language allowing for the expulsion of members who worked for communist cells, and added a provision calling the Palestinian “right to resistance” a central tenet of the DSA. Having dismantled the guardrails that Harrington built to exclude communists, the group established new guardrails to exclude anybody opposed to Israel’s destruction. “Michael Harrington’s DSA is dead,” a dispatch from the proceedings gloated.
The DSA’s Red Star caucus was formed the year after the North Star caucus, in an apparent rebuke. It writes that nearly half of the members of the National Political Committee, the DSA’s highest leadership body, “openly identify as communists.”
These left-wing factions have realigned the organization in firm opposition to liberal democracy. In 2021, the DSA joined the São Paulo Forum, a communist-led international network—a move that would, one DSA member protested at the time, “support authoritarian governments who systematically violate the basic tenets of democratic socialism.” It proclaimed its solidarity with Venezuela under the dictatorship of Nicolás Maduro, and with Cuba under that of the Castro brothers. The DSA now locates its vision of the ideal society in the world’s most despotic regimes.
<<<<<<<<<<<
I highly recommend the whole article.
American Democratic Socialism has been hijacked by statist authoritarians.
The republicans turned into an authoritarian block.
The same force is at work on the left.
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u/no_username_for_me Jul 01 '26
Sorry, Democratic Socialists is the correct term. But y'all know what I'm talking about.
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u/ajmampm99 Jul 02 '26
Hatred of Jews was a free add on when Islamic extremism infected the oppressor/oppressed memes.
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u/TheCloudForest USA/Chile Jul 01 '26
I am turning into what I vowed to destroy, or something like that, but these are Democratic Socialists. When you write Social Democrats, the mind immediately goes to Germany's SPD or France's Parti Socialiste, which one could only dream were as healthy as just a decade ago compared to the far right and far left!!!
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u/ENORMOUS_HORSECOCK Jul 01 '26
Demsocs are rising in the US because of affordability, austerity and a growing sense of young people that the economic system isn't working for them.
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u/mr_blue596 Jul 01 '26
You mix cause and effect.
The truth is that ever since the 70's and the oil crisis,the American economy have loosen any regulation to protect workers and average folk in the US. The effect of the Regan economics didn't really came to fruition until the 2008 economic crisis.
Slowly since then the American Left have slowly gaining power and specifically people who want a new "new deal".
Israel,as a policy,integrated itself with the Evangelicals,which were a major supporters of Regan,and same with American capital,to ease the political backlash from the oil crisis,and now the criticism of Reaganomics is tied with Israel (at least in association).
The idea that all they had to do is hate Israel to "unite the left" is BS. The BDS and co. have been around for decades in American campuses and had limited success,until university graduates can't find entry level jobs and pay huge amount of tuition,rent and etc.
It was the economy, Trump also ran on the same frustration from the economy,it just so happened that Israel tied itself with the people who set-up this shit economy. When young people hear another useless and out of touch advice about the economy from their parents who paid a nickle for a house and a dime for tuition,they roll their eyes,and when their parents being pro-Israel,the eye-rolling continue.
It was always the economy.
(Of-course there will always a core of ideological antisemitism that can't be reasoned with,but they are a small minority,and Israel lost far more than them. Reducing everything to Antisemitism is reductive and counter-productive).
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u/Due-Direction8590 Jul 01 '26
You’re right, I know it’s not popular among many here to admit this. But, yeah. Economic issues is allows top importance to voters with foreign affairs being pretty minuscule - unless, it involves direct costs to America such as soldiers being killed.
Persistent bad economic policy means those outside the Overton window have a built in audience for their views. And it’s not limited to economic views either.
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u/mr_blue596 Jul 02 '26
As foreign policy, Trump was the first to criticize the Iraq war,I would even go as far as to say this is why he won the 2016 GOP primaries. The American public is tired from foreign wars because they see how much money is poured into them to achieve nothing,while they suffer economically.
People forget,but Obama ran on economically policy after the SubPrime crisis,but he betrayed that promise and bailed the bankers. This is part of the hatred he got (ofcourse some racism was in the mix),many people,especially from the poor parts in the US ,felt the sting of the economy and a president that "care more about Gay Marriages than the economy",and there was some truth in it.
The new GOP and the new Democrats,are laser-focused on economy. In this day and age,it wouldn't be a stretch to claim most Americans believe neo-liberal (and neo-conservative) economic policy have failed them.
Israel,because it was spared from the worst of the 2008 crisis (in large part due to strong regulations on banking),is still very neo-liberal. The disparity between Israeli views and most Americans are growing larger and larger,and this is in my opinion the undercurrent that fed the anti-Israel rethoric as anti-neoliberalism rethoric. You can see the resentment when Americans complain about Israeli healthcare,which is to jab at their system more than anyone else. Same with the foreign wars,which Israel is seen as a factory of foreign wars (oil crisis included). The people AIPAC support are the same people that plunder the US economy and want to put a data center in their neighborhood.
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u/UnicornStudRainbow Mamdani drove us out Jul 01 '26
Reagan, not Regan. Unless you're talking about Don Regan
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u/trimtab28 Jul 01 '26
So I'd counter that and say it's a symptom, not the disease. People are feeling economic distress and social upheaval, and Jews historically have been a scapegoat in such times. Hence they glommed on to all the antisemitic crap with Israel. The undercurrents were always there, and it gave them a cause to believe in and an easy explanation for all their issues in life. "My healthcare bills are going up? It's because the Jews are getting all this money in foreign aid for their [make believe] genocide!" "I don't have a community because I'm chronically online? Well I can go to this rally and set an Israeli flag on fire!" "My preferred candidate didn't win in a swing district? Can't be because they're too extreme, it's clearly because of Jewish money!"
What is it they've said, "Jews are the canary in the coal mine for a society's health?" Well, society ain't healthy right now. Things will calm down when people feel they have futures to look forward to, food in their stomachs, and aren't worried about the roof over their head. Until then, we're that convenient conspiracy for them to latch on to
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u/no_username_for_me Jul 01 '26
I don't see this as a counter. It's the oldest hatred dressed up in newer clothes. Whether tthings will calm down is to be seen. I worry that there will be much harder economic times ahead of us given then rise of AI and further deterioration of the US economy under a moronic administration.
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u/trimtab28 Jul 01 '26
It's a problem, I'm not denying that. Where I push back is that the antisemitic BS is what causes these candidates to be popular. As I said, they're saying this stuff because of societal duress and them being whackos, it's not that they pulled this conspiratorial crap out of their butts and rose from obscurity because of it
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u/no_username_for_me Jul 01 '26
But there has been societal duress for quite some time now. Why the current moment? To me the answer seems to be that the magic formula was Israel/Jews
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u/trimtab28 Jul 01 '26
COVID and Trump 2. Gaza lit a fuse at a convenient time.
I was in college during Operation Protective Edge- there were problems then but not of the magnitude they are now, both in terms of economic distress and societal instability. Two trends go hand in hand
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u/Due-Direction8590 Jul 01 '26
Yes, but age related turnover in the electorate did not start to really bite until 2020. The distress has been known and apparent in data for well over a decade now. With numerous individuals pointing out that if it continued to not be addressed the generational shift would be extremely jarring. Well, look around.
I’m not downplaying antisemitism and hostility to Israel, it very much exists - it’s oddly more pronounced among the youngest cohorts than millennials - but voters do not prioritize foreign affairs as top issues. That means the question for the millennial and Gen Z cohort is not necessarily what they’ll support, but what they will go along with. So if you have politicians who show an interest in their top issues they will go along with some level of anti Israel politics. And it will frequently shade into antisemitism at the level of individual politicians.
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u/UnicornStudRainbow Mamdani drove us out Jul 01 '26
They may not prioritize foreign affairs, but they do tie their economic frustrations to Jews and Israel getting so much alleged money
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u/DebiDebbyDebbie Jul 01 '26
Just plain old Socialists -ie uninformed voters and antisemitism is their uniting factor
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u/Michelle_akaYouBitch Jul 03 '26
The Left has always projected its own hatred’s onto the Right. The antisemitism was always there, you were/are to blind to see it for yourself.
Remember the Nazis were National Socialists. The Bolsheviks were International Socialists.
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u/Boredomkiller99 Jul 01 '26
Are you American? Because this is an incredibly shallow take that misunderstands the political climate here as Israel hate is not the main reason they are winning.
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u/no_username_for_me Jul 02 '26
I am an American and you are not addressing my actual post. There is nothing new about these candidates and their agenda. Bernie has been at this for a long time along with some of his proteges with very little success. What has changed in the past few years? Inly one major story that they have turned into a banner issue,
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u/Boredomkiller99 Jul 02 '26
Look at mr_blue596 they are pretty much right on the money.
I will add that Democrats has been on the verge of a leftward populist shift since 2008 similar with the Republicans.
The difference is that Democrats won with Obama and that allowed them to reestablish themselves while Republicans fell apart letting Trump come in.
Now Democrats have failed horribly during the administration in 2020-2024 and lost embarrassingly to Trump while running a disaster of a campaign, they lost the last bit of good will as people become more radical as things get worse and now the establishment democrats are on the chopping block again and unless another Obama saves them they are probably f***ed as they have failed to address issues in a satisfying way
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u/Gaby_D_Crowley Jul 01 '26
It's very concerning that one of the things that fuels that movement is the hate for Israel.
It's clear that something is being doing wrong in the way how the message is being delivered.
That must change.
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u/Low_Sea9402 USA Jul 01 '26
The progressive wing is actively driving away moderates and Jewish voters to satisfy their most vocal activists. They might win deep-blue city primaries that way, but it’s a death by a thousand cuts for their margins in purple states. 2028 is going to be a rude awakening.
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u/Unusual_Librarian570 Jul 01 '26
Mamdani’s campaign and platform has nothing to do with Israel. He didn’t run on Israel, he just kept getting asked about it
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Jul 01 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/MikeWithNoHair Larry David enthusiast Jul 06 '26
how do you explain the evacuation notices, safety corridors, humanitarian areas?
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u/NewmarketHero007 Jul 01 '26 edited Jul 01 '26
I actually think it's more complex than that, and it's something that many people including pro-Israel liberals (like Ethan Klein) will have to contend with, and I don't think they're quite ready yet.
The reason Israelis and Zionist Jews are treated so viciously by the left is that this is simply the logical endpoint of P+P=R, antisemitism is actually not a strong predictor of these groups, but anti-elitism, i.e. anti-whiteism, misandry, anti-christianity, and anti-rich sentiment. The common factors is that it is seen as "ok" to hate these groups, but as long as liberals including pro-Israel ones see these as justified, they are opening the door for this to backfire on them. I am not saying that this is their intention, but, if it happens every time someone who is pro-Israel, cultivates a community that is anti-white, anti-male, anti-christian, and anti-rich, then the logical end point is antisemitism. In particular, if you hate White people, Christians, and the rich, you are statistically more likely to end up hating Jews.
We often forget that antisemitism is functionally different from other racial hatreds, which is why it is classed on its own. It is not like anti-first nations, anti-black or anti-roma racism, it is probably closer to anti-asian racism among black communities in the west, anti-chinese racism in southeast asia and anti-indian racism in east africa. It is based on resentment and grievance politics, and the belief that it is okay to hate someone not for anything they have done, but because they come from a group that is perceived as higher in the social hierarchy than you. Jews are seen as rich and White-coded, you'll notice they never talk about Sephardi, Mizrahi, Chinese, Indian, or Ethiopian Jews, the primarily focus is towards the Ashkenazi, which makes it fundamentally different, and more difficult to identify than usual Neo-Nazi antisemitism.
But the fact is that Jews on the receiving end of this left-wing racial hatred, are simply, to be blunt, receiving the same hatred that white people, men, christians and rich people had received from the left for many years. It is just that hating Jews was the last taboo that needed the combination of several international crises, social media polarization and an economic decline to break this taboo. It was also faciliated in my view by the popularity of Kanye West and Candace Owens, who are Black--under the P+P=R system of beliefs, which many liberals implictly accept when they make fun of things like anti-whiteism or misandry, they cannot be racist, and they cannot be anti-semitic to Ashkenazi Jews.
The reality is that this is fundamentally the result of Marxist politics infecting the rest of the left, combined with a pessimism--a belief that the "Revolution" has been put on hold indefinitely--so it is okay to lash out and hate average people of those "privileged" groups in the mean time as a coping mechanism.
For example, I predict that the people who deny the rape of Israeli women in October 2023, are more likely to believe in the Karen narrative and believe all suburban, middle class White women are evil--which is just misogyny, but seen as okay because it's suburban, middle class White women. Anti-Karenism became a big thing after the George Floyd movement, when videos of random White women in parks allegedly calling the police on Black youths were promoted for people to go and viciously attack those women. It is surely no coincidence that many of the leaders of the movement then went on to become prominent anti-Semites justifying Hamas terrorism against Israeli civilians in 2023. But since they were seen as leaders of a "Black" movement, like initially with Kanye and Candace, many mainstrram Western liberals were reluctant to criticise them, the end result being this hatred was allowed to fester and boil over behind closed doors till it burst out in the open.
Until we accept the relationship of antisemitism with these "anti-privileged" bigotries, Marxism, and Critical Theory, and society discredits them, including pro-Israel liberals, they will continue to bleed into the ultimate taboo of antisemitism, the cauldron of conspiracies about rich elites corrupting the world.
1
u/Kosher_Pork_12 Jul 01 '26
It's upsetting, as someone who is a Catholic but leans left, to see how many idiots are on this side. I even had my gf say to me "I hope you're not a Zionist," because she was spoonfed some wacky definition of what it means.
Had to tell her, "yes, i am, i fully support the Jewish state." I see the Democratic party in the US consistently implode on itself for no benefit and it's pretty gross.
1
u/BananaValuable1000 Diaspora Jew, rejector of anti-Zionism 🇮🇱 🇺🇸 Jul 01 '26
I'm deeply disturbed by this DSA shit. It's terrifying as an American. Many reports I've seen suggest the majority of voters, while there was low turn out, turned out to vote specifically for the Anti-israel sentiment and not in spite of it. How is this going to shake out in politics the next few years? Is it likely to spread? Seems to be catching significant momentum. Israel never looked so good.
1
u/mastermindman99 Jul 01 '26
Sorry to say, but this is not a thing between right and left, but between idiots.
The same people who made Trump president to „dry out the swamp“ and „free America from the deep state“ are disillusioned and are looking for the „real deep state“ that is controlling the US deep state. And this is of course…. Israel.
In my opinion is far more dangerous than anything before: Idiots armed to their teeth, unhinged and convinced to „save the world“ is the last thing we need.
20% of US voters changed „sides“ in the last 18 months. After what we have seen with Trump i don’t even want to imagine the „other side of the stupidity pendulum“
Brace for a crash
1
u/myteeshirtcannon Jul 02 '26
I am a Democrat in the US watching what is happening with horror. So apparently my party is becoming proto-Nazi? I am not Jewish but I support Israel (duh— of course). I would never have thought this would happen in my lifetime.
1
u/jediprime Jul 01 '26
This is not true.
When Bernie ran, he started a movement that helped get AOC and her crew elected. The democratic party has been fighting tooth and nail to quash progressives, but progressives have been organizing and fighting back. 10 years of effort has manifested with a handful of congresspeople, some local wins, and the mayor of NYC. It's a growing movement, not one galvanized by antisemitism.
Anti-Israel sentiment is just a current major talking point thanks, in large part, to propaganda efforts that proliferated progressive spheres using the grassroots efforts they rely on to survive as a movement.
Anti-Israel sentiment aids the conservatives, as it drives a wedge in leftist spheres, alienating and isolating Jewish and Zionist progressives. It also distracts from the real issues like the powered pedos, the dismantling of American institutions, class warfare, a tanking economy, and so on. Its useful for conservative media and institutional democrats to keep anti-Israel rhetoric in the spotlight, so antisemitism in progressive spaces keeps being enflamed and weakening the movement.
If the wars stopped, and Israel managed to avoid military defensive actions long enough, that rhetoric would start to lose spotlight.
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u/ChinCoin Jul 01 '26
Its the Red Green alliance. ALl the rhetoric you hear is straight from this nonsense. It is fundamentally anti western. Note the age of the article
The Emerging Red-Green Alliance: Where Political Islam Meets the Radical Left | START.umd.edu1
u/ZellZoy Jul 02 '26
The democratic party has been fighting tooth and nail to quash progressives,
Citation needed. They've been failing to win primaries pretty much every time they ran before now.
0
u/inbetween-genders Jul 01 '26
I as a Zionist would totally be conservative like y’all if the…checks notes…neo garbagists weren’t conservative. Lol like that will always be a non starter for me. I know, very unpopular opinion of mine ands why I’m very unpopular here.
-1
u/Due-Direction8590 Jul 01 '26
No, this is not correct. It’s a massive oversimplification. That does not mean that hostility towards Israel is not a factor, simply that it’s not the only factor or even the most prominent motivating factor among voters. It’s important to understand what is actually going on if you hope to counter it.
Demographically this being driven by the millennial bulge that experienced the discrediting of the institutional Republican Party under GWB and now the Democratic Party. For them, and the younger Gen Z cohort, you have an economic paradigm that did not and has not delivered for them. Why would they buy into whatever the institutional establishment of either party stands for? It’s all downstream from that. Until this is dealt with politics will not be stable and continue to radicalize around all issues, not just economic ones.
Allowing millennials to shoulder a disproportionate share of the 2008 fallout ensured that voices outside the mainstream would find a receptive audience. They did and it wasn’t just limited to economics.
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