Alright so I'm finally in a place where I can sit down and just talk to people. And this will be a long one, but I hope there's some bridging to be done here.
First and foremost, I apologize to the Jewish members here for in any way giving them that impression that I was okay with any kind of antisemitic rhetoric. I am not. The Twitter account is indeed mine. I made those comments in a discussion with a rando on Twitter in a larger thread concerning the Palestinian genocide. I don't remember the inciting tweet or anything, but I did post very frank and vague anticolonialism theory without considering the wider cultural context of the Jewish perspective when it comes to calls for decolonizing Gaza.
So for the past few days I've had multiple talks behind the scenes after pulling the tweets to let others read them and help me understand where I went wrong. On one end, it was explained where the logic that Palestinian Gazans are owed autonomy to fight back by any means runs concurrent with antisemitism, and I'll explain in the way it was explained to me: Let's say that tomorrow, a permanent ceasefire is implemented and total political autonomy is given to Palestinians, and they say that they want Israelis to leave. If the Israelis say no, and Palestinians insist, then you’re probably going to have ethnic cleansing happening but in the other direction.
Naturally, this isn't something that the majority of people want. You don't want that. I don't want that. Genocide is horrible no matter who it happens to. This in turn lead to another conversation last night with Jewish staff because I admitted there were other simultaneous conversations happening where other parties have come back to me in response saying they don't think those tweets were antisemitic from a very frank perspective of addressing the on-going genocide happening right now, and the logistical and historical outcomes of decolonialism itself wherein, largely, the oppressors aren't actually genocided when autonomy is gained.
Which in turn is a problem. Because how can I possibly square two opposing viewpoints on this matter to make right? "It's antisemitic to talk about decolonialism in the context of Israel-Paestine without understanding that a potential throughline of that thought is more dead Jewish people." "It's not antisemitic to talk about decolonialism in the context of Israel-Palestine because the identity of the settler is ultimately irrelevant to the fight and self-defense of those being settled upon."
I have yet to really figure this out, but I have put that to the side for now because principally and morally, I just don't want to impart harm at the end of the day. I don't want to make either ResetEra or the wider world unsafe for anybody, especially the marginalized, if I have the means and knowledge to do the opposite. There's too much pain out there, and I do my best to not add to it. So who cares about the ambiguity of the politics and history involved if there is pain being expressed here and now? So I decided I was going to apologize directly to the PoliEra OT after work on Sunday and invite specifically the Jewish members to open up to me however they wished.
That got railroaded when, during my lunch break, I learned that my house got put up on hate sites, I was advised by both site administration, my boss, and the security guard there to get in contact with the police, and PoliEra decided to descend into chaos (Fun fact: I've had the PoliEra OTs blocked since I last posted in them, so I was one of the last administrators to even know any shit was going down in the first place regarding Brady's ban). Even today I had to perform follow-up with another local police department. But that story and admonishment will be for another post. During these talks with Jewish staff, we forced each other to stop beating around the bush and just say how we feel and where we’re coming from, and I want to share part of that to shed light on why I said the things I did:
I principally have come to believe and recognize that one's identity isn't really tied to their ability to participate in oppression. It might lead to general cultural political leanings and affects depending upon the wider material context that one's identity exists in, but it is not a full check. Like as an example, 95% of Black people who do vote, vote for Democrats. That means the other 5% are voting for Republicans. This doesn't erase their Blackness; what it does is merely reflect the reality that no one is automatically immune from identifying with and wanting to participate in systems that reinforce harmful status quos even if there are contradictions involved in doing so, just because of their identity. Melanin blocks sunlight, not cultural conditioning.
Subsequently, I don't really care about that 5% in any notable manner. Plenty of Black folks shame these people, call them coons, and get Schadenfreude at their inevitable misfortune in a white supremacist system, and largely there isn't really a belief that the act of denigrating conservative voting patterns and beliefs is inherently anti-Black when it's being aimed at a Black person on those grounds specifically. So to me, decolonizing Gaza should ideally have no more of an inherent strain of bigotry than decolonizing South Africa; if the latter is not anti-white on those grounds, it should follow that the former is not antisemitic on those grounds. These conflicts involve death, but the death isn't inherently predicated on the identity of the person performing the oppression. That is the framework and headspace I was posting in, and I learned quickly that this is an outright cultural disconnect.
Again, violence in these kinds of conflicts is indeed inevitable, and much of that violence is going to be aimed at people who aren't directly or physically capable of participating in the oppression, such as children. It isn't good that this happens even if we can sit here and rationalize it as a tragic inevitability of these conflicts where people are pushed to no other means. And specifically in terms of how Jewish people can see this, it is ultimately inseparable from the real and latent fears and generational trauma they have as a result of centuries of antisemitism within the Middle East, Africa, and Europe. That the violence, even within the context of a conflict like this, can nonetheless go too far, that justifications can be found yet again for another pogrom, another cleansing, another genocide. And yeah, that fucking sucks, and I can't in good faith blame people who don't know me intimately to wonder about whether or not I'm gunning for genocide of Jewish people unless I make it clear as such. And I failed to do that.
So once again, I apologize. As I said, the last thing I want to do is ever impart harm or become a direct liability to any members here, and there's two things I'm going to do to ensure that this never happens again. First is that I'm simply not going to talk about the I/P conflict in any way, here or elsewhere online, because it's clear I'm not equipped to discuss this in a way that doesn't actually engender legitimate feelings of fear. This also extends to modding reports; beyond maybe tagging relevant folks if something flares up which needs quick attention, I will provide no actual relevant input in report discussion. Second is that I'm going to continue just educating myself about this separately. Poodlestrike gave me some good resources to look into to further learn about both the antisemitic throughlines that can not only crop up in I/P discussions, but in general other discussions where people can slip into stereotyping, such as with the trope about Jewish new world order conspiracies.
So that’s what I have to say. I’m sorry. I hope I can earn your forgiveness and trust back, but I do understand if I’ve breached lines in an irreparable way with some members here. All I can say is that this has been a lesson learned, and I will take that lesson going forward in an effort to better myself.
Thank you.
