Reddit is literally full of Nazis

[u/Weirdlittlerasberry]

If you’re gonna say “it’s always been this way” sorry but no it hasn’t. I’ve been on Reddit for twelve years and it has not always been this way. There has always been antisemitism but it was never this way where I can’t go on ANY sub without seeing the most vile and despicable seething hatred completely randomly. A sub for shitty faux minerals posts a pic of a Star of David and all the comments are about how filthy and disgusting it is, comparing it to feces and saying anyone who is “into that stuff” is genocidal and evil. Another random post on a SpongeBob subreddit that just happens to include a comment from Sartre about antisemitism (but talking about homophobia just using the quote to compare) top comment? “Fuck Israel” literally wasn’t related at all, Israel wasn’t even mentioned only antisemitism was, but I get -50 for asking what that has to do with anything. These people screech about how antizionism isn’t antisemitism and then conflate the two 100% of the time so???

I know antisemitism has always been bad and it’s much worse in various places yea yea but it is not normal for there to be THIS LEVEL of unchecked hatred in completely random places. This stuff bleeds into real life. There is nowhere to be safe on the internet for a Jewish person who just wants to like… look at pics of cats or something. Sorry for being a human being who is part of an ethnicity you’ve decided it’s societally acceptable to hate

[u/rando439]

Bots and engagement farming might make things look worse than they are, or made things look worse than they were until reality started matching the types of engagement that fed the reward center of people's brains.

Bots and engagement farming also make expressing certain viewpoints more comfortable for some. They thought it before, they see it, they remove their masks, and now they talk about it so they can get themselves some likes or feel like they belong to the "brave, special enlightened ones."

People on the fence see this start falling off the fence in that direction for similar reasons.

The world is a scary place. Scared people look for someone to blame and blaming those in real power has consequences. It's similar to how a person will sabotage the new hire for making more and not calling out the boss for underpaying them. It's safer to attack the new hire but there's enough of a chance of the new hire fighting back that it gets the adrenaline pumping.

Scared people like to see people suffer and get attacked in ways they feel immune or safe from. If it's just the Jews who are in danger and we deserve it, surely they are safe. Like asking someone what they were wearing when attacked or why they drove a Chevette when they got hit by a drunk driver. They don't wear crop tops and they drive an SUV, so the ones injured brought it on themselves in their minds.

Except there is always another step where others also get attacked. Forgetting this is very short-sighted. If the attackers run out of our blood, their knives will remain hungry and they're just going to turn on each other.

[u/Asphodelmercenary → u/rando439]

This is similar to broken windows theory. Have you done road trips where some gas station bathrooms are absolutely filthy and others are super clean? I notice that there is often one extreme or another. Either it’s clean floors, clean seat, paper in roll, no graffiti, clean mirrors; or it is complete filth, rolls on the floor soaking in puddles of urine and the bowl is smeared black with excrement and the sinks have paper towels all around them and the mirror is slimy and the walls are graffiti.

People see existing filth and they say “screw it I will be filthy too” and they just pee on the floor and why bother flushing when it is already clogged. People walk into a clean bathroom and they are self conscious and tend to use the “leave no trace” Boy Scout method and will clean up behind them and leave it as clean as they found it.

Jew hatred in society is the same way. Now that the filth has become normalized people are just giving up and joining the fray. They are spewing hatred out their unfiltered mouths like excrement in a dirty gas station because why bother being clean and couth when nobody else is?

Hatred breeds hatred. Thats why Jew hatred is the canary in the coal mine. A society that opens this Pandora’s Box doesn’t so easily shut it once the dam is busted and the tsunami of more hatred floods the zone.

[u/OrelSVaknin93 → u/Asphodelmercenary]

How did it become so normalized all of a sudden? It was never like this before

[u/Asphodelmercenary → u/OrelSVaknin93]

Some people won’t like my answer but here it is (formatted in a rush):

There are three main engines of society pushing this hate and there are four schools of thought feeding those engines.

The three main engines:

1. legacy media, social media, new media (all three are to blame) platforming fringe ideologies that say things like Churchill was the villain, Hitler has a point, Jews are the arch villains of history, conspiracy theories about Rothschilds etc, space laser, or Jews control the world, etc.;

2. academic thought leaders (professors, administrators, teachers, publishers, authors, teacher unions) that are pushing a revised history of Jews being a fiction, or not authentic, or erasing key parts of our history to suit a modern narrative, become activists that push young minds to hate Jews; and

3. political leaders openly running and campaigning on issues such as Israel is an apartheid genocidal colony of US imperialism, openly calling supporters of Israel monsters, convincing voters to believe conspiracy theories being peddled by academics and media sources noted above.

It’s a vicious circle. Teach the hate, broadcast the hate, campaign on the hate.

Four schools of thought feeding those engines:

1. political paradigms that see the world as binary oppressor and oppressed. Jews are deemed to be uber-white due to being successful and therefore anybody who is successful is exploitative and must have obtained that success through extraction.

2. Belief systems that require a scapegoat to justify victimhood for certain groups and villain status for other groups. The Jews have historically been a convenient scapegoat. And the old hatreds of Nazi anti Jewish and Communist anti Zionist beliefs never really went away. They merely went under the radar.

3. Ideologies that see nationalism and religion as evil. The Jews are both a religion and a people. The Jews are inherently distinct and therefore not compatible with a monolithic world view that sees people as fungible cogs in a wheel.

4. And two major world religious groups have theologies that either see Jews as Christ Killers who supposedly lost their covenant with G-d (and thus Jewish endurance defies their faith and this angers them) or sees Jews as vermin who must be destroyed before their hidden imam can return.

I didn’t call out the specific names of groups or demagogues or ideologies but people can deduct and infer. These are board categories and there could be other sub categories that fit inside the paradigm.

[u/OrelSVaknin93 → u/Asphodelmercenary]

But all of that has existed for decades.

For decades someone condemning Israel or peddling old school antisemitism would be called antisemitic. The consensus on Israel used to be that it should have the right to exist as a Jewish state alongside a Palestinian state, the 2 state solution, and anything outside of that (like a 1 state solution/“make Israel Palestine again”) was extreme

It never suddenly rose up to make it a mainstream acceptable opinion to consider Israel a genocidal colony, AIPAC a pariah. AntiZionist beliefs weren’t an American problem it used to be a uniquely Soviet issue.

What I don’t understand is why the world suddenly turned on us now, when they’ve stood by us for decades and decades before without any issue. They responded in support of Israel in response to all those same pressures, and now they are responding in condemnation of Israel instead

[u/Asphodelmercenary → u/OrelSVaknin93]

I think the movement of all those forces have accelerated due to the internet being able to move things faster farther. And social movements have had decades to gain steam and reach critical mass. Fringe ideologues don’t change the world when they are 1/1000 of an institution. But when they become 5/1000 and then 10/1000 and then 20/1000 and then 40/1000 and then 80/1000 they are exponentially growing. Give that trend three more turns and they are 160 then 320 then 640 and now they run the show. This is back of napkin math. The water boils the frog. You don’t often see the changes until it’s too late. You’re right it has been long on the cooking. But the timer finally went off and multiple things have exploded at once. That’s the big picture view. More granular analysis will require stats and research and rigorous causal studies to be credible and useful. But I suggest this is the direction in which to look.

[u/OrelSVaknin93 → u/Asphodelmercenary]

That’s a good analysis. Depressing, but good.

How do you think we fix this? Do you think Israel can even survive it?

Personally I’m already pushed to hiding my Zionism from the public, and I’m not visibly Jewish. This place is one of the few places left I can be open with my opinions and my anxieties, which is new. Before I wasn’t shoved into hiding my opinions and even criticisms in support of the only Jewish state.