• wpb@lemmy.world
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    3 days ago

    The same way I don’t think we should capitulate to framing “cracker” as a slur, or to framing “black lives matter” as a racist thing to say, I don’t think we should capitulate to framing things like “from the river to the sea” or “zionist” as antisemitic.

    But, as a thought experiment, let’s indulge in this doublespeak trash. What is a good alternative? So far I’ve got:

    • Israeli colonizers
    • Jewish supremacists
    • genocidal sacks of shit
    • Israeli apartheidists
    • Isreal expansionists
    • Israeli warmongerers
    • people in favor of the genocide and apartheid committed by Israel (in full, every time you need to say zionist)
    • modern day nazis
    • zionazis (technically not zionist!)

    So all of this liberal crybaby nomenclature trash aside, I actually do think “zionist” is in itself a fairly useless term for the Israeli apartheid question (as Norman Finkelstein and Judith Butler do too). While one faction of zionism pursued the nakba and massacres from fairly early on, and while this faction has been quite successful, there are other notions of zionism which do not entail murdering children or colonizing a country. When Netanyahu and Chomsky can both legitimately refer to themselves as zionists, I think it’s clear that zionism is too broad a term to be useful in the current ongoing genocide and the ethnic cleansing that has been going on for the better part of a century.

  • lorty@lemmy.ml
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    3 days ago

    Waiting for the free-speech absolutists to boycott twitch for this (they won’t)

    • Crikeste@lemm.ee
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      2 days ago

      One of the orchestrators of this whole thing, Destiny, defends child porn and the use of slurs.

      Ironic is putting it lightly.

  • JovialMicrobial@lemm.ee
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    3 days ago

    Calling zionism what it is shouldn’t be discouraged with dog whistles masquerading as conduct policies.

    At the same time I’d like to remind folks that not all Jewish people subscribe to Zionism.

    There are a couple Jewish lead organizations that fight for the freedom of Palestine and have been very critical of Israel for many years.

    Jewish Voices for Peace* is one group. I wonder how they’d feel about Twitches new policy. I’m genuinely curious what their opinion would be.

    Edit - corrected Jewish Voices for Peace

    • anarchotoothbrushist@lemmy.ml
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      3 days ago

      At the same time I’d like to remind folks that not all Jewish people subscribe to Zionism.

      Further to this, the majority of zionists are christians.

    • Azzu@lemm.ee
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      3 days ago

      If you had looked at the link of this post, you would have read:

      Twitch specifies this is conditional: you’re allowed to discuss the political movement of that name, but not “attack or demean another individual or group of people on the basis of their background or religious belief.”

      I.e. nothing is masqueraded here as long as they keep to this. This seems to be a reasonable policy. I’ve seen a couple of instances of people being derogatorily called zionists just for supporting the people of current Israel not being pushed away out of their now decades-old homes, which is hard to still call Zionist if they don’t support any further expansion and any offensive military action.

      There’s almost never anything gained to use “Zionist” on someone as if saying “asshole”.

      • Anas@lemmy.world
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        3 days ago

        Twitch specifies this is conditional: you’re allowed to discuss the political movement of that name, but not “attack or demean another individual or group of people on the basis of their background or religious belief.”

        Zionist is a political term, it has nothing to do with one’s background or religious belief.

        • Dasus@lemmy.world
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          3 days ago

          You’re entirely right.

          But see if the political view is only held by members or a certain religious group (even if not all members of said religion accept said political thought), it’s easy to conflate it, so that you can ban anyone opposing said political thought based on “they’re discriminating against me because of my religion”.

          Fuck twitch.

      • Passerby6497@lemmy.world
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        3 days ago

        which is hard to still call Zionist if they don’t support any further expansion and any offensive military action.

        Your ‘if’ is doing a lot of heavy lifting. And is fucking hilarious given they keep expanding and pushing people out of their decades old homes.

        Funny how that part seems to be ignored in defense of zionists…

      • JovialMicrobial@lemm.ee
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        3 days ago

        I guess my pessimistic lens is a little strong and I generally don’t trust large companies to act in good faith. So maybe I’m over scrutinizing here and being a bit of a curmudgeon.

        I think your perspective is fair, and it’s likely this is akin to a high school faculty dealing with some random word or idea becoming a meme of sorts and causing problems. So they have to write some new rule that sounds ridiculous or weird.

        It sucks there’s so much racism and bigotry driving forces in the world that it’s hard to not be dubious of everything. You always kinda wonder about the actual motivation behind things like this.

        • Azzu@lemm.ee
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          3 days ago

          I identify myself as a homosexual.

          I’ve heard homo being used in a derogatory way as an insult. That usage should not be tolerated.

          Retarded is just a medical term, yet you can use it as an insult as well.

          That is what this “specification of conditional” aims at. It’s fine to use the word in a descriptive way, you’re just not allowed to go around angrily calling people “fucking zionist”

  • PedroG14@lemmy.ml
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    2 days ago

    Okay, now streamers can get more creative when refering to a zionist. I think that ‘bibi’s removed’ is a good term.

  • humanspiral@lemmy.ca
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    2 days ago

    They probably don’t like zionazi either. Neither this nor zionist is a code word for Jew. The entire political class, the great majority being Christian, and their donors are zionist, because going with the flow of AIPAC is path to get your candidates to also serve your oligarchist or Christofascist protections.

    Netanyahuists or likudists or Mossadists or Epsteinists ok?

    BTW, Chuck Shumer is going to allow a vote in Senate over this “criticism of zionism is anti semitic” law in US. Reddit also supports mods who recomend permabans over criticism of zionism already.

    • eldavi@lemmy.ml
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      3 days ago

      All tech companies eventually enshitify and we would never be able to remember all of them if they all became slurs. Lol

    • OneMeaningManyNames@lemmy.ml
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      3 days ago

      This might be out of context for the article, but once we are in /c/technology get this: GIMP is a slur, and their slogan during startup is “we glitch because we twitch” which makes me want to kick them in the nuts every time I use the fucking software.

  • RiQuY@lemm.ee
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    3 days ago

    Friendly reminder that selfhosted streaming exists (Owncast) or online alternatives like PeerTube.