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Cake day: March 3rd, 2025

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  • “Zionism is a settler-colonial ideology, and Israel should become a state that provides equal rights for Palestinians

    Except the moderation rule feddit has implemented does not allow for this statement, unless you specifically say that jews deserve equal rights in a single-state solution - which is similar to those who respond to ‘black lives matter’ by saying ‘but all lives matter’. Saying ‘Palestinians deserve equal rights’ wouldn’t be necessary if equal rights were already afforded them, and the point of making that statement is to draw attention to the fact that they currently aren’t

    This singular and persistent focus on the destruction of the (unfortunatly) already existing state of Israel, really makes it likely that many people rather use that as a dogwistle for antisemitism.

    Nobody who is advocating for Palestinian liberation uses the word “destroy” or ‘destruction’ when referring to the dissolution of Israel - I only ever see those words used by people trying to make this inference between anti-zionism and antisemitism. The only people who take statements of liberation as a threat against Jews are people who are collaborating or benefiting from the oppression Israel conducts in their name.



  • there is a very specific legal reason for that

    A misguided or intentionally malicious reason, for what the effect of that law is. Codifying into law the conflation of Judaism/ethnic Jewish identity with zionism is itself antisemitic. Calling for the end of Zionism isn’t the same as calling for the end of Jews or Judaism. What is the use of being allowed to criticize Zionism the ideology when you’re not also allowed to advocate for its end?

    “Zionism is a settler-colonial ideology.” <- Ok “Zionism is a settler-colonial ideology, and Israel as a Zionist project should be dissolved in favor of a single-state that provides equal rights for Palestinians” <- Not ok, somehow?

    The law as written only allows abstract and dissociated critique of Zionism, but forbids any criticism that comes too close to threatening Israel’s existence as a ethno-nationalist state. That’s a huge problem.








  • Lmao. K fine, i’ll play this game:

    I think that, if you wanted to boil it down to main root causes, there are two causes for the Democrats losing because people didn’t vote for them. One was propaganda and the other was democrats being corporate ghouls in need of reform.

    Here’s my take:

    I think that, if you wanted to boil it down to main root causes, there are two causes for the Democrats losing because people didn’t vote for them. One was a national distress over the failure of democracy and the other was a failure of democrats to acknowledge this distress.

    I have repeatedly, ad nauseum stated my disagreement. You do not agree with me, and that’s fine. I don’t think there’s any world, in the absence of propaganda, that democrats could have overcome the broad, nationwide discontent being caused by the failure of democracy without acknowledging that discontent. That’s always been my whole point. That was the whole reason I responded to you to begin with. I don’t care if you agree that there is some attribution to that specific problem, I’m attributing the their entire loss to it, full stop. That’s why i was screaming why it’s such a huge problem. It isn’t because of propaganda or the dems being in need of reform, it’s because there’s a growing faction of people that think the choices on offer do meet even the threshold of consideration.

    Do not tell me again that you agree with me, even in-part. I wouldn’t believe you at this point even if you did.


  • I wasn’t sure if that was what you were saying, I wanted to allow you the option to clarify, but every time you did you just made it less-clear what you were saying.

    I said:

    Liberals insist that the democrats lost because of 3rd party spoilers and far-left activists deflating the cause, but I think there’s more evidence that the Democrats failed themselves by not reacting to the clear signs of distress that both the far-right and far-left populists were signaling.

    You responded with:

    You can reform Democrats without a bunch of immigrants going to El Salvador or worse because you didn’t feel like holding your nose and you’re privileged enough to be able to not have to.

    • Notice I was framing their failure around the national distress and their dismissal of it as a reality, and explicitly said I didn’t think their loss was attributable with “3rd party spoilers and far-left activists deflating the cause”. You turned around and re-framed the issue around some group (I can only really assume you mean those same people) trying to “reform democrats” (no mention of the core of my issue, which is them not addressing the national distress i was describing), and placing the cause-effect emphasis on those people.

    and then you said:

    I think the election took place almost entirely in fantasy-land. The far left (tiny in American politics) thought that Kamala Harris was responsible for 100% of Biden’s Israel policy, but also more mainstream people thought that Biden had accomplished nothing of value on climate change or for working people in the US, other people thought Trump was a genius at business who would bring inflation back down, and so on. It was propagandized to the point that it almost doesn’t matter that the Democrats’ messaging was bad.

    • Again, my point was that I didn’t think democrats were addressing the distress I was pointing to, and they lost because those mainstream people didn’t think their agenda was addressing it. You didn’t seem to pick up on that point, so I restated it again in clearer language

    I said:

    It’s also possible that those accomplishments, as much as we’d like to celebrate them, weren’t addressing the core popular discontent of the voters. It could be a matter of messaging or propaganda, true, but it would be irresponsible to have this conversation and not point out that the current popular messaging in the democratic base isn’t related to infrastructure spending, inflation, or climate initiatives - it’s an expression of frustration about a system that’s rendered ineffective against oligarchs who use their immense wealth to undermine and frustrate all attempts at democratic reform.

    • Notice that I addressed your complaint about lack of celebration and credit for Biden’s accomplishments, and then again restated the core of my point against that. I even addressed what I thought of your claim of propaganda, which is apparently what you kept wanting me to address, unbeknownst to me.

    I can go down the whole conversation if you want, but pretty much every comment has some degree of intentional(?) obfuscation. Edit: just so we’re clear, that first quote from me is in my very-first comment. That was basically my entire point, but you kept pointing to other things I was using to support that argument and saying ‘yea, i agree’ but never addressing the thing I was trying to communicate

    This is the loose language i’m talking about. Yes, you kept saying “i agree” to a vague sentiment within my comment, and then you’d turn around and disagree with the main thing. I don’t even really know if you’re doing this on purpose, but when I see you in another conversation that people keep having this kind of exchange with you I have to assume that this is why.

    I’m sorry if this truly is unintentional, because this must be incredibly frustrating, but this is why I think you keep running into this. To those who don’t know what your intention actually is, it feels a hell of a lot like gaslighting. Just state the thing you’re disagreeing with explicitly, don’t bury it behind a whole bunch of statements of agreement.


  • Claiming that someone said something when they actually said something else, blatantly ignoring a direct question and instead going off and just talking about some different thing, repeating yourself forever without substantively responding to anything the other person says. That kind of thing.

    Lmao, I cannot believe that i’m getting back into it with you, but I can’t not address this

    I have a strong feeling you think I fit into this bucket, and - for the record - I think the reason you get into these types of exchanges is because you use pretty lose language when describing your perspective, and people pick up on the possibility you may be alluding to a specific meaning they take issue with.

    That’s what happened with our conversation that got me engaged, and it turned out at the end that I had correctly identified our disagreement while you were explicitly trying to pass it off as agreement. You should consider yourself lucky that so many people seem to be addressing these politispeak comments with long and charitable explanations and not outright scorn. “I didn’t say that” or “why are you yelling, i agree with you” sounds innocuous enough but quickly becomes gaslighting behavior when it turns out you were in disagreement.


  • I’m glad I went back through this post and found this, because this part:

    Severing out of a key aspect of their post, in one comment, at the bottom of a long comment chain, while only expressing agreement elsewhere?

    Is exactly what happened to me with this user, right up until yesterday. He kept asserting something I disagreed with, to which I responded in detail, and then they’d explicitly say “i agree 100% why are you so upset?”, while reiterating nearly the same point but with some pretty important distinctions. It went back and forth for far longer than I care to admit, and then when I finally put a fine-enough point on it they disengaged with ‘aren’t I allowed to disagree?’ as if he hadn’t been repeatedly expressing nothing but agreement.

    It’s been a while since I got baited like that, but if there were a agnostic behavior online I thought needed to be banned, it’d be this one exactly.

    Unbelievably enraging, but also a bit insidious because to the outside observer it looks like they actually are in agreement, and then they go on to completely rewrite the perspective to match theirs as if it’s the no-brainer position (see? look, we’re agreeing). It is some absurd postmodern contemporary version of MLK’s white moderate.


  • Democrats are ghouls who need replacement or foundation reform

    I was saying AMERICA needed reform, that democrats are bleeding voters because they’ve lost faith that foundational reform is possible.

    You seem like you are doing literal backflips to avoid the conversation of whether that propaganda is happening

    It is happening, but even if it wasnt I think the material conditions would be doing the same thing anyway. I don’t think its the reason dems lost. A clear difference, I now know.

    shrieking at me that the Democrats carry some blame for losing the election, no matter how many times I attempt to express that I, also, think that.

    I’m telling you they carry all the blame. That even if the cards were stacked in their favor they’d still lose, if they don’t propose foundational change.

    Idk how else I could have communicated that without any less emphasis, but ‘shrieking’ is a bit hyperbolic.

    I have literally no idea why you are that way. I hope you come out of it someday

    I hope dems come out of it someday.