Political Memes

There's a lot of casual antisemitism going around now.

This sort of thing goes back a long ways. In the early 20th century they separated Jews into categories. "It's ok to hate Cosmopolitan Jews, that's not the same as hating all Jews" say the people that hate all Jews. But then slowly they start dropping the "Cosmopolitan" qualifier.

Antisemitism in the 21st century is following the same patterns as antisemitism in early 20th. Instead of Cosmopolitian Jews, it's now Zionist Jews. But you can see the same basic strategy at work.

People are looking the other way when there's violence towards Jews. A Synagogue is attacked, a Jewish business is burned down. But it's awkward to denounce those actions isn't it? Because you're sympathetic towards the people doing those actions. You disagree with the violent acts but since you hate the Zionist Jews, you feel more like "well the people that did those things were just misguided." Rather than denouncing it as you would if it were another group being attacked in similar ways.

Raise the heat slowly enough then the frog doesn't notice and jump out of the pot.

Eventually it gets to a point where you feel complicit. The water's boiling and you can't get out.

Sure you don't want to hop out of the pot yet?

At one point a meme was spread saying "it's ok to criticize Israel." Don't know the origin of that meme, but it's similarity to the white supremacist meme "it's ok to be white" from decades ago is interesting. No matter, we do know that the white supremacist types did a find and replace on their conspiracy theories replacing "the Jews" with "Israel" and those conspiracies gained traction.

Want out of that pot?

There was an explosion at a Hospital in Gaza. Many assumed Israel was responsible. These people accused Israel of genocide. Turns out the explosion at that hospital was a Hamas rocket, likely missed. But who knows? But definitely not an Israeli missile. But the accusation of genocide was already made. Nobody on the internet can admit they're wrong, so that narrative gained traction.

At Palestinian protests there are people cosplaying as Hamas. People that went into villages and massacred Jews are being idolized. Nobody questions it. It's considered normal to dress up as someone that murders Jews.

The water in that pot starting to feel warm yet?

And now we're at a point where the masks are starting to come off and we're seeing straight up antisemitism become more prevalent and dominating discussion on social media. People repeating propaganda from a group that wants to murder Jews like it's no big thing.

So people have to make a choice. Do you want to keep going along with the crowd that's becoming more and more antisemitic by the day? Or do want to be a smart frog and hop out of that pot while you're still able to?