י.ל. פֿײַנשטײן JL Feinstein @derpayatz@masto.jews.international

voter suppression efforts are a real thing though so i'd like to advise anyone not to drastically be like "i'm not going to vote" two days before the election because they read something

make a principled decision well in advance

they don't talk about how joe biden is going to execute them in central park

they don't histrionically act like joe biden winning a primary is equivalent to the nazis taking over france

have to give it to the supporters of bernie sanders, they don't have the power to do shit like this or the ruthlessness to want to

@OCRbot

You don't get to tell me that anti-fat bigotry isn't a serious problem until you've had several doctors insist that you can treat the pain in your hands and wrists with weight loss.

It's pure bullshit, an absolute lie, to say the word trap did not begin as a transphobic slur used against trans women

kachol lavan agrees with likud on literally every issue except whether netanyahu should be prime minister

this is why they're considered "radical leftists" by the cult that is likud

or the Zionist is removed from the context of "the Jewish question" and from thousands of years of persecution, and placed at the root of that question and of that persecution

"if it weren't for Zionists, antisemitism wouldn't exist"

Zionism is toxic internalized oppression and misdirected anger that is oppressive in itself; that doesn't mean "the bad Jews" or the Zionists are responsible for the antisemitism that spawned them

the main problem with dividing Jews into "good Jews" and "bad Jews" is it removes Jews from historical context and ultimately confirms the idea that *some Jews* are responsible for antisemitism

e.g. George Soros is removed from the context of the Hungarian antisemitism that he and his family grew up in and is placed, ahistorically, at the root of that same antisemitism

"if it weren't for George Soros and people like George Soros, there would be no antisemitism..." say the antisemites

the ancient crime of Jews was being in the way of more powerful empires (Rome, Greece, Persia, Babylon). The books of Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings were most likely composed in the aftermath of the conquering of the Northern Kingdom of Israel in order to spur Jews (Judeans) to action against the invading Babylonians and implore them to remain Jewish no matter what. it was probably not a historical account in any sense but an effort to toughen the Jews against a powerful invader.

in exile these books received further redactions. the archeological record shows no evidence of the conquest spoken of in these books; rather, it shows that the Jews were Canaanite pagans indistinguishable from our neighbors who gradually came to abandon polytheism.

there's good reason to believe Deuteronomy was first composed in the Northern Kingdom and that the original Temple was the one on Mount Gerizim. after the conquering of the Northern Kingdom, the book of Deuteronomy spread southward, received a few additions parallel to existing passages, and the "deuteronomic history" (Joshua->Kings) was composed to explain current events and existing legends in light of Deuteronomy.

granted, the thing about the book of Deuteronomy being originally from the Northern Kingdom is controversial, but the evidence is compelling imo

the rest of that is widely accepted, with various caveats, among near east scholars

even at the time of course, lots of people were migrating in and becoming Jews, which is why even to this day we call converts "foreigners". this is natural; migration has always been a huge thing in every area, especially the crossroads that is the Levant. people have come and left that area for ages. the only strange thing Jews did was to take our identity with us no matter where we were, and consequently continue welcoming foreigners into the fold. This, diaspora, is what defines us.

If this sounds like the ideology of 19th-century antisemitism, you're getting it backwards. That Jews have always called ourselves a "people" or a "nation" (same word in Hebrew) was never a problem under feudalism, but only became an issue under liberalism, which needed a new basis for sovereignty and settled on the concept of nation-states and national sovereignty.

It was the fundamental conflict between the newly constructed "German nation," "French nation," "Spanish nation," "Polish nation," and the constitutive others among them that led to modern ethnic conflicts such as the Holocaust, the Reconquista, etc..

Here's an amazing article going into Hitler's hatred the idea of a nation that could exist outside the context of blood and soil, and tying this into Nazi transphobia for good measure: https://www.versobooks.com/blogs/4188-the-eradication-of-talmudic-abstractions-anti-semitism-transmisogyny-and-the-national-socialist-project

sorry bernie but if you think i'm not playing pokemon go while i canvas for you in iowa you're fucking insane. walking for 3 days straight ? i'm gonna hatch so many 10 km motherfuckers for you, bernie