From: Dace (edace@earthlink.net)
Date: Sun 15 Jun 2003 - 20:34:08 GMT
> From: "Scott Chase" <ecphoric@hotmail.com>
> Subject: Re: Joe's anti-Muslim and anti-Semitic attacks
>
> >From: joedees@bellsouth.net
> >
> >From: "Lawrence DeBivort" <debivort@umd5.umd.edu>
> >
> > > This is addressed to the host of this list:
> > >
> > > Are Joe Dees and others not enjoined from posting anti-Islamic
> > > diatribes from this list, and was Joe not suspended already once from
> > > this list for doing so?
> > >
> > > Will you enforce your rule, or are we again, on this list, to be
> > > subjected to this nonsense?
> > >
> >I am not anti-Muslim; rather, I am opposed to the virulent Wahhabist
> >convert-enslave-or-kill mutation that originated in Saudi Arabia and has
> >taken hold in Egypt, Pakistan and the West Bank and Gaza. Anyone
> >who is in favor of participatory democracy, religious and philosophical
> >freedom, and equal civil and human rights should share my concerns.
> >I simply could not, in all good conscience, allow Dace's gratuitous and
> >unsolicited antijewish hate-propaganda diatribes to go unanswered
> >onlist. Of course, Lawry would NEVER complain about the original
> >rabidly Jew-hating screeds that provoked my responses, now WOULD
> >he?
> >
> >
> OK guys this is getting out of hand again.
>
> Dace, Lawry, and you have your biases and you're not going to convince
each
> other otherwise.
I see a memetic explanation of your misunderstanding. When particularly
unpleasant conflicts erupt, you tend to view all sides as being equally
guilty. This is the simplest way to put a stop to the fighting. The meme
in question here exploits your desire to protect the group from tearing
itself apart. If this way of thinking belonged to you alone, it would
merely be a personal habit. But since this approach is common across many
groups, it can be described as a culturally-transmitted habit, i.e. a meme.
> > From: "Scott Chase" <ecphoric@hotmail.com>
>
> >From: Jkr438@aol.com
> >
> >[Jake] Could Godwin's rule be invoked here?
> >
> That's likely. This brings up the larger issue of why comparisons of
> ideologies or groups people dislike to Nazism or Nazis or leaders people
> dislike to Hitler are so common. Does the comparison add anything
> informative to the topic at hand or detract?
I wasn't comparing Zionism to Nazism. Rather I was tracing the existence of
this malignant form of Zionism to its gestation in the death camps of Nazi
Germany (just as Hitler's murderous impulses can be traced, in part, to the
mechanized killing of World War I). It's a question of epidemiology, not a
simple comparison. (It should be noted that Zionism preceded Nazi
persecution, but then the Nazis were just the climax of a long tradition).
> >Or even if not, is this really a
> >good use of the memetics list? Surely some forums revel in this kind of
> >theorizing, so I can't imagine that the memetics list has anything to add
> >to this.
> >
> Some aspects of the Arab-Israeli conflict are topical, but as we've seen
> cannot be handled without people getting their feathers ruffled.
>
> The ideology of Zionism (which isn't a bad word) would be interesting to
> look into with some depth and objectivity. I actually have Herzl's book
> around here somewhere. Zionism itself breaks up into subideologies, with
> rightward and leftward leanings. The difference between the Labor Zionism
of
> David Ben-Gurion and the Revisionist Zionism of Vlad Jabotinsky would be
> one such polar subgrouping.
Funny you should bring this up, since the equation of criticism of Israel
with race hatred against Jews originated in none other than David
Ben-Gurion. Here's a paragraph from Noam Chomsky's *Fateful Triangle,* page
16:
>>>
Christopher Sykes, in his excellent study of the pre-state period, traces
the origins of this device ("a new phase in Zionist propaganda") to a
"violent counterattack" by David Ben-Gurion against a British court that
implicated Zionist leaders in arms-trafficking in 1943: "henceforth to be
anti-Zionist was to be anti-Semitic." It is, however, primarily in the
post-1967 period that the tactic has been honed to a high art, increasingly
so, as the policies defended became less and less defensible.
>>>
> Another interesting, but far too emotionally charged, topic would be the
> origin and propagation of the blood libel that Jews have some need for
> Gentile blood. This has appeared in a recent form with Arabs cast as
victims
> of the mythical bloodthirsty Jew. The blood libel is a notion that has
> worked itself into propaganda spread by Arab media, and one wonders what
> influence this might have on the perception Arab childen have of Jews.
Is this the origin of the vampire myth? I thought that came from
anti-Slavic racism.
> Other interesting topics relevant to cultural evolution would be
(especially
> as ideological antipodes to Zionism) ideologies of pan-Arabism and
> Islamicism and how these might be broken into subgroupings.
>
> Instead we have Dace versus Joe or Lawry versus Joe.
This is a very serious mischaracterization, and again I smell a meme. I am
in no way attacking Joe, and neither is Lawry. I made a comment Joe didn't
like, and he then accused me of an "antijewish diatribe." I have now
defended myself from his unwarranted attack by noting that he's proving my
point about the "accuse-all-critics-of-racism" meme. Your alarm at the
threat to the integrity of the group (a noble concern, I might add) causes
you to roundly condemn all parties, regardless of the facts.
Ted
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