> Contemporary examples of antisemitism ... could, taking into account the overall context, include...:
Context is important. The examples are not true in all cases, but rather context dependent.
Accusing Jewish citizens of your country of being more loyal to Israel than their country simply because they're Jewish? Antisemitic.
Accusing a specific Jewish citizen that has said they are more loyal to Israel? Not antisemitic.
Plenty of dual citizens that are not Israeli citizens and would admit the same thing, but we don't go around throwing such accusations at them.
> this example seems to apply to accusing any individual.
Does it? It would be accusing the individual just because they are part of a certain group.
Simply not true. There is plenty of rhetoric about immigrants (even 2nd gen+) in Western countries being accused of being disloyal to their Western citizenship in favor of their ethnic origin countries. Chinese, Indians, Middle Easterners, Latin Americans etc are all accused of this; see the recent riots in LA for a very recent example. Yet this insinuation is made illegal only with respect to one country only for whatever reason.
Certainly is news to japanese americans ( literally put in concentration camps ), chinese americans, german americans, mexican americans, arab americans, italian americans, catholics in general, indian americans, russian americans, etc.
> so of course they are more aligned with their country than ours, even if they have no direct ties to it whatsoever.
But there are plenty of jewish americans who are pro-israel. Such as jewish americans who joined the israeli military rather than american military.
It doesn't help that jewish americans were the main proponent to allowing dual citizenship in the US.
This is untrue. It's untrue to such an extraordinary degree that it's hard to believe you're arguing in good faith.
Accusing people of being loyal to some other nation or cause is levied regularly against almost all peoples to some degree or other, particularly if the person holds any ancestral pride or accoutrements. Even just refusing to adapt to food customs is enough to arouse suspicions.
Look at the outrage about the "invasion" because some protestors hoisted Mexican flags. Various members of Trump's administration declared this a demonstration of "occupied" territories.
If you're Chinese in America you must never, ever, show an iota of association with your homeland -- or even just your grandparents home if you're 3rd generation -- or you will be ostracized and considered a deep agent. An Indian that has an Indian flag in their bio or the like is going to be frequently asked why they don't move back if they "love it so much".
Similarly, a frequent criticism of some Muslims is din wa dawla, which is a belief that religion and politics/the state are one. Indeed, if someone has religious beliefs that can go in conflict with the needs/goals of the state, there is a discord there that needs to be considered.
There are Americans who are more loyal to Israel than the US. Like, they will literally tell you this without an ounce of compunction or question (which is utterly verboten among virtually any other group. Similarly a US congressman wore his IDF uniform into congress, which is simply insane). On the flip side, there are many Jewish Americans who are deeply critical of Israel. Like does anyone think Bernie is a deep agent of Israel? Bernie, like much of Jewish America, is deeply critical of Israel.
> Look at the outrage about the "invasion" because some protestors hoisted Mexican flags
Because LA Chicanos did not realize how inflammatory using the Mexican flag is in anti-government protests outside the California.
In CA, it's well understood it's used as an identity marker (though still exclusionary, as a growing portion of the Hispanic community in CA isn't Mexican anymore), but outside CA using another country's flag at the expense of the US absolutely is viewed as a severe faux pas.
"Nobody accuses AOC of secretly working for Mexican government"
It would be an incredibly weird accusation given that her ancestry is Puerto Rican.
And FWIW, there is a credible observation that the US evangelical "death cult" right has a bizarre, self-sabotaging loyalty to Israel. This group is not remotely Jewish, but they -- again not Jews -- are the reason the US government is subservient and in the service of Israel. All because their mythology holds Israel as some end times revelations battleground or some other bizarrely ignorant, archaic belief.
The invasion angle is simply entering a country without permission. Protesting against the laws of the country while holding the foreign flag adds to the poor optics but the root of the invading accusation is the people actually invading.
But are somehow—without any apparent reason, given that nothing binds them to the country—in favor of Israel being allowed to continue their war of agression against pretty much everyone around.
I'm sure this definition is going to be applied to Zionist organizations that do this on a regular basis.
Absolutely zero reasons to give the current US government the benefit of the doubt
I think citizens is meant to mean “American citizens” as opposed to Jewish people that are citizens of other countries. It seems intended to prevent people saying Jewish people cannot be loyal to America, though I agree the wording is clumsy.
Trump and his friends are fascists (corporatism, corruption, strongman rule, us vs them with human rights abuses vs the "them", etc).
And the corruption within USAID was off the charts..billions of dollars shovelled out the door to Democrat friends.
The bypassing of the first amendment by pressuring social media companies to self-censor.
And the weaponisation of the legal system to take out a political opponent.
I think your description far more accurately describes the Democrats than the Republicans.
Please share evidence. Links to X of people simply stating the same thing does not count as evidence.
> The bypassing of the first amendment by pressuring social media companies to self-censor.
The platforms never claimed to be coerced, the platforms themselves said in court filings they were not coerced, SCOTUS determined they were not coerced.
The actual way this played out was that random crybabies on the Internet were sad their posts were moderated, so they complained to the courts that the government pressured the platforms. The platforms responded "no, we did that because you broke our ToS."
Here's Twitter's own lawyer in their legal filing on the matter:
> Such requests to do more to stop the spread of false or misleading COVID-19 information, untethered to any specific threat or requirement to take any specific action against plaintiffs is permissible persuasion, and not state action... as [SCOTUS] previously held, government actors are free to urge private parties to take certain actions or criticize others without giving rise to state action. The evidence provided does not support a plausible inference of state action because they suggest neither the degree of deep public, private entwinement necessary for joint action, nor the kind of threatened sanction necessary for coercion.
And here are Zuckerberg's own words:
> Ultimately it was our decision whether or not to take content down and we own our decisions.
Both platforms receive millions of government requests per year, the vast majority of which (from the US government) they are free to decline and frequently do decline.
> And the weaponisation of the legal system to take out a political opponent.
The entire purpose of a legal system is to "take out" criminals. Do you think running for office somehow gives someone criminal immunity? That has to be one of the dumbest ideas I've ever heard in my life, and I've heard some astoundingly stupid ones!
I'm not going to fact check that because it's probably wrong, but regardless, it doesn't matter.
Trump literally appointed a billionaire to be a minister of his, after said billionaire spent hundreds of millions on his campaign. Same billionaire also has government contracts, was in charge of "optimising" government spending. Oh and he runs a social media with blatant censorship. Trump had a coronation event where billionaires had to donate big sums of money to be able to attend. He launched shitcoins and collectibles and a fucking mobile phone.
Nothing any recent politician in any western country has done comes even close to this level of brazen corruption. Hell, well known corrupt autocrats like Putin are more delicate in public about their corruption.
> And the corruption within USAID was off the charts..billions of dollars shovelled out the door to Democrat friends
Like preventing HIV from being transmitted to babies in Africa? Darn Democratic HIV infected babies!
They probably shouldn't do that and should just say fascist.
It really isn't. Where did you get that information?
But obviously this is not an excuse for Israel government supporting religious orthodox extremists and their settlements and aggression against Muslims in the area near Jordan. If you just take the situation there then it is basically a war zone.
If West Bank was considered part of Israel then I can see elements of apartheid but people who say it's apartheid also say West Bank is a separate country. You can't have apartheid in another country. Call it invasion/occupation or apartheid, but pick one? (Also yes this is whataboutism but what Russia is doing is orders of magnitude worse if invasions are considered.)
It sort of made sense if I thought just of West Bank. One reason, freedom of movement. I did not see from the inside but from what I read it is semi closed like a warzone with checkpoints and all. What's worse is that it is supposed to be closed for everybody but allegedly it is not equal and Israel military tolerates Jews but can be way overly strict to Muslims. Some people mad at Netanyahu for it.
But it's a weird limbo, people say it's apartheid and then the same people also say it's occupied and not really part of Israel. (Except for people who also say Israel shouldn't exist but I wouldn't listen to them, because then why a shitton of militant Muslim countries are allowed to exist right there but Israel isn't considering it is much more democratic and Jews were there as early if not earlier than Muslims)
They accuse others of being nazis so that they themselves can be nazis.
Some interesting maps thankyou.
This is legitimately debatable. If your allegiance is first to a foreign state, in my view, you should have to relinquish your American citizenship.
Ursula K. Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness
In terms of what dictates your action, true allegiance is more significant: it is possible to really love somebody and not do something for their sake, but if you really are a part of something then it’s not much of a choice.
Some people, culturally or temperamentally, have an allegiance to their family and do not care beyond that. Some feel allegiance to a community (whether defined religiously or geographically or elsewise). Some people feel allegiance to nothing. In the US specifically feeling belonging to one’s state I presume could be more powerful than belonging to the country. It is not always or not everywhere that people feel a strong allegiance to a country, even if they always lived in one and never thought of moving.
Among people who do feel country allegiance, I would imagine it is rare to feel belonging to two different countries with a similar force. Perhaps those people do exist (e.g., someone who mostly lived in country A but was born to immigrants from country B and also spent a lot of time in country B), and then it would be mighty unfair if they had to pick one, but people I know can usually classify one citizenship as “convenience” and another one as “true”.
Comprehensively assessing true allegiances (or lack thereof) of a prospective citizen is fraught, but as phrased the question does not actually require that. For 99.9% of people, “do you feel allegiance first to a foreign state?” is pretty unobtrusive and has a clear answer. The main caveat is, of course, that those for whom the answer is positive will almost certainly just lie.
In case using tangentially related quotes is considered smarter than original thought, I looked one up too and I raise you Orson Scott Card:
“Every person is defined by the communities she belongs to and the ones she doesn’t belong to… a person who really believes she doesn’t belong to any community at all invariably kills herself, either by killing her body or by giving up her identity and going mad.”
I have one or two friends in that situations, and they want to do that. But it also cost a $2,350 fee to give up your US of A citizenship.
And, frankly, while this is most prominent with Islam, that religions describe their goal to be a single state and trying to be a single state is the norm, not the exception. Christianity is the exception here that does not want to have state power (even though that rule screams "compromise with the Roman emperor", and hasn't exactly been followed very well once Christians were well established)
So no more muslims allowed in the US then? In fact no religion allowed except Christianity or revering the US directly somehow?
However, I disagree with your conception of Islam as a state, even if it was explained to you by Muslims. The strongest argument I can build from your statements is that, according to the reference to the end of the Sunni Caliphate in 1923,
p1) only Sunnis are Muslims, and
p2) the Caliphate is unique, and
p3) the Sunni Caliphate of 1923 is the original one, thus
c) it was the state of Islam.
We can disprove all of these premises. p1) is obvious, there are more Muslim religions than just Sunnis. The earliest schism was the Sunni-Shiites split, happening immediately after the first prophet's death.
About p2), while I'm fuzzy on the details, I'm pretty sure that between the 900s and the 1900s there were at least 3 major, parallel Caliphates and also a bunch of smaller Caliphates. Geographically they were even sometimes overlapping. It might be interesting that the Caliphate of the Ottoman Empire (the one in question) was a Hanafist (a Sunni splinter group) Caliphate.
On p3), the Sunni caliphate of 1923 was reestablished after a 300 year "hiatus" by the Ottoman Emperor to lay claim on Crimea. It had no representation besides a leader, the Sultan. Before the dissolution of the major Sunni Caliphate in the 1500s it relocated several times, from today's Syria to today's Iraq, to then and now Egypt. Thus we can say that the Caliphate had no continuous existence. We can furthermore say that the time the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire was the Caliph, it was because it was a diplomatic ploy of the secular power of the Ottoman Empire.
Therefore, c) must be wrong. There are more Muslims than Sunnis, the Sunni Caliphate wasn't unique, and the Caliphate that ended in 1923 was not the original one.
A less philosophical counter-argument could be the vigorous infighting between different Muslim groups we see today. I'm curious how the war on Iran changes that, if at all.
... every group of every monotheistic religion says and believes they're the only "true" group, their group is the only valid group, and the entirety of that religion. Islamic dogma states very clearly, and every muslim will repeat it, that there is "only one islam".
This despite the fact that what you say is correct. There's 100s, minimum, of different versions of islam.
Your idea, that history is clear proof to the contrary ... well history is clear proof that there is no god and therefore no valid religion. In the case of islam, one might point out that the central promise of islam as a religion is that muslims will win militarily, because god will intervene directly (but "of course" what is currently happening in Iran proves they are wrong and every other group of muslims is right - this is the sort of argument you're up against). The fact that any caliphate fell at all is a pretty damn obvious contradiction to the entire religion.
Frankly, I must say, I like the "goal" of Christians and Jews a whole lot better.
Hence debatable.
Let me escalate: I think such a bill would find bipartisan support. Right now might be a good time to attempt it.
I hate the idea of revoking citizenship. But a question about swearing, on naturalisation, that your supreme allegiance is to America should be incredibly popular to secure.
And despite the difficulty of revoking US citizenship, the rate of revocations has increased over the last decade or two. If there was such a simple way to toss out that old rag, I'm sure there would be many more (and a little less tax revenue).
So I'm afraid* the USA is much more transactional than you think, at least regarding citizenship.
*I must admit this is sarcasm. Thank god the US is transactional rather than so stubbornly patriotic about citizenship.
I know more born citizens with a second nationality than naturalised ones who gave up their first.
Also, to be pedantic, you don’t have to have citizenship of a foreign country in order to have a greater allegiance to it.
The behavior of the christian conservative cult is a bit more than a pedantic detail at this point. Why is trying to get Israel into a conflict to get Jesus to come and accelerate the end of all jews on Earth not antisemitism? I don't see wanting to use the Jew for cockfighting making it to the State Department's summary of antisemitism.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual_loyalty#Jewish_Believers
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/21/us/politics/jews-disloyal...
In general, you should be wary of "forms of antisemitism" (or similar "forms of x-ism/x-phobia/etc"). Such things usually consists of the defensible but vacuous notion that "doing X in an antisemetic way is antisemetic", while attempting to imply that doing X is antisemetic in general, regardless how it's done, or at the least that doing X is suspect. But the only proof that has been provided in such cases is that X has ocassionally been done in an antisemetic way, which you could say for just about anything. Since X in these cases is not per se anti semetic, it is more helpful to identify what antisemetic thing has often been done alongside it, and be on the lookout for that, instead of for X.
You specified that. The excerpt did not.
I admit the phrasing of the excerpt does look vague out of context, but it is about the collective of Jewish people. That is suggested by the excerpt saying "Jewish citizens" rather than "a Jewish citizen". It should also become more clear if you click through to the original and see all the other examples are about the Jewish people as a collective too. So yes, this text is specifically about the "because of" even if the excerpt doesn't make that explicit. It is not saying that any accusation of disloyalty is inherently antisemitism. For example, if a Jewish American citizen was arrested with real evidence of them being an Israeli spy, there would not be a serious discussion of whether the arrest was an act of antisemitism.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detention_of_R%C3%BCmeysa_%C3%...
> Accusing Jewish citizens of being more loyal to Israel, or to the alleged priorities of Jews worldwide, than to the interests of their own nations.
There are plenty of dual citizens that would proudly admit that their first loyalty is to Israel.
Other examples from the document use the term "Jews as a people", whereas this example seems to apply to accusing any individual.
Although perhaps a generous interpretation of the example, is that it excludes Israeli dual citizens, because Israel would be one of "their own nations"