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U.S. Politics: Huff and Puff the Socialism away


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12 minutes ago, mormont said:

There's a huge distinction between an ethnicity and a nationality, though. 

According to what's been posted the order would define Judaism as a race OR nationality, and "race" would be an equivalent of "ethnicity", wouldn't it?

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As someone who is actually Jewish, I have to say the issue is tricky and you’ll get all kinds of opinions on it and they are not restricted to certain sub-groups of the faith. Personally I don’t care, but it really is a topic that shouldn’t be discussed outside of the group and it’s typically done so in a deeply anti-Semitic way.

On the plus side I guess I now get a diversity angle when applying to law/grad school, though it really is not deserved in any way.

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46 minutes ago, Ormond said:

I remember a discussion on this board several years ago when one of our regular posters who lives in Israel -- and who is NOT a "right winger" in the Israeli context -- said that Judaism IS both a religion and an ethnicity. The idea of Jewishness as an ethnicity is embodied in Israel's "law of return", where one gets the right to immigrate to Israel and become a citizen if one is a Jew, and where Jewishness is not defined by having any religious beliefs or adhering to any Orthodox Jewish traditions or customs, but simply by having one grandparent who was a Jew -- a genealogical and therefore "ethnic" definition.

This doesn't mean I personally approve of this becoming the definition of "Jewishness" in American law. But I don't think it's fair to just blame this bad idea on the Nazis.

Yes, as you point out yourself the problem isn't whether the definition is technically correct or not, the problem is that how one defines their ethnicity or nationality is -pretty much by definition- personal. Even without getting into any kind of "slippery-slope argument," imposing a state-enforced definition is fundamentally wrong and dangerous. In this specific case it creates absurd situations where anti-sionist Jews (or even people who define themselves as ethnically Jewish but are highly critical of religion) can be prosecuted for "anti-semitism."
And of course, if even Jews can be accused of anti-semitism it effectively silences criticism from non-Jews and prevents many forms of activism targeting the state of Israel.
So it's not really "nazi" in itself (one cannot ignore the alleged purpose of the order, intent does matter), but it certainly has a form of authoritarian flavor because it robs people of the possibility of using other definitions when discussing such matters in public. And given the context of Israeli leadership and decisions it is a glaring attempt to indirectly support those decisions.
Fuck, I'm certainly not an ardent defender of the 1st-amendment, but this is a case that could definitely warrant a Supreme Court decision... Can the US state really define what a "Jew" is, even if some Jews definitely don't agree with such a definition, and consequently restrict freedom of expression? According to a quick google search the SCOTUS did rule that Judaism was a race in the 1980s, but that was already controversial (it offended many Jews at the time). I'm not convinced a state-enforced definition would be more popular in 2019...

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30 minutes ago, Ormond said:

According to what's been posted the order would define Judaism as a race OR nationality, and "race" would be an equivalent of "ethnicity", wouldn't it?

I'm not clear on this, but certainly all of the reporting I've seen talks about 'nationality'. 'Race' and 'ethnicity' aren't completely interchangeable either: the former typically has more connotations of biological similarity whereas the latter is generally understood to be much broader. 

My concern here is that the discourse is going in a direction that allows the unscrupulous to reinforce the old canards about Jews having divided loyalties. 

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5 minutes ago, mormont said:

My concern here is that the discourse is going in a direction that allows the unscrupulous to reinforce the old canards about Jews having divided loyalties. 

That ship has sailed when the president gets cheers for making such comments from Jews themselves.  

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1 hour ago, Tywin et al. said:

As someone who is actually Jewish, I have to say the issue is tricky and you’ll get all kinds of opinions on it and they are not restricted to certain sub-groups of the faith. Personally I don’t care, but it really is a topic that shouldn’t be discussed outside of the group and it’s typically done so in a deeply anti-Semitic way.

On the plus side I guess I now get a diversity angle when applying to law/grad school, though it really is not deserved in any way.

Yeah I agree that's best discussed within the community and it's complicated. I've tried explaining before and had things not go well. It's hard for some people to wrap their heads around ideas like ethno-religious groups. But I'm pretty sure the timing of this has everything with Trump's antisemitic speech to IAC last weekend.

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I don't think it is historically correct to think that the idea that Jewishness is a nationality as much as a religion was invented by the Nuremberg laws.

no doubt.  gobineau conceives of a jewish racial group. his conception, at the onset of purported 'scientific racism,' is qualitatively different from a religious group's defining its own membership, even if the internal definition includes matrilineal components, which in isolation might mislead external definers by appearing to warrant a biologistic approach.

ethnicity and race are easily imploded--but the terms when used uncritically imply an undeconstructed distinction between inherited cultural norms and genetic difference. i don't read the new US rule to include ethnicity. nationality is fairly simple, a question of citizenship.  the US rule therefore marks out judaism as a separate citizenship?

the new US rule accordingly appears to invoke gobineau, on the one hand, and dual-loyalty narratives, on the other.  not a good development.

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Does it mean that if one is defining being "Jewish" as being a nation, hey folks, deportation is legal, as it it is being done right now with people who are present here but from another nation?

If so, it also opens this nationality to all the means of discrimination and separation from the US that are in place already for Native Americans -- separate and not the same.

This kind of division and duality is politically - legally wide open to all sorts of abuse.  The sort of language he's used just this week in PA about Jews is red flag of all kinds.

 

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17 minutes ago, Zorral said:

Does it mean that if one is defining being "Jewish" as being a nation, hey folks, deportation is legal, as it it is being done right now with people who are present here but from another nation?

Pretty much, since Judaism is now tied to Israel... So all American Jews can now be de facto seen as Israelis.
They also are forbidden by law to express disloyalty...

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This is pretty much the epitome of an issue you don't want to touch with a ten foot poll, so I'm not going to comment much on it.  But, an EO guiding agencies' enforcement of the CRA to include the IHRA's definition of anti-semitism is hardly something to worry about on its face.  I don't see anything in the text of the draft that is objectionable.  It simply appears to be a boon to right-wing Jewish groups that are currently championing it.  In terms of the intent of the order, it's plainly targeted towards mollifying Palestinian groups, so that would be the substantive problem with the order (which strangely I don't think anyone's mentioned yet).

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2 minutes ago, DMC said:

This is pretty much the epitome of an issue you don't want to touch with a ten foot poll, so I'm not going to comment much on it.  But, an EO guiding agencies' enforcement of the CRA to include the IHRA's definition of anti-semitism is hardly something to worry about on its face.  I don't see anything in the text of the draft that is objectionable.  It simply appears to be a boon to right-wing Jewish groups that are currently championing it.  In terms of the intent of the order, it's plainly targeted towards mollifying Palestinian groups, so that would be the substantive problem with the order (which strangely I don't think anyone's mentioned yet).

That and the attempt to crack down on anyone criticizing Israel, especially the BDS movement. (Watching conservative reaction to BDS has always been an easy way to show what a lie the whole conservative spiel of “money = speech, and there shouldn’t be any restrictions on speech” is. The second anyone wants to use their money/speech in a way you don’t support, that “principle” goes right out the window.)

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5 hours ago, Rippounet said:

So this decision manages to i) classify Judaism as a nationality, which is deeply wrong, ii) improves the protection of Jews against discrimination, but also iii) confuse anti-semitism with anti-sionism.

Yeah, I don't think there's much chance of that in practise :(

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34 minutes ago, DMC said:

This is pretty much the epitome of an issue you don't want to touch with a ten foot poll, so I'm not going to comment much on it.  But, an EO guiding agencies' enforcement of the CRA to include the IHRA's definition of anti-semitism is hardly something to worry about on its face.  I don't see anything in the text of the draft that is objectionable.  It simply appears to be a boon to right-wing Jewish groups that are currently championing it.  In terms of the intent of the order, it's plainly targeted towards mollifying Palestinian groups, so that would be the substantive problem with the order (which strangely I don't think anyone's mentioned yet).

Care to explain this?  

How could it be a boon to right wing Jewish groups and mollify Palestinians?  Seems like a half century of diplomacy hasn't been able to do this.

*Perhaps I'm cynically wrong in assuming that "right-wing Jewish groups" are generally extremely pro-Israel?

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1 minute ago, larrytheimp said:

How could it be a boon to right wing Jewish groups and mollify Palestinians?

Because right-wing Jewish groups want to mollify pro-Palestinian groups that criticize Israeli policy.

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1 minute ago, larrytheimp said:

...by making it more difficult to criticize Israel?

Am I missing something?

I don't know what the confusion is here.  Yes, making it more difficult to criticize Israel is a way to mollify pro-Palestinian groups, such as specifically the BDS movement.

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7 minutes ago, larrytheimp said:

Why would pro Palestinians groups want it to be more difficult to criticize Israel?  I legit do not understand.

They wouldn't.  Let's start from the beginning.  The EO directs agencies to enforce the CRA by including the IHRA's more expansive definition of antisemitism.  On its face, I don't see anything wrong with that, as the IHRA's definition of antisemitism is not objectionable.  However, the underlying motivation for this order is to threaten private groups - pretty much exclusively universities - that grant a forum/platform/what have you to pro-Palestinian groups, particularly the BDS movement as that is popular right now across campuses nationwide.  Policywise, this order is barely effectual, basically symbolic (there's a bunch of EOs throughout history that "guide" how agencies enforce policy that are subsequently wholly ignored).  Politically, it's an implicit way to cast any supporter of the BDS movement as antisemitic.

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