I don't see where you get "Judaism is anti-working class" from anything he said. Care to back that up a bit?
Certainly; I will do so by using Skeptic's own version of logic, as employed in the parts of this thread where he doesn't simply ignore backing up his claims with evidence:
Let us assume that Skeptic's world view is correct. This means that Judaism and communism contradict each other. Since we know, from Skeptic's assertions, that "contradicting Judaism" = anti-semitism, it follows that "contradicting communism" = anti-whatever-group-communism-purportedly-represents. This group is typically said to be the working class. Therefore, whatever contradicts communism is anti-working class, and as Judaism is claimed to contradict communism, it is necessarily anti-working class.
Of course, this is, and was meant to be, a ridiculous assertion based on Skeptic's lack of logic, and should not be taken seriously.
This seems to pop up whenever there is a discussion of something being anti-Semitic or not. The idea that if something is not solely motivated by anti-Semitism that it's not really anti-Semitic. By that standard Nazi death camps weren't anti-Semitic. Sure, Nazis hated Jews, but they also wanted cheap slave-labor and a population they could loot to help fund the war effort. Does that make sense?
The difference is that nazis are
explicitly anti-semite. Certainly they targeted other groups of people as well as Jews, but Jews featured prominently on their list of things to eradicate, and explicit anti-Jew-for-the-sake-of-them-being-Jews propaganda and policy was established.
This is not the case here. Communist and other leftist propaganda is typically explicitly
anti-Israel, which is not the same as anti-semitic. Typically, it criticizes Israel and its leaders and military for their actions, not for them being Jews, which is in line with how they criticize other nations, leaders, and groups for their actions, not for who they are.
I have nowhere denied that there may be people on the left whose motivation for participating in anti-Israel events is at least partially anti-semitic. There are idiots everywhere, unfortunately. However, this does not in any way imply that the vast majority of the people who participate in these events are motivated even in part by anti-semitism, not does it imply that their ideology as such in any way is motivated by, founded upon, or even including anti-semitism.
Note also that you have misread the exchange. It is Skeptic who is claiming that communists ally with Hamas "solely because they hate Jews":
The vast majority of "revolutionary communist chapters" (or whatever they are called this week), who allied themselves openly with the murderers of Hamas, Hizbullah, Saddam Hussein, etc., and who march together with such murderers in rallies despite the fact that those folks would execute them as heretical infidels if they had the chance -- solely because both hate the Jews.
I believe there are other reasons for why one could support Hamas that either are in addition to hating the Jews, or which entirely supplants hatred for Jews, meaning that they do not hate Jews at all, but do, for instance, hate the policies of the state of Israel and the treatment of the Palestinians by the state of Israel.
I am trying to get Skeptic to support this accusation, but when you have no data to base your conclusion on -- not even anecdotal data -- I guess it is easier to just pretend the questions are never asked, and just repeated the same thing again on the next page.
Logically there is anti-Semitism if any part of the motivation is anti-Semitic. Just like with any other kind of bigotry.
But this does not imply that if 100 people protest against Israel, and one of them do so purely or partially for anti-semitic reasons, then the event as such, or the ideology that the event is based on, is anti-semitic.
The key question here is whether or not communism as such is anti-semitic, and if all it takes to make communism anti-semitic is that at least one person who claims to be communist at least partially is motivated by anti-semitism, then yes, communism
is anti-semitic, but then again so it
every human endeavour.
A hypothetical example:
I have a sandwich here next to me, but I am not very hungry. I can decide to force myself to eat this sandwich, instead of giving it to a starving Jew in the area because I hate Jews. If I do, this renders the whole field of
eating anti-semitic.
If so, the word "anti-semitic" has no meaning any longer, which would mean that we would have to come up with a new phrase to describe genuine anti-semites, like the neo-nazis.
Given that part of Hamas's stated goals is the extermination of Jews, supporting Hamas is anti-Semitic by definition.
I do not necessarily agree with this. While the effect may be anti-semitic, the person who supports Hamas does not necessarily have to be anti-semitic if the reason for support is that no other organisation appears to be doing anything to right perceived injustices in Palestine. The same person who supports Hamas may have no problems with Jews in general, but may have a problem with the way Israel behaves towards the Palestinians, and may see Hamas (and Hizbullah and other similar organisations) as the only force that tries to counter the Israeli army. Therefore, their support would go to these organisations by default, because there is -- or at least is perceived to be -- no other alternative.
However, I feel I cannot even begin to argue convincingly in favour of Hamas in relationship with how I see communism in any way, as I think the Hamas are despicable. As I said above, Hamas and the other murderers in Palestine are prime candidates for gathering up and shipping out to some Antarctic island and then just forget about. In my eyes, they have no redeeming features, and within reason (1), I believe Israel has every right to defend themselves against these organisations. I fully support the existence of the State of Israel in its present position, and with whatever borders they find suitable (again, within reason).
Still, I call myself a communist and am accepted as such by other leftist friends. My stance on Israel or Jews has never ever, when it has come up in discussions with other leftists, casued these to claim that I am not a true communist. This, I believe, is because regardless of what media wants you to believe, having a particular opinion with regards to Israel or the Jews has nothing whatsoever to do with whether or not you are a leftist or a communist.
That, to me, is all the evidence I need to show that communists are not inherently anti-semitic.
Edit: Just came across another of his articles: "The British Left Goes Anti-Semitic. Socialism and anti-Semitism are closely related worldviews."
It's rare to see something that so openly does not draw the distinction between anti-semitic and anti-Israel in its conclusions, while doing exactly that in the actual words. A laughable article. It's main pieces of evidence for a similarity between socialism and anti-semitism are:
1) That unnamed cartoonists in unnamed British papers usually depict capitalists as stereotypical Jews (without giving a single example);
2) That an academic whose political leanings we are not told about published a "flagrantly anti-semitic poem" at an undisclosed time in a liberal (that is, right-wing) paper;
3) That the same academic at an undisclosed time and place "opined that American Jewish settlers on the West Bank should be shot", which may or may not look vastly different if it was in context or wasn't paraphrased -- but there are no details with which to look this quote up;
4) That claiming that there are too many dead white men in "the college syllabus or the lack of minority representation in the judiciary" is basically the same as saying that a Jewish conspiracy is the reason for the "prominence of Jews in the arts, sciences, professions, and in commerce";
5) That Israel alone of the supposedly evil states of the world is being subjected to a boycott by academics;
6) That a great fuss would have been made in a hypothetical situation but wasn't in a real situation;
7) That Marx himself "accepted the ancient stereotype of the Jew as a bloodsucking usurer", and;
8) That "socialist and anti-Semite alike seek an all-encompassing explanation of the imperfection of the world, and for the persistence of poverty and injustice: and each thinks he has found an answer"
Seriously? This must be the most ludicrous "defense" for a spurious idea I have ever seen. The only thing that even comes close to being evidence is 5, but the article author still doesn't make the effort to expand on
why this situation came about. I have no idea, but I could see it happen both for anti-semite reasons and for anti-Israel reasons.
It could certainly be the case that all the academics who decided to boycott Israel are all anti-semites. Why should academics be a field without genuine anti-semites? And, given that there are a large enough number of academics who are also anti-semites, it seems reasonable that they may feel confident in their status to declare a boycott of Israel even for explicitly anti-semitic reasons.
On the other hand, it could certainly also be the case that these academics are
not anti-semitic, but are anti-Israel and want make the point that Israel should stop committing whatever wrongs the academics are against by using pressure on what I assume is the elite in Israel as well, the academics. This does not necessarily have to have any anti-semitic undertones at all.
We are not told in the article, which just
assumes that anti-Israel = anti-semitism. And talking about assumptions, we also get no information on whether or not these academics
are even leftists in the article. This is
assumed because they are academics, but no mention is made of these academics' political leanings. If, for instance, a proportion of these 200 academics are conservatives, liberals, centrists, genuine nazis, or belong to any other right-wing ideology, where does that leave the hastily put together and ill-though-out thesis of the article?
I also like 8, where the author states that one similarity is that both anti-semites and socialists believe they have found "all-encompassing explanation of the imperfection of the world" -- what, in that aspect, makes them different from
any other political ideology in the world, including, interestingly, the ideology that believes that being anti-Israel and/or communist means you are an anti-semite? Am I equally justified in saying that people who claim all socialists/communists/leftists are anti-semites are themselves anti-semites, because there are some similarities in the way an ideology works?
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(1) I would not in any way support a nuclear strike on Palestine, however, nor attacks of similar devastating effects.
