We’re all very good at talking to ourselves and to others who are already convinced. But we all too often…

Sat 2 Mar 2024

“Alex McDonald’s When They Speak Israel, reviewed here by Steve Grant, explains to all of us how to engage. His basic assumption is that while some Zionists are dyed-in-the-wool racists or ethnonationalists, most are not. They sincerely believe they oppose racism but have been taught that support for Israel is justified — if not a solemn moral duty.”

    • eldavi@lemmy.ml
      21·
      11 days ago

      it’s deference, not tolerance and those people have unknowingly ingested propaganda since birth, so they’re unaware that it’s bigotry. also: that propaganda has put them in a false reality and that reality is reaffirmed daily by an overwhelming majority of americans so it seems like reality if they never leave that bubble; most americans don’t even bother to leave the country much less anything else.

      they know that people who actually live in reality exist; but that propaganda paints those people as boogeymen so any attempts to create a discourse with them has to take these preconceived notions into account; because that discourse is not going to anywhere if you don’t and the zionist will go back to that false reality where it’ll be reaffirmed.

      it’s worth the bother because; like in the lemmyverse; they’re an overwhelming majority with the numbers necessary to exert their unconscious bigotry onto society using the ballot box and the law (defederation in lemmy) where it can stay enforced for decades/centuries and diminish/reverse progress for generations. no white supremacist groups nor the KKK enjoy the popular support and finances to do that anymore, but the isrealis can, did, and do; hence the deference.

        • eldavi@lemmy.ml
          3·
          11 days ago

          i’d like to think that this is true.

          my ancestors were genocided out of existence this in this country 100 years or so ago and i think that they would find this situation extremely familiar; especially in regards to gaza; and this comes after decades worth of the “trail of tears” paragraph in american history books.

          i think that today’s public opinion is manufactured like consent is; how else can something like a genocide be treated the way it is when we should know better after doing so many and advocated against it for so long?

  • Raymond Shannon@lemmy.ml
    72·
    12 days ago

    Note: this may not work for Amerikans, Australians, and other settler-colonial people, who understandably think that if Israel is next, they’re next…

  • SkyNTP@lemmy.ml
    5·
    12 days ago

    Listening to others, empathizing and earning their trust, and then being insistent about facts is the only proven remedy to any kind of tribalism. Doesn’t matter what tribe.