(no subject)
I watched 'The War on Britian's Jews?' tonight. When I heard all the descriptions of the causes of anti-semitism I found that all my descriptions of anti-american “racism” were being presented to me. Fair enough, I do not feel unsafe in this country because of my nationality, I do not get spat on, nobody shouts ‘yank’ at me from their car but the similarities are clear even if the intensity is not. On the other hand I did read about a couple Canadians murdered in Egypt because of their accent.
The story actually begins when I suggested to a friend that one of our mutual friends had been accused of racism. She commented that did have right wing politics. I was a bit shocked having been faced with countless incidences of prejudice and perhaps racism from liberals. Therefore I thought the comment was a bit unfair but I could not put my finger on the feeling at the time.
I still do not know what to call this special type of bigotry. Racism does seem to fit skin coulour better and yet prejudice is not strong enough. We all have prejudice, in fact we rely on it, drunk people are more prone to violence, men are more prone to sexual assult. But this is different. One of the strangest things about it is that it comes from the very values that I have. That all people have certain ‘inailiable rights.’ Then one perceives that a country is constantly abusing these rights, then one has to believe that everything this country does is wrong. Not just in forigne or even domestic policy, but in everything. I once got a lecture about how much better Cadbury’s was than Hershey’s. I never liked Hershey’s myself, but see no reason why it should be an emotional issue.
So here we have a comfortable, white, bourgeois liberal compares their life of comfortable safety to the millions who suffer, many due to the ‘Great Satan’, you can think of the US or Israel, and you want to do something about it. You need a scape goat for this immense feeling of injustice. So you become drawn in to this ‘special racism’ of the left and then everything about that country becomes vilified. The same way that we can not credit national socialism for reviving the German economy because we feel such large measurs of both hatred and fear of them.
Anti-american sentiment can not be fully explained in this way but the similarities between European anti-semitism and anti-american psudorascism can be. While I regret the vitriolic way I have attacked people for expressing these views, I have no regret over never seeing these people again and being removed from the liberal circles that brought me into contact with them.
Of course what I find amusing is that I have no problem getting along with the french, who are supposed to hate us, Serbians, who’s people still bear the mental scars of our constant bombing, or even muslems, whome I lived and worked with without incident but not liberals whom I am supposed to share politics.
The story actually begins when I suggested to a friend that one of our mutual friends had been accused of racism. She commented that did have right wing politics. I was a bit shocked having been faced with countless incidences of prejudice and perhaps racism from liberals. Therefore I thought the comment was a bit unfair but I could not put my finger on the feeling at the time.
I still do not know what to call this special type of bigotry. Racism does seem to fit skin coulour better and yet prejudice is not strong enough. We all have prejudice, in fact we rely on it, drunk people are more prone to violence, men are more prone to sexual assult. But this is different. One of the strangest things about it is that it comes from the very values that I have. That all people have certain ‘inailiable rights.’ Then one perceives that a country is constantly abusing these rights, then one has to believe that everything this country does is wrong. Not just in forigne or even domestic policy, but in everything. I once got a lecture about how much better Cadbury’s was than Hershey’s. I never liked Hershey’s myself, but see no reason why it should be an emotional issue.
So here we have a comfortable, white, bourgeois liberal compares their life of comfortable safety to the millions who suffer, many due to the ‘Great Satan’, you can think of the US or Israel, and you want to do something about it. You need a scape goat for this immense feeling of injustice. So you become drawn in to this ‘special racism’ of the left and then everything about that country becomes vilified. The same way that we can not credit national socialism for reviving the German economy because we feel such large measurs of both hatred and fear of them.
Anti-american sentiment can not be fully explained in this way but the similarities between European anti-semitism and anti-american psudorascism can be. While I regret the vitriolic way I have attacked people for expressing these views, I have no regret over never seeing these people again and being removed from the liberal circles that brought me into contact with them.
Of course what I find amusing is that I have no problem getting along with the french, who are supposed to hate us, Serbians, who’s people still bear the mental scars of our constant bombing, or even muslems, whome I lived and worked with without incident but not liberals whom I am supposed to share politics.