When thinking outside the box just isn't enough
Jason C. McLean and Samantha Gold discuss Lucasfilm firing, or rather, not re-hiring The Mandalorian star Gina Carano after months of transphobic, anti-mask and finally anti-Semetic tweets. Will the role be re-cast? What about the fans still backing her?
Samantha Gold is an artist, disability activist and FTB contributor. Follow her artist page on Facebook @samiamart
Jason C. McLean is the Editor-in-Chief of ForgetTheBox.net Follow him on Twitter @jasoncmclean
Social media has been set ablaze following the news that Bill C-51, the Conservatives’ so-called “anti-terrorism” legislation, has passed. The Conservative government intends to use their new legislative weapon to ban any BDS movement on the grounds of hate speech. I won’t elaborate on that question here, since Jason quite eloquently did so in a previous article.
Obviously anti-semitism and BDS aren’t synonymous. Many Israelis and Jews throughout the world are against the occupation and colonization of the West Bank and the illegal blockade of Gaza – does that make them any less Jewish? If anything, it would make them more human!
But what this whole debate underlines, once again, is that you can’t consider yourself Jewish if you don’t prostrate yourself completely at the feet of almighty Israel that can do no wrong – you aren’t Jewish unless your every action is a perfect emulation of Israel’s moves.
In this parallel universe that Harper, Netanyahu and Irwin Cotler, among others, have created, your “Jewishness” is defined by your support for Israel. Thus as long as you support Israel, all is fine and well. As long as you support Israel, you can even support, let’s say, the Neo-Nazis in Ukraine, even arm them and give them training. You can send strategic advisors to the aid of notorious anti-semites such as Andriy Parubiy or Andriy Biletsky and yet still be anointed with the title of “biggest friend of the Jewish people.”
The hypocrisy of the Harper government has reached new heights within the past few weeks, especially after this government’s megalomaniac decision to directly intervene within Ukraine’s internal affairs. Defence Minister Jason Kenney decided to quell the rumours of the potential affiliation of Canadian troops with Neo-Nazi elements by issuing a statement refuting those claims.
But in issuing that statement, Jason Kenney proved his complete lack of understanding about the Ukrainian conflict or, at least, his intellectual dishonesty. It’s interesting to see that Jason Kenney seems to know how to separate a “Neo-Nazi” from a “Non Neo-Nazi” better than the Ukrainians themselves.
The sphere of influence of Neo-Nazi terrorist outfits in Ukraine is larger and more powerful than ever and indistinguishable from the state apparatus. Neo-Nazi elements are present within every single major party represented within the Ukrainian parliament, within government, and within the National Security Council, which is the main actor through whom Canadian military officials are coordinating their operations in Ukraine.
I guess being the best friend of Israel, gives you those sorts of benefits… Fighting against Islamic fanaticism on one side of the globe and supporting Neo-Nazi fanaticism on the other – that’s Stephen Harper’s foreign policy in a nutshell.
Anti-semitism has become a word that has been thrown around so much that it’s become merely a tool nowadays – a rhetorical figure of speech to quash contrary points of view. Unfortunately, because of its over usage and conflation with any criticism of Israel, the word has become devoid of its original essence, which is the hatred of the Jewish people, perpetuated by millennial racial stereotypes.
A year ago, this Conservative government organized the grandiose gala of anti-semitism in Ottawa and, with figures from across party lines, jointly denounced the “new anti-semitism:” a monstrous and preposterous new epidemic afflicting the world – the criticism of Israeli crimes against humanity.
This is the whitewashing of anti-semitism for political purposes, at its best. This type of whitewashing succeeds at doing exactly what it supposedly condemns: creating a racial stereotype and thus facilitating racism – in this case anti-semitism. In the universe of this new era of anti-semitism that comes in the drapes of criticism of Israel, Jews are seen to be a monolithic group: all support Israel, all support the illegal blockade of Gaza, and since Netanyahu said it a few months ago, every single Jew is against a two-state solution. As Steven Blaney said – at the time referencing the Qu’ran as justification for bill C-51 – “violence starts with words, hatred starts with words.” May I add violence starts with misleading racial stereotypes and hatred grows through the perpetuation of those racial stereotypes.
Nazi propaganda pumped racial stereotypes and conglomerated Jews as one and the same. That is how hate speech was born then and how it is born now. In defining Judaism as supporting Israel, the Harper government and all those that abide to such a logic are instigating hate speech, promoting a false racial stereotype and should be convicted under the hospice of their new draconian hate speech laws.
תיקון עולם
“Indeed, both Jews and Arabs are the Children of Abraham; Jews descended from his second son Isaac (peace be on him) and Arabs from the first son Ishmael (peace be on him). To Moses, God Almighty revealed the Torah, as He revealed to Jesus (peace be on him) the Gospel.” – Shahul Hameed, onislam.net
Some very tragic events took place over the past few weeks. Several people were killed in a Kosher supermarket in the suburbs of Paris. A shooting took place around a synagogue in Copenhagen. Following these, a video titled “10 Hours of Walking in Paris as a Jew” appeared, which, considering the neo-conservative ties of the journalist who shot the video, was a nothing more than a PR stunt for those who absolutely want to promote the Aliyah of European Jews.
And the tragic news kept on coming. A Jordanian pilot slain by ISIS, increased ISIS presence in Libya, the murder of three Muslims in Chapel Hill, the ongoing civil war in Syria, and the ever-present situation in Gaza… The only glimmer of hope came from Oslo this weekend, where Muslims and Jews joined hands in a very mediatized show of solidarity. In the face of all this madness and insanity, some have responded with even more madness and insanity.
The witch hunt that started in France against those were identified as “enemies of secularism,” and the birth of “radical” secularism – which in fact isn’t secularism at all, but just xenophobia in disguise – are just a couple of examples of the “madness” that is in the air. The madness culminated in its apex yesterday in a report by the president of le Conseil répresentatif des institutions juifs de France (CRIF). In the report, the supposed voice of the majority of French Jews stated that Marine LePen – the leader of the fascist Front National, the most anti-Jewish of all French political parties – was herself irreproachable, that the only problems were caused by “some members of the FN,” and that, in fact, most violence perpetrated against the French Jewish community were the acts of “Young Muslims.”
Recently, the so-called peak in ‘extremist religious’ violence has allowed “anti-terrorism” legislations to be passed throughout the world, at the cost of civil liberties and of democratic rights. On the other hand, this violence has also empowered fascistic sections of Canadian and Quebecois society, allowing bigoted and xenophobic discourses to go unopposed, and garner mainstream coverage.
The same has happened within the Jewish community, as well. The violence perpetrated against people of Jewish descent, or of Jewish faith, has empowered a scary xenophobic discourse, which doesn’t draw a line between Islamism and Islam; between a fundamentalist minority that receives much more attention than the fundamentalist segments of other religions, and the overwhelming peaceful majority of Muslims. On the 70th anniversary of the Shoah, of the liberation of Auschwitz, we must stand firm against such kind of discourse – it’s a moral duty.
This, in no way, excuses anti-Jewish discourse or actions – they are despicable and must be fought. But those who perpetuate the most prevalent anti-Jewish discourse today, claim to to be the defender of our faith, and consider themselves the sole voice of the Jewish people. The political consequences of this is slowly showing itself, even here in Montreal, not more than a few blocks away from where I am writing this piece. The Jewish Defense League (JDL), considered to be a terrorist organization by Israel, the EU and the United States, and whose slogan, ironically, is “never again” has set up shop in Montreal this past week. To those in the JDL who stress the motto “never again” and the need to “defend the Jewish community from the Islamist threat” I have but one thing to say: The antisemitism of the 1930s and 1940s is the Islamophobia of today, and if we really want “never again” to be more than a slogan, we must fight discrimination against any and every minority. We must fight discrimination in every shape and form.
The JDL’s discourse and the true notion of “never again” are antithetical. “Never again” is a universal call for tolerance, acceptance, solidarity, peace, and, most importantly, resilience against the horrors of xenophobia. Thus, if we truly want to follow the creed of “never again,” we must make sure we fight the presence of the JDL. We must fight all those who resort to a discourse that uses violence as a justification to perpetuate even more violence, that tries to justify one form of racism with yet another. It’s a discourse of hatred that disseminates itself in the disguise of religion, or of some higher moral ground, or in the drapes of secularism. It’s a discourse that is prevalent within the neoconservative movement across the globe right now. It’s a discourse that is at the backbone of the hatred that fuels ISIS, and other such Islamist organizations. It’s the ideological foundation of fascism and of fascist movements. It’s this discourse that links them all together.
We are all sisters and brothers. Either we fight together, or we will perish together as fools!
A luta continua.
