Hacker News Reader

Comment by masterphilo | Hacker News Reader

I read the blog post and while the author's tone was a little bit harsh, I really doubt it can be called anti-semitic.

I guess that's why they re-assigned him and he wasn't fired. You probably don't want a "head of diversity" to be controversial in that way.

View on HN

That was one of the most heinous, blatantly bigoted screeds I'd read in quite a long time. There isn't anything defensible about it.

Does mild criticism shake you to your core, or something?

I'm not Jewish first of all, but to categorize the character of an entire group of people based on their birth/religion is the definition of bigotry.

"mild criticism" mixed in with generalizing Jewish people, regardless of country, in the last paragraph?

> If I were a Jew I would be concerned about my insatiable appetite for war and killing in defense of myself. Self defense is undoubtedly an instinct, but I would be afraid of my increasing insensitivity to the suffering others.

https://web.archive.org/web/20210601160519/https://www.kamau...

Blatant stereotyping of a people is not mild criticism.

It's definitely anti-semitic, but I regularly will see worse stuff even on here.

In other comments in this thread, even.

All I'm saying is that the charge of "antisemitism" is too heavy and the author's post didn't sound that way to me, but since I'm not Jewish, I'm not going to press this point this further at the risk of sounding too insensitive or privileged.

If you'd like a Jewish perspective on this, here's a comment made by someone who claims to be Jewish that basically echoes my sentiments -- that the author of that blog post was naive and got carried away in his rhetoric, instead of being an actual antisemite: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27385448

Usually the argument I see online is that criticism of Israel isn't necessarily anti-semitic.

But this is just straight up criticism of Jews, based on the actions of Israel. He's saying that Jews in general should atone for their inherent bloodlust.

That's not "harsh", he's picked a bad thing that some members of a group did and tried to apply it to all members of that group. In other cases we would say that's sexist or racist, and here it's anti-semitic.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com