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Comment by _ache_ | Hacker News Reader

If you claim that, you have to back it up.

Otherwise, assuming there are Zionists everywhere is borderline antisemitic.

> assuming there are Zionists everywhere is borderline antisemitic

It’s more just basic conspiracy theorizing. Assuming there is a secret group in charge of world affairs is a lot more comforting than facing the reality that we’re careening towards political anarchy on multiple continents. I don’t think one need be anti-Semitic to subscribe to that system.

> Assuming there is a secret group in charge of world affairs

Ah and it just so happens to be the Jews again, gee what a shocker never heard that before. And no , not antisemitic at all!

> it just so happens to be the Jews again

It’s 2026, every group is secretly in charge to someone. The Russians, the deep state, the Indians [1]. It’s a chaotic world and even the brightest among us are struggling to thread a coherent narrative about it. That leaves lots of room for the less bright to do their thing.

[1] https://m.economictimes.com/news/international/global-trends...

No. I don't deny other groups could get attacked sometimes or have something vile said about them, but it's not at the same scale and geographic spread the Jews are having it.

One of these days we as a species really need to learn that Zionism and Semitism are not the same Venn circle.

Not all Zionists are Semitic (or even Jewish) and not all Semites (or even Jews) are Zionists.

Now, it’s obviously extremely easy to conflate Zionism with Semitism, and vice versa, which is a trap both the actual antisemites and those most likely to point and yell “antisemite” seem wont to fall into.

Personally I’d call that borderline antisemitic, since in either case it’s conflating an ethno-nationalist political agenda with both an ethnicity and a nationality that may not subscribe to or support that political agenda at all.

Yeah, a lot of Jews oppose Zionism for religious reasons. It's not fair to lump them together like that.

The word antisemitism itself is pretty funny though, as a thought-terminating cliche.

Can you imagine if any time the news media criticized white people, I could get them cancelled, (or in some countries jailed), for their antiaryanism? Wouldn't that be silly?

Then again, maybe that comparison doesn't work. After all, to see Jews as your equals is antisemitic: https://archive.ph/InK8h

The claim that Jews control or manipulate governments has been an antisemitic claim going back hundreds of years in multiple different variations. So, even if semetic does not equal Jew does not equal Zionist, any claim that one or the other controls a government requires some substance. Otherwise, it fits one of the most recognized template of antisemitic false claims.

The Israeli government does support Zionism and it does have quite a lot of influence with western governments. In the US, Israeli-tied special interest groups donate significant sums of money to our politicians who then vote in ways that benefit Israel. I don't think it's fair to say "Jews control the world" and I can certainly understand the sensitivity of that statement but it's not wrong to say that Israel has significant influence over the foreign policy of a world superpower.

That isn’t the claim that was made, though… unless you conflate Zionists in government outside Israel (claim actually made) with Jews in governments outside Israel (claim not actually made), thereby making my point. And it’s a conflation that Mike Huckabee — as just one trivial example — puts the lie to.

Observing that AIPAC both exists and has significant influence over American politics — especially the side of American politics that started an illegal and unjust war with Iran absent a legitimate casus belli — isn’t the same thing as putting on the tinfoil beret and screaming about the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and hasn’t been for quite a while.

It’s also important to remember that some of the most virulently antisemitic (meaning anti-Jewish) people alive are now, and long have been, actively Zionist precisely simply because they believe that restoring Jewish control over Israel will bring about the Christian-centric apocalypse of whomever claimed to be John of Patmos and thus delivery into eternal conscious torment any and every Jew that didn’t convert before the [entirely fictitious] Rapture.

That’s the fatal problem with equating Zionism and antisemitism in the first place… nothing stops someone from being rabidly both simultaneously.

And that’s all before we get to the nuance of there being plenty of Zionist-identifying Jews who are dead set against the specific form and flavor of Zionism currently controlling the Knesset.

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