Thread by @Delafina777

There are a pair of articles in the Forward which aren't set up as a two-part story, but they form one, and it's concerning. The concerning stuff, strangely, is treated as context rather than the story.

And I mean EVERYONE should be concerned. (Thread)

forward.com/news/national/…

And here's the second one. forward.com/news/national/…

None of what I'm going to say is going to surprise anyone who's been, I dunno, awake at all during the past year and a half, but I'm still going to spell it out.

It's easy to focus on the neo-Nazis, & how white men in the tech industry and organized atheism and geekdom and all of those supposedly secular, rational, progressive spaces are enthusiastically embracing fascism, but the heart of the political base for it is white evangelicals.

And, like, I dunno, how do you even TALK about this without sounding like a tinfoil hatter? They're setting the world on fire.
--I've already talked at length about how they promote violence in the Middle East.

--They were a major force in turning Russia into the right-wing Christian, white supremacist force it is today. politico.com/magazine/story…

--They nurtured the brutal homophobia in Uganda and other areas of Africa. economywatch.com/features/Part-…
--and much, much more!

And look, I don't think Christianity as a whole is a death cult. Christianity isn't a monolith, and for every variant of evangelicalism, there's one of liberation theology and other positive forces.

But. White American Evangelicalism IS a death cult.

These people WANT the world to burn.

And it's pretty telling that some of their favorite recruiting grounds have always been prisons and the military--places where men are confined, in danger, and trained to be violent.

Evangelicalism's association with the military is nothing new, of course.

But it sounds like it's being escalated in a way that's really disturbing.

And again, I'm not going to be saying anything new here, really, just spelling some stuff out.

But first, context. Why should you care about antisemitism if you're not Jewish? Well, for one thing, for the same reason you should care about transphobia and government action against disabled people: it's a signal. Jews are one of the canaries in the coal mine.

But it goes a bit further than that. Antisemitism is the engine of white nationalism. Don't take my word for it--here's a professor who worked with the SPLC and came to that conclusion because of his work as a Black antiracist: politicalresearch.org/2017/06/29/ski…

To vastly (over)simplify: white people get antsy whenever there's a major cultural shift toward equality for non-white people. Since white supremacy (not just the overt kind, but the basis-of-American-culture kind) is based on the idea that anyone who isn't white is inferior...

...it presents quite the conceptual dilemma. If non-white people are inherently inferior, how is society progressing toward equality? How are non-white people managing to "win"?

(And to be clear, I'm not talking about the *reality* of how non-white people are treated in American society. I'm talking about white people's perception of it.)

Reconciling those two beliefs/perceptions is a dilemma--unless, of course, progress toward equality isn't happening because we ARE all equal and the idea that non-white people are inferior is wrong... but because there's a supervillain involved.

So, the narrative goes, what if the world isn't divided into ("superior") whites and ("inferior") people of color, but there was a third group out there? A group of puppetmasters pulling strings and trying to destroy society (in part, by promoting multiculturalism and so on)?

If you've ever wondered why (white/white-coded) Jews are Schrodinger's white people--why the question of whether (non-POC) Jews are white keeps coming up, why white nationalists keep insisting Jews aren't white but not saying they're POC, there's a big part of your answer.

If you've ever wondered why all those conspiracy theories keep coming back, somehow, to The Jews, welp, there you go.

And antisemitism doesn't usually play out like other types of racism, but where you find one--at least among white people--you're usually going to find the other if you poke around for 5 minutes or more.

But this is all old news. The flip-side of it is that for most of America's history, as (perceived) members of the only non-Christian religion most Americans were familiar with, Jews have been the poster children for American religious tolerance.

American self-conception is heavily based on the idea that we're a nation of religious tolerance, land of the free, etc. And so tolerating Jews--and protecting Jews' right to worship--is fundamental to our national self-image.

(Again: perception != reality)

And yes, deeply ingrained antisemitism and national pride in ostentatiously tolerating Jews because LAND OF RELIGIOUS FREEDOM can absolutely coexist, and have for the US's entire history.

And as far as symbols of that tolerance goes, there are a lot of big ones: the courts protecting Jewish rights, the police protecting Jewish communities, and of course the idea that this is a big part of the freedom the military protects.

So, we come to the point of this thread: the military has long been heavily Christian, but a move from passive intolerance (cluelessness, prejudice, not accommodating Jewish practice) to *actively eliminating Jewish leaders and services* is really ominous.

Because it signals that, as a nation, we're ditching the idea that a big part of our identity is religious tolerance.

And again, I fully--FULLY--recognize that things like legal protections, self-conception, etc. don't mean that minority groups actually HAVE religious freedom. But they're still tools, and important as declarations of intent.

So yeah, this is scary. And a lot of the scariness is in the details in those articles.

So, in summary: when the US has a group that it's always pointed to as the example of "Look how tolerant we are!" and its military is like, "eh, let's STOP tolerating them," that's a sign we're about to take another plunge into further open, shameless horribleness.

Antisemitic hate crimes had a huge jump after the election, but aside from a few dogwhistles, the *government* has largely been silent about Jews--it's been focused on other vulnerable groups. But the military is the arm of the government. :-/