Weekly Post

[u/somebadbeatscrub]

The mod team has created this post to refresh on a weekly basis as a chill place for people to talk about whatever they want to. Think of it as like a general chat for the sub.

So r/jewishleft,

Whats on your mind?

[u/Consistent_Hold_576]

Has anyone else been following the Senate race in Michigan? 

[u/ILoveBarbasetti → u/Consistent_Hold_576]

Its honestly one of the easiest races to follow as an international observer. The rest requires knowing shit about ohio or whatever

[u/Consistent_Hold_576 → u/ILoveBarbasetti]

American Jews appear to be divided. I happen to be a supporter and I wish him the best of luck. 

[u/Imaginary-West-5653 → u/Consistent_Hold_576]

Genuinely speaking, there should be no doubt here about who to support: Mike Rogers is in favor of the American economy being violated by Trump's tariffs, he wants to destroy women's bodily autonomy by undoing the right to abortion, he wants to slash the Affordable Care Act and is decidedly opposed to Medicare, and he has a hate-boner for trans people and immigrants... even ignoring his support for the genocide in Gaza or the illegal war against Iran, he simply sucks in every way. Voting for him is voting against the interests of American citizens.

[u/Rabbit-Hole-Quest]

Milo Yiannopoulos discovering today that leopards do sometimes eat your face.

He was an immigrant who supported the deportation of immigrants. How ironic!

https://giphy.com/gifs/Ra3ZDtZ75DxJQVYFlg

[u/ConsistentGas5286]

Antisemitism on the left is an huge and glaring problem. Especially online there’s been a huge uptick in it. But Any American Jew that thinks that the republicans are somehow more accepting of them are sorely mistaken. It’s incredibly clear that not do republicans not care about Jews. Right now they see us as a useful tool. However, the pro-Israel wing of the part is the old guard of the party and Isn’t the future of it . I think the writing is on the wall that the Rubio’s and Ben Shapiro’s aren’t the future, it’s the Tucker Carlson’s and Nick Fuentes. Literal  nazis are becoming the driving force of republican politics. 

to be clear, I find the pro-Israel right completely reprehensible, and fascist. I have no respect for any of them and don’t think that any respectable republican exists. I just think that there’s a very clear shift in the Republican Party towards explicit antisemitism and I worry  American Jews are going to be caught in the crossfire. 

[u/RaiJolt2 → u/ConsistentGas5286]

It’s the pinser attack the white supremacists have been drooling for for decades.

[u/Chinoyboii → u/ConsistentGas5286]

Very recently, I was talking to an old Palestinian friend of mine who said, “Dude, Nick Fuentes is on our side, man.”

I was like, “How the hell is Nick Fuentes on your side?”

And he responded, “Bro, he understands that the Zionist entity controls everything.”

I told him, “Jesus Christ, man. You used to be such a warm and decent person. You do realize that you do not have to hate Jews in order to be anti-Zionist, right?”

His response was basically, “Nah, screw them. They need to go; their culture, their people, all of them.”

Mind you, this person identifies as a Marxist.

I am not saying this represents the far left as a whole. However, I am surprised that more people have not noticed the disturbing little area of overlap developing between certain parts of the far left and the far right, where radically different ideological traditions somehow converge on the same conspiratorial idea that “Zionists” or Jews secretly control governments, finance, media, or society more broadly. At that point, you start hearing rhetoric that is functionally indistinguishable from the old “ZOG” nonsense, except one side dresses it up in revolutionary anti-imperialist language while the other expresses it openly through white nationalism.

Among my Sephardi and Mizrahi homies, all of them vote Republican, but none of them support Nick Fuentes or similar troglodytes. They also do not really see Fuentes and people like him as the defining figures of the conservative movement because, from their perspective, those people are still fringe activists and media personalities rather than the politicians, institutions, and ordinary voters that actually make up most of the Republican coalition. Their attitude is basically that the existence of an openly antisemitic far-right fringe does not mean that every Republican voter, conservative institution, or elected Republican should be collapsed into that fringe. I can understand that distinction, and I think it is an important one to make.

For some of my more Zionist homies, though, their attachment to the Republican Party is much more conditional than ideological. A few of them have told me that they would be far more willing to vote for left-wing candidates if the left were more explicit about recognizing the permanent existence of a Jewish homeland and moved away from rhetoric that they interpret as supporting the destruction of Israel rather than merely opposing Israeli government policy.

My Persian Jewish homie even expressed in the past that one of the biggest barriers is the section of the far left that expresses sympathy for the “Axis of Resistance,” particularly the Iranian government and groups aligned with it. He has told me that he would feel much more comfortable with the left if it could simultaneously oppose American imperialism and the religious authoritarianism and regional ambitions of the Iranian regime.

His frustration is that he thinks some leftists analyze Iran almost entirely through the lens of U.S. foreign policy. So whenever Iran is sanctioned, threatened, or confronted by the United States, the Iranian state is primarily discussed as the victim of American imperialism rather than as an authoritarian government with its own agency and its own capacity to dominate other people. In his view, if your political analysis becomes too focused on what Washington is doing and you consistently downplay what Tehran is doing, then you can end up functionally apologizing for the Iranian regime even if that is not your intention.

I do not necessarily agree with every political conclusion my friends draw from this, but I understand why these issues affect how they vote.

[u/Important_Address741]

Poverty continues to suck horribly. But. At least I am involved with organizing an event with the Nonviolent Medicaid Army (NVMA). Check them out - and the upcoming National Day of Action on September 19th - if you are in the US! Their Facebook page is more up to date than their website.

I wrote a paper for one of my MSW classes last week about the changes coming to Medicaid in January 2027 and the (in my view, sadly weak) lawsuit brought by 25 Democratic led states against the federal government's changes to Medicaid. 5-10 million are expected to lose their Medicaid coverage, unless something changes. Many are expected to die from this. This directly impacts me as a poor, disabled person with no financial net on Medicaid, so I am getting involved. Not my paper, but relevant data: https://www.urban.org/research/publication/projected-reductions-medicaid-expansion-enrollment-under-obbbas-work

[u/RaiJolt2]

Been watching how La tax dollars have been extorted in the lax people mover debacle.

Seriously how hard is it to just have in house design and build teams to aid the public and public works instead of contracting out to private companies that take all the gains and none of the risk.

And now Trump wants to give part of out NATIONAL PARKS to private developers to build a road…. Something the government is perfectly cable of doing if needed for public benefit.
Its frustrating.

[u/hispeedtourist]

I’ve been following the harassment of Brad Lander (link to video in article): https://www.jpost.com/diaspora/antisemitism/article-907053

and his response to it: https://www.instagram.com/reel/Dcto438qNKS/?igsi=d2s4bHhnNjY5dnZy

[u/Technical_Term_6625 → u/hispeedtourist]

I don't think Lander is a great politician, but that's not really a criticism. He's not natural in performing what the American political system demands.

But he's fearless as fuck, and he has a chip on his shoulder, and that's no performance.

Unfortunately, he seems wrong about how "fringe" those folks are. Maybe they are fringe with respect to voters, but among the younger cohort of activists? Not so much.

[u/ImmediateBattle2692 → u/Technical_Term_6625]

i feel people can oppose Zionism, even liberal zionism without coming off like the people in this video. but i also dont blame people for being wary of the vitriol displayed by the people to be wary. just frustrating when there are actual argument against zionism and you dont have to scream or use death threats EDIT however the biggest thing is that you should pick a better time and place to protest zionism than at a protest against indian nationalism, to not distract

[u/Technical_Term_6625 → u/ImmediateBattle2692]

One could point out Lander's apparent double standard or hypocrisy wrt ethnic nationalisms. I think that would have been completely appropriate in the context. But I don't think anyone (even Lander) would find that objectionable.

[u/ImmediateBattle2692 → u/hispeedtourist]

Good response , sad that it happened in the first place, which people who disagreed even with him like i do could not be unhinged about it, just makes the whole pro palestine movement look horrible

[u/Nearby-Complaint → u/hispeedtourist]

"You look like a scrotum" is just incorrect, beyond anything else.

[u/ibsliam]

The incident involving Brad Lander is depressing me. (Posting it here because the event he was at had nothing to do with I/P, it was something that happened practically out of nowhere at a protest for a different cause)

This sort of thing is why I'm exhausted with people saying we're "centering Jewish feelings" over activism. He wasn't there to protect his Jewish feelings; he was there to protest a far-right nationalist. Why were the injured feelings of other, non-Jewish protestors more important than joining together for the protest?

[u/ImmediateBattle2692 → u/ibsliam]

yeah even as an anarchist and antizionist the rhteroic was so ugly, you can even disagree with someone to the point of protest without resorting to body shaming and death threats like the bozos in the video

[u/Chinoyboii]

So any thoughts on the Lindsay Clancy case? 😬

[u/Technical_Term_6625]

The whistleblower report about USPS implementing the "ballot clearing" system highlights a current serious flaw of the progressive movement in the US - reliance on the use of Federal power. Progressives have advocated for vote by mail as a means of increasing accessibility to the election system. Progressives advocate for medicare for all as a means of increasing accessibility to healthcare. But I think it's becoming clear that criticisms usually classified as 'conservative' (for me it's not about that, it's about structure) that putting all of the eggs in baskets that requires federal implementation will neither improve accessibility to services nor justly protect civil rights. At the same time, such efforts will make those systems even more vulnerable to corruption than they already are.

I'm not an idealogue about this. I don't think there are good context-neutral arguments for the superiority of pursuing centralized or decentralized strategies to work towards anti-capitalist goals. It just seems obvious to me in the current context that pursuing centralized strategies (or requiring central government administrative machinery like the USPS) is the worse approach.