They
Uh, yeah.
The tweet Iseult saw was then deleted, but there are others.
“They’ve captured our media, banks, academia”…golly gee that sounds familiar, i.e. exactly what the Nazis used to shout, when they weren’t too busy dropping the zyklon B pellets into the “showers.”
There’s nothing wrong with the first phrase, you can argue it, but as soon as you get into that second one… Well, the game is up.
The original from ‘I Abject’ at Twitter (NB: which latter I usually stay right away from):
This IMHO is the old conundrum of the chicken and the egg. Israel was originally set up as a result of Turkey and her Ottoman Empire being on the losing side in WW1; set up on what was arguably the land belonging to the original Palestinians; the Philistines of the Old Testament.
BUT there is no book up there in sky in which it is written: ‘China belongs to the Chinese, Italy to the Italians, America to the Americans…’ Etc. There is only one rule, and it goes right back through human history, prehistory, and our animal ancestors and right down further through the entire history of life: ‘If you can’t defend it, you don’t own it.’
Dogs and cats know manifest that knowledge, as did the dinosaurs and every other species, even down to the plants with their thorns, spines, poisonous tissues, protective bark on their wooden stems, etc. The Jews have a case. So do the Plaestinians. And the war between the two will probably go on for the next 1,000 years or longer; punctuated of course by peace talks, settlements, breaches of same, resumed hostilities, etc, etc, etc ,etc etc.
(Damn and blast.! The ‘etc’ key has just fallen off my keyboard.!)
According to Politico, pro-Palestinian content is much more widely available on social media than pro-Israel content.
https://www.politico.eu/newsletter/digital-bridge/does-social-media-favor-palestine-over-israel/
Israel has a history of being the most actively condemned nation by the UN. In 2020, al Jazeera reported that Israel was 3 times more likely to be condemned by the UN than other nations.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/12/24/un-condemns-israel-most-in-2020-almost-three-times-rest-of-world
https://ask.un.org/faq/353420#:~:text=Member%20States%20select%20people%20to,the%20Minister%20for%20Foreign%20Affairs.
So our governments are simultaneously captured by Israel, and sending people to the UN who vote to condemn Israel. Suuure.
Meanwhile lets just ignore Dubai’s role as a destination for moneys stolen through corruption, and a host to Hamas’ leadership.
https://carnegieendowment.org/2020/07/07/dubai-s-role-in-facilitating-corruption-and-global-illicit-financial-flows-pub-82180
Media, Owen Jones wouldn’t have a job if that was true, and so far as the universities are concerned, there has been way too much stated support for the mass rape and murder of Israelis and Jews in general for this to have any currency whatsoever. The backlash against these universities would not have happened if they had been “captured” the way the tweet alleges.
It is based on the acceptance of conspiracy theories, complete with the natural armoring of said theories. Every source that could possibly work to falsify the theory – well that’s obviously all been captured by the Zionists.
To the point where, to paraphrase Stephen Colbert, reality has an obvious and well known Zionist bias. I mean it is our governments, it is our universities, it is our social media, it is even our banks!
TLDR: I’m going to be on the side that isn’t peddling conspiracy theories straight out of Nazi Germany, thanks.
The invitation is so ecumenical:
But if they were being extra careful about distinguishing responsibility for the actions of the Israeli government from Jewish people as a whole, you’d think they would have included Jews in the invitation. But they don’t.
“According to Politico, pro-Palestinian content is much more widely available on social media than pro-Israel content.”
I look at Quora fairly often.
I’m getting more pro than anti Israel content. A lot of the pro Israel content is cogent responses to anti Israel questions.
I might have upvoted some pro Israel content and now an algorithm is feeding me *only* pro Israel content.
As a proper skeptic I would like to find the ‘Steelman’ argument for the pro Palestinian position.
Is there some way to get around these algorithms to find the best arguments and data for *both* sides of an issue?
Bruce Gorton@#3:
You’re arguing against something a bit different than what the conspiracists claim, however. By “our governments”, they’re referring very specifically to the governments that ‘matter’–that is to say, Western Europe and America. After all, it’s America in particular who has the ability to shut down any resolution by the Security Council (along with the other permanent members). And we’ve done so, often giving Israel a pass on misconduct when maybe we shouldn’t have. Honestly, the unwillingness of the US to criticize Israel is probably the one legit argument the crazies have (and even then, that’s borne far more out of some geopolitical strategies that I, personally, disagree with, rather than any particular need to obey the government of Israel–the ‘special relationship’ is mainly a matter of mutual exploitation).
And pointing to Owen Jones when talking about ‘media’ is kind of silly. Again, they’re talking about the ‘big’ institutions–the few remaining newspapers, the major TV networks. We can see that those institutions are on the downfall because the media has become so splintered, going from ‘mass’ to ‘mainstream’ to ‘algorithmically determined’. But the big companies do still own the vast majority of media franchises. Again, though, it’s not the Israelis in charge, but rather a bunch of corporate ownership.
As for education, the claim (unsubstatiated and still absurd) is that the University ownership/leadership is captured, not the student population, who are clearly inclined to support the perceived underdog, never mind the fact that it’s still two dogs fighting viciously over the same bone.
SO, yeah, this whole thing is reprehensible, but to have any chance of arguing against it, you first need to know what the actual claims are.
Freemage
If they mean simply the US and Western Europe, then they need to be specific. Which admittedly they wouldn’t do because that would mean admitting that they don’t think any of the rest of our governments matter.
As to Owen Jones, is The Guardian not a major newspaper?
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/feb/05/keir-starmer-gaza-muslim-voters-labour
Harvard’s inconsistent application of its campus speech codes was a big part of what got Claudine Gay hauled before congress. That was very much an issue of university leadership, and it wasn’t a “captured” campus, or at least, not by Israel.
Off topic, though not entirely, but Elon Musk, in his own name, has recently posted this embracing of the ‘Great Replacement Theory’ on Twitter;
“Biden’s strategy is very simple:
“1. Get as many illegals in the country as possible.
“2. Legalize them to create a permanent majority – a one-party state.
“That is why they are encouraging so much illegal immigration. Simple, yet effective.”
The website Talking Points Memo notes it and provides a link to a historian who discusses the matter:
Our Generation’s Henry Ford
‘Elon Musk embraces the Great Replacement Theory, and historian Kevin Kruse unpacks the racist stupidity: “I know, I know, it’s hard to believe a guy whose grandfather left Canada because it was becoming too diverse and decided to relocate the family to a newly-segregated South Africa could ever embrace paranoid racist nonsense, but here we are.”’
He’s like this to a significant extent because of the dumb Twitterati (obviously that doesn’t explain everything); the people who’d claim he’s gone “mask off” made the Twitter-poisoned monster. Doesn’t mean we shouldn’t conclude that he isn’t still a tit and that he’s somehow improved Twitter.
Screwed my negatives up; should be “he’s still a tit”.
@JimBaerg (5): I don’t know whether it is any good as I have never signed up, but that seems to be the objective of Ground News. Maybe The Algorithm keeps popping it up for me because I comment here :-). A nice-to-have for those who want it; only necessary for those who don’t.
Alan #11
Thanks. I’ve bookmarked it to check it out.
From my first glance at it, it seems to be just stuff that is currently in the headlines.
I would also like to find the best arguments on both sides of some more long-running disputes that don’t get onto the internet equivalent of the front pages of newspapers.
Eg: I’ve been reading about how the “Linear No Threshold” model of harm from ionizing radiation ignores the ability of organisms to repair such damage. Thus it gets things roughly right for a brief blast of radiation (eg: being at Hiroshima in August 1945), but grossly overstates the harm from weeks to decades of exposure at modest dose *rates* (eg: the spread out fallout from a bomb, or *almost* any exposure due to nuclear electricity generation).
These arguments seem pretty convincing, but as a proper skeptic I want to find the Steelman argument for using LNT on low dose *rate* radiation exposure.
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