NEW YORK — It’s no laughing matter when it comes to how Jerry Seinfeld feels about what he seemingly believes is the lesser of two evils. During a Duke University event on Tuesday, the Emmy-winning comedian compared the Free Palestine movement to the Ku Klux Klan. He even went so far as to say that people who use the phrase “Free Palestine” are worse than the white supremacist group. Seinfeld ...
If anything good has come of this Israel-Palestine conflict thing, it has been exposing idiots.
But the infestation is bad, so widespread. It’s like moving your fridge and there are thousands of roaches under it.
Specifically pretend-progressive idiots, for whom progess is great when it’s for their approved groups.
Idk, I never would have learned about all the “nuances” within the far right about this issue if not for what happened to Charlie Kirk. It’s not just a pretend-progressive idiot thing. Idiots across the political spectrum have done some very interesting mental gymnastics over this conflict.
Charlie Kirk made some clearly antisemitic statements during his career, but he also fully supported Israel in this conflict. That is fucking dumb, but also sounds pretty on point considering Trump supports Israel in this conflict, yet refused to admonish his neo nazi supporters who were caught on camera during rallies doing sieg heils before his first term. Or his supports that marched with torches chanting “Jews will not replace us.” Not to mention some dude on Ketamine who hopped on stage during his second inauguration to do a few more sieg heils just to really rub it in.
Apparently the shooter was a fan of Nick Fuentes. Fuentes hated Charlie Kirk bc he believed he was “too moderate” in his far right views. Ok…
Nick Fuentes is apparently a Holocaust denier and has called for the death of jews in a holy war. He is very upfront and honest about his antisemitism. I guess this makes Fuentes the kind of guy Jerry Seinfeld apparently prefers as opposed to anyone who might otherwise just simply disagree with him about Palestine.
Nick Fuentes also called Charlie Kirk a hypocrite for claiming to be a Christian while supporting genocide and murder of hundreds of people on a daily basis.
I can’t argue with him on that particular statement. However, it also seems just a bit hypocritical to be an antisemite calling for the death of jews, while claiming to worship a jew who sacrificed himself for the sins of the world, and only asked in return that you love your God as the creator of all things and love your neighbor as yourself.
I always found weird the position some far right people take that
Why bother defending 1 if you believe 2?
Probably bc if you claim 1 didn’t really happen, it makes it a lot easier to downplay all the steps that had to happen to reach 2. That way when somebody calls you out for starting down that same road again, you can claim they’re trying to make a big deal out of nothing. Once it’s just normal for one group to be treated as if they’re deserving of less than any other human, nothing is really a big deal.
It’s not like one day there was no genocide, everything was peachy, then suddenly 6 million people were gone. It was a long road that began with normalizing attitudes, then legalizing discrimination, and eventually stripping away an entire group’s perceived humanity along with their rights.
I know some people claim they believe empathy is a made up new age concept, but it’s actually a tool humans have relied on for millions of years, even before they had a name for it. It’s that part of you that says this feels wrong. That feeling should drive you to act, or at least say something because you can recognize how it would feel if it was happening to me instead of them.
It’s can be ignored, but it’s what’s supposed to keep this from happening over and over again, unless individuals within a broader dominant group are allowed to normalize the idea that we’re us and that other group is them, so just ignore that feeling. Eventually this normalizes the narrative they are a danger to us. Inevitably it becomes anyone who doesn’t see that we had no other choice but to do what we did, just doesn’t understand or is refusing to acknowledge what they are really like. They’re not like us. Except in all the ways that they are.
I could understand if 1 was the public position while 2 was the one you speak only among like-minded folk. Then 1 serves as something that makes nazism and other far right ideologies more palatable. Is it the case for Nick Fuentes? I don’t know enough about him.
I don’t know much about Nick Fuentes either, other than what I already said (and that thing with that lady knocking on his door and him tazing her), but I don’t think 2 has to be the ultimate goal to believe one. That’s just where stripping away humanity (regardless of original intention) can always lead.
Like individuals have their own experiences and biases that lead them to beliefs, but when the bias of individuals starts being turned into policy and law, it means that a larger group is now helping to carry out those actions against others.
Think about it like joining the army and being sent to a war even if you don’t agree with your reasons for being there. There are some people that join the army bc they want to fight and kill, but I’ve known a lot of genuinely good people that joined the army at 18 bc they felt like that was their only option at the time, or bc they really thought they could help people by joining.
Not everyone that joins even sees combat, but some people are haunted by the things they end up having to do to complete the orders they’re given during combat. Even if its justified or they believe it was necessary to protect themselves.
Once you have a policy or command in place, you’ve gone from whatever the beliefs of a few people might have been, based on their own interactions and experiences, passed on to people below them in the chain of command being given as orders and carried out.
That’s usually how genocide works. The individuals creating the policy, giving the orders, or spreading propaganda aren’t usually the ones getting their own hands dirty by killing large numbers of people. That disconnect is usually what allows personal beliefs to turn into atrocities.
Ex: Stephen Miller is obviously a complete piece of shit. He can get on TV and spout a bunch of hateful propaganda, but would his lame ass ever be out physically detaining people? Hell no.
Yet he feels comfortable being the one to dramatically scream about needing higher quotas and threaten anyone that questions his policies (and even in his case, I suspect his biggest motivation is the money to be made off of this operation moreso than any actual strong ideology).
That’s a nice summary of some of the mental gymnastics going on!
Seinfeld is a known conservative. Has never been known as a progressive.
Also “dated” a 17 year old.
I mean I’d prefer people not being idiots. But yeah