I have been pretty vocal about the uncomfortable rhetorical alliance between the far left and far right on this issue, and others. Whether this particular screenshot is real or not, the fact that leftist spaces on here don’t see why this is a problem is extremely disappointing. Especially since many of us have been critical of Israel for decades while trying to maintain a wall between that criticism and neo nazi subversion, only to have it torn down by people who seem newly minted in the issue.
And now it’s just stuck in a feedback loop of shit, where dug in egos seem more important than the issue itself. Honestly, whether right wingers have actually infiltrated db0 or not is almost besides the point. They seem to be sprinting towards some weird enlightened extremism one way or another.
I feel like I’ve been taking crazy pills after the Gaza situation. Suddenly there was a huge uptick in people in so-called “Leftist” spaces hating on Jewish people and being against it would easily lead to severe harassment, death threats and even doxxing.
I don’t know if OP is real but I do know that db0 doesn’t give me a lot of reasons to doubt it. I thought the idea of an anarchist instance was cool and I had an account there until the defederation debacle revealed they aren’t really Anarchist. Yet somehow in their eyes I’m the bad guy for not being comfortable with calls to violence. It’s just baffling. Not gonna lie, I want to think the OP is more widespread because I really don’t want to believe that so many Leftists would be so comfortable with anti-semitism.
Yeah the assertion that “death to Israel” isn’t a call to violence was pretty absurd on its face, but then to say that anyone who interprets it that way is a “Zionist” was straight up fucking Orwellian.
'marg bar ___ ’ is pretty standard rhetoric in farsi, it’s translated as ‘death to ___’ but doesn’t actually mean ‘kill everyone in ____’. for example people will say ‘marg bar trafik’ and not mean that they literally want to kill every other driver on the road, they just want the traffic to end.
this does tend to get misrepresented out of either ignorance or bad faith i’ve noticed.
Well people from other cultures or who have a different first language than English will interpret it as including the populace, no matter how much you try to convince yourself of semantics. Especially with Germans you have to specify that you mean the government and the IDF and not the populace, otherwise they are going to interpret words as some revanchist nightmare.
This has been a misrepresentation that’s been happening by propagandists and politicians since the 1979 revolution. it’s been propagated like that specifically to demonize iran in that way.
personally I appreciate the shock value of it, in a reclamation sort of way. I want to see an end to american imperial hegemony and the genocidal ethnostate it’s enabling.
an ‘end’ to the occupation doesn’t mean that everyone in it dies, it means it stops being apartheid and there’s restorative justice for the decades of genocide
I mostly agree with the second and third paragraphs. However to prevent misunderstandings, it is important to maintain that criticisms against Israel are voiced precisely to avoid jumping to conclusions.
Yeah, I mean it’s not surprising that an English speaker would mistake a farsi colloquialism. Like if I went around saying Khoda la’nat-esh kone in Iran it’s kind of understandable that people might not appreciate it.
the mistranslation of a relatively common protest chant/hyperbolic idiom does get amplified by media/propagandists and politicians who absolutely know better though. that misrepresentation has been a propaganda point since 1979!
does it make sense to you that someone can say death to america/israel without literally wanting to kill every american/israeli though? as an american i say death to america all the time. i want to see an end to american imperial dominance and the genocidal ethnostate it enables. is that so orwellian?
We’re not talking about propagandists saying “Iranians bad”, we’re talking about people writing the literal English translations themselves and expecting everyone else to guess what they mean.
I’m very familiar (and you as well) with how dramatic Iranian idioms can sound when translated literally, but how are we to know, in an English speaking space, that they are supposedly Farsi speakers?
The most likely/simple explanation is that most of these people mean what they write, rather than some rather niche lost-in-translation meaning. And then, when called out on that, they just give the same answer as you do. “It’s just a figure of speech bro”.
To be honest here: No, it does not make any sense. If I write “I want to murder you, slit your throat and kill all your children” I wrote that I want to murder you and your children. That is threatening to you and might scare you. It is also punishable by law in many jurisdictions. It’s also how languages work.
This is even worse in the context of the middle east: There is a lot of history of people murdering jews together with their children because they are jews. The current Gaza war started with terrorists killing Israelis because they were Israelis. And the Iranian government is totally sponsoring groups that are launching rockets at Israel. So if someone in that context is posting “Death to Israel” we totally will believe him that he wants to kill everybody there. There are so many people out there who really want to exterminate all jews that, well, people will think that you are one of them if you shout “Death to Israel”
does it make sense to you that someone can say death to america/israel without literally wanting to kill every american/israeli though?
In germany we take words literally, so what do you think? You can’t go else where, behave against their culture and think everything will be fine. ‘Death to…’ is harsh language and will be moderated.
I have been pretty vocal about the uncomfortable rhetorical alliance between the far left and far right on this issue, and others. Whether this particular screenshot is real or not, the fact that leftist spaces on here don’t see why this is a problem is extremely disappointing. Especially since many of us have been critical of Israel for decades while trying to maintain a wall between that criticism and neo nazi subversion, only to have it torn down by people who seem newly minted in the issue.
And now it’s just stuck in a feedback loop of shit, where dug in egos seem more important than the issue itself. Honestly, whether right wingers have actually infiltrated db0 or not is almost besides the point. They seem to be sprinting towards some weird enlightened extremism one way or another.
Removed by mod
I feel like I’ve been taking crazy pills after the Gaza situation. Suddenly there was a huge uptick in people in so-called “Leftist” spaces hating on Jewish people and being against it would easily lead to severe harassment, death threats and even doxxing.
I don’t know if OP is real but I do know that db0 doesn’t give me a lot of reasons to doubt it. I thought the idea of an anarchist instance was cool and I had an account there until the defederation debacle revealed they aren’t really Anarchist. Yet somehow in their eyes I’m the bad guy for not being comfortable with calls to violence. It’s just baffling. Not gonna lie, I want to think the OP is more widespread because I really don’t want to believe that so many Leftists would be so comfortable with anti-semitism.
Because fucking really?
Removed by mod
Yeah the assertion that “death to Israel” isn’t a call to violence was pretty absurd on its face, but then to say that anyone who interprets it that way is a “Zionist” was straight up fucking Orwellian.
'marg bar ___ ’ is pretty standard rhetoric in farsi, it’s translated as ‘death to ___’ but doesn’t actually mean ‘kill everyone in ____’. for example people will say ‘marg bar trafik’ and not mean that they literally want to kill every other driver on the road, they just want the traffic to end.
this does tend to get misrepresented out of either ignorance or bad faith i’ve noticed.
anyway marg bar amrika, marg bar israel
Is “death to” Farsi?
Well people from other cultures or who have a different first language than English will interpret it as including the populace, no matter how much you try to convince yourself of semantics. Especially with Germans you have to specify that you mean the government and the IDF and not the populace, otherwise they are going to interpret words as some revanchist nightmare.
This has been a misrepresentation that’s been happening by propagandists and politicians since the 1979 revolution. it’s been propagated like that specifically to demonize iran in that way.
personally I appreciate the shock value of it, in a reclamation sort of way. I want to see an end to american imperial hegemony and the genocidal ethnostate it’s enabling.
an ‘end’ to the occupation doesn’t mean that everyone in it dies, it means it stops being apartheid and there’s restorative justice for the decades of genocide
I mostly agree with the second and third paragraphs. However to prevent misunderstandings, it is important to maintain that criticisms against Israel are voiced precisely to avoid jumping to conclusions.
Yeah, I mean it’s not surprising that an English speaker would mistake a farsi colloquialism. Like if I went around saying Khoda la’nat-esh kone in Iran it’s kind of understandable that people might not appreciate it.
the mistranslation of a relatively common protest chant/hyperbolic idiom does get amplified by media/propagandists and politicians who absolutely know better though. that misrepresentation has been a propaganda point since 1979!
does it make sense to you that someone can say death to america/israel without literally wanting to kill every american/israeli though? as an american i say death to america all the time. i want to see an end to american imperial dominance and the genocidal ethnostate it enables. is that so orwellian?
We’re not talking about propagandists saying “Iranians bad”, we’re talking about people writing the literal English translations themselves and expecting everyone else to guess what they mean.
I’m very familiar (and you as well) with how dramatic Iranian idioms can sound when translated literally, but how are we to know, in an English speaking space, that they are supposedly Farsi speakers?
The most likely/simple explanation is that most of these people mean what they write, rather than some rather niche lost-in-translation meaning. And then, when called out on that, they just give the same answer as you do. “It’s just a figure of speech bro”.
To be honest here: No, it does not make any sense. If I write “I want to murder you, slit your throat and kill all your children” I wrote that I want to murder you and your children. That is threatening to you and might scare you. It is also punishable by law in many jurisdictions. It’s also how languages work.
This is even worse in the context of the middle east: There is a lot of history of people murdering jews together with their children because they are jews. The current Gaza war started with terrorists killing Israelis because they were Israelis. And the Iranian government is totally sponsoring groups that are launching rockets at Israel. So if someone in that context is posting “Death to Israel” we totally will believe him that he wants to kill everybody there. There are so many people out there who really want to exterminate all jews that, well, people will think that you are one of them if you shout “Death to Israel”
In germany we take words literally, so what do you think? You can’t go else where, behave against their culture and think everything will be fine. ‘Death to…’ is harsh language and will be moderated.
you mean the ongoing US-backed extermination campaign?
people conflating the entity conducting an ongoing genocide with jewish people writ large are the ones who are being antisemitic.