The video shows Michael Yon making false claims regarding so-called “terrorists coming across the border being funded by Jewish money.” Yon was speaking at a “Take Back Our Border” convoy in Texas.

In the video posted on X, formerly Twitter, the man can be heard claiming that HIAS, a global Jewish nonprofit that works to protect refugees, is responsible for funding terrorists coming to America.

    • Billiam@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      Indeed. We need a new version of Godwin’s law. Something like

      The odds of xenophobia, homophobia, transphobia, or antisemitism appearing in a conversation is directly proportional to the number of conservatives participating in that conversation.

      • Eldritch@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        Godwin’s law was always more harm than good. Basically stating that despite a long history with fascism, it was inappropriate to compare Republicans to fascists/Nazis. Sure not everyone who votes Republican is a fascist. They’re just okay with fascists. But if you are a fascist or modern Nazi, if you vote you vote Republican and always have.

        What you’re putting forward is much more like a razor anyway. See Occam’s or Hanlon’s.

        • Billiam@lemmy.world
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          11 months ago

          …my dude, the only people who are okay with fascists are other fascists. Like, that’s not even a debatable question.

          Godwin didn’t say it wasn’t okay to call Republicans Nazis, he warned that one shouldn’t make such comparisons lightly because it risks desensitizing everyone to the atrocities the Nazis committed and numbs the impact being called a Nazi should have. And to an extent he’s still correct, as much of the Republican party thinks the issue with Nazism is branding (The Boys summed it up perfectly when Stormfront said "People love what I have to say, they just don’t like the word ‘Nazi’ ".)

          He also said it’s perfectly fine comparing Trump to Hitler.

          • Eldritch@lemmy.world
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            11 months ago

            I agree with you. Though perhaps I was being too subtle. Yes, if you are okay with fascists and fascism then you are one of them. The whole point was that it isn’t better to support it than it is to outright claim to be it.

            As the proverb says, the road to hell is often paved with good intentions. That may have been what Godwin intended. But that wasn’t the result. The result was we were loathe to even discuss the Republican party’s enduring fascism problems In general. Especially in recent times. Because someone would shout out “Godwin’s law!” as a discussion-ending cliche. Simply because Republicans hadn’t slaughtered millions recently.

            We lost all focus on how it starts, over defference with how it ended. Leaving many many people to wonder where the fascism that has existed for most of the last 100 years suddenly came from.

            • Billiam@lemmy.world
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              11 months ago

              Look man, I’m gonna need you to stop being so reasonable and polite when debating on the Internet, or I’m gonna have to call your ISP and get your internet privileges revoked.

  • stevedidWHAT@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    Idk about you guys but I hate Nazis more than I hate illegal immigrants.

    Hopefully their power grid can keep up this winter.

      • captainlezbian@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        Yeah, especially considering how the border goes through communities and we’ve relied on the labor of these immigrants since we stole that land from Mexico. Also complaining about people coming from Mexico to land that we stole from Mexico feels ironic.

          • force@lemmy.world
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            11 months ago

            Yeah nah it’s theft. It doesn’t matter how it’s framed. In the middle ages and before, where what side of the border you lived on was pretty much irrelevant to your life, it’d make sense to think of it the way you are. But in the modern day, where taking land often means completely altering and destroying the lives of the people that live on it, forcibly removing it from them is theft. The implications that come from it being theft is a completely different conversation.

      • Eldritch@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        Not attacking you or anything. But people can’t be illegal. They’re undocumented. And we should actively seek to reframe it as such. They are just immigrants. Regardless of whether they came here illegally or not. The term illegal immigrants has been popularized and pushed by fascist/conservatives as a way to frighten people and “other” immigrants.

      • queermunist she/her@lemmy.ml
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        11 months ago

        I’m sorry that their country was destroyed by US policies and they were forced to abandon their homes, I’m sorry that they’re coming here to be superexploited by brutal farming operations and meatpackers and slaughterhouses, and I’m sorry they’re going to have to find out how bad this country is in-person.

        I could never hate them.

        But this doesn’t make me proud either.

  • EdibleFriend@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    Jesus fuck I’ll never understand these people. So now the Jews are sending Mexicans? Do they hear themselves when they speak? How incredibly fucking stupid that sounds?

    • mosiacmango@lemm.ee
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      11 months ago

      It’s not that confusing. You figure out who you hate, and then find any possible reason for them to be the cause of all your life’s problems, no matter how thin or tenuous.

      Luckily, there are always people to tell you both of the above.

    • gedaliyah@lemmy.worldOPM
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      11 months ago

      This is not a new theory. This was the motivation for the 2018 Tree of Life shooting, which is the deadliest anti-semitic attack in American history.

    • YaBoyMax@programming.dev
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      11 months ago

      My uncle-in-law is convinced that the CCP is sending spies and sleeper agents in droves across the border. There’s just no way to reason with this level of delusion.

      • saruwatarikooji@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        Except they still believe that one… They even know what color it is.

        It’s blue, apparently, and you can protect your home from it by painting your roof blue… Doesn’t matter what shade of blue, just so long as it is blue.

        True to form… Someone began advertising their blue paint as protection from the laser.

        • CIA_chatbot@lemmy.world
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          11 months ago

          Yea, this crap is making it harder and harder to make jokes. It’s like someone installed a mod in the simulation that makes reality go bonkers.

    • trebuchet@lemmy.ml
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      11 months ago

      I kinda wonder if it had been said the Russians are sending the Mexicans if people around here might have bought into it despite the ridiculousness.

    • TheSanSabaSongbird@lemdro.id
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      11 months ago

      Right? It’s still the Jews? Really? WTF? East Indian Americans are rapidly outpacing “the Jews” in terms of elite professionalism, but it’s still all somehow about the Jews?

      What planet do these people live on?

    • captainlezbian@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      It’s because of their stereotypes. They see Jews as shifty underhanded masterminds. There’s no other minority group that they see that way so everything they don’t like they blame the Jews for.

  • nvvp
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    11 months ago

    Anti-immigration hysteria? Check. Anti-semitic conspiracies? Check. Now all they is some anti-black dog whistles to hit the trifecta. The odds are looking pretty good.

  • trebuchet@lemmy.ml
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    11 months ago

    Yet this is the same party attacking the left for being antisemitic, and the media never contextualizes their attacks with things like this or their Jewish space laser actual antisemitism.

    • SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca
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      11 months ago

      Socialists have an antisemitism problem because of the whole Wealthy Capitalist Jew stereotype. They hate wealthy people, they hate capitalists, so on an emotional level they have predisposition towards hating Jews. Not enough to kill Jews, but just enough to look the other way when someone else is killing Jews.

      The right wing has an antisemitism problem because of religious bigotry.

      This common hatred allows for strange coalitions to form between fascists and socialists. ie. National Socialism.

      Of course socialists tend to be so certain of their ideological superiority they feel like they can win over the fascists in time. But then there’s a night of the long knives and guess who are the ones holding the knives?

      Socialist spend so much time debating the minutia of ideology they become ignorant of emotional manipulation and how power dynamics work. This makes them susceptible to being duped into joining fascist causes and when they’re no longer useful to the fascists, they’re promptly disposed of.

      • Feathercrown@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        Socialists have an antisemitism problem because of the whole Wealthy Capitalist Jew stereotype.

        I’ve never met a socialist who believes that stereotype though

        • SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca
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          11 months ago

          The nature of emotions is that you can have a feeling that is contrary to how you think. That feeling may not influence how you think about Jews directly, but it can influence how you think about issues related to Jews. Just ignore a few details here, fixate on some other details there, and suddenly you think a group whose goal is to kill Jews might be right about a lot of things. You might think it’s wrong to destroy that group because they’re right about some things. You might attend their rallies and not think too much about the people at that rally cosplaying as people that murder Jews.

          See fascism isn’t really an ideology. It’s just emotional manipulation that exploits people’s predispositions. The goal of fascism is to get power through any means necessary. Socialists tend to think they’re immune to these manipulations, but that makes them all the more susceptible to certain kinds of manipulation. And a fascist will accept a socialist into their movement, so long as the socialist is useful in their goal of gaining (or maintaining) power.

      • Drivebyhaiku@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        Issue with your first premise about Socialism… I have never heard leftist and Socialist circles take specific issue with Jewish people. Quite frankly the stereotype of the rich Jewish person is tied into the idea of Usury being a sin in Christianity but not the Jewish faith… But when was the last time you heard of the church full of fire and brimstone proclaim participating in the stock market is a sin? Answer is, you don’t. Because it doesn’t happen anymore. As dogma goes it was subtly retired from popular consciousness over a lengthy process about 300 years ago. The concept of “the Rich Jew” being a distinct issue for having any kind of advantage over anybody else is just the lingering unexamined myth of an era where any loan made where interest was charged had limited sources. There is no bogeyman money lender anymore when secular short term loan businesses dot the landscape.

        The factor the main branches of Socialism all agree on is that the super rich should be taxed and measures made to put checks on monopolies. The faith of the people in those positions has zero relevance to that discussion. The common denominator is the amount of money made and the social ills that are perpetuated when that wealth is allowed to be unambiguously hoarded. Assuming that targeting the rich unfairly targets the Jewish people is buying into the antisemitic stereotype that paints them as the only rich predatory bogeymen of consequence.

        What Conservatives often don’t realize about hate speech is that there are protected and unprotected grounds. Israel is a political construct, a country. Becoming mega rich through exploitation is a choice anyone can make. Neither of these things are beyond criticism because they are both institutions independant of the body of religion. You have Jewish people who hate what the body politic of Israel is doing and you have rich exploitative people who are not Jewish.

        The near complete lack of understanding of the actual hard boundries of what counts as hate speech versus legitimate targets of criticism leave a lot of moderates in your position where they are out to sea and unable to pick hate speech properly out of the dialogue and are subject to false equivency propaganda that there’s hypocrisy when there’s not. In rhetoric there are solid rules about what counts and until you learn them you are sailing without a compass or stars.

  • Mouselemming@sh.itjust.works
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    11 months ago

    I disagree with the word “descends.” Aren’t their previous racist and otherwise positions equally low? This is a lateral move not a descent.

  • Burn_The_Right@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    How does a group “descend” to a position they never left. That’s like saying these conservative shitstains “descended” into racism and xenophobia. They are conservatives FFS!

    • ghostdoggtv@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      I think it’s funny how the starting point was they’re christian nationalist secessionist traitors but OP’s red line is anti-semitism.

      • MataVatnik@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        It’s pretty common to see in the Jewish culture. They generally really don’t give a shit about anything outside their bubble but when something happens to them they demand they world drops everything to help them or otherwise you’re a piece of shit.

        • dangblingus@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          11 months ago

          I see where you’re coming from, but in the case of right wing conspiracy theories, “the Joos are secretly controlling the world!” is a common topic of conversation.

          • MataVatnik@lemmy.world
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            11 months ago

            Yeah, not saying that isn’t true. These conspiracy kooks are wild. I just grew up in a Jewish community, so being force fed propaganda from the time I was a child got kind of exhausting. Especially when I got older and started to see through it so I think I have more of an averse reaction to it than most people would.

    • Drivebyhaiku@lemmy.world
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      Technically there is a legal answer but unfortunately in the States it has different possible definitions at the State and Federal level.

      In a very general sense one in part looks at intention and also all the factors around in the environment. If I were to go “we should kill the !” in a forum such as this where generally speaking we are all just people talking and hyperbole is more or less the norm it’s probably not going to meet the criteria of a chargeable incitement. If I as a speaker at a podium where I have been marketed as some kind of authority - even if that is just implied by the fact I am on the podium - start winding up a crowd with the intention of setting them loose to a criminal purpose or start yelling at someone who is already weilding a gun to shoot then that’s a pretty strong case for incitement. Your intention is made fairly clear and you are in a place to directly influence in an outsized fashion how events might play out.

      A lot of the harmful rhetoric that goes on, while priming the stage for individual people to become aggressive and more predisposed to take out their aggressions on the target (stochastic terrorism) has been leaned on quite heavily in modern times it does so basically cheating the system. If you start low and slow and let the water appear to boil itself then it generally protects you from a incitement charge.

  • Erasmus@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    In a separate video of the same event posted by Ryan Matta, he also claims that Hamas and Hezbollah “are coming across” the U.S. border. “Venezuela is filled with Hezbollah,” he said. “Our borders are wide open, it’s our government that’s doing it.” Yon reposted the video with the caption “Allahu Akbar!”

    So is it Jews or Hamas/Hezbollah?

    They can’t even keep their shit straight that they are telling people. 🤦🏻‍♂️

    • S_204@lemm.ee
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      11 months ago

      They probably don’t know the difference. They’re from the same place after all LoL. These people aren’t smart.

  • Minotaur@lemm.ee
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    11 months ago

    I was told that 21 year old college students advocating that less children get blown up were the antisemitic ones?