Israeli and Zionist influence in the USA is a purposeful choice of the American government. It allows the American government to circumvent many domestic and international laws by allowing Israeli firms to do the spying and dirty work for them. Israel is essentially a rogue state that is entirely controlled by the American intelligence apparatus (and therefore, American capital). This has created a feedback loop of constantly reinforcing settler colonialism and American economic extraction of the Middle East. If America withdrew support to Israel, this feedback loop would cease and Israel would be greatly diminished or completely collapse.
Saying Israel controls America is simply wrong, stop saying this. I will remove your post. ✌️
edit: altered title for clarification and to avoid nonsensical semantic arguments
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Israel is essentially a rogue state that is entirely controlled by the American intelligence apparatus (and therefore, American capital).
What the fuck is this shit? Israel is literally in the process of committing the worst genocide of the 21st century and now we’re getting mod-sponsored hasbara that Israel has no agency and it’s all just America?
Yeah I had let it go after the last one despite only calling multiple times for something to acknowledge the tendencies which I can only really regard as Jewish supremacist (‘the Jewish Israelis can’t be guilty of doing things aside from the US empire, otherwise it’s ZOG’ has to carve out some space and I can’t imagine why else other than Jewish supremacy)
I don’t think the mods are “Jewish supremacist”, they’re afraid of Hexbear looking antisemitic in the eyes of people who don’t distinguish between anti-Israel sentiment and antisemitism. It’s a silly concern IMO since those people already hate Hexbear for being “tankies” and actual antisemitism has always been a bannable offense.
Yeah I don’t intend on accusing anyone of “being Jewish supremacist” just that a tendency to tacitly accept some arguments based in it has occurred. That includes overprotection against anti-Semitism relative to other biases (by overprotection I mean protection against things not actually anti-Semitism so ‘overcorrecting’, not the zeal with which protection is done)
Two parties (America and Israel) can be guilty of genocide
Do you even believe two parties exist? Because you just said that Israel is "entirely controlled " by US intelligence, a group which is famously bad at controlling their various proxies.
This whole thread is starting to feel like
where mods decide that Israel gets special treatment because the reality of what Israel is doing is running a little close to old antisemitic tropes (nevermind that Israel = Judaism is a Zionist idea in the first place).
I’m more inclined to say it’s a mutually beneficial relationship in which the US overlooks Israeli influence (and control) in US politics because of the benefits it gains from Israel. The US could at any time reverse this, by removing its support for Israel, but the issue with this argument is that the US literally never will do this because of both the benefits of Israel to the US in the middle east and the influence(and control) within US politics.
It’s an entanglement. A tangled web of connections that can not be unentangled. They simultaneously control each other and because they will never disentangle they will never cease to simultaneously be controlled by and control the other.
I do think it’s strongly flawed to say the US simple controls Israel by its ability to step back from support though, it’s not a card that can or will ever be used so it functionally does not exist.
Another good, nuanced take that captures why I didn’t like the original post.
the OP is a clumsy attempt to clarify the boundaries of discussion on the site to conform to the comfort of selected individuals. All these nuanced takes are at cross purposes with that. Irrelevant at best because the decision has been made and input not required.
I don’t think the admins are against input. If they were I wouldn’t even be allowed to say this.
What they do from time to time is act clumsy in laying down their boundaries. They’re absolutely right to say it is totally unacceptable to make the far right argument of Israel controlling da wurld. Which is really all that they are saying with this post. The issue is that they get this across in a way that implies there is a problem in the wider userbase’s nuanced takes, which there almost always is not, and when this is taken the wrong way people negatively react because they do not want a chilling effect on debate about the nuanced entanglements.
I agree that it’s wrong and bad analysis. I could say more about it but mostly I’m just wondering why more poor judgement interventions being made by mod/admin team. Like are you bored or something? Not enough notifications this weekend?
Obviously a policy decree like this without discussion is going to rub people the wrong way regardless of its content. Like obviously. If you are trying to solve some sort of problem, you should say what the problem is and why you think this is the way to solve it. Instead of unilaterally announcing site political policy, apparently on your own individual initiative. Is there like some sort of schedule where carcosa has to have a reason to make an accountability post every so often? Is it over due? Are you attempting to concoct a learning experience to train new mods in crowd control? Trying to boost site traffic? Why would a person in a position of authority decide to make this particular intervention? On any topic.
Have the discussion then make the rule. Good god. Why always doing it the other way around? Announce a rule to provoke a discussion?
It really makes me thump my head in particular for someone who was on the wrong side of the recent
israel-coolstruggle session that was so upsetting to make announcements of site political policy on the same topic. My feeling is that this is a continuation of that conversation. At least this time you have bothered to come up with a coherent political idea so it shows some progress I guess. But it is not tied to the intervention you have decided upon, so still incomplete. It would have been better for someone with more credibility on this issue to introduce the question. Honestly it does seem intentionally inflammatory.To recap:
The mods/admins (including OP kristina) apparently arrived collectively amongst themselves at a completely ass backwards opinion which was in opposition to the entire rest of the userbase. (Briefly for those who missed it: the then-non-existent emoji of the burning israel flag would, if added, be an antisemitic dogwhistle and/or convey approval of the holocaust.) This was a reflection of some sort of prior discussion and ideas which had at the time had some degree of consensus from userbase. In the intervening years, every person on planet earth had their analysis of this issue sharpened at least a little bit, hexbears included, and the general opinion had changed dramatically which was not understood by the mods/admins. Instead of engaging with the political concepts and moment, they decided to instigate and then all piled on a giant shit show throwdown fight. Which when they understood themselves to be losing badly, told the “stupid” users to stop wasting their time posting on trivial matters. Many different aspects of political argument from users only met with inter-personal, conspiratorial, and emotional from mods/admins.
Eventually, “confused” why anybody (to say nothing of everybody else) cared about inconsequential emoji, the mods/admins backed away from the fight, unbanned numerous users, emoji was added by 1 mod who apparently was able to change opinions with rest of planet earth. The userbase was overall managed into a more peaceful situation because ultimately, that’s how the balance of power goes. Various people left the site or withdrew because the conflict was so hostile. The collective political clarification came at a price.
But unless I missed it (and I could have) there was never any resolution. No indication that any of the minority who were on the incoherent side of that argument changed their mind politically during or after the struggle session. Nor was the question of why mods/admins were permitting and even encouraging each other to go around ratcheting up the hostility on the basis of personal disputes.
It was just a stalemate. Mod applications opened and I assume (?) the team expanded, hopefully adding some diversity of opinions to better reflect the userbase. Everyone awaiting vague reforms.
Even kamala harris knows that everything exists in context and we didn’t just fall out of a coconut tree. I am not “relitigating”. I am wondering why again mod deciding to stir shit up by leading with censorious and dismissive assertions instead of attempting to collaborate.
I think this choice does a real disservice to the ostensible goal of the intervention by winding up feelings of interpersonal power struggle with politics. It is so arrogant, in the specific context of the recent chapter described above.
And look, if you are going to lead with threats it ought to be with an argument which has been better developed. It is clear from comments already that userbase again has a more nuanced understanding of the topic than the person who condescendingly lectures and warns of consequences should they step out of line according to her judgement.
Even those who broadly agree with the core ideas are seeking to develop the point further. Because as posted, it is insufficiently mature. Disagreement, discomfort, confusion, and contributions are being made re the politics and/or the policy. This comment is solely addressed at the policy, its implementation and the broader framework.
At minimum, the political stance that is to be enforced on this website requires significant clarification so that users can understand what the rule applies to, and mods can have clear guidance. Which is good for mods because it avoids the perception that that are arbitrarily enforcing ill-considered, unknown and unknowable rules according to their mood. It’s better if there is some degree of mutual understanding rather than initiating with conflict.
Soon will have a bunch of bans I guess? In this very thread there are outright refutations, yet the comments are not removed. So a rule is announced, then it is immediately ignored? On replies that generate a notification to OP who is so interested to enforce. So what is the meaning?
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Good to see you Hellinkilla, and good post. Full agreement from me with every line above.
I agree with this post. This is a recurring issue, there’s clearly a problem with how these things are decided.
@CARCOSA@hexbear.net , I asked a while ago in a shitshow of a post I probably shouldn’t have made, but I’m coming back to it now. I think hellinkllla here is highlighting the important point about how we keep coming to this sort of moment.
I’m eating ice cream rn
(edit: dw its not dairy)
@hellinkilla@hexbear.net provided what I thought was well thought out feedback to this moderation post, and I think this is a very dismissive, unproductive reply. Why reply at all?
I agree that it’s wrong and bad analysis. I could say more about it but mostly I’m just wondering why more poor judgement interventions being made by mod/admin team. Like are you bored or something? Not enough notifications this weekend?
I said I was eating icecream :smuglord:
Jesus why the fuck are you being so dismissive? Is this a thing where mods get drunk and do horribly short-sided and harmful things for fun? If it’s an inside joke, have fun I guess, but it’s unbarably cringe and making me doubt trust in mods at all
Starting to see the downside of a site culture built on a subreddit built on irony poisoning.
I think the site culture still maintains some boundaries at which we react seriously to hard work put into a thought or idea. This is just an instance of someone missing that entirely and needing to reflect on that. Maybe it is impossible to maintain these 2 different cultural aspects I guess
Yes, I agree, it’s OK to be ironic sometimes as long as you can be serious when needed. I think the irony has been reduced over the years, but sometimes it can still spill out like this in a completely counterproductive context.
and making me doubt [sic] trust in mods at all
My faith in the mods hit rock bottom during the DNS issue and has remained at rock bottom across all the other struggle sessions of the past year. Seeing this thread, Pippi Longstocking has for the umpteenth time put her hand on my shoulder and told me to make an Eigo Kinshi splinter of Hexbear already… Alas, I remain broke, know jack about computers, and don’t like that sort of attention, anyways.
Kristina, you’re not touching grass, you’re being mean.
As I said, no one is making you reply. You can just say nothing, lol.
If you’re that busy eating ice cream maybe you shouldn’t be a mod
this site is toast
Why are we pretending that nation-states are singular entities with their own “wills”? They are networks of intelligent actors exchanging information and “energy” (money in this case). The “israel” net is heavily overlapped with the “america” net, and there is a large flow of information/energy across the 2 nets. The “america” net being much larger gives more of its energy to “israel” than vice versa, but the word “control” is meaningless for describing interactions as complicated geopolitics.
A lot of the discourse around this whole topic uses the verbal short-hand of treating nation-states as if they were entities with a will. And for good reason because a lot of the times, it’s an OK approximation. But other times, you just end up arguing about meaningless things.
Very good post. Agreed 100%
We don’t need to pretend that the exact opposite of “zog” is true just to prove the nazi’s wrong. We cant ignore Israel’s own agency here. The contradiction of believing their own ethnic supremacy while being wholly dependent on the US is part of the Israeli psychosis. It has driven them to control as much of US politics as possible. First as a matter of survival, then as a matter of pride. We can’t pretend that individual US political and media figures aren’t controlled by the Israel lobby just because the US as a whole controls Israel.
Israel is essentially a rogue state that is entirely controlled by the American intelligence apparatus
You can’t be a “rogue state” yet be “entirely controlled”. That would be a puppet state. They could be controlled but aren’t. The leash is almost always slack. Also the leash isn’t the " American intelligence apparatus", its the federal budget.
Edit: Your title is flaming bullshit, like WTF? Israel absolutely does control many US politicians. Who the fuck is Ritchie Torres then? Jamal Bowman and Cory Bush just disappeared on their own.
as pertaining to your edit, ted cruz literally said he’s in american politics to be israel’s biggest supporter lol. 100% in it for the israeli dollars, not at all for texans. so yeah, i don’t know about this post. i don’t like antisemitism. i think it’s gross and should be bannable. i’m not sure i have EVER seen anyone being antisemitic on hexbear. even once.
The mod teams reeks of UK labor ideas of antisemitism and is being absurdly reductionist.
Hey so when are we getting that official constructive session on Zionism in the mod/admin team? Just chucking things like this over the fence doesn’t count by the way.
Example: “Israel is essentially a rogue state that is entirely controlled by the American intelligence apparatus (and therefore, American capital).”
This is incorrect and Zionist apologetic and I think it’s being thrown in because of focusing on a right wing trope that absolves US blame, but it is actually an overcorrection. Same as the Zionist entity flag burning emoji. Instead of overcorrecting and making escalatory announcements, you should really actually do that constructive session to deal with Zionism in the mod and admin team, which I will remind you is tantamount to Nazi sympathy in the mod and admin team.
I usually defend the mods here somewhat because I think they’re trying their best, but yes, that whole thing was never properly addressed and clearly isn’t over.
if they were trying their best, they would take seriously the many, many concerns people have had about a lack of accountability, transparency, and community input over the past year. instead they continue to make decisions in a black box matrix server where they shittalk the userbase - the people that actually make this site worthwhile despite its many, deep problems - and run cover for abusive members of the community if those people are their personal friends or they find them funny enough or they align on some pet issue. i’m not mad at your comment to be clear, i’ve agreed with your analysis across this whole struggle sesh and am pointing out what i think the real core issue here is.
shit, i wanted to find the right time/place to make a nerdy effortpost about how people are operating on an oversimplified view of what a “vassal state” is, how there’s a base superstructure feedback loop here where US imperialism is the root cause, but belief in Zionism w/in the ruling class takes on a life of its own and informs the base, but that’s not worth it right now because it’s clear people’s analyses on israel aren’t the issue and neither is antisemitism. it’s site management refusing to take an L, self crit, change site processes, and then continuing to cudgel the userbase with their radlib liberal zionist brainworms they refuse to grow on. (and to be just slightly conciliatory, yes, mods are not a monolith - when i say “the mods, the admins, site management” i mean admins and the powermods they allow the most sway over the community).
shit, i wanted to find the right time/place to make a nerdy effortpost about how people are operating on an oversimplified view of what a “vassal state” is, how there’s a base superstructure feedback loop here where US imperialism is the root cause, but belief in Zionism w/in the ruling class takes on a life of its own and informs the base, but that’s not worth it right now because it’s clear people’s analyses on israel aren’t the issue and neither is antisemitism.
Please do still make that post if you can! Despite the disappointing mod behavior, I still think that that would be an interesting post and would generate an interesting discussion.
maybe in a chiller comm once the struggle session dies down
it was mostly gonna be some basic marxism 101 about how base-superstructure operates
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I salute our hardworking mods for their roof-knocking posts announcing they will be demolishing any replies or posts that contain the antisemitic lie of israel using money, clout, intelligence or media to influence other nations. Israel represents all Jewish people around the world and one word can be substituted for another when determining if post or reply is vile antisemitism or just garden variety political speech. Thank you for standing up for our forums suffering Israeli posters who just want to be able to use the respected adl’s definition of antisemitism like the rest of social media does.
If it weren’t for your commitment to holding the most expensive brand of paint chip up to people’s words before applying rules this place would fall into utter chaos.
Pissrael is just a smol puppet
lol jfc. Sure let’s say control is the wrong word. Does Israel heavily influence American politics? Yes. If you think saying that is anti Semitic you might be a Democratic candidate. It’s a symbiotic relationship at this point. We’ve been blaming America already for a while now, blaming Israel is new to us. 15 years ago if i heard the word zionist, it was some white supremacist shit. It’s also not our fault they are an ethnostate.
Oh we got 2 threads about this. I’ll post the same thing in both. I will not argue with anyone about this.
“Isreal has a powerful lobby with lots of Western backing and a far reaching influence as a result” is fine.
“I’m gonna use neo Nazi terminology that originates from white supremacist conspiracy views about how Jews secretly control everything” is not.
It’s honestly not even that complicated. One is factual. The other is neo Nazi propaganda. Hexbear can do better. Death death to the IOF
the issue here is that nobody seems to know who or what the fuck yall are talking about with this nazi propaganda supposedly being an issue on hexbear. who here can say they’ve run into antisemites or antisemitism here? i’ve read about a billion posts on this site criticizing israel, israel’s influence in western governments. not once have i read any sort of antisemitic conspiracy theories, it’s all based entirely in material analysis and using our own eyeballs and ears.
some mod can make a post like this, then suddenly criticizing aipac is antisemitic and posts about who is taking money from israel, or about how you have to sign a loyalty pledge to israel to be a fuckin mailman in the US will be removed for “antisemitism”
i really think mods need to hold some sort of vote on this, because judging by the replies in this thread the userbase seems to really not know what yall are on. i can’t speak for everyone ofc but i do not wanna use a website that conflates criticisms of the zionist entity with being antisemitic. hexbear is quite literally the only place online where at least right now, you can freely criticize israel without being censored or fearing that you’re secretly interacting with a bunch of nazis. granted i dont look at the mod log, maybe there are a ton of antisemites washing their antisemitism with criticisms of israels. i definitely don’t see it tho and it doesn’t seem like anyone else on this site does either?
They’re probably on edge because of this:
I (USA) bought a dog(Israel) specifically for fighting the neighbours’ dog(all Muslims), I put it on a leash(literal money and weapons) the length of my block(the world) and now it’s biting everyone(everyone). Somehow this means my dog now owns me.
The military industrial complex could not exist without america giving it money, yet politicians are bribed and controlled by it in order to support it more. America supports the military industrial complex, and the military industrial complex takes steps to control politicians to keep the money flowing. It’s a vicious cycle where the 2 are grafted together. Please ban me for being an anti-militaryite for saying this.
capital controls the US and if elections were publicly funded and no PACs were allowed then there would be no AIPAC to control US policy in israel’s favor
with that being said i absolutely do not support removing people’s posts simply for saying israel controls the US. its definitely a miscalculated statement but unless its specifically about jewish people then removing comments like that, intentionally or not does not help with the “israel controls america” shit they already think. i think its also kinda fucked up to take people’s ability to voice their frustrations about the state of our country away. so many laws in the US exist to protect israel. so much of our politics is just “how would you protect israel?”. everyone on tv is a zionist spewing israeli propaganda. you’re gonna push people to the wrong side of hating israel if you start removing posts criticizing the israeli state, which has nothing to do with jewish people
i just do not see anything wrong with saying X country controls Y country. people are allowed to be wrong. if they make it about jews then yeah remove and ban because thats not someone who can be educated or reasoned with but israel is a state and they do not represent jewish people so i just really don’t see how its useful for anything other than unintentionally protecting israel from criticism
saying israel controls the US
I also wanna note ive never even characterized it like this, i’ve been pushing back on the seeming idea that there’s NO INFLUENCE AT ALL, WHATSOEVER, which seems really hard to believe when we’re literally discussing it because of the existence of a PAC that exists for the express purpose of influencing American politics, and this is like the above board influencing project that is KNOWN about. The country that sent thousands of explosive pagers to do a terror attack isn’t going to even attempt to influence its “liege” state to keep giving it whatever the fuck it wants? It’s easy enough to just throw your hands up and be like “well the U.S. is just going to give them whatever they want anyway” but that isn’t really exactly a stellar analysis and it’s just the result of thinking “well, it’s the unsinkable aircraft carrier, america NEEDS it” and terminating thought there. Great job you really solved it!
P.s. regarding AIPAC i noted in another comment bemoaning associating them with being foreign that their literal fucking name emphasizes their being Israeli first, it’s “American Israeli” not the “Israeli american” PAC. That’s a choice. It’s like how calling the CPC the “chinese communist party” tries to paint them as a Han nationalist thing whereas the “Communist Party of China” doesn’t.
I big missing piece of this discussion is the historical Christian influence for Western control the Holy Land. In so many ways the Crusades never ended. It also sheds additional light on why Israel is held in special regard compared to other American and European imperial projects. I find it useful to see Israel through a Crusader State lens as it reveals parallels of the, often competing, influences that historically drove Western interest in that spot in particular.
If America withdrew support to Israel, this feedback loop would cease and Israel would be greatly diminished or completely collapse.
Absolutely true. I would add the rest of Europe and “The West”, but we all know they are on board anyways. The Crusader States eroded and collapsed with the attenuating support of the West as well.
Based. Amerikkka is not the victim here.
EDIT: Seems I was incorrect about Amerikkka simply being Europe’s attack dog.
you’d think. I have a friend in mil intelligence here. The CIA is running the show. Now again our respective bourgeoisie interests aligns, for the most part.
Europe is an interesting case, you can see a lot of splitting on America and wanting more domestic imperialist armies. I think their relationship with the USA is far more complex, the USA can do without Europe and vice versa if they really needed to. Some Marxists even argue we may see a tripolar world soon (global south with Russia and China at the helm, Europe, and the Anglosphere)
Israel will always be dependent on foreign powers.
America absolutely has the dominant position over Europe and it is not symmetrical to the relationship with Israel regardless. I’ve seen some people call it a protection racket, and I don’t think that’s exactly the right image but it’s pretty close.
Yeah, it’s completely incorrect to call America the attack dog of Europe. Staggeringly incorrect. And calling “Israel” America’s attack dog is an oversimplification at best. “Israel” has its own interests, it’s not just some extension of American power in West Asia, even if that is one of the things it does.
