“Why I left the left”
Removed by modi don't think it's a conspiracy to normalize Israel. I think it's like when COD had the " highway of death" but in their story the Russians, not the Americans, did it. Now you have a former IDF trainer, participant in the 2006 invasion of Lebanon, literally pro Gaza massacres, Gal Gadot partake in a role reversal of one of the most notorious IDF crimes.
The specificity of the scenario seems like an intentional insult from the criminals.
How? How does someone watch someone shoot a rocket overhead, have Gal Gadot lasso onto it, and then throw it away to save Egyptian kids from being run over from a car give anyone a "Israel/the IDF is good" impression
Because Gal Gadot is the physical westernized embodiment of support for Israel and the IDF by being a willing participant in its associated crimes, supporting its military campaigns, and doubtless, the execs who manufactured that film know this, and know that her critics know this.
I stopped watching Marvel shit, so I'll give an example from an earlier film - Iron Man. The Ten Rings militants/terrorists/army/whatever is not even real. But they're shown separating families/murdering civilians, made to look as realistic as possible with a TV announcer doing a story on it. The result is a narrative that this is the sort of thing that Afghans do - they're either abusing people or getting abused. And the sort of thing Americans do in response is journalists lamenting it, the military complaining they "never got the green light to go in", and Iron Man saving everyone just because he's such a nice guy.
Gal Gadot saving Egyptian kids reinforces the same narrative - English-speaking Western-culture superheroes save the children of the world (and all inferior people are children to their benevolent Western benefactors). That's the relationship between Arabs and the West - benevolent rescue.
I don’t think Gal Gadot’s IDF service is top-of-mind for most viewers, if they’re even aware of it.
You're right. But if you like the movie and then look up the actress and BAM she's Israeli, your mind now extends the association - Israelis, they're Westerners just like us. They like hamburgers and they're funny and cute and they rescue Arabs on the side. They're "THE GOOD GUYS". If you hear some crazy radical or Middle Eastern politician then point out Israeli crimes, you'll think, "Nah... If anything bad happened, it was an accident. The good guys mean well."
Whether "missile flying at 4 kids playing soccer" was intentional or not doesn't matter. The fact that the reality is Israelis kill Arab kids and the media tells you Israelis rescue Arab kids is quite enough.
Agreed. There was historically left-ish Zionism - Labour Zionism, which was less racist, militarist, or expansionist. But that ship has sailed. It's like Big Foot - sighted once in the 1950s by a drunk farmer, never seen again since.
An Israel can still exist and be compatible with leftism - but not the Jewish state with racial Apartheid, not a state that occupies land or denies the right of return to Palestinians. Or threatens all its neighbors with illegal military intervention.
Its 2040. The state of Wisconsin had been sieged by China. You get a job shitposting in Milwaukee but you live in Oshkosh. It doesn't matter cause you can take the newly built train there in 20 minutes. You arrive. You do a twitter search for winnie the pooh. You send a gif of a horse with a giant cock jizzing on a bystanders head to a man named thethoughtprovoker. You make triple the minimum wage in any neighboring state and have health care. Its been four hours, time to go home for the day. Life is good.
Apparently facts hurt brains. Enjoy riding the downbear button.
I mean, it's incredibly naive to pretend China isn't playing the same game as every nation or corporation in 2020 by trying to influence public opinion. The counter is always, "lol where' my paycheck, Xi?" as if this somehow negates their efforts.
Wow, the comments on that video are a weird combination of leftists and Nazis
I'm more inclined to believe that it's someone talking about actual antisemitism than Israel criticism if they put themselves next to Israel criticism from the get-go... why are we so hostile to the idea that there's bigotry in our own circles? the hegemonic culture is rife with it. do we believe ourselves to be perfect and immune to it?
I understand where you're coming from but when I read tweets like-
Or
I'm gonna laugh at you plugging "Free Palestine" in your bio. Probably a good person that means well, I'll admit
the first is either ignorant of what the term bourgeoisie means or it's making a subtler point about certain kinds of leftists. I can't tell which. the second is just ignorant of the history around pepe the frog but frankly, I'm not sure it really matters... it's used by g*mers and nazis and good luck separating those two groups enough to know that the person using the meme isn't an antisemite...
I think a little more charity of interpretation would go a long way.
I can't tell either, cause twitter is a place where nuance goes to die, but the first is still a "both sides" argument even if we are discussing certain leftists with actual anti-semitic views. The second is mired in neo-nazi shit but it's an "incredibly online" hill to die on. I'm being pretty charitable with this person, I don't know them or their full views (and I'm definitely not holding anything against them) but the tweets I saw combined with their bio amused in a way that is best summed up as "lol"
I don't like the part of this post that equates this poster to a paid Israeli troll account. I'm just chuckling at what Twitter does to our brains, which I don't think is that bad, sorry for being unclear
I think a little more charity of interpretation would go a long way.
Definitely true about individuals. But they're the exceptions to general trends.
I mean, if you dismiss every criticism out of hand, if you prejudge, the only thing you've done is foster prejudice. take individual claims of wrongdoing on a case by case basis.
Yeah - exactly! I agree with you. Individual claims and individual people should be given the full benefit of the doubt. Don't paint anyone with a broad brush.
However, if you're trying to paint the whole landscape - then break that broad brush out. The person in OP's picture is probably earnest (if perhaps a bit misguided), but generally when you hear "why I left the left" it is an astroturfed piece of BS.
I feel weird but I am so over the isreal discourse that I don't care anymore. They got me. I am hypernormalized and it feels bad. Let this be a cautionary tale to log off before your brain rots.
"Fuck off I don't believe in that nonsense" but it's liberals accusing people of being Russian bots and "So true!!!" when it's The Jews.
I honestly do believe there are accounts out there whose main purpose is to make us all hate each other more and more. I don't know if they're russian or whatever, but it's not crazy to think a foreign power would be happier with us all at each other's throats than banded together.
The Russian bot farms are real (as are other countries' similar projects), it just sucks that it's co-opted to dismiss any criticism as being state-funded propaganda. It obviously doesn't help that they utilize the same language and highlight the same problems as actual leftist do (for obvious reasons, they don't have to lie).
I have to say, US has perfected the propaganda machine, they don't even have to do state-sponsored shit (even though they still do it) since all the "free and open" media just parrots their shit willingly since it benefits their owners.
It is crazy. There's also the herd mentality. When enough people see troll posts cracking a joke and getting a bunch of likes, they'll repeat it. Eventually the trolls barely even have to work because real people join in and start saying the same shit the trolls are.
The Russians, Israel, saudis, China. A ton of countries literally do have paid trolls/bots online. They’re usually pretty easy to spot. I’m not inclined to believe this person is one of those based on a single tweet, but come on.
I think Russian bots are basically fake news - a marginal non-issue. During RussiaGate the US media/intelligence agencies tried their hardest to find evidence of Russian influence and they found one billionaire's side-project with a comically low level of activity.
You have to think relative GDP/population size/level of interest. A bot net or troll farm costs money and if suspicious activity is detected it's easy for Twitter or whoever to shut it all down.
Russian PR operations are focused on influencing Russians and neighboring countries and maaaybe EU states. E.g. if a million Germans get pro-Russian opinions, there's a chance German politics will shift a little, because Germany's position on Russia is ambivalent in the first place.
But the US has a huge population AND it invented PR. So you have to invest way too much to sway a sizeable chunk of people AND every major company has their own PR operation sending their own bots and trolls in support of their policies, not to mention the political parties and SUPERPACs swimming in money all fighting to Correct The Record. And these are all Americans who understand other Americans intuitively - they speak the same language and continuously research what makes people tick.
How does a foreign group insert its own voice into a room where there's already a thousand voices shouting? Israel succeeds at it because there's millions of Israeli Americans, American Jews, and American Israelis - people who live between the two countries and can speak to both countries, and even more so because the US elites are aligned with Israeli elites - they already speak using similar narratives.
I doubt Saudi Arabia has much in the way of an influence operation - they hire PR firms, but their relationship to the US is through elites talking to other elites.
The idea that Russians can out-manipulate American manipulators who are bigger and more experienced at manipulating Americans is laughable.
China may have a better go at it, because of American-Chinese business relations and a large number of Chinese Americans, but without elite alignment the narratives are all off.
what does the last img have to do with what they said exactly? was his "anti semitism in leftist circles" a reply to that article?
“If you aren’t listening to white people from Brooklyn, you’re akshually a bigot”.
Sorry guys I’m a fucking pussy and I see the direction of this thread is going off the rail. I was just matching the Felix joke “they are gonna try UK Labor anti-semitism game again since it worked”. Gonna take down the post in a sec.
