Zionism isn’t the sole essence of Judaism or Jewish culture the way colonialism is to whiteness.
Correct, I completely agree and this is not a claim I would make, which is why I said “Zionism comes from within european jewish culture same as the christian colonialists came from within european christian culture.”. When people talk about “white supremacy” they aren’t talking about a class of white people in the dialectical sense, a class in contradiction with non-white people, but an ideology rooted in an idealist view of what being “white” is. Similarly when people say “Jewish supremacism” they aren’t talking about a class of Jews, but about the ideology that has an idealist view of what a Jew is, best described by Herzl in that article I believe.
I find that article the best example for this honestly, compare it with how fascists have been describing their nation. There is always this notion of an Übermensch, the “pure” example of ones nation (hard-working, family-oriented, in some cases devout), that stands in contrast to the people of the same nation that are practicing bad habits (liars, free-loaders, drunks etc.), who have compromised their “purity”, who need to be fought to regain that purity or at least need to shape up so that ones nation can rise above the others. This is a through-line in italian, german and japanese supremacist thought as far as I understand them.
Colonization can describe what one nation does to another and is also commonly used to describe cultural, psychological, social, biological, or whatever other processes of encroachment or exploitation.
Also true, however when applied to society, colonizing involves extracting from one group to another in which case I don’t see this “other” group that is the main beneficiary of the alleged colonization of Jews. What people usually mean when they talk about colonialism is that there is an element of distance that the oppressors have to the oppressed, however the main benefactors of the zionist project are Jews. Jews are not getting oppressed by zionists unless they get in the way and are heavily encouraged to share in the spoils. Of course there are non-jewish zionists who also benefit largely from zionism but “Israel as the Nation-State of the Jewish People” mainly centers jewish zionists.
The spread of Zionism in Jewish institutions isn’t just some natural, inevitable thing inherent to Jews
Definitely not what I think or am trying to say! Just like how I don’t think being a nazi is some natural, inevitable thing inherent to Germans. I think you have a rather mechanical understanding how contradictions within a society or nation work?
The mechanism of co-opting a shared experience and narrative of oppression in favor of the oppressors is a fundamentally colonial process.
The question of this specific conversation is whether white supremacism is directly comparable to Jewish supremacism, as a response to someone advocating for categorical precision. The category of whiteness is defined by supremacism, so the two terms signify the same concept. That is not true for Judaism/Jewishness, a signifier or signifier-cluster that contains multiple concepts, one of which is Zionism. Anything else here is tangential to that point.
colonizing involves extracting from one group to another
Sure, this definition is fairly workable for this context. In this case it is the coalition of western imperialists and middle east plunderers devouring social capital and narratives and culture and institutions to bolster support for their materially unrelated settler-colonial/imperialist project. A similar process to how capitalist superstructure co-opts/colonizes hard-fought victories by queer people when it pinkwashes its war machines. Queer labor produced social value that is being extracted and transformed into imperialist propaganda. A community that formed around a common experience of otherization is hollowed out to make space for Otherization machines. Those that can’t or won’t participate in the new otherization are expelled from their own space.
Jewishness as a category is not useful in defining the category benefits from Zionism because the latter category includes most white westerners regardless of cultural experience and excludes Jews that aren’t white and western, as well as excluding aspects of Jewishness that aren’t useful to imperialism/colonialism/Zionism.
We by necessity tolerate and smooth over imprecision in language all the time, that’s not a problem in and of itself. But in this case the network of meaning and symbols is deliberately obfuscated and confounded (as fascism is wont to do), so precision is at the very least justified, and I’d argue tactically correct. The concepts that can be pointed to might be broadly, fuzzily categorized as anti-imperialism/anti-capitalism, Israel-first American exceptionalism/apologism, or anti-semitism. The latter two directly contradict the first! So signifiers should be carefully selected to deliberately preclude the latter two and precisely point to the first. Otherwise we see the encroachment of nazbol and similar deviations into anti-imperialist spaces, a trend that’s become not-so-subtle on capitalist-mediated social media like Reddit.
Again, I didn’t argue against the term Jewish supremacist, just that it is functionally dissimilar to white supremacist in this context. Whether it’s useful and precise enough as a signifier is another discussion.
Correct, I completely agree and this is not a claim I would make, which is why I said “Zionism comes from within european jewish culture same as the christian colonialists came from within european christian culture.”. When people talk about “white supremacy” they aren’t talking about a class of white people in the dialectical sense, a class in contradiction with non-white people, but an ideology rooted in an idealist view of what being “white” is. Similarly when people say “Jewish supremacism” they aren’t talking about a class of Jews, but about the ideology that has an idealist view of what a Jew is, best described by Herzl in that article I believe.
I find that article the best example for this honestly, compare it with how fascists have been describing their nation. There is always this notion of an Übermensch, the “pure” example of ones nation (hard-working, family-oriented, in some cases devout), that stands in contrast to the people of the same nation that are practicing bad habits (liars, free-loaders, drunks etc.), who have compromised their “purity”, who need to be fought to regain that purity or at least need to shape up so that ones nation can rise above the others. This is a through-line in italian, german and japanese supremacist thought as far as I understand them.
Also true, however when applied to society, colonizing involves extracting from one group to another in which case I don’t see this “other” group that is the main beneficiary of the alleged colonization of Jews. What people usually mean when they talk about colonialism is that there is an element of distance that the oppressors have to the oppressed, however the main benefactors of the zionist project are Jews. Jews are not getting oppressed by zionists unless they get in the way and are heavily encouraged to share in the spoils. Of course there are non-jewish zionists who also benefit largely from zionism but “Israel as the Nation-State of the Jewish People” mainly centers jewish zionists.
Definitely not what I think or am trying to say! Just like how I don’t think being a nazi is some natural, inevitable thing inherent to Germans. I think you have a rather mechanical understanding how contradictions within a society or nation work?
How so?
The question of this specific conversation is whether white supremacism is directly comparable to Jewish supremacism, as a response to someone advocating for categorical precision. The category of whiteness is defined by supremacism, so the two terms signify the same concept. That is not true for Judaism/Jewishness, a signifier or signifier-cluster that contains multiple concepts, one of which is Zionism. Anything else here is tangential to that point.
Sure, this definition is fairly workable for this context. In this case it is the coalition of western imperialists and middle east plunderers devouring social capital and narratives and culture and institutions to bolster support for their materially unrelated settler-colonial/imperialist project. A similar process to how capitalist superstructure co-opts/colonizes hard-fought victories by queer people when it pinkwashes its war machines. Queer labor produced social value that is being extracted and transformed into imperialist propaganda. A community that formed around a common experience of otherization is hollowed out to make space for Otherization machines. Those that can’t or won’t participate in the new otherization are expelled from their own space.
Jewishness as a category is not useful in defining the category benefits from Zionism because the latter category includes most white westerners regardless of cultural experience and excludes Jews that aren’t white and western, as well as excluding aspects of Jewishness that aren’t useful to imperialism/colonialism/Zionism.
We by necessity tolerate and smooth over imprecision in language all the time, that’s not a problem in and of itself. But in this case the network of meaning and symbols is deliberately obfuscated and confounded (as fascism is wont to do), so precision is at the very least justified, and I’d argue tactically correct. The concepts that can be pointed to might be broadly, fuzzily categorized as anti-imperialism/anti-capitalism, Israel-first American exceptionalism/apologism, or anti-semitism. The latter two directly contradict the first! So signifiers should be carefully selected to deliberately preclude the latter two and precisely point to the first. Otherwise we see the encroachment of nazbol and similar deviations into anti-imperialist spaces, a trend that’s become not-so-subtle on capitalist-mediated social media like Reddit.
Again, I didn’t argue against the term Jewish supremacist, just that it is functionally dissimilar to white supremacist in this context. Whether it’s useful and precise enough as a signifier is another discussion.