As far as I knew, “Zionist” as a negative was primarily used by the Nazis for all that blood libel stuff. I think it may have been used under Stalinist communism as well. The KKK and other white supremacist groups use it. You also see Zion in hymns, usually as a reference to heaven.
FWIW, I’m not a supporter of Israel or the ongoing Palestinian genocide. I also think that most of the Muslim states are terrible as well. Organized religion and its involvement in the state is a cancer and it doesn’t much matter if it’s Judaism, Islam, or Christianity. Fundamentalism is terrible.
Anyhow, when I see “Zionism” to refer to support of Israel, it pings my bullshit detector. It isn’t a part of normal discourse as I know it in the US. It feels like whomever is spouting it has been propagandized when I see it. It seems to be accompanied by varying degrees of jingoism and anger. Tends to be a very black and white worldview, almost naive. Reminds me of Qanon brainwashing but for the Left.
As this is Lemmy, it’s not coming from neo-nazis.
What is driving this?
Is it tankies? (Which I don’t know a lot about, but they seem to be heavily propagandized and unpleasant.)
Is it Muslims?
Some sort of Left ideology that isn’t common in the US?
Is it politically naive kids that have been fed talking points?
Is it Russian, Chinese, or some other state level disinfo/propaganda?
Because the state of Israel spent over a year blowing up children and sometimes people read the news.
And Zionism frequently appears in your news sources?
Yes
Are you from the US?
Yes
Okay, weird. As I said in another comment, I’m middle aged and from the deep South. I have never heard the term used conversationally. I’m not highly formally educated, high school with some college.
This is a great example of what I’m talking about.
What age range are you? What would describe your political alignment as? (For myself, I’m Left, other countries would probably call me a centrist, and the Republicans would call me a radical leftist.) What region are you from?
Life-long Chicagoan, leftist in that I complain on the internet a lot.
I live in Canada, less than 100km from the US, and it’s a pretty commonly used term. I’ve heard it come up in the beer league hockey dressing room in casual conversation multiple times.
I first started hearing the term occasionally in high school history class, then heard it more at university in political discussion contexts, then again a ton more in the past decade or so given what’s been happening leading up to the current war.
It is not a propaganda term, it is literally the term for people who believe that Jewish people have a right to an ethnostate around historic Jerusalem.
This is a category of people that include some Jews, but not all Jews, and not exclusively Jews, it includes some Israelis, but not all Israelis, and not exclusively Israelis.
Some people wear the term proudly, and some people view it as the devil incarnate, so it’s a term that can be used hatefully or non-hatefully, but it’s not specific to Lemmy.
You’re probably seeing it be used more in general these days because people critical of Israel are trying to be specific in their choice of language and just criticize the supporters of the idea of the Israeli ethnostate rather than Jewish people more broadly (obviously anti-Semitic), or even Israelis more broadly (which sweeps up many Arab-Iseaelis and other citizens who don’t support their state), and misses the non Jewish / Israeli people who also fund and support the state of Israel for various reasons.
I’m middle aged, only recently left the deep south, and have never heard it used in conversation. Only occasionally saw it used on Reddit and before that, Slashdot. Seeing it a lot more on Lemmy.
My prior experience with the term was religious or white supremacist. I can probably count on one hand the Jews I have met and known they were Jewish. Tiny minority where I’m from. Antisemitism did become quite common as Qanon accelerated in 2020 and people that had no experience with Jewish people were suddenly spouting blood libel and such.
Is it more common outside the US, do you think?
I quite frankly don’t know how to put this in a completely un-critical way, but I genuinely think it’s an example of Americans’ quite frankly, overall crappy public education system, and how insular and self focused it is.
Most other countries spend more time on world history, as opposed to their own national history for instance in school. If you only ever covered American history, and world war two up until the point that “We Won!” then you would never really cover the history of the middle east leading up to the world wars, or the rippling aftermath of what displacing the local people to create a Jewish state would look like.
American conservatives also tend to be a group that cannot deal with any guilt or shame whatsoever, so don’t like covering any parts of history that makes them look bad, and given how lock step America has been with Israel, and some of the atrocities that Israel has committed, that results in them not talking about or criticizing Israel or Israelis, which means they don’t ever need to distinguish between Israelis at large and those who oppose the state of Israel or its ethnostate policies.
You can probably consider me self educated, especially when it comes to history and culture. My public education occured in a state that is consistently ranked 49 or 50 and is far right. We were not even taught about evolution but given a statement that there is controversy between Evolution and Creationism, this was state policy in a publicly funded school. Prayers were common and led by authority. I was raised by Christian Fundamentalists and didn’t logic my way out of it until my 30s.
Anyhow, to make my way out of it I cultivated a finely honed bullshit detector. I think I’m lucky enough to be naturally skeptical and self trained in critical thinking. I learned to trust the scientific process.
I can sniff out far right bullshit from a mile away. I’m seeing a fair amount of far left bullshit on Lemmy that I don’t have a lot of experience with. The far Right doesn’t have monopoly on fanaticism. That’s why I’m asking about this. The whole Zion thing sets off my radar and I’m not all convinced it’s a false positive given the response in this thread.
I tend to trust my gut on this sort of thing. However, I am actually able to change my mind given clear information that doesn’t trip my detector.
I’m leaning towards the Zion thing being an indicator of tankie thought/Left fanaticism or a phrase that is common outside the states. The fact that it was used historically heavily by the Nazis and, I think, by the Stalinist communists is a large negative factor for me. I also think it may have been picked up by non-fanatics and not necessarily be a firm indicator.
Very common in my experience of french politics to distinguish between anti-Zionism and antisemitism.
It’s also a lot more used since the genocide is an important subject, so that may explain why you see it a lot more used in the last two years.
Also in germany in my experience. It often but not exclusively comes up when people talk about the history of the formation of Israel. And also to differentiate between Jews that think there should be a Jewish state and those that think there shouldn’t.
Zionist, in the modern sense, is more or less the Jewish equivalence of white supremacy.
They believe they have a divine right to the lands of Israel and everyone else who lives there can get bent.
The Wikipedia article isn’t really something I, as someone who’d describe himself as a Zionist, would agree too.
I’m not going to go through every point, but talking about Zionism in terms of ethnicity is… weird. Like, that’s technically right, in the scene that the Jewish people are “A group of people who identify with each other on the basis of perceived shared attributes that distinguish them from other groups.” (link), but you’re trying to use it in the context of race, and that’s factually wrong. Israel are probably is one of the most racially diverse countries in the world.
The translated Hebrew Wikipedia article hits closer to home IMO:
Zionism is a national movement and ideology that aims to establish a national home state for the Jewish people in the Land of Israel. The Zionist movement, as a Jewish national movement, arose in the last third of the 19th century, mainly in Central and Eastern Europe.
Shortly after the establishment of the Zionist movement, most of the movement’s leaders linked its main goal with the renewal of Jewish sovereignty in the Land of Israel - the establishment of a Jewish state. With the establishment of the State of Israel, Zionism continues to work to support Israel, ensure its existence and strengthen it.
The roots of Zionism lie in age-old motives and values inherent in religious tradition on the one hand, and in the national ideologies that flourished in Europe in the 19th century on the other. Zionism as a popular political movement that developed among the Jews in Eastern Europe was spurred by outbreaks of anti-Semitism and was fueled by a process of secularization that intensified among the Jewish population from the mid-19th century, which also gave its signs in the secularization of the two-thousand-year-old religious longing for Zion. The modern world has led to the fact that on the one hand, religion has ceased to be a sufficient identity definer for them. This conflict has led to the creation of a new national self-definition[1].
From its beginning, the goals of Zionism were the return to Zion, the gathering of the exiles, the revival of Hebrew culture and language, the creation of a new Jew – muscular Judaism according to Max Nordau, and the establishment of independent Jewish sovereignty. According to Benjamin Zeev Theodor Herzl, who is considered the thinker of modern Zionism, Zionism is a broad tract of ideas, which includes not only the aspiration for a legally guaranteed political territory for the Jewish people, but also the aspiration for moral and spiritual perfection. Since the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, the Zionist movement has continued to mainly support Israel and address threats to its existence and security.
From its beginning, Zionism was not homogeneous. Its ideology, leaders, and parties were different from each other and even contradictory. The need of the hour, along with the longing to return to the homeland of the ancestors, led to compromises and concessions for the sake of a common cultural and political goal.
Edit: The English Wikipedia article from mid 2023 is also good:
https://web.archive.org/web/20230312004301/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zionism
My guess is that it’s been revised in the last year-and-a-half to retroactively make what’s happening in Gaza a natural extension of Zionism.
Oof, get ready for the backlash. I think that in summary, what you’re going to receive is anger about the belief that a group of people based on ethnicity/nationality can expel or eradicate another group from their lands because the initial group supposedly used to live there millennia ago and experienced a recent genocide attempt elsewhere. From the perspective of an outsider, it seems like one group of people (i.e. Jewish) believe they can and have the mandate to genocide another group that had nothing to do with the genocide to avoid their own genocide that is no longer a threat. Imagine if Native Americans started genociding European Americans rn, particularly bombing schools and hospitals. That’s what it would look like, except the Native Americans were here for millennia, were dominant much more recently depending on the specific location, and suffered a much much more extensive genocide over centuries.
Basically, the universal moral code that is being violated is that no one no matter what has the right to genocide anyone. There is no exception to that rule. Not culture, ethnicity, religion, or even genocide. In fact, it seems hypocritical to commit the genocide of a group of people that had absolutely nothing to do with the initial genocide while claiming that genocide is horrible. It’s like saying, “John killed my child, so I get to kill Jenny’s child.” What?? No, you don’t get to kill anyone.
Yeah, that’s what I meant by “My guess is that it’s been revised in the last year-and-a-half to retroactively make what’s happening in Gaza a natural extension of Zionism”.
You’re talking about the Israeli reaction to the Oct. 7th attack, not Zionism. Some people are trying to link these things together, making the very concept of a Jewish state in the area of Israel “genocidal” (while also tying it to white supremacy, as a bonus). That’s not the case.
Yes, some Zionists would like to kill as many Palestinians (a disproportional part of them are a part of the Israeli government). Then again, some people who like to put ketchup on their steaks would also like to kill as many Palestinians. That doesn’t mean liking ketchup on your steak makes you genocidal.
I learned that term on Lemmy and other social media platforms, never really questioned it.
I now quickly scrolled through that Wikipedia article and the most recent date reference given there is 1995 with the majority of events being in 196x or earlier. No recent event is linked there to the Zionist movement.
Zionism is support for a sovereign Jewish state - I’m personally opposed to zionism because I don’t believe in fundamentalism or officially embraced national religions.
It sounds like you also disapprove of zionism but may have bought into propaganda spread by the ADL and AIPAC that try and equate antizionism and antisemitism - this has been a pretty long running political game in the US and deeply harmed a lot of ethnically Jewish folks.
I’d suggest reading up on what zionism is so you can dispel what seem to be a lot of deep seated misconceptions about the term.
I don’t really have a problem with the term. Its frequent usage here is unusual to me. It feels like it’s some sort of ‘tell.’ You hear someone talking about illegal aliens in the US and you know you’re probably dealing with a magat. If they call them undocumented workers, you’re most likely dealing with a leftist of some stripe.
I very well could have a propagandized view of the Zion terms. However, it’s also not something I ever run into in real life.
What country are you from and how would you describe yourself politically?
I’m somewhat familiar with the ADL and their bullshit. Not so much with AIPAC.
I grew up in the states (Massachusetts w/ university in Vermont) and immigrated to Canada (Vancouver) a few years after graduating.
I’ve also lived for short terms (90 days) in Spain twice - once in Barcelona and once in Puerto de Santa Maria.
AIPAC is much worse than ADL. It’s the American-Isreali Political Action Committee and those are the folks that frequently fund primary opponents in US elections for anyone who doesn’t support US aide to Isreal and other Israeli interests like not calling what’s happening in Palestine a genocide.
A simple search of DDG found multiple Jewish sources using and explaining the use of the word ‘zionist’ as an adjective for individual persons e.g.
The Times of Israel: “To be a Zionist means to recognise the land of Israel as the ancestral homeland of the Jewish people and to believe in the existence of a Jewish state in the land of Zion, or Israel.”
I know what it means, but thanks for googling that for me… I guess. It’s the usage I find odd.
I didn’t say “Websters Dictionary defines” - I showed that the word is in common usage as a non-perjorative by Jewish sources
Anyhow, when I see “Zionism” to refer to support of Israel, it pings my bullshit detector. It isn’t a part of normal discourse as I know it in the US.
This must be a thing inside the Usa then.
I know the term Zionists as refering to the political right-wing parties in Isreel.
That’s like saying “I know the term ‘patriot’ as referring to the republican party in the US”.
Like, yes, the right tries to take over the term, thus making all other parties “anti-Zionists”/“anti-patriotic”. But in reality the term crosses political boundaries.
If anything, the far-religious-right parties are the only (non-Arab) parties that don’t refer to themselves as Zionists (they have some issues with Zionism being a secular movent)
I asked my partner this a few weeks ago. It never comes up in normal conversation. Whenever I see it, I see red flags and my BS detector turns amber.
Glad I’m not the only one. I’m getting down voted to hell here, not that it matters, but I don’t think I’m getting good answers.
The Lemmy hive mind is strong.
I guess it’s either tankie or non-US. I’m leaning towards tankie due to the down votes.
It’s anti-genocide and wars of conquest people.
Feel free to go back to Reddit if that’s a problem for you.
Boo. You’re making my point for me. Fanaticism on the right or the left is not optimal. Lemmy has a good chunk of left fanaticism that is divorced from critical thinking and is inflammatory.
To a reasonable person, it’s obvious that I’m not in favor of genocide or ‘wars of conquest’.
However, I’m downright ornery when it comes to people pushing blind agenda. Sick of it. Cut my teeth on the far right agenda and deprogrammed myself as that’s what I was raised in.
As other people have explained, basically it’s a viewpoint supporting the existence of Israel. Israel itself is sometimes called “the Zionist entity” as a propaganda term by its opponents/enemies, as a way of refusing to say the name “Israel” or acknowledge it as a country. You might have heard the term used that way and picked up the undertone. It’s like saying “the orange-haired figure” as a way of pointedly refusing to say the name Trump or calling him the president.
