Every so often, people say things to me like, “God, why on earth do Jews keep banging on about anti-Semitism? It’s the 21st century! People don’t hate Jews in Europe anymore. They’re just overreacting”.
Below is a conversation that just occurred on a friend’s Facebook status that was actually about the Clacton by-election and descended rather rapidly into something else. Kudos to Stuart and Ed and the others who took him on.
While I rarely see conversations quite so blatantly and proudly racist, I do have to put up with comments about “Zionists” running the world and not learning their “lesson” from the Holocaust on a fairly regular basis, making it rather obviously which Zionists are being referred to (hint: not the Christian ones). If you believe this, you are not cool and party to secret knowledge that is “obvious” if you just google “Rothschild”. You are a racist.
If you don’t believe this, the only way we are going to create a world in which people can exist peacefully with one another without regard to race, religion, colour or creed is if we step up and defend each other when dickheads like Aleks Green turn up and start spouting shite about marginalised groups. I’ve titled this post to be about anti-semitism but it didn’t end there: the full conversation took in trashing Muslims, black people, immigrants, women and gay people. Bigots rarely stop at one group of people who aren’t them. I’ll defend you if you defend me.
Actually, I’ll defend you even if you don’t defend me, because I’m not a dick. But I’d appreciate it if you returned the favour.
