John Rivers tweets: “For those who don’t know, the ((())) echo joke is that Jewish lives are so much more valuable than ours their names echo throughout History.”
Many Jews are horrified to find themselves described as “oven-worthy” on Twitter but the Torah has no problem listing off crimes such as homosexuality and breaking the Sabbath that make a Jew worthy of death.
[Editor: BUT WOULDN’T LOTS OF REGULAR JEWS NOWADAYS ALSO FIND IT HORRIFYING (OR ALMOST) TO CONTEMPLATE A SOCIETY WHERE THE TORAH’S RULES AND PENALTIES WERE ACTUALLY APPLIED? I GUESS I’M NOT ENTIRELY SURE WHAT YOU’RE GETTING AT HERE.]
If a Jew studies Talmud, he’s unlikely to be horrified by anti-Jewish sentiment on Twitter. He likely has better things to do with his time. It’s only those Jews who are insecure in their identity, or who are running a scam (such as neo-conservatism, the ADL, the SPLC, the SWC, etc), who worry about anti-Jewish opinions.
[THIS PART SEEMS WRONG TO ME. DO YOU REALLY NOT UNDERSTAND WHY A NORMAL JEWISH PERSON WOULD BE VERY DISTURBED TO SEE SOME OF THE ‘ANTI-JEWISH OPINIONS’ OUT THERE NOW ON TWITTER? THESE ARE NOT JUST RATIONAL CRITICISMS OF JEWISH BEHAVIOR OR JEWISH ORGANIZATIONS OR WHATNOT. SOME OF THESE ‘OPINIONS’ ARE BASICALLY EXPRESSIONS OF GHOULISH RACIAL HATE AND ANIMOSITY. TO CLAIM THAT ONLY JEWS WHO ARE INSECURE OR SCAMMERS GET WORKED UP ABOUT THIS SEEMS IMPLAUSIBLE AND ALSO SEEMS KIND OF CALLOUS. MAYBE YOU MEAN THAT IT’S NOT RATIONAL TO FEEL THREATENED BY THESE COMMENTS? I GUESS I’M NOT SURE HOW TO ASSESS THAT. THERE ARE SOME PRETTY NASTY NAZI TYPES OUT THERE, AND IF I WERE JEWISH I WOULD RATIONALLY FEAR THAT THEY MAY NOW BE GETTING A BIT MORE REAL POWER AND INFLUENCE.]
It would be weird and unhealthy if non-Jews did not have some negative anti-Jewish feelings (and same goes for Jews about goyim). Every normal person thinks that other groups and other religions, are weird, if not downright satanic.
[COULDN’T THERE BE SOME CASES WHERE ONE MEMBERS OF A GIVEN GROUP HAVE A STRONG IDENTITY AND YET THEY THINK SOME OTHERS ARE JUST FINE, AND ARE NOT UNHEALTHY OR WEIRD? THE POINT YOU’RE MAKING HERE IS VERY OFTEN TRUE, BUT SEEMS TO BE TRUE MOSTLY FOR SPECIFIC GROUPS THAT ARE HELD TOGETHER BY A SPECIFIC KIND OF BELIEF SYSTEM; CHRISTIANITY, JUDAISM AND ISLAM ARE EXAMPLES. BUT I DON’T KNOW THAT IT WOULD ALWAYS BE _UNHEALTHY_ FOR ANY GROUP TO HAVE NO NEGATIVE FEELINGS TOWARD ANY/EVERY ARBITRARY OTHER. SEEMS IT WOULD DEPEND ON THE NATURE OF THESE GROUPS. IN THE CASE OF CHRISTIANS AND JEWS, THE MANY CENTURIES OF GRIEVANCES ON EITHER SIDE ARE OBVIOUSLY PART OF IT; THIS IS PECULIAR TO THESE TWO GROUPS, THEIR SPECIFIC IDENTITIES AND ATTITUDES AND HISTORIES WITH EACH OTHER.]
Removing anti-Semitism from Christianity neuters Christianity. Removing anti-Christianity from Judaism neuters Judaism. Removing anti-Semitism from Islam neuters Islam. Any Christian or Muslim who does not have some negative feelings about Jews is not normal. He’s been neutered. Any Jew who does not have some grudge against the goyim, against Christianity, against Islam, is not normal.
[I GET WHERE YOU’RE COMING FROM. BUT THIS DEPENDS ON A CERTAIN VIEW OF THE NATURE/FUNCTION OF CHRISTIANITY (FOR EXAMPLE). IF WE’RE JUST TALKING ABOUT THE RELIGIOUS PATH OR WAY OF LIFE OF THE CHRISTIAN, IS IT TRUE THAT IT _MUST_ BE ANTI-SEMITIC IN ORDER TO BE A ROBUST FORM OF CHRISTIANITY? YOU MAY BE ASSUMING THAT CHRISTIANITY = AN ETHNOCULTURAL IDENTITY AND GROUP, I GUESS, RATHER THAN A RELIGIOUS PATH OR EXPERIENCE OR WAY OF LIFE.]
Japan without anti-Semitism is not strongly Japanese. China without anti-Semitism is not strongly Chinese. If East Asians allowed themselves to be manipulated as easily as WASPs, Jews would have less respect for them.
[A STRONG JAPAN WOULD BE CAUTIOUS IN DEALING WITH JEWS OR OTHER OUTSIDERS, AND WOULDN’T ALLOW JAPANESE TO BE TAKEN ADVANTAGE OF. THEIR (JAPANESE) INTERESTS WOULD COME FIRST. WOULD THAT BE THE SAME AS ANTI-SEMITISM? I DON’T SEE THAT IT WOULD HAVE TO BE. WOULD STRONGER ANTI-JEWISH FEELINGS AND BEHAVIORS BE NEEDED FOR JAPAN TO BE ‘STRONGLY JAPANESE’?]
If you are strongly for something, you must hate its negation. If you love your people, you must hate your enemies.
[ARE JEWS AND CHRISTIANS, OR JEWS AND JAPANESE, ALWAYS AND NECESSARILY IN THE POSITIONS OF ENEMIES? IS THAT AN INTRINSIC/NECESSARY FEATURE OF THESE GROUPINGS? BECAUSE, IF NOT, IT’S NOT CLEAR WHY LOVING CHRISTIANITY (FOR EXAMPLE) WOULD HAVE TO INVOLVE HATING JEWS OR NON-CHRISTIANS, OR REGARDING THESE THINGS AS ‘NEGATIONS’ OF WHAT YOU LOVE. AM I MISSING YOUR POINT HERE?]
When I meet people who hate Jews, I immediately know that they love their own people and hate their enemies. I’ve never yet encountered (via reading or in real life) a person who hated Jews and does not love his own group. I see these lovers and haters as the reciprocal of Jews who love Jews and will sacrifice anyone and anything to keep Jews and Israel safe. Each group will tell any lie and commit any sin to protect its people.
I suspect that these tendencies are wired into our genes.
[I AGREE. BUT AREN’T THERE SOME UNIVERSALISTIC TENDENCIES WIRED IN THERE TOO? MAYBE I’M NOT PARANOID ENOUGH, BUT I THINK LOTS OF JEWS ARE CAPABLE OF REAL FELLOW-FEELING FOR NON-JEWS WHO ARE FELLOW AMERICANS, FELLOW NEW YORKERS, FELLOW WESTERNERS, ETC. WHY COULDN’T SOCIETY BE BASED ON SOME KIND OF BALANCE BETWEEN UNIVERSALISTIC AND PARTICULARISTIC FEELINGS AND LOYALTIES?]
What’s unnatural and doomed to fail is the American experiment with putting civility before identity.
John Rivers tweets: “Ethnocentrism evolved naturally, like most traits. NW Euros appear to have evolved to cooperate more with Outgroups.”
There are no good guys and bad guys in the universe unless you look at things through the eyes of faith.
[I TEND TO AGREE! BUT IT WOULD BE INTERESTING TO EXPLAIN MORE WHY YOU THINK THIS. I’M NOT SURE MYSELF WHAT THE BEST ARGUMENT IS. WHY DO YOU THINK THERE COULDN’T BE A COHERENT NON-RELIGIOUS BUT MORAL WORLDVIEW?]
I reply to my editor:
Of course there can be coherent non-religious worldviews but they are
all acts of faith. All moralities are based on faith.[IN SOME SENSE THAT SEEMS TRUE. I GUESS ‘FAITH’ MEANS SOMETHING LIKE ‘BELIEFS THAT CAN’T BE RATIONALLY JUSTIFIED’? BUT THEN, ISN’T SCIENCE ALSO BASED ON ‘FAITH’ IN THAT SENSE? FOR EXAMPLE, HOW DO WE KNOW THAT ANY PURPORTEDLY UNIVERSAL LAW OF NATURE REALLY IS UNIVERSAL? THAT IT WILL HOLD IN A MILLION YEARS OR THAT IT HOLDS NOW IN UNOBSERVED PARTS OF THE UNIVERSE? NO AMOUNT OF OBSERVATIONS COULD EVER PROVE THAT THEY REALLY ARE UNIVERSAL, OR EVEN MAKE THAT PROBABLE, UNLESS WE ACCEPT CERTAIN ASSUMPTIONS, E.G., THE ASSUMPTION THAT NATURE IS UNIFORM, AND THAT ASSUMPTION CAN’T BE JUSTIFIED BY SCIENCE BECAUSE ALL SCIENTIFIC REASONING AND EVIDENCE IS BASED ON IT. (THIS IS HUME’S PROBLEM.) BUT YOU COULDN’T DO ANY SCIENTIFIC THEORIZING OR REASONING WITHOUT BELIEVING THAT THERE ARE LAWS TO BE DISCOVERED. I THINK ALL BELIEFS DEPEND ON FAITH IN THIS SENSE. SO FOR ME IT’S NOT USEFUL TO SAY THAT THERE ARE NO GOOD GUYS OR BAD GUYS UNLESS WE LOOK AT THE WORLD FROM A ‘FAITH’ POINT OF VIEW; I THINK THERE’S NO COHERENT OR INTELLIGIBLE WAY TO LOOK AT ANYTHING THAT ISN’T BASED IN ‘FAITH’. YES, MORALITY IS A MATTER OF FAITH, BUT SO WOULD BE AN AMORAL OR IMMORAL WORLD-VIEW OR PERSPECTIVE.]
Social Identity Theory explains much of how people behave. Sure, some
people can have strong in-group identities and not hate outsiders, but
that is not how things work in general.[WHAT WOULD YOU SAY ABOUT THE PEOPLE WE CALL ‘LIBERALS’? THE PROGS AND MULTICULTIS? DON’T THEY HAVE A VERY STRONG IN-GROUP IDENTITY? THEY HATE WHITE MALE CONSERVATIVES AND CHRISTIANS, ETC. BUT THEY DEFINITELY DON’T HATE ANY OF THE OTHER GROUPS OTHER THAN THEIR OWN, EVEN THOUGH IT’S OBVIOUS THAT IN REALITY THEY ARE IN COMPETITION WITH MANY OF THESE GROUPS IN ALL KINDS OF WAYS. E.G., WHITE PROGS ARE IN CONFLICT WITH BLACKS BUT THEY TREAT BLACKS LIKE SACRED OBJECTS. I AGREE WITH YOUR BASIC POINT, AND I ASSUME SOCIAL IDENTITY THEORY IS GENERALLY CORRECT; I DO WONDER ABOUT HOW TO MAKE SENSE OF THIS KIND OF EXAMPLE THOUGH.]
When groups are competing, they naturally tend to think ill of their
competitors. When groups are not competing, other groups are less of a
threat (eg the Amish).There are no permanent enemies and alliances between groups. Jews and
Nazis are not necessarily enemies. It all depends on time and place
and circumstance. Sometimes Jews and Christians have common interests,
sometimes they have contrary interests.It is not necessary for any gentile group to be anti-Semitic to be
authentic, but to automatically rule out anti-Jewish attitudes neuters
that group identity when they have to compete with Jews. If it is fine
for Jews to have anti-gentile attitudes but not fine for Christians to
have anti-Jewish attitudes, well, I will tell you who will win that
competition.[I AGREE. BUT YOU COULD HAVE BEEN MORE CLEAR IN YOUR ORIGINAL STATEMENTS, IF THIS IS WHAT YOU HAD IN MIND. YOU DIDN’T SAY THAT CHRISTIANITY WITHOUT THE _POSSIBILITY_ OF ANTI-SEMITISM WAS NEUTERED OR INAUTHENTIC; INSTEAD YOU JUST SAID THAT ABOUT NON-ANTI-SEMITIC CHRISTIANITY. UNDER PRESENT CIRCUMSTANCES, GIVEN THE BEHAVIOR OF JEWS AND JEWISH ORGANIZATIONS, IT’S INSANE THAT CHRISTIANS REGARD ANY KIND OF NEGATIVE FEELINGS TOWARDS JEWS AS A KIND OF SIN. KIND OF LIKE HOW THE ATHEISTIC PROGS REGARD NEGATIVE FEELINGS TOWARDS BLACKS, WHILE BLACKS CONSTANTLY RAPE AND MURDER AND ASSAULT NICE LITTLE PROGS.]
Anti-Jewish attitudes are largely irrelevant to strong Japanese and
Chinese identity because of time and place and circumstance, but when
these groups have serious conflicting interests with Jews, it would be
self-destructive of them not to have some anti-Jewish attitudes. If
you deny your group sanction to hate its enemies, you are weakened.We can all get along in certain times and places and circumstances
when there are not deadly conflicts of interest.[YES, THIS SEEMS VERY TRUE AND IMPORTANT — THE MOST IMPORTANT THEME IN YOUR ORIGINAL POST. HATE IS NOT INTRINSICALLY WRONG. A SOCIETY THAT DECLARES ‘HATE’ TO BE WRONG — IN REALITY, ONLY A VERY SPECIFIC KIND OF HATE, ONLY WHEN EXPRESSED BY WHITE MEN — IS SICK AND MUST BE PUT DOWN. TO DEFEND YOUR SOCIETY YOU HAVE TO HATE THINGS THAT ARE DEADLY THREATS TO THAT SOCIETY. WE’RE SURROUNDED BY DEADLY THREATS, ACTUALLY BEING KILLED AS INDIVIDUALS AND AS A COLLECTIVE, BUT WE ARE TOLD IT WOULD BE WRONG EVEN TO _FEEL_ HATE TOWARDS THOSE WHO ARE KILLING US. LET ALONE DO ANYTHING TO PROTECT OURSELVES.]
As usual, the cuckservatives and Churchians are blithely falling in line with the globalists and Babelists, as they rush to endorse Big Brother’s war on hate speech. It’s amazing how they fall for the lies every single time.
The fact is that hate is not intrinsically bad. God Himself hates. There are six things He hates – actually, seven that he detests. There are specific individuals He has hated. There is a time to love, and there is a time to hate.The Christian is instructed to hate as well as to love, indeed, we are told that if one does not hate, one does not fear the Lord.
And that, of course, is the root of the pagan campaign against hate. They wish to arrogate to themselves the decision what you will, and what you will be not, permitted to hate. They want you to love Big Brother, and therefore you will not be permitted to hate him.
But hate is our birthright. Hate is part of what makes us human. Hate is an aspect of our free will. And if hate is outlawed, or worse, eliminated, there will be no moral basis for love.
Hate is a human right. The war on hate speech is a war on our humanity. #IStandWithHateSpeech
REPORT: In the early days of the social web, putting someone’s name in multiple parentheses was meant to give that person a cute virtual hug. Today, it’s something far more sinister.
Neo-Nazis, anti-Semites and white nationalists have begun using three sets of parentheses encasing a Jewish surname — for instance, (((Fleishman))) — to identify and target Jews for harassment on blogs and major social media sites like Twitter. As one white supremacist tweeted, “It’s closed captioning for the Jew-blind.”
Jonathan Weisman, deputy Washington editor for the New York Times, wrote about his experience as a victim of this harassment in a May 26 story.
“Hello ((Weisman))” it began after Weisman tweeted a Washington Post article about Donald Trump titled “This Is How Fascism Comes to America.”
Weisman asked his harasser, @CyberTrump, to explain the symbol. “It’s a dog whistle, fool,” the user responded. “Belling the cat for my fellow goyim.”
With the parentheses, @CyberTrump had alerted an army of trolls. The attacks that followed were sudden and unremitting. “The anti-Semitic hate, much of it from self-identified Donald J. Trump supporters, hasn’t stopped since,” Weisman wrote.
The origins of the symbol ((())) can be traced to a hardcore, right-wing podcast called The Daily Shoah in 2014. It’s known as an “echo” in the anti-Semitic corners of the alt-right — a new, young, amorphous conservative movement that comprises trolls fluent in internet culture, free speech activists warring against political correctness and earnest white nationalists. Some use the symbol to mock Jews; others seek to expose supposed Jewish collusion in controlling media or politics. All use it to put a target on their heads.
To the public, the symbol is not easily searchable on most sites and social networks; search engines strip punctuation from results. This means that trolls committed to uncovering, labeling and harassing Jewish users can do so in relative obscurity: No one can search those threats to find who’s sending them.
The origin of (((echoes)))
The symbol comes from right-wing blog the Right Stuff, whose podcast The Daily Shoah featured a segment called “Merchant Minute” that gave Jewish names a cartoonish “echo” sound effect when uttered. The “parenthesis meme,” as Right Stuff editors call it, is a visual pun.
In Right Stuff propaganda, you’ll often read that Jewish names “echo.” According to the blog’s lexicon page, “all Jewish surnames echo throughout history.” In other words, the supposed damage caused by Jewish people reverberates from decade to decade.
In an email, the editors of the Right Stuff said it is also intended as a critique of “Jewish power.” They explained further:
“The inner parenthesis represent the Jews’ subversion of the home [and] destruction of the family through mass-media degeneracy. The next [parenthesis] represents the destruction of the nation through mass immigration, and the outer [parenthesis] represents international Jewry and world Zionism.”
We got off easy — just a flood of memes in our timelines, a few “kike” insults hurled our way.
Other Jewish writers have faced more serious attacks: death threats, anti-Semitic cartoons, images of concentration camp ovens and executed Jews, threatening emails, even home phone calls.
“With the cat belled, the horde was unleashed,” Weisman wrote of his experience. One tweet he received included a photo of the gates of Auschwitz with the “Arbeit Macht Frei” slogan of the Nazi death camp replaced with “Machen Amerika Great,” a clumsy translation of Trump’s slogan, “Make America Great Again.”
“I get plenty of anti-Semitic things, but this was different,” said Michael, a Jewish journalist who was targeted by right-wing trolls in 2015 following a story he wrote that was critical of the GOP. (Michael asked Mic to use only his first name to protect his family.)
“[The echo] is a way of bringing attention to people who are Jewish — intimidating,” Michael said. “They try to threaten.”
Michael received “awful cartoons,” animated GIFs of Hitler with the caption “Don’t you miss me?” and photos of Nazis killing Jews in Eastern Europe. Trolls threatened him: “‘When the time comes, the Jews are going to be in trouble, lined up,'” Michael recalls. “That kind of tone. Random shit by people thinking it’s funny Jews were being targeted.”
Michael said he blocked about 100 accounts during the onslaught.
Hate speech and the election
In a phone call, Oren Segal, director of the Anti-Defamation League Center on Extremism, said he’s seen a “spike in hate speech and the harassment of journalists, in particular Jewish journalists” this election cycle.
According to Segal and other social-justice advocates who keep tabs on racist groups and hate speech, the jingoism of Trump’s presidential campaign has fueled this sort of harassment. Trump’s xenophobic and Islamophobic rhetoric and policy proposals have resonated with the rebellious, belligerent, flag-waving alt-right
“They’ve been on a tear,” Heidi Beirich of the Southern Poverty Law Center said in a phone call. “You can’t publish something about Trump right now and have any inclination of being Jewish without being trolled to hell.”
Beirich called for Trump to denounce the anti-Semitic harassment conducted in his name. “This is the most racist invective that’s been directly involved in a presidential campaign in the last 16 years,” she said. “It’s frightening how cavalier Trump has been about these people.”
How have these trolls been able to hide harassment in plain sight?
Partially because the ((())) symbol is difficult, if not impossible, for ordinary users to search for.
If you try to search for “(((Last Name))),” Twitter’s search engine strips the results of the parentheses, yielding every single result for the last name, the sheer size of which obscures instances of the symbol being used.
Try searching for random combinations of parentheses on Twitter, Reddit or Google. Try searching Google for “site:twitter.com ‘(((‘” or a similar query. Try looking for (((Mic))) in a Google search. The results drop the parentheses from the search.
Filtering is possible using the app TweetDeck, which has the ability to mute punctuation like parentheses. But the larger issue is the Twitter community’s ability to identify and police hate speech. Singling out a particular method of harassment is more difficult when Twitter has to rely on users reporting single tweets, rather than being able to search for everyone who’s using the construction. A spotlight on ((())) would let users and Twitter developers shut down the problem much faster.
Twitter needs better tools to curb hate speech
On Tuesday, Twitter, Facebook, Google and Microsoft partnered with the European Union to crack down on online hate speech, pledging to delete offensive comments on their respective platforms in under 24 hours.
Asked about users targeting Jewish people, a Twitter representative directed Mic to a statement by Karen White, Twitter’s head of public policy for Europe: “Hateful conduct has no place on Twitter and we will continue to tackle this issue head on alongside our partners in industry and civil society,” she said.
Twitter Rules, an extension of the company’s Terms of Service, forbid its users from “incit[ing] or engag[ing] in the targeted abuse or harassment of others.” Users are required to agree to these rules when they sign up for the social media site.
At the same time, Twitter also pledged to protect free speech on its network. “We remain committed to letting the tweets flow,” White said. “However, there is a clear distinction between freedom of expression and conduct that incites violence and hate.”
Twitter declined to address why the symbol is unsearchable on its platform, if a hate-speech filter would detect it or if the company plans to categorize the symbol as hate speech at all
Users wary of the social network silencing unpopular views responded by launching the hashtag #IStandWithHateSpeech, which began to trend Tuesday night. “[Social justice warriors] are infecting society with their made-up terms,” one user wrote.
Coded hate speech like ((())) may not be searchable, but it is public; tweets containing it can be reported to Twitter for abuse and shut down. This will not stop abusers from simply creating new accounts, and it will not stop other users from swarming on victims once they’ve been identified using the ((())) symbol — a method of abuse known as “dogpiling.”
In 2014, the group Women, Action and the Media reviewed hundreds of Twitter harassment reports and recommended several measures to help curb the problem. To address dogpiling, WAM recommended that Twitter grant users the ability to report multiple accounts at once and to filter abusive content from their timelines. Twitter now lets users flag multiple tweets in one report.
Whether they know it or not, Neo-Nazis on Twitter have discovered a brilliant loophole — a code that’s difficult to filter whose meaning incites waves of hate before the target realizes what’s happening. Jewish writers can report those tweets all they want, but the damage ((())) sets into motion may only be beginning.
