Twitch declares “Zionist” a slur — and a bannable offense
1y 7mon ago by lemmy.ml/u/Alsephina in technology@lemmy.ml from www.theverge.com
Zionists really captured that platform.
Congrats on your Bush era islamaphobia you ghoul
I would like to see a version where it's pro Israel and zionist quote or terrorist quote
Hey everybody has a right to a racist ethnostate how dare people criticize the idea.
From the link of this post that you could have clicked on:
Twitch specifies this is conditional: you’re allowed to discuss the political movement of that name, but not “attack or demean another individual or group of people on the basis of their background or religious belief.”
but not “attack or demean another individual or group of people on the basis of their background or religious belief.”
Yeah, how dare people try to demean someone just because they checks notes hold dehumanizing beliefs and support a government and movement bent on removing the people from their land so they can steal it and build new homes while ethnically cleansing the existing population.
smh my head.
Next, "apartheid" will be anti-Semitic.
The same way I don't think we should capitulate to framing "cracker" as a slur, or to framing "black lives matter" as a racist thing to say, I don't think we should capitulate to framing things like "from the river to the sea" or "zionist" as antisemitic.
But, as a thought experiment, let's indulge in this doublespeak trash. What is a good alternative? So far I've got:
- Israeli colonizers
- Jewish supremacists
- genocidal sacks of shit
- Israeli apartheidists
- Isreal expansionists
- Israeli warmongerers
- people in favor of the genocide and apartheid committed by Israel (in full, every time you need to say zionist)
- modern day nazis
- zionazis (technically not zionist!)
So all of this liberal crybaby nomenclature trash aside, I actually do think "zionist" is in itself a fairly useless term for the Israeli apartheid question (as Norman Finkelstein and Judith Butler do too). While one faction of zionism pursued the nakba and massacres from fairly early on, and while this faction has been quite successful, there are other notions of zionism which do not entail murdering children or colonizing a country. When Netanyahu and Chomsky can both legitimately refer to themselves as zionists, I think it's clear that zionism is too broad a term to be useful in the current ongoing genocide and the ethnic cleansing that has been going on for the better part of a century.
the problem is that about 75% of people have no idea what happened during the partition plan and 20% who do think what the Zionists did were justified (even pre partition/pre war/war time(
These are indeed very good alternatives
I'm partial to three, m'self.
I wish I could upvote this more.
Edit: a word
Izan - Nazi backwards Iz A Nazi or IzrAeli Nazi
Calling zionism what it is shouldn't be discouraged with dog whistles masquerading as conduct policies.
At the same time I'd like to remind folks that not all Jewish people subscribe to Zionism.
There are a couple Jewish lead organizations that fight for the freedom of Palestine and have been very critical of Israel for many years.
Jewish Voices for Peace is one group. I wonder how they'd feel about Twitches new policy. I'm genuinely curious what their opinion would be.
Edit - corrected Jewish Voices for Peace
At the same time I’d like to remind folks that not all Jewish people subscribe to Zionism.
Further to this, the majority of zionists are christians.
I know there's a lot of Christians involved but how do we know it's the majority? Young Israelis are raised largely around Zionist propaganda after all.
There's about 100 million evangelical christians in the US, and a LifeWay poll in 2017 showed that about 80% essentially considered themselves zionists. That's 80 million. There's 15.8 million jews worldwide. So the non-Jewish zionists outweigh Jewish zionists by a fair margin. Heck, they outweigh the zionist and the non-zionist jews taken together by a beefy margin, even.
That's an insane number. Must be a very broad definition of Zionist.
oh no, statistics that challenge my world view! Quick, let's not look into it at all and move the goal posts!
Could you at least try to engage in this discussion? Or maybe come up with any evidence supporting your world view?
A different definition of the term isn't a different worldview. Also, not immediately spinning every exchange into an exhaustive debate isn't a critical character flaw. Unlike being an insufferable ass about not getting the amount of attention you apparently feel entitled to.
Though I would take look at that poll about 80% of Christians being "essentially" Zionists if you'd link to it.
Which makes the blob anti-semitic for saying anti-zionism is anti-semitic.
If you had looked at the link of this post, you would have read:
Twitch specifies this is conditional: you’re allowed to discuss the political movement of that name, but not “attack or demean another individual or group of people on the basis of their background or religious belief.”
I.e. nothing is masqueraded here as long as they keep to this. This seems to be a reasonable policy. I've seen a couple of instances of people being derogatorily called zionists just for supporting the people of current Israel not being pushed away out of their now decades-old homes, which is hard to still call Zionist if they don't support any further expansion and any offensive military action.
There's almost never anything gained to use "Zionist" on someone as if saying "asshole".
Twitch specifies this is conditional: you’re allowed to discuss the political movement of that name, but not “attack or demean another individual or group of people on the basis of their background or religious belief.”
Zionist is a political term, it has nothing to do with one’s background or religious belief.
You're entirely right.
But see if the political view is only held by members or a certain religious group (even if not all members of said religion accept said political thought), it's easy to conflate it, so that you can ban anyone opposing said political thought based on "they're discriminating against me because of my religion".
Fuck twitch.
Except not all Zionists are Jews, many are Christian.
Well, I guess, but... you could argue that Zionists are mostly seen to be purely Jewish due to the nature of the movement.
which is hard to still call Zionist if they don't support any further expansion and any offensive military action.
Your 'if' is doing a lot of heavy lifting. And is fucking hilarious given they keep expanding and pushing people out of their decades old homes.
Funny how that part seems to be ignored in defense of zionists....
I guess my pessimistic lens is a little strong and I generally don't trust large companies to act in good faith. So maybe I'm over scrutinizing here and being a bit of a curmudgeon.
I think your perspective is fair, and it's likely this is akin to a high school faculty dealing with some random word or idea becoming a meme of sorts and causing problems. So they have to write some new rule that sounds ridiculous or weird.
It sucks there's so much racism and bigotry driving forces in the world that it's hard to not be dubious of everything. You always kinda wonder about the actual motivation behind things like this.
Zionists identify themselves as zionists. How's that a slur?
I identify myself as a homosexual.
I've heard homo being used in a derogatory way as an insult. That usage should not be tolerated.
Retarded is just a medical term, yet you can use it as an insult as well.
That is what this "specification of conditional" aims at. It's fine to use the word in a descriptive way, you're just not allowed to go around angrily calling people "fucking zionist"
They use the word starting with F not the word homosexual
Can we make Twitch a slur for terrible tech companies.
All tech companies eventually enshitify and we would never be able to remember all of them if they all became slurs. Lol
It's great how people are gathering and having discussions under heavily censored platforms owned by billionaries, just amazing.
And on top of that, pretty much all the platforms, even all the way down to this one, are censored in at least one increasingly-relevant way.
At least we can still talk about butt stuff in peace.
OK, so people can use the definition instead. In fact it might be more useful.
Terrorists?
I'm still not sure what it means, judging by the comments here it (murderer / terrorist etc) it does seem to be used as a slur. So yeah, using the definition instead would be useful.
Terrorist isn't a slur. Or are you saying criticizing ISIS was biggoted?
They're saying that in the same way terrorist is not always a slur but is used as a slur sometimes, Zionist can be used as a slur. I think it's a fair take. It's odd to specifically list Zionist as a contextual slur when you can just say no slurs.
I don't know if I fully agree but that's their argument as I understand it.
Edit: Idk why people are down voting me trying to explain someone's argument.
If you refer to the Muslim man in the bomb vest as a terrorist its fine, if you refer to all muslim men as terrorists its a slur.
Refering to Israeli generals and politicians as Zionists is fine, If you refer to all Jewish people as Zionists...
Nobody is referring as all Jews as zionists. Actually it's zionists and Israel defender who want you to believe that anti zionism is anti Judaism
I figured zionism had to do with an ideology, not a profession. Generalisations like these are not helping.
Falsehood is fruitless from the start so don't worry, Truth always prevails as they say
Meanwhile, nobody has attempted to give a definition. Lots of downvotes all around though. 🤷🏼♀️
the devil is in the details
Yup, that's it.
I mean, is nazi a slur?
If you do something like refer to all white people or all Germans as Nazis then yeah, in that context it's a slur. But just referring to members of the Nazi party, definitely not. Extreme far right folks, personally no, I don't view it as a slur there. Some people may disagree (probably the extreme far right people being called Nazis).
I just told you I I'm not sure of the definition, so asking me what I think it means is pointless. Though I'm pretty sure it's not a group you can join like ISIS, right?
How do you people propose to call them? Expansionists? Colonialists? Genocidists?
Israeli supremacists
How about "genocidal assholes?" Can they still say that?
Waiting for the free-speech absolutists to boycott twitch for this (they won't)
One of the orchestrators of this whole thing, Destiny, defends child porn and the use of slurs.
Ironic is putting it lightly.
I'm willing to get this will increase the amount of actual ethnic slurs.
It's their goal. They want to conflate jewishness and israel because they need the world to be antisemitic.
Otherwise people would just leave.
Friendly reminder that selfhosted streaming exists (Owncast) or online alternatives like PeerTube.
They already banned a swathe of pro-palestinian political streamers in the run up to the US election, so this is likely retroactive reasoning.
But Zionism isn't a religion, it's a nationalist movement.
Do a lot of slurs have a wikipedia page?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/*removed*
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wetback_(slur)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spic
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paki_(slur)
So yeah. Not that 'Zionist' is a slur
Edit: Really, shitty censorship bot? We're adulterating URLs now, and selectively only that specific slur? Gross on both counts
Yes, probably most of them...
I actually do think “zionist” is in itself a fairly useless term for the Israeli apartheid question (as Norman Finkelstein and Judith Butler do too).
Do any of the forms of zionism (a belief that they should own the land) involve market purchases of the land they would like? (instead of settler colonial theft?)
Okay, now streamers can get more creative when refering to a zionist. I think that 'bibi's removed' is a good term.
Never used it and never will, but maybe we can make Twitch become a slur?
TBH people should talk about zionism and zionists much more.
This might be out of context for the article, but once we are in /c/technology get this: GIMP is a slur, and their slogan during startup is "we glitch because we twitch" which makes me want to kick them in the nuts every time I use the fucking software.
That kind of sucks, but it should only be for a dev release
https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gimp-data/-/blob/main/images/splash-log.md
Ewww
They probably don't like zionazi either. Neither this nor zionist is a code word for Jew. The entire political class, the great majority being Christian, and their donors are zionist, because going with the flow of AIPAC is path to get your candidates to also serve your oligarchist or Christofascist protections.
Netanyahuists or likudists or Mossadists or Epsteinists ok?
BTW, Chuck Shumer is going to allow a vote in Senate over this "criticism of zionism is anti semitic" law in US. Reddit also supports mods who recomend permabans over criticism of zionism already.
Twitch has become garbage anyway. I’m more on Kick for streams nowadays.
Anyway wasn’t “Zionist” suppose to be a good term for these murderers? Whether they make it a banable word, screw them. Those who defend Israel, their genocidal actions and claim that the land “belongs to them, the colonizers” are Zionists.
Yeah, totally!
Even technologically Twitch has always been shit. For all the hate YT rightfully deserves, I'm kinda glad they just said "ok we do livestreaming now too" one day and it works so much better. Simply so I never have to use twitch ever again.
The issue with YouTube is, I don't see many people on it to Stream (or I just don't look in the right direction?). I barely to not use Twitch these days, sometimes Kick but that's about it.
Good thing I'm an anti-zionist then I suppose.
sooo twitch declares the Zionist movement offensive? and should only discussed in sn academic sense? /s
wow twitch, very brave!!
I really don't like the censorship of speech from either side. People have a right to choose their own words and suffer the consequences for the words they choose.
"How dare you use a word that means 'genocidal, imperialist, apartheid, ethnostate' in a way that explicitly means 'genocidal, imperialist, apartheid, ethnostate'!" - Twitch, active supporters and enablers of genocidal, imperialist, apartheid ethnostates.
If you're equating the Jewish people with zionism, or conflating being in favor of zionism as somehow being benevolent to the Jewish people as a whole, you are treating the Jewish people as a monolith and are yourself being anti-semitic. Zionism is perfectly compatible with anti-semitism (see for example all those anti-semitic christians who enthusiastically support zionism), and anti-zionism is in itself not anti-semitic (cf Jewish voice for peace).
So making "zionist" a slur has nothing, absolutely nothing to do with being anti-anti-semitic or not.
I removed my comment because I realized after that I've would be interpreted like that. I don't believe that all Jews are zionists
Fair enough, all good. I'm leaving mine up because I think the point about the conflation of anti-zionism and anti-semitism being in itself antisemitic bears repeating.
Is this why we should not delegate the control of hate speech to the state, because it will always blow up in our faces?
Twitch is not the state
Sure it isn't. Let's review this when the state does the same thing lol.
Jewish Supremacism was the instigating lobby for such laws. They wanted to enable other "supremacist liberal-themed" movements to take advantage, and hopefully ally, with Zionism. Me too, at the height of the cultural wars, essentially was representing that women can never lie.
An inherent problem with equality, awareness for oppressed groups, advocacy is that the advocacy never stops at equality. The ADL is canonical example of supremacist overreach.
I am not subscribing to this bullshit, and I am sad my comment enabled you to spew it out. "Me too" was a valid and necessary movement to combat sexual assaults that were institutionalized in many industries and protected by law enforcement and judicial authorities. Many prominent figures went rightfully to jail for sex crimes, and the proportion of women lying about it is rather small to make a political argument off it. Tracing back "liberal-themed supremacy movements" to Jewish supremacism sounds to me quite close to Nazi conspiracy theory, to take any of this seriously. I am sorry this reached my feed, and I can't wait to engage the likes of you in combat.
sorry to be triggering, but there is a link between zionists using "Jews have a history of oppression" linking to "everything a zionist says is true" is a related tactic to "empowerment advocacy" doesn't stop after equality achieved. Hate crime legislation was sponsored by zionists, but they welcomed allies into broadening protections. Flipping out over the comment is a supremacist tactic.
@Alsephina okay, how about "the baddies"?;)
Are they gonna lock up genocide joe for hate crimes?