Texas Border Convoy Descends into Antisemitism

Descends into?

Are you sure they weren't there all along?

Indeed. We need a new version of Godwin's law. Something like
The odds of xenophobia, homophobia, transphobia, or antisemitism appearing in a conversation is directly proportional to the number of conservatives participating in that conversation.
- Hence forth this will be known as “Billiams law”
- Godwin's law was always more harm than good. Basically stating that despite a long history with fascism, it was inappropriate to compare Republicans to fascists/Nazis. Sure not everyone who votes Republican is a fascist. They're just okay with fascists. But if you are a fascist or modern Nazi, if you vote you vote Republican and always have.
  What you're putting forward is much more like a razor anyway. See Occam's or Hanlon's.
"Texas border convoy removes mask"
- And it would have gotten away with it if it weren't for you kids and your dog.
- I mean yes, but also no: most of them are probably antivaxx and antimask
"descends into," "reveals undertone of," tomatoes, tomahtoes

Idk about you guys but I hate Nazis more than I hate illegal immigrants.

Hopefully their power grid can keep up this winter.

- Yeah, especially considering how the border goes through communities and we’ve relied on the labor of these immigrants since we stole that land from Mexico. Also complaining about people coming from Mexico to land that we stole from Mexico feels ironic.
- Not attacking you or anything. But people can't be illegal. They're undocumented. And we should actively seek to reframe it as such. They are just immigrants. Regardless of whether they came here illegally or not. The term illegal immigrants has been popularized and pushed by fascist/conservatives as a way to frighten people and "other" immigrants.
- I'm sorry that their country was destroyed by US policies and they were forced to abandon their homes, I'm sorry that they're coming here to be superexploited by brutal farming operations and meatpackers and slaughterhouses, and I'm sorry they're going to have to find out how bad this country is in-person.
  I could never hate them.
  But this doesn't make me proud either.
I hate Nazis
"Especially Illinois Nazis"
~"Joliet" Jake Blues
- Idk what these words mean
Don't need to hate anyone tho.
- except nazis. we need to hate them.
- Then the paradox of tolerance is never solved, good luck.

Jesus fuck I'll never understand these people. So now the Jews are sending Mexicans? Do they hear themselves when they speak? How incredibly fucking stupid that sounds?

- Less so dumb, more so easily swayed by validation of their internalized racism and homophobia. We gotta remember there are smart assholes out there.
It's not that confusing. You figure out who you hate, and then find any possible reason for them to be the cause of all your life's problems, no matter how thin or tenuous.
Luckily, there are always people to tell you both of the above.
My uncle-in-law is convinced that the CCP is sending spies and sleeper agents in droves across the border. There's just no way to reason with this level of delusion.
- They get their spies in legitimately or turn people. The fuck would you use a border? You want someone with a legal job.
- CPC
This is not a new theory. This was the motivation for the 2018 Tree of Life shooting, which is the deadliest anti-semitic attack in American history.
Well yah, because the space laser didn’t work!
- Except they still believe that one... They even know what color it is.
  It's blue, apparently, and you can protect your home from it by painting your roof blue... Doesn't matter what shade of blue, just so long as it is blue.
  True to form... Someone began advertising their blue paint as protection from the laser.
Maybe it's the Mexicans who are sending their jews?
- Now that's a shama llama ding dong level plot twist
I kinda wonder if it had been said the Russians are sending the Mexicans if people around here might have bought into it despite the ridiculousness.
Right? It's still the Jews? Really? WTF? East Indian Americans are rapidly outpacing "the Jews" in terms of elite professionalism, but it's still all somehow about the Jews?
What planet do these people live on?
- What planet do these people live on?
  Flat Earth
It’s because of their stereotypes. They see Jews as shifty underhanded masterminds. There’s no other minority group that they see that way so everything they don’t like they blame the Jews for.

Anti-immigration hysteria? Check. Anti-semitic conspiracies? Check. Now all they is some anti-black dog whistles to hit the trifecta. The odds are looking pretty good.

It's like a horrible game of Bigot Bingo
There must have been at least one confederate flag at this shindig.
- I will be fucking shocked if there is only one, hell I’d be shocked if it was under 10
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTT1qUswYL0

The only part that surprises me about this is that the convoy isn't called "Take Back Are Country."

Well there's a shock.

Who's funding *this *rally??
- The asshole who tells you that you just need to work harder to get that $2 raise, after purchasing himself a new super truck with the money he definitely earned by working hard.
- Stupidity

Yet this is the same party attacking the left for being antisemitic, and the media never contextualizes their attacks with things like this or their Jewish space laser actual antisemitism.

The so-called antisemitism: pls stop genociding Palestinians :(
Socialists have an antisemitism problem because of the whole Wealthy Capitalist Jew stereotype. They hate wealthy people, they hate capitalists, so on an emotional level they have predisposition towards hating Jews. Not enough to kill Jews, but just enough to look the other way when someone else is killing Jews.
The right wing has an antisemitism problem because of religious bigotry.
This common hatred allows for strange coalitions to form between fascists and socialists. ie. National Socialism.
Of course socialists tend to be so certain of their ideological superiority they feel like they can win over the fascists in time. But then there's a night of the long knives and guess who are the ones holding the knives?
Socialist spend so much time debating the minutia of ideology they become ignorant of emotional manipulation and how power dynamics work. This makes them susceptible to being duped into joining fascist causes and when they're no longer useful to the fascists, they're promptly disposed of.
- Socialists have an antisemitism problem because of the whole Wealthy Capitalist Jew stereotype.
  I've never met a socialist who believes that stereotype though
- So in your first paragraph are you saying that the Jews have all the money?
- Issue with your first premise about Socialism... I have never heard leftist and Socialist circles take specific issue with Jewish people. Quite frankly the stereotype of the rich Jewish person is tied into the idea of Usury being a sin in Christianity but not the Jewish faith... But when was the last time you heard of the church full of fire and brimstone proclaim participating in the stock market is a sin? Answer is, you don't. Because it doesn't happen anymore. As dogma goes it was subtly retired from popular consciousness over a lengthy process about 300 years ago. The concept of "the Rich Jew" being a distinct issue for having any kind of advantage over anybody else is just the lingering unexamined myth of an era where any loan made where interest was charged had limited sources. There is no bogeyman money lender anymore when secular short term loan businesses dot the landscape.
  The factor the main branches of Socialism all agree on is that the super rich should be taxed and measures made to put checks on monopolies. The faith of the people in those positions has zero relevance to that discussion. The common denominator is the amount of money made and the social ills that are perpetuated when that wealth is allowed to be unambiguously hoarded. Assuming that targeting the rich unfairly targets the Jewish people is buying into the antisemitic stereotype that paints them as the only rich predatory bogeymen of consequence.
  What Conservatives often don't realize about hate speech is that there are protected and unprotected grounds. Israel is a political construct, a country. Becoming mega rich through exploitation is a choice anyone can make. Neither of these things are beyond criticism because they are both institutions independant of the body of religion. You have Jewish people who hate what the body politic of Israel is doing and you have rich exploitative people who are not Jewish.
  The near complete lack of understanding of the actual hard boundries of what counts as hate speech versus legitimate targets of criticism leave a lot of moderates in your position where they are out to sea and unable to pick hate speech properly out of the dialogue and are subject to false equivency propaganda that there's hypocrisy when there's not. In rhetoric there are solid rules about what counts and until you learn them you are sailing without a compass or stars.

I disagree with the word "descends." Aren't their previous racist and otherwise positions equally low? This is a lateral move not a descent.

How does a group "descend" to a position they never left. That's like saying these conservative shitstains "descended" into racism and xenophobia. They are conservatives FFS!

I think it's funny how the starting point was they're christian nationalist secessionist traitors but OP's red line is anti-semitism.
- It's pretty common to see in the Jewish culture. They generally really don't give a shit about anything outside their bubble but when something happens to them they demand they world drops everything to help them or otherwise you're a piece of shit.

When does free speech descend into incitement?

When black people do it.
See: BLM protests
Technically there is a legal answer but unfortunately in the States it has different possible definitions at the State and Federal level.
In a very general sense one in part looks at intention and also all the factors around in the environment. If I were to go "we should kill the !" in a forum such as this where generally speaking we are all just people talking and hyperbole is more or less the norm it's probably not going to meet the criteria of a chargeable incitement. If I as a speaker at a podium where I have been marketed as some kind of authority - even if that is just implied by the fact I am on the podium - start winding up a crowd with the intention of setting them loose to a criminal purpose or start yelling at someone who is already weilding a gun to shoot then that's a pretty strong case for incitement. Your intention is made fairly clear and you are in a place to directly influence in an outsized fashion how events might play out.
A lot of the harmful rhetoric that goes on, while priming the stage for individual people to become aggressive and more predisposed to take out their aggressions on the target (stochastic terrorism) has been leaned on quite heavily in modern times it does so basically cheating the system. If you start low and slow and let the water appear to boil itself then it generally protects you from a incitement charge.

In a separate video of the same event posted by Ryan Matta, he also claims that Hamas and Hezbollah "are coming across" the U.S. border. "Venezuela is filled with Hezbollah," he said. "Our borders are wide open, it's our government that's doing it." Yon reposted the video with the caption "Allahu Akbar!"

So is it Jews or Hamas/Hezbollah?

They can’t even keep their shit straight that they are telling people. 🤦🏻‍♂️

They probably don't know the difference. They're from the same place after all LoL. These people aren't smart.

I was told that 21 year old college students advocating that less children get blown up were the antisemitic ones?

You're telling me they're not defending Jews they just like the cruelty‽

I’m shocked

These people don't know whether to hate or love Jews depending on what their talking heads told them that morning

They generally hate Jews unless Fox News tells them that Arabs are scarier.
When it's not involving Arabs, then Jews are scarier.
I don't quite understand the hierarchy of fear that's so present in these communities though, but I assume there's sub gradations within the groups like an Israeli Jew isn't as bad as a wall street Jew and a wall street Jew is scarier than a Mexican but not a taxi driver?
I'm probably not racist enough to grasp the nuances of their thinking but I'm among the scary people so I try to catalogue where I am in the moment on the hate scale LoL. Rising the ranks quickly is my current experience.....
- For many of them the role Israel plays in their eschatological fantasies drives a lot of that complication and nuance.

Been hearing about terrorism in the US for years. Why are they all homegrown?

Oh this is good.

Maybe we'll see some of that censorship put to good use, now.

I feel like we need to stop using the term antisemitism and split it into two categories. You have the Nazi's hate speech vs the Israeli government wants to justify killing Palestinian children.

You literally have to read the articles to figure out in which way it's being used.

And I really wish the Israeli government would stop making me feel I need this distinction.

No, we don't need to split it into two categories because only one of those is antisemitism. If there were an organization of Latino Americans, even a powerful one, who announced that anyone who doesn't support Mexico's war against the cartels is racist, no one would say that there are two kinds of anti-Latino racism. There's racism and then there's bullshit that a group might claim is racism but isn't.
(Sorry, I know that's not a 1:1 example, but I can't think of an equivalent one to make my point. I think my point still stands.)
- No, I get you. I even agree with you. Unfortunately it's being used both ways, and I honestly think it would help to differentiate the two, because it's being diluted by the people that need protection from it the most.
- I agree fully it's a political tactic.

I’m getting worried.

I planned a vacation to TX for my birthday in early April, because it happens to coincide with the eclipse, and Dallas will be one of the best places to view it from.

So, since I had a lot of points to splurge on, I extended the vacation a bit and we’re going to fly into Houston, hang there for a bit, then spend my birthday weekend in Austin, then Dallas for the eclipse, and back down to Houston to fly home.

Lots of stuff I want to do in each city, and I know the cities are generally lean a bit more liberal, but I’m getting more concerned each day about actually spending my birthday and a monumental celestial event inside an actual civil war.

I live on the border, and you really don't need to worry unless you're pregnant.
Unless some kind of armed violence and wide scale conflict actually breaks out, you'll be perfectly fine. Especially in the cities, most of those people are just as aghast as you.
You’ll be fine. The average Texan isn’t even aware of this stupid shit and the cities you listed are way more left-leaning than a small town in whatever state you’re from.
This is a few hundred idiots in a state with a population of 30 million people. I saw more people at Costco yesterday.
Some articles have misrepresented it as 1,000 people, but that was a concert in Dripping Springs, a small town outside of Austin (not the border) with Ted Nugent and Sarah Palin. 1,000 people turning out for a musician with Top 40 hits is actually a very poor turnout for being near a city with 1,000,000 people.
This is all just media hype. Edit to add: And politician hype. I’m not sure which one I’m angrier at. They both suck for trying to “make fetch happen.”
I cancelled my trip for the eclipse. Why mess with texas?
Your first mistake was planning to go to Texas.
I'm sure it's like Florida and the cities are fine. Inside the cities here it's tolerant and more progressive, in the country and even now the suburbs it's different.
Dallas, Houston, Austin, even San Antonio, Galveston I wouldn't worry about visiting.

Oh, what? No way.

Referring to every brown person as a terrorist is just making the word meaningless

Never meet your heroes.

That was fast. Fucking antisemites. If they don’t like the land of religious freedom they’re free to leave to wherever wants them.

.. and in record time, too!

Antisemitism has always been a cornerstone of "White replacement theory." Why do you think the 2017 Charlottesville neonazis were chanting "Jews will not replace us?"