Matt Egan

Recent Activity

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  Matt signed the petition | about 7 hours ago

  The National Football League, Nerds Everywhere: Weird Al Yankovic performs the Super Bowl XLVII Half Time Show
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  Matt commented on the article | over 2 years ago

  When Hatreds Collide: Gay Youth Attacked in Tel Aviv

  "Whoever this individual is, if he is a member of the Israeli Jewish community, it is beyond shameful that the lessons of his own history have been lost on him."

  
  

   

  
  

  It's shameful whenever anyone doesn't learn those lessons, but it's not right to attach that to the murderers ethnicity. Really, would you say that about any other oppressed group? There's a long history, stretching way before WWII, of treating Jews this way -- and it is part of the process of othering Jews that creates antisemitism.

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  Matt commented on the article | about 3 years ago

  Uri Avnery on Israel as an Ethnic State

  What about a television station like BET (Black Entertainment Television)? If you argue that BET is racist, as do a good many conservatives, most anti-racists will respond (probably in a fairly abrubt manner) that every other station on the dial is very much white. That whiteness is taken for granted. Despite having only a minimal, token number of blacks on other stations, no one notices. It's the racists who complain about BET.
  
  In fact, people do talk about demographic threats in the US (unless you ignore the immigration debate). We do call such people racists, but in doing so, we hopefully recognize the dominance of whites in this country. And hopefully, we also recognize that the American project is not, in practice, as open and tolerant as the aspiration.
  
  Though people don't talk about Jewish demographics, people do talk about Jewish power in the form of the "Israel lobby." As distorted as that conversation is, it does make the point that Jewish interests are seen as distinct from American interests. For Jews to have actualized political power, of the sort that even approaches hegemony in *any* space outside a synagogue, is seen as awkward (or even threatening), yet for Christians to have such power is normal and unremarked upon.
  
  It's not hard to see that in the US, Christianness is taken for granted in quite the same way whiteness is taken for granted on tv. So, in a very real and meaningful way, America does not and (I think you really have to consider the possibility that it) cannot meet the national aspirations of the Jewish people.
  
  I find the second quote in the post to be, at best, shallow. In response to Livni's argument, I think we need to think a lot more about what national aspirations are and what the very concept of a nation is. How political power is organized into national groups, and what it means for subaltern groups.
  
  (see also: http://meretzusa.blogspot.com/2008/12/debating-marx-antisemitism.html)