I suppose it's time for a new thread seeing as the previous one is almost at 1,700 posts.
It's been kicking off in America (again) after the police have shot a black man (again). A couple of protesters/rioters have been killed after they were driven by the police towards an alt-right militia, with this planned in advance.
Is it just me who feels like it's a special sick kind of perverse irony that this woman has made herself so wealthy on the back of all the black men who lose their lives to Yank police?
I don't think bumsore intersectional liberal lad still posts around here, we only have proper class based lefties and plain old Tories on this site now. But I'd like to hear his answer to it.
>>38416 I don't think anyone defends stealing, or misleading people into thinking they are donating, charitable funds. I think you'd be lucky to start a fight over this, daftlad.
>>38416 I think it's been well established by now that BLM (and BLM UK) as an organisation is a joke and BLM as a movement tries to distance itself from it.
BLM is just another Seppo problem dumped onto our nation without understanding the structure of our society. Just like trying to impose Taco Bell on us all when we already have Kebab shops. And our nation in this analogy is a pair of shitted Y-fronts.
Yeah, it's just I remember arguing with some lad here a few years ago saying these lot are clearly grifters and he was all "hurr you're just a crypto-racist" and what have you.
Just like when I said Lindsay Ellis was going to get cancelled over something stupid, my prophecy came true. I might be cynical, but I'm usually right.
>Nicholas John Roske, 26, had planned to murder a Supreme Court justice and was armed with a pistol and tactical knife, court documents said.
>Protection for the justices has been beefed up ahead of a landmark ruling on US abortion rights.
>Mr Roske said he was having suicidal thoughts, had a gun and had come from California to "kill a specific United States Supreme Court justice". Local police officers were sent to the justice's home and arrested Mr Roske.
>While in custody, Mr Roske said he was "upset" about the leaked Supreme Court document on abortion, as well as the recent mass shooting in Uvalde, Texas, according to the affidavit.
Hey, it's a lefty trying it this time! It sounds like he's absolutely mental, but it feels very refreshing to have a murderous nutter standing up for abortion rights for once instead of raging about globalist Jew conspiracies again.
Not sure how nutjob you have to be as a left winger to hate on Jews. The ones I've met seem to think that the more multiethnic a society, the better, because it'll break white privilege.
>>38703 >Not sure how nutjob you have to be as a left winger to hate on Jews.
There's a not-insignificant chunk of them who consider that they're to blame for the whole Middle East thing and run the world's finance and media industries. You're a Jew? It's your fault that right-wingers in Israel are building settlements, personally.
There's a reason Rangers fans, Protestant fundamentalists and anti-antifascists (a.k.a. pro-fascists) like to antagonise people by carrying the flag of Israel on marches.
David Baddiel wrote a superb book about it. The basic "logic" is that white people cause all of the bad things, Jews are basically ultra-white, ergo Jews are the worst of the worst. Jews might have been historically persecuted for thousands of years, but leftists tend to perceive them as privileged rather than underdogs. When you start digging down into that perception, a lot of anti-Semitic tropes start to crop up. Jewish people are intelligent, Jewish people are often successful in business, Jews are rich, Jews are usurers, Jews are cunning.
There's a very thin veil of innuendo between "The world is being run by a shadowy cabal of bankers" and "The world is being run by a shadowy cabal of bankers. You know, bankers. Them." Throw in the anti-Israel sentiment and it's almost inevitable that people will start crossing the line into outright anti-Semitism.
The trouble is that when you look at it in objective terms, jews largely are priveleged. You can see a similar parallel to this developing in Americas race politics, because the narrative of "white people and then everyone else" doesn't fit with the truth of the matter that Asians (Chinese, etc) are more successful in basically every metric.
Of course, this becomes difficult to reconcile with the idea that certain groups are poor oppressed victims while white people are always advantaged in everything, so you have to start doing mental gymnastics. The retarded thing is that instead of seeing this and realising oh, maybe that whole reductive narrative of grouping everyone together by their ancient tribal origins and assigning them to "priveleged" or "non-priveleged" accordingly is a bit daft, they double down and just start adding caveats and loopholes.
The trouble for the left is that legitimate critique of Isreal and/or certain institutions that happen to be owned or disproportionately represented by Jewish people is often misrepresented as anti-semitism. And indeed, pointing this out is, in itself, often accused of being anti-semitism. But that's the real anti-semitism- Being willing to use that label so cynically that it loses all meaning.
David Baddiel discredited himself by joining the wolf-crying about Corbyn, for what it's worth.
Jews are the most persecuted people in the history of humanity. They were very nearly eradicated within living memory; several countries used to have Jewish communities. The Holocaust was not a one-off aberration, but a continuation of to centuries of displacement and mass murder across Russia and Eastern Europe.
Any discussion of anti-Semitism that doesn't put those facts front and centre is tacitly anti-Semitic, just as a discussion of racism in America that overlooks the legacy of transatlantic slavery is tacitly racist.
There is abundant evidence that Jeremy Corbyn is at the very least extremely tolerant of anti-Semitism among the people he associates with. If he isn't anti-Semitic, then he has the awful luck of continuously associating himself with people who turn out to be vicious anti-Semites. For someone who presents himself as being dedicated to anti-racism, that is an astonishing oversight; it's almost as if, as Baddiel proposes, certain people on the left believe that "Jews don't count".
When every major British Jewish group is calling someone an anti-Semite and the vast majority of British Jews agree, it might be sensible for them to listen. When his supporters defend him by claiming that Jews are conspiring to keep a socialist out of office, he might want to reflect on the fact that the only argument against claims of anti-Semitism is itself an anti-Semitic slur.
More like there are certain people on the left who just aren't falling for it.
Bit like when a copper arrests a black lad for stealing something, and the lad goes "this is racism this is!", only for jews it actually works. Can't accuse them of anything, even when they objectively done it and we have evidence they done it, because that's anti-semitism. Then they're all surprised pikachu face when people start thinking they're shady fuckers.
The part you're ignoring is that there are large swathes of the Jewish community see this behaviour and rightly condemn it for reflecting badly upon them all. Has a lot to do with that nasty Z word, which a lot of Jewish institutions subscribe to, but not all Jewish people agree with. Bit like how not all British people approve of being ruled by a thousand year old aristocracy, in fact a great many of them think it's retarded, but nevertheless every major British institution supports it.
Oh dear, it all comes back to class, again, doesn't it?
When Barry Hines sat down and wrote "Threads" I'm not sure that in his wildest dreams he could've imagined his post-nuclear Britain circa 1994 would be preferable to being subjected to discussion threads in the tragically un-nuked Britain of 2022.
Jeremy Corbyn's refusal to push the button was a terrible vice. Not because he wouldn't do it in self-defence, that was fine, there's nothing here worth defending. A first strike would be an act of mercy, not aggression, and should go unpunished. No, Jeremy Corbyn's refusal to push the button was a vice because he wouldn't launch a first strike against the world. He was not prepared force their hands and bring about the merciful obliteration of this grey and unpleasant land which every nuke-swinging johnny foreigner from Washington to Tel-Aviv has been putting off for far too long.
>>38707 >it's almost as if, as Baddiel proposes, certain people on the left believe that "Jews don't count".
The problem is that it's absolutely fine to say that bankers don't count, or that tax-avoiding newspaper tycoons don't count. I will oppose anyone who says that prejudice against bankers does count. But of course, lots of Jews aren't millionaire bankers, and lots of Jews don't control the media. The biggest #1 media-controlling crook is Rupert Murdoch, who isn't Jewish.
A lot of people unfortunately use the word "Jew" as a very convenient shorthand to refer to the people who really do control society, some of whom are Jewish and some of whom are not. As long as we interpret anti-Semitic outrage in that way, and accept that many Jews are innocent and many Gentiles are guilty, those neo-you-know-whats could really do a lot of good in society. But when so many people appear to be so thick that they can't even tell the difference between support for Palestine and actual anti-Semitism, there is no way to be sure that anyone who talks that way can really be trusted to understand even the most basic nuance that not every evil corporate fatcat is actually a Jew.
>A lot of people unfortunately use the word "Jew" as a very convenient shorthand to refer to the people who really do control society, some of whom are Jewish and some of whom are not.
That's very much the core of the issue, but "convenient shorthand" is rather underplaying things. The last time that particular convenient shorthand became popular, six million people were murdered. There's a very good reason why we don't give people the benefit of the doubt when they start accidentally paraphrasing Mein Kampf.
>But when so many people appear to be so thick that they can't even tell the difference between support for Palestine and actual anti-Semitism
I sometimes find it very hard to believe that's anyone merely being thick, and not just an ethno-nationalist equivalent of how your little sister used to start crying and pretend you'd hit her to get her own way, and your parents never believed you.
The problem is that the Palestinian Territories, Jordan, Egypt and Syria are run by overtly anti-Semitic governments. They're opposed to a two-state solution because they're opposed to the existence of Israel, because they're opposed to the existence of the Jewish people.
Support for Palestine is far too often based solely on the propaganda of Islamic fundamentalist groups. People who march under the pro-Palestinian banner believe such utterly spurious nonsense - starting with the idea that a Palestinian state has ever existed, or that there was such a thing as a "Palestinian" before 1909 - that it's impossible to have a meaningful conversation.
There are a many wholly legitimate criticisms of the actions of the state of Israel, but seeing "support for Palestine" and "support for the people of the Palestinian Territories" as being equivalent is a key part of the problem of left-wing anti-Semitism. They don't know what happened in 1948, so they fail to understand what Israel is and what Palestine isn't.
>>38720 Something about this post feels very disingenuous, but I can't put my finger on what. Maybe the way it silently makes Israel an essential part of Jewishness, with all the implications that go with that. Maybe the sop to a two-state solution that everyone pretends to believe in while not really caring for. Maybe the implied concern for the people of Palestine and sops to "legitimate criticisms of the actions of the state of Israel" in a post so obviously "pro-Israel". I'm not quite sure, and I'm honestly curious if you'd have a guess at what it is. I'm not trying to start shit. My objection is one of style, not of substance.
(It's not that I'm some whining lefty pro-Palestine type, I can't see that stupid "loss of Palestinian territory" graphic without having to remind people practically every step is "the Arabs start a war they can't actually fight.")
My problem with Israel has always been much less about concern for the poor innocent helpless desert pikeys they're genociding, and more about the massive brass bollocked fucking hypocrisy of it, to be perfectly honest.
>>38720 >The idea that a Palestinian state has ever existed, or that there was such a thing as a "Palestinian" before 1909
This seems a bit weird to me. So the land where Palestine may or may not be was just laying around unclaimed and unused, including by the people living there? They didn't get the right papers stamped by the Register of Official Countries before 1909 so it was fine to take it away from them thirty years later? None of this makes sense.
That bit of land was previously part of Ottoman Syria. Prior to that it was ruled by Egypt under the Mamluk sultanate, prior to that it was ruled by Catholic crusaders, prior to that it was part of the Byzantine and Roman empires. It didn't have distinct national boundaries and the people who lived there didn't see themselves as having an ethnic identity that distinguished them from the broader Arab world.
After the First World War, the Ottoman empire collapsed and we divvied up the remnants with France under a mandate from the League of Nations. The territory that is now Israel and the Palestinian Territories was formally established in 1920 as Mandatory Palestine. It was conceived as a multi-ethnic state, with a joint Arab and Jewish parliament and a British High Commissioner.
In the 1930s, Arab groups started revolting against British rule; this revolt is really what established the concept of Palestinian nationalism. Attacks on Jewish immigrants by these Arab groups led to the creation of Jewish militias. In an effort to calm these tensions, the British government imposed strict quotas on Jewish immigration to Mandatory Palestine in 1939. This was clearly not brilliant timing.
During the second world war, Jewish groups in Palestine made significant to resettle Jews fleeing the Holocaust, contrary to the immigration quotas set by the British government. The previously cordial relationship between Jewish people in Mandatory Palestine and the British government collapsed completely, leading to a low-level war and the clear will amongst Jews in Palestine to establish Israel as a self-governing nation.
In 1948, the British Mandate was formally ended by a UN resolution; the plan was to partition the Mandatory territories into an Arab and Jewish state, with Jerusalem being designated as a neutral city-state. This plan failed almost immediately with the outbreak of the 1948 Arab-Israeli war.
Although Palestinian Arabs had negligible military capacity of their own, the Israelis were expected to be quickly defeated by forces brought in by the Arab League. The Arab League opposed partition and entered the war with the intent of completely driving out the Jewish settlers, with the expectation (supported by the British) that the former territories of Mandatory Palestine would be annexed by the Kingdom of Jordan. To the surprise of pretty much everyone, the Israelis fought incredibly effectively and by early 1949 had achieved a decisive military victory.
An armistice agreement was signed between Israel and Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan and Syria, establishing the national borders of Israel roughly in line with the UN's partition plan. This agreement did not establish an independent Palestinian state - not because the Israelis opposed it, but because their Arab neighbours did. The Gaza strip remained under Egyptian control and the West Bank remained under the control of Jordan.
>>38729 >establishing the national borders of Israel roughly in line with the UN's partition plan
Eh? I know there are problems with this map - for me primarily the racist idea that pre-partition Jewish communities can't be considered 'Palestine' - but what you're saying here is that the second map and the third map are identical?
The key problem with that map is labelling the green bits as "Palestine". The bit to the east was part of Jordan, the bit to the west was part of Egypt. The bit to the north would have been part of Lebanon, but the Lebanese government didn't want it.
Israel didn't sweep in and steal Palestine; the conflict over that territory created the idea of Palestinian nationhood as distinct from the British Mandate. The 1949 armistice wasn't negotiated between Israel and Palestine, because Palestinian Arabs were only a minor party to the conflict and they had no government for Israel to negotiate with. The "if Israel never existed" counterfactual isn't a Palestinian state, but a bunch of land being divvied up between Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon.
The conflict in that region was never a two-way dispute between Israel and Palestine, but a complex multi-party dispute between Israel and their neighbours with Arabs of the Palestinian territories caught in the middle. It's now an even more complicated dispute involving a bunch of non-state actors due to the political instability of Israel's neighbours.
Egypt was officially at war with Israel until 1979, Jordan until 1994 and Syria to the present day. Those protracted states of war weren't about Palestine, but about the national interests of those states and their refusal to recognise the existence of Israel as a legitimate state.
There's one very important piece of the puzzle you're ignoring here David, that explains why the concept of Palestinian nationhood became something of a necessity, but we'll not go there eh.
>>38825 One time I asked for chipotle southwest and they gave me ketchup, and I was too scared to correct them, so I paid and brought it home and threw it away because ketchup makes me sick. If only I lived in the USA, I could have bust a cap in the sandwich artist's ass for doing the wrong sauce.
>'Avatar' Faces Calls for Boycott Over Accusations of Racism
>Director James Cameron is facing allegations of Native American and Indigenous cultural appropriation over the themes and imagery in his latest blockbuster, Avatar: The Way of Water.
I've always just thought that part 1 was a shit movie and the beginning of a shit novel movie franchise. But I guess some people aren't content with leaving it at that.
Or Dances With Wolves. I think that was the main comparison when part 1 came out.
Anyway, it's no coincidence that films like these are made in the U.S.. There's always that lingering colonialist idea that America must bring (its) civilisation to the unwashed savages and steal their natural resources in the process. Even if they live on a moon orbiting an extrasolar planet.
There's a but in the new one where they move house to live with the water indians instead of tree indians, and one of them makes fun of how small their tails are. Very subtle.
When I think back on it I'm surprised the original didn't get more backlash for that kind of-sorta-a bit racist maybe if you want to be one of those people portrayal of the noble enlightened savage and all that. This second one is no different, but honestly it's hard to really argue when the overall theme of the movie is so heavily and un-abashedly "industrial white people ruining nice beautiful nature bad". Some people are just never happy.
For what it's worth I thought they were both alright. Nothing amazing story wise but they are an entertaining watch, and sometimes that's fine.
>Nothing amazing story wise but they are an entertaining watch
I went to see part 1 with a friend who was an aspie sci fi geek and had nobody else to go with that day.
To me, the premise was overblown, the visual effects self indulgent and at times pretentious, and the excessive length of the film torturous. Also, although that wasn't the fault of the movie itself, we had seats in about the fifth or sixth row with an absolutely gigantic screen, which is a strain on your eyes and neck on a good day, but 3D somehow made it ten times worse.
I like certain kinds of sci fi movies. For example, I'm a big fan of the original Alien movies, which is why seeing Sigourney Weaver in Avatar was one of the few good things. But all in all, it just didn't tick many boxes for me. And I don't plan on seeing part 2.
>Ben & Jerry's is facing a boycott after calling on the United States to "commit to returning" stolen Indigenous land in its 4th of July message.
>On Independence Day, the iconic American ice cream brand sparked outrage on social media by publishing a Twitter post with an image reading: "The United States was founded on stolen Indigenous land. This Fourth of July, let's commit to returning it."
>Ben & Jerry's message generated a flood of negative responses on social media, with some calling it the company's "Bud Light moment," referring to controversy and subsequent boycott after the beer brand partnered with a evangelist christian korean youtuber activist in April.
Whatever else you may think about this, from a marketing perspective, one golden rule in advertising is that you don't shit on the sensibilities of your target audience or customer base. Whatever they are. It can be massively risky for a middle of the road, mass market brand to stray from that principle and take a cotroversial stand that's mainly going to appeal to a small fraction or subset of your customers, especially in identity politics and in a country that's as culturally divided as the U.S. Add to that American patriotism, which is more easily offended than many think. On Independence Day, no less.
Having worked in advertising, I know what kind of people that profession can attract. I'm not going to slam wokeness as such here, although I tend to be sceptical of it, but this is a reality check for young gen-Z advertising executives whose only concept of the world so far has been shaped inside liberal arts college seminar rooms and social media echo chambers, where you could cancel and deplatform people for ideas and opinions that contrasted yours. It doesn't work that way in most of the real world, where you'll sometimes have to sell a product to a demographic whose entire way of thinking is diametrically different from your own. And whatever you may think about American history, some of it probably founded, you won't get many cheers for a tweet like this one.
>>40495 B&J have followed this strategy for over a decade now and it works very well for them. The most recent 'right-on' position they took was at the end of last year placing and embargo on Israeli settlements but they've done all sorts that would be the end of any other company.
The people who buy the overpriced ice cream, despite the small tubs, are upper-middle class American women. A protest on a national holiday is right up their alley.
>>40495 But what does any of this mean? Even if I was American, it wouldn't be my country to give back. I couldn't just unilaterally hand over North Dakota. And let's say I was a governor or congressman, or whoever it would be who theoretically could claim to have the power to give someone a state. Who would I give it to? Would I just quit my job and appoint the local Native American chieftain as my replacement? Democracy doesn't work that way. I suppose I could rename my state to whatever its old Injun name was, but then it's just performative and I'm not giving anything to anyone.
It's one thing to take an edge position on a fringe topic like Israeli settlements, on which most Americans will have no opinion whatsoever either way. But patriotism is much more dear to many Americans, with around 75% saying they're patriotic, and half of those 75 percent even calling themselves "very patriotic", according to YouGov. And I don't know if you've met many middle to upper middle class women in America. You'll find that a lot of them may disagree with the government but are still quite patriotic.
Ben & Jerry's may have carved out a niche for itself with a brand image of being an unconventional, progressive, maverick, forward-thinking ice cream maker. But even people who identify with the brand and don't just eat it because it's arguably some pretty good ice cream won't mirror those attributes to such an extent that you should assume they aren't patriotic. They may not give a shit about Israel, but that doesn't mean they want to be told on Independence Day that they stole the country from the Indians.
Also, brand image often transcends your buyer demographic. Or at least it can greatly help a brand if it's appreciated and has positive connotations even with people who don't use or buy it. I'm not sure Independence Day is the right time to put that to the test in such a way.
>The people who buy the overpriced ice cream, despite the small tubs, are upper-middle class American women. A protest on a national holiday is right up their alley.
This. American society is so divided that most consumer brands can quite comfortably pick a side in the culture war, in the knowledge that the overwhelming majority of their customers will be on one side. Brands do occasionally fuck this up and pick the wrong side, but it's still dangerous to remain neutral - if you don't pick a side, you risk offending everyone.
I still don't fully agree with you, but Bud Light did fuck it up this year in April. In advertising terms, mainstream beer drinking is still a bastion of masculinity in America, not only are most people in America who drink it white heterosexual men, but they're also often the kind of men who are very sceptical of the whole LGBT movement. American machoism and masculinity as concepts in certain circles of society are hard to explain if you've never witnessed it first-hand, and whatever depictions you see over here in the media don't really do it justice. But in any case, having an advert with a transwoman endorsing a product whose buying demographic are such a complete and polar opposite to everything of that sort has backfired completely. Sales have tanked, supermarkets can't move it even at great discounts, and branded Bud Light beer stands at events remain empty. Even sister brands that are also owned by Anheuser-Busch are affected.
LGBT-friendly advertising may be a non-issue over here, I can't think of any brand in Britain that would really see a backlash from an LGBT-friendly advert, but then it's America we're talking about. Where people will let you know their party affiliation with the same breath that they'll tell you where they go to church.
I think it's fair to say that the specific American strain of consumerism and how it actually integrates with their culture has a lot to do with it.
It seems barmy to us because who gives a fuck, are you buying the chocolate and caramel ice cream to support the gays or just because it's the one on offer this week and you fancy some ice cream? We are a lot more cynical about advertising and branding in general, we have brand loyalty and strong preferences sure, but on some level everyone recognises that it's all just stuff and we're only being targeted to part us with out money.
In America brands make themselves into parts of the community, people are much more willing to connect with brands and companies as part of their identity. Many brands position themselves as a cornerstone of American-ness, think of the rugged Ford pick-up embodying the frontier spirit, the Fender Stratocaster in authentic cowboy Stevie Ray Vaughan's hands, the Marlboro man, all that. These things are baked into the way Americans see themselves, it's no surprise that they have become essentially sacred cows and that threatening that self-image draws such ire from some segments of American society.
An American brand that doesn't want to accept and integrate all that baggage is essentially left with little choice but to pitch itself as an effeminate, bagel eating, latte-sipping, hipster "woke" brand for the urbanites who wish they were European at either coast.
The Civil War was never really resolved. On a cultural, social and political level, America is still two very different countries. Those differences have been brought to the forefront by communications technology in general and social media in particular.
Historically, America has never really had a national media. They've got the New York Times and the Washington Post, but almost no genuinely national newspapers. They mostly have TV networks, not channels - a loose group of affiliate stations that operate under the same brand name, but broadcast a mix of nationally-syndicated and locally-produced content.
Until fairly recently, the two Americas maintained an uneasy truce by simply ignoring the other half. Someone from Alabama might have regarded people from New York and LA as snobby liberals, they might have regarded him as a toothless hick, but mostly they didn't think about each other at all. Twitter (and an increasingly Twitterised news media) have shattered that truce, because angry people are good for the engagement metrics. Stoking those divisions is just too profitable and the First Amendment keeps media regulation fundamentally toothless.
America could return to the old live-and-let-live approach, but the zeitgeist is opposed to it, particularly on the left. Devolution ("states rights") has always been right-coded in the US, but the partisan split seems to be particularly acute at the moment, with those on the left aggressively pushing back on the principles of federalism. "Letting local areas make more of their own decisions" is understood by many as meaning "letting the right win".
>but the partisan split seems to be particularly acute at the moment, with those on the left aggressively pushing back on the principles of federalism. "Letting local areas make more of their own decisions" is understood by many as meaning "letting the right win".
American politics is full of that kind of politics-by-catchphrase. Not saying it doesn't exist in Britain, but Americans push it to extremes. And whatever is really behind it is often a hidden agenda.
Just take fiscal conservativism. On the face of it, many Republicans like to call themselves "fiscal conservatives" because they will tell you that they believe that Big Government shouldn't be wasting your tax dollars. Which sounds reasonable, but what they really mean is they don't want to pay into the system, and other people who are too poor to help themselves get a job or medical treatment can just go fuck themselves, because surely they're in the place they're in for a lack of trying.
Also, both sides frequently accuse each other of stoking the culture wars, but what it boils down to is really just another way of saying your loony ideas are different from our loony ideas.
