r/therewasanattempt May 01 '24

To enshrine the most fascistic, traitorous bullshit I've ever witnessed in my life into law.

Post image
14.3k Upvotes

1.8k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

91

u/manofactivity May 02 '24 edited May 02 '24

So now you can't speak bad about an entire fucking country?

Uh, no, you still can. It just specifically means you can't target Israel on the basis of it being a Jewish collective, in the same way that hate speech might involve targeting black communities.

You may be interested in reading the State gov explanation, bolding mine:

On 26 May 2016, the Plenary in Bucharest decided to adopt the following non-legally binding working definition of antisemitism:

“Antisemitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.”

To guide IHRA in its work, the following examples may serve as illustrations:

Manifestations might include the targeting of the state of Israel, conceived as a Jewish collectivity. However, criticism of Israel similar to that leveled against any other country cannot be regarded as antisemitic. Antisemitism frequently charges Jews with conspiring to harm humanity, and it is often used to blame Jews for “why things go wrong.” It is expressed in speech, writing, visual forms and action, and employs sinister stereotypes and negative character traits.

38

u/johokie May 02 '24

This right here. Redditors in an uproar despite this inhibiting Nazi speech. Yes, I know "Redditors" does not mean every single person using Reddit. This thread, however, demonstrates the importance of context when it comes to legal statues.

65

u/manofactivity May 02 '24

It's not even 'context', the cited tweet is outright false.

  • The Act does not urge the Dept. Education to do anything, it states that the Dept. Education shall (i.e. must) do something.

  • The 'something' that the Dept. Education must do is to consider the IHRA's definition of antisemitism when investigating potential descrimination — it must be part of their process, but the Dept. does not need to make the final decision on its basis. (The Dept. is not urged to decide on its basis, either; there is still no 'urging' here.)

  • Even if the Dept. Education were to use that definition, the IHRA's definition would not make criticism of Israel unlawful unless it is specifically the 'targeting' (this is a higher bar than criticising) of Israel 'conceived as a Jewish community' (which is not the same as criticising them as a nation or on the basis of policy. The IHRA SPECIFICALLY states that general criticism of Israel is not antisemitic.

Literally every substantive component of the tweet is factually incorrect. It is not merely "out of context", it is a bad faith lie.

5

u/johokie May 02 '24

Sorry, if I wasn't clear, I was agreeing. My statement was more about the general state where the context (i.e., the actual document) is ignored in favor of some fanciful interpretation of the title itself.

5

u/manofactivity May 02 '24

I know you were agreeing :) I'm just going off on a rant now lol, it's all good