Hot take, but even if you ARE punching up (instead of punching sideways at a group that is in the same boat as you), there's a limit to what you can say without sounding like a violent facist but woke this time.
Making fun of a group of people that are privileged over you is one thing, but wishing non-cartoonish violence and death on them ("they should fall off a cliff" vs. "they should be wiped out"), wishing sexual violence on them, dehumanising them, claiming that they're less capable of creating art or living meaningful lives, saying that their relationships are inherently shallow and fake - these things are fucked up. I understand venting and saying extreme things when in pain, but when you find yourself regularly posting about wanting certain people tortured and killed, you need to examine that.
When the only thing stopping you from completely dehumanising someone is your own judgement regarding their privilege level relative to yours, you are not a safe person to be around.
"convince your followers that their Oppressor Class (whether real or imagined) is less deserving of human rights" is the oldest and most reliable trick in the book to incite mass violence, and you're not immune to it because you're a Good Person with Correct Opinions. you will continue to be a potential breeding ground for fascist thought until you stop dehumanizing people in any context, regardless of whether they deserve it or not, or how serious you are. there can be no acceptable targets.
In the spring of 1994, the small African nation of Rwanda was engulfed in a maelstrom of violence that saw at least 800,000 Tutsi and modera
I always think of the Rwandan Genocide when it comes to this. Thank you for bringing it up.
In particular, from that second link:
As we have already seen in this series of articles, Rwandaâs ethnic division between Hutu (around 85 %) and Tutsi (around 14 %) had deep roots in colonial rule. Under Belgian administration, identity cards fixed ethnicity as a rigid category, and the Tutsi minority was favoured for education and government work. After independence in 1962, this hierarchy inverted, and Hutu elites consolidated control. [...] When RTLM launched in July 1993, it combined pop-culture style with extremist ideology. This hybrid made hatred sound normal, even entertaining. Music, jokes, gossip, and death threats co-existed in the same broadcast. [...] RTLMâs language fused entertainment with ideology. It mocked Tutsis as arrogant âcockroachesâ (inyenzi), accused them of conspiring to enslave Hutus, and encouraged listeners to âworkâ to eliminate themâa euphemism for killing. Humour, music, and familiarity disguised the lethal message.
âAnything goes as long as itâs punching upâ is also the central tenet of antisemitism. Leftists think Jews are the ultrawhite ruling class, worst of the worst of whiteness, and conservatives think weâre a race secretly controlling the world and pretending to be white as a plot to bring down the white race. People who believe the latter are in charge of the US government rn. The nature of antisemitism is that we serve as a misdirect for the people with real power. Whatever issues you care about, people in power will find a way to blame the Jews. I cannot remember the exact quote or who itâs from, but I will paraphrase it anyways. Depending on who you ask weâre communists, capitalists, nationalists, rootless cosmopolitans, white, least white, liberals, conservatives, fascists, anarchists, or whatever other âexistential and powerfulâ threat one may believe exists. But what we never are to these people is human. Weâre the monsters who hurt them and so itâs okay to hurt us. The truth doesnât matter, of course, because they arenât actually afraid of us. Weâre just a safer and easier target, and the lie that hurting us is dangerous and makes a change is easier than the hard truths and dangers one must face to fight real power. As Jean-Paul Sartre said, âIf the Jew did not exist, the antisemite would invent him.â Because it is not about the truth, but having a comforting lie that you can make positive change through abusing the vulnerable.
Another thing that happens is that white American gentiles will speak this way about Israeli Jews, because if a Palestinian said it it would be punching up, and they see themselves on some level as Palestinian because of their allyship.
However, they arenât actually Palestinian, and they do hold power and privilege over Israeli Jews, by virtue of being white gentiles and by virtue of being American.
Plus maybe some of them believe that US military aid to Israel means that Israelis are oppressing them, I guess.
