On "Anti-Semitism" versus "Antisemitism"

This excerpt—originally from my book series, Sex Positivity—discusses the differences between "anti-Semitism" and "antisemitism," and why I favor the former over the latter in my own academic work. It's part of a larger book section, but given its application outside my own material, I wanted to supply it here, on my old blog (which is intended for a more general audience).

Originally posted on December 30th, 2024, in "Idle Hands, part three: Goblins, Anti-Semitism, and Monster-Fucking":

Inside this book sample, I reference an archived video about my grandfather, interviewed in 2005, talking largely about his experiences during WWII: as a Dutch liberation fighter and Holocaust survivor. I didn't have time to go into the video, here, so I recorded a response video where I think about the interview as a third-generation trans Communist Dutch girl writing a book series on goblins and other anti-Semitic monsters (Persephone van der Waard's "Anti-Semitism vs Antisemitism: Discussing My Grandfather (a Dutch Holocaust Survivor) w/ My Work," 2024); i.e., how in writing this preface, I thought of my Dutch heritage overshadowed by fascist oppression, and wanted to examine my grandfather, warts and all; i.e., relative to anti-Semitic myths and monsters that don't apply to Jewish persecution exclusively. —Perse

[A] note about Zionism and anti-Semitism. It has been brought to my attention that academics and scholars tend to favor "antisemitism" versus "anti-Semitism." Holocaust Remembrance explains it as follows:

The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) would like to address the spelling of the term "antisemitism," often rendered as "anti-Semitism." The IHRA's concern is that the hyphenated spelling allows for the possibility of something called "Semitism," which not only legitimizes a form of pseudo-scientific racial classification that was thoroughly discredited by association with Nazi ideology, but also divides the term, stripping it from its meaning of opposition and hatred toward Jews. […] The term has, however, since its inception referred to prejudice against Jews alone. [emphasis, me…] The unhyphenated spelling is favored by many scholars and institutions in order to dispel the idea that there is an entity "Semitism" which "anti-Semitism" opposes. Antisemitism should be read as a unified term so that the meaning of the generic term for modern Jew-hatred is clear. At a time of increased violence and rhetoric aimed towards Jews, it is urgent that there is clarity and no room for confusion or obfuscation when dealing with antisemitism (source).

And yet here I am, using "anti-Semitism," anyways. What gives?

(artists: Persephone van der Waard and Autumn Anarchy)

The problem is, my work on Gothic Communism doesn't concern Jewish people, alone; it explores the holistic and widespread application of blood libel (and relative persecution languages) as having gone beyond Jewish people, but which were once applied aggressively-if-not-uniquely to them as a criminalized non-Christian group (don't forget Muslims during the Crusades, or later on, the Irish Catholics)—i.e., blood libel, sodomy and witch hunts have expanded beyond Jewish people to attack other marginalized groups (often by Jewish tokens, in later centuries); e.g., queer people, women, Muslims and Pagans, Indigenous groups, and people of color all being supplied tropes of a historically anti-Semitic nature: the so-called "bad blood" of slaves and their foregone betrayal as codified "evil servants" (with sex workers and their discrimination being as old as Judaism, for instance). What bigots from older times used to punch primarily down against persons called "Semite," then, has since been repackaged and sent, tokenized, back into the world. 

For one, this speaks to a fundamental historical misunderstanding of race, insofar as "race" as a punitive notion under capital didn't exist in the Middle Ages, wherein such things focused on religious persecution against competing factions; it emerged with capital developing into itself as a hauntological device that inserted racism into the imaginary historical past. Said past, in turn, is routinely evoked in ways that concern the abjection process tied to different monsters of a Jewish character that has tangled itself among different marginalized groups, fictions and historical events.

In other words, Zionism can't be separated from non-tokenized forms, which token elements try to emulate and downplay in bad faith. That's not simply the focus of my work (which it very much is), but something that needs to be discussed regardless of bystanders who haven't sold out. The word clearly has been weaponized by Zionism, at this stage, and splitting hairs about a hyphen is a bit academic and furthermore, dangerous; i.e., when the word—regardless of its punctuation (and not even changing the pronunciation, while my using of the hyphen serves an academic purpose)—is clearly being used by colonizers decaying the Jewish body to fulfill a Christianized, capitalist agenda, and which the feelings of non-participants in an ongoing genocide is, forgive me, considerably less important than exposing the genocide. Those feelings are still valid—hence my prefacing of the Tolkien critique with any kind of preamble at all—but they should never silence criticism regarding said word's current misuse, nor the tokenized actions Zionism represents, when doing so.

(source: Suzanne Moore's "'Terf' Is the Ultimate Slur against Women," 2023)

Just as we shouldn't invent brand-new phrases to distance feminism from TERFs, nor should we, regarding Jews and Zionism. Zionism is a radical, fascist form of Judaism, just as TERFs are a radical, fascist form of feminism, and each bleeds into fiction, itself, meriting a radical response from us; i.e., to change the course of history on all registers. Radical problems require radical solutions, meaning bigots use DARVO and obscurantism to point the finger at their victims with their own language (witch cops hunting other witches, above). I'm not going to stop using "anti-Semitism" academically just because it offends someone or because I'm not Jewish (academia would cease to exist, if that were the case); the point is how it's offending others and why—using intellectual movements to scare those who fear intellectual power's historical ability to change the status quo (versus maintaining it by attacking intellectuals, which fascism does by design).

To that, I don't "have" to be Jewish to write about Jewish tokenism and oppression going beyond a narrow idea of Jewish people/Jewish people period, any more than I would "need" be to be black to write about Frantz Fanon's arguments likewise extending to non-African-Americans; my doing so merely happens on my side of the pedagogy of the oppressed, using its relative privilege, oppression and alienation to reach across the aisle, regarding holistic oppression: as a white, middle-class trans woman whose own non-Jewish family (on my father's side, next page) was brutalized by the Nazi regime in Holland. Nazis don't discriminate insofar as discrimination goes; they merely swap out scapegoats as needed.  

Fascism, at its core, is conservative, meaning it compels speech through selective boundaries and moderate-to-reactionary punishment (re: "boundaries for me, not for thee"). We must contend with such arbitration while also dealing with each other's respective and collective abuse, mid-liberation; i.e., saying what needs to be said while dealing with others who say what should or shouldn't be said—all leading to a great deal of unproductive arguing back and forth, instead of systemic, cooperative change (a bit like Gandalf and the three trolls, the latter debating about eating the dwarves and the wizard invading their conversation by throwing his voice to make them delay until the sun came up): "Won't someone please think of the Jews!" If all they do is lead to singular and myopic interpretations that never move the focus onto stopping genocide, such refrains are infantilizing and criminogenic; i.e., those who say them in bad faith don't actually care about Jews, save as a tool for discrediting activism.

To it, my giving of hard facts and genuine arguments that Jewish people can respond to is a sign of respect; i.e., towards those I view not simply as human, but adults capable of thinking for themselves, while letting their fellow oppressed get a word in, too. To prevent that would be to logically limit each group only to itself through self-administered gag orders—a Tower of Babel to divide and conquer all peoples raped by capital. No one ever said rebellion was simple or clean (e.g., Gramps, below, was a Dutch* patriot and Holocaust survivor who spoke about Nazi abuse all his adult life, but also loved America/free enterprise, hated Socialism [which he conflated with the Nazis] and would have fought in the War on Terror if they'd let him, and certainly wouldn't have understood what trans people are).

*The Dutch being historically compared to Jewish people through similar "miser" arguments; i.e., the blood libel argument of essentialized greed being "in the blood," which my people endure similar to Jewish people: by also being concentrated by tokenized elements appeasing the oppressor! To do so is folly! All arguments for liberation are valid provided they liberate all peoples from capital calling us "sick" for different reasons.

(source: Linda Meloche's "Henri Vanderwaard Interview," 2005)

Beyond Jewish trauma, we likewise wouldn't discourage not talking about rape or sex work, period, merely because it makes some women uncomfortable or because it "only" applies to them; that's TERF/SWERF logic, which extends to Zionism laterally espousing the various anti-Semitic myths surrounding it, but also the rape (and other harm) those systemically cause—i.e., when one group tries to monopolize victimhood, including demonic theatre as the performative, anisotropic tool, thereof. Silence is genocide, including partial silence. Gothic Communism seeks to raise awareness and emotional/Gothic intelligence to prevent universal rape, which you can't do if you're bunkered down in a space disconnected from others; i.e., for fear of being offended to such a degree that you close your eyes (and your mouth) entirely.

So many people that I showed this section to were afraid to say anything at all, for fear of speaking out of turn, or telling me to "ask a Jewish person," first. And while some caution is merited, and good-faith Jewish opinions are entirely valid, to let overcaution push people into keeping quiet about some fairly obvious connections—like Zionism and racial conflict in Tolkien, bleeding into politics through persecution mania and genocide denial—is a fatal flaw that fascism will happily telegraph and exploit! Fascists aren't your friends; they're cops with a license to kill, cheat and steal for the bourgeoisie in bad faith—i.e., power aggregates behind activism painted as "slander" by state litigators playing at false rebellion. They'll wear the mask until it suits them; i.e., until their victims lower their guard, all but asking for a knife in the back.

If I sound defensive, it's because I am; I've trusted others blindly before and have been burned for it (tokens are vicious in their policing of others). So I'd rather preface things ahead of time, then proceed in good faith when critiquing tokenism going forwards. That's how healthy relationships work. These arguments, then, are a gallery exhibit in a symposium meant to counteract hate crimes, not foster public harassment targeting minority groups for hateful reasons. Anyone who walks away from my writing and seriously thinks that I'm attacking Jews/trying to harm them is the one with the problem, in that respect. No one is above critique, including victims but especially when they go on to victimize others (whether on purpose or not); i.e., while hiding behind exclusive-victim status. Instead, we should value the voice of victims in a holistic sense, not squander it by policing its potential to the point where any critical bite disappears. If fascism squirms, you know you've hit a nerve and should keep at it. Hit 'em where it hurts!

All of this is to say, the selective use of problematic kayfabe language (e.g., orcs and goblins, but also king hippos, left) pertains to the semi-imaginary history I'm referring to, here, which the Gothic essentially comprises at all times. It's a specific group of disparate historical threads and ideas that remain at play and continue to evolve; i.e., blood libel, sodomy and witchcraft, which have similar historical elements but different applications nowadays through evolved monstrous code (re: goblins, vampires and witches). And the historical elements regarding blood lineage and power that such things evoke, however false they ultimately are, continue being evoked in bad faith by fascist parties of various signatures. Sometimes I call that signature "pre-fascist" or "post-fascist," according to the anachronisms at work. But the lineage of forgeries nonetheless remain; i.e., as something of world history that, however imaginary it ultimately is, can still be addressed through camp: regarding tokenized violence lampooned by a polity of victims, which bourgeois elements levy against each other during Capitalist Realism. Tokenism is the weaponizing of useful idiots. Except, it's not Jewish "erasure" to camp anti-Semitism; i.e., to speak to other groups harmed by or with anti-Semitic devices (speaking to a hauntology whose religious, ethnic and/or cultural "other" doesn't apply exclusively to Jews). They can use it to speak to their unique history and abuse, and others can expand it beyond that bailiwick to speak to theirs, too.

A social element obviously persists. The phrase "anti-Semitic," unto itself, is known to make many Jewish people feel unwelcome, but as I will go on to argue, it doesn't apply exclusively to them, past or present. There's also a historical character to interpret, mid-praxis. Much of that history is real and embellished, and speaks to things that are simply uncomfortable period; i.e., dealt in demonic forms, and something that refers to a specific idea of "past" that is still being used to attack a variety of people from the same source—while also being associated with a narrow section of the population and its tokenized violence, shouting others down!

To be blunt, police victims often go on to police others. The need to discuss Zionism, then (and its monopolies/mirror syndrome), frankly outweighs making all Jews feel comfortable, because there are those among them who—since Israel's forming by the British empire and the United States—have grown increasingly hostile and bad-faith (re: gaslight, gatekeep, girl boss). Hyphen or not, the word is positively radioactive, and the time for polite discussion using it has well-and-truly passed (e.g., climate change, genocide, fascism).

In short, we need to prioritize the acknowledgement of the grievous harm being caused, but also the tokenized means of sanitizing itself through mythical language that points away from the mechanisms at work; i.e., I'd rather talk frankly about the history of anti-Semitism and its expanded Venn Diagram of persecution networks right now—using markers of bigotry at play to raise awareness about genocide that some Jewish people have had a hand in—then spend time coming up with comfortable words that fail to cut home.

Anti-Semitism is an ugly business. So is Tolkien's use of it through his token power fantasies. We need to be able to address that, including the myriad ways in which these devices often go unnoticed precisely for the reasons above. How can I talk about the bigotries at work in any focused way if the language for doing so is forced out of focus and off target? We need to pinpoint these issues, not hold hands (and this is coming from a service top). You might as well ask me to cut down the mightiest tree in the forest with a herring (or use a herring to blow up the Death Star, below). Counterterrorism, from an actually rebellious standpoint, is meant to make tokenism think twice, including those sitting—with relative comfort—on the fence. For many Jews, this idea is unthinkable all on its own, but criminogenic conditions make for strange bedfellows (and no one ever said that traitors weren't logical in their assessment of the Judas payment). The idea isn't to blame or police our fellow oppressed, but recognize and address what many do not.

I could say "victims of fascism" to dodge the issue, but then the history and signature (of which victims) would be swept aside—meaning "as it would be" for Tolkien or similar authors (e.g., Lucas, above), who built their careers (and legacies) out of coded racism and other bigotries with false arguments and origins tied to real ideologies; i.e., Tolkien did believe in blood myth, and applied it to Jewish people, but also non-white and monstrous-feminine people period through the same medieval hauntologies; re: orcs, which clearly have an anti-Semitic quality to them that, canonized by Tolkien's work, go on to disguise that function used against all parties (which is why I think that covering up the lineage is dangerous).

(source: Wikimedia Commons)

Furthermore, any word we could invent would still wind up being used by the colonizer abusing tokenism to obfuscate their own operations! Tokenism and betrayal are both an ugly business—and the obscurantism of oppression is equally vile—but the reality as such needs to be dragged out into the open, not covered up; i.e., that, despite being coded unfairly as "vengeful backstabbers," some Jewish people do sell out (e.g., Ze'ev Jabotinsky, left), as have any marginalized groups in history tied to different monsters "getting even"; re, Federici vis-à-vis witches: "Witchcraft accusations, in fact, are the ultimate mechanism of alienation and estrangement as they turn the accused—still primarily women—into monstrous beings, dedicated to the [vengeful] destruction of their communities, therefore making them undeserving of any compassion and solidarity" (source). 

Empire hides behind its tokens, and Jewish revenge assimilates into Christian revenge (re: the Crusades, which Zionism emulates to kill Arabs for Christians through misguided ideas of revenge). This includes turning a blind eye towards present wrongs concerning past wrongs; i.e., regarding generational trauma, which many Jewish people in privilege are currently doing. If that bothers you when you're demonstrably not a Zionist, remember that my critique is of Zionism hiding within Judaism as a more radical and tokenized form, thereof. And if you still can't see past your own insecurities about my arguments "rocking the boat," then maybe you should let go of whatever's blinding you to the bloodbath currently happening overseas. While past atrocities can bring marginalized communities closer together, they also shock and isolate them, encouraging as they do willful ignorance regarding larger systemic issues. Sooner or later, that's what complacency always becomes.

However shameful, disturbing or uncomfortable that feels, then, we have to account for it as it's happening with blood libel, then reclaim that in light of such embarrassments. It sucks to require that anyone face the shame someone else more powerful in their own group has caused, but it must be done; i.e., such things don't affect "just the Jews" (as the Palestinians well know, by now), so telling the investigator(s), "stay in your lane" won't work: Zionism is currently happening and will keep happening regardless if all Jewish people are comfortable or not. Indeed, their fantasies of assimilation (re: Tolkien) often play into the silencing of genocide taking place! If their conscience gnaws at them, so be it; and if they have a bone to pick with me (for valid reasons or not), "lay on, Macduff. The black knight always triumphs!"

All kidding aside, I relish criticism; it lets me know what to fortify. I also specialize in tokenism, which—if you haven't noticed—is a tricky subject; i.e., if you don't belong to the group being tokenized, you're viewed (with some justice) as an outsider. And yet, we're all oppressed to some degree (re, Derrida: "there is no outside of the text"). Furthermore, tokenism remains all the same, requiring its addressal, mid-exile, and inside a system of differences; i.e., it needs to be interpreted intersectionally and holistically to acknowledge parties acting in bad faith, and who rely on such selection processes to silence valid criticism outright.

In turn, my usage of "anti-Semitism" is also tricky because it concerns holistic historical abuses speaking to token forces who rely on the feelings of those they blend in with to cover for them; i.e., human shields, those regarding different peoples harmed by/sandwiched between collective and selective bigoted practices, and with language that was formerly used to attack Jews pointedly having expanded elsewhere: by using the same fictitious elements of arbitrary myth-making and application tied to Zionism (frontier capitalism) as something that hasn't gone anywhere.

Again, I'm talking about monsters, and there isn't a Jewish monopoly to what has been assigned to (and to some degree accepted by) that portion of the world's population. The "Semite," while it historically is centered around Jews, is an umbrella egregore that includes vampires, witches, orcs and goblins leveled at a variety of real-world groups; i.e., at the same time, and to a rising degree of prominence during Jewish gentrification and decay through Zionism (a practice, that through capital, tries to bastardize various inkblots to mean one thing and nothing else; e.g., token orc butts are "Jewish," in Zionist eyes, and non-token/abject orc butts are "Hamas"; re: the giving and receiving of state violence through bourgeois models of terrorist/counterterrorist violence, per the zombie apocalypse relaid in demonic forms).

(artist: Just Some Noob)

My whole point, then, is how a formerly Jewish-exclusive calumny has expanded beyond Jewish peoples, in recent centuries, and well into the present. Even during the Holocaust, it wasn't "just" about Jews and how they were affected by that disaster of state machinery run amok (desk murder); other groups besides Jewish people were sent to their deaths to "answer" the Jewish Question, but the popular historical records (fictional or otherwise) don't mention them, nearly enough. I'd rather discuss things openly to reclaim them from token forces; i.e., as monopolizing holocaust, exile, persecution, bereavement, rape (accusations) and revenge, and whose falsehoods we use the imaginary power of "Gothic" fakeries to subvert. "Semitism" is invented, which means it can be reinvented. So, too, has Jewishness has gone from a religion to a national body that relates to others in ways that necessitate such invention and outspoken shots-in-the-arm. Blame Capitalism, not me, and set your tokenized guilt aside; my patience is frankly at its end, and I'm going to hyphenate different things to form connections useful towards universal liberation (as the Gothic so often does; re: the grey area of its storied poetics; e.g., correct-incorrect). We learn by challenging each other, and my work is hardly the final say in the grand scheme of things.

That being said, I also think we shouldn't seriously entertain any idea of ranking rape and "oppression Olympics." There's no such thing as a perfect victim. Instead, I think all groups need to be considered together in light of state abuse; i.e., versus a great many living in the shadow of one particular group, whose own extinction event has been advertised by American media to prioritize them, first and foremost. This goes for trans people, Jews, people of color or Indigenous people, etc; no one "trumps" anyone else, everyone speaking out against tokenism regardless of who's doing it whenever such things are out of joint/balance.

Believe it or not, I don't want to step on anyone's toes, here, but all the same, we need to get over the idea that holocaust and genocide are strictly of a Jewish character and history (real or otherwise); i.e., while simultaneously recognizing how tools of Jewish oppression aren't used against them, we can acknowledge the harms caused against them, including holocaust denial. You can't camp holocaust, but you can camp your own survival, and multiple people can survive the same event to camp it later.

Likewise, it's not denial to include others in what has largely been framed (in Zionist circles) as a wholly Jewish ordeal. Two (or more) things can be true at once, Zionism doubling Jewishness as capably as Gene Simmons, but for different reasons (see: footnote, next page). Just as Israel and America invent things out of whole cloth behind double standards, we can do the same to spite those standards; i.e., fighting fire with fire and for land back despite the Jewish dogmatic belief of a god-denied, -promised, then ultimately -given homeland. Like Omelas, the point is walking away from Egypt if that means not genociding other people, not towards it! Israel is a ploy to buy cheap loyalty in furtherance to capital's continued raping of others—Jews included!

This will certainly ruffle some feathers, but I'm a Satanic atheist; i.e., there is no God, only workers vs the elite and whatever deities either fabricates for their own purposes. My doing so happens while speaking to those harmed by refusing to look past matters of a "purely" ethnic character. It was never about "pure ethnicity" but dividing and conquering more broadly using that and other means of persecution through various networks, thereof. Jews don't have a monopoly on holocaust, and as Zionism shows us, they can tokenize like any other minority group to police nature with; i.e., non-white skin, white masks; e.g., the Inca's imperial subjugates and the Conquistadors. Betrayal is betrayal. It's only ever a question of who and why.

Assimilation is poor stewardship. We must do better if we are to survive capital's effects on us and the planet; we must camp what has become canon, including what Sandy Norton calls "the Imperialism of theory"; re: academics policing what is or isn't acceptable, thereby granting imperial characters to any discourse beyond academia that, unto itself, desperately needs to shed. Applying Sandy to Gothic studies instead of Foucault, I choose to use "anti-Semitism" because of its speculative richness, not its historical misuse. And if those historically abused by it feel like I'm encroaching on what is unique to them, they are sorely mistaken: witches and "sodomites" were killed in the Middle Ages, followed by the Renaissance, Holocaust, and neoliberal era. As such, liberation politics need to expand to account for changing dynamics of oppression under capital, lest they tokenize and decay as Zionism (and its fanatic territorialism) has done.

No one ever stopped fascism by being polite, and anti-fascism is inherently radical because it challenges state's rights in ways gentrified parties won't; i.e., nothing is sacred except basic universal human, animal and environmental rights, and it's possible to compromise those by doing nothing of note. It's also possible to work allegory into seemingly vacuous material. Far be it from me to venerate KISS, for example, but if they can camp their own idea of Jewishness and present it as monstrous to get what they wanted[1a], then so can we toy around with ideas of monstrosity that aren't intrinsically Jewish to find our own pro-Communist voice under capital. Such is the nature of demonic poetics, which camp dogma through itself; e.g., through rock 'n roll; i.e., not all Jewish representation challenges profit—can be weaponized against Communism just like the Nazis did (re: Israel and Zionism, next page), or at the very least can foster ignorance through overly simplistic approaches: "Keep It Simple, Stupid."

(artist: Kim Kelly)

So, yes, my statements will doubtless offend some. That is what those in power want. But all the same, my work speaks to an imaginary element of discourse that is, unto itself, half-real; i.e., anything used to attack the idea of Jewishness has well-and-truly expanded into other groups.

And if saying that ruffles some feathers—specifically that I mention inclusive oppression to address the needs of those other groups while keeping the former in mind—said former group needs to remember that liberation is a universal affair and all peoples need to come together to overcome oppression as one; i.e., there is no one group for which oppression exclusively applies, or who has a magical, innately oppressed quality to them/monopoly on oppression. To think otherwise is to deny others a voice, no different than Afrocentrism or similar movements, which only historically decay into a kind of fortress mentality that prioritizes itself over other groups in a similar position.

The fact remains, we're all in the same boat, and bigotry is built into capital; i.e., "a bigotry for one is a bigotry for all," built into capital as something to dismantle accordingly. It's certainly important to communicate our feelings and say when something bothers us; but also, upsetting others isn't the point of my arguments, which remain true regardless if they are upsetting—re: Jewishness is a weapon, one that state proponents use to limit oppressed outcry to a single specific group of people it can then weaponize against itself and others. As Asprey astutely writes, "Not only can terror be employed as a weapon, but any weapon can become a weapon of terror: terror is a weapon, a weapon is terror, and no one agency monopolizes it" (source). No one has a monopoly on shelter or aliens, mid-dialectic!

So, for example, can the Jewish gentry in Hollywood punch down against anyone who speaks out against America's token ethnostate[1b]. For them, "Jewishness" = "terror" carried out of the medieval world and into ours; i.e., one whose half-real, historical and imaginary sense of past (the Wisdom of the Ancients) can dominate the proceedings—regardless of class, culture and race, to serve the bourgeoisie through its cultivating of the Superstructure!

Zionism does just that, turning Jews (and Jewish symbols and arguments of persecution and rebellion, victim and oppressor) against Jews and friends of the Jewish while making the idea of "Jewishness" something that Imperialism can hide behind: "We will always suffer and do so exclusively in ways that supersede our victims." It's an Omelas refrain, turned into a spear and, as it turns out, a cash cow to milk, mid-genocide; e.g., Judas Priest's Invincible Shield (2024); re: Persephone van der Waard's "Judas Priest: Invincible Shield and Zionism" (2024):

as the time-tested tradition of punching Jews became uncool after WW2, Jews became tokenized to punch down; i.e., against themselves and other oppressed groups, thereby serving the same-old profit motive as part of Capitalism out of Antiquity. In turn, Priest seems to have emblazoned their album with such a badge despite the Palestinian genocide happening next door (evoking a party disturbingly similar to Israeli settlers). Despite some bad actors being far more active in ongoing misinformation campaigns, Invincible Shield sadly feels like Priest saying "the show must go on" while using such imagery to line their own pockets. It feels at best, willfully obtuse; i.e., the modern equivalent to selling sugar during British Abolitionism instead of honey despite knowing full well of the Caribbean sugar (thus slave) trade.

All the same, Priest's commodifying of struggle at the cost of human life is merely the chickens coming home to roost, our metal gods staying silent on what should be blasted from the loudest speakers imaginable (source).

Silence is death[1c]; for Capitalism to work, it needs a victim and a cop for which to buy silence with. To that, victims can become cops through oppressor misuse of oppression language to silence others with; re: DARVO and obscurantism; e.g., the Star of David adorning Zionist war machines and dropping bombs on Palestinians and Lebanese people, while playing the universal savior and victim, and policing anyone who might use their language incorrectly. Different voices need the ability to speak up and out for themselves and others, thus coexist, lest capital divide and disorganize us to keep doing what it has, is and always will do: rape worlds and the world by sowing division to move money through nature.

(artists: Avram Finkelstein, Brian Howard, Oliver Johnston, Charles Kreloff, Chris Lione, and Jorge Socarrás)

Capitalism is a disease that makes society sick (and fosters diseases like AIDS in those societies; i.e., Capitalism is AIDS). For the colonizer class, the point of tone-policing criticism isn't to raise consciousness in duality towards an intersectional solidarity resisting capital; it's to insist in bad faith that we need to respect this one group's feelings above the collective well-being of those the bad actors are currently destroying in the name of a people they themselves have stopped representing save as a dogwhistle and cloak. And those tactics will likewise be employed among good-faith participants—laypeople and academics alike—who are understandably upset by what is being said on both sides. Those feelings and concerns are valid, up to a point, but desperately need to recognize how they can be weaponized by the state to overlook legitimate criticism against genocide. "Yeah, conflict sucks; but it's also necessary when escaping the Torment Nexus." So critique power where it is!

We need to abolish genocide as a consequence of privatization, and for that to happen, we must deprivatize bigotry by discussing it holistically among all groups affected by the same tools differently. This isn't "just" affecting Jewish people, then, nor is it "only" about them, and we shouldn't tiptoe around Zionists colonizing those arguments; i.e., to weaponize Jewish discomfort to perjure themselves and others. Rememory hurts and, to a healing degree, reenvisions and reprioritizes the imaginary elements of past history during the rememory process; i.e., to suit all peoples under attack simultaneously by those abusing imagination to suit their needs and historical revisionism for the state (re: Zionism).

And if that hits a nerve, then good; pain is healing. This pain is controlled—is an academic exhibit couched inside a larger book full of trigger warnings. To it, I'm not running to every Jewish person I know or see and saying "anti-Semitism, anti-Semitism!" until they grab a stick and brain me. It's an academic conversation punching Nazis (which Zionists are) while acknowledging the praxial complexities concerning blood libel as a universal performative device. Anyone can wear a beard and throw a stone (or a can of soup "for our family"), and the house—to some degree—is always made of glass:

Glass-Onion that shit! Have your revenge by demonopolizing the concept; i.e., as normally used by oppressors-in-disguise, who we learn from to do better than while borrowing from. Shakespeare's Shylock soliloquy from The Merchant of Venice, for example, has tremendous liberatory potential; i.e., as something to act out in spite of its anti-Semitic origins and fixation on Christian ideas of Jewish revenge. Shylock inquires, "Hath not a Jew eyes?" to stress the praxial similarities of oppression and oppressor on token groups who, pushed to their limit, do sell out; i.e., Portia punching down to serve herself and Venice (while dressed as a man, no less), and Shylock converting to Christianity after having his day in court! Nothing is sacred but universal liberation; anything that prohibits said liberation is dogma (often in disguise, above).

So "better the instruction" by thinking outside the box while inside it. Disrupt! Speak out! Discredit your discreditor! Camp dogma to make state defenders uncomfortable, doing so to develop Gothic Communism; i.e., through ironic Gothic poetics and theatre challenging profit, thus unironic rape and revenge! The exercise is one of interpretation through performance. No one agency can monopolize victimhood or revenge, including Jews. And if any try to argue otherwise, remind them of your own oppression linked to theirs ("I see your holocaust and raise you a queer pogrom…"). All roads lead to Auschwitz, after all; the idea is to prevent concentration and extermination to begin with by using medieval arguments "when in Rome…"; i.e., to burn Rome, not people!

To that, I'm trans and belong to a group of people who were occupied and raped by the Nazis; my grandfather—despite fighting to liberate Holland from the Nazis—was still a conservative-minded man I seldom agreed with. Segregation is no defense and silence is genocide, therefore death. We must solidarize intersectionally—not merely to survive, but break Capitalist Realism (engendered by the likes of Spielberg saving war to maintain Pax Americana; re: Zinn). This means preventing what causes genocide to begin with; it means causing some degree of pain, during ludo-Gothic BDSM. "Hurt, not harm," babes! You "don't get a pass" just because you're Jewish (or queer, non-white, or any other group); doing so would only give capital something to pounce and capitalize on: a human shield from criticism (Jewish or not, the settler colony model favors women and children for this purpose, below)!

 

If history proves anything at all, it's that cops come from victims; i.e., those who, apart from desperation and convenience, likewise betray through entitlement. Those who can't be wrong in their own mind are always right, which—as the Nazis, America and Zionism demonstrate through American liberalism needing fascism to operate—will always lead to the harming of others: by the entitled group, because the others (who are not them) are always wrong! This caveat includes victims who sell others out, becoming cops in the process (stochastic terrorism). And if that stings a little to hear—if it shocks those it applies to out of their useless sense of martyrdom and makes them rethink things, or at least recover the ability to interpret things orthopraxically versus dogmatically—then good! Equally good, though, is it making bad actors to go mask-off (as many Zionists have recently done). Cryptonymy serves multiple goals.

To avoid genocide as a historical-material outcome, we need to kill our darlings during dialectical-material analysis. Said scrutiny includes challenging the terrible idea of an exclusive and innate victimhood tied to a select group of people that—regardless of what traitors think, and however deeply entrenched their dogma is—cannot be reduced to class, religion, ethnicity and/or culture; i.e., a misconception that often stems from popular media; re, bands like Judas Priest:

Being a fan of their music since high school (for over twenty years now), a part of me takes no joy in doing so; but all the same, part of me does. I'll gladly sacrifice the sacred image of my childhood heroes if it means liberating Palestinians (and by extension all oppressed groups). I may not succeed, but I want to try because it's worth trying. Certainly I can enjoy Priest while criticizing their pernicious aspects; and, as Anita Sarkeesian put it, doing so is "both possible and necessary." Otherwise, what are we doing? (ibid.).

The same goes for Judaism or any precious idea, but also any means of spreading it in ways that cause harm; i.e., overcoming oppression, in Jewish culture, is important, but its overprioritization historically leads to communication breakdown/abjection (re: Zionism). Hence, how a device able to heal actually causes more harm in the face of capital doing what capital does: raping nature as monstrous-feminine by tokenizing workers; i.e., anyone acting like the universal, exclusive victim; re: "Haven't I suffered enough? I know all there is to know about victimhood, because I'm the only victim to ever exist!" To centralize one group and one group alone is to normalize through tunnel vision. We're in this together, comrades, and the state is the enemy, not me.

I don't want to hurt anyone purely for its own sake, here. Instead, if you scratch a Zionist, a fascist bleeds, and this goes beyond Jewish culture and identity to spread into other groups intersecting oppression as a state weapon. If ever that occurs, the priorities for self-victimization should be reexamined. The pain in doing so—of getting scratched, mid-debate—will invariably yield new synthesis, thus better praxis pushing away from Capitalism, once and for all! Alienation is bad; it's also a bridge leading to greener pastures: demonic poetics inventing new uses for old dead symbols! The symbol's appearance remains, but its function can anisotropically change, mid-duality—on the Aegis, oppositional praxis reversing abjection/worker chattelization to legitimize our struggles and invalidate profit's (re: per the whore's revenge, the state [and its rights] incompatible with life/consent, needing cops-and-victims extermination [thus rape, per the profit motive] just to exist)! Subversion of state utility can become normal; i.e., during the cryptonymy process becoming second-nature at a societal level. "We camp canon because we must." 

(model and artist: Blxxd Bunny and Persephone van der Waard)

Gothic Communism is holistic, liminal, dualistic, and ergodic, bringing different voices together to find common ground. My focus is sex work and Gothic poetics (whose nudity and exposure is offensive to a great many people), but it by no means rejects Jewish identity or voices; it merely asks them, "Give us a place to voice ourselves and say what we need to say. Nazis suck, including Jewish Nazis." Refusing victimization is important, of course, but making victimization your whole identity—meaning to such an unchecked degree that you alienate other oppressed peoples around you, therefore elevate yourself above them/ignore their own opposition affected by tokenism (Zionism or otherwise)—is reckless. Fascism will fash, regardless. Find similarity amid difference and come together to challenge the state and its lapdogs. Liberation transcends national, ethnic and religious boundaries! ACAB! ASAB! AHAB (All Holocausts Are Bad)! Free Palestine!

***

 

Persephone van der Waard is the author of the non-profit book series, Sex Positivity—its art director, sole invigilator, and primary editor (the other co-writer/co-editor being Bay Ryan). She has her independent PhD in Metroidvania, and is a MtF trans woman, anti-fascist, atheist/Satanist, poly/pan kinkster with two partners. Including her multiple playmates/friends and collaborators, Persephone and her seventeen muses work/play together on Sex Positivity and on her artwork at large as a sex-positive force. She sometimes writes reviews, Gothic analyses, and interviews for fun on her old blog; or does continual independent research on Metroidvania and speedrunning. If you're interested in her academic/activist work and larger portfolio, go to her About the Author page to learn more; if you're curious about illustrated or written commissions, please refer to her commissions page for more information.

Footnotes

[1a] As Jon Stratton writes in "KISS: Jewishness, Hard Rock and the Holocaust" (2020):

KISS was a hard rock group, one of the most successful during the second half of the 1970s and early 1980s. The group's two founding members, Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley, were both Jewish. Indeed, both were the sons of Holocaust survivors. This article examines the impact of Simmons's and Stanley's Jewishness on KISS as a rock group and on its success. One of the most obvious impacts was the drive to succeed which Simmons and Stanley shared. Simmons writes about wanting power, Stanley that he wanted respect. As children of survivors they wanted safety. During much of the 1970s, the Holocaust was not yet publicly acknowledged. However, its trauma is evident in, for example, the stage characters that Simmons and Stanley adopted (source).

[1b] Including wealthy Jews who refuse to toe the line; e.g., Jonathan Glazer's acceptance speech and admittedly mixed/sanitized approach nevertheless met with resounding criticism from other Jews in Hollywood (re: Tatiana Siegel's "Over 1,000 Jewish Creatives and Professionals Have Now Denounced…" 2023), versus Sarah Friedland's own award response, describing the conflict in no uncertain terms: as "the 336th day of Israel's genocide in Gaza," upon receiving her own trophy (source: Aljazeera's "Jewish director at Venice Film Festival Speaks in Solidarity with Palestine," 2024). Context matters.

[1c] Brooklyn Museum writes,

In 1987, Avram Finkelstein, Brian Howard, Oliver Johnston, Charles Kreloff, Chris Lione, and Jorge Socarrás founded the SILENCE=DEATH Project to support one another in the midst of the AIDS crisis. Inspired by the posters of the Art Workers Coalition and the Guerrilla Girls (both of whose work is on view nearby), they mobilized to spread the word about the epidemic and created the now-iconic Silence=Death poster featuring the pink triangle as a reference to Nazi persecution of LGBTQ people in the 1930s and 1940s. It became the central visual symbol of AIDS activism after it was adopted by the direct action advocacy group AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP) [source].