"Critical support" in 3... 2... 1...
this post was submitted on 28 May 2024
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No.
Semites is an outdated racialized grouping of all dwellers of the middle. It was introduced in the 1700s and is completely outdated, because WE DO NOT USE RACIAL THEORIES ANYMORE. This name is also only based on the idea, that all middle eastern people have a biblical ancestor, Sem.
The only two modern uses are: The Family of Semitic languages which encompasses Arabic and Hebrew, but also Maltese, Amharic and Aramaic. And its these Semitic speaking peoples that are SOMETIMES, often in an archeological context, referred to as Semites.
The term antisemitism was first coined in 1860, as catch-all term for hatred of semites (once again, the ridiculous racial category grouping all middle eastern people into one). Wanna know when that changed? 10 years later. It was used in 1871 in Germany as sciency sounding name for Judenhass "Hatred of Jews". We are not changing the meaning of antisemitism, the word has had this meaning for 150 years. And the only justification to reverse that is to pretend that either the racial categories of the old days exist, or that antisemitism somehow encompasses both the Maltese and Ethiopians.
Ok wow, actually looked it up... Wtf??? Why does semitic and anti-semitic have a completely different definition? Man fuck this shit... I admit I didn't look into it enough before forming an option, but who the fuck would separately look up "something" and "anti-something"??? Once I found semitic it lead me down the semitic languages and the history and bla bla route, not the btw this word has a different meaning in its negative form. Wikipedia even has a whole section dedicated to just how bullshit this is.
Tho tbh it doesn't really change my feelings about the word. It still comes across as extremely problematic to use. Honestly it just seems like 100x worse now that I know the origin is a literal nazi conspiracy theory that hijacked the word and both versions are floating around today. With this context, calling arabs anti-semitic is calling them literal nazis, which I'd argue is worse than just "anti self existence".
And before I star sounding too dismissive, thanks for the info, twas surprisingly and eye opening.
I mean, arabs can also be nazis. I dont think the problem lies within the word or the usage, but the application. Because pretending criticism of Israel is antisemitic or "Judenhass", whatever you wanna call it, thats the real problem.
The houthis are definitely word we can agree upon to mean hating jews. The fact that they are Arabs does not change this. So in the end, i find the discussion around the word very weird.