Notices by Rabbit Cohen (bathyspherehat@mastodon.online), page 5

I feel like "guy who's generally really smart but way too easily seduced by libertarian ideas" is a whole genre of guy.

@evan Oh shit, I’m so sorry to hear that! Get well soon, friend.

Not gonna lie, that stings.

It seems to me like a lot of leftists never really believed it. They saw Nazis as a convenient rhetorical device to use to condemn their political opponents, not as people who do real harm to marginalised people, particularly Jews.

Listen: I'm not sure what to do about that. Protests aren't always well organised, and even when they are, it's not easy to keep people out. But I don't think I'm alone among Jews in saying that I feel kind of betrayed. The whole "table with eleven Nazis" idea has been replaced with "Well, we can't be responsible for everyone."

Then October 7th and everything that followed happened, and we've started seeing some really awful people at pro-Palestine protests. It's not everyone. I don't think it's even most people. But there are some blatant antisemites saying blatantly antisemitic things at pro-Palestine rallies.

Ok, so here's what's on my mind: it used to be, not so long ago, that we (leftists) would say things like "If you've got a table with one Nazi and ten people sitting with them, that's a table with eleven Nazis." Similar things were said about antisemites and other bigots more generally. This was used to condemn a lot of non-leftists, especially right and center right folks, who weren't themselves Nazis, but who allowed them at their rallies and such.

There's something that's been on my mind about antisemitism and protests, but I'm not sure what there is to actually be done about it.

Harassing the Auschwitz Memorial account on here does not help Palestine.

I'm about to be one of the top pissers in this godforsaken country.

I've been prescribed a diuretic to help with my swollen feet. Trouble is, last time I took a diuretic, I got gout. So I'm going to try to stay Incredibly Fucking Hydrated this time.

Another reason that this is important is that if you create a class of humans that you don't think of as people, you're in danger of that class expanding to fit anyone who is convenient to unperson.

There is no human being who is not a person. This is fundamental. That includes people who do and believe terrible things.

It's actually really important to remember that Nazis were and are people, not because I'm concerned for their welfare, but because when you think of them as a different species, you stop considering that you, your friends, and your loved ones are capable of the same crimes.

I’m very tired.

Why don't they make regular candy that tastes as good as vitamin C gummies?

Related: the idea that it's just wholesale fine to ridicule and hurt men is also fucked up and not actually progressive. As a general rule, we should avoid designating classes of people who we don't see as wholly human.

It's understandable to have some hangups about men, to be cautious about men, etc. But the idea that men are ontologically evil hurts people of all genders, I think.

There's a balance here between fighting back against misogyny and just being an asshole.

There's so much value in having smart friends who are excited to share information and not judgmental when you don't know things already.