Monday, December 08, 2014

#JewishPrivilege

On Twitter, "Independent Journalist" Rania Khalek mocks a Jewish college student as "paranoid" for fretting about "tropes about Jewish privilege and domination." After all, who could object to innocent graffiti alleging that "Jewish men run the CIA", or Marx's identification of capitalists as "inwardly circumcised Jews", or the claim that "All Jews run Wall Street. They take over all of the banks. It pisses me off." The real problem, Khalek says, is that we don't discuss the ways in which Jews enjoy "Jewish privilege" (apparently something distinct from the privilege some Jews may enjoy as White, male, heterosexual, etc.).

So to oblige her, I've trying to promote a #JewishPrivilege hashtag (the associated photos are not my own, though they do make wonderful illustrations). Entries include:

* "People think I can summon tsunamis w/my mind #JewishPrivilege"

* "I have the #JewishPrivilege of being only the *2nd* most common victim (per capita) of hate crimes in the US."

* "I have the #JewishPrivilege of being blamed for any global calamity. Seriously: ANY calamity."

* "My mere presence can make even the most committed leftist forget what 'intersectionality' is. #JewishPrivilege"

* "Maybe my #JewishPrivilege is the ability to tirelessly explain the 'buffer theory' of anti-Semitism."

Feel free to add in your own contributions of all the reasons why being a Jew in the world is the cat's meow.

2 comments:

Rebecca said...

I don't know if you noticed, but aside from the few tweets at the top when you search for the hashtag, all the others are used in blatantly antisemitic tweets (mostly from the right-wing Neo-Nazi side). So did Rania Khalek pick up the idea from hanging out with right-wing antisemites, or did she create this idea on her own?

David Schraub said...

I did notice that. I've seen the trope (if not the exact words) used by Max Blumenthal which, er, doesn't exactly falsify the hypothesis that this emerged from far-right neo-Nazi types.