Dentists always show up in weird statistics lists. Most frequent profession among Scientologists. The leading profession among adult suicide victims. I have always questioned whether they are the best medical professionals. This article helps to answer that question.
This is a neo-nazi maxim. It sounds reasonable until you realize that the people who say this are hoping you'll arrive at an antisemitic answer. Yes, criticizing "jews" broadly is going to get you a negative reaction. No, that does not mean that "jews rule over you". You're not going to get a great response saying the n-word either, but that doesn't mean Black people are your oppressors.
Same kind of drivel as "there's nothing wrong with defending your own people", until you realize that "your own people" = "the racial majority" and "defending" = "defending against other races". Take a moment to think about what you're saying and why people say it. These aren't universal truths; it only takes a moment to find a counterexample that should prove to you that these aren't worthy of being guiding beliefs.
Anyone living by these kinds of figures of speech isn't a critical thinker, which is pretty much why they exist. Authoritarians benefit when you don't think too hard about how things work.
There's nowhere in the entire country you'd face legal consequences for criticizing Hamas. In the UK, maybe, depending how you do it (someone was arrested for posting "fuck Palestine and fuck Hamas").
Non-citizen students were also deported from the US for criticizing Israel. Courts later ruled this unconstitutional since the 1A still applies to them, but it was too late for those students.
> nowhere in the entire country you'd face legal consequences for criticizing Hamas
> Courts later ruled this unconstitutional
Those students faced practical consequences. There are plenty of places in America where expressing any doubts about the moral superiority of Palestinians over Israelis (note: I’m intentionally referring to the people) could get you isolated to the point of facing real consequences. Pretending this isn’t a polarizing debate across the political spectrum is a bit strange.
It's a legal consequence. This isn't like when customers or corps stop doing business with someone, our government took away visas and deported them.
And it's still not even that polarizing. Both major parties are still pro-Israel. This is only barely starting to change. And in the few cities where Israel is unpopular, there are plenty of openly Zionist businesses.
If you want to focus on the status quo, it was anti-BDS laws. This is the most they can do thanks to the 1A, and it still manages to be exceptional and shouldn't really be legal. Netherlands and much of Europe have no 1A equivalent, they'll just fine or jail people.
> Netherlands and much of Europe have no 1A equivalent, they'll just fine or jail people
For lots of stuff including Islamophobia.
This forced victimhood mentality among activists does real damage to the pro-Palestinian cause. If you’re advocating for something, the advocacy should not dwarf the cause.
They do it for all sorts of "hate speech" as it may offend locals, but Israel is usually the one country they can't criticize. Or at least the threshold is very different from criticizing any other country.
Also, I don't particularly care about Palestine as a country. Frankly it's insulting and also unwise how those protestors will wave any flag except our own.
That is a very recent change, one that is only true because of the Gaza genocide. Before the Gaza genocide criticizing Israel would be your political doom. So much so there is even a compilation of John Steward stating this fact.
The city of Reykjavík, Iceland, tried to boycott Israel back in 2015 but had to abandon the attempt because of the political backlash. In the 10 years since we can clearly see how justified those attempts were.
Do you know why that is the case? Its because calling a war a genocide is basically extremist propaganda. It isn't a charge based in fact.
HAMAS uses child soldiers, then when they inevitable get killed claim that X number of children were killed in the war. HAMAS doesn't use uniforms so they can claim when their fighters die that a civilian was killed. These things are warcrimes exactly because it creates such confusion and because it increases the chance that actual civilians will get killed.
The people who make such charges are absolutely doing it to create the environment where they can commit atrocities. HAMAS publicly admits such things. Additionally, most of the images and videos from Gaza that got people upset in 2024 were generated by LLMs. It was pretty obvious too. Plenty of images with the wrong number of fingers or limbs were posted around that time. That's why such speech gets treated the way it does, not because of some sort of grand conspiracy.
PS Nobody debates the finer points of fascist public policy. The things people don't like are about vilifying a group of people and then creating a "final solution". Being part of a propaganda effort to do it again isn't a great look. That's why such speech is treated how it is.
I wouldn't call the Gaza war a genocide exactly, but they were in a situation where they lose their homes either way. West Bank Palestinians chose the more peaceful route and are still getting pushed out, as it's been for decades.
The thing I care about more is the US and other western countries fund this to our own detriment. We're now all-in on the Iran war, even threw Ukraine under the bus for it. Yes there's a conspiracy in plain sight like Trump's transaction with the Adelsons, or everyone at least knows about AIPAC. There's merely a no-conspiracy theory.
Even Democrats fully supported the Gaza war. Seems it really took Trump starting an unpopular, losing war against Iran and openly saying Israel told him to do it.
It shouldn't revolve around Zionism, but more and more it's clear that if you oppose Israeli military offensives as a Westerner, the powers that be will brand you a terrorist and respond as if you were a threat.
A/I is not a terrorist organization, and they only got branded as such when operatives started taking direct action in response to the Genocide that Israel is committing presently. The cited "terrorist" actions so far have been spray-painting military property with anti-genocide messages: Criminal vandalism, sure. But absolutely not terrorism!
You're not really helping answer the core question here: Why must subjective "weirdness" be censored? Who cares if it's "weird"? People are allowed to be weird, regardless of your personal feelings about it.
When we normalize corporations deciding in what ways we are allowed to be "weird", we just accept corporations forcing us into conformity with whatever they happen to consider "normal", and so far these companies don't have a great track record of drawing that line.
The very same Disney that hired Brian Peck to work on The Suite Life of Zack & Cody immediately upon his release from prison after serving 16 months for sexually abusing Drake Bell while working on Drake & Josh at Nickelodeon.
That seems perfectly reasonable. In theory, someone being released from prison has paid for his crime and reformed his behavior (if not, that's a failing of the criminal justice system). In that case, he doesn't deserve further extrajudicial punishment like being unable to get a job, nor is it some kind of breach of morality to hire him.
> In theory, someone being released from prison has paid for his crime and reformed his behavior
There's no theory that says this.
> he doesn't deserve further extrajudicial punishment
1) You're explaining your own personal belief here and not referring to anything.
2) It is not extrajudicial punishment to not hire a child molester to work with children any more than it is extrajudicial punishment to not hire a bank robber to work at a bank.
Exactly. I'm all for giving people who have been in prison employment, but maybe not in the exact way that they went to prison for in the first place. He could have worked at a bagel shop for all I care.
Those fools, what a wasted opportunity! Picture this: the prisoner is methodically prepared for execution, meanwhile sprinkle a few interviews with victims, friends, etc... Seconds before the moment of execution BAM! hydration pause and five minutes of ads.
True, but this does not mean that both acts were equal.
For example, voting is a political act, and so is voter suppression. We wouldn't argue that both are equal acts. One is liberating, and the other is oppressive.
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