Sunday, October 13, 2024

In which I tell my antisemitic drive-by reviewer-troll: buddy, I get you.

You're not supposed to respond to bad reviews, but on Steam I got a "review" that was not really a bad review in that sense (the author made it very clear they had not actually read/played The Ghost and the Golem), but rather a... well, a cry for help, honestly, I think.

I mean it was an antisemitic drive-by, sure. But, like drunken Radzim in the market in Chapter One of The Ghost and the Golem, swinging his fists at available Jews because of the pain and confusion in his heart... also a cry for help.

And I sympathize. On this erev yom kippur, with my heart in anguish over the scale of death in Gaza and the cruelty of the unfolding horror, and over the way that the Kahanists have captured and perverted the state of Israel and taken Likud's fearmongering and hate-stoking to its fascist apocalyptic logical conclusion, and at how the world goes on, la la la, as if this is not happening... oh I sympathize with my random drive-by antisemitic harasser. I understand how "punch nearest Jew," despite being an evil and profoundly counterproductive reaction, could feel like it might offer some kind of solace. I get it.

Does that sound weird? I think it's an author thing, or at least a the-kind-of-author-I-am thing. I had to write Radzim, after all, which means I had to be Radzim. It wasn't difficult. I'm never that far from being Radzim. Radzim is destructive, but his pain is real.

So anyway, I replied at some length.

The original conversation is here, but as the internet is fickle, I'll also reproduce it below.

Kaitshif wrote:

# Does it talk about Palestine?

Does this story also talk about Palestine and the Arabs that are being genocided by the colonialist zionists?

Is this a pro zionist story? Because it has jews and 90% of them are zionist so is this Israeli funded propaganda?

also say Free Palestine

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[I think that last sentence is particularly hilarious, like they're telling me the magic shibboleth I should include in my text to achieve absolution?]

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Then user bella helpfully wrote:

Hey, from one non-Jew to another, this is some of the most egregious leftist antisemitism I've seen in a hot second. I don't even know where to start. You've been tricked by an antisemitic narrative. And even if it were true what you say about Israel and Judaism (it's NOT, to be clear):

Not everything is about Palestine, and NOBODY needs to prove they're a "good Jew" in any way (e.g. by saying some specific phrase to you).

The gall and lack of self awareness you've gotta have to come onto a novel about pre-Holocaust pogroms against Ashkenazi Jews and say this.... If you're going for extra credit, read some objective sources on Jewish history, because you're clearly being misled. You sound young, and you probably don't mean to hurt people or spread hate, but that's what you're doing. Please take this post down.

Khaitshif then doubles down:

Just because the Holocaust happened doesn't mean white Europeans can colonize Arab land that was always Arab land like Palestine.

Why do people from Brooklyn deserve to slaughter millions of Palestinians from their homeland because Germans didn't like other white people in Germany?

Again, Does this story also talk about Palestine and the Arabs that are being genocided by the colonialist zionists?

Is this a pro zionist story? Because it has jews and 90% of them are zionist so is this Israeli funded propaganda?

P.S. Calling white history "Jewish history" doesn't turn white oppressors into victim all of a sudden, and most of this "history" is from Arabs

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["Brooklyn" made me laugh, it seemed so absurd. A charitable reading of Khaitshif would be "why do the Jews, including even a small but illustrative number coming to make aliyah from Brooklyn, deserve to slaughter millions"; but this might be too charitable. Certainly behind the word "Brooklyn" lurks the dangerously misleading idea that the Israelis are all soft and pampered first-worlders with second homes in Miami, slumming in the Middle East, who will leave as soon as the tide turns against them. As opposed to there being at least three or four million poor Jews and Jews of color who, in the event of Hamas's fantasy victory scenario, would be taking their own turn at digging tunnels while being massacred.]

So I replied:

(thanks, @bella)

@kaitshif, the funny thing is that I'm also a white American man, but somehow nobody drive-bys my unrelated works to demand that I denounce male sexual violence, U.S. imperialism, or the carceral state... even though I've arguably spent less energy fighting against those evils than I have, over the past 30 years, against the Occupation and the ruinous fanatics now running Israel. Why do you think that is?

I could leave that as a snarky rhetorical jab, but I actually want you to really think about the answer to the question, @kaitshif. Why? With American bombs pouring down on Gaza, as well as so many other places, with senseless spiteful American revenge embargoes starving children in, for instance, Afghanistan (where we seized all their assets when we pulled out, despite not even having any pretense of replacing the Taliban) why isn't my American-ness relevant? Why aren't you drive-by-bombing stories of other American authors to demand they declare their politics?

Surely you've had moments when you were also overcome with fury at the mass epidemic of rape and harassment in our world, at how it curtails and traps and haunts women, how it shrinks their freedom. Did you ever think, in anger over it, to drive-by male authors' stories you haven't read, demanding to know if they take a position on sexual violence?

This isn't whataboutism. I'm not saying "don't criticize group X unless you also criticize group Y." The reason I'm asking you to look at why is that I think it will be illuminating.

I will hazard a guess. I will propose that the reason you don't show up in other white American author's boards demanding they take a position on U.S. policy, that you don't show up in other male authors' boards demanding that they take a position on rape, is that you'd feel foolish. It would feel ridiculous. Overblown. (Even though it's, arguably, not.) "White" and "male" and "American" are the default, unmarked state. They're understood as "normal". It's weird to go yell at "normal" people for acts perpetrated by their group.

Even if you felt justified in coming to yell at me as a man or as an American or as a white-person-in-general, you wouldn't feel like it would be understood by the world at large. You would be seen as ridiculous even if it was in fact not ridiculous.

And the result of this is that in those identities -- male, white, American -- I am safe. Nobody is going to attack me for being those things. They might grouse about those things, they might attack male-ness or white-ness or Amercian-ness in general (they will, the constantly do, I constantly do for that matter). But they're clearly not going to come for me individually. Nobody starts a review saying "this male author does not address rape in this story, and I think all male authors should always address rape in their stories, because men are responsible for the vast majority of rapes." Men have to be accused of specific, individual bad behavior they personally did to get shit for male violence -- and when they are, legions rush to their defense, yelling about wokeness, and they get to do popular "they tried to cancel me!" speaking tours if they want.

Being Jewish, as you have just demonstrated, is not safe in this way. I am not safe as a Jew in the way that I am safe as a white male American.

I am, it goes without saying, much safer than a starving child in Gaza being targeted by snipers when all the hospitals have been blown up and aid workers are being killed and journalists are being targeted. If that is our baseline, I am perfectly safe, as are you, @Kaitshif.

I think what you are confused about, is that antisemitism is a distinct oppression from racism. I am white and male, thus protected by racism and sexism. I am also Jewish and queer, thus vulnerable due to antisemitism and homophobia. None of these things cancel each other out. To say that Jews in the Holocaust were not oppressed because it was "a bunch of white people killing each other" is like saying that if an army rounds up and kills all the men in the village, that's just "a bunch of men killing each other", and thus there is no relevant axis of victimhood and oppression. Which I think you can agree is a little silly.

Racism, in the modern sense, was largely developed to justify colonialism - to justify genocide, expropriation, and forced labor. There are other uses, but that's the main one (and the one which is operative in Gaza, obviously). Antisemitism was developed and refined primarily for a different purpose -- to create highly visible quasi-elites for scapegoating. This is why it feels easy and natural to blame me, as a Jew, where it would feel odd and uncomfortable to show up blame me as a man or a white person. (You can easily refute this by offering me links to places where you have done random drive-bys insisting men incorporate refutations of sexism or non-Jewish white people incorporate refutations of racism in their works. I'll wait.)

The purpose of these oppressions, @Kaitshif, is to divide and conquer. And it's working. There should be a vast and unified coalition of people opposed to Netanyahu and the Kahanists' murderous siege of Gaza. It ought to include, honestly, the great majority of Zionists and Israelis. As recently as 10 or 20 years ago, the genocidal fascist Kahanists who have now captured Israel's governing coalition, and who want to exterminate Gaza, were shunned in Israeli politics. As recently as last month up to half a million Israelis took to the streets to protest Netanyahu's intransigence and demand a ceasefire. That this opposition is not more powerful has largely to do with Likud's tremendous success over the past 30 years (with Hamas as their willing junior partner) in terrifying Israelis, and Jews more broadly defined. Their message has been that the rest of the world is cheering for them to die, and that Jews have no safety but in domination and violence. And I gotta tell you, it sure feels like that sometimes out here.

I don't think you have any idea the extent to which your antisemitism (and I don't say that to condemn you, @khatshif -- I say "your antisemitism" in the same way in which I am constantly aware of my racism, my sexism, my transphobia, as constant companions which I did not choose, which are part of the shit we swim in, and which I must constantly notice and be vigilant about, and go oops! look at that! I did a racism! and clean it up; if you want a concrete example of this, the announcement thread for this game on the COG forums is an exposure of and very supportive and gentle dialogue about my inadvertent and unconscious transphobia, from very helpful trans players, which I tried to clean up in the first two updates to this game; so that's how I mean "your antisemitism", not as a condemnation, but as like, hey! I notice you have some spinach stuck in your teeth, might want to wipe it off) -- I don't think you have any idea how much your antisemitism supports Netanyahu and his agenda.

In answer to your question: I wrote a game in which there is exactly one Muslim character (the very sympathetic Yakub in the epilogue, see if you can find him!) and in which Palestine is mentioned only occasionally, in the very vague and romantic way which shtetl Jews in 1881 would have known about it, so no, there are no Arabs in the game. But it is a game that offers an exploration of how a community can be demonized and marginalized and exploited and attacked (as Palestinians have been), an education in how divide-and-conquer works and how differently oppressed groups can be led to fight each other instead of those with actual power (as is happening today, and, indeed, in this thread), and which offers an exploration of kinds of Jewish strength and resilience and survival which don't necessarily fit in Netanyahu's and Itamar Ben-Gvir's apocalyptic all-against-all worldview, which offer possibilities of alliance, grace, and hope.

You should play the game @Khaitshif, I think you'd like it.

[You can comment over at the Facebook or Bluesky threads.]