Interesting reading the mod log and seeing what got your comment removed and you banned.
Fediverse bug. I see the correct thumbnail, but have seen the wrong thumbnail on other posts when using a kbin account.
I argue that the act of ethnically cleansing the Palestinian people is comparable to the Holocaust.
Your comment above:
if you don’t care about the fact that a Holocaust level genocide
Maybe you misunderstood my criticism, but I wasn't disputing that what was happening was genocide or ethnic cleansing. I was disputing the level or scale of what was happening. Clearly what is happening in Gaza (and the West Bank) is on a smaller scale. 17 million vs. 30,000 in Gaza.
This doesn't make what is happening ok. It just means that it is on a smaller scale than the holocaust.
Please don’t create another straw man to argue over, the number of casualties was never the point
This is not another argument. The number of casualties was my argument from the beginning. The number of casualties may not have been your point, but it was mine when you said that what was happening was on the same level or scale as the holocaust.
This is also not a strawman argument. I am literally adressing something you said in your comment.
On a more general note, this is why comparisons to the Nazis or the Holocaust are rarely helpful, and partly why Godwin's law is a thing.
For example, just because someone isn't Adolf Hitler or a Nazi, doesn't mean they're not a fascist. Calling someone like Ben Gvir or Smotrich a Nazi might feel good, but it allows them to say "Aha! But I don't believe x, y, z. Also, the Nazis hated Jews. I'm a Jew. So you're wrong." It undermines your argument, even if they are quite similar to Nazis. Call them a fascist or racial supremacist, based on things that they actually said and did, and it's far harder to deny.
The comment I replied to said:
a Holocaust level genocide is taking place
30,000 people have died. 17 million people died in the holocaust. That is not on the same level and it is not on the same scale. 30,000 is a significantly smaller number than 17 million.
If you support the Palestinian cause, pretending otherwise is a home goal.
I get that it feels right, because people are understandably angry about all this, but it's not a winning argument. Quite the opposite. If you're provably exaggerating the scale of what's happening, it allows supporters of Israel's far right government to sow doubt and claim you might also be exaggerating about the very very real war crimes and ethnic cleansing they are engaged in.
I’d argue if you don’t care about the fact that a Holocaust level genocide
17 million people died in the holocaust. IRC the population of Gaza is roughly 2.4 million of which just over 1% have died. That figure includes Hamas militants. The Gaza Health Ministry does not distinguish between combatant and civilian casualties in its reports.
It is possible to criticize and condemn Israeli war crimes and ethnic cleansing, which are without doubt horrific, without distorting the facts.
In fact, it actually makes your criticism more convincing and harder to discount by supporters of the current hard right Israeli government. The fediverse is a bubble on this conflict, but we should be aware that hyperbole does not serve the interests of the Palestinian cause or win the argument outside of this bubble.
Maybe you'll be the exception, but I say this knowing full well that some will call me pro-Israel for this comment. But if anything these extremists are useful idiots for Israel's far right government and its supporters, as they allow them to paint any criticism as anti-semitism or disingenious.
e: this comment already had downvotes within seconds of me posting it. This is not long enough to finishing reading it...
Sorry, but nope.
Attempting to discredit an argument, because of who said it and why they supposedly said it, is a text book ad hominem.
It's especially painful, because you're defending a corporation (run by a white male) with an abysmal record on women's rights, who sell a product that has a track record of damaging young girls' self image, from accusations of purplewashing. Purplewashing being a term, that as far as I know, was originally termed by female feminists. It's a bit like if I quoted Emmeline Pankhurst, and you said the quote was nonsense because I don't know what's it's like to be a woman.
But more generally, I suppose that's the danger of a superficial understanding of identity politics. In practice it is often used to divide groups with a common cause, like how the far right have used TERF ideology in an attempt to divide the LGBTQ+ movement and pit feminists against the trans community, claiming trans women aren't real women, because of (and I quote) "lived experiences". (Luckily actual lesbians don't often fall into this trap, because they know that this is nonsense because they know actual trans people and know they face similar struggles and live through similar experiences.)
And from a feminist perspective it perpetuates gender binaries and essentialism. The whole men are form Mars, women are from Venus nonsense. In the case of the Barbie movie, purplewashing is very similar to pinkwashing, greenwashing, bluewashing, etc. So you don't need to actually be a woman to understand why purplewashing is problematic, just like you don't need to be gay to understand why pinkwashing is problematic.
But hey, what do I know. I'm just Ken.
Anyway, agree to disagree.
is likely coming from a place that is uncomfortable with the kernels of meaning in the film. … in part because the gender of the critic you linked to is also male.
Nah. That's just an ad hominem. The linked article was the second to top link when you do a quick google.
I know the right disliked Barbie because it was feminist. (Mattel denies the movie's feminist, btw. Which should also tell you something. Presumably they were worried it'd cost them money in feminist utopias like Saudi Arabia).
I liked the movie, but was simply pointing out it was also purplewashing for a company with a poor reputation. Which it is. That's a left-wing feminist argument. I mean, the movie's fun and it was super pretty, but patriarchy isn't really all that funny is it? Andrea Dworkin this ain't.
to mere corporate dissent generation when both can be equally true. ... I have to presume is what the creators of the film actually cared about
They can't be equally true in a movie made by a large corporation. IRC Margot Robbie made $50 million. Understandably if you're getting paid that much, you aren't going to spend much time dwelling on stuff like their treatment of women in their factories:
Instead you'll focus on the pretty outfits and avoid mentioning femicide during press junkets.
Indeed.