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Further Adventures in Con: Antisemitism
I was not familiar with Big Bad Con until this and this fell across my feed. Now, since in my experience anyone who uses "Zionism" like that is using as shorthand for "No, we don't hate all Jews, just the evil filthy Zionist ones (which is every Jew who doesn't loudly proclaim that they support the destruction of Israel)," my curiosity was piqued. Based on what I found I'm not sure the boycotters would actually take issue with that characterization of what they believe but rather with my assessment that believing that is a bad thing.
Digging through it, I found that what kicked it off is this demand to know who among Big Bad Con's staff "identifies as a Zionist" because someone was asked to remove "anti-Zionist language." You notice they don't specify what the anti-Zionist language was. (And their explanation website here seems to conflate "being a Zionist" with "being against a free Palestine," which is not true.) They have a demand letter here. I get the impression based on their writing that that the "censored Zionist language" was "from the river to the sea," which... that's a Hamas slogan, people. That's been a Hamas slogan since long before the attacks. It can't be reclaimed as long as Hamas is actively using it and honestly I'm not sure it can be reclaimed after that, if there ever was anything to reclaim there--this is much like the Pepe the Frog thing except with significantly more active violence attached to it. There is no way to interpret that as anything other than a call for Jewish genocide and Big Bad Con was 100% right to want it removed. (And it's incredibly disappointing that what seems to be a decent-sized convention has capitulated to antisemitism here.)
One wonders if these people even are against Hamas; they don't at any point say so while using Hamas rhetoric and while there are people who use this rhetoric who would be horrified to be accused of supporting Jewish genocide, they're few and far between-- well, okay, they'd all be horrified to be accused of it, but then when you ask them what they are in favor of, they list off elements of Jewish genocide without actually using those words.
Certainly I wouldn't feel safe attending Big Bad Con given all this...
Digging through it, I found that what kicked it off is this demand to know who among Big Bad Con's staff "identifies as a Zionist" because someone was asked to remove "anti-Zionist language." You notice they don't specify what the anti-Zionist language was. (And their explanation website here seems to conflate "being a Zionist" with "being against a free Palestine," which is not true.) They have a demand letter here. I get the impression based on their writing that that the "censored Zionist language" was "from the river to the sea," which... that's a Hamas slogan, people. That's been a Hamas slogan since long before the attacks. It can't be reclaimed as long as Hamas is actively using it and honestly I'm not sure it can be reclaimed after that, if there ever was anything to reclaim there--this is much like the Pepe the Frog thing except with significantly more active violence attached to it. There is no way to interpret that as anything other than a call for Jewish genocide and Big Bad Con was 100% right to want it removed. (And it's incredibly disappointing that what seems to be a decent-sized convention has capitulated to antisemitism here.)
One wonders if these people even are against Hamas; they don't at any point say so while using Hamas rhetoric and while there are people who use this rhetoric who would be horrified to be accused of supporting Jewish genocide, they're few and far between-- well, okay, they'd all be horrified to be accused of it, but then when you ask them what they are in favor of, they list off elements of Jewish genocide without actually using those words.
Certainly I wouldn't feel safe attending Big Bad Con given all this...