Contested Terrain

Antisemitism and Indymedia

After my latest experience with antisemitism on the New York City Indymedia website — in which the first reply to an article I posted about the firebombing of the home of a member of the Jewish Agency on Brown University, was something like “so what?”, and the ones that followed were explicitly justifying the attack — I’ve decided to finally pen my very first blog entry here.

I would like to provide a link to the thread I’m referring to, but comments under this supposed “open publishing” section have repeatedly gone missing - both my comments, and those which I was debating with - so I unfortunately have no ability to share them.

After my posts were erased the second time, I wrote, “this is the second time in 2 days that my posts on this story have gone missing. why are they getting erased?” In one of the friendlier replies to me, a poster under the name “Zionazi Watch” wrote, “Here is a remedy to your problem, don’t post. Save yourself the aggravation and time. We won’t hold it against you.”

Being that at that point none of the content of my posts was any longer present on the website (due to their deletion of my posts), “Zionazi Watch’s” hostility seems strange. For all they know, I could have been on their side, sending vitriol against the “Zionazis” along with them, unless they had read my deleted posts. It seems clear that the poster “Zionazi Watch” is in some way involved in the censorship of the debate that was taking place. The next “Zionazi Watch” post, which raised the level of hostility towards me, with the threat, “See you in the streets, or more likely in our scopes,” [which has now also been deleted, after I alerted them to the fact that they’re making death threats] tells me that my posts were erased because of my supposed “hatemongering” and “racism”. Being that they deleted my comments they would need in order to prove their accusations, and that they’d probably just delete them again if I was crazy enough to spend the time re-posting them, they’ve got a well-greased propaganda machine espousing hostility towards Jews and censor criticism they lack the courage to respond to. And this is done not out of a Right-wing argumentation, but rather strictly on a Leftist one, and are quite clearly moderators of the website.

 

Of course, Indymedia’s troubled relationship with antisemitism is not new, as the article “Anti-Semitism on the Indymedia website” by the Dutch anti-racist group De Fabel van de illegaal (the Myth of Illegality) documents, which was published back in 2002. It documents outrageous examples such as: “The jews knew about the attack on the WTC. Before the planes went into the buildings.” Or this one: “What a pity that Hitler didn’t finish his work. Then we would have been liberated of the parasites.” And so forth.

But De Fabel’s focus on the open publishing aspect seems only partially correct. It is not simply that open publishing allows a platform for neo-Nazis, Holocaust Deniers, Conspiracy Theorists and the Far Right, as De Fabel correctly asserts, but that Indymedia is a prime example to witness the increasing hostility towards Jews coming from a Leftist argumentation and Leftist websites, particularly under the label of “anti-zionism” and “anti-racism.” There have been many internal and public debates over the years since Indymedia’s founding, back in 1999, on these and related issues. But it does not seem like any progress is being made. It is good to see though that while many people have grown sick and tired of struggling with Indymedia’s failure, such as the former Indymedia people who formed Indymediawatch, criticism of their continued contradictions are still to be found in some uncensored posts such as this one, posted on the same thread under the name, “Permitted racism,” who wrote:

“Apparently its open season on Jews here. Its the only racism permitted now a days. And if you feel like justifying violence against Jews, hey, just claim that you are “anti-zionist”, invoke the “suffering of the Palestinians” and blame Israel!”

But look quick before it’s too late. Sorry, you’re too late. Since the duration of my writing this post, it’s been removed.

This entry was posted on Monday, March 17th, 2008 at 11:56 pm and is filed under blog, antisemitism, anti-zionism. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.