The repression of Palestinian rights claims is the single most urgent
crisis of free speech in the United States today. How we narrate this
crisis, and the frameworks we use to analyze organized efforts to
silence pro-Palestine speech, shape the strategies through which we
resist them. As Gaza burns, the hegemony of anti-Palestine,
pro-apartheid zealots seems suffocating – and that’s the point. The
history of McCarthyism, as Alex Kane recently noted in Jewish
Currents, offers one useful lens: doxxing trucks, rescinded job
offers, law-firm blacklists, and the ignominious House censure of
Rashida Tlaib all carry the eerie chill of the 1950s Cold War era.

As a historian of censorship, I believe a complementary framework for
analyzing the intensifying repression of pro-Palestinian voices can be
found in recent censorship campaigns that have resulted in banning
LGBTQ books and works of so-called “Critical Race Theory.” It’s firmly
established that efforts to ban these texts are motivated by anti-gay
sentiment and racism. But rarely is the suppression of Palestinian
voices linked to such efforts – yet Islamophobia animates the
pro-Israel crusade in strikingly parallel ways; these are deeply
interrelated campaigns of political targeting. The only serious
difference is that the recent censorship campaigns are aligned with
the U.S. political right, whereas anti-Palestinian censorship is a
joint project of the Republican and Democratic parties.

A thorough new report released by the Rutgers Law School Center for
Security, Race and Rights maps out the role Islamophobia plays in
structuring the national discussion of Palestinian rights. In
Presumptively Antisemitic: Islamophobic Tropes in the Palestine-Israel
Discourse, authors Mitchell Plitnick and Sahar Aziz identify how
Palestinian rights claims are laundered by the Israel Lobby and
others, through Islamophobic lenses. Self-styled experts imbue such
claims – calls for Palestinian human rights, for the consistent
application of international law, and the like – with the presumption
they are antisemitic to preemptively nullify them. It’s essentially
the same “folk devil” basis for moral panic that drives the book bans,
with such organizations as AIPAC playing the parallel role to
explicitly far-right groups like Moms for Liberty.

When right-wing dark-money groups come for Jonathan Evison’s Lawn Boy
or Maia Kobabe’s Gender Queer, they’re extending a legacy dating back
to the 1873 Comstock Act, which first put teeth in federal obscenity
law. “Obscenity” was always a tool for enforcing sexual normativity.
The anti-queer aspects of obscenity were on display when the Supreme
Court affirmed the law in the 1957 Roth v. U.S. decision, pinning the
legal definition of obscenity to “prurient interest,” defined by the
“average person, applying contemporary community standards.” Sex was
not inherently obscene, declared the court—but male physique
magazines, lesbian pulp novels, queer avant-garde cinema, however,
were all targets for obscenity charges. This has been replayed every
subsequent decade; a generation ago, it was Heather Has Two Mommies
under fire.

https://mondoweiss.net/20g

"From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free"

NefeshBarYochai wrote:
> The repression of Palestinian rights claims is the single most urgent
> crisis of free speech in the United States today. How we narrate this
> crisis, and the frameworks we use to analyze organized efforts to
> silence pro-Palestine speech, shape the strategies through which we
> resist them. As Gaza burns, the hegemony of anti-Palestine,
> pro-apartheid zealots seems suffocating – and that’s the point. The
> history of McCarthyism, as Alex Kane recently noted in Jewish
> Currents, offers one useful lens: doxxing trucks, rescinded job
> offers, law-firm blacklists, and the ignominious House censure of
> Rashida Tlaib all carry the eerie chill of the 1950s Cold War era.
>
> As a historian of censorship, I believe a complementary framework for
> analyzing the intensifying repression of pro-Palestinian voices can be
> found in recent censorship campaigns that have resulted in banning
> LGBTQ books and works of so-called “Critical Race Theory.” It’s firmly
> established that efforts to ban these texts are motivated by anti-gay
> sentiment and racism. But rarely is the suppression of Palestinian
> voices linked to such efforts – yet Islamophobia animates the
> pro-Israel crusade in strikingly parallel ways; these are deeply
> interrelated campaigns of political targeting. The only serious
> difference is that the recent censorship campaigns are aligned with
> the U.S. political right, whereas anti-Palestinian censorship is a
> joint project of the Republican and Democratic parties.
>
> A thorough new report released by the Rutgers Law School Center for
> Security, Race and Rights maps out the role Islamophobia plays in
> structuring the national discussion of Palestinian rights. In
> Presumptively Antisemitic: Islamophobic Tropes in the Palestine-Israel
> Discourse, authors Mitchell Plitnick and Sahar Aziz identify how
> Palestinian rights claims are laundered by the Israel Lobby and
> others, through Islamophobic lenses. Self-styled experts imbue such
> claims – calls for Palestinian human rights, for the consistent
> application of international law, and the like – with the presumption
> they are antisemitic to preemptively nullify them. It’s essentially
> the same “folk devil” basis for moral panic that drives the book bans,
> with such organizations as AIPAC playing the parallel role to
> explicitly far-right groups like Moms for Liberty.
>
> When right-wing dark-money groups come for Jonathan Evison’s Lawn Boy
> or Maia Kobabe’s Gender Queer, they’re extending a legacy dating back
> to the 1873 Comstock Act, which first put teeth in federal obscenity
> law. “Obscenity” was always a tool for enforcing sexual normativity.
> The anti-queer aspects of obscenity were on display when the Supreme
> Court affirmed the law in the 1957 Roth v. U.S. decision, pinning the
> legal definition of obscenity to “prurient interest,” defined by the
> “average person, applying contemporary community standards.” Sex was
> not inherently obscene, declared the court—but male physique
> magazines, lesbian pulp novels, queer avant-garde cinema, however,
> were all targets for obscenity charges. This has been replayed every
> subsequent decade; a generation ago, it was Heather Has Two Mommies
> under fire.
>
> https://mondoweiss.net/20g
>
>
> "From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free"
>

It never ceases to amaze me how people who choose to behave strangely or
attack someone violently, feel they are being treated unfairly when a
person or group of persons responds to them in what they see as an
unfair manner. You cite above people who choose weird sexual and
violent behavior and wonder why the majority rejects them. Screw others
of the same sex, dress like a different sex, put a bone through your
nose, and most will simply laugh at you. Try to take from them what
belongs to them with force, or harm them bodily, and don't be surprised
if they resist.

Such a reaction may be muted in your part of the world, but where I
live, when someone says he is going to kill you, it is time to lock and
load.