# Jewish Dopers: Have you ever watched the film "Defamation"? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [January 18, 2011, 12:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jewish-dopers-have-you-ever-watched-the-film-defamation/568018 "2011-01-18T00:12:22Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![MPB\_in\_Salt\_Lake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/c0e974/32.png) [@MPB\_in\_Salt\_Lake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MPB_in_Salt_Lake)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2011, 4:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jewish-dopers-have-you-ever-watched-the-film-defamation/568018/61 "2011-01-19T04:50:08Z")
> [@DSeid](#): > > Roughly 40% of the world’s Jewish population was killed off in the Holocaust and the world did _not_ act to stop it. Really? I suppose the Nazis just decided that enough was enough and gave up? ---
**Author:** ![Lakai](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/9de0a6/32.png) [@Lakai](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lakai)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2011, 5:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jewish-dopers-have-you-ever-watched-the-film-defamation/568018/62 "2011-01-19T05:00:48Z")
> [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#): > > Um… where are they, then? > > If you’re not counting the areas under PLO control as part of Israel, then you shouldn’t be counting the Basque country as part of Spain, either. Basque country isn’t under the control of terrorists. The people there didn’t elect the ETA as their national party. That’s why Spain was able to give them some autonomy and give in to some demands for independence. Israel can’t do the same thing to territories run by Hamas or Hezbollah - whose main goal isn’t just independence from Israel, but also the complete destruction of Israel. ---
**Author:** ![Shmendrik](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ee7513/32.png) [@Shmendrik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shmendrik)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2011, 5:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jewish-dopers-have-you-ever-watched-the-film-defamation/568018/63 "2011-01-19T05:06:11Z")
> [@MPB\_in\_Salt\_Lake](#): > > Really? > > I suppose the Nazis just decided that enough was enough and gave up? You are cordially invited to read posts #48 and 53 of this thread. ---
**Author:** ![Ibn\_Warraq](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/e19b73/32.png) [@Ibn\_Warraq](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ibn_Warraq)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2011, 5:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jewish-dopers-have-you-ever-watched-the-film-defamation/568018/64 "2011-01-19T05:24:11Z")
> [@FinnAgain](#): > > We just had a thread where someone alleged that the prevalence of Jews in Hollywood was a good basis for bringing a lawsuit against Hollywood and forcing Jews to reveal whether or not they’ve formed a cabal in order to keep non-Jews out of positions of power. Good Lord, where was that? ---
**Author:** ![Condescending\_Robot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a183cd/32.png) [@Condescending\_Robot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Condescending_Robot)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2011, 5:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jewish-dopers-have-you-ever-watched-the-film-defamation/568018/65 "2011-01-19T05:33:36Z")
> [@RedFury](#): > > That said, I’d think you’d know better than to bring this as a topic to GD what with all the years you’ve been here: page after page of Impenetrable Walls Of Text© defending all that’s Right with Israel. > > Don’t agree? Anti-Semite and/or self-hating Jew. Duh! > > Just ask Mr Foxman. And here it is. The topic of the film is anti-Semitism, in Europe and the U.S. Israeli policies are not the issue. But you insist on conflating them, along with the typical “there is no such thing as anti-Semitism, only legitimate protest against Israel” dig. Is it really the pro-Israeli zealots who are solely responsible for conflating criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism, or is the blame also borne by Jew-haters like RedFury, who insist on holding all Jews responsible for Israel’s actions, and reflexively denying the possibility of anti-Semitism in contexts that have nothing to do with Mideast politics? ---
**Author:** ![FinnAgain](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/finnagain/32/12500_2.png) [@FinnAgain](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FinnAgain)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2011, 7:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jewish-dopers-have-you-ever-watched-the-film-defamation/568018/66 "2011-01-19T07:10:35Z")
> [@Hypnagogic\_Jerk](#): > > As well, say “Jew” around here and the image that will come to most people’s minds will be Hasidic Jews who made the news in the last few years because of their illegal schools, their refusal to deal with female police officers, and their attempts to force a YMCA in Montreal to put opaque glass in their gym room’s windows so they wouldn’t see the women inside. Do you really not see the irony here? “When people say ‘black’ around here, the image that will come to most people’s minds is a drug addled criminal.” “When people say ‘homosexual’ around here, the image that will come to most people’s minds is a promiscuous, effeminate wimp with AIDS.” “When people say ‘Muslim’ around here, the image that will come to most people’s minds is a swarthy kill-crazed terrorist with a suicide vest.” > [@monstro](#): > > People hate Jesse and Al, but at least they don’t have a database that records complaints from people who can’t get the day off for MLK day. Even I would hate them if they did that. Just to be clear here, you hate Jews for wanting religion, which is a protected class, to be granted reasonable accommodations? Or you have the ADL for compiling statistics which include those sorts of figures? > [@monstro](#): > > You don’t think a teenager saying she wants to kill all the “Nazis” she saw at the airport “over the top”? The only person I recall saying anything about wanting to kill Nazis was one Israeli girl talking about to wanted to kill the people today who are the heirs to the Nazism. Do you have a quote or time-index in the film? > [@monstro](#): > > Or instead of just saying that there were three old guys who she had an awkward encounter with, a girl told the camera that they called her terrible slurs…even though it was evident from the footage that that’s not what happened at all. That’s not over the top to you? Is it really evident from the footage, do you speak Polish? I don’t. But even assuming that one girl mistranslated or even wildly imagined a slur where none existed, that doesn’t bear out your claim that the group as a whole was “over-the-top paranoid” but that one single girl on it was. > [@monstro](#): > > two students interpreted that Again, two students. And we’re talking about [Poland.](http://www.ajc.org/site/apps/nlnet/content2.aspx?c=ijITI2PHKoG&b=849241&ct=3574805) > [@monstro](#): > > So was Jim Crow. > […] > But I guess that was back in the “olden” times and thus not relevant at all to the history of this country. > […] > Slavery and the ills that followed were what? Accidental? Clumsily implemented? > […] > I’m not trying to play the “more oppressed than thou” card. I _hate_ that game. You said that if blacks treated slavery the same way Jews treat the Holocaust, that there would be objections. I pointed out that blacks and Jews aren’t fungible, and the Holocaust and slavery aren’t fungible, so your analogy breaks down. Now you seem to be arguing several different things. > [@monstro](#): > > But countries eventually stopped the madness, right? Delayed reaction, yes. Nope. WWII was not about the Holocaust, at all. And as pointed out, even the UK went on to continue imprisoning Jews even after Israel was established as a sovereign state, and wouldn’t let them immigrate there. And that’s the point, the Holocaust is relevant because it shows that, even in modern times, the world can and will stand by why Jews are exterminated. > [@monstro](#): > > But Jews are not treated like that…not on this board. Check our Red’s post again. > [@monstro](#): > > If you rewatch the film, Foxman almost demands from the Ukrainian delegation to not even _think_ about comparing the Stalinist genocide of the Ukrainians and the Jewish Holocaust, because doing so, he says, would be “counter-productive.” I have heard this before. Don’t you dare compare the Holocaust to slavery! Well… yah. Stalin’s butchery was different from the Holocaust, and slavery is so wildly disparate as to be connected pretty much by “they were bad things, that were based on race, and lots of people died.” > [@monstro](#): > > “Never forget” shouldn’t be something reserved for the Jews. Who said it is? > [@monstro](#): > > Of course not. But for it to matter, hate must be manifest in action. If the ADL can only come up with a little over a hundred incidents (with no breakdown of how minor or major those incidents are), then why should Jewish people _care_. I know lots of people hate black people. All you have to do is read the comments on any Yahoo article or youtube video and you can see that. But do I live in fear? Do I yearn for my own separate country because of it? Do I cry “NEVER FORGET!” to ward off the hurt feelings? No. Statements like that do show that you don’t understand. It’s not about “hurt feelings.” (seriously, monstro?) It’s about the fact that, time after time, Jews have settled in to a country, become secure and prosperous, and then had the gentiles turn on them and-or kill them. Just because both blacks and Jews have suffered oppression does not mean that the two experiences are fungible > [@MPB\_in\_Salt\_Lake](#): > > I can’t speak for monstro, but she may have been talking about the wild claims that some of the Israeli teens made about the local Poles in the town that they were visiting. > > “They called up pigs and Jew bitches!” > > “Last month at this hotel, the Neo-Nazis broke in and rounded up all the Jews that were staying here!” The first may, potentially, speak to paranoia on behalf of one girl, or it may have been an honest mistranslation (or, for that matter, the filmmaker himself may have been wrong in the translation). The second sounds much more like the kind of ‘ghost story’ that groups of teens away from home tend to tell to freak each other out. Nor does that speak to any kind of unique Jewish sort of paranoia. [Poland does have a problem with neo-Nazi groups.](http://www.nizkor.org/hweb/orgs/american/adl/skinhead-international/skins-poland.html) Going from stories that teens on a trip tell each other to scare each other isn’t a slam dunk case for over-the-top paranoia, nor is a possible mistranslation made by one single girl. > [@Condescending\_Robot](#): > > And here it is. The topic of the film is anti-Semitism, in Europe and the U.S. Israeli policies are not the issue. But you insist on conflating them, along with the typical “there is no such thing as anti-Semitism, only legitimate protest against Israel” dig. Well, since it’s GD I can’t really speculate on whether or not Red hates Jews, but he’s certainly gone on record saying the sort of anti-semitic things that he’d prefer be viewed as being simple anti-Israel rhetoric. For instance, he named a bunch of people in the American government whose names sounded Jewish to him (including Greek Orthodox Christian George Tenet) and alleged that all of them should be investigated for potential Jewish Treachery because, well, he never did identify what his reasoning was other than that they were Jews in the government (and perhaps that they were uppity enough to disagree with his politics). Rather than identifying the fact that that’s a racist argument, it’s easier to use the sort of claims that Red has. Red’s post, in a very good way, serves as an object lesson for what the thread is about. Just like Rev. Wright reverted from [“Them Jews” keeping him from talking to Obama to “I really meant ‘Zionists’”](http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2009/06/rev-wright-i-meant-to-say-zionists-are-keeping-me-from-talking-to-president-obama-not-jews.html) If you have a view that’s anti-Semitic, you can claim that it’s “anti-Zionist” and it becomes ‘okay’. Just like Sevastopol’s gone on record as saying that groups like Hamas and Hezbollah which voice their support for the genocide of the Jews or who spin elaborate conspiracy theories about Jews controlling the world aren’t really anti-Semitic, since it’s “in the context of anti-Zionism” And to head off any angry mouthbreathing at the pass, of course there are criticisms of Israel that aren’t anti-Semitic, and bits of anti-Semitism that have nothing to do with Israel. But the only thing more absurd than the claim that there’s no intersection between anti-semitism and anti-Israel sentiment, is that nobody at all can criticize Israel without being called an anti-semite. > [@Ibn\_Warraq](#): > > Good Lord, where was that? [Here it is.](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=58068) ---
**Author:** ![Sevastopol](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/cdc98d/32.png) [@Sevastopol](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sevastopol)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2011, 7:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jewish-dopers-have-you-ever-watched-the-film-defamation/568018/67 "2011-01-19T07:37:35Z")
> [@Ibn\_Warraq](#): > > Dude, I’ve read the book and they make it quite clear that they believe that the Israeli Lobby was responsible for the Iraq War. > > In fact you quote them specifically claiming that the Lobby was “a factor” in the decision to go to war. … It has been a while since I read M & W. When the book came out those criticisms of it did not talk of them claiming Israeli Lobby ‘responsibility’ for the Iraq war. The second paragraph quoted above is a different thing, talking of a “factor”. As I recall it, that conclusion was arrived at in a respectable way. ---
**Author:** ![Hypnagogic\_Jerk](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hypnagogic_jerk/32/4252_2.png) [@Hypnagogic\_Jerk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hypnagogic_Jerk)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2011, 7:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jewish-dopers-have-you-ever-watched-the-film-defamation/568018/68 "2011-01-19T07:38:07Z")
> [@Shmendrik](#): > > I’m somewhat surprised you haven’t met any North African Francophone Jews, as they are about a quarter of the city’s Jewish population. Quite possible, but I must admit that I don’t actually live in Montreal (I’m in Sherbrooke right now), and among Montreal Jews they’re not the ones who get the most media coverage. But thanks for the information, there are more of them than I would have guessed. > [@](#): > > I’m also surprised that the first people which Montrealers associate with “Jews” are Hassidim, who must be about 5% of the Jewish population. See my previous comment about media coverage. There might not be many of them but they find the way to get in the news. To a French-speaking Montrealer who may not know many Jews in person, since most of them are English speakers, they make up a large part of the public face of the community. > [@](#): > > In my mind, “Montreal Jew” = Mordecai Richler. In my mind as well, to be honest. (David Levine’s the second name that comes to me.) > [@straight\_man](#): > > > [@Malthus](#): > > > > I dunno if that will make him like them any better. 😃 > > I get the impression that a scary number of Francophone Montréalers have never heard of him! :eek: > > But no, for those who have,… just, no. Perhaps. That’s the “two solitudes” phenomenon: francophones don’t know much about Canadian English-language culture, and anglophones don’t know much about Canadian French-language culture. I, for one, have heard of him, and I know he was considered one of Canada’s greatest writers, but I’ve never read his books and I don’t intend to. I’ve got better things to do than to give myself an aneurysm. 😉 By the way, I think they’ve just released the movie adaptation of _Barney’s Version_ and the critics seem to be very good. I’m not going to see it either. > [@Ibn\_Warraq](#): > > Now, I might be wrong, but I get the impression you’re white and one mistake a lot of white people is to misunderstand how racism and bigotry work. As said in the thread, **monstro** is a black woman. I assume she’s aware of how bigotry works. > [@Condescending\_Robot](#): > > Is it really the pro-Israeli zealots who are solely responsible for conflating criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism, or is the blame also borne by Jew-haters like RedFury, who insist on holding all Jews responsible for Israel’s actions, and reflexively denying the possibility of anti-Semitism in contexts that have nothing to do with Mideast politics? I haven’t seen any evidence that **RedFury** is a Jew-hater, at least not in this thread. He came in belligerently, I will admit, but what he was saying is that many people get smeared with accusations of anti-Semitism (or of being a “self-hating Jew”) only for criticizing the actions of the government of Israel. I don’t want to re-hash this debate once again, but I’ve noticed it too. > [@FinnAgain](#): > > Do you really not see the irony here? > “When people say ‘black’ around here, the image that will come to most people’s minds is a drug addled criminal.” > “When people say ‘homosexual’ around here, the image that will come to most people’s minds is a promiscuous, effeminate wimp with AIDS.” > “When people say ‘Muslim’ around here, the image that will come to most people’s minds is a swarthy kill-crazed terrorist with a suicide vest.” I think there’s a difference between a Hasidic Jew and a suicide bomber. But I only said that when they require the society they live in to bend over in order to accommodate their wants, they’re going to attract negative attention, attention that will fall over the Jewish community as a whole, since they are its most obvious members. ---
**Author:** ![Ibn\_Warraq](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/e19b73/32.png) [@Ibn\_Warraq](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ibn_Warraq)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2011, 7:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jewish-dopers-have-you-ever-watched-the-film-defamation/568018/69 "2011-01-19T07:38:22Z")
> [@FinnAgain](#): > > [Here it is.](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=58068) I think you linked to the wrong thing. This is about mirages. ---
**Author:** ![FinnAgain](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/finnagain/32/12500_2.png) [@FinnAgain](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FinnAgain)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2011, 7:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jewish-dopers-have-you-ever-watched-the-film-defamation/568018/70 "2011-01-19T07:42:45Z")
WTF… no clue how that got into my cut and paste cache. [Here is the correct one.](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=580689) > [@Hypnagogic\_Jerk](#): > > they’re going to attract negative attention, attention that will fall over the Jewish community as a whole, since they are its most obvious members. “attention that will fall over the community as a whole” is the definition of racism. ---
**Author:** ![Ibn\_Warraq](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/e19b73/32.png) [@Ibn\_Warraq](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ibn_Warraq)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2011, 7:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jewish-dopers-have-you-ever-watched-the-film-defamation/568018/71 "2011-01-19T07:44:42Z")
> [@Sevastopol](#): > > The second paragraph quoted above is a different thing, talking of a “factor”. As I recall it, that conclusion was arrived at in a respectable way. Ah, so we can’t call a conclusion bigoted if it’s “arrived at in a respectable way”. I assume then you’re pissed at me accusing Charles Murray and Richard Hernnstein of being bigots because they arrived at their conclusions that blacks are dumber than whites “in a respectable way.” You’ve also ignored there were numerous flaws with that book which make it of little use such as their asinine decision to not interview the people who would understand the best about interactions between government and political lobbies. Sorry, but claiming that a cabal of powerful Jews who care more about Israel than America played a key role in the decision to invade Iraq is anti-Semitic and anyone who doesn’t think so is either a bigot or a moron. ---
**Author:** ![Sevastopol](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/cdc98d/32.png) [@Sevastopol](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sevastopol)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2011, 7:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jewish-dopers-have-you-ever-watched-the-film-defamation/568018/72 "2011-01-19T07:47:02Z")
> [@DSeid](#): > > … > Why care? Because Jew hating to the point of mass murders is a _recurring theme_ over the past two thousand years. A generation or so of assimilation and success, then an economic downturn and the Jews get blamed and murdered en masse. That’s just history. The German Jews before the rise of Nazism were highly successful overall, both in academic and economic circles. They were highly assimilated and listened more to classical German composers than to Klezmer. Until the German economy collapsed after WW1. What would make anyone believe that historic patterns have just stopped, that human nature has suddenly changed? Things are not so bad in America now, but my father had to pretend to be Italian to make sales and I’ve personally was called a kike and a Jewboy in college (and honestly thought I was going to be killed, literally battered body found, when I got into a fight with that very large football player racist in response. And the funny punchline was that I got out having come out on top and the first person I ran into to vent to was a guy who was the one Black guy in my otherwise White and more than half Jewish fraternity, who gave me the greatest look when I innocently vented and asked if he had any idea what it was like to come up against something like that … Oh, yeah, I forgot you’re Black.). > > A few decades into a “good” part of the cycle, in this country only really, really is not enough to relax about it… See, this view isn’t borne out by the history. Conflict and persecution are parts of human history wherever you look. Peoples and nations come and go, all the time. Not pretty but it’s true. The Etruscans, Picts and Sumerians, their vanishing is the normal, not the exceptional case. The context shows there is no exceptional bias of history against the Jews. ---
**Author:** ![Sevastopol](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/cdc98d/32.png) [@Sevastopol](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sevastopol)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2011, 7:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jewish-dopers-have-you-ever-watched-the-film-defamation/568018/73 "2011-01-19T07:52:02Z")
> [@Ibn\_Warraq](#): > > Ah, so we can’t call a conclusion bigoted if it’s “arrived at in a respectable way”. Actually that’s true. Bigotry is all about closed minds. > [@](#): > > I assume then you’re pissed at me accusing Charles Murray and Richard Hernnstein … Do not know the named gentlemen. > [@](#): > > Sorry, but claiming that a cabal of powerful Jews who care more about Israel than America played a key role in the decision to invade Iraq is anti-Semitic and anyone who doesn’t think so is either a bigot or a moron. Leaving aside ‘cabal’, you have to go where the evidence takes you. Ruling a conclusion in or out because it displeases is what bigotry is all about. ---
**Author:** ![Ibn\_Warraq](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/e19b73/32.png) [@Ibn\_Warraq](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ibn_Warraq)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2011, 7:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jewish-dopers-have-you-ever-watched-the-film-defamation/568018/74 "2011-01-19T07:52:56Z")
> [@Hypnagogic\_Jerk](#): > > As said in the thread, **monstro** is a black woman. I assume she’s aware of how bigotry works. Ah, well then apologies for the mistake. I’m very sure she’d agree with me than that using racial slurs and assaults as a measure of bigotry and one’s experiences with it is a pretty piss poor indicator. Like I said, I’ve never had a white person call me a “raghead” or similar slur to my face, but I have experienced racism(not that I want to go all woe is me). ---
**Author:** ![Ibn\_Warraq](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/e19b73/32.png) [@Ibn\_Warraq](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ibn_Warraq)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2011, 7:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jewish-dopers-have-you-ever-watched-the-film-defamation/568018/75 "2011-01-19T07:56:41Z")
> [@Sevastopol](#): > > Actually that’s true. Bigotry is all about closed minds. Do not know the named gentlemen. Leaving aside ‘cabal’, you have to go where the evidence takes you. Ruling a conclusion in or out because it displeases is what bigotry is all about. Countless believers in Eugenics and various other forms of scientific racism would be applauding your logic. Every racist thinks that there belief is “logical” and that they went where the evidence took them. Anyone, since you want to push it then a couple of fairly easy yes or no questions. 1. Do you think that AIPAC played a key role in George Bush’s decision to invade Iraq? 2. Do you think that it’s not bigoted to claim that for genetic reasons blacks are less intelligent than whites? ---
**Author:** ![Ibn\_Warraq](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/e19b73/32.png) [@Ibn\_Warraq](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ibn_Warraq)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2011, 8:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jewish-dopers-have-you-ever-watched-the-film-defamation/568018/76 "2011-01-19T08:01:11Z")
> [@FinnAgain](#): > > WTF… no clue how that got into my cut and paste cache. > [Here is the correct one.](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=580689) > > “attention that will fall over the community as a whole” is the definition of racism. Thanks for the link. Good lord, what’s with Polerius? Didn’t he realize that the Joel Stein column he was quoting from was a joke? ---
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2011, 8:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jewish-dopers-have-you-ever-watched-the-film-defamation/568018/77 "2011-01-19T08:11:43Z")
> [@Sevastopol](#): > > See, this view isn’t borne out by the history. Conflict and persecution are parts of human history wherever you look. Peoples and nations come and go, all the time. Not pretty but it’s true. > > The Etruscans, Picts and Sumerians, their vanishing is the normal, not the exceptional case. The context shows there is no exceptional bias of history against the Jews. In other words, it’s the Jews’ fault for surviving. ---
**Author:** ![Hypnagogic\_Jerk](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hypnagogic_jerk/32/4252_2.png) [@Hypnagogic\_Jerk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hypnagogic_Jerk)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2011, 8:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jewish-dopers-have-you-ever-watched-the-film-defamation/568018/78 "2011-01-19T08:13:34Z")
> [@FinnAgain](#): > > “attention that will fall over the community as a whole” is the definition of racism. No. It’s not the definition of anything. If it’s something, it’s the process that leads to the development of a stereotype. And stereotypes are usually based on facts, even though relying only on them is lazy thinking. Plenty of people, including here, believe in stereotypes about groups of people. That doesn’t make them racists. ---
**Author:** ![FinnAgain](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/finnagain/32/12500_2.png) [@FinnAgain](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FinnAgain)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2011, 8:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jewish-dopers-have-you-ever-watched-the-film-defamation/568018/79 "2011-01-19T08:24:17Z")
> [@Hypnagogic\_Jerk](#): > > It’s not the definition of anything. Yep, it is. Ascribing negative actions of a part to the whole of a group is racism, pure and simple. > [@Hypnagogic\_Jerk](#): > > it’s the process that leads to the development of a stereotype. Also known as, racism. > [@Hypnagogic\_Jerk](#): > > Plenty of people, including here, believe in stereotypes about groups of people. Yes, we call them racists. ---
**Author:** ![Ibn\_Warraq](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/e19b73/32.png) [@Ibn\_Warraq](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ibn_Warraq)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2011, 8:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jewish-dopers-have-you-ever-watched-the-film-defamation/568018/80 "2011-01-19T08:26:56Z")
> [@Hypnagogic\_Jerk](#): > > Plenty of people, including here, believe in stereotypes about groups of people. That doesn’t make them racists. “believ[ing] in stereotypes about groups of people” is universally viewed as a form of bigotry whether it’s believing that Jews control the government, blacks make great dancers, or that Muslims are terrorists. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jewish-dopers-have-you-ever-watched-the-film-defamation/568018.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jewish-dopers-have-you-ever-watched-the-film-defamation/568018.md?page=5)