Case in Point: Anti-Semitism
I’ve written previously about how the term “anti-semite” has been weaponized to silence dissidents who question official narratives (i.e., propaganda) around COVID, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the Gaza genocide, or other third-rail topics. As I noted in Requiem for a Smear Victim: Clemens Arvay:
Out of all the name-calling, all the slanders, all the accusations, one word cut the deepest: “anti-semite.”
This word holds the power to torpedo reputations with a single utterance.
It is the when-did-you-stop-beating-your-wife Chinese finger trap of allegations to which there is no feasible defense.
Once “anti-semite” is attached to you, it forever lurks in the archives, ever threatening to resurface, even if you’ve managed to clear your name.
It is like a rusty needle the shaman propagandists can plunge into their chosen voodoo doll the instant they cross a line.
Ludicrously, this accusation has also been wielded against CJ Hopkins, who—despite having been previously acquitted of thoughtcrimes before the prosecutor immediately appealed the verdict—is now “being criminally investigated for publishing and promoting a book.”
The book in question is The Rise of the New Normal Reich: Consent Factory Essays, Vol. III (2020–2021), which features the sardonic use of a faint swastika superimposed over a medical mask in Anthony Freda’s homage to William Shirer’s The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich.
As reported in Bündnis Redefreiheit:
“On the morning of Wednesday, 26 November 2025, three armed police officers arrived at the Berlin apartment of American writer C. J. Hopkins with a search warrant issued by the Amtsgericht Tiergarten. As he reports on his Substack, the officers not only searched the apartment but also confiscated his computer and interrogated his wife.”
The only thing CJ is guilty of is confronting New Normal Germany with its fascistic behavior—you know, like raiding the home of a satirist for publishing a book exposing its backslide into tyranny. He’s doing exactly what he stated in a Bakkie met Bergsma interview (as quoted in my Dissident Dialogue with CJ):
“I’m holding up a mirror, and I’m saying, ‘Look at how you’re behaving. Look at how you’re acting. Because it looks just like other totalitarian systems.”
Even though the term “anti-semite” has been abused by censors and propagandists to target innocent people like CJ, the unfortunate reality is anti-semitism does exist. The State of Israel’s increasingly brazen war crimes and genocidal actions have amplified that cognitive bias a thousandfold while emboldening its adherents to wage both verbal and, in some cases, physical attacks against Jews.
If you can’t tell the difference between Israel and Israelis or Jews, you’re still stuck in the divide-and-conquer pinball machine.
To repeat my axiom from I Wish I Knew How: A Rehumanizing Algorithm:
The State is not the people; the people are not the State.
Those who fail to heed this distinction erroneously blame innocent individuals for the crimes of Israel or philanthropaths like unrepentant Nazi collaborator George Soros because of a genetic variable completely outside the control of those individuals.
When small-minded people make this cognitive leap, that only gives the Israeli government and its toadies ammunition for aiming “anti-semite” at all their critics, including those with legitimate concerns about criminal and corrosive actions.
Someone recently made a vile anti-semitic comment about my beloved friend Vera Sharav in the context of her poignant reading of Mistakes Were NOT Made.
The irony is you would be hard-pressed to find a more outspoken or credible critic of Israel and its atrocities than Vera, whose documentation of the Gaza genocide I published in Waging Peace.
In days of yore, I would have leapt to Vera’s defense and eviscerated this troll, which would have given him the very attention he is trying to provoke while wasting hours of my time.
I know many people would be tempted to delete such a comment, but that would remove evidence of malicious behavior. Documenting such occurrences is a reminder that anti-semitism does indeed happen, even though the concept has been so abused, it’s nearly lost all meaning.
I, too, have been subjected to venomous anti-semitic attacks over the years.
One such exchange occurred in the unlikeliest of places. It is a truly wonderful community created by a truly wonderful person, but a couple commenters decided to hijack a thread and start ganging up on a Jewish person.
I felt it was my duty as an upstander to intervene on his behalf, which caused the bullies to redirect their vitriol at me. I was fine with that because I found it comical watching them self-destruct as they engaged in an amusing series of self-owns.
This was also a vital lesson about the importance of why it is so crucial to allow free speech, no matter how repulsive. I don’t want this kind of hatred being stuffed into a pressure cooker without a steam release valve. In a way, they’re doing us a favor by raving so openly; it’s easier to understand what they’re saying when their voices aren’t muffled by a sheet.
Ultimately, it is our responsibility as individuals to control how we react to others’ words. If I had chosen the route of getting offended, this would have been an entirely different experience. Instead, every insult they flung at me made me laugh harder, so all their attempts to hurt me boomeranged back at them.
There’s a reason children learn the phrase, “Sticks and stones can hurt my bones, but words can never hurt me.” It’s designed to teach them resilience so they can survive the inevitable harshnesses they will encounter throughout life.
Coddling younger generations has produced infantilized, flaccid marshmallows who can’t even tie their shoelaces without consulting an authority, and that is precisely why the cruelites have intentionally cultivated a mentality of dependency and obedience.
If we thicken our mental Teflon and deflect ad hominems with humor, the bullies can no longer hurt us and may even develop a begrudging respect for us, eventually giving up harassing us altogether.
That may have happened with the primary antagonist in this dialogue as we had a civil exchange in a later thread where he even expressed appreciation for my efforts on another front—although it didn’t stop him from coming back to this original thread three months later to hurl more entertaining epithets 😆
