Article (UK) Judophobia versus anti-Semitism

[C C]

Call something a 'phobia' and you stifle all debate
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/artic...es-it.html

EXCERPT (Peter Hitchens): . . . Some years ago, I felt that the term ‘anti-Semitism’ was not doing its job. Many people who don’t like Jews (and there are quite a few) refuse to think of themselves as anti-Semites. They associate the word with Adolf Hitler and the Nazis, or Oswald Mosley and his British Union of Fascists. They do not think they are like that.

So I tried to introduce the word ‘Judophobia’ into the language, so as to give Jew-hatred the same pariah status as all the others. It never caught on, even though it’s probably a more truthful description of this strange mania than the other ways in which ‘phobia’ is used. I’m not even going to try with ‘marriage phobia’ or ‘family phobia’ or ‘Britophobia’, even though bigoted opinions exist which deserve these names.

Some Latin or Greek experts might also come up with a fancy medical-sounding word for the contempt which our elite classes feel for women who stay at home to rear their own children.

The truth is that the invention of all these ‘phobias’ is a brilliant piece of political trickery. It works because it is so hard to fight.

Most people are distressed and scared to find their opinions classified as a sort of mental illness. Any view or position the new liberal elite disagree with is not treated as an opinion. It is treated as a disease of the mind, a fearful derangement, to be greeted with disdain and pushed out of the national conversation.

There is no logic as to which opinion is called a phobia, and which is not, except the current opinions of that elite. Take ‘Islamophobia’, nowadays a serious charge which, once made, can ruin a person in a day.

My own sad view is that there are some people on the political Right who conceal racial bigotry behind an alleged opposition to Islam. I have no time for them. I dislike them. Their behaviour makes it easier for the rival bigotry of the Left to triumph. For Islam is not a race. It is a religion which you may choose to follow, or not follow. It is (like Christianity) a set of political, moral and historical opinions with which it is perfectly reasonable for others to disagree.

I have had some very interesting times disagreeing with Muslims (most notably at the Islamic university at Deoband in northern India, but in plenty of other places too). To classify such disagreements as a ‘phobia’ is to end the discussion and to attack freedom of speech. But that is what the Left in this country have chosen to do, and what they have been doing busily now for at least two decades.

During that time it has become harder and harder to say what you think, even if your opinions are quite free of prejudice and hate. This is an old Left-wing technique and I don’t know where it will stop... (MORE - missing details)

[Syne]

While labeling it a "phobia" would serve the same rhetorical purpose as other so-called "phobias," which simply imply irrationality and fear (weakness), the comparison to Hitler is much more apt, whether the anti-Semites believe so or not. They literally call for the annihilation of Israel and use all the same antisemitic tropes.

Besides, no one who opposes anti-Semites wants the debate stifled. That's a tactic of the left, who support groups and causes that cannot be rationally defended against opposing arguments. Their only recourse is shutting down discussion.

But we know that the hate, conspiracies, and outright genocidal antisemitism requires the antiseptic of debate. Without debate, it would appear to go unopposed for many gullible people susceptible to brainwashing. Hateful ideologies fester in the dark but are exposed for being the fringe beliefs of the evil and unstable in the light.

[Zinjanthropos]

….the left, support groups and causes that cannot be rationally defended against opposing arguments. Their only recourse is shutting down discussion.

Could this shutting down action be, in itself, the result of an irrational fear? Fear of facts seems to be a phobia in many of these cases.

Yet….If you fear something is the most rational thing you can do be to seek psychological help or simply destroy that what you’re afraid of? (Latter seems like an oxymoron).

[Syne]

Yeah, it is usually a fear of facts. Sadly for them, you cannot destroy facts. Even if you can ostracize or silence a speaker, your own agenda will eventually run afoul of reality.

And the denial of reality is just plain delusion. So yeah, lots of reasons they should seek mental help.

[confused2]

When you're right you don't need to listen anyone else's point of view. To avoid actually having to go through the farce of discussion the best policy is to find names or words that sum them up as (say) ignorant, stupid, evil, deluded or insane.