Mainly in the Austro-Hungarian empire, at a time when the government there was relaxing the long-standing policy of discrimination against Jews, enabling them to assimilate. The Zionist leaders were panicked by the possibility that assimilation might erase Jewish identity, and by the alternative possibility that a reactionary backlash against equal rights might lead to further persecution. The latter is what ended up happening.
The diagnosis of the risk was correct. The problem was with two linked features of the proposed cure: ethnonationalism and colonialism.
And yeah, for centuries, Islam treated its second-class citizens less badly than the Christians did. That didn’t make Islam a human-rights paradise, but consistent discrimination was more bearable than the Christian kingdoms’ pendulum swings between tolerance and pogroms.
All three have a lot to answer for over the years. I could do without any of them, but I think humans would find some other bullshit excuses and narratives around an invisible friend to justify subjugating other countries and subjugating others within their own country…
Humans will always find some other bullshit excuse and narrative… but only the religious get tax-free status over and above any non-profit.
We certainly shouldn’t be passing their tax burdens onto everybody else, for any religion. They are all unfathomably wealthy already, no need to add to their gigantic pile of gold.
I wonder where that aspect of Zionism originated…
I hate to say it, but one of the big three is not like the others.
Mainly in the Austro-Hungarian empire, at a time when the government there was relaxing the long-standing policy of discrimination against Jews, enabling them to assimilate. The Zionist leaders were panicked by the possibility that assimilation might erase Jewish identity, and by the alternative possibility that a reactionary backlash against equal rights might lead to further persecution. The latter is what ended up happening.
The diagnosis of the risk was correct. The problem was with two linked features of the proposed cure: ethnonationalism and colonialism.
And yeah, for centuries, Islam treated its second-class citizens less badly than the Christians did. That didn’t make Islam a human-rights paradise, but consistent discrimination was more bearable than the Christian kingdoms’ pendulum swings between tolerance and pogroms.
All three have a lot to answer for over the years. I could do without any of them, but I think humans would find some other bullshit excuses and narratives around an invisible friend to justify subjugating other countries and subjugating others within their own country…
Humans will always find some other bullshit excuse and narrative… but only the religious get tax-free status over and above any non-profit.
We certainly shouldn’t be passing their tax burdens onto everybody else, for any religion. They are all unfathomably wealthy already, no need to add to their gigantic pile of gold.
They are all infested with a smug superiority and have proven willing and able to murder all who won’t submit to their rule.
They are dissimilar in some ways, but the most important thing is that they are all murderous and all have scriptural support to be murderous.
But yes, one of the big three is not like the others. For example, there are no PRIDE parades in any Islamic state.