Story of Keshen

My Politics

I say I am a “staunch socialist, diasporist and anti-assimilationist (and more broadly anti-imperialist),” but I expect you might be confused about some of these terms, so I wanted to give you some explanations. I also want to put this here so that my words and works do not get co-opted by the wrong people.

Socialism

I am not sure where in the spectrum of socialist beliefs I fall, so I use this term as something of a catch-all for my politics. My ideal world would feature a government that looks out for its people using such things as universal healthcare, education, housing and more. I believe the best way to do this is by eliminating wealth inequality and removing those who make profit on other people’s labor or by extorting people for money by holding their basic human needs hostage.

Diasporism and Anti-Assimilationism

These two terms are the ones I expect people will be most confused by. So, I will give a little history:

In the first century CE, the Romans destroyed Jerusalem and sent most of the Jews living in Israel into exile. The people now living in exile were known as “the diaspora.” Over the next several centuries, three (kinda) cultures emerged: the Sephardim, the Ashkenazim and the Mizrachim (more of an umbrella term for Jewish communities from north Africa and the Middle East). One thing that made these cultures distinct from their neighbors was the fact that we were often forced out of Christian European society. Specifically, we were isolated in shtetls (small villages) or ghettos (parts of cities where Jews were largely confined to). During the French revolution and the enlightenment, however, the now “secular” West offered Jews an ultimatum: stay in our communities and continue to be victimized by the imperial designs of the West, or sacrifice our culture and assimilate into Western culture. I put secular in quotations because apart from a few cosmetic details there was little different between the pre- and post-enlightenment cultures of Western Europe (women’s rights, queer rights, slavery, who should hold power, etc.). I will not pretend that Judaism was much better than Christianity in its treatment of minority groups in our communities, but there is more to being a part of a culture than how we treat others.

Many Jews assimilated into Western society, however, and brought in ideas of nationalism, supremacy and more into Jewish communities. They formed this idea that Jews are supposed to be one people and that diaspora Jews were diseased and needed to be cured (they did not see antisemitism as the issue, rather the state of being religious Jews). This ideology led directly into that of Zionism, with Pogroms and the Shoah giving Zionists the perfect opportunity to scare Jews into following them loyally. As a result, languages like Yiddish, Ladino and all of the other diaspora languages and their associated cultures began to die, being eclipsed by a synthetic culture that preached that the Zionist Jew was inherently superior in both mind and body to the decrepit, weak Jew of the diaspora (literal Nazi beliefs). To this day, Israel and its acolytes hold over our heads that if we do not have a Western-style ethnostate of our own we will be subjected to another holocaust, ignoring the fact that Israel to this day refuses to assist survivors of the last one.

When I say I am a diasporist, I mean that I reject the ideology of Zionism in favor of an actual Jewish tradition and culture that survived for centuries without needing to commit genocide. When I say I am anti-assimilationist, I mean that I reject the ultimatum given to our ancestors by the West and choose to oppose the subsuming of Jewish culture under the term “Judeo-Christian.”

Anti-Imperialism

The West, as I have always known it, is built on imperialism. The term imperialism itself refers to the use of force (whether direct or indirect) by stronger groups to extract resources or subjugate less powerful communities. The world kowtows to a Western sense of aesthetics, for example, with beauty standards, clothing, etiquette and language being dominated by those of upper-class Europeans. When I say I am anti-imperialist, I mean that I oppose this structure of the world and wish for a world where we are allowed to express ourselves in our own ways, not ways that are predetermined by the wealthy.

My Praxis

I engage in political activism by attending rallies, bringing medical supplies, water and self-defense equipment when I believe it to be necessary. I also try to help wherever else I can in my daily life by buying food for the homeless, giving money to the poor and more. I do not have any messianic delusions, though. I see these things as the bare minimum any of us can do to change the world for the better. I also use my work as activism by trying to instill core human values into my audience. In all, I do my best to help the people around me. I try to use my place in society to support others, and I encourage anyone else to do the same.