(mods pls remove post if it violates rules)
TL;DR:
My 19 yo little brother who had a rough childhood (which I unfortunately contributed to) is convinced that Israel’s actions and impunity is because “modern jews run the Western world”. I’ve tried countering this with a materialist explanation of Israel’s role in US imperialism to no avail. I suspect my treatment of him in the past may be an obstacle here, and that the key to changing his mind might require an emotional rather than logical approach. Please advise.
Pre-October 7th:
We live in the West and grew up in a conservative Muslim family, both male, I’m 24 and he’s 19. We have been pro-palestine since birth. Some channels he watches are Gattsu, Geopold, GDF and Badempanada, doesn’t like Hasan much. He’s not really into socialist politics/history like me but I think he sympathizes, although he has edgy humor which is sometimes borderline centrist/center-right.
He’s a lot better now but as a kid he was really difficult, and my dad and I handled this extremely poorly. I was never physical (unlike sometimes my dad), but I said some putrid shit to him throughout my teens. Regretful shit that makes me stay up at night and breakdown from guilt if I think about too much.
5-6 years ago I mellowed out and thought “man, what the fuck am I doing” and asked him if he wanted to be normal brothers again, to which he enthusiastically agreed. Since then we’ve had a decent relationship and talk about shows, politics, history, movies, uni stuff, etc. We seldom talk about our feelings, and we never processed that traumatic 10 year period when I was a shitty older brother. Despite going through all this he turned out relatively fine, mostly well-adjusted all things considered.
Post October 7th
At some point in the past 2 years of genocide, he started believing in ZOG (zionist occupied government), which quickly morphed into “jews run the world”. According to him, “90% of Israeli and US Jews are pedophile rapist murderers”
- He thinks that in modern times, Jews control western nations including US through the media, banks, legal institutions etc.
- He knows that Zionists != Jews, but says it doesn’t matter to him at this point
- Despite my best efforts to explain Israel’s role in US imperialism, he still thinks “the middle east wouldnt be as bad” if not for Israel
- I’ve tried explaining that its a symbiosis for US and Israel, and that Israel can’t do anything without green light from US, but he thinks Israel can do whatever they want because they’re blackmailing US politicians with Epstein
- He sends me reels of Israeli rabbis saying crazy shit with Havah Nagilah playing in the background
- sent me an Amin al-Husseini x Hitler edit (he joked saying how husseini saw the future and wanted to save his people, and that maybe Hitler was right)
- His “evidence” includes verses from the talmud condoning pedophilia and other insane things that many religions also say
- He thinks Nick Fuentes is funny, and likes that he is “one of the only far-right people who doesn’t utterly despise Muslims/Arabs”
Potential solutions
Basically I’ve tried explaining with logic why he’s wrong but he won’t budge. I suspect part of it is because I was shitty to him during his formative years so maybe that’s causing some friction. I think the solution will hinge on an emotional approach rather than logical, but I’m not sure what to do.
Hey mate, I know what it’s like having reactionary family, it’s hard, heartbreaking, and disappointing. There’s no guarantee that you can change them, and at the end of the day it’s their decision and opinion, all you can do is show them your evidence, and whether they take it or not it’s entirely up to them.
That being said, there’s something of a mismatch in your brother’s supposed viewing habits that I think you can use as a starting point. Badempanada actually did a very good piece on GDF, and how his content is deliberately presented to misrepresent the relationship between Israel, Judaism, and the US Empire in order to fuel his largely anti-Semitic audience. You could perhaps use that as a starting point to talk about the many contradictions in your brother’s logic and help him understand where he’s being misled.
I’ll link them here
I found YouTube links in your comment. Here are links to the same videos on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
Link 1:
Link 2:
You could try highlighting:
- Jewish opposition to Zionism
- How the overwhelming majority of our Senators, Representatives, Governors, Supreme Court Justices, etc. are not Jewish. There has never been a Jewish President or Vice President of the United States in the entire country’s history.
- Instances throughout history in which the U.S. government has successfully used its leverage over Israel in order to force them to pursue a certain course of action (e.g. the withdrawal from the Sinai Peninsula in 1957, the decision not to destroy the encircled Egyptian 3rd Army during the Yom Kippur War, and Reagan forcing Israel to end the bombing of Beirut in 1982). This demonstrates that it is in fact Israel which is (to at least some extent) controlled by the United States and not the other way around
- The long history of collaboration between Zionists and anti-Semites; how both ideologies are supported by the same people and serve the same financial interests
- How Zionism does not exist in isolation but rather is part of a broader phenomenon of European settler colonialism
If that doesn’t work, no amount of reasoning will. Unfortunately, you can’t logic someone out of a position they didn’t logic themselves into. They have to be willing to learn. Not that that means you should just abandon them, but as you said, the solution will have to hinge on an emotional approach
A few weeks ago when I attended an antisemitism class, I teasingly asked the rabbinic lecturer, ‘If you control Hollywood, how did The Passion of the Christ become so popular?’ The audience chuckled. If ‘the Jews’ controlled the mainstream media, then The Grey Zone would have been a smashing success at the box office, but with precious few exceptions, Shoah films tend to have unremarkable results on the market:
Holocaust films generally lack commercial success. Indeed, approximately 440 features have grossed more than Schindler’s List and Inglourious Basterds (2009), the highest-grossing Holocaust films in history; in contrast, Crocodile Dundee (1986) and The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water (2015) have outgrossed those Holocaust film icons. The Pianist (2002) does not even approach the all-time top thousand grossing films.
(Source.)
Likewise, if ‘the Jews’ were controlling mainstream education, then they’d waste little time telling us about the Polish–Cossack Wars and the 1917–1923 pogroms (the proto-Shoah), but I asked several Jewish adults whom Symon Petliura was and they hadn’t a clue. To be honest, I would be unsurprised if Jewish communities themselves had no more than the vaguest familiarity with either of those eras—as counterintuitive as that may sound.
As far as I can tell, the way that mainstream education exposes us to Judaism and Jewish history is not particularly impressive. Aside from our cluelessness regarding nearly all of the observances, some of us seriously still think that Jews have horns on their heads, ingest blood, and never have to worry about money, which is only a tiny sample of the evidence that the education system has failed us.
You can invite him to learn about Judaism through Jewish sources like Judaism for Dummies, but I guess that he can dismiss those out of hand for being ‘biased’. If he goes to that extreme then there is nothing stopping us from assuming that he’s really a super secret Mossad agent pretending to be an antisemite to keep us off of his trail.
