➥ Thread on Seth Rogen:

We’ve been hearing a bit too much about Seth Rogen lately in the Jewish activist community. The actor is known for his stints playing mediocre Jewish characters and wearing ugly Hannukah sweaters. 2/

He is known for capitalizing on Jewishness, and yet, has decided to discard all of us in his community as he profits from us viewing his Yiddishkeit fetishization. 3/

Seth has been crossing off items of the internalized antisemitism checklist so eagerly and mirroring the likes of Karl Marx so closely, you’d think he gets his antisemitism education from “On the Jewish Question” and JVP, the latter being quite plausible. 4/

Let’s put a pin on Israel delegitimization for a second. Let’s begin with his comments on Orthodox Jews to start us off:

“Their gene pool is so tight they’re producing Jews who don’t even look like Jews. If you didn’t have the get-up, you wouldn’t know they were Jews.” 5/

When asked what he thinks of Hasidim, he answered “Not doing us any favors,” alluding to feeling embarrassed by religious people. He ended up outright comparing Orthodox Jewish garbs to wizards and incorrectly assumed Orthodox Jewish culture and practice... 6/

...were informed by the Holocaust aka fear and trauma. Orthodox Jews are violently beaten on the daily in New York City, and yet Seth Rogen feels it is appropriate to marginalize and dehumanize them for “laughs” clearly based on deep-seated prejudice. 7/

I can hardly imagine comments like these being made of any other minority and seen as acceptable. 8/

Now, back to Israel. Antizionism is antisemitism. Seth didn’t get the memo. He said “Israel doesn’t make sense,” basically stating that the millions of lives of Jewish people that were saved by Israel, to him, are disposable. 9/

The fact that Mizrahi and Sephardi history and culture have been preserved because of Israel’s existence, to him, is negligible. 10/

The fact that most Jews in the diaspora believe in Israel’s existence because we understand that one day we might come to need it ourselves, irrelevant. 11/

Facing bad press after his despicable comments and at the brink of the promotion of his film, Seth followed several Jewish activists, some of which I consider my friends, only to use them for their emotional labor to educate him, to later discard them and unfollow them. 12/

He apologized (only for his comments on Israel) only to take them back, and saying he did so because his mother asked him to. 13/

So, a few days ago, Seth decided to capitalize on his political agenda after Trump’s failure to condemn White Supremacy during the presidential debate tweeting this: 14/

The problem is he’s made it clear that he is not interested in condemning antisemitism on the other side of the political spectrum, he’s engaged in it himself. 15/

As soon as Jewish activists pointed this out to him yesterday, and explained the well recorded and analyzed antisemitism of Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar, Linda Sarsour and ilk, he reiterated that he viewed their stances as legitimate criticisms of Israel. 16/ https://twitter.com/jasonrantz/status/1311846446900015104?s=21

(Apparently blood libels, medieval tropes, and believing in the destruction of the only Jewish state are “criticism.”) 17/

Seth Rogen is a “Good Jew.” The kind of Jew that will only call out what’s socially acceptable to call out. The kind of Jew who will politicize antisemitism when convenient but doesn’t bother to educate himself on it because to him it does not matter. 18/

To the Good Jews out there, step up or shut up. If you only care about antisemitism when it comes from the right, you don’t actually care about Jewish people. 19/

If you fail to condemn left-wing antisemitism and violence against Orthodox Jews, you have zero credibility when “condemning Trump.” Seth Rogen is simply contributing to the gaslighting of American Jews who are facing record highs of antisemitism in this country. 20/

You don’t want me to call him a “self-hating Jew?” Fine. You’re right. I don’t think he hates himself or his narrow idea of what being Jewish should be limited to. I’ll call him an antisemitic Jew. 21/

Because his internalized antisemitism is glaring, because of his eagerness to throw Israel, the country that is home to seven million Jewish people under the bus... 22/

because his statements on Orthodox Jews that having been directed at any other minority group would have gotten him cancelled, because he is so willing to defend congresswomen who have pushed blood libels. 23/

Let’s be clear, if Seth Rogen weren’t a Jew, we would have categorized him as an antisemite a while ago… because he is one. End