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It's not just true of anti-Semitism, but a lot of times the people who join in on "ironic ____ism jokes" think the joke is "This thing is plainly ridiculous on its face so no one could believe I mean this," but... people do believe it, and they rely on "ridiculousness" as cover. https://twitter.com/Lollardfish/status/1355170406282493952
Yeah, Bean Dad's self-serving explanation of his bigoted tweets being that he was "taking power away from" slurs by just... using them... is exactly in that vein.
(Whether he believed it or not, I don't know or care.) https://twitter.com/MuiMui2010/status/1355181832132816900
(Whether he believed it or not, I don't know or care.) https://twitter.com/MuiMui2010/status/1355181832132816900
Those two possibilities are neither exclusive of each other, nor opposites.
My answer is: no one can know what impact their words and actions will have on the world before that impact is made, and yet everybody is still responsible for that impact. https://twitter.com/OblivionVortex/status/1355184656874954760
My answer is: no one can know what impact their words and actions will have on the world before that impact is made, and yet everybody is still responsible for that impact. https://twitter.com/OblivionVortex/status/1355184656874954760
Literally nobody can stop you from making "joking/ironic" racism or anti-Semitism or whatever, least of all me. I have no power over you.
But if your theory is "It's so ridiculous no one will believe it or believe I mean it," I will point out that you are very likely mistaken.
But if your theory is "It's so ridiculous no one will believe it or believe I mean it," I will point out that you are very likely mistaken.
Every day on this site, to use a very small and petty example, you can see guys replying to women's tweets by doing whatever thing the woman is complaining about men doing, clearly expecting that this will be appreciated as humor because the guy doing it Is Good And Would Never.
But 99% of the people seeing it, often including the woman it's directed at, have no prior awareness of the person so their introduction to him is him doing the very thing that the joke depends on the audience understanding He Would Never Do.
And the fact that it's being complained about should have indicated to him that a random man doing this thing *is* plausible, not something so farcically far out there that its very possibility is risible.
We can entertain arguments about whether it's "fair" to blame men who do this the same way as we would if they'd "meant it", but in doing so, we're giving cover to men who do "mean it", who are just as likely to fall back on "I was only joking, lighten up."
With the case of anti-Semitism and groups like the KKK and a lot of internet "edgelord"-ism, layering in absurdity is part of a conscious and consistent strategy to make sure they can dog whistle in public while still flying under the radar. They count on plausible deniability...
...and they count on "the normies" to laugh off the outer fringes of things and maybe even pick up some of it and start echoing it as a joke.
