Propaganda

It's amazing. People tell you things your whole life and you believe them and 90% of the time it is complete and total crap. Sometimes you do it to yourself, by making assumptions from the context of what people are saying. By believing implications that aren't there. I recently found out that it is a myth that people thought the world was flat. Total crap. The result of religious politics in the 18th or 19th century as one group tried to prove how retarded another group was by slandering them. Sure, people may not have thought the world was a sphere, but they knew it was curved and most either knew it didn't go on forever or didn't care. I remember laughing at school at the idea that people thought the world was flat. Now I am laughing at myself for being so arrogant that I once thought that people could be so clueless. He who laughs last, thinks slowest.

Now this one, from Raed in The Middle via soul pacific: The phrase "anti-semitic" is used by many to mean anti-Jewish or anti-Israel. I have taken that as fact for years and it seems that most commentators use the phrase in that context. Here is the definition of Semitic, via dictionary.com:

Se·mit·ic
adj.

1. Of or relating to the Semites or their languages or cultures.
2. Of, relating to, or constituting a subgroup of the Afro-Asiatic language group that includes Arabic, Hebrew, Amharic, and Aramaic.

n.

1. The Semitic languages.
2. Any one of the Semitic languages.

No one calls the racists and bigots who equate terrorism with Islam or terrorism with Arabs anti-Semitic. These same people who would call Palestinian Arabs anti-Semitic.

In the end, it is just a little thing. Just a grammatical misunderstanding, perhaps a deprecation of a particular conotation of the word Semitic. The deeper problem is the racism, bigotry and prejudice that produces the need for the phrase. Anit-Semitic is clearly a term like Un-Australian. It sounds like it means something, but no-one is actually clear on the definition, thus it can be used to forward whatever agenda you choose.

And I didn't even know.