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you are antisemitic if you don't think the National Guard should be called up to murder peaceful student protestors
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this post was submitted on 21 Apr 2024
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the_dunk_tank
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the -phobic suffix is used much like the -phillic suffix in sociology, it generally means "averse to X" or "attracted to X" respectively. It's not used in the sense of an actual psychological fear, but as a sociological flat amoral description of a group being anti-X and averse to it.
Think Hydrophobic and Hydrophillic. Rightwing groups are homophobic because they are averse to homosexuality and don't want to interact with it, and when they come into contact with it they react negatively. Hydrophobic molecules are not "afraid" of water in a literal sense, it's a description of their reaction to water.
where do you think any of these terms come from? They all originate in academia in a more scientific and rigorous setting, and then leak out into the mainstream ideology. Specificity and rigor is lost when strict control over the definition is lost and the word enters the public zeitgeist and takes on a meaning of its own.
This type of non-moralistic descriptionist language is what Marxists should seek to use when describing society, our role is to do a cold autopsy not to sit in moral judgment. We will never be able to control the public usage and steer language and how it develops, but we can control how we describe the world scientifically to each other. What others do with it later is their problem.
I don't recall this personally, I recall instead it being framed not as fear but as ignorance and lack of understanding and willingness to understand. The 90s common knowledge among the more social-liberal portions of the public was that racism and bigotry were finished as powerful forces in the West, that they only existed in vestigial corners where education and diversity had not yet reached. It was not shown as innocent fear, but as a regrettable silly superstition that would be flushed out by history's end if we all just keep being polite to each other.
i'm not sure what your point is though. That we shouldn't use amoral descriptionist language when describing social forces? That we should seek to control public common language with an iron fist (something historically not very realistic)?
That a white supremacist society coopted a revolutionary idea and blunted it is not surprising, it's what it does to all revolutionary ideas it gets ahold of. Is that any reason to stop having revolutionary ideas?
I thought you were getting at the point that "homophobia" is a problematic and not useful term because it isn't inherently loaded with enough moral judgment against homophobes (compared to something like 'gay hate' or 'anti-gay bigotry'), or that the colloquial definition that has been adopted being less accurate means we should retroactively change our own descriptions and accurate usage of the term within sociology and left-politics.
Personally, I'm completely fine with the -phobia and -phobic suffixes to describe tendencies among populations and think it's better than using moralistic terms when it comes to understanding social forces at play correctly. It just depends on the context. If you're hurling invectives at a specific reactionary, go for the moralist jabs if it is effective with your current audience. If you're trying to do a sociological description of the forces of society among fellow comrades I think we should stick to the cold autopsy approach.