Ask Lemmy

Zionist, in the modern sense, is more or less the Jewish equivalence of white supremacy.

They believe they have a divine right to the lands of Israel and everyone else who lives there can get bent.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zionism

I live in Canada, less than 100km from the US, and it's a pretty commonly used term. I've heard it come up in the beer league hockey dressing room in casual conversation multiple times.

I first started hearing the term occasionally in high school history class, then heard it more at university in political discussion contexts, then again a ton more in the past decade or so given what's been happening leading up to the current war.

It is not a propaganda term, it is literally the term for people who believe that Jewish people have a right to an ethnostate around historic Jerusalem.

This is a category of people that include some Jews, but not all Jews, and not exclusively Jews, it includes some Israelis, but not all Israelis, and not exclusively Israelis.

Some people wear the term proudly, and some people view it as the devil incarnate, so it's a term that can be used hatefully or non-hatefully, but it's not specific to Lemmy.

You're probably seeing it be used more in general these days because people critical of Israel are trying to be specific in their choice of language and just criticize the supporters of the idea of the Israeli ethnostate rather than Jewish people more broadly (obviously anti-Semitic), or even Israelis more broadly (which sweeps up many Arab-Iseaelis and other citizens who don't support their state), and misses the non Jewish / Israeli people who also fund and support the state of Israel for various reasons.

Zionism is support for a sovereign Jewish state - I'm personally opposed to zionism because I don't believe in fundamentalism or officially embraced national religions.

It sounds like you also disapprove of zionism but may have bought into propaganda spread by the ADL and AIPAC that try and equate antizionism and antisemitism - this has been a pretty long running political game in the US and deeply harmed a lot of ethnically Jewish folks.

I'd suggest reading up on what zionism is so you can dispel what seem to be a lot of deep seated misconceptions about the term.

A simple search of DDG found multiple Jewish sources using and explaining the use of the word 'zionist' as an adjective for individual persons e.g.

The Times of Israel: "To be a Zionist means to recognise the land of Israel as the ancestral homeland of the Jewish people and to believe in the existence of a Jewish state in the land of Zion, or Israel."

Anyhow, when I see "Zionism" to refer to support of Israel, it pings my bullshit detector. It isn't a part of normal discourse as I know it in the US.

This must be a thing inside the Usa then.

I know the term Zionists as refering to the political right-wing parties in Isreel.

As other people have explained, basically it's a viewpoint supporting the existence of Israel. Israel itself is sometimes called "the Zionist entity" as a propaganda term by its opponents/enemies, as a way of refusing to say the name "Israel" or acknowledge it as a country. You might have heard the term used that way and picked up the undertone. It's like saying "the orange-haired figure" as a way of pointedly refusing to say the name Trump or calling him the president.

I asked my partner this a few weeks ago. It never comes up in normal conversation. Whenever I see it, I see red flags and my BS detector turns amber.

Some bint lied about being knocked up and we're still suffering for it to this day....