this post was submitted on 29 May 2024
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That's fine. If we don't want to use the word we don't need to. If we're going to use it then let's use it in a non-racist way.
It's kind of bizzare to say claim that we shouldn't use the term "Semite" because it's outdated but then continue to use "antisemite" and claim it's only about a tiny subsection of the people that "Semite" used to refer to.
Because "antisemitic" and "Semite"/"Semitic" are completely different words. "Antisemitic" is no longer semantically just the "anti-" affix plus "Semitic". That's just how semantic drift works unfortunately. It's become pretty much completely disconnected from the base morpheme, and most people that use the word don't even know that the word "Semitic" actually exists in the original sense – it's practically a bound morpheme now, outside of its use in linguistics. Semantic narrowing is a normal part of language change.
If we're going by current usage rather than historical precedent, it doesn't matter that "antisemitc" was originally coined to refer to hatred of Jews.
In that case we would look to the very common usage that includes hatred of all the other speakers of Semitic languages.
Or we could use the extremist definition of, "Any criticism of Israel." If we go by that definition a whole lot of people (including many Jews) would also qualify.