Talk:Semitic people

Page contents not supported in other languages.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Obsolete?[edit]

There is something seriously wrong with this article. Compare it with the article "Germanic peoples" or the article "Celts". Neither of those article say the term is obsolete. There is no separate Wikipedia article for "Ancient Germanic-speaking Peoples". Moreover, standard dictionaries do not say the term Semite is obsolete. This article is an example of pro-Zionist and anti-Arab bias in Wikipedia. --Westwind273 (talk) 20:28, 10 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Can you explain how this is pro zionist? Jews very much do consider ourselves semitic people. If anything, this article is trying to erase the our semitic heritage 192.30.52.22 (talk) 08:34, 29 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It's a sad but obvious attempt to circumvent the rational conclusion that Semites can't be accused of being anti-Semites unless one is arguing that they hate themselves. That's why the article follows with the narrow definition of the term anti-Semite which excludes hatred of all Semites except those who are Jewish. Fact of the matter is that term anti-Semite literally means hatred of Semites not Jews specifically. Had Hebrews not been known as members of Semitic peoples, the term anti-Semite would not have come into use because there would be no reason to associate hatred of Jews with the hatred of that which is Semitic, anti-Semitism.
Similar tactics used to circumvent what is genuinely America and American, hence the misconception of what is genuinely Anti-American. Using argumentum ad populum to defend the U.S. promoted fallacy.
America is to the United States as Notre Dame is to the Hunchback.
The truth is that the United States is of America not itself America. It derives its long form name by making use of the genitive case "of America," owe to the fact that the name of the hemisphere it was founded on is named America in honor of Amerigo Vespucci in 1507 by Waldseemuller and Ringmann.
Motivation behind promoting the United States as being one and same as America is the need to justify using the continental term American as if it were a nationality. The proper terms are in fact U.S. Citizen, United Statesian and U.S. American.
United States of America https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth251664/
Common sense -- Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.3.162.15 (talk) 22:58, 6 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Language, especially English, is not strictly rational and self-consistent. Words mean now what they are used to mean now , not what we wish or think based on other words or our own attempts at analyzing historical/etymology. By policy, WP:OR has no place on Wikipedia, but instead WP:V is the policy supported by WP:RS and similar guidelines. The term anti-Semite was specifically coined to refer to the anti-Jewish concept and specifically chosen to give that concept an air of authenticity, based on historical non-facts.[1] Or of course see the explanation and cited refs in our existing article. DMacks (talk) 23:03, 6 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Last comment. You can delete/censor this one too if you like.
For those reading this if given the chance by wikipedia moderators, note that the false claim of etymology is used to argue in defense of the narrow use of the term anti-Semite while factual etymology of the name America and term American goes ignored by the very same. In addition DMacks uses two fallacies respectively, argumentum ad verecundiam for the former and argumentum ad populum for the latter.
Wikipedia is replete with articles promoting falsehoods and misconceptions the authors of this forum defend with logical fallacies. 173.3.162.15 (talk) 14:09, 9 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]


This was previously discussed at Talk:Semitic people/Archive 2. Here's a slightly different form of the explanation there: The term "antisemitism" has meant "Jew-hating" continuously since it was originally coined by non-Jewish Jew-hater Wilhelm Marr in 1879. It has a slightly peculiar etymology, but insisting that etymology must override current usage (and the consistent usage of the last 130 years) is the "Genetic fallacy". By the genetic fallacy, the word "homophobia" could only mean "fear of those who are the same as oneself". Anyway, the reason why "Semitic" was used by the non-Jewish inventor of the word anti-Semitism was because it fit in with a whole series of 19th-century mock-grandiose euphemisms, such as "Celestials" for Chinese, "Sons of Erin" for Irish, "Romans" for Italians, etc. Some of them sounded rather elevated, but when used by white Anglo-Saxon Protestants to refer to others, they were really rather condescending (not complimentary or respectful). Also, during the late 19th-century, the term "Jew-hating" could be considered a little too harsh to be used in mixed company when Podsnap's innocent Young Person was present, so that "anti-Semitism" was more acceptable as a genteel polite euphemism for drawing-room use. At that time neither Jews nor Jew-haters in northern European cities commonly encountered Arabs in their everyday lives, so that most of them didn't think about Arabs in the context of such terminology. Maybe they should have (according to you), but the plain fact is that they didn't. AnonMoos (talk) 11:54, 10 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I really didn't mean for this to turn into a debate over the term antisemitism. I agree that the common usage of that term is racial discrimination against Jews. But this is not the Wikipedia article on Antisemitism. This is the Wikipedia article on Semitic People. The claim that "Semitic People" is obsolete, and the existence of the separate "Ancient Semitic-speaking Peoples" article, is an over-reaction to those who complain about the usage of antisemitism. The structure of Wikipedia on the Semitic People should be consistent with the structure on Germanic People and other historic ethnicities. There was at one time a single people called the Semitic People who did indeed exist; otherwise the Semitic languages would not be related to each other. Over-zealous defense of the term antisemitism has caused the structure of Semitic People on Wikipedia to be deformed, untruthful, and not in conjunction with articles on other historic ethnicities. Westwind273 (talk) 09:37, 11 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It's very easy to classify languages as Semitic or non-Semitic -- so that people who speak a Semitic language are Semitic-language speakers -- and it's a convenient scholarly shorthand to refer to some ancient Semitic-language-speaking groups as Semitic tribes or such. However, deciding which modern groups, independent of language are or are not "Semitic" is a complicated task without clear guidelines or widely-accepted standard definitions, and some would consider it almost meaningless. I was always in favor of this article keeping its old title as just "Semitic", as can be seen in the talk page archives. AnonMoos (talk) 14:10, 11 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Semitic_people&oldid=1223344960"