Comment by wizzwizz4
3 days ago
Someone with a tendency towards racist generalisations might start disliking a particular group due to the zeitgeist identifying "disliking the behaviour of a political entity" with "disliking all members of an ethnic group", though. If they previously didn't hold any such views, then they would go from "not racist" to "racist". (If you disagree with my category boundaries, you can construct your own similar example for your preferred category boundaries.)
Just because something's wrong, that doesn't mean it's illogical. A logical conclusion from flawed premises is still logical.
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The difference being that racists who do so are factually incorrect, when they blame the victims. You've just pointed to the actions of individuals (those who trained the racist in the racist culture) as a potential cause, and I'm inclined to agree with you: does that make us racists? I think not.
I don't think we should treat extremely powerful men as powerless victims of antisemitism who've done nothing to stoke the flames, a priori. Maybe they haven't: I certainly don't blame George Soros for the George Soros conspiracy theories (even though he partly does: I think he's wrong to blame himself any amount, since a non-Jew doing Black Wednesday or philanthropy wouldn't have emboldened the antisemites). But people in charge of states and militaries, who've been accused of war crimes by rather a lot of international justice bodies, who rarely let a chance to say "if you hate our decisions, you hate all members of this group" pass them by? They might be contributing to the bigotry. If a racist said something like that, we'd rightly condemn it as stoking the flames of hatred: why should it be any different, if someone else says it?