There’s no pride in anti-Semitism : How Facebook commenters frame the 2019 DC Dyke March as problematic and construct queer (and) Jewish identities

I explore intersections of queerness and Jewishness in the context of the 2019 DC Dyke March. Ahead of the march, organizers banned the Jewish pride flag, claiming that the flag, with the Star of David in the center of a rainbow flag, is reminiscent of the Israeli flag, and is thus a symbol of “violent nationalism” against their queer values of anti-Zionism. This caused a large outcry from DC queer (and) Jewish communities, as well as queer (and) Jewish communities nation-wide, as many claimed the ban was anti-Semitic. In this paper, I demonstrate that queerness encapsulates moral and political values that do not immediately involve gender or sexuality, taking an analytical viewpoint that departs from most linguistic studies which examine queer communities with research questions involving sexuality and gender, and filling the ensuing research gap. I show that when queer leaders are not considered to uphold queer moral values (such as supporting other minority communities), their identities are contested by other community members. Many of the discourses surrounding the DC Dyke March’s flag ban took place through Facebook posts published by the DC Dyke March and subsequent comments posted by community members. I perform a multimodal discourse analysis of 301 Facebook comments posted in response to two Facebook posts published by the DC Dyke March in June 2019 in which the Dyke March discusses their ban of the Jewish pride flag. Drawing on Entman’s (1993) and Bing and Lombardo’s (1997) concepts of framing, I show how Facebook commenters construct three frames to problematize the DC Dyke March, including: (1) the March is anti-Semitic, (2) the March is spreading untruths and inaccuracies, and (3) the March is morally inconsistent. My analysis primarily focuses on the framing of the Dyke March as morally inconsistent, as I demonstrate that commenters use multimodal communicative strategies to construct this frame and represent Dyke March organizers as bad dykes/queers, and also bad Jews. I highlight the uses of rhetorical questions, constructed dialogue, references to Middle Eastern countries, symbols, images, and memes as multimodal communicative strategies through which participants construct queer and Jewish identities and overarching political and moral ideologies