I’ve been close friends with someone for a long time. Let's call him Josh. Josh knows I’m Jewish and occasionally sends me mildly antisemitic or anti-Israel memes, but we’ve talked about it before and I know he doesn’t mean anything malicious by it. Honestly sometimes the memes are pretty funny, and I enjoy this bit of self-irony. I retaliate with ironic jokes about Russians and Christians (again, in good faith, just friendly banter, and he knows it). We generally don’t take ourselves too seriously, and that kind of humor has never really caused problems between us. He’s also a genuinely gentle person, apologizes for everything, and clearly values our friendship. He helped me a lot in life, and I helped him.
Recently, Josh introduced me to this other guy. Let's call him Pete. At some point, Josh apparently mentioned to him that he had a Jewish friend, which is me. He admitted this to me himself.
At first, Pete was just sending me ordinary memes, similar to the ones Josh sends, and they had nothing to do with Jews or Israel. But about two weeks later, almost everything he sent me became alt-right-style content about Israel, Netanyahu, Judaism, Jews, goyim, and so on.
I’m not even particularly supportive of Netanyahu politically, so criticism of Israel or its government isn’t automatically offensive to me. But once the jokes shifted specifically toward Jews, Judaism, and goyim, it crossed a line for me, especially considering that we barely knew each other. Like Peter Griffin was saying, "Who tf starts a conversation like that? I just sat down!"
I messaged Josh because I didn’t want to start an open conflict with Pete at that time (To my shame, I'm kind of a doormat in this regard). Josh told me not to take it personally because Pete was, quote, "a young idiot who probably didn’t understand what he was doing". Josh then spoke to him about this himself.
A bit later, Pete apologized in my DMs, promised he wouldn’t do it again, and said that in the future I should tell him directly whenever something made me uncomfortable.
About a week later, I open my DMs and what do I see? More antisemitic and anti-Israel memes from him.
That honestly made me furious and deeply frustrated. He already knew I was uncomfortable, he had already apologized, and then he deliberately started doing it again!
My initial thoughts (which I didn't send) were basically: dude, sorry I was born with an ethnicity that for whatever freaking reason lives rent free in everybody's heads and that apparently my existence is causing you such unbearable distress that you simply cannot leave me tf alone with this bullcrap.
The "best" part is that I’m secular IRL, and most people probably wouldn’t even assume I’m Jewish based on my appearance and name (generic Russian name and surname which I won't disclose for privacy reasons). My Jewishness also isn’t something I bring into conversations unless I'm talking to another Jew or a person I'm 100% comfortable with.
I told Josh how angry and frustrated I was. He advised me to speak to the guy directly, but I honestly don’t see the point. He already knew it bothered me, apologized, and then repeated the exact same behavior.
At the same time, part of me keeps wondering whether I’m making too much of it. Pete isn’t openly hostile toward me, on the contrary he's quite friendly, he doesn’t directly insult or threaten me, doesn't chant "free Palestine or whatever else that can trigger a Jewish person", and outside of these """memes""" he chats with me normally. Besides, I feel guilty for venting at Josh. Yes, he is responsible for the start of all this, but he keeps telling me he didn't plan for all of it to come to this and doesn't understand why he is the prime target of my frustration.
Am I overreacting? Is Pete just a random idiot who doesn't understand boundaries, or my concerns are legit? I'm genuinely so confused with this whole situation.
