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'Rationalism' always makes way for 'moralism' when the ingroup starts taking too much flak. The quantifiers and metricians who usually like to count things and make grandiose utilitarian arguments to figure out the best course of action suddenly just can't even. The conflict is just too messy, there are no simple answers here, and so on.
In simple utilitarian terms Palestinians obviously suffer more. The end. Taking up any position other than this collapses every other position 'rationalist' or 'progressive' people hold. As you are no longer rational or progressive. You're just another nazi taking up the cause of your people. 'The barbarians are at the gates and something must be done.' Except we have tied ourselves up a little too much in rationally disciplining the outgroup so now we have to cover our tracks somehow.
It reminds me of Sam Harris' Moral Landscape. An entire book written by a man in an effort to convey an 'ought' without using the word. We have a few people in a very similar spot here. To them 'jews and Israel > The rest'. But getting to that point would break their own perception of themselves so we get to play this game of words instead. Where, like Harris, if we space our very transparent intentions far enough apart from one another, using just enough words, we can proclaim that by the ordained will of science, morality or whatever else, Israel must survive above all else.
But what if it's self-induced suffering, gamified to achieve victory on the scale of "who suffers the most?" Is that still "The End?"
That's been the program so far.
No one asks these questions in any other context. I mean, isn't a lot of suffering self inflicted? No one forces the third worlders to continually make mistakes. We just keep giving them money and privilege them in our first world societies. Their populations keep growing and we just accept more immigrants for the greater good.
The pro-Israel narrative doesn't compute with the rationalism or moralism behind all the other oppression narratives. People are continuously trying to carve out some special clause that allows us to ethnically cleanse the browns just this once. The inconsistency is glaring and the ethnic motivation behind it transparent, as this is only being asked because it's jews and Israel.
Is it ethnically cleansing them when they are so eager to do it to themselves? If the civilized world pulls back entirely from the middle east and africa, their bloated populations would kill each other first before starving to death. For all the criticism of white people committing genocide none have been so effective as what these people do to themselves.
I don't disagree. I just wonder why that criticism of the white mans burden is only pushed when the topic of jews, Israel and Palestine are on the docket. Outside of that you would only hear it from ethno-nationalists. Yet the people pondering these things now don't consider themselves as being ethno-nationalists. At least they don't advertise themselves as such. So what gives? Does it just happen to be that in this case we can actually genocide the browns for the greater good and not the other way around?
I mean, just as a point of honesty, for how long could anyone back in 2016 or so uphold the idea that they were just rational skeptic centrist logic lords whilst constantly railing against the white mans burden? Wouldn't everyone just see that they are white nationalists? Isn't that transparently obvious?
Niall Ferguson is a very widely read and famous popular historian who has made a living defending the British Empire. Sure, many leftists don’t like him for it, but they typically don’t like Israel either, and Ferguson is a columnist for Bloomberg and Newsweek so can hardly be considered cancelled by the mainstream. In general neoconservatives broadly defend the legacy of European (especially British) imperialism while acknowledging some limited atrocities.
And? Douglas Murray also exists. Fielding a similar point of view. His wiki page is filled with a similarly long list of 'controversial comments'. None of them go against the bigger elements of the white mans burden. All of them hold to the typical conservative ideals of 'family values are the reason the browns are the way they are' or 'Islam is the problem'. If they even stepped a foot near total expulsion of the brown or flirted openly with the ideas you have entertained their heads would be on a spike.
I’m saying that defenders of Western imperialism don’t only defend Israel but also Euro colonialism on the same grounds. Many are also upset about eg. South African whites being attacked and so on. I never claimed they were dissident right or wignats, indeed quite the opposite - I said these were mainstream center-right people.
Defenders of western imperialism like the aforementioned men defend said imperialism on the basis that it was good for the conquered people. I don't understand what parallel you are trying to draw on unless you are saying Palestinians are better off with Israel ethnically cleansing them.
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