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Culture War Roundup for the week of September 14, 2026

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Why does opposition to genocide require a "hippy-dippy peace-and-love" attitude?

It doesn't. But I think that's how Macklemore is trying to present himself: as an ordinary well-meaning guy who believes in equality and civil rights, who's appalled by the footage he sees coming out of Gaza and thinks something should be done to stop it. As controversial as his speech was, he never explicitly dedicated his set to "the brave Mujahedeen fighters of Hamas", or called upon the audience to stone the Jew wherever he lies: he's smart enough to know that doing so would make him look like a nutcase. Instead, he does the savvier (and more dishonest) thing of presenting himself like an ordinary well-meaning dude, while explicitly endorsing groups who've been much more open in their extremism then he has, and banking on most people listening not knowing the specifics of what those groups believe. This seems like the constant two-step with the "moderate" pro-Palestinians in the West (and the "moderate" left more broadly). They generally claim that they want to bring about a two-state solution via peaceful means like BDI or other kinds of economic sanctions – and yet you notice that they never offer any criticism of Hamas or the other violent pro-Palestinian groups whose ideology and methods they claim to decry, they amplify their propaganda at every turn, and seem exuberant when they achieve tactical wins (however brief and temporary).

Indeed, I'd respect Mackle- a great deal More if he actually came out and said "there's a genocide going on right now that's just as bad as the Holocaust, so we have to stop it the same way we stopped the Holocaust – by waging total war on the people committing it". The fact that he felt the need to equivocate, hedge and delegate his opinions suggests to me that either a) he doesn't consider stopping the genocide worth torpedoing his career over or b) he doesn't believe it's a genocide either. The only thing more contemptible than a Jew-hater is a Jew-hater who can't even commit to the bit.