naraburns nihil supernum
6mo ago
(text post)
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Israel-Gaza Megathread #2
This is a refreshed megathread for any posts on the conflict between (so far, and so far as I know) Hamas and the Israeli government, as well as related geopolitics. Culture War thread rules apply.
In a weird way this really is about communism vs capitalism, radical vs liberal, left vs center.
My understanding is the recent ancestors of the present Israelis bought the land from willing sellers fair and square, whose tenants were evicted when the new buyers wanted to move in. From a liberal standpoint, we see one new consensual transaction being conducted and one formerly consensual transaction being canceled when no longer consensual. Completely legit and just.
That this happened to result in a large enough number of people in a short enough time getting evicted and not knowing what to do with themselves and becoming ghettoized in shantytowns (prior to the initial civil wars in that region), is exactly the sort of thing that leftists say is wrong with liberalism.
The fundamental leftist argument is that purely voluntary transactions can force some people into conditions sufficiently intolerable that it constitutes a real injustice, even if all contracts are upheld and everything is consensual.
So you have on one hand: "we purchased the land in Mandatory Palestine fair and square, we toiled and saved and spent hard earned money on it, and moved in, and now people want to kill us"
And on the other hand: "100 years ago we were spread out over this whole land, we had a system going, we had our own society. Now we are impoverished, crammed into this little ghetto while you rub your possession of our land in our face."
In the first case: voluntary, uncoerced transactions between consenting parties, aka liberalism
In the second case: those purely voluntary transactions result in injustice, aka leftism
That's why the left is pro-Palestinian. Pointing out how Muslims are anti-LGBTQ or whatever falls on deaf ears because it's not really about that with them.
Far easier to understand it as the way it slots into power dynamics and progressive stack thinking. Jews have strong ingroup ethnic preference, traditions, and cluster together in money management, media and entertainment fields in the strongest country in the world, and exert outsized influence in its politics because America is the country where money talks louder than anything else and allows capital to do insane, outsized things.
Muslim states across the ME are, to be blunt, shitholes dominated by tribal winner-takes-all politics or foreign power influence, usually some combination of both. The average westerner only sees them in the context of the Cold War (plucky rebels fighting communism), the War on Terror (9/11 perpetrators), or Predator drone victims (we fear the blue sky).
If you go back a few decades, or even as recently as Dubya, you can see the dominating force of Christian religion and puritanism in American politics. American red tribe has traditionally used this leverage to back Israel, because Israel and the promised land features heavily in Christian theology and they were an ally in the Middle East back when oil interests there were considered much more critical to America maintaining global hegemon status. Plus, Israel is much less likely than its neighbors to maintain a percent of extremists that will pitch Christians off rooftops.
Of course, as America secularized, an ascendant Blue tribe would calcify against this, because both tribes in America define themselves by what the other tribe is not. Israel support is Red-coded, along with Bible-thumping, Dubya-supporting, bomb-the-brown-people, military-industrial-complex enriching itself by selling Israel weapons they use to oppress the brown people. So blue tribe looks at this and starts bible-bashing, Dubya-is-a-moron bitching, campaigning against America's foreign dalliances (imagine that not being red-coded before Obama-Trump) and whining about the MIC war profiteering. [Unsolicited Opinions On Israel] showed up in a Marvel comic book as a boo-outgroup signal.
No guess which side would equate Israel's existence to modern colonialism.
I'm pretty sure you could get the left to be pro-Israel as soon as you got Red America to be pro-Muslim. I'm not quite sure how that could happen, but stranger has happened before in American politics.
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Notes -
In a weird way this really is about communism vs capitalism, radical vs liberal, left vs center.
My understanding is the recent ancestors of the present Israelis bought the land from willing sellers fair and square, whose tenants were evicted when the new buyers wanted to move in. From a liberal standpoint, we see one new consensual transaction being conducted and one formerly consensual transaction being canceled when no longer consensual. Completely legit and just.
That this happened to result in a large enough number of people in a short enough time getting evicted and not knowing what to do with themselves and becoming ghettoized in shantytowns (prior to the initial civil wars in that region), is exactly the sort of thing that leftists say is wrong with liberalism.
The fundamental leftist argument is that purely voluntary transactions can force some people into conditions sufficiently intolerable that it constitutes a real injustice, even if all contracts are upheld and everything is consensual.
So you have on one hand: "we purchased the land in Mandatory Palestine fair and square, we toiled and saved and spent hard earned money on it, and moved in, and now people want to kill us"
And on the other hand: "100 years ago we were spread out over this whole land, we had a system going, we had our own society. Now we are impoverished, crammed into this little ghetto while you rub your possession of our land in our face."
In the first case: voluntary, uncoerced transactions between consenting parties, aka liberalism
In the second case: those purely voluntary transactions result in injustice, aka leftism
That's why the left is pro-Palestinian. Pointing out how Muslims are anti-LGBTQ or whatever falls on deaf ears because it's not really about that with them.
Overthinking it.
Far easier to understand it as the way it slots into power dynamics and progressive stack thinking. Jews have strong ingroup ethnic preference, traditions, and cluster together in money management, media and entertainment fields in the strongest country in the world, and exert outsized influence in its politics because America is the country where money talks louder than anything else and allows capital to do insane, outsized things.
Muslim states across the ME are, to be blunt, shitholes dominated by tribal winner-takes-all politics or foreign power influence, usually some combination of both. The average westerner only sees them in the context of the Cold War (plucky rebels fighting communism), the War on Terror (9/11 perpetrators), or Predator drone victims (we fear the blue sky).
If you go back a few decades, or even as recently as Dubya, you can see the dominating force of Christian religion and puritanism in American politics. American red tribe has traditionally used this leverage to back Israel, because Israel and the promised land features heavily in Christian theology and they were an ally in the Middle East back when oil interests there were considered much more critical to America maintaining global hegemon status. Plus, Israel is much less likely than its neighbors to maintain a percent of extremists that will pitch Christians off rooftops.
Of course, as America secularized, an ascendant Blue tribe would calcify against this, because both tribes in America define themselves by what the other tribe is not. Israel support is Red-coded, along with Bible-thumping, Dubya-supporting, bomb-the-brown-people, military-industrial-complex enriching itself by selling Israel weapons they use to oppress the brown people. So blue tribe looks at this and starts bible-bashing, Dubya-is-a-moron bitching, campaigning against America's foreign dalliances (imagine that not being red-coded before Obama-Trump) and whining about the MIC war profiteering. [Unsolicited Opinions On Israel] showed up in a Marvel comic book as a boo-outgroup signal.
No guess which side would equate Israel's existence to modern colonialism.
I'm pretty sure you could get the left to be pro-Israel as soon as you got Red America to be pro-Muslim. I'm not quite sure how that could happen, but stranger has happened before in American politics.
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