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Culture War Roundup for the week of October 23, 2023

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Below, there is a discussion of the civil war due to Robert E Lee statute being torn down. The other main event of the day is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

I would say as a general matter the biggest supporters of Palestine in the US are progressives. Progressives also hate the confederacy.

Question is can you separate them? The south was arguing for their right of self determination? Of course, imbedded within that is they wanted to savagely deny that right to blacks held in chattel slavery. Likewise, the Palestinians claim the right of self determination but their stated intention is to kill the Israelis (from the river to the sea has a meaning).

So in both cases there is a legitimate claim to right of self determination. But that claim is bloodied by what those people would do with such right and at least in the confederacy context that “bad thing” was enough to invalidate their right to self determination.

My question then is whether the right to self determination is properly thought of as as a right? If so, it seems at best it is a contingent right. If it is a contingent right, what contingencies are unimportant enough to “trump” the right?

The south was arguing for their right of self determination?

The South didn't want self determination. It wanted slavery. This is indicated by the fact that there's no meaningful concept of self-determination for southern states once slavery becomes moot in politics. Without the slavery before or after there is no state "nationalism." That's not the same and it's not sympathetic.

Likewise, the Palestinians claim the right of self determination but their stated intention is to kill the Israelis (from the river to the sea has a meaning).

I don't know what to say to this. It's such a bizarre straight face statement of propagandized narrative as fact. First of all let's be clear about something, Israel invaded the Palestinian's lands. And they're the ones that have a ethnostate based around preserving and expanding their ethno-purity at the expense of the natives. Israel is also the one violently expanding. I don't know if people are just not aware of this or they elide over it for propaganda reasons. It's Israel forcing violence into the situation.

There's no reason to project some certainty that anyone saying free Palestine or whatever wants to kill all Israelis. Least of all on to "progressives." I'm not aware of a single person that believes that. At the most extreme you'll get people suggesting Israelis should leave and go back from where they came from (Europe), or rather their forefathers at this point (this would be very difficult for Mizrahi).

There isn't any real similarity here.

Israel is also the one violently expanding.

Palestinians are the ones who are murdering civilians whenever they can, despite that being rather counterproductive to their cause because the more Israelis see them as rabid animals, the more justification is there for casting them out and taking their land.

Palestinians are the ones who are murdering civilians whenever they can

Israeli dead: 1,400

Palestinian: 8,000

And rising for the Palestinians. Scuttlebutt is the only thing keeping the Israelis from murdering much greater amounts is the U.S. and maybe some saner military officials fighting the government in backrooms.

I've said it before appealing to dead bodies is such a weird strategy for Israeli apologists. Anything you can say about the Palestinians you can say about the Israelis. The killed more people ratio has always been in favor of Israel, before current events.

And again I say, Israel did start this. Their demands of: "let us come in, steal your land, and ethnically cleanse you for our ethnostate" have never been reasonable or would lead to anything but conflict. It's just they won. But peaceful good boys who dindu nuffin? Never.

When Palestinians are doing prisoner exchanges, they want tens to hundreds of their own for one prisoner.

This suggests that they consider the value of their own people to be rather low. So, more like 1400 Israelis, 80 Palestinians.

I don't think that suggests that they consider their own people to be of low value, otherwise, why bargain for so many? Rather, I think that's just them being greedy.

They also admit to not caring a shit about civilian deaths.

All points to them assigning a low value to their own lives, high value to winning. So people who are out there teary eyed over dead kids are just being idiots.