naraburns nihil supernum
6mo ago
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Israel-Gaza Megathread #3
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.
Regarding Western liberal narratives on the Gaza war, I’m noticing something I find somewhat odd. I see mainstream liberals arguing that clueless college students are indoctrinated by loony leftist propagandists to be rabid enemies of Israel, our greatest ally, the only democracy in the Middle East etc. And they seem to be saying this without any reflection on the past, where conservatives they hate, like Ben Shapiro and others, have been warning everyone of the same trend for basically two decades, at least since the early years of Bush Jr’s presidency. Now that the true extent of anti-Zionist agitation on Western college campuses is revealed on prime TV for the first time in almost a decade (the last major Israeli military operation in Gaza was in 2014, I reckon, not counting the mass shootings at the border in 2018 or so), targeted at a nation and a people they actually care about, suddenly it’s a real problem, a real concern to be tackled.
Now I understand that one can come up with all sorts of cynical and mundane interpretations as to why this is, how it’s unsurprising and so on, and I get that. But then I remember that there were violent anti-police protests in the summer of 2020, the campaign to remove Confederate monuments, the various protests against Trump’s rallies, and in these cases the tone of the protests were, as far as I can tell, pretty much set by the same leftist college agitators who initiate the current anti-Zionist protests, the ones who call themselves anticolonialists, social justice advocates, antiracists and so on. And the big difference was that they weren’t criticized by mainstream liberals the way they are now, even though all their agitation and messaging stems from the same ideological tenets.
If all you want to say is that the Palestinian attack, and the following protests are worse, that's fine by me. I think BLM actually still managed to deal out more damage, and result in more deaths, but whatever, it's normal for people to have different reactions to ordered vs disordered violence.
But if you think the difference is big enough to justify not having noticed how radical the social justice activism was, or worse that all of it was fine until this specific issue... well, have fun standing against it on your own.
?? The estimates I've seen were something like an extra 1600 homicides per year across certain cities. You think that is more deaths than we are going to see out of this war?
Eh. My cynical view is that BLM's attitude towards black deaths is pretty similar to Hamas's attitude towards Palestinian deaths - they're a rhetorical weapon to be wielded more than a problem to be solved.
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Notes -
Regarding Western liberal narratives on the Gaza war, I’m noticing something I find somewhat odd. I see mainstream liberals arguing that clueless college students are indoctrinated by loony leftist propagandists to be rabid enemies of Israel, our greatest ally, the only democracy in the Middle East etc. And they seem to be saying this without any reflection on the past, where conservatives they hate, like Ben Shapiro and others, have been warning everyone of the same trend for basically two decades, at least since the early years of Bush Jr’s presidency. Now that the true extent of anti-Zionist agitation on Western college campuses is revealed on prime TV for the first time in almost a decade (the last major Israeli military operation in Gaza was in 2014, I reckon, not counting the mass shootings at the border in 2018 or so), targeted at a nation and a people they actually care about, suddenly it’s a real problem, a real concern to be tackled.
Now I understand that one can come up with all sorts of cynical and mundane interpretations as to why this is, how it’s unsurprising and so on, and I get that. But then I remember that there were violent anti-police protests in the summer of 2020, the campaign to remove Confederate monuments, the various protests against Trump’s rallies, and in these cases the tone of the protests were, as far as I can tell, pretty much set by the same leftist college agitators who initiate the current anti-Zionist protests, the ones who call themselves anticolonialists, social justice advocates, antiracists and so on. And the big difference was that they weren’t criticized by mainstream liberals the way they are now, even though all their agitation and messaging stems from the same ideological tenets.
If all you want to say is that the Palestinian attack, and the following protests are worse, that's fine by me. I think BLM actually still managed to deal out more damage, and result in more deaths, but whatever, it's normal for people to have different reactions to ordered vs disordered violence.
But if you think the difference is big enough to justify not having noticed how radical the social justice activism was, or worse that all of it was fine until this specific issue... well, have fun standing against it on your own.
?? The estimates I've seen were something like an extra 1600 homicides per year across certain cities. You think that is more deaths than we are going to see out of this war?
Eh. My cynical view is that BLM's attitude towards black deaths is pretty similar to Hamas's attitude towards Palestinian deaths - they're a rhetorical weapon to be wielded more than a problem to be solved.
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