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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   25856 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 25, 2024

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Texas Governor Abbott signs law attempting to ban free speech at universities whenever the speech criticizes Israel in certain ways (described below).

The Executive Order requires all universities to —

  1. Review and update free speech policies to address the sharp rise in antisemitic speech and acts on university campuses and establish appropriate punishments, including expulsion from the institution.

  2. Ensure that these policies are being enforced on campuses and that groups such as the Palestine Solidarity Committee and Students for Justice in Palestine are disciplined for violating these policies.

  3. Include the definition of antisemitism, adopted by the State of Texas in Section 448.001 of the Texas Government Code, in university free speech policies to guide university personnel and students on what constitutes antisemitic speech.

Section 448.001 reads

Examples of antisemitism are included with the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance's "Working Definition of Antisemitism" adopted on May 26, 2016

And this definition includes (among other things) —

  1. Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis

  2. Applying double standards by requiring of it a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation.

  3. Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor.

  4. Accusing Jewish citizens of being more loyal to Israel, or to the alleged priorities of Jews worldwide, than to the interests of their own nations.

These examples are intentionally ambiguous and can be weaponized by politicians or the judiciary against critics. The first example simply bans anyone from criticizing Israel in the same way that Israel routinely criticize others, by comparing them to Nazis. This cuts off a whole spectrum of political comparisons from ever applying to Israel. The second example could imply that you are antisemitic if you criticize Israel for things without also criticizing other nations in the same breath, however culturally and politically distant the nation. The third implies that an ethnostate cannot be considered racist if it is Jewish. The fourth implies that no one — not a single politician who is Jewish — can be accused of being more loyal to his self-defined homeland than America.

IMO this is a clear affront to freedom of speech. I find it embarrassing that any conservative in America would sign a law like this. The ambiguity is dangerous because it could be used by biased politicians or judges in its broadest application. While I don’t think it’s good public rhetoric to compare Israel to Nazis, that should be legal because (1) Nazis are everyone’s go-to villains, (2) Israel was recently the subject of an ICJ inquiry regarding genocide, (3) ethnonations should be extra scrutinized for genocide, (4) ethnonations with a history of genocide (Kitos War) and who fondly remember their nation previously committing genocide in their Holy Text should be super extra scrutinized for potential genocidal acts. The holocaust, like it or not, has no actual relevance to the current conduct of the Israeli regime. In real life, multigenerational ethnic groups do not swear off the same violence that their grandparents were victims of. So comparisons are fair game, if usually in bad taste.

Living in a deep blue enclave and being contrarian to my bones, it can be easy for me to start to think of the reds as "my team." Stories like this are an important reminder that they are absolutely not, and that as a rule anyone who makes it to power has abandoned most of the principles I care about.

Very disappointed in this. I fear that the version of freedom of speech that I believe in was the result of fleeting, temporary historical circumstances that will not be repeated, and certainly not while I live.

Stories like this are an important reminder that they are absolutely not, and that as a rule anyone who makes it to power has abandoned most of the principles I care about.

I wouldn't go that far; I'm sure there exist some great, principled politicians. But yeah, certainly no guarantees.

ethnonations with a history of genocide (Kitos War) and who fondly remember their nation previously committing genocide in their Holy Text should be super extra scrutinized for potential genocidal acts

I agree wholeheartedly with most of the points in this post, but this one in particular seems like a bit of a reach. We routinely criticise woke people for holding white people personally accountable for crimes that their great-great-great-grandparents were maybe involved in. There has to be some kind of statute of limitations.

If it were merely that the ancient Israelites committed genocide, I would agree with you; basically all ancient peoples did at one point or another, and indeed a statute of limitations is in order. But as OP mentioned, Judaism today teaches Jews to delight in the genocidal slaughter perpetrated by their forebears. That is, to say the least, unusual among modern ethnoreligious memes.

But as OP mentioned, Judaism today teaches Jews to delight in the genocidal slaughter perpetrated by their forebears. That is, to say the least, unusual among modern ethnoreligious memes.

Plenty of Christians will defend the same. (Of course, there are relevant differences that might affect how we should treat the two.)

I mean, the Arabs do the same thing. Irish rebel songs are also a thing. It doesn't seem like it's that unusual.

Your Irish counterexample doesn’t really apply. Songs celebrating resistance to oppressors and occasional genociders is a far different matter than celebrating genocides themselves.

Sure, but we're talking about historical oppressors and colonisers here. I would completely understand an English person feeling uncomfortable if they walked into an Irish bar in 2024 and the band started singing "Come Out ye Black and Tans". And I say that as an Irish person who's lived in Ireland his whole life and retains a certain residual sympathy for the Irish republican cause.

Seems to me the Kitos War, a rebellion against the occupying Romans, counts as that too.

If the ancient Roman historians who wrote about the war are to be believed, the Jews went far beyond just rebelling, they outright slaughtered the Greeks and Romans wherever they could.

The Jews… waged war on the inhabitants throughout Libya in the most savage fashion, and to such an extent was the country wasted that, its cultivators having been slain, it’s land would have remained utterly depopulated, had not Emperor Hadrian gathered settlers from other places and sent them thither, for the inhabitants had been wiped out.

Dio Cassius also records that they gruesomely murdered 220,000 Greeks and Romans in the area, while Synesius writes in one of his letters that the Jews were “fully convinced of the piety of sending to Hades as many Greeks as possible.”

This is something akin to the Haitian genocide, not a mere rebellion.

All that said, I’m not sure that most modern Jews know much at all about that particular rebellion, let alone celebrate it.

That is, to say the least, unusual among modern ethnoreligious memes.

Looking at Wiki's examples of ethnic fusion ethnoreligions, other than Jews, I'm seeing 10 Christian sects (i.e. other people who believe Moses was a prophet of God), 4 Islamic (likewise), 1 Jewish-but-distinct (ditto). That still leaves a few Sikhs, Mandaeans, and Zoroastrian sects, but they seem to be outnumbered about 3 to 1 (by sect count) or 1.5 to 1 (by population). Ethnoreligions which don't treat the Book of Numbers as scripture are the unusual ones.

Although... why should we limit our numbers here to ethnoreligions? If I meet an Asian guy who thinks Jeffrey Dahmer had some great menu ideas, I'm not going to think "well, at least they're not the same ethnicity!", I'm going to smile non-confrontationally and back away slowly. Most religions with murderous scriptural lessons tend to downplay or backpedal from them a bit, but that goes for most Jewish believers as well. The "Genocide is good when He orders it" message is in the Bible and the Quran, with billions of followers. The killer is calling from inside the house!

Fair enough, I should have said “unusual among the founding principles/origin myths/civic religions of modern nation-states”, and I think it’s accurate to characterize Judaism as the founding principle and raison d’etre of modern Israel.

I would completely agree with the assessment that a rational observer should be extra vigilant re: genocidal intent or actions from explicitly Islamic nation-states; indeed 20th and 21st century history provides us with examples of such. As for explicitly Christian nation-states, I would say less so, both because they are almost invariably Christian-in-name-only (cf. regular attendance rates at any of the established churches in Europe), and because modern Western Christianity has memetically shed its attachments to the wanton bloodlust of the Old Testament.

Increasingly I think the key to good politics is, in internet parlance, to make the enemy sperg out. You need them to get really mad, to feel the combination of humiliation, shame and rage that leads to acting out. Only then can you really destroy them by pointing out how ridiculous they are. (On a related note, Zionists doing this is why support for Israel is currently falling in the West.) It’s why a few swastika tattooed prison gang room temp IQ ‘grand dragon’ KKK-LARPers can be pushed to discredit large swathes of the far right with the public, but it’s also why leftists projecting “Glory to the Martyrs of Al-Aqsa” or whatever onto university buildings in American cities can make a bunch of centrist swing voters go ‘man these guys are kinda crazy though’.

Since almost every single leftist in America is strongly anti-Israel, while the vast majority of conservatives, even if they don’t care about or like Jews (as @hydroacetylene says) either support Israel for eschatological reasons or don’t give a shit, this is an effective way of singling out leftists. What every critical race theorist, marxist philosopher and academic ‘decolonize science’ poaster in America has in common right now is a 🇵🇸 flag in their Instagram bio. Even most Jewish leftist (rather than merely lib) academics are strongly anti-zionist, as seen by the various Jews sanctioned by their own universities for statements since 10/7.

What every critical race theorist, marxist philosopher and academic ‘decolonize science’ poaster in America has in common right now is a 🇵🇸 flag in their Instagram bio.

Not all of them.

Some of them use the 🍉 emoji.

(On a related note, Zionists doing this is why support for Israel is currently falling in the West.)

What do you mean by this, are Zionists the ones sperging out or is it that Zionists are getting the Palestine supporters to sperg? And who is doing the good politics?

I took it the way 2rafa says she intended, but I kind of want to post that "How about both? Both is good" gif here. (Although the "good politics" kind of cancel out, at best.)

Yeah Zionists are the ones sperging out about relatively milquetoast Palestinian activism.

It’s why a few swastika tattooed prison gang room temp IQ ‘grand dragon’ KKK-LARPers can be pushed to discredit large swathes of the far right with the public

It would be more like the if 'grand dragon' KKK-LARPers that have been used by ADL as a representation of "right-wing extremism" actually ran college campuses and elite institutions.

One of the very first red-pills for me was seeing ADL tout "higher extremism on the Right than the Left" but if you read the white paper, they would actually report things like "this guy murdered a prison guard during an escape, and he has a Swastika tattoo on his mug shot so this counts as right-wing violence." So the strategy was to misrepresent the opposition. But Zionists implementing these speech regulations banning criticisms of themselves and banning Holocaust revisionism are not misrepresenting Zionists, they are actually representing Zionists. It's not a matter of bad apples, it's a matter of them finally gaining ground in banning speech in the US where they have already achieved the same thing throughout Europe.

On a related note, Sweden is slated this month to outlaw Holocaust denial, joining the growing number of European nations. This sort of lawmaking is mostly recent across Europe.

Now if I were a student in Texas I would be liable to be expelled for my conclusions regarding the historicity of the alleged gas chambers, due to the use the "International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance" definition of antisemitism. Meaning Holocaust Revisionism is outlawed on Texas campuses, only formalizing an informal policy. I remember years ago making a post about the IHRA definition of antisemitism and people were skeptical it would be used as a vector for censorship in the United States, for Jews to try to achieve levels of censorship they have in Europe, but here we are.

People tend to overestimate the blowback caused by real censorship. What tends to happen is the outrage dies down, and then the act of censorship really does have a cooling effect that can be hard to measure or understand, and then it becomes "the new normal." It works, the "Streissand effect" is fake.

I think that’s @2rafa’s point- Greg Abbott is going after the campus left in such a way as to make them defend that hypothetical KKK grand dragon to try to defend themselves. It’s a clever strategem, although I expect it winds up with a bunch of friction dragging it down from working as intended.

And de facto you were already well advised to keep your views on the Holocaust to yourself at any university anywhere outside the Islamic world.

And de facto you were already well advised to keep your views on the Holocaust to yourself at any university anywhere outside the Islamic world.

Of course, but the idea of this being legally sanctioned by the government would have been far-fetched not too long ago due to First Amendment protections. No longer so.

Only then can you really destroy them by pointing out how ridiculous they are.

But what counts as "ridiculous" in the first place is itself politically determined. I personally think the left acts out in a lot of ways that I would classify as ridiculous, but it plainly hasn't discredited them on a national scale so far. The extent of your pre-established narrative dominance determines whether your particular mode of acting out will be seen as legitimate (BLM riots) or illegitimate (January 6th). So before you goad your opponent into acting out, you have to be in charge of defining what counts as "acting out". I think that's a more fundamental goal.

I'm uncertain if it's even possible for the left to push the pro-Palestine stuff "too far" at this point. I don't know how many centrist swing voters are left in America. Probably still enough to influence the results of national elections, but not enough to uproot the entrenched zeitgeist or really impact the way things are heading overall.

This is obviously targeted at left wingers on college campuses as part of a non-terribly effective effort to go after left wingers on college campuses. Your groypers who incidentally go to Texas A&M are largely safe, or acceptable collateral damage if they aren’t. Even most IRL right wing antisemites don’t really care who controls that patch of desert.

Do I think it’ll work? I don’t have high hopes. Do I particularly care that some campus lefties are going to get written up for antisemitism when they insist on making an ass of themselves? Well, I suppose I’d prefer they be written up for making an ass of themselves, but I don’t really mind. Am I happy that it sets a precedent for the state to intentionally write laws unevenly to target the left? You betcha, even if this example is kinda stupid. It’s time to aim state power against the left. Just get it done. They’ve pointed it at us; I’m not really interested in continuing to be a gentleman completely onesidedly.

And the only side effect is enshrining the most privileged group of people on the planet as a protected class!

‘Enshrine’ implies a change in status.

I'd say it being made illegal to criticize them certainly serves to elevate their status!

Exactly which group do you claim is the most privileged people on the planet?

I don't like the Title 9 speech police and I don't like this any better. We should be free to criticize whomever we want without running afoul of thought-crime laws. This is a bad law and I hope the courts smack it down like the fist of an angry god.

Some university will sue the relevant entities in federal court (or some student will sue a university in federal court) and the order (or universities compliance with it) will be permanently enjoined. The policies the universities are to develop are straightforwardly content based restrictions on speech. This means they must satisfy strict scrutiny. There is no way this order, or policies flowing from it, satisfy strict scrutiny. Especially if the IHRA's definition of antisemitism is to be a guide to sanctioned speech.

While this order is not mostly aimed at Nazis- although they’re not going to get a special exemption either- Greg Abbott can get a few Allies onboard that normally don’t go conservative, while he has a partly captive judiciary to work with. His chances are better than you think.

I am skeptical scotus lets this go into effect. The fifth circuit can potentially get it going temporarily but I doubt it lasts long.

https://splc.org/2016/10/an-unintended-consequence-of-title-ix/

“(The Constitution) doesn’t supersede [Title IX],” he said. “Title IX is a federal compliance policy. Those policies supersede anything else.”

https://www.usccr.gov/files/pubs/2020/02-19-Free-to-Learn.pdf

Higher education institutions that receive federal funds must take steps to address hostile environments and sex-based discrimination.10Preventing a hostile environment, in public universities, may overlap with an individual’s right of free speech or expression. The most common type of sexual harassment is often termed gender harassment. Gender harassment includes verbal and nonverbal behaviors that convey insulting and degrading attitudes about members of one gender. Examples may include lewd jokes, disrespectful comments about body parts, and inappropriate gestures

Freedom of speech went up against Title IX, and Title IX won. The only reason I can see this being any different is that it's not supported by the Biden admin.

If the government can require that a school investigate and expel a student for "misgendering," why can't they require the same for yelling "gas the jews"?

Your first quote is from some university administrator who is, obviously, wrong about how the law works. I also note none of the students in question seem to have actually sued over their punishment. They should have. I think they would have had an excellent chance. Courts do not just insert themselves in disputes to vindicate rights, someone has to ask them to. Here is a pretty good breakdown of how Title IX actually works from the congressional research service.

Freedom of speech went up against Title IX, and Title IX won. The only reason I can see this being any different is that it's not supported by the Biden admin.

There are many differences. Title XI, for example, generally requires some individual(s) be subject to discrimination or harassment. Abbott's order contains no such language.

If the government can require that a school investigate and expel a student for "misgendering," why can't they require the same for yelling "gas the jews"?

Can you give me some examples of the US government requiring a student be expelled for misgendering?

Here is a pretty good breakdown of how Title IX actually works from the congressional research service.

Your link disagrees with you and agrees that schools are required by Title IX to prevent "peer" sexual harassment.

The Supreme Court explained that in Title IX cases alleging peer harassment, a school will not be held liable unless its deliberate indifference “subjects” students to harassment. The school’s response must, “at a minimum, ‘cause students to undergo’ harassment or ‘make them liable or vulnerable’ to it.” The harassment thus must occur when the school has “substantial control” over the harasser and the context in which the misconduct occurs. For example, the standard would be satisfied if misconduct occurs on school grounds during school hours.

Where did I claim that peer harassment could not be actionable? "Harassment" can, and often does, involve more than speech.

And "being vulnerable" can, and often does, involve nothing more.

to ban free speech at universities

You know, the folks that take umbrage with this (outside of a few truly principled libertarian types) were probably completely fine with the speech banning here, they just disagree on the targets. Free speech absolutism on campus sailed probably a century or so ago. The Obama Administration helpfully defined "sexual harassment" banned for the purposes of Title IX to include "unwelcome conduct of a sexual nature" including "verbal conduct". Democrats were completely on board with these rulings at the time, and similar ones about racial slurs. But now that Republicans are passing rules that students can't cheer "gas the Jews" (or, admittedly, several more modest phrases that still advocate for ethnic cleansing) and remain in good standing, that is clearly a bridge too far.

I'm not sure anyone is really being principled here, which as someone with centrist-to-principled-libertarian views is rather frustrating.

outside of a few truly principled libertarian types

I tire of this parenthetical being deployed to avoid grappling with legitimate calls to defend liberty. Yes, it's clearly not the prime value for some of the bigger ideological movements today. But it's deployed because it still carries weight and its call should be answered regardless of what slime blows the horn.

I'm not sure if there's a better way to defend liberty than to put these restrictions in place and defend them, explicitly, on the Title IX precedents. It probably won't work, they'll probably find some spurious distinguisher. But what else can you do, since both conservatives and liberals will follow those precedents on other speech (for different reasons)?

I don't even see a plausible way that this advances liberty. It's just a spiting of my enemy to no gain. The closest I can come up with is that a taste of their own medicine might make the left wake up to what they've been doing. But I find that justification very weak. Why help them build the weapon of a tyrant? I know how it will be wielded.

I don't even see a plausible way that this advances liberty.

Probably because you understand it won't work.

The weapon is already built. The point of defending these restrictions based on the Title IX precedents would be to put the court in a position where they could either ratify the government shutting down of speech friendly to the left, or overturn the Title IX precedents.

Honor cannot be dispensed with, and treating the dishonorable as honorable is not itself honorable.

Quite to the contrary: an honorable man treats all people with honor, even those who are dishonorable. If you do anything less then you aren't honorable, you're just nicer to people you like.

Honor demands the dishonorable be dishonored. A oathbreaker's word should not be trusted, for instance. There are disadvantages to acting with honor; these can be outweighed by the advantages of being treated as if one is honorable, but only if those advantages exist. If honor requires the dishonorable be treated with honor, honor is self-defeating.

Would you like to look at some real-world examples? Because I think there's no shortage of people modifying their interactions on the basis or absence of honor in their counterparties. One easy example would be the concept of "Magdeburg Quarter", and its analogues throughout the history of warfare.

You don't have to like someone to consider them honorable. In fact, the entire point of honor is to separate personal feelings from behavior.

I'm sure you can find lots of examples of people who claimed to be honorable and did that. But those people were not, in fact, honorable. They showed it by not acting honorable.

Honor is like principles: if you only uphold it when it's convenient for you, then you don't actually have it. It's the times when it bites one in the ass where you see who is actually honorable/principled versus who merely claims to be.

They showed it by not acting honorable.

Whether they acted honorably or not is the dispute we are currently engaging in. Denying quarter to those who have denied it to others is not reducible to a "convenience"; there are no shortage of situations where simply letting the dishonorable behavior of others slide would absolutely be more convinient.

Honor is like principles: if you only uphold it when it's convenient for you, then you don't actually have it.

Certainly. Nevertheless, there remains a distinction between treating others with honor, and treating the dishonorable as though they were honorable. Honor is not a synonym of "nice". It can in fact be extremely convinient to pretend that people are honorable when they are obviously not, but doing so remains dishonorable.

Principles and Honor are about rules, and rules require enforcement. There must be an answer to the question "what follows?"

This combined with an easy excuse to find the outgroup dishonorable allows you quite a convenient relationship with when you are bound by honor.

I do not concede that my "excuses" are "easy". We've had a decade of widespread attacks on freedom of speech, including popular public repudiation of the concept's core validity. The principles free speech proponents claim, and which many of us wholeheartedly accepted and acted upon in good faith for decades, were swept aside in an instant when they obstructed Progressive ideology. That action requires a response.

Free speech was supposed to be for all of us. It observably failed in that mission. If you are willing to accept one side censoring its opponents without being censored in turn, I am more than willing to operate under those rules provided I get to be the censor you favor. If you want to argue that we should cooperate to secure free speech for everyone, I note that I am part of "everyone", and eagerly await the lifting of the censorship against myself and my allies. If you want to help the people censoring me to not be censored in turn, with no actual plan for ending their own censorship, I am going to oppose you, because this is a conflict and you appear to have picked a side.

We've had a decade of widespread attacks on freedom of speech, including popular public repudiation of the concept's core validity.

And before that your faction was the defectors from my perspective, do not claim this high ground, you've not paid the cost when it was dear. You being the conservatives it's not important to me whether you, @FCfromSSC were one of those principled libertarians. It's enough that you'd oppose us now on the side of those who opposed us then.

If you are willing to accept one side censoring

I am not.

If you want to argue that we should cooperate to secure free speech for everyone, I note that I am part of "everyone", and eagerly await the lifting of the censorship against myself and my allies.

Ground has been reclaimed. We feast wantonly in the valley of twitter. How much of a mistake it would have been to give control to twitter over to the bureaucrats in order to spite the social justice crowd only for them to cement control forever through the deep state.

If you want to help the people censoring me to not be censored in turn, with no actual plan for ending their own censorship, I am going to oppose you, because this is a conflict and you appear to have picked a side.

If it must be so, but should my side lost the ratchet will turn and it will be your own doing.

My rules > your rules, fairly > your rules, unfairly.

Free speech is "my rules".

Speech restrictions for conservatives is "your rules, unfairly".

Speech restrictions for everyone is your rules, fairly".

The best choice is still to be principled, bu the second-best choice is to at least apply the speech restrictions to some of the left as well.

Free speech absolutism on campus sailed probably a century or so ago.

I always think it’s funny when people imply that the America of the past had stronger free speech rules. Free speech in the US is less than a century old. A hundred years ago there was extensive state-led regulation of speech, art, lewdness and countless other things we’d consider 1A rights today. New York jailed people for writing leftist manifestos, or professing to be anarchists; California jailed people for flying the communist flag. During the wars the state banned publication of truths the government didn’t like, harassed and threatened journalists far more than it did now, and the idea in 1894 or whatever that the government couldn’t ban certain kinds of speech was seen as ridiculous. Free speech in the US is an invention of the Supreme Court in the twentieth century.

You know, the folks that take umbrage with this (outside of a few truly principled libertarian types) were probably completely fine with the speech banning here, they just disagree on the targets.

Eh, I think there are a pretty good number of people who are against speech restrictions in general. I'd expect there to be a good number of Republicans opposed to this.

I'm not sure anyone is really being principled here,

When you're losing badly it's wise to be strategic rather than principled. University admins currently claim that they have the absolute right to crack down on heretical speech while also claiming absolute freedom for speech they support.

A court ruling here will create a losing precedent for them either way unless the appeals courts chicken out and refuse to look at the issue.

A court ruling here will create a losing precedent for them either way unless the appeals courts chicken out and refuse to look at the issue.

Couldn't an appeals court rule that university admins do indeed "have the absolute right to crack down on heretical speech while also claiming absolute freedom for speech they support," but that the state government of Texas does not? Wouldn't that be a winning precedent for the admins, and a loss for Abbott?

I think that leads to one set of rules for private universities and another set for public. IIRC public universities have been considered extensions of the state in other court cases. Do we think the courts are willing to allow that split?

I guess there are few mainstream politicians that believe in free speech as a principal. Most of them believe in free speech when restrictions on speech are used against them but happy to put forward restrictions on speech when they think it benefits themselves. Conservatives might look like they support free speech at the moment but its because they are the ones that mostly being screwed.

I don't get why a campus should want to police free speech at all.

I mean obviously don't hand out benefits and special considerations to known hate groups, but if it is legal to stand at an intersection with a sign of "from the river to the sea" or (equivalently) "kill all the men/women/trans/Jews/Muslims/gingers", I see no reason to forbid them on campus.

Also, it is nice to know that for all their differences, the wokes and the GOP can at least agree on some things (i.e. fuck free speech).

'From the river to the sea, Palestine shall be free' isn't even egregious as a phrase. They want borders to be changed. Israel also wants borders to be changed - they've changed them in past wars, annexing the Golan Heights amongst other things! Spain wants Gibraltar back. Ukraine wants Crimea back. Russia wants Novorussia back. Japan wants the Kuril Islands back...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_territorial_disputes

Saying 'From the river to the sea' doesn't neccessarily require violence (though realistically it would need a lot of bloody fighting), 'kill the Boer' is a clear call for violence, despite considerable effort from the NYT and leftist media to obfuscate it.

Right-wing commenters claim that an old anti-apartheid chant is a call to anti-white violence, but historians and the left-wing politician who embraces it say it should not be taken literally.

In theory, you could have some kind of non-violent settlement where Palestine gets the territory they want. It's extremely unlikely of course, all kinds of things would need to go wrong for Israel. But in principle it's possible. And that's not even 'not taking it literally' which can apparently be done for much more overt statements. Far easier to 'not take literally' abstract ideas like freedom, as opposed to killing.

I think context matters a lot. Crimea is 'merely' a territorial conflict. Sure, there are a few people living on it who probably have their own preference about which state they want to belong to, but the primary importance is strategic. The overall Ukraine is a bit closer. I vaguely recall that the Russian position is that Ukraine is not a legitimate state and would expect that Putin's preferred outcome would be either the vassalization or annexation of Ukraine, which would probably entail murdering enough journalists to bring them to Russian per-capita standards and so on. Likewise, if China ever gets Taiwan into their clutches, they will of course go full Hong Kong on their civil society. Of course, it is very unlikely that Israels Jewish population in a "river to the sea" scenario would be allowed to stay in Greater Palestine. A return to the medieval Muslim states of tolerance and multi-culturalism (compared to their contemporaries) seems very unlikely. In the best case, the Jews would escape with their lives, but Oct 7 seems closer to the vision of the main "river to sea" proponents. Context matters. Victory and salvation are both relatively abstract ideas which are not terribly offensive, but anyone who phrases them as "Sieg Heil!" will rightly be considered as a Nazi. In another world, "from the river to the sea" could be an innocent call for a transport corridor between Gaza and Jordan, but in this world, it is a genocidal Hamas slogan.

Regarding the Boers, the woke left (and arguably at least the maga right) loves their 'provocative' slogans which they insist should not be taken literally (while at least the more radical fringes take them 100% literally):

  • "Lock her up"
  • "Defund the police" There is of course some memetic evolution at work where the most stupid and radical slogans serve as a more costly membership signal and thus end up winning. So I am not very surprised that "kill the Boers" (which got clearly selected for being offensive, I am sure that there are a ton of less offensive rallying cries from the fight against Apartheit) became popular.

Was lock her up non-literal? Team Trump may think 'oh we aren't able to imprison Hillary Clinton right now' or 'there are other more important things we should be doing' but if there was a button that just locked her up, wouldn't they press it? Benghazi, emails, selling uranium to Russia, disappearances... they think she's a criminal.

Sure, but Hamas doesn't simply want a change in management and a new name on the map. They conceive of Palestine as being essentially and exclusively Arab and Muslim - not all that different from Israel being essentially Jewish.

Saying 'From the river to the sea' doesn't neccessarily require violence

In the same way that "blood and soil" could just be a call to recognize the efforts of hard-working small farmers. But if its used by protestors in the immediate aftermath of a horrible attack by a group of white supremacists who are known to have used it as their own slogan... at that point, I feel like using it and claiming innocence is ignorance at best.

I think ‘from the river to the sea’ shouldn’t be banned at colleges or universities, and I agree that most people who use it don’t intend for it to mean the ethnic cleansing or murder of Israelis. (I also think most people, even at Malema rallies, who shout ‘kill the Boer’ don’t actually want to exterminate Afrikaner farmers, but they do typically quite transparently wish to dispossess them).

Nevertheless, as in that case, ‘from the river to the sea’ effectively means the large-scale murder of Jews, since no Palestinian one-state solution would tolerate a longstanding Jewish presence and because the democratically elected leadership of a free Palestine would almost certainly be an Islamist group that, like Hamas and the Houthis and bolstered by countless extremely anti-Jewish hadiths that have become more prominent in Islamist scholarship over the last forty years (gharqad tree etc), would in practice seek to kill any remaining Jews in Palestine.

You can draw the South Africa comparison, but the simple fact is that South African black people mostly have no personal animus toward whites. There is a politician grift complex and there is plenty of resentment that 30 years after apartheid ended many are still poor etc etc, but the primary racial hostilities in South Africa are between blacks and Indians, between indigenous black peoples (ie. Khoi-San) and Bantus, and between South African citizens and migrants from the Congo and elsewhere in Central Africa who are perceived as pushing down wages for the urban poor. This was substantially true even before 1994, and from the rich to the poor few people in SA actually think that kicking out whites will solve the country’s problem. Even today, polling in SA shows that:

South Africans say creating jobs and fighting corruption are much more important as government priorities than “racism”, or “land reform”.

By contrast, it is clear that the primary policy preference of most Palestinians in the Levant is hostility towards Jewish rule of Israel even at extraordinary cost to themselves, no matter how many bodies pile up. There would be no ‘debate’ on land reform in a one-state Palestine (unlike in SA, where whites still own 55% of prime agricultural land, the majority of valuable private enterprise and so on), everything would be taken. And given that this hostility is also a longstanding part of Islamic religious and cultural values, we can assume without any leaps of logic that the end of Israel as a Jewish state would also guarantee, in short order, the end of any Jewish presence in Palestine. Meanwhile, there are many African countries like Namibia, Botswana and Kenya that retain sizable white communities 50+ years after independence.

the simple fact is that South African black people mostly have no personal animus toward whites

Why does the EFF get all that support, then?

indigenous

Off topic, but is there a coherent definition of this word?

The EFF polls around 10-15% now. The EFF is also much more leftist than the ANC or DA, its messaging isn’t solely about taking white money but also about redistribution from rich to poor generally, I don’t think it’s correct to ascribe anti-white animus to every EFF voter even if Malema obviously has it.

There’s no coherent definition of indigenous because whether, for example, South African Bantus or New Zealand Maori are indigenous depends on where you draw the cutoff line.

most people who use it don’t intend for it to mean the ethnic cleansing or murder of Israelis.

They don't even know which river and sea!

This might be true, but seems kind of like an insanity plea.

I mean, these are not kindergardeners who will happily sing every song their minders teach them without any reflection on the deeper philosophical meaning. These are digital natives who presumably can read Wikipedia.

Likewise, not one in ten thousand university students lives under so thick a rock or so deep within a filter bubble that they were factually unaware of the Oct 7 attacks (which are among the largest terror attacks in the western world since 9/11.).

I don't get why a campus should want to police free speech at all.

Because, among other reasons, Title IX requires it, or so the theory goes. Allowing speech (including speech by other students) which is discriminatory as to gender sex is said to violate Title IX's guarantee:

No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.

I have no idea if the theory has been put forth that baldly and directly tested in court, but there's a lot of lawyers, administrators, and regulators who believe it.

And of course, once you've opened the door to speech regulation, there's always more that can be added.

This feels like a stretch.

Central examples of being subject to discrimination on the basis of sex would be:

  • Requiring different SAT scores for enrollment for male and female students
  • Requiring one sex to take extra coursework
  • Having different grading curves (e.g. for sports achievements) for both sexes (Minimally discriminatory grading curves would at least try to model the dependence of testosterone, size, weight and a ton of other factors on sports outcomes and then adjust for that instead of just treating the prepubescent nerd on the same scale as a jock who is halfway through puberty because they both have testicles.)

Someone who happens to be on campus saying someone mean about people who share the sex of a student seems like as non-central as you can possibly get.

Sure it's a stretch. But the people administering these regulations want to make that stretch, so they do, and there's no one to gainsay them.

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