domain:academic.oup.com
Sunshine
25m ago
Do you think that the passage of time just turns this real violence into meaningless "symbolic" violence when the impacts are still tangible and visible?
Yes. If nobody alive has any engagement with a subject beyond historical knowledge, then by definition it has been reduced to merely symbolic violence. Literally, the violence exists only in the symbols of our history textbooks. It no longer exists in real life.
Symbols do not justify murder, next question.
On that note, given that the primary justification for the creation of Israel was the holocaust, we may as well shut the entire enterprise down. At some point you have to let history go, after all.
Well, first of all, no it wasn't. Secondly, it wouldn't matter if it was.
The primary justification for the establishment of Mexico was to enslave the natives to mine gold and silver to send back to Spain. Now that they've stopped doing that, should they all just get on a boat and sail to Spain? No, of course not, that would be insane.
The justification for the ongoing existence of a nation is to provide a home for the people who live there, not whatever historic reason they had for establishing it however many hundreds of years ago.
This is the thing you're not getting: Revanchism is actually really stupid. The only things that matter are the things that are happening right now to people who are actually alive right now. That's why nobody in power takes the Palestinian cause seriously. Bitching and complaining about things that happened before you were born is not a sound basis for setting geopolitical policies that will affect the lives of millions or billions of people.
No, you just decide to arbitrarily pick the starting point of the conflict, so you can point to a reprisal and claim that it is an offensive strike.
No, you see, this is the crux of the issue: It doesn't matter whether it's a reprisal or an 'offensive strike'. Those are the same thing. Attacking innocent people to get revenge on their ethnic group is evil. Yes, really.
I categorically deny the right of anyone to commit murder to get revenge for things that happened before they were born. No exceptions. That is the line I'm drawing in the sand.
Actually, you appear to have misinterpreted me
No, I know what you meant. But I think the way you phrased it was telling in a way you perhaps didn't consciously intend.
Are you going to sit here and claim that Israel has never committed any war crimes prior to October 7th?
No, of course not.
The USA has also committed lots of war crimes. If, the morning after 9/11, a bunch of people staged protests against the US, it wouldn't be untrue for them to defend the decision to do so on the grounds that, while the US may have been the victim of a horrendous terror attack the day before, that doesn't negate the fact that they have committed war crimes in the past. And yet, I can't help but feel that the kinds of people who would protest against a country the morning after it has suffered a terrorist attack are motivated more by hatred of that country (and the people committing terror attacks against it) than by a desire to raise awareness of war crimes.
If this particular analogy doesn't achieve the desired effect - supposing the morning after the tsunami in Japan in 2011 in which thousands of Japanese people were killed, I immediately staged a protest against Japan in which I made repeated calls to "globalise the anti-Japan resistance". Somebody points out to me that this is a bit tasteless considering that this country has suffered a horrendous tragedy literally the day before. I defend myself by pointing out that Japan has committed war crimes in the past. This is unassailably true (Nanjing, Unit 731). And yet, wouldn't the timing rather suggest to you that I'm motivated more by hatred of Japanese people than by an innocent desire to raise awareness of Japanese atrocities?
There are a fair few people who protest against the fact that Israel exists at all, but those are usually the ultra orthodox jews who believe that the creation of the Israeli state is in violation of the Torah.
I don't believe that the majority of people opposed to the very existence of Israel are Orthodox Jews. Moreover, I don't believe that you believe it either.
For example, an outright majority of young Britons think Israel should not exist. A different poll of the same age group found twenty-one percent say it does not have the right to exist. A majority of young Americans believe that Israel should be "ended" and given to the Palestinians. Combining half of young Britons and half of young Americans gives you 18 million people, which is already significantly more than the total population of Jews in the entire world (never mind the subset of those who are Orthodox). And that's just two countries. Do you really think that if I surveyed literally any Arab country "does Israel have a right to exist?", a majority of respondents would agree with me?
If you're as committed an anti-Zionist as you say and you've been to as many of these protests as you claim, I'm extremely confident that you're familiar with the saying "Israel does not have a right to exist", or descriptions of Israel as an illegitimate "made-up" state and so on. I'm equally confident that when you heard people making such proclamations, 100% of the people who did so were not Orthodox Jews. I don't believe that you believe what you're claiming.
Fruck
Lacks all conviction
38m ago
It has been 15 years since I have had occasion to use this.
Are you saying no taxpayer funding is involved in declaring National Penguin Day, or are you claiming that taxes aren't collected by threat of violence? Also if you wouldn't mind providing your definition of violence. I'm using the first one in Merriam-Webster
1 a: the use of physical force so as to injure, abuse, damage, or destroy
It's very rarely "just a joke" in the sense that it has other meanings and functions. It is very often just a joke in the sense that the accusations tossed at the people making the joke are false, and the accuser usually knows that in advance.
daguerrean
1hr ago
This is libertarian nonsense. Words have meaning, and declaring Penguin Day is not violence. This is akin to redefining White Supremacy to include punctuality. Just because anyone with sufficient intellect can play 7 degrees of [violence/White supremacy/Kevin Bacon] doesn’t make it so.
This is very similar in form to the “everything is political” crowd. Often on reddit, if someone complains about politics in X, some oh-so-smart objector will point out that everything is political, even a painting of a flower is political (perhaps it is conservative because it upholds traditional notions of beauty or the status quo or is silent on leftist social issues, perhaps it is environmentalist because it presents nature as beautiful). And in some abstract sense I accept that a clever person can extract a political meaning from any text/object/artwork by sufficient mental gymnastics. But all this really does is deprive us of a word. If we are to say that everything is political, then what word do we have to distinguish between a straight up campaign ad for Trump and a painting of a flower. Even if sufficient efforts can divine a political meaning in both there is surely some real meaningful difference in the strength, obviousness, legibility or centrality of that political message, and we could use a word to express that.
Similarly here there is surely a useful difference in violence between punching a guy in the face and Penguin Day that is useful to talk about, and twisting the word violence into contortions just replaces a useful definition of the word with a useless definition of the word. This is only popular with Libertarians because they are the only people for whom the new definition is useful. They want to import the bad scary evilconnotation of violence to new territory by a bit of trickery. They think if they can redefine scary bad feeling word to encompass any government action no matter how benign it will trick people into applying this old emotional association (scary, bad, evil) onto the new definition (any govt action). Woke people redefining White Supremacy are trying the exact same trick
In general a good rule of thumb is this: if someone appears to be using a very nonstandard definition of a word they are almost certainly trying to manipulate you dishonestly.
zoink
1hr ago
This is such a bizarre argument, particularly for one I've seen repeated again and again in different variations with negligible pushback.
It gets negligible pushback in places like The Motte because beyond a certain level of political-philosophical acumen, it becomes ubiquitously understood as true. Even doing a study, declaring National Northern Hemispheric Penguin Day, ordering lunch, done on taxpayer time with taxpayer-funded resources. And taxes are backed by threat of violence. Normies push back on this understanding because they attach normative baggage to violence. Virtually no one is a pacifist; we're all cool with violence. The actual debate is not around whether political action is backed by violence, it's when the violence is legitimate.
ulyssessword
1hr ago
Wait a second. Doesn't Bitcoin have a record of every transaction ever? Couldn't you just look at the blockchain to see when you got your coins?
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
1hr ago
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
1hr ago
You have people like Daryl Cooper and Tucker Carlson who may not be full-on sieg heiling but look an awful lot like they think the Nazis were directionally correct about maintaining national purity.
Is this just your uncharitable interpretation of them saying things like "hey maybe we don't need a million immigrants from poor countries who have very different cultures than ours and who don't share our values" or do they actually talk about racial or "national purity?" People seem to get their panties in a bunch because these two guys don't genuflect to the WW2 mythos that has been handed down to the American public through Hollywood and high school history class, but I'm not convinced that saying something like "actually WW2 was more complicated that just Good Guys vs Bad Guys" is in any way remotely near "full-on sieg heiling."
falling-star
1hr ago
My startup may or may not be falling apart. We've been completely out of money for a bit, and the last fund raise process is almost over with minimal results. We're only waiting to hear back from a few more funds. Darkly funny this all happened right after we signed multiple contracts worth tens of millions. Maybe healthcare just is a cursed industry.
I have an idea for another business. I'm pretty much out of money though. I guess some sort of part time or short term job is in order.
Been losing a lot of progress at the gym while dealing with this. I'm doing my best to damage control the decline.
PutAHelmetOn
Recovering Quokka
2hr ago
I would say the quoted text is a bad reason to be against gay marriage. You can just let gays get married and then not trans the kids. He is saying it's bad to allow [fine thing] because its in the same direction as [worse thing]. What am I missing?
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
2hr ago
Maybe we could start a left-wing group chat called "The Young Turks", named in honor of the group behind the Armenian genocide. Nah, that'd be too obviously bait.
/s
FirmWeird
Randomly Generated Reddit Username
2hr ago
This is a problem for all countries that aren't China right now - but I think most of those countries will survive.
You're right here, but that's like saying a minor infection isn't worth worrying about while leaving out the context that the sufferer is immunocompromised. If Luxembourg and Monaco lose access to the rare earths market, they're not really going to care - but they don't exist in an incredibly dangerous environment where they are surrounded by hostile powers. If Israel loses their military edge they will be in an extremely bad position, extremely quickly. While they do have nuclear weapons, using them would be suicide - not only do they want to claim the land of the people around them (and irradiated wasteland is worthless territory), using nuclear weapons so close to their own country would cause so much damage to themselves via fallout that it could render the entire country uninhabitable... to say nothing of the political consequences associated with being the first non-USA country to use nuclear weapons offensively.
This isn't really a consideration at play if the US is no longer Israel's patron, is it?
You're actually correct here - the only way I can salvage this argument is to determine exactly how amicable the split is. If the zoomer nazis take power and decide to demand a refund from Israel for all the money that was sent by bribed politicians in the past the economic situation is going to be even worse, but they might be able to do business with China in that case.
You can make of that what you will but "France can't/won't sell people military hardware" doesn't seem correct.
We're talking about a time several years into the future at the very least, and the trendline for French military manufacturing (and a great many other statistics) isn't terribly inspiring. They might make a few deals, but the ability of the French to manufacture materiel is so anemic in comparison to the Iran axis that I don't think it'll make much of a difference.
Russia has relatively good relations with Israel (and notably Israel has declined to assist Ukraine) and a history of cooperating with Israel on military technology.
If Israel did in fact lend assistance to Ukraine that assistance would be returned in triple with assistance to Iran and Hezbollah. That's a matter of self interest... not to mention the fact that NATO resources are being diverted away from Ukraine TO Israel - actually lending that assistance would be a bad joke.
Russia also doesn't have much qualms about selling to both sides of a conflict, I don't think, and have (allegedly) agreed not to sell arms to Iran due to agreements with Israel in the past, so I'm skeptical that the Russian relationship with Iran would actually prevent them from selling arms to Israel.
I can find it plausible that Russia didn't sell arms to Iran in the past, but now?
https://www.newsweek.com/russia-delivers-mig-29-jets-iran-air-force-10479982
Russia and Iran are collaborating in depth and their relationship is significantly stronger now than it was in the past - and China's helping them out too. If Russia did actually go on to assist Israel, they'd be able to decide who wins and who loses by simply turning off one side's equipment remotely... and I don't think they'd support Israel over Iran. Either way, even if Russia does decide to completely ignore their broader goals and arm both sides, Israel merely having the same level of technological sophistication as their far larger and more resource-rich enemies is not a particularly good situation for Israel. Israel currently requires a technical edge over their opponents due to their much smaller size, population and resource base - being put on the same or even lower level than their chief opponents would put them in an extremely dangerous position.
Why? I don't think American Jews are sending support to Israel because the US government suggests it.
No, they're sending support to Israel because the US government allows it - and in the hypothetical future where the US has abandoned Israel, I don't think the government will allow wealthy citizens to simply send all their money to a hostile foreign power.
Why do you think this is necessary
Because the US is doing it right now. If Egypt would do those things without being paid, why are they being paid? I sometimes do extra work for my employer when I get a call after hours, but I'm not going to do shit if they tell me that I'm no longer getting paid.
Why hasn't Iran done this, then? It sounds to me like Iran could have destroyed Israel already without needing to develop nuclear weapons. This would probably have been a better idea than letting Israel bomb them nonstop for days. What's stopping them?
Iran hasn't done this because they can perceive that the situation only gets better for them over time. If they blew up Israel right now the US would attack them, and while they could probably survive a conventional attack it'd cause immense amounts of damage and wipe out the global economy. If they wait, the US will continue to decline in influence and power while their own situation gets better and better. Their military manufacturing is substantially lower cost and more distributed than Israel and the US, and when you include the lead-up time to the west spinning up their manufacturing sectors again they are likely going to maintain that lead for another ten years or so - and ten years of stockpiling arms is going to lead to a very big disparity in forces.
Could Iran destroy Israel today? Probably not, and even if every other nation in the Middle East joined in it would be a pyrrhic victory at best - Israel may get destroyed, but they have publicly stated their intent to just murder everyone around them in nuclear fire on the way out (look up the Samson option if you're unaware of this).
As for letting them bomb them nonstop for days...did they? I was under the impression that Iran actually did manage to strike back, but I have no idea how effective it actually was given the censorship of the damage reports from Israeli media. I've read enough analyses about the situation that I think Iran probably landed a significant blow, on top of severely depleting interceptor stocks - but I don't think this is really worth litigating because the fog of war is still too thick.
I would note that the Houthis are in Yemen. Yemen and Iran are both too far away from the Mediterranean to close shipping lanes there with the ease that they can close shipping lanes through Suez. What mechanism do you propose for shutting down shipping? Missile strikes on port facilities, maybe?
I used the houthis as an example - I think that Iran would be able to find or manufacture a dissident group close enough to be able to harass shipping with drones and missile strikes. Iran would be capable of destroying port facilities with missile strikes, but at that point you're already in all-out war.
How are the neighboring nations going to charge fees on goods imported via the Mediterranean traveling through international waters?
I was referring to hypothetical land routes under the assumption that shipping was ruled out. Having only a single viable means of resupplying or trading with the outside world renders you extremely vulnerable when you're in a dangerous security situation.
It sounds to me in your telling like losing the United States as a patron would be irritating and expensive - does it really follow that Israel will cease to exist as a state?
Absolutely - currently, Israel is already facing steep and significant pressure. One of their major ports has gone bankrupt, they're facing renewed boycott and sanction efforts, major Israeli leaders are wanted for arrest in ways that mean they're unable to travel to large parts of the world and the nation is now broadly hated all over the world (except in India apparently).
If Israel wasn't facing any significant problems, had a healthy and sustainable economy, a strong military with no reliance on foreign or imported technology, access to a wide variety of trade routes and good relations with all of their neighbours, losing the US as patron would indeed just be expensive and annoying as the flow of free cash gets cut off. But none of that is true for Israel, and they don't have a viable replacement for what they'd lose in that situation. Having your crutches taken away from you isn't a problem if you're capable of walking on your own two feet - but it is a big problem if you aren't.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
2hr ago
With logic like that, I should have voted against gay marriage so that they wouldn't try to trans the kids next!
Err, aren't you making his point for him?
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
2hr ago
Where does endless escalation lead and tit for tat reprisals?
It's amazing how this point is brought up when someone defected thinking the other side could do nothing, and then realized they were wrong.
I think peace requires you to put aside the different river instinct and recognize it is similar enough
It really isn't, and we aren't going to have peace anyway. If one side gets to do all sorts of shit and get away with it, and then not only excuse all of it but have the other side punished for doing something which vaguely rhymes, we've still got nothing but who/whom for a standard.
sockpuppet2
2hr ago
Again, Scott links to his review of Mussolini's book in the post, using that as his reference for fascism, as an ideology.
sockpuppet2
2hr ago
How often are terrorist attacks designed to discriminate between victims based on self-proclaimed ideology? Isn't the terrifying aspect of terrorism that attacks are largely indiscriminate?
Fruck
Lacks all conviction
2hr ago
I think cjet has the right of it below. The stupid thing these people did was not follow the golden rule of the internet - don't say anything you don't want held against you.
Also question: Is Wayne Hope a nazi? What about Francis Greenslade? Or what about Shaun Micallef, it's his show. Did that clip in anyway make you think any of them might be a nazi? Or did the context tell you they weren't serious, even though Wayne explicitly states that Nazis really are a superior race?
I reflected a bit on this. Generally among conservatives and here on The Motte there are two types of responses, both I dislike.
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“The left started this with Charlie Kirk/Jay Jones so this is fine.” All I can say is that this way lies ruin. Where does endless escalation lead and tit for tat reprisals? Are we expecting some kind of come-to-Jesus mutual disarmament moment or just escalation until Civil War? If we are hoping for mutual disarmament, how does that happen? Why can’t this be that? Doesn’t someone have to move first?
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“This is different from Charlie Kirk/Jay Jones, that was not okay but this is because reasons.” Here my reaction is to say that you never step in the same river twice. Even though I share the intuition that this is a nothingburger while Kirk was a big deal I have to recognize it is always possible to conjure self-serving reasons why “this time it’s different.” I think peace requires you to put aside the different river instinct and recognize it is similar enough
aqouta
2hr ago
On that note, given that the primary justification for the creation of Israel was the holocaust, we may as well shut the entire enterprise down
It's pretty surprising that the justification for the creation of Israel came decades after many jews had already moved to that region for a national project.
Gaashk
2hr ago
This is part of why I strongly prefer handcrafts to puzzles. I've been enjoying learning to make wire wrapped tumbled stones. My husband is tumbling them, and I am wrapping them.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
2hr ago
Sometimes the politicians order lunch too. Or proclaim today National Northern Hemispheric Penguin Day or some other such thing. But a lot of it is about deciding what acts will now call for state violence against the actor, or arguing about how to divide the spoils from the protection racket.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
2hr ago
I believe you'll find the threshold is "just the other side of whatever is on offer".
I'm not sure why they chose Jane Austen instead of Florence Nightingale. The woman who invented modern nursing vs a woman who wrote six books about thinly veiled author inserts finding rich husbands. My guess is that the civil servants who decide are more likely to be English Lit graduates than nurses.
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