As I reported a few days ago, this year’s Dyke March, part of Chicago’s Gay Pride celebrations, kicked out a handful of Jewish women who were carrying “Jewish Pride” flags: multicolored Gay Pride flags with a white Star of David in the middle. I call that an act of anti-Semitism, and so does Bari Weiss, who happens to be a staff editor at the New York Times. She posted about it on Tuesday, in an op-ed with the intriguing title, “I’m glad the Dyke March banned Jewish stars“.
Why, pray tell, is Weiss glad? Because the Dyke March’s actions expose the hypocrisy and unworkability of “intersectionality” as a part of social justice. As she says,
I’m sorry for the women, like Ms. Grauer, who found themselves under genuine threat for carrying a colorful cloth falsely accused of being pernicious.
But I am also grateful.
Has there ever been a crisper expression of the consequences of “intersectionality” than a ban on Jewish lesbians from a Dyke March?
Intersectionality is the big idea of today’s progressive left. [JAC: I’d say “regressive” left, for many progressives don’t sign on to “intersectionality” as it’s used.] In theory, it’s the benign notion that every form of social oppression is linked to every other social oppression. This observation — coined in 1989 by Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw — sounds like just another way of rephrasing a slogan from a poster I had in college: My liberation is bound up with yours. That is, the fight for women’s rights is tied up with the fight for gay rights and civil rights and so forth. Who would dissent from the seductive notion of a global sisterhood?
Well, in practice, intersectionality functions as kind of caste system, in which people are judged according to how much their particular caste has suffered throughout history. Victimhood, in the intersectional way of seeing the world, is akin to sainthood; power and privilege are profane.
By that hierarchy, you might imagine that the Jewish people — enduring yet another wave of anti-Semitism here and abroad — should be registered as victims. Not quite.
Why? Largely because of Israel, the Jewish state, which today’s progressives see only as a vehicle for oppression of the Palestinians — no matter that Israel has repeatedly sought to meet Palestinian claims with peaceful compromise, and no matter that progressives hold no other country to the same standard. China may brutalize Buddhists in Tibet and Muslims in Xinjiang, while denying basic rights to the rest of its 1.3 billion citizens, but “woke” activists pushing intersectionality keep mum on all that.
. . . though intersectionality cloaks itself in the garb of humanism, it takes a Manichaean view of life in which there can only be oppressors and oppressed. To be a Jewish dyke, let alone one who deigns to support Israel, is a categorical impossibility, oppressor and oppressed in the same person.
That’s why the march organizers and their sympathizers are now trying to smear Ms. Grauer as some sort of right-wing provocateur. Their evidence: She works at an organization called A Wider Bridge, which connects the L.G.B.T.Q. Jewish community in America with the L.G.B.T.Q. community in Israel. The organizers are also making the spurious claim that the Jewish star is necessarily a symbol of Zionist oppression — a breathtaking claim to anyone who has ever seen a picture of a Jew forced to wear a yellow one under the Nazis.
No, the truth is that it was no more and no less than anti-Semitism. Just read Ms. Shoshany Anderson’s account of her experience, which she posted on Facebook after being kicked out of the march.
Unfortunately, Ms, Weis isn’t all that woke, as she seems to be realizing only now that the Left harbors a large component of anti-Semitism, particularly on the Regressive Left. Here’s her last paragraph:
It may be wrong to read too much into an ugly incident at a single march, but Jews should take what happened in Chicago as a lesson that they might not be as welcome among progressives as they might imagine. That’s a warning for which to be grateful, even as it is a reminder that anti-Semitism remains as much a problem on the far-left as it is on the alt-right.
Earth to Bari Weiss: your piece is very good, but you can absolutely read what you did read into the March. The Cntrl-Left segment of “progressives” has been anti-Semitic for years. They call it “anti-Zionist”, but that’s just a euphemism. If you don’t think the state of Israel should exist, and was wrongly founded as a homeland for expelled Jews, then yes, you’re anti-Semitic.
Now one of the organizers of the Dyke March, Alexis Martinez, taken by surprise at the negative reaction to the expulsion of Jews, has responded in an interview on the gay site Windy City Times. I find the response disingenuous and unconvincing, motivated by the very bad press the Dyke March Collective got. Their story is that the Jewish Pride Flag Wavers were expelled not for their flag, but because they were chanting. What were they chanting? Well, they were said to be chanting a response to pro-Palestinian and anti-Zionist marchers who were already chanting “No walls from Mexico to Palestine.”
According to Martinez, the Jewish women then chanted, in response, “No walls anywhere.”
That was all it took to boot their asses out. Martinez doesn’t see the irony of her own account:
The first thing I want to say is that this was never about the Jewish Pride flags. They never came into the conversations. As long as I’ve been an organizer, Laurel has always marched [in the Dyke March] with that flag. I had a conversation on text message with Laurel the night before. She asked me if people would be protesting her Jewish flag. I told her “No. It’s never been an issue and it shouldn’t be an issue.” But I also told her very clearly that we were anti-Zionist and pro-Palestinian and she needed to understand that and the nature of the event.
. . . They were taking ‘No walls from Mexico to Palestine’ and they started with “No walls anywhere.” They were disrupting the chants and nobody said anything to them.
What happened at the site [of the rally] was some Palestinian Queers who came up to organizers and said they were being antagonized verbally. The Jewish contingent kept agitating and being aggressive about presenting a pro-Zionist position to Palestinian women.
I would say 15 or 20 minutes after we entered the park. One of the organizers came to me and said “Alexis, you have to do something about this.” So, I went over and talked to Laurel. She tried to make it about the flag. I said “Nobody’s got anything against your flag. Wave it proudly. I am asking you if you’re trying to present a pro-Palestinian, pro-Zionist point-of-view.”
She said that she was proud of her Zionist views and she needed to be able to express them. I told her “This isn’t the format to do that. Either you have to stop or you have to leave.” They refused. We don’t have an armed security force to push people out so I left. They stayed around the park until the whole event was over. They were still there an hour and a half later.
So it wasn’t just a Dyke March, it was a pro-Palestinian and anti-Semitic Dyke March, and the statement “no walls anywhere” was somehow taken to be disruptive, and offensive to the Palestinian Queers (n.b. Queers are prohibited in Palestine but not Israel). And that chant alone isn’t even pro-Zionist, much less pro-Israel.
It’s clear from Martinez’s long account that she’s trying to rationalize expelling the Jewish dykes because they were “Zionists,” yet at the same time saying that, vis-à-vis the world, they’re not an explicitly political march. The fact is, all this confusion just reflects their upset at being called out, and their haste to confect rationalizations, viz,:
. . . the media and social media outrage was almost instantaneous and we got hit from every possible site and angle. I have never seen any member of the Collective make anti-Semitic statements. We’re anti-Zionism and people are conflating that into being anti-Semitic. They’re saying that we acted against Jewish queer women and it’s just a complete falsehood. Anyone who interprets our political positions as anti-Semitic is profoundly wrong. They’re misinformed. There’s nothing in our history that indicates that.
and
What we stand against is oppressive governments be they in Israel, El Salvador, Nicaragua; if people are struggling for their freedom, we try to show support in the context of the small organization that we are. The State of Israel is not endangered by anything we have to say at Dyke March and neither was Laurel. Nobody attacked her.
How hypocritical can you get? If they’re talking about oppression of women and gays, well, Palestine is infinitely worse than Israel—not to mention Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, and so on. Why single out and demonize Israel? Because they oppress the oppressive and homophobic Palestinians.
But wait–there’s more! The Dyke March wasn’t political!
WCT: So, you are saying that, if the women had minded their own business, enjoyed the rally and not engaged others, that would have been fine?
AM: Right. We’re not there to resolve the political issues of the world. Laurel could have approached Dyke March at any point prior to the march and requested to make a statement but she used the occasion as a representative of A Wider Bridge to inject herself into a space and then ferment dissention.
They’re not there to resolve the political issues of the world—except to bring up Palestinian political issues and suppress dissent from them. Finally, there’s this:
WCT: There are a lot of nation states which are oppressive to populations. Example, the British to Northern Ireland, the Australians to the Aboriginal people, France to the Muslims living within its borders, Iran to the LGBTQ people living there. Is the presence of such people or open support of their government’s policies whether verbal or in a manner of dress or a sign also unacceptable at Dyke March?
AM: We’re not ignoring that. It’s why you see very few flags [at the march]. But we’re pro-Palestinian. We think that the Palestinian struggle demonstrates a good model for what constitutes oppression. [JAC: except for oppression of gays! Why not North Korea, which oppresses nearly all of its citizens?] You have a military power that subjugates a group of people. It could be any number of places in the world including the US. But I’m not going to stop somebody from wearing a US flag tattoo or whatever. It’s only if you begin to agitate a point of view that creates a condition that could explode into something much bigger. We have to be the judge of that. It’s not just hurt feelings. It could become physical. If somebody gets hurt, we are going to be held accountable. I don’t get sucked into arguments with circular logic. If you want to debate Zionism, there’s other forums for that. I’m not going to ban you from my event.
Who is “we”? I guess it’s all the dykes who aren’t Jewish, and if that’s the case, then Jewish lesbians aren’t welcome unless they keep their mouth shut. Pro-Palestinian and anti-Semitic lesbians, of course, are free to chant.
You can read the long interview for yourselves; I’ll show just one more bit of dissimulation, pretending that all cultures are equally homophobic (my emphasis in Martinez’s answer):
WCT: Some commentators challenged you to hold the Dyke March in the middle of the Gaza Strip and “see what happens”—that the Palestinians would respond with violence. How do your respond to that argument?
AM: If we had our march nearly anywhere in the world, we run the risk of being attacked. There are Gay Pride marches being attacked everywhere. Even in Israel. Queer people have civil rights there but that doesn’t give you a free pass on not giving Palestinians equal rights. Having equal rights for queer people in the US doesn’t give us the right to ignore the problems that queer people of color face.
And there you have it, ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters: you see how far the termites have gone, and how well they’ve dined. To buttress her anti-Semitism, Martinez pretends that gays are just as bad off in Palestine as in Israel. That, of course, is bullpucky.
What the whole interview demonstrates is what the Times’s Bari Weiss realized too late: the cancer of anti-Semitism, masquerading as anti-Zionism, is metastasizing through much of the Left, and has now infiltrated the gay community. One would think that a gay pride march would decry the oppression, hatred, and execution of gays by Muslims in Muslim-majority lands. But no, they ignore it. Because for them, “intersectionality” puts being brown (i.e., Palestinian) higher than being gay in the Scale of Oppression. What a confused pride of people!
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The British are oppressing Northern Ireland?
99% of Eire and the UK want nothing to do with Northern Irish politics and now the DUP is part of a Conservative coaliton.
Indeed. Northern Ireland is part of Great Britain and until they vote to leave the Union, as Scotland may, they will remain part of Great Britain.
And the French are apparently “oppressing muslims within their borders”…
Unbelievable that that claim is somehow equivalent to oppression of gay people in Iran. Apparently I missed the news that being a muslim in France is now punishable by death.
There’s no “oppression of muslims” in France, unless these bozos believe that not being allowed to wear religious symbols in public buildings (which applies to ALL religions) is “oppression”.
Gay people risk death in the Gaza Strip if they are found out as homosexual activities are subject to capital punishment there.
Of course, the poster child for the whitewash of Muslim gay bashing is Jewish antisemite and two fisted Israel basher Glenn Greenwald who has not found it expedient to travel to the Gaza Strip to interview authorities there because, as an out of the closet gay man, he would be subject to leaving feet first if he did so. Greenwald says that his Jewish ancestry proscribes such a visit but that didn’t deter Jeffrey Goldberg from going there and interviewing Ishmael Haniyeh who was the prime minister at the time. By the way, Goldberg has also interviewed leaders of Hizbollah in Lebanon who are also noted for being soft in Israel.
That should be not noted.
Glenn Greenwald is convinced that islam is only poorly maligned by the Evil Western powers, and that the veil is an awesome sign of religion freedom. He’s an idiot.
I might be over-simplyfying, but the chant “No walls anywhere” does not seem to conflict with the chant “No walls from Mexico to Palestine”.
The first one is not targeted particularly at Israel, that is a big difference for them.
It’s the same as saying “all lives matter” in response to black lives matter. For rational people there is no conflict. But if you’re an intersectional CTRL-leftist, saying “all lives matter” nullifies the lived experience of oppressed black people. Or something.
“Intersectionality” is similar to “political correctness” in that it has a benign definition in theory but in practice is used as a tool to gain power.
Both, in their worst forms, are also used as proof that nothing is ever enough. Witness this essay about “Winder Woman” that excoriates it for not having enough black women and not being intersectionally feminist enough.
http://www.harpersbazaar.com/culture/film-tv/a9992873/wonder-woman-black-women-erasure/
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How is this nonsense seeping into fashion magazines? I keep seeing intersectional crap posted from Elle and Cosmo and the like. Did they just run out of writers that came out of writing/english departments that where not post modernist?
I think by now virtually ALL writers that come out of writing/language departments and the humanities are post-modernist.
Not all. I have a PhD in linguistics, and I’m very anti po-mo. But then again linguistics is more of a science than part of the humanities.
Language departments never even discuss Pomo ideas and there is. I such thing as a “writing” course in Humanities as far as I know. Writing well is something you need to acquire to be successful in the Humanities and you will be expected to do this well, quickly and under pressure.
Where you tend to see wonky thinking is in any of the SJW areas of disclipline ehich didn’t exist when I was in school in the 90s: gender studies, cultural studies (usually not associated with cultural anthropology). Usually these are small areas in a much larger Humanities disclipline which includes linguistics, language, history, English, Classics. There is a really great course at my university that I wish existed when I was a student to do with language and neuroscience. I would have been all over that in the day. Sadly there is a math component but it’s stats and these days students can exclude an area from being counted in their grade point average. That didn’t exist when I was in school so I wouldn’t take risks to learn something I thought I couldn’t get a high mark in as i wanted to position myself to have lots of options open to me, including grad school.
You’ll find that most philosophers are apathetic, rather than anti-pomo, but at least most aren’t pro.
Yes that, and also I have another possible contributor.
I have often looked at these magazines while in the supermarket check out line. I can say that over the course of about 10-15 years now they have gone from being very coy and euphemistic about sex to being extremely explicit. It used to be stuff like “10 fun post-dinner tips to get your guy in the mood” (tee hee) whereas now it is more like “the best lubes for a hard anal pounding.”
There must have been much more creativity and writing skill involved in the former than the latter. Someone can really put on their writer’s hat in order to come up with 100 ways to say penis or clitoris or penetration or sperm without actually saying those words. So basically, there was something keeping the copy writers’ brains at these magazines engaged before that there isn’t now. Disengaged brains surf HuffPo and Salon all day and want to write about what they see there.
I mean this as an honest question – why should women’s magazines be coy and euphemistic about sex? Because it’s not lady-like?
In stores, it’s Cosmopolitan magazine that’s fairly explicit on its covers about sex, and it’s been this way for a long time. Other women’s magazines might have one cover blurb about sex, while Cosmopolitan will have 2-3, and they’re fairly to the point. Some recent examples (from Google Images):
101 Hot Sex Moves
What’s Your Sex IQ
Sexy Jeans
Have Sexier Sex
The Myth of the Man Stealer
I Sexted My Boss
Teach a Guy to Please You
Mushy Moves Guys are Totally Into
Dates from Hell
Your Sexiest 24 Hours
Sexy Summer Skin
Seductive Beauty
Love Secrets that Change Everything
But just for balance, here’s a sampling of coy and euphemistic cover blurbs from Men’s Health magazine, also found readily at stores:
She Wants You to Watch – Her Surprising Sex Confessions
5 Things to Say to a Naked Woman
Date Any Woman
(Much) Hotter SEX This Year
SEX: Her Hottest Hot Spots
30 Red-Hot Sex Secrets
Make Good Sex Great
Superhuman Sex Secrets
Build a Body She’ll Love
Her 41 Darkest Sex Confessions
Women Love Sex, Too!
And my personal favorite –
Double Your Endurance – Go Longer, Go Harder!
Hahaha “I sexted my boss”. I dpthink I find it funny because I don’t know if it was by accident or not.
And you can tell by my typing that text message mishaps could happen to me.
I didn’t say they should one way or the other. I just noted the rather dramatic change.
I see this has come to Jerry’s attention. https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2017/07/01/harpers-bazaar-becomes-everyday-feminism-says-wonder-woman-movie-is-insufficiently-intersectional/
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We need an algorithm to sort out the hierarchy of oppression and aggrievedness. Where does a gay white man stand relative to a straight white woman? A straight black man relative to a gay hispanic? The combinations must involve factorials, but with how many factors? We need help.
I’ve heard of gay white men being banned in certain situations at from regressive left groups at some universities because apparently they no longer suffer oppression. So in effect, the gay white men were oppressed because they’re no longer oppressed!
Maybe we could get Mo’Nique to chart this out for us, the way she did for mixed race folk in the movie Domino.
Not to detract from the larger point of the piece, but thinking Israel was wrongly founded isn’t, by itself, anti-Semitism. One can be perfectly sympathetic to Jews and still think that the creation of Israel was not done in a particularly just or prudent way. One can also hold that position while recognizing that it is a historically done deal, and that the current generation of Jews in Israel have as much right to call it their home as anyone.
Many countries were founded after dissolution of diverse empires ofter IWW and then after II WW. The principle is that a nation has a right to self-determination. No other newly establish state(be it Lebanon, Jordan, Pakistan or some other country in Africa) is incessantly said to be “wrongly founded”. Only the Jewish state is singled out. And this is antisemitism.
Nonsense, the USA itself was wrongly founded. I’m not going to get into the history of every other state you can think of, the simple fact is that many of them were probably created in dubious fashion, at least in the eyes of some group of people. Whether they get the attention Israel gets or not is a separate issue, it does not affect the principles on which one would judge its founding. And the point remains that even if *you* judge it as wholly legitimate, someone else can come to a different conclusion without being an anti-Semite.
Imagine if some European country had massive immigration of Muslims, encouraged by an external power, let’s say China. Suppose that, following a massive war, that country was occupied by Chinese forces and, after more massive immigration, the Muslims declared a caliphate, entirely against the wishes of the more indigenous population and the Chinese left. Surely there would be people upset about that and they wouldn’t all be bigots.
Singling out Jews (previously) and Jewish state now for opprobrium for something other has done as well without encountering even a fraction of the condemnation is antisemitism. When you have a principle but you are holding only one (Jewish) country accountable for not to be exactly according to your principle and you are letting all the other of the hook – this is antisemitism.
Who are you talking to? Where have I said that Israel should be singled out? What do you know about what I do and don’t condemn? Why do you think a statement about a historical event is uniquely casting opprobrium on a modern state? Jerry implied that anyone who finds fault with Israel’s founding is an anti-Semite. That’s unreasonable. That’s the only point I was making, because he introduced the topic. If you want to know what I think about some other country’s history, you’ll have to pull your head out of your ass and ask.
I agree with Malgorzata. None of the other “wrongly founded” countries are being singled out to be wiped off the face of the map. There are maps in existence in schools in the ME that do not include Israel.
Technically it’s possible to be anti-Zionist without being anti-Semitic. However, on the whole anti-Zionism is just the acceptable face of anti-Semitism and an excuse for the same thing.
Sounds like.. I’m not racist, I just don’t like African Americans expressing their views.
I just don’t like the fact that the groups in the ME that oppose Israel actually want to wipe jews there off the face of the earth.
I haven’t said anything about Israel being “wiped off the map”, quite the opposite. Nor am I claiming anti-Semitism doesn’t exist, clearly it does. But the difference between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism, particularly in respect to the way Zionism was historically implemented, is not merely technical, it is important.
You are falling into the pro-Israel version of regressive-left-style discourse when legitimate criticism of Israel is dismissed because a bigot could also make it. If bigots use anti-Zionism as a cover that’s too bad, but it’s up to honest, reasonable people to draw the distinction and treat the question on its own merits. Bad people will always use good arguments in their service when they can, that doesn’t mean we should write off those arguments.
I won’t disagree, but, which particular part of Israels founding do you consider to be so unjust?
I think it is true that Israel was founded for reasons over and above the refugee problem in Europe around the war years.
There was an earlier bigger Zionist movement.
But, the refugee factor must always have been a factor of some sort and then did provide a stronger impetus for Israel existence after the big one.
But I would like to know just where you think the great injustice lies.
Here you are trying to conflate anti-Zionism with criticism of Israeli policy, as if both are legitimate modern viewpoints. They are not.
The time of legitimate discussion of Zionism was in 1870. And the world decided that issue and celebrated its decision in 1948.
For you to propose it is not now racist to discuss anti-Zionism is as if you propose it is not now racist to argue that the Civil War should be properly seen as the War of Northern Aggression because the South has a legitimate State’s right to maintain slavery.
Anti-Zionism *is* anti-semitic.
Upon closer inspection…
1) Palestine exists from ? to 1577.
2) Ottoman Empire takes over, Palestine is dissolved.
3) WWI ends and Palestine is awarded land and status.
4) WWII ends UN awards land and status to Israel.
No one ever talks about Palestinians giving back the land they were given after WWI.
I’m not sure what you mean. There was never a political entity (never mind independent state) called Palestine. After defeating Jews Romans renamed the country (to erase its Jewish character) Syria-Paleaestina 132 (by Emperor Hadrian) and incorporated it as its province into Roman Empire. After that diverse empires conquered this territory until Ottoman Empire took hold of it 1516.
After IWW this territory was accorded the name of Mandate of Palestine (other mandates were created as well) in order to prepare it for independence in accordane with Balfour Declaration. It encompassed the territory of today’s Jordan. Great Britain was suppose to administer this Mandate on behalf of League of Nations. Britain cut of Jordan and created an Arab part of Mandate Palestine, the rest was supposed to be Jewish state (confirmed in San Remo 1923 by League of Nations). There was no Palestinian nation untill around 1960. Until Israel was created 1948 Jews from Mandate Palestine were called “Palestinians”. Arabs from Mandate Palestine were offended when they were called “Palestinians” regarding this name as colonial invention. First when Arab armies were defeated and there was a need to fight Israel with other means, Arab started to call themselves Palestinians.
I was attempting to point out that Palestinians have no more claim to the area than anyone else, however poor the attempt.
I do appreciate the detailed history.
I was going to make a similar point. The analogy between inter-WW Palestine and “some European country” is a poor one, for a number of reasons. One being, of course, that Palestine hasn’t been a real country since 1577.
Another is that the region’s population in 1920 was barely 700,000 (of which 4/5ths were Muslim). Now there are over 12 million people in the region, roughly half of whom are Muslim.
I’ve heard people describe Israel as a “genocidal apartheid state,” but honestly I don’t see it. As a point of comparison, one might look at the emigration trends of Hindus from Pakistan, which came into existence around the same time as Israel.
“Palestine” has NEVER been a political entity. Not before and not after 1577.
I use analogies to illustrate. I didn’t spend pages constructing an exact hypothetical parallel because it was not important to the point I’m making. The fact that Palestine was not a formal country prior to Israel is irrelevant, it’s like arguing that there is nothing to say about the USA’s founding because Native Americans weren’t organized into a European style state.
Nor can I see what point you are trying to make regarding population growth. What matters is the population at the time. At the beginning of the Mandate, the area was very much majority Muslim Arab and this moved closer to parity thanks to massive immigration promoted by a colonial power.
At the beginning of the Mandate, the area was very much majority Muslim Arab and this moved closer to parity thanks to massive immigration promoted by a colonial power.
Not sure which colonial power you’re talking about. I guess Britain. But, seeing as how Jewish immigration ramped up in the 1930s and reached its peak in the mid-40s, I think a different “power” had more to do with it.
And to say that power “promoted” it would be quite the euphemism.
Zach, the Balfour Declaration was in 1917 and obviously the idea of Zionism had existed well before then. So rather clearly I was talking about Britain, the colonial power that actually had control of the Palestine area. Zionist movements also existed in other countries, including the US of course.
The motivations for Jews to emigrate from Germany in the 30s aren’t in question. But Palestinians at the time weren’t responsible for German sins.
If being wrongly founded is fairly typical for countries then there still is a problem with singling out Israel and using the circumstances of its founding as justification for destroying Israel.
I have seen the criticism of Israel shift over time. I think 20 years ago, the idea of disbanding Israel was more of a fringe idea for leftists, now it appears to be the most common opinion on Israel of Identity Politics Progressives. There are people that are critical of Israel that are not anti-semitic, but the number of anti-semitic critics has grown significantly. I think most who label themselves as pro-Palestinian are at least mildly anti-semitic and many of them much more so. Part of the problem is that intersectional feminism allows bigotry if it is against groups that have power or are dominant somewhere.
When leftists were mainly talking about stopping settlements in the west bank I think that was a very different situation from now where many have adopted the Palestinian position of destroying Israel.
“Whether they get the attention Israel gets or not is a separate issue, it does not affect the principles on which one would judge its founding.” Hmm I don’t agree it’s a seperate issue. The fact that Israel is virtually the only state that gets singled out for the circumstances of it’s foundation, even though as you (and Malgorzata) say, many other states could be said to be founded under equally, or more dubious circumstances should lead one to ask the question: why Israel? Apparently most people are more than willing to accept the founding of other countries when it happened long enough ago. Why not Israel? And if it’s not antisemitism, then what?
Also our host made the point that it’s anti-semitic “If you don’t think the state of Israel should exist, AND was wrongly founded as a homeland for expelled Jews”. So it’s not just about the founding, but also about denying it’s continued right to exist. At least that’s how I read it.
You’ve never heard anyone criticize colonialism? I doubt anybody thinks the layout of states we have in Africa is perfect, but it’s what’s there because of history.
I’m by no means an expert on the founding of Isreal, but my reading of history makes it seem at least complicated. It was such a unique confluence of issues that I’m not sure anything better was possible, but I do think there is a lack of empathy (among some) for the Arab perspective on it.
Well that lack of empathy might have something to do with the fact that immediately after the founding of Israel the Arab countries banded together and attacked it with the intent of destroying Israel and the Jews in it. The Arabs in general aren’t really known for their empathy towards Jews.
To say that Israel was “wrongly founded” is ahistorical and meaningless. As you note, many countries (I would say most) were “wrongly founded” in the sense that one people took over the land of others. There are thousands of years of history to prove this. Under your view of things, a country could only be considered “rightly founded” if the land is occupied by a group of people who migrated to a place not previously occupied by human beings. This hasn’t happened in a very long time. For those (perhaps not you since you seem to recognize Israel’s right to exist) who dwell on criticizing the Jews who occupied what is now Israel without condemning the thousands of other such “invasions” are, indeed, exhibiting anti-Semitism, although perhaps not knowing it.
To me, debating whether or not it is theoretically possible to regret Israel’s founding yet not be an antisemite is like debating how many angels can dance on a pin.
I have been following anti-Zionist discourse on the internet for 10 years and have extensively studied its long history and current flavors. I can sincerely say that I have -never- found an expression of anti-Zionism, or a source or forum for anti-Zionism, that was not profoundly antisemitic, either in intent or effect, and almost always in both.
The exact analogy I would draw is this: It is probably theoretically possible to believe in the tenets of the birther conspiracy theory without being a racist. Theoretically, one could become intellectually obsessed with the intricacies and details of Hawaii’s birth certificate copying procedures in 1960 or whatever and yet harbor no racial animus whatsoever. However, in the real world, it is obvious that 100.0% of the people who believe in the tenets of birtherism harbor some racial animus toward President Obama, or intend to ride a wave of others holding such racial prejudices. And so it is with anti-Zionism and antisemitism. Whether it is theoretically possible to be one without the other, it has never, ever, actually happened in the real world.
BTW, I was a bit taken back by this: “If you don’t think the state of Israel should exist, and was wrongly founded as a homeland for expelled Jews, then yes, you’re anti-Semitic.”
Based on this definition I am antisemitic and yet I beg to differ.
The foundation of Israel is understandable under the conditions of that time, but it was a mistake that caused harm, because it had its role in the fail of the secular movements of the Middle East (Well, of course a “what if” is is a very problematic question. We have no way to know for sure.) One could say that it was a consequence of the former tragedies and as such cannot be evaluated without that context and I’d agree, but it was still an unfortunate event.
What to do now is however a completely different story. That ship had sailed a very long time ago and backstabbing Israel now solves none of the created problems, just causes even more harm and tragedies.
Do you really mean that this opinion makes me antisemitic?
I definitely do. I answered why, a moment ago to #8Josh. I can repeat that many countries were established with much greater bloodshed and injustices than Israel. But I doubt you are protesting against them. (The world opinion definitly is not.) Just against the one Jewish state. Jews had a right to self-determination like any other nation in the world. The real injustice was done to Kurds who are a nation and were promised their own state and all these promises were broken.
You made a total straw-man argument. I have not complained about the bloodshed around the formation of Israel and have not protested against Israel on that base. In fact I do not protest against Israel at all. Also you don not and cannot have any idea what opinion I hold on the foundation or any other attributes of other states. So your answer is a complete miss, not a single sentence is relevant for what I wrote.
You literally said in your last comment that, based on Jerry’s opinion of “If you don’t think the state of Israel should exist, and was wrongly founded as a homeland for expelled Jews, then yes, you’re anti-Semitic,” you would be defined as antisemitic. You have already outed yourself as thinking that Israel should not exist and was wrongly founded. Don’t try to take it back. We’re not stupid.
If I’m reading your comment correctly, you seem to be saying that by saying Jerry’s comment makes Skepticalhippo anti-semitic means skepticalhippo admits to being anti-semitic. But what if Skepticalhippo meant that he fulfilled the condition of thinking that Israel was wrongly founded, but it’s a done deal, and he has no problem thinking Israel therefore does have a right to exist? Does that still make him anti-semitic?
No, I was saying that if he is antisemitic according to Jerry’s definition, he believes both that Israel was wrongly founded *and* that Israel should not exist. That is literally the definition Jerry gave.
Most people do think that one who has such feelings (e.g. that Israel shouldn’t exist) is antisemitic, as these people never seem to be concerned about literally any other country in the world existing except for Israel. Which happens to be the one Jewish state, founded with little bloodshed and far less displacement than nearly every other state in the world, and is less than the size of New Jersey. How strange.
My point is that it is an overreaching, mistaken cause to call somebody antisemitic on that base, in the exact form as it worded. I do not understand what do you think I tried to take back. Would you elaborate?
So if scepticalhippo believes Israel was improperly founded, but supports Israel today, and harbors absolutely no animosity toward Jews, must he or she abandon his/her good-faith belief regarding Israel’s founding to avoid the label “anti-Semitic”?
No, of course not. The trouble is with this constant reminding of how wrong it was to create Israel in the first place. And, when people say that, they are most often silent about the question what was the world suppose to do with Jews, and what Jews were supposed to do with themselves. Zionism came into being as a double answer: 1. to centuries long persecution of Jews in Europe, Russia, Arab and Islamic countries which was growing at the end of 19th century; and 2. as a Jewish dream to escape the persecution and alienation in host countries and once again have a state of their own. If you say that it was wrong to create Israel for these people, what was the solution?
A agree with Josh and scephippo that recognizing that there are unpleasant aspects to the founding of Israel doesn’t neccessarily make one an anti-semite. On the other hand I think you’re right to be suspicious of someone who feels the need to point this out.
I think the anti-semitism of the alt-left is unremarkable. They’re pretty obviously anti-white and jews simply fall into the larger category of ‘whites’
Personally, I’m as staunch a supporter of Israel (and as firm a believer in the need for a Jewish homeland) as you’re likely to find in a non-religious-right American goy. (And, FWIW, I think it unwise for Jews to make common cause with right-wingers whose primary interest in Israel is eschatological.)
But on the issue of the “legality” and “appropriateness” of Israel’s founding, I’m agnostic. I brooded on the matter for a time, while trying to read up on the history and the analyses thereof by both sides, but decided the issue admitted of no clear answer (and might well be vexed) — and that any solution to the area’s current problems didn’t turn the resolution of that issue anyway. So I shrugged and turned away from that question, toward more potentially fruitful aspects of the matter.
Such agnosticism on the issue isn’t emotionally satisfying, but I do the best I can. 🙂
Are you also agnostic on the legitimacy of Jordan?
One solution would have been to come to America.
Plenty of land, tolerant people.
Or, was the ancestral and religious claims the that particular location a big factor.
I am partially playing devils advocate here.
I don’t think it was possible to simply come to America, or anywhere else.
I was having a discussion with someone on a different site who said just that. Why don’t all the Jews just come to America and leave the poor Palestinians alone.
I accused this person of a deeper Anti Jewish sentiment and got the ‘I have many Jewish friends and they are against Israel too’
My understanding of the whole situation is limited but I don’t see how Israels founding was all that bad. History can be a bit rough, so be it.
I think the problem is that the Arabs started a war, they lost, they are pissed and are maintaining this unsteady situation, the expense of the Palestinian people who have been sold out and or promised something they can never have to accommodate Arab pride.
Among other things.
As far as I can see, had there been jut a bit of good will and a genuine desire for a sensible outcome on the part of the Palestinians, there would have been one.
That there are walls and restrictions are a consequence of Palestinian action, not apartheid ideology.
There is an elite leadership making money and reputation on the suffering of the Palestinians. that, religious factors and Arab honor culture are the stumbling blocks.
The US was significantly less tolerant of Jews back then, and while Jews are much more comfortable here now, they still face the largest proportion of hate crimes to their population size.
I thought that might be the case.
I don’t see that scepticalhippo supports Israel today. I do see problem in the middle east being blamed on Israel.
…it was a mistake that caused harm, because it had its role in the fail of the secular movements of the Middle East…
I spell that out for you then: I support Israel today. Happy? 🙂
Also having a role is not equal being the main cause. I think however that it had a negative effect. I don’t quite measure the size of it, I’d pretty much need to compare paralel worlds for that.
…because it had its role in the fail of the secular movements of the Middle East (Well, of course a “what if” is is a very problematic question. We have no way to know for sure.)
No, but we can make a reasonable guess.
I remember reading an article in National Geographic (back when it was good) about a photography expedition to Morocco. The crew’s most common type of interaction with the locals involved them being asked if they were Zionists.
Now, why so many Moroccans were concerned with some American photographers’ stance on the state of Israel is beyond me. Likewise, as hard as I try, I can’t rationalize the link between the founding of Israel and every failure the Muslim world has experienced since, from Casablanca to Kashmir. There is a link, to be sure. But it’s not rational.
So no, my guess is that the secular movements in the Middle East were doomed to fail, whether the European Jews emigrated to Palestine or Madagascar.
With that said, I certainly don’t think you’re anti-Semitic for wondering about the wisdom of past history. From what I can tell, there’s been some grammatical miscommunication around the word “should.” Your stance of “Now that Israel’s here, it ain’t goin’ nowhere” is not anti-Zionist, at least not by any functional definition.
What’s confusing is that he says he’s antisemitic by Jerry’s definition, then in reply to Malgorzata, just says that we don’t know his opinion, only that she strawmanned it. The first part of Jerry’s definition is “if you don’t think the state of Israel should exist, and…” It’s not an either/or. If you believe both that it shouldn’t exist and was wrongly founded, then you’re antisemitic, and he says that he is antisemitic according to this definition. That means he believes that Israel should not exist. He says that it’s not going anywhere, but he clearly doesn’t think it should be there.
That reminds me of the people who called Sam Harris anti-Muslim, because “those were his own words”.
I specifically claimed in that answer that Malgorzata do not know my opinion on the foundation and problems of other states, because I did not write anything about those. Malgorzata claimed I am unfairly picking on Israel while ignoring other problems elsewhere, but it is a baseless strawman.
Also Zach is correct that this is partly about the interpretation of “should not” in the exact wording. By definition if somebody think Isreal should not have founded then that somebody also think Isreal should not exist, because “should not exist” has such a meaning. That is why I think the definition with that wording fits me, even if I do not think Israel has no right to exist (whatever it means really), let alone that we should undone it. Whether the creation of Israel was a good move or not and what to do about it now are too separate questions, but that “should no” connects them.
Absolutely, yes. You will not find a country anywhere that wasn’t formed as part of a treaty of some sort including those in the ME. Worse, you’ve blamed Israel for the actions of other countries.
Your first point: generally true, but irrelevant, since I never claimed Israel to be particularly bad in any comparison. I did not compare.
Your second point: a lie.
I’m with Josh and scepticalhippo. The foundation of Israel was a bloody huge mistake, and has caused nothing but trouble ever since.
I notice the big countries that thought it was a good idea to have a Jewish homeland didn’t feel like volunteering any of their own territory (surely the US must have had a few thousand square miles in Montana it wouldn’t have missed?). I don’t seem to recall the Palestinians being consulted about this great idea.
However, like most mistakes of history, it isn’t easily reversed, it is now a fait accomplit and ‘removing’ Israel is not a practical solution.
cr
Can you explain why you think Israel has caused problems? If it’s because they defend themselves against genocide and terrorism, I don’t see that as a good reason.
As for consulting with Palestinians about forming Israel in 1948, Malgorzata pointed out ^^ that Palestine didn’t exist until 1960.
The existence of Israel has caused problems. As has many aspects of their ‘defence’. Stupid place to suddenly designate as a Jewish homeland, really, considering it was already fully occupied by somebody else.
As for the Palestinians, my impression is that they had been living there for some quite considerable time, under whatever national flag, they didn’t just suddenly appear from nowhere when ‘Palestine’ was established.
cr
Not really from nowhere. There are quite exact data how many came from Syria, how many from Egypt, how many from Jordan etc. When Zionists started to develop the land (which, of course, had inhabitants but really not very many) the difference in standards of living and possibilities to find work were such that many very poor Arabs from surrounding areas came to Mandate Palestine in search for better life. There were years under British rule (which restricted immugration of Jews but allowede unrestricted immigration of Arabs) when Arab immigration was many times the Jewish one. All this is documented and not difficult to find.
I’m fairly certain that where you’re living was fully occupied by someone else as well.
It’s a silly argument.
Also, you still haven’t said what problems the existence of Israel has caused. Other than violence against Israel I can’t think of anything.
If you’re suggesting that the middle east was conflict free prior to 1948, that isn’t going to hold up.
Yes but it was not as simple as the big countries having an idea. Chaim Weizmann lobbied for years for a homeland in Palestine (instead of Uganda) and he was highly respected and brilliantly persuasive. Right or wrong he put his case to Balfour very well. In the post WW11 twilight years not many politicians cared much before the actual founding of Israel until it became a political football match between the Soviets and the US. Todays criticism of Israel is in a peverse way also a criticism of the West which is basically the same old moan (why aren’t we as successful) dressed up for the 21st century
Well the West has made plenty of mistakes (and some things they got right). But I can’t help but ask, can you name me any country or locality, anywhere, where the locals would regard with equanimity big foreign powers saying “good news! We’re going to establish a homeland for displaced people who haven’t lived in your neighbourhood for hundreds of years and we’re going to do it right on your doorstep. In fact, they’ll own your doorstep.”
cr
Like today’s migration policy of the EU.
Liberia and major parts of Pakistan come to mind also the ethnic transfers after the collapse of the Ottoman empire solely based on religion. A good chapter on the Ottoman/Greek etc business is in The Vanquished by Robert Gerwarth
It is sometimes said that Israel is the only country to be approved by both the League of Nations and the United Nations. The best place for a Jewish homeland was not in some other part of the world but where there were indigenous Jews and where Jews had been expelled from. If any mistakes were made in the run-up to the state of Israel it was surely the British encouragement of Arab immigration while discouraging Jewish immigration to the Mandate area and the acquiescence in Arab riots against Jews and the appointment of the poisonous Mufti of Jerusalem.
The existence if infidels in general is regarded as a problem by some.
As for the foundation of Israel still causing trouble, the only reason for it to still cause trouble is the willingness of the world powers to agree with the idea of Arabs to push Jews into the sea.
The same world powers did not agree with the idea of Milosevic to expel and kill the Kosovars, therefore the foundation of Kosovo did not cause much trouble.
As for consulting the Palestinians, I’d find it great to consult the natives before letting in immigrants, but this is not done anywhere, and natives of other countries are called names if they demand it, so I do not see why Palestinians should (as always) be the great exception.
A bit different, immigrants in other places do not get to take over and make the existing residents foreigners in their own land. At least, not by legal fiat, and certainly not without a lot of friction. In fact it’s usually called ‘invasion’.
I’m not sure this is going anywhere…
cr
Really? Is that how it happened in New Zealand? It wasn’t like that in the Americas.
The Maori ate the people who were in NZ before them and then when the Pakeha came they ate some of them too. :). At least that’s how some Maori have explained it to me.
Then there was what happened to the moriori as opposed to Maori
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moriori
Yes they were the ones I referenced at having been there before the Maori. I think there may still be some who didn’t get Esten.
You forgot to quote my second sentence. And also, colonialism was supposed to be a thing of the past by the middle of the 20th century.
cr
Uganda gained independence in 1962. The borders of the country are the consequence of European political relations. Ethnic groups within the country are not all happy about this arrangement.
I don’t recall hearing anybody in the West (or East, for that matter) taking up the cause of the persecuted minority groups.
We could talk about other examples, but the conversation would be similar. I think that singling out Israel for criticism for how it was created is grossly disproportionate compared to other countries.
I am afraid that Muslim immigrants to Europe are exactly getting to take over and make the existing residents foreigners in their own land. They are already enforcing their religious taboos by deadly violence and creating numerous zones that are no-go for natives. A previous migration wave has started the same process in South-East Europe; it is completed in Kosovo and ongoing in Macedonia. All this is done perfectly by legal fiat, because the immigration was/is allowed by the authorities at the time. There is a lot of friction, but, as I repeat, it is the natives that are blamed for the friction, called bigots and many other names.
I try to avoid the term “invasion”. I restrict it to it narrowest meaning – when the natives organize to defend their territory by force but are defeated. This is not happening in Europe, and did not happen in Palestine/Israel. It was other Arab powers, not the locals, that tried to annihilate Israel immediately after its formation in 1948. Many would say that a nation that does not defend its territory deserves to lose it.
I agree that this discussion is not going anywhere.
It’s hard to understand why people are so against the founding of Israel beyond the fact that it’s a Jewish homeland for the following reason: it was established in the place that the people for whom it was established were kicked out of previously by another group that came in and took over; it’s establishment resulted in the displacement of far fewer people than the vast amount of countries throughout history, and this displacement was not done by genocide or oppression unlike many, many other countries (in fact, many Arabs have ended up living in Israel because it’s significantly less oppressive than the alternatives); it gave these people a strip of land smaller than New Jersey, and far smaller than the vast majority of other countries; these people had just had six million people from their population wiped outby purposeful genocide due to discrimination, and were teetering on the brink of complete extinction; these people faced both historical and current oppression throughout the world and in a manner more widespread than that against any other known group; and the establishment of most countries throughout human history since the dawn of organized civilization has been far bloodier, displaced significantly more people, and did so in far more brutal ways (and yet these countries are not criticized like Israel is).
Given all this, it’s very hard to understand why people hate the establishment of Israel so much (beyond it being a Jewish homeland), but don’t seem to be nearly as concerned with the establishment of any other country throughout history.
No that doesn’t work. With that argument you can justify anything.
Because some other countries’ founding was worse, doesn’t make the displacement of the Palestinians ‘okay’.
I will certainly concede that Israel is maybe the nearest to a democracy in the area (leastways, I will till the next time Netanyahu opens his mouth), but expecting Palestinians to be happy about the situation was never going to happen.
cr
This “displacement of the Palestinians” needs a little analysis. It has been pointed out before that “Palestinians” meant Jews until the Arabs took over the word in the 1960s. At the founding of the state of Israel Arabs were asked to stay put and become citizens. Some did, but others fled because Arab armies immediately invaded Israel and told local Arabs to get out of the way while they annihilated the Jews. When that didn’t happen after all, those Arabs found that they were unwelcome refugees in Arab countries. About 800,000 Arabs were “displaced” and about the same number of Jews were also refugees, kicked out of the surrounding Arab countries. They, however, although initially homeless, did not remain refugees in Israel but were resettled there. There has always been room for everybody in Israel/Palestine, and the Zionist idea was never to “displace” people. The idea of displacement is certainly being used to the hilt by the PA, who tell their people that all of Israel is rightfully theirs. It keeps the hostility going and makes a joke of peace talks.
Exactly. Well said.
The actual details of the situation make a lot of difference.
“Because some other countries’ founding was worse, doesn’t make the displacement of the Palestinians ‘okay’.”
The Palestinian Arabs were not “displaced”. They were given their own new homeland – a country five times the size of Israel called “Trans-Jordan”. Or, if they wanted, they could stay in Israel.
It was Jews that were displaced – they were legally not allowed to stay in Trans-Jordan, and like they were in every other ME Arab land, were expelled.
Not only are you wrong about multiple other issues that other commenters have already pointed out, but your whole “the fact that its founding wasn’t as problematic as some other countries’ founding” wasn’t at all my point. Its founding was less problematic than the founding of the vast majority of countries throughout history, including modern history. And yet, somehow, it’s the one country that continues to be debated. Why is this?
You also failed to address the whole of my comment, instead picking out one or two things you thought you could knock down, and you proved to be wrong even on those.
Again, if even most of what I said about Israel is true (I mean, all of it is, but lets pretend it’s just most of it), how can you explain having a constant problem, as you have expressed many times beyond this thread, with Israel’s founding, but not have such a significant problem (to the point where you bring it up every time the country is mentioned) with any other country?
You wrote, the creation of Israel was, ‘a mistake that caused harm.’ You did not mention the creation of the Palestine Mandate as ‘a mistake that caused harm.’ Why one and not the other?
On what basis is your opinion – a mistake that caused harm – founded? You make the statement as if it were an accepted fact, rather than your view which you need to support. I do not like calling people names, but I think you need to reexamine your ideas.
I will admit I am not very sympathetic toward the pro-Palestinian movement or the calls for Universities to divest themselves from certain investments or the one-sided view that only Israel is at fault. I do not see that my role as a Progressive is to take sides. What is the logic of declaring a gay pride event a pro-Palestinian event. It makes no sense to me.
I am beginning to think that ‘intersectionality’ is a ploy to get us all to play the let’s-you-and-him-fight game. By all means lets tear apart the traditional coalition of the Democratic Party. Let’s continue to loose elections.
I also did not wrote that the bombing of Pearl Harbor by the Japanese was a mistake that caused harm, but I very much think so. Really, there should be limit to this “you did not talked about this other thing in your finite comment, so you have ulterior motives” argument. My comment had a limited scope. I do not think that the foundation of Israel was some kind of unique evil or something. Really, if I started to write a list of historical mistakes that caused harm, Israel would not make to it, because I would get bored before reaching that. My comment was not meant to judge Israel or the foundation of it, but to call out a description of antisemitism that I see as overreaching. I gave a short abstract of my opinion on the matter only as a background for that.
Also I am not part, activist or supporter of any pro-Palestinian movement. I completely agree with Jerry on the description of the current Palestinians as a more oppressing culture that the current Israel, but that is beside the point I wanted to make there.
I can see your point.
Jews were never safe in Russia/Soviet Union and they don’t feel safe in Europe even today. They are a natural minority attacked because they are distinct yet have no way of defending themselves – the darker side of human behaviour. They have done well in the US – partly because they were so useful in and since the second world war and generally attitudes towards them in the US are good – though not necessarily as 2x attacks on Jews as on Muslims in the US relative to population size shows. In Israel they can defend themselves.
That’s baloney. When people stand against oppression in El Salvador, they mean a change in the leadership and policies of El Salvador to be less oppressive to the citizens of El Salvador. When people stand against oppression in Nicaragua, or (to move away from central America) China, or Turkey, or North Korea, or Saudi Arabia, they mean a change in the leadership and policies of each of those respective countries to be less oppressive to its citizens. But the anti-Israel group isn’t calling for a new Israeli government that will be less oppresive to Israeli citizens; they are calling for the abolishment and removal of the country. It’s not at all the same. The pro-Palestinian position is more like demanding that Nicaragua be dissolved and all the territory given to Costa Rica.
You have a military power that subjugates a group of people.
Why do anti-Zionists think Israel is so militaristic? Because Jews are inherently violent?
Because Israel defends itself.
Not only defends itself, but defends itself against avowedly genocidal enemies. Yes, that’s what I was alluding to. 😉
This reminds me of an article written by a college student who decried the “oppressive” actions of a pair of FEMEN protesters who disrupted a gathering of Muslim women in Paris a few years back.
The disrupted session was led by a pair of male clerics who were debating the question of whether religious law allowed a husband to physically discipline his wife.
The latter detail, as well as the harsh treatment meted out to the protesters, was strangely absent from the piece, as was the fact that the women. whom the author accused of engaging in “white feminist” politics, were both of Middle Eastern descent.
The selective quoting of facts and willingness to dismiss criticism in the name of intersectionality is abundantly evident in the article, as it is in the recent disruptions of Pride parades and the controversy over the Star of David.
The article is here: http://dailyorange.com/2015/09/colvin-organizations-anti-religion-agenda-oppresses-excludes-women/
I would add that the actions of the students at Evergreen and the organizers of the Dyke March, as well as their reactions to the vitriolic criticisms from across the political spectrum, reveal just how insular many members of the far left have become.
That these incidents are increasingly covered in the mainstream press is encouraging, though I don’t see any indication that the tide has turned.
‘No walls anywhere’ is this year’s of ‘All lives matter.’ There’s no place on the Left for expressions of universal concern.
Good point.
Yes, it is important to keep up with the latest fad.
There is an under-appreciated “Doublespeak Award” put out each year by the National Council of Teachers of English.
Anyone can nominate a candidate, though the winners are more frequently conservative. (Bill Clinton and Rahm Emmanuel got the award though).
See basic info here
http://www.ncte.org/volunteer/groups/publiclangcom/doublespeakaward
See a list of previous recipients here:
http://www.ncte.org/library/NCTEFiles/Involved/Volunteer/Appointed_Groups/Past_Recipients_Doublespeak_Award.pdf
So does Alexis Martinez deserve a nomination??
I’ve read Kimberlé Crenshaws 1991 “intersectionality” paper, and ever since find myself in the odd situation of having to defend her work — even though I disagree with her premise.
The trouble is – as I wrote in some comment before – the ardent followers of “Intersectionality” have no clue what she actually proposed. Maybe the concept underwent revision. But even in that case, you couldn’t tell that from anything. The Usual Suspects, from Freethought Blogs to the withering Orbit blogs, or at Everyday Feminism, which consider themselves “intersectionalists” never produced anything enlightening. As with Christians, it’s usually the opponents who seem to know more about the creed of the believers than they themselves do.
I found this to be one of the most bizarre insights of the recent years: there is actually a kind of movement, which is highly influential, who advocate for an idea, and they consistently misrepresent it! Of course, my first reaction was that I must have misunderstood them, or Crenshaw. I felt what they would call “gaslighted” for a while.
It makes no sense why a whole movement follows some concept they don’t understand. But she’s clear, and doesn’t write in postmodernist prose. It makes sense once you look at the “intersectional” believers, who are famous for their “Educate Yourself” mantra, and their call-out-culture, which ironically leads to the discovery that their movement is made of illiterate imbeciles who didn’t even read their own Bible. They are micro-cults, each occupying some comment section or a corner of the social network and all their knowledge is acquired through community osmosis. There is most incentive to “fit in”, but none to argue.
Saying that a whole movement got it wrong is of course a bold claim, too. Rather, I think of this as Intersectionality “Version 2”, a new idea that only borrowed the name and some vague themes, but ran off into the opposite, dumbed-down, direction. Related to this, Social Justice Warriors often also claim their views are backed by science, or at least originate in social science or related fields in the humanities. This is also wrong.
Instead, the entire ideology emerged from Harvard Law school, and is a reaction to the “narrative” of the Civil Rights Movement which Critical Race Theory scholars view as failed. This is also the reason why they appear to be racists themselves to normal people, who grew up with Martin Luther King Jr. “not be judged by the color of their skin” ideals, and the image of America as a Melting Pot.
Instead, their idea is that people always see colour, but denying this was “color-blindness” and somehow racist. The Melting Pot is, likewise, turned into the opposite, and cast be them as an oppressive idea, a micro-aggression and pretence for Cultural Appropriation. Their strategy has been to also make white people aware that they have colour, too, which is why the Social Justice Warrior offshoots today are obsessed with “whiteness” and “check your privilege” (which, in turn, has empowered genuine White Supremacists, and led to Alt Right and CTRL Left feeding each other).
So what’s original Intersectionality? Here’s the big Irony Nuke: it’s somewhat similar to what the Opponents of “Version 2” are saying! (i.e. “we” here) Wait what!?
As an example, take Vegetarianism. Picture a situation where Richard Dawkins says “don’t eat pork” and suddenly a faction of self-proclaimed “Vegetarians” arise who viciously attack Dawkins for what he said. After a while, it turns out their version of “Vegetarianism” has come for some eccentric reason to mean the exact opposite, advocacy to eat meat – and this is the reason they hate Dawkins: somehow they managed to turn the idea into the opposite, but are not even aware of it.
Basically, Richard Dawkins’ “Dear Muslima” was in the spirit of original Intersectionality, but the self-proclaimed “Intersectionalists” (of Version 2) attacked him for it. You cannot get any more ironic than that, since his response has largely mobilized the Intersectionality Version 2 faction in Atheism, too.
So what does Crenshaw actually write? Here’s a representative quotation from her (1991):
In a sense, Crenshaw can be read as a criticism of the Regressives of their day. Much like how Regressives today defend Islam, and thereby perpetuate oppression of “Dear Muslimas” even though these women sit at the intersection of both patriarchal, and islamic oppression (hence the name!). As back then, the fear of helping bigots, or looking like them, somehow make Regressives shy away of that subject, and which is exactly why Crenshaw wrote her paper in the first place. The big irony is that it somehow came to name the ideology it was meant to combat.
What seemed to have happened, and this is my idea only, that established discourse around feminism and anti-racism won. Identity politics together with some basic Critical Race Theory framework (the idea that everyone but white males are oppressed) has apparently led to a dumbed-down version, which is akin to “minorities, unite against the oppressors! (but let’s not melt and mingle)” and by that way, they are an identical copy of Right Wing identitarianism. And by that view, I don’t regard the Regressives as left wing. They are basically an offshot of the “Identitarian Movement” of the Right, and are largely complementary to it (though I admit that this take is eccentric, but not unfounded).
This is why, to me, the Freethought Blogs etc. people are right wingers. The impression gets even stronger when you consider their almost puritanical attitudes, as well as their obvious concern for “safety” (as in “save spaces”), complete with calls for law and order (just an alternative version). People like Sarkeesian are a mirror image of Right Wing moral police of earlier generations. And Regressives who defend islam, defend its most patriarchal and orthodox elements.
Fascinating. Thanks for the analysis.
Could you elaborate on this a little?
Did Critical Race Theory really emerge from Harvard Law School?
Yes, one of the founders, Richard Delgado wrote (Delgado & Stefancic, 2006)
Not only has it little to do with science, unlike what proponents (who usually don’t even know that their ideology is CRT), it also explicitly “questions the very foundations of the liberal order, including equality theory, legal reasoning, Enlightenment rationalism,”
This leads to the second screaming irony, how a large faction generally located within the Enlightenment tradition, out of atheism-skepticism, has not only come to embrace this (and there are many, many thorns that follow from this), but in the process also convinced each other that their ideas are somehow grounded or compatible with science and enlightenment values.
Regressive ideology does not merely look like anti-Enlightenment, and anti-science: it says so in their very manual! (this is taken from the introduction to CRT).
Lots of annoyance could have been averted if certain blogging “names” had bothered to research the ideas they came to promote. They could have went their own way, and not f*cked up progressive causes with their deluded ideas, they, on top, not even understand.
At least Delgado and the likes, while card-carrying postmodern censors, are straightforward and tell you what they think. He’s not a bully, and even though I disagree with Crenshaw, et al on their postmodern premises and several of their tenets, I sympathize with many of their aims.
Another stark difference is that they also care about class and poverty, while the typical SJW does not.
Unlike traditional civil rights, which embraces incrementalism and step-by-step progress, critical race theory questions the very foundations of the liberal order, including equality theory, legal reasoning, Enlightenment rationalism, and neutral principles of constitutional law.
Yes, this is the part that keeps rearing its ugly head. It’s the dark undercurrent flowing beneath modern “progressivism.”
Another stark difference is that they also care about class and poverty, while the typical SJW does not.
I’m no fan of Marx, but I have to admit he had some good points about the downsides to capitalism. Which is why it’s so remarkable that the modern political movement resembling Marxism has so little to say about the relationship between labor and capital, and why its paragons are so often ensconced in the well-educated “gentry” class.
“Which is why it’s so remarkable that the modern political movement resembling Marxism has so little to say about the relationship between labor and capital, and why its paragons are so often ensconced in the well-educated “gentry” class.”
The second point demonstrates why the first is true. They have created a system whereby you gain power to have rights and social capital based on the supposed oppression of your group (leaving out groups they don’t like, of course, such as…I don’t know…Jews). In order for them to maintain their rights and social capital within this system, the must completely ignore the role that money plays. The people that learn, use, and teach this system are nearly all ensconced in academia or some other life that is largely comfortable monetarily. Nearly every one of them lives a financially comfortable life. And multiple studies have shown that the number one factor regarding whether or not you’ll be able to live comfortably, have what you need, and not face constant life stress is money. Taking financial comfort into account would completely kill the victim/oppression narrative for the vast majority of them.
Brian Leiter, Noam Chomsky and Susan Haack have all said in various ways that a lot of the “oppressed-er than thou” people are ignoring class. I agree too.
Intersectionality 1.0 is valid. If you are a Muslim and a woman then you get doubly shafted. Intersectionality 2.0 doesn’t recognise how sex and race (among other factors) interact. Instead one factor trumps the other so while feminists should be fighting for the rights of (for instance) Muslim women on both the axes of race and gender, race trumps sexism so they’ll fight Whitey for the Muslim identity while ignoring how Islam oppressed women.
This incidentally is why you’ll find so many very privileged first world white women who trade exclusively on their woman status. Sure, they’ve never faced real oppression in their lives, but some women have, and they are also women, ergo by the transitive property of suffering they are also oppressed.
This also gets turned around to ignore the problems of the poor and destitute if they happen to be white men. Surely that homeless guy’s white privilege will keep him warm in the winter.
Nice.
I was just revisiting Elevatorgate in another comments section in response to Sarkeesian’s attack from pulpit as an ‘invited speaker’.
Shades of Rebeccaa Watson ‘calling out’ Stef McGraw, from the pulpit. An act, which to my mind was the real kick starter of Elevatorgate.
Dear Muslima brought a big name to it and both things prompted PZ Myers to open his mouth, and start the big collapse.
Nice clarification and summary of intersectional. I was wondering if it was a corruption born of ignorance like so much is.
Well said.
Elevatorgate has a nested structure, where people at the time had only limited information. But it is remarkable how consistently mispresented the events are even on such sites as KnowYourMeme, Wikipedia or RationalWiki.
The order of events, with surrounding comtroversy is (1) elevator incident, (2) video talking about 1, (3) reply videos and limited discussion of (2), and then (4) Watson’s CFI talk, which introduces everything to a wider public. “Naming names” was on 4, so was Smith’s “bad form”. The trouble is that these initial comments were written based on witness accounts and buzz, as the video of the CFI event was released only a month or so later.
This, in turn, also obscured the actual “inciting incident” if there was one. Notably, Watson herself pushed it off-the-charts and over the cliff, not only by bringing this to stage, but by turning an awkward double entendre and some limited discussion about it into a matter of rape culture, including accusing everyone they’d also “laugh down” rape victims (!) who’d stand up for themselves.
Dawkins, as almost everyone, including PZ Myers did not know this part then! (most still never learned it, because it was consistently supressed. But it did upset those who saw it. Dawkins reacted to a community that was in flame war over seemingly nothing (as it appeared then) – and it was that, which gave the Regressives the leverage to spin it into a “white male” essentially dismissing “rape culture”. This led to Watson’s boycott, which led Myers into a state of denial, and all of them departed into their Alternate Reality.
I only learned of this much later, and was amazed how wrong the “movement” is typically on all of this, indicating that skeptics don’t do the research (this is not limited to sides. You still see big names, “anti-SJWs” on YT who describe Elevatorgate as about coffee in a lift, which is the least important aspect of it).
Yep. The real story is lost to many on both sides.
And, Dawkins had been listening to Watson’s particular brand of criticism of ‘the movement’ for some time at and around the World Atheist Convention and I think he was already sick of her. (So I hear)
Speculation: I think, their animosity started earlier indeed. Watson was not invited to the panel where many known women of the movement were discussing “women in atheism”. I think that hurt Watson’s pride, for she had her “SkepChick” brand going and wasn’t invited to this. So, when she sat next to Dawkins on another panel, she suddenly commented on the previous panel (where she wasn’t invited), and also managed to criticize Paula Kirby — a friend of Dawkins. Perhaps this made it easy for her to burn bridges later on, in a seemingly costly ritual (SJWism is about such things, to signal commitment to the cause).
It also allowed her to carve out her niche as the first “go-to” feminist. And it worked, for in the following years, this faction was (in my perception) the mainstream and practically THE atheist-skeptics movement: routinely went to conferences, dozens of them as speakers, etc.
I have no good opinion of most organizations and big names, because they went along, supported this, and when they eventually turned their backs on them (as it seemed to have happened), they did it quietly, never apologized, never set the record straight. They just moved on.
I am not quite sure who you are referring to as the big names and big organisations and who they support.
As far as my anecdote being, Speculation, yes it is, but, I saw a video shortly after the dear Muslima letter that gave me some clues. Perhaps you have seen it?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EyMTI7MoWck.
Kirby gets a mention and I was aware of her too.
It is pleasing to discuss this with someone who has dug beneath the surface and knows the real story..
As you say, so many from all sides get it quite wrong.
Sorry for the full bore insert.
Oh, I forgot to mention, I was right there.
I remember listening to Rosie St. Clair’s video right then.
Why not bring up politics at all except where people oppress the LGBTQ? I would have done the same thing. If you say something, I’m going to comment back because I want others to hear what I think is right. So why not avoid all that?
Of course, because counties with brown people harm the LGBTQ, that would not be allowed.
Sad that intersectionslith divided when the movements it is part of seek to bring together.
Oh and sub 🏳️🌈
Well as Jerry says, this doesn’t seem to have been a pure LGBTQ event. It was a “LGBTQ + Pro-Palestine” event.
You’re right, of course, that a smart way to go would’ve been to avoid all that by making it a “LGBTQ” event without the added on politics. Far better to have people sporting a rainbow flag with a Star of David on it marching hand in hand with Pro-Palestinians sporting a rainbow flag, than having the two groups disrupt the event by yelling at each other.
“Because for them, “intersectionality” puts being brown (i.e., Palestinian) higher than being gay in the Scale of Oppression. What a confused pride of people!”
For me, the canary in the proverbial mine, was Cologne. Clearly you saw that “intersectionality” meant that the sanctity of refugee reputation was superordinate to that of the molested women.
I have relayed that to many other gay and straight people who are on the left, and have been mocked.
(BTW, I first read of Israel as sanctuary for Arab and Palestinian gays back in the 1970s.)
Cologne the canary? Was it not clear much earlier? Even before Dawkins’ “Muslima” tweet? It is difficult with hindsight to honestly assess when it actually became clear, but I think it was clear for at least a decade, if not more.
Some gay Muslims were accused of Islamophobia at the Pride Toronto!
http://hurryupharry.org/2017/06/30/lgbt-muslims-challenged-on-pride-march-in-toronto/#comments#disqus_thread
https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=1563094820381252&id=100000422484727&ref=bookmarks
A further note, it really seems that these individuals, like the students at Evergreen, marinate almost exclusively in their own juices.
And when an opposinhg flavor comes along, it’s hysterics, insults, threats, slurs, dissimulation or so on. But what they find hard to do is argue directly and cogently.
Sorry, meant as a reply to someone else. Please delete, Jerry.
Can anyone imagine any other Middle Eastern country being represented internationally by a trans pop star, as Israel was in the 90s? Or even allowing Pride marches?
“And there you have it, ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters: you see how far the termites have gone, and how well they’ve dined.”
Yeah, I miss him too.
🙁