I don't like how people free themselves with violence so I, a Westerner, am going to side with the decade long oppressor
I don't like how people free themselves with violence so I, a Westerner, am going to side with the decade long oppressor
Stupid tankies >:-(
Modern liberals: "The American Revolution was the best and most wholesome revolution ever!!!"
Liberals if they lived back then: "The colonists are using violence to gain independence, why can't they just be peaceful? They're a bunch of violence loving terrorists, I'm siding with the British Empire."
Liberals have this image in their head of a perfect victim that fights a just battle against the cinematic evil oppresive force. They'd rather support Palestinians as harmless corpses than as a liberation force killing their oppressors. And since they see events in a vacuum, they will side with the 'victims of agression' again.
well to be fair here the colonists were mainly mad at being constrained by British treaties from massacring the natives so the founding fathers are a much better map to Israel in this situation. It's also not undue to speculate that the strong abolitionist movement in Britain at the time that led to the fact Britain would ban the slave trade was a concern on some level to a colony that made its money off of slavery. infact there is some evidence that the relative popularity of abolition was a factor in the American desire to break from Britain
There are a lot of good reasons why someone might fight the British empire so it's a true testament to American ingenuity that they managed to find an evil reason
I've heard the american revolutionary war described as "Brexit but for slavery" and I feel like that really hits the nail on the head
The colonist militias did heinous shit. They massacred entire indiginous tribes "just in case" they were on the British side.
Palestinians have to be a “perfect victim” to be even the slightest bit sympathetic, and even then it’s not a guarantee.
The Palestinian struggle for liberation and self-determination is "no angel" and in this essay i will
There's a truly disgusting amount of both-sidesing on the liberal lemmys.
It's that imperialist propaganda narrative that has shrunk Palestinians to their current locations.
What yesterday's events have shown is that who gives a fuck what liberals and western "leftists" think? It doesn't matter, like at all. Push comes to shove, they see themselves in the oppressor and supporting the downtrodden is just a cultural aesthetic. And even that, they will abandon in a hurry.
Who cares, they will never support the oppressed. No one needs their lame ass permission to fight back. Spineless cowards.
A lot of the western "left" has a fetish with defeat and struggle. The moment the oppressed take things into their own hands, make advances never seen before, overthrow their oppressor, and start rebuilding post-war, the western left tends to stop giving a shit and abandon what's now has "lost its charm".
That's why critical support for AES is so low in the western left. I think it has its roots in orientalist thinking. Poor, oppressed, and revolutionary people from the global south driven into martyrdom fits their narrative, anything else is too much reality to deal with. They project onto these conflicts their desired aesthetics and what they deem a "cultured" theoretical understanding of global systems.
But dialectical thinking doesn't stop at rallies and symbolic pins, flags, posters and patches. It also means accepting the material actions being taken to achieve that. Sure, it might conflict with their ideal aesthetics. But they can't get past the disappointment. Instead, they take the disappointment as a sign of some kind of moral high ground, which is just blatant orientalism.
A lot of the western "left" has a fetish with defeat and struggle. The moment the oppressed take things into their own hands, make advances never seen before, overthrow their oppressor, and start rebuilding post-war, the western left tends to stop giving a shit and abandon what's now has "lost its charm".
I imagine for many western "leftists" in these last few days, you can see the moment that they turned from "Poor Palestinians :( being oppressed by Israel in Gaza and the West Bank, I support their struggles and protests, we need to find a solution, let's go BDS!" defeat fetishism, looking on with concealed glee as Palestinians martyred themselves in relatively non-violent protests, and turned to "Okay, the unspeakable violence of Gazans towards Israeli civilians has GOT TO STOP. We need a ceasefire now, or the Gazans will get what's coming to them!"
An evergreen quote from MLK: "First, I must confess that over the last few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Council-er or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I can't agree with your methods of direct action;" who paternalistically feels he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by the myth of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait until a "more convenient season."
You are absolutely correct.
I'd be disappointed if it wasn't so predictable. Instead I'm just disgusted.
And the disgust is mostly at the arrogance: they seem to think they have moral authority. If Israel sets off nukes, Westerners will make excuses for it.
If this liberation of the global South succeeds, the West will continue to be insist on being treated as first among equals in international discourse.
Relevant related reading: Western Marxism, the Fetish for Defeat.
Of course this isn't just relegated to Marxism though the article focuses on it. There is broadly across the west this myth of peaceful resistance, of the noble peaceful resistor, of the noble martyr whose death brought about change without ever lowering or debasing themselves to shedding blood or engaging in violence themselves. This broadly connects back to the Christ mythos, Christ a figure who was martyred so the Christian religion says to save all of humanity. He died nobly we are told because he did not call upon all the powers of heaven to smite the oppressors, because even in his dying throes of agony he screamed "father forgive them" to stall the wrath of heaven. And through his glorious, noble, peaceful, pacifist sacrifice we are told all may have eternal life through belief rather than perishing.
So the west is very obsessed with this idea and it stems from I believe this and of course is actually propagated in school teaching and so on with figures like MLK and Ghandi because it supports the hegemonic domination of the west, the submission of the proletariat, perpetuates ineffectual tactics which are handily beaten down with laughs and hands the participants trophies while regaling them with revisionist tales of how it didn't work this time but it did this other time as long as you ignore all the violence and other pressures that actually led to the victory falsely claimed in the name of non-violent, peaceful, and non-disruptive protest.
Good read. But I don't necessarily agree with the correlation of admiring defeat as a direct connection to Christianity, but rather the way the west is conditioned to find a way to win. If some Socialist movement failed, it is glorified in its failure because the hyper competitive West must extract some kind of victory. To utterly lose is to potentially admit eternal defeat and abandon a path as impossible, so already downtrodden Western leftists are keen to extract a moral victory or sense of heroic martyrdom.
Also much of what would account for leftist celebration of these failures, is actually Liberals co-opting historic evidence. For example I interpret the celebration of non-violent means that have yet to produce any revolution as simply Liberalism. If one would cheer on the status quo while dreaming of a slightly more perfect utopia, then they are going to romanticize the people that fought for a better future, only to be "cut down by reality". Liberals celebrate these people for their ideas but not their actions, unless of course their actions accounted for nothing. If they ennoble a failed leader or idea, it is because they want to celebrate the status quo crushing those who would challenge it, but admire their "heart being in the right place". Or Liberals interpret the fallen hero or movement's actions as a means for reinforcing the challenged status quo, as opposed to changing it.
It does explain some level of psychological copium that is used by Western leftists to glorify defeat, but I don't think it is the driving force behind the defeat itself. I would presume the reason Socialism doesn't get off the ground in the West is the lack of material challenge that it's populations experience by benefiting from their imperialism. No collectives form from a need for survival unlike the East and Global South that are subjected to imperialism and poverty. For these regions, Socalism is a source of strength. While for the West, Socialism is an aesthetic or higher moral purity, which is the reason it never goes anywhere. It isn't seen through the lens of survival, but often just contrarian rejection or individualistic rebellion of a system that isn't serving that persons best interests.
Though I absolutely agree with your sentiment that these ineffective tactics are hammered into children at a young age to be admired for their virtue and lack of results. But I would regard that as institutions of capital protecting themselves from any future overthrow, not because "it was what Jesus would do".
"Unless Ukraine does it, then it's so cool and heroic. No no it's very different i swear!!!!"
Absolute trash
No child and family unless they are Palestinian apparently.
social democracy is objectively the moderate wing of fascism
They don't even want housing to be built because it will reduce their home values, supporting oppressed darker skinned people is asking a bit much.
Most westerners don't understand what war is.
