a comrade in em_poc called the site hexboer and it’s accurate tbh
Fascism is apparently just a “wrong position”.
Libs need to suck lemons till their faces collapse inwards, I swear.
I’m going to take a shot in the dark here and speculate that this wouldn’t line up with their position on China abstaining from a certain UN vote on Palestine.
Doesn’t apply here as much at all but generally I’m not sure why people are debating either or not blowback is going to pick and choose on definitions of targets when in reality, most westerners are settlers and there are many more that are zionist. Settlers and zionists are fair game when it comes to the blowback that is going to occur when you bomb the fuck out of the world and I’m not going to cry when zionists or settlers of any caliber are taken out by a part of the global resistance who has complete and total reason to after years of being literally bombed.
It’s okay to be uncomfortable with that though; but pretending there is some “moral superiority” because you’re condemning what is simply the consequences of the West’s actions. You can condemn it all you want, doesn’t change that the U.S and the West is still going to do the things that cause this. I’m not going to get sad about a Zionist organization getting destroyed or attacked either, just sad for anyone who was simply going there without any “political purpose” getting hurt or killed in these events.
I wonder how many peaceful protests failures western leftists need to understand that change doesn’t come without force.
I’m a bystander, but, for context, the above response is from a longtime hexbear user who opposes the genocide and Zionism, but also opposed the alleged attempted attack against a US Zionist synagogue by a man whose family was recently murdered by Zionists in Lebanon.
My own feeling is that this topic is almost perfectly triangulated to generate hot takes and intractable arguments – we are basically asking, “should you defend attacks against American civilian religious centers that provide material support to an ongoing Zionist genocide, which has already killed hundreds of thousands of victims, even if such attacks are unlikely to slow the genocide and are likely to harm children?”
Ultimately, what is the point of fighting about that, especially in a heated and off-the-cuff manner? It’s so emotionally charged and sensitive that you are just going to get sucked into defending yourself by attacking the other side, and vice versa, in an endless feedback loop, until you hate each other and it poisons the community around you, all for what benefit? You either defend an ineffective tactic or condemn a grief-stricken victim of fascists?
Maybe I’m in the wrong here, but my feeling is, if you think there’s a valuable point to make, please recognize the potential pitfalls of this topic and discuss it patiently and diplomatically, if not for the other party’s sake than at least for the sake of the community.
I hate drama posts like this that are just posting a comment someone made on this site, but your read is wrong here. As someone who tried going back and forth with the user in question, they do not oppose Zionism. Their entire playbook is redefining words, ignoring any sort of question or challenge, and watering everything down into vague ideals. You can look through their post history if you want to spend the time, but your assessment of their beliefs does not match what they say.
Edit: I guess I should say that I agree with the rest of your comment. I didn’t engage them on the synagogue attack because I also believe it’s worthless to discuss. But they were also directly excusing AND denying the Zionism of the temple in question.
I’m happy to learn you think talking about this is worthless because it interferes with the movie-watching party.
I have no idea of this is supposed to be a joke or something but I’ll just say:
Ya.
It’s terrible how the tricky news media fooled people into revealing they don’t think Zionist synagogues and the majority of the Jewish American public that supports the existence of Israel as a state are complicit in genocide. In fact, every single person with even limited autonomy in the core is complicit, particularly if they provide distractions in the form of incompetent, performative “solutions”. For additional context, the man’s family was killed in Lebanon, and he harmed nobody, unless you count a security guard with minor damage and cops getting smoke inhalation, which I personally don’t. It wasn’t a mass shooting at all, I meant to contrast the liberal and conservative methods of being as useless as possible, as publicly as possible.
Unfortunately such antics still hold water with Iranian media, in spite of my best efforts. Respond to my emails, Mister Ayatollah! We don’t need interviews from US veterans, or parliamentary speakers who only realized they can’t triangulate the empire’s satraps against it last week. The protestors did nothing, they provided less solidarity than online “communities”, and most continued to buy Burger KKKing.
My recommendation is, don’t get caught up in needing to have the precisely correct moral judgment on it in the first place. If you’re speaking for an org and trying to figure out if there’s a stance you need to publicly take to further your messaging, that’s one thing. But as a random individual, especially on the internet? Not really.
Instead, you can focus on the realities of cause and effect, and where it comes from. (As the story goes so far, assuming the reported details are accurate): A man whose family was killed by israeli forces attacking what he perceives as an extension of israel should not be shocking to anyone. Nor should it be confused with anti-semitism or seen as support for it without explicit evidence for such (but israel would sure love to seize on the opportunity to say it is, I’m sure!). I mean, from what I could find on the story, the place is called Temple Israel very explicitly. He doesn’t need to have had some preoccupied hatred of Jewish people to do 1+1=2 math of “entity called N killed my family, so I’m going to attack [place within reach] that shares the name N.”
It’s kind of staggering how little consequences israel has actually faced for its actions up to this point (though it’s finally facing some now, from Iran - the colonizer picked a fight with someone who is more of a peer militarily, something colonialism is not really prepared for normally). Now make that x10 for how staggering it is how little consequences the US has faced for its actions up to this point… and it still isn’t in any way that actually hits at home, because the US’s domestic occupied territory (stolen from the indigenous - what a surprise it would be supporting israel) is not based in the same region as Iran. Though the US might finally start to feel some consequences via oil prices if this goes on as Iran seems to plan for it to.
Note: This is not to say “detach yourself from thinking about morals” or something. Just that the anti-imperialism struggle can get complicated fast if you’re trying to solely judge it from a moral parity perspective. Some people get tripped up by this such as when feel they must hate what Russia is doing because it’s run by capitalists even though it is currently playing a pivotal role in opposing the unipolar western imperial domination. Sometimes “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” has real truth to it (provided they actually behave like one, not just opportunistically). The rest can be wrestled with when the primary threat is not bearing down with guns blazing.
Referring to analyzing the material links between first world countries as “moral judgment” is certainly a choice.
??? How is that the takeaway you got from what I said?
It isn’t a moral judgment to say they’re responsible for the genocide. Without Americans none of this could happen. I just take issue with the phrasing, I’m sure the intent is fine. The smoothie of idealism and Marxist terminology coming from US orgs unsettles me. The language veers towards “the world must stop this” when they are at fault.
When I mentioned “moral judgment”, I was referring specifically to having a take on every news story that comes out, in this case, a person who attacked a synagogue. It is hard to put things into words sometimes, but the general idea was to warn someone against getting tripped up by imperialist tactics where they try to place you in a box of good and bad because you didn’t “condemn violence” or something.
Imagine a scenario like the following:
“So I heard about this guy who ran a truck into a synagogue. Pretty anti-semitic, right? What a depraved, violent act.”
“Yes, I condemn violence and anti-semitism, but [insert stuff about israel committing genocide and so on].”
This kind of thing was happening earlier in the days of the genocide against Palestine being so publicly known. The infamous “do you condemn Hamas” line. Could still be happening now. Sometimes the best thing you can do, in my estimation, is sweep that aside and focus on why these things are happening, which pushes the empire narrative on its backfoot because it is the cause via its horrific violence - and yes, that includes genocide.
So then it can become more like:
“So I heard about this guy who ran a truck into a synagogue. Pretty anti-semitic, right? What a depraved, violent act.”
“As far as I can tell, he didn’t even end up killing anyone and his family in Lebanon had recently been murdered by israel. Sounds like consequences of actions to me. Cause and effect.”
“But do you condemn him?”
“Why are we discussing a guy who didn’t even end up killing anyone when israel is continuing to commit genocide?”
Does that make sense?
Well maybe people could attempt analysis instead of mindlessly regurgitating their favorite riffs on events. It’s actually good for everyone to be involved in this rather than traipsing after media and “content creators”, it develops mental skills and motivates them to learn about the world. It can be positive social activity, but you won’t get that in America, so you tend to assume it’s worthless for anyone to give their take. You just need higher standards for discussion. Discussion and academic/industry knowledge should proliferate among workers, demystifying current events and production. This is why CNET is so powerful.
I’m tired of hearing variations of “the news is sad and divides people” from those who refuse to expand their sources beyond what is aggregated to them.
IME, people on the grad do in fact tend to try to do a material analysis of events and not take what sources say uncritically, both of which are important. It doesn’t always play out that way, but there is a culture here of encouraging it. It would be better if this kind of culture was more common in western “discourse”, but it doesn’t come from magic on the grad. As far as I can tell, it comes primarily from a combination of clarity in ideological line and a decent working understanding of dialectical and historical materialism overall (some are more clear on it than others). In order to practice this more generally, people need to be taught. Without the tools, they can’t analyze clearly (they will easily fall prey to things like idealism without any consciousness of an alternative, simply seeing it as “the way the world works”).
What is not important or worth the time is stepping into every land mine laid by western narratives and sources, acting like it’s a perfectly neutral and harmless framing (people are prone to doing this in part because of believing the narrative that mainstream sources are “neutral”). What is not important is westerners feeling they need to have a take on everything (nobody needs to have a take on everything, no matter the culture - sometimes we can plain learn from others who have done the work). And some westerners are especially prone to thinking they need to individually weigh in because they’re from the west (western superiority mindset).
People unthinkingly listening to X media personality or network can be a problem, but so can trying to be an island of skepticism who lurks outside reality and makes all the proper judgments by analyzing life like a chess board or something. It’s just more complicated than “have higher standards.”
Was this taken from a big thread that I missed or am I supposed to glean from half a comment what this conversation was? I mean I like social media drama as much as the next guy but this was the first post on my feed today and idk what anyone’s on about.
Don’t worry about it kitten. Not providing a link was meant to discourage dogpiling, but apparently it’s actually my evil plot to destroy the My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic community.
Rude but ok, whatever.
I just don’t want to rope everyone into it. Let me rope you into Samir Amin’s writing. He would frown upon most of my antics. One of the greatest communicators.
