Old School Left Calls For End To Cancel Culture Of The New McCarthyist Left - Page 8 - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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#15107912
ckaihatsu wrote:
No, I'm not moralizing -- I keep focusing on the dynamic of 'balance-of-power', which is an *empirical* quality, and has nothing to do with my own sense of 'morality', or personal opinionating in any way.

You're going off on a tangent of *irrelevance*, to overly focus on the Cast Lead period in particular, without advancing any political point, position, or politics for such, while *ignoring* the overall historic power relations.



wat0n wrote:
Not really, the figures span from 2000 to nowadays. But denial is easier.



Here you're merely nit-picking, only mentioning the *timeframe*, and ignoring the overall Palestinian-struggle issue itself.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
Has Israel been able to exercise its political will more readily, against the interests of Palestinians, moreso than vice-versa?



wat0n wrote:
Yes, but the latter still get plenty of support and protection from other countries.



ckaihatsu wrote:
Oh, you think this is all a *popularity contest*. No, politics doesn't work that way.



wat0n wrote:
It's not about popularity, simply a protection that does constrain Israeli actions there - such as the proposed annexation law that so far is just that, a proposal. Isn't that a form of soft power?



Okay, so you're acknowledging that there's a power relation, and that Israel can 'propose' yet-another land annexation, while the Palestinians can't exactly 'propose' getting their land back.


---


wat0n wrote:
Even during the French Revolution, there were fence sitters. Oh, and let's not forget the most dangerous counter-revolutionaries: The disenchanted, those who feel the Revolution was a sham and become rabid counter-revolutionaries.



ckaihatsu wrote:
Source, please. Who are you talking about, exactly, when you say 'the disenchanted'?

(My point stands that revolution is a profoundly *polarizing* event and that people don't really 'sit-out' a revolution.)



wat0n wrote:
I'm referring to people who desert the revolution.



You're mixing *two definitions* together -- the 'disenchanted', and active counterrevolutionaries.

Not all who are 'fence-sitters', or are not-supportive of a revolution in-progress, are automatically *counterrevolutionaries*. They simply can not-oppose, as many people have done regarding Black Lives Matter protests, and then the movement takes its course, according to the collective actions of active *participants*, while those who sideline themselves are simply not-active, and non-deterministic.
#15107915
ckaihatsu wrote:Here you're merely nit-picking, only mentioning the *timeframe*, and ignoring the overall Palestinian-struggle issue itself.


I'm simply correcting you on the facts, and what does it say about how they conduct their struggle that they are killing civilians at a greater rate than Israel is? I'll tell you: It signals that they are weak, not that they are beacons of morality.

ckaihatsu wrote:Okay, so you're acknowledging that there's a power relation, and that Israel can 'propose' yet-another land annexation, while the Palestinians can't exactly 'propose' getting their land back.


Of course they can propose that, they can even try to fight for the destruction of Israel and the ethnic cleansing of the Jewish population there (as some do), but that doesn't mean they will get what they want without facing pushback.

ckaihatsu wrote:You're mixing *two definitions* together -- the 'disenchanted', and active counterrevolutionaries.

Not all who are 'fence-sitters', or are not-supportive of a revolution in-progress, are automatically *counterrevolutionaries*. They simply can not-oppose, as many people have done regarding Black Lives Matter protests, and then the movement takes its course, according to the collective actions of active *participants*, while those who sideline themselves are simply not-active, and non-deterministic.


But that "not-oppose" position can quickly change depending on how the self-declared revolutionaries behave. If they start messing with them, if the fence-sitters start to regard that the revolutionaries are going too far and that they are threatening whatever they regard as their rights or their personal and economic safety, people who are currently fence-sitters will stop being so and will begin to oppose the revolutionaries. Why else do you think that the Russian Revolution eventually took its stalinist turn?
#15107928
Unthinking Majority wrote:You're creating a whole bunch of strawmen. Making a joke is a lot different that a tweet from the professor seeming pretty serious about wanting Israelis to die.


No. I am anti-censorship in art, unless something is illegal, like seriously threatening someone's life.


No, another pair of strawmen. Are you done now?

These weren't strawmen at all. They are the same kind of use of "dying, death" in sentences that dramatize the point that the author-speaker is making.

The point I was trying to make...

It's not the words that these people have used, it's the platform on which they expressed themselves. In the days before Twitter-Facebook etc., people used to talk politics face-to-face, and they were able to do this with a great deal of freedom. That's how we all got used to saying things like "I'm dying for avocado salad," even though they contain a reference to someone's death.

In the current age, people are unable to communicate face to face much anymore, so everything gets written onto the Internet where each word can be treated like a major publication that reaches billions of viewers. So lawyers working for whatever cause are able to create misery out of words that were used to express an idea.

Meanwhile, Hollywood and TV have been cleverly encoding racism against non-white, non-Jewish groups for my entire lifetime, and all they ever got out of it was ... rich and famous.

This demonstrates how much of our "feelings about stuff" have been manufactured by the oligarchs of culture.
#15107930
wat0n wrote:
I'm simply correcting you on the facts, and what does it say about how they conduct their struggle that they are killing civilians at a greater rate than Israel is? I'll tell you: It signals that they are weak, not that they are beacons of morality.



You're *lying*, as is demonstrably evident, based on the stats I posted previously:



Israelis and Palestinians Killed

September 29, 2000 - Present

Image

Chart showing that 6 times more Palestinians have been killed than Israelis.
1,270 Israelis and at least 10,001 Palestinians have been killed since September 29, 2000. (View Sources & More Information)

https://ifamericansknew.org



viewtopic.php?p=15107520#p15107520



---


wat0n wrote:
Of course they can propose that, they can even try to fight for the destruction of Israel and the ethnic cleansing of the Jewish population there (as some do), but that doesn't mean they will get what they want without facing pushback.



'Pushback' isn't the correct term to use, because Israel has *already* pushed Palestinians off their land.

Why don't you address the *existing* ethnic cleansing of *Palestinians*?


wat0n wrote:
But that "not-oppose" position can quickly change depending on how the self-declared revolutionaries behave. If they start messing with them, if the fence-sitters start to regard that the revolutionaries are going too far and that they are threatening whatever they regard as their rights or their personal and economic safety, people who are currently fence-sitters will stop being so and will begin to oppose the revolutionaries. Why else do you think that the Russian Revolution eventually took its stalinist turn?



Bad example -- the counterrevolutionary Whites were already pro-Western-imperialism.
#15107935
ckaihatsu wrote:You're *lying*, as is demonstrably evident, based on the stats I posted previously:


No, I cited BTselem's statistics, hardly a pro-Israel organization. Your graph doesn't break the casualties by whether they are civilians or not, opening them up by that paints a rather unflattering picture doesn't it?

ckaihatsu wrote:'Pushback' isn't the correct term to use, because Israel has *already* pushed Palestinians off their land.

Why don't you address the *existing* ethnic cleansing of *Palestinians*?


Because it's not a thing, and under those standards there has also been an ethnic cleansing of Jews throughout the conflict. Any other questions?

ckaihatsu wrote:Bad example -- the counterrevolutionary Whites were already pro-Western-imperialism.


So?
#15107941
wat0n wrote:
No, I cited BTselem's statistics, hardly a pro-Israel organization. Your graph doesn't break the casualties by whether they are civilians or not, opening them up by that paints a rather unflattering picture doesn't it?



I *wish* that's all it took, but here's the more *comprehensive* picture, including *all* deaths, from the same source:


Image


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli%E ... %80%932011



---


wat0n wrote:
Because it's not a thing. Any other questions?



Well, it *is* -- see the disproportionate numbers of Palestinians killed, versus Israelis killed, at the graph above.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
You're mixing *two definitions* together -- the 'disenchanted', and active counterrevolutionaries.

Not all who are 'fence-sitters', or are not-supportive of a revolution in-progress, are automatically *counterrevolutionaries*. They simply can not-oppose, as many people have done regarding Black Lives Matter protests, and then the movement takes its course, according to the collective actions of active *participants*, while those who sideline themselves are simply not-active, and non-deterministic.



wat0n wrote:
But that "not-oppose" position can quickly change depending on how the self-declared revolutionaries behave. If they start messing with them, if the fence-sitters start to regard that the revolutionaries are going too far and that they are threatening whatever they regard as their rights or their personal and economic safety, people who are currently fence-sitters will stop being so and will begin to oppose the revolutionaries. Why else do you think that the Russian Revolution eventually took its stalinist turn?



ckaihatsu wrote:
Bad example -- the counterrevolutionary Whites were already pro-Western-imperialism.



wat0n wrote:
So?



So your point is *invalid* because there *were* no fence-sitters-turned-counterrevolutionary in the Russian Revolution. The counterrevolutionary Whites were *already* on the side of pro-Western imperialism.
#15107944
ckaihatsu wrote:I *wish* that's all it took, but here's the more *comprehensive* picture, including *all* deaths, from the same source:


Image


What does it say about the civilian/military breakdown?

ckaihatsu wrote:Well, it *is* -- see the disproportionate numbers of Palestinians killed, versus Israelis killed, at the graph above.


Again, that doesn't mean much. If you want we can discuss the ratio between revolutionaries and counterrevolutionaries killed during the Russian or Cuban revolutions and you can tell me which side is morally better based on this reasoning :|

ckaihatsu wrote:So your point is *invalid* because there *were* no fence-sitters-turned-counterrevolutionary in the Russian Revolution. The counterrevolutionary Whites were *already* on the side of pro-Western imperialism.


I guess that's why original Marxist theory of permanent revolution was never applied. Then you are surprised to see Stalinism eventually took hold there :roll:
Last edited by wat0n on 16 Jul 2020 16:56, edited 1 time in total.
#15107945
Verv wrote:While I am against cancel culture, Bari Weiss is literally the worst poster child for this.


That's what made the initial letter hilarious, someone like Weiss being a signatory, despite going out of her way to push out a professor from Columbia University because her extreme Zionism didn't like to hear the reality about Palestine being taught. Thankfully, this professor, Dr Joseph Massad, didn't suffer the same fate as Dr Norman Finkelstein or Dr Steven Salaita, who lost their careers as teachers for defending Palestinian human rights.

Pants-of-dog wrote:Is cancel culture the same as blacklisting?


No, here it's mainly Zionists and Neocons whining because they get push-back for their racism and extremist political views, e.g. Bari Weiss.

Real cancel culture or blacklisting is stuff like The Canary Mission, an org that makes profiles of students, teachers and orgs, who, mainly, have been vocal about racist Zionist oppression against Palestinians. Like what happened to the professors as mentioned above. That's the real cancel culture. But as it is with dealing with Zionists, their MO is projection nearly every time; they are the victims and not the oppressors, they are the ones being cancelled, not doing the blacklisting and destruction of careers. Of course, only a fool or Zionist would believe this shit.

And worst of all, they're the ones who love antisemitism. For example, Israel is very good friends with fascist and antisemitic governments today, such as India, Brazil, Hungary and Saudi Arabia. The history of Zionism's collaboration with anti-Semites is in this article below.





ckaihatsu wrote:Why don't you address the *existing* ethnic cleansing of *Palestinians*?


Of course he won't. If it's not on the MSM, it doesn't exist, even though there are videos every few weeks online showing Zionists literally bulldozing homes of Palestinians and pushing them further out of what little land they had left (22% of their country). This reality on the ground of ethnic cleansing of Palestinians very much exists and has been ongoing for about a century. But Zionists / people like wat0n ignore it entirely and then try to place Palestinian oppression and Zionist supremacy on par. It would be hilarious if it wasn't so racist and savage. He is not a serious person. He's here to hone his awful arguments, you see. This is all a game for him.
#15107948
skinster wrote:Of course he won't. If it's not on the MSM, it doesn't exist, even though there are videos every few weeks online showing Zionists literally bulldozing homes of Palestinians and pushing them further out of what little land they had left (22% of their country). This reality on the ground of ethnic cleansing of Palestinians very much exists and has been ongoing for about a century. But Zionists / people like wat0n ignore it entirely and then try to place Palestinian oppression and Zionist supremacy on par. It would be hilarious if it wasn't so racist and savage. He is not a serious person. He's here to hone his awful arguments, you see. This is all a game for him.


What I find hilarious is to see you spewing your usual racism courtesy of Twitter (because you can't do any better), while pretending to be antirracist. When your racism is noted (like your defense of Bashar al Assad's fascist regime) you just get mad and throw your tantrum like all snowflakes do.
#15107953
skinster wrote:It's clear to everyone on this board that I'm not racist, including Zionists. But lol at your attempts to paint me like you. What did I say about Zionists and projection? This is exhibit 358. Own your shit, pussy. :lol:


Your ethnicity-based double standards don't lie here, regardless of whatever your buddies say. Neither does your constant projection of your own racism for that matter.

I hope you enjoy defending the Assad regime's systemic racism against non-Arab minorities, such as Kurds.

skinster wrote:Also, thanks for repeatedly reminding me you don't know how to click links to articles via Twitter. :lol:


Why do I suspect you don't ever read them and simply find a Tweet, and then just repeat it here? :roll:
#15107956
wat0n wrote:
What does it say about the civilian/military breakdown?



Go and discern that yourself.


wat0n wrote:
Again, that doesn't mean much. If you want we can discuss the ratio between revolutionaries and counterrevolutionaries killed during the Russian or Cuban revolutions and you can tell me which side is morally better based on this reasoning :|



Well, now you're going off on a tangent which also happens to be a poor metaphor, or comparison.

The graph I provided clearly shows who the *victims* of Israeli settler-colonialism are.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
So your point is *invalid* because there *were* no fence-sitters-turned-counterrevolutionary in the Russian Revolution. The counterrevolutionary Whites were *already* on the side of pro-Western imperialism.



wat0n wrote:
I guess that's why original Marxist theory of permanent revolution was never applied. Then you are surprised to see Stalinism eventually took hold there :roll:



Hmmmm, you're showing your lack of knowledge -- Trotsky's 'Permanent Revolution' isn't part of 'original Marxism'. I doubt you even know what it means -- you're just throwing it out there, like name-dropping.

Your point is still invalid. Try again. (Also your *tangential* point here is invalid, too.)


skinster wrote:
Of course he won't. If it's not on the MSM, it doesn't exist, even though there are videos every few weeks online showing Zionists literally bulldozing homes of Palestinians and pushing them further out of what little land they had left (22% of their country). This reality on the ground of ethnic cleansing of Palestinians very much exists and has been ongoing for about a century. But Zionists / people like wat0n ignore it entirely and then try to place Palestinian oppression and Zionist supremacy on par. It would be hilarious if it wasn't so racist and savage. He is not a serious person. He's here to hone his awful arguments, you see. This is all a game for him.



Yup.
#15107959
ckaihatsu wrote:Go and discern that yourself.


So it says nothing, because it doesn't include that information. Hence the need to use the very same source of that graph, BTselem, which does include a breakdown - one that is omitted because it leads to uncomfortable questions.

ckaihatsu wrote:Well, now you're going off on a tangent which also happens to be a poor metaphor, or comparison.

The graph I provided clearly shows who the *victims* of Israeli settler-colonialism are.


On the contrary, I'm poking holes into your argument. It's not hard to understand that the civilian/non-civilian breakdown is important to analyze any conflict.

ckaihatsu wrote:Hmmmm, you're showing your lack of knowledge -- Trotsky's 'Permanent Revolution' isn't part of 'original Marxism'. I doubt you even know what it means -- you're just throwing it out there, like name-dropping.

Your point is still invalid. Try again. (Also your *tangential* point here is invalid, too.)


I meant this:

Karl Marx wrote:While the democratic petty bourgeois want to bring the revolution to an end as quickly as possible, achieving at most the aims already mentioned, it is our interest and our task to make the revolution permanent until all the more or less propertied classes have been driven from their ruling positions, until the proletariat has conquered state power and until the association of the proletarians has progressed sufficiently far – not only in one country but in all the leading countries of the world – that competition between the proletarians of these countries ceases and at least the decisive forces of production are concentrated in the hands of the workers.[4]


It's not hard to understand why that will antagonize many fence-sitters and lead to an overall erosion of support for any revolutionary regime in the long run.
#15107972
wat0n wrote:
So it says nothing, because it doesn't include that information. Hence the need to use the very same source of that graph, BTselem, which does include a breakdown - one that is omitted because it leads to uncomfortable questions.



There's *no ambiguity* in the balance-of-power between the Israeli state, and the Palestinian population, contrary to your positing.


wat0n wrote:
On the contrary, I'm poking holes into your argument. It's not hard to understand that the civilian/non-civilian breakdown is important to analyze any conflict.



Pass. There's no ambiguity in the situation.


wat0n wrote:
I meant this:



Okay.


wat0n wrote:
It's not hard to understand why that will antagonize many fence-sitters and lead to an overall erosion of support for any revolutionary regime in the long run.



Why are you so concerned about purported 'fence-sitters', during the time of a proletarian revolution? As I already noted, those who sit-out are de facto politically *irrelevant*.

(Maybe you think fence-sitters are like the 'swing vote' in bourgeois elections. They're not.)
#15107974
ckaihatsu wrote:There's *no ambiguity* in the balance-of-power between the Israeli state, and the Palestinian population, contrary to your positing.


I'm not speaking about balance of power, I'm speaking about ethics - which happens to be the reason why balance of powers is the issue to you, if I understand your arguments correctly.

ckaihatsu wrote:Pass. There's no ambiguity in the situation.


:roll:

ckaihatsu wrote:Why are you so concerned about purported 'fence-sitters', during the time of a proletarian revolution? As I already noted, those who sit-out are de facto politically *irrelevant*.

(Maybe you think fence-sitters are like the 'swing vote' in bourgeois elections. They're not.)


Because they can easily stop being on the fence.
#15107976
wat0n wrote:@skinster yeah, just evade and keep on evading :lol:


I didn't evade anything. Let me know what you think it was that I evaded.

And no, I'm not projecting anything. That's my inference when I see you copypasting stuff without commenting.


But I did comment. Right before the article I shared via Twitter, I mentioned the symbiotic relationship between Zionism and antisemitism and then posted an article about exactly that. This guy straight up makes shit up. :lol:

Here it is again with what I typed above it:
"The history of Zionism's collaboration with anti-Semites is in this article below."
#15107978
skinster wrote:I didn't evade anything. Let me know what you think it was that I evaded.


Why bother when you will just ignore my post when I do so and pretend it doesn't exist?

skinster wrote:But I did comment. Right before the article I shared via Twitter, I mentioned the symbiotic relationship between Zionism and antisemitism and then posted an article about exactly that. This guy straight up makes shit up. :lol:

Here it is again with what I typed above it:
"The history of Zionism's collaboration with anti-Semites is in this article below."


Your comment is simply a restatement of whatever the Tweet says.
#15107979
wat0n wrote:Why bother when you will just ignore my post when I do so and pretend it doesn't exist?


As I said, I didn't evade anything.

Your comment is simply a restatement of whatever the Tweet says.


No it doesn't. I stated "The history of Zionism's collaboration with anti-Semites is in this article below." and Ben Norton didn't say what I said, as you can read again:
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