3 ms·

Not all protests exist to further concrete political proposals (ex. suggestions to Hamas). Expressions of mass grief, community solidarity, and elevation of an

Not all protests exist to further concrete political proposals (ex. suggestions to Hamas). Expressions of mass grief, community solidarity, and elevation of an issue which harms your neighbors are all important outcomes for people meeting en masse. You're welcome to impute whatever motives you want onto people you disagree with, but that doesn't mean you actually understand.

mrangle 3y ago
And the lying about the nature of "Palestinian support" continues. In spite of the protest-wide evidence at virtually every demonstration.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- tech_ken 3y ago
  I suppose if I equate “retributive genocide” and “just consequences” then I can see where you’re coming from. The US made similar statements as they poured white phosphorus on Afghani children after 9/11 and I thought it was a thin argument then. I don’t find it much more convincing now. Overall I try not to lie, but given how different our experiences seem to be I’m not sure if there’s much I can say on the internet to convince you of that. Have a good one!
  - mrangle 3y ago
    Will you state that Hamas should give up as a means of ending the conflict? To test your moral and semantic consistency. Your "retributive genocide" label doesn't hold if the conflict ends as soon as Hamas is eleminated, which it would. And which they can effect in this instant by giving up. Not that people are obligated to or widely accepting of the morally and logically inconsistent labels of Hamas supporters. Hamas who began this conflict with a massive war crime. Your straw man attempt is unskilled and indicative of your weak position. You lie a lot. To yourself and to your readers. I never said "just consequences". You won't launder Hamas propaganda through this conversation. Every innocent death is an injustice on the head of Hamas and its supporters: many being Palestinian. Hamas can give up in this hour. Or better yet they can invent a time machine, return to October 6th, and cancel their plan for the massive war crime that started this. The penalty for which, and which would save the most Palestinian lives, is Hamas giving up in the nearest possible moment. They could have given up immediately in order to save the most possible Palestinian lives. Or moved out from behind their human shields, immediately. They didn't. Every moment that they do not is for the continuity of their war at the calculated expense of Palestinian civilian lives. Let's see a single pro Palestine protest whose primary message is toward that single most effective goal. inbfre your not so covert Hamas support and October 7th justifications.
    - tech_ken 3y ago
      Sure happy to: Oct 7 was a crime and the perpetrators should face justice. Hamas should immediately disarm and leave civilian areas. I don't like reactionary Islamism, I don't believe violent terror creates political progress. Fighting this war is not productive and is harming civilians. Again: you're welcome to impute whatever motives on me or others that you want, but that doesn't make them correct. With all that said, I will also say: the presence of Hamas members in civilian areas does not give the Israeli military legal right to kill civilians. What is being done to (and has been done to for decades) the citizens of the West Bank and Gaza by the state of Israel is a crime and its perpetrators should face justice. West Bank settlers need to leave immediately and return the stolen property to its owners. The open air prison that is the West Bank should close and the rights of its occupants should be restored. War crimes don't fix war crimes. The most direct way to stop the mass death of Palestinian civilians is for the people killing them to stop doing that. The idea that the only response to the violence of one political faction (Hamas) is greater amounts of retributive violence until conditions are met is just the “take hostages” paradigm at another scale. The fact that any attempt to move beyond that paradigm gets labeled as like “pro terrorist propaganda” is the same stupid nonsense that embroiled the US in a costly and atrocious war for 2 decades.
      - xyzelement 3y ago
        // The idea that the only response to the violence of one political faction (Hamas) is greater amounts of retributive violence This seems to be the crucial flaw in your analysis - I don't see a cycle of "retributive" violence. Israel asserts the goal is to "solve this threat" not "kill as many as possible." If they could remove the threat w/o affecting civilians, they would do that. This is a qualitatively different than the Hamas strategy of intentionally targeting kindergartners as happened in Oct 7.
        tech_ken 3y ago
        From where I'm sitting the historical contours are somewhat different. I understand what is asserted by Israel, but I think an examination of their historical treatment of Palestinians makes it pretty clear that they're interested in basically removing them from the area at any cost. In my own opinion, this history makes their claims about not wanting to harm civilians not very credible. I've drawn a lot of parallels with the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq, and I think that this is another place where history is repeating itself. The US claimed over and over again that it was fighting "justly" and would not be committing violence if it wasn't the cleanest way to resolve the threat, but retrospective analysis shows that this isn't really what was happening on the ground.
xyzelement 3y ago
// Not all protests exist to further concrete political proposals (ex. suggestions to Hamas). Expressions of mass grief, community solidarity, and elevation of an issue which harms your neighbors are all important outcomes for people meeting en masse This too smells like a "luxury belief" to me. If you're actually experiencing the problem, you want to solve stuff. You want to be practical and pragmatic because your ass is on the line -- or die as a martyr while prolonging people's suffering, but hopefully the former. In contrast to that, things like wallowing in "mass grief" and generating a lot of noise and energy in a way that isn't aiming at making anything better is exactly the kind of thing one can easily engage in when shielded from the outcomes and failure on the actual issue.
- archagon 3y ago
  If anything, glibly dismissing mass protests as "luxury beliefs" is itself a luxury belief.
- tech_ken 3y ago
  > This too smells like a "luxury belief" to me. If you're actually experiencing the problem, you want to solve stuff This is kind of broad and I don't think it's super fair to what I'm trying to say. You might want to solve stuff very badly, but simultaneously want to hold space for communal grief. There are examples of this all over the place (look at any community response to a mass shooting). Waving that away as "noise and energy" is IMO a kind of tech-bro, solutionist impulse that ignores the very real function that it serves in creating bonds between people or like entrenching a shared culture. Solutions come from coherent political movements, coherent political movements come from people who know and trust each other. Being together, in physical space, airing the same grievances and seeing how many people stand with you is incredibly empowering and an important step in producing the kind of mass movements that bring change. You can call that a luxury belief if you want, but I would encourage you to talk with poor people who actually organize political movements (although maybe you do and we just run in different circles) because I think your mind will be changed.

mrangle 3y ago

And the lying about the nature of "Palestinian support" continues. In spite of the protest-wide evidence at virtually every demonstration.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
tech_ken 3y ago
I suppose if I equate “retributive genocide” and “just consequences” then I can see where you’re coming from. The US made similar statements as they poured white phosphorus on Afghani children after 9/11 and I thought it was a thin argument then. I don’t find it much more convincing now. Overall I try not to lie, but given how different our experiences seem to be I’m not sure if there’s much I can say on the internet to convince you of that. Have a good one!
- mrangle 3y ago
  Will you state that Hamas should give up as a means of ending the conflict? To test your moral and semantic consistency. Your "retributive genocide" label doesn't hold if the conflict ends as soon as Hamas is eleminated, which it would. And which they can effect in this instant by giving up. Not that people are obligated to or widely accepting of the morally and logically inconsistent labels of Hamas supporters. Hamas who began this conflict with a massive war crime. Your straw man attempt is unskilled and indicative of your weak position. You lie a lot. To yourself and to your readers. I never said "just consequences". You won't launder Hamas propaganda through this conversation. Every innocent death is an injustice on the head of Hamas and its supporters: many being Palestinian. Hamas can give up in this hour. Or better yet they can invent a time machine, return to October 6th, and cancel their plan for the massive war crime that started this. The penalty for which, and which would save the most Palestinian lives, is Hamas giving up in the nearest possible moment. They could have given up immediately in order to save the most possible Palestinian lives. Or moved out from behind their human shields, immediately. They didn't. Every moment that they do not is for the continuity of their war at the calculated expense of Palestinian civilian lives. Let's see a single pro Palestine protest whose primary message is toward that single most effective goal. inbfre your not so covert Hamas support and October 7th justifications.
  - tech_ken 3y ago
    Sure happy to: Oct 7 was a crime and the perpetrators should face justice. Hamas should immediately disarm and leave civilian areas. I don't like reactionary Islamism, I don't believe violent terror creates political progress. Fighting this war is not productive and is harming civilians. Again: you're welcome to impute whatever motives on me or others that you want, but that doesn't make them correct. With all that said, I will also say: the presence of Hamas members in civilian areas does not give the Israeli military legal right to kill civilians. What is being done to (and has been done to for decades) the citizens of the West Bank and Gaza by the state of Israel is a crime and its perpetrators should face justice. West Bank settlers need to leave immediately and return the stolen property to its owners. The open air prison that is the West Bank should close and the rights of its occupants should be restored. War crimes don't fix war crimes. The most direct way to stop the mass death of Palestinian civilians is for the people killing them to stop doing that. The idea that the only response to the violence of one political faction (Hamas) is greater amounts of retributive violence until conditions are met is just the “take hostages” paradigm at another scale. The fact that any attempt to move beyond that paradigm gets labeled as like “pro terrorist propaganda” is the same stupid nonsense that embroiled the US in a costly and atrocious war for 2 decades.
    - xyzelement 3y ago
      // The idea that the only response to the violence of one political faction (Hamas) is greater amounts of retributive violence This seems to be the crucial flaw in your analysis - I don't see a cycle of "retributive" violence. Israel asserts the goal is to "solve this threat" not "kill as many as possible." If they could remove the threat w/o affecting civilians, they would do that. This is a qualitatively different than the Hamas strategy of intentionally targeting kindergartners as happened in Oct 7.
      - tech_ken 3y ago
        From where I'm sitting the historical contours are somewhat different. I understand what is asserted by Israel, but I think an examination of their historical treatment of Palestinians makes it pretty clear that they're interested in basically removing them from the area at any cost. In my own opinion, this history makes their claims about not wanting to harm civilians not very credible. I've drawn a lot of parallels with the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq, and I think that this is another place where history is repeating itself. The US claimed over and over again that it was fighting "justly" and would not be committing violence if it wasn't the cleanest way to resolve the threat, but retrospective analysis shows that this isn't really what was happening on the ground.

xyzelement 3y ago

// Not all protests exist to further concrete political proposals (ex. suggestions to Hamas). Expressions of mass grief, community solidarity, and elevation of an issue which harms your neighbors are all important outcomes for people meeting en masse This too smells like a "luxury belief" to me. If you're actually experiencing the problem, you want to solve stuff. You want to be practical and pragmatic because your ass is on the line -- or die as a martyr while prolonging people's suffering, but hopefully the former. In contrast to that, things like wallowing in "mass grief" and generating a lot of noise and energy in a way that isn't aiming at making anything better is exactly the kind of thing one can easily engage in when shielded from the outcomes and failure on the actual issue.

archagon 3y ago
If anything, glibly dismissing mass protests as "luxury beliefs" is itself a luxury belief.
tech_ken 3y ago
> This too smells like a "luxury belief" to me. If you're actually experiencing the problem, you want to solve stuff This is kind of broad and I don't think it's super fair to what I'm trying to say. You might want to solve stuff very badly, but simultaneously want to hold space for communal grief. There are examples of this all over the place (look at any community response to a mass shooting). Waving that away as "noise and energy" is IMO a kind of tech-bro, solutionist impulse that ignores the very real function that it serves in creating bonds between people or like entrenching a shared culture. Solutions come from coherent political movements, coherent political movements come from people who know and trust each other. Being together, in physical space, airing the same grievances and seeing how many people stand with you is incredibly empowering and an important step in producing the kind of mass movements that bring change. You can call that a luxury belief if you want, but I would encourage you to talk with poor people who actually organize political movements (although maybe you do and we just run in different circles) because I think your mind will be changed.