Violence begets... sympathy?
TikTok (popular social media platform for Pro-Palestine activism) under threat of ban in a must-pass bill that includes $26B in aid to Israel (currently committing a not-so-clandestine genocide)...
Netanyahu—who is primarily responsible for clearly and intentionally razing every last university in Gaza—comparing American university student protests to pre-Nazi Germany is the pinnacle—the pinnacle—of projection!
"This is reminiscent of what happened in German universities in the 1930s."
Let’s indulge the merits of his claim on the basis of deaths incurred by agents in question.
Deaths caused by Pro-Palestine 'Nazi-like' protesters on American college campuses: 0
Deaths caused by IDF soldiers in Gaza: 42,510+ (38,621+ of which were civilians; 15,780+ of which were children; 10,091+ of which were women). 2M+ besieged, displaced, besieged again, now pelted by famine and surrendering Rafah.
Who, exactly, are akin to Nazis according to Netanyahu?
Nary a peep about this by the first-amendment-humping American right wing of yore. Why? It’s not because their heads are buried in sand (they know exactly what is transpiring), but because they tacitly agree with authoritarian crackdowns on those with whom they disagree. It was never about "free speech," then. It was about pledging allegiance... to a foreign state! So get this: you can't even protest genocide without being accused of abetting genocide by those committing genocide.
We live in a farcical world that encourages perpetrators of high crimes to go uncontested if not promoted; where peaceful dissent is met with vituperative force; where morality seemingly atrophies as fascism abounds; where violence begets sympathy. And freedom? Consigned to oblivion at the hands of the powerful.
Zionism is one helluva drug, the side effects of which include delusions of persecution (conflating the anti-war with the antisemitic or pro-Hamas). Lay off it lest innocent people—namely, Palestinians—continue to die. Are we surprised to acknowledge that its history isn’t originally associated with that of the current state of Israel? That in order to understand its deep roots, one must contend with the perfidious and far more brutal Christian Zionism, a.k.a. “the-Bible-told-me-so” imperialism and settler-colonialism that disseminated from the United Kingdom to the rest of the Anglo-Saxon world? Oh, but, yeah, let’s not go there. It’s too woke, probably.
Our tax dollars are drenched—steeped—in the blood of the innocent. I am ashamed and forlorn. My revulsion for the opportunistic smear-merchants of the political moment who apologize for war criminals for the sake of clout knows no bounds. My revilement for the swiftness with which the police force is deployed for college students compared with the likes of white nationalists is beyond parity. My disenchantment with the exceptionalism fomented by elite figureheads to excuse postmodern war crimes is rivaled only by people who are apprised of the situation and bravely speaking out against it.
The implication for Biden—absolute ideological buffoon that he is—is, of course, that he is willing to risk losing reelection over the religious compulsion to appease a foreign head of state who uses expansionist and dehumanizing justification for genocide, just. Like. The. Nazis. What does that say about him? He deserves to lose the support he hemorrhages by the minute. The anti-war movement is not going anywhere.
The question for all of us dutifully moral is thus: if the world spins long enough for factions to factionalize, does it follow that the oppressed can become the oppressor? And if so, for whom will you speak?
Let’s just square with the irrevocable demands of the protesters for once and stop the carpet-bombing of babies in Gaza. Brilliant, right? Right?
C’mon, America. While you were castigating college kids, Netanyahu moved on Rafah with Biden’s fiduciary blessing, and he is no closer to extirpating Hamas.
Dear Late Bloomer,
My newsletter is concerned with exploring the following question:
What are the linguistic principles, mechanisms, and limits thereof that govern the way we engage with reality?
The newsletter will comprise articles, opinion pieces, and short essays that address this question while commenting on powers big and small from a learner’s perspective.
My rhetoric primarily assumes of its readership the willingness to do the work required to reconsider the finality and veracity of the narratives propagated by the U.S. mass media, known and documented conglomerates of capitalist institutions with a financial responsibility to increase profits by trading privileged audiences’ viewership with advertisers to drive approval ratings. Their natural product—as most would readily affirm—is entertainment that forgoes the responsibility to empower and educate, instead setting firm limits on the spectrum of acceptable opinion on solutions for societal issues impacting the average citizen, where nothing is so absurd that it won’t be quoted if it’s useful to that end. That which passes for entertainment also makes lying in service of the state that much more palatable.
The tactics of control and its consent are ultimately linguistic in nature. Therefore, they can be analyzed by the same linguistic means.
It’s not a bridge too far if you’re not beholden yourself, and a cursory look at history accomplishes the otherwise heavy lifting required to accept this premise. You’re a smart person. We have the wherewithal. Now to see why we might disagree.
OK, Bloomer. Let’s go.