Oh, dude, the anti-semitism of the Left is honestly a thing I am very aware of and disgusted with, and will actively call the fuck out. And indeed, in the case of Wiesel particularly, he's incredibly important and he did years of incredibly important work and as noted elsewhere I honestly get where the part that saddens me comes from. This shit is complicated.
It just becomes in this case even more a case of . . . if you are going to use his words as support for an Absolute Two Sides Only kind of thing (there is only the oppressor and the oppressed and you are either with one actively and in one specific Approved Way, or you are passively supporting the other) then he . . . doesn't come out well.
And I think that's actually an indicator of why that Absolute Two Sides Only narrative is flawed as fuck when it comes to moral positions and interacting with other humans, and why "you are either anti-fascist or WITH THE FASCISTS" is a hugely fucking flawed position taken to any general extreme.
(And the very specific context of the settlements is also germane here - I mean I realize you don't know me from a hole in the wall! And I wasn't elaborate about it either. So. But it's a very specific issue of a specific injustice, not General Position All Around, cuz that'd be bullshit and the entire area is the definition of "it's more complicated than that".)
And yes, I absolutely grok and to some extent sympathise (from different experience positions) with the "display your credentials" bullshit, and this is in fact part of what I reject, and am rejecting in the context of noting that I don't think that's a great quote (the Wiesel one about silence) to use to prop up the "there are two sides" argument or position.
(And in fact often have to stop from starting fights with "pro-Palestinian" - scare quotes used because they're often using the cause as an excuse for whatever behaviour it is they wanted to perpetuate - people from North America by demanding when they plan on demonstrating in the streets to return Manhattan and surrounding area to the Indigenous peoples run off that land, and so on. Because gosh is it ever easy to espouse that kind of absolutist thinking when it doesn't actually affect you AT ALL. But kids I don't think that 'there are only two sides' position is gonna end you up in places YOU want to be if you actually hold yourself to the standard of fucking applying it without hypocrisy.) (I stop myself because as an apparently white chick it's an inappropriate set of behaviours and my energies are better spent elsewhere but man does it make my blood boil.)
So yeah, I don't think we're . . . in disagreement? In that my primary intent with pointing out that facet of Wiesel's legacy is in fact to say "so I don't think this is the support for the Absolute Binarism that we want to invoke here, because of where it would take us - which is a place I think is inappropriate and wrong, given the Entire Context."
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regna
(no subject)
Date: 2017-08-30 06:45 pm (UTC)It just becomes in this case even more a case of . . . if you are going to use his words as support for an Absolute Two Sides Only kind of thing (there is only the oppressor and the oppressed and you are either with one actively and in one specific Approved Way, or you are passively supporting the other) then he . . . doesn't come out well.
And I think that's actually an indicator of why that Absolute Two Sides Only narrative is flawed as fuck when it comes to moral positions and interacting with other humans, and why "you are either anti-fascist or WITH THE FASCISTS" is a hugely fucking flawed position taken to any general extreme.
(And the very specific context of the settlements is also germane here - I mean I realize you don't know me from a hole in the wall! And I wasn't elaborate about it either. So. But it's a very specific issue of a specific injustice, not General Position All Around, cuz that'd be bullshit and the entire area is the definition of "it's more complicated than that".)
And yes, I absolutely grok and to some extent sympathise (from different experience positions) with the "display your credentials" bullshit, and this is in fact part of what I reject, and am rejecting in the context of noting that I don't think that's a great quote (the Wiesel one about silence) to use to prop up the "there are two sides" argument or position.
(And in fact often have to stop from starting fights with "pro-Palestinian" - scare quotes used because they're often using the cause as an excuse for whatever behaviour it is they wanted to perpetuate - people from North America by demanding when they plan on demonstrating in the streets to return Manhattan and surrounding area to the Indigenous peoples run off that land, and so on. Because gosh is it ever easy to espouse that kind of absolutist thinking when it doesn't actually affect you AT ALL. But kids I don't think that 'there are only two sides' position is gonna end you up in places YOU want to be if you actually hold yourself to the standard of fucking applying it without hypocrisy.) (I stop myself because as an apparently white chick it's an inappropriate set of behaviours and my energies are better spent elsewhere but man does it make my blood boil.)
So yeah, I don't think we're . . . in disagreement? In that my primary intent with pointing out that facet of Wiesel's legacy is in fact to say "so I don't think this is the support for the Absolute Binarism that we want to invoke here, because of where it would take us - which is a place I think is inappropriate and wrong, given the Entire Context."
So.