@foreveracharmedone / foreveracharmedone.tumblr.com
Hmm isn’t it so funny how a lot of the “both sides suck!!!” leftists will make and share posts listing suicide hotlines and resources for survival under a Republican presidency, but these posts never appear when Democrats win? Wow it’s almost like everyone knows Republicans are infinitely more dangerous and your “both sides” game is full of shit.
This reminds me of another thread I saw (I think one of your anons provided a link to it, actually):
So crazy how people on the Left (tm) not only want voters to ignore the entirety of the two parties’ domestic policies—which they consider irrelevant, despite affecting +300 million people and being the main thing influencing almost everyone’s vote—but they also get angry when you point out how significantly worse Republicans are on the very foreign policy issue they’re telling people to sacrifice their votes for. Like yeah that information is actually relevant to your entire argument and people are right to bring it up.
You can't shout "ceasefire now!" for 8 months straight, but suddenly go silent when the American president calls for the end of the war on the world stage, Israel agrees to a deal, and joint statements made by the 17 countries who all have citizens being held captive by Hamas, the G7, and the U.S., Egypt, and Qatar make it clear that the sole party holding up a ceasefire this time is Hamas. You can't go silent now and expect people to think you were ever earnest.
Fascinating to see that Biden going public with the Israeli deal and bringing world leaders together to urge the end of the war has really broken the brains of people who've been pretending to be anti-war for 8 months.
(First screenshot wasn’t taken by me, here’s the source)
So, if you actually want the war to end, why do this? Why get angry that the U.S. president is urging the end of the war, with the help of the G7, Qatar, and Egypt? Why lie and pretend this isn’t an Israeli deal? Why lie and act like Hamas hasn't rejected multiple ceasefire offers?
Because people care about discourse more than human lives. They don’t want Israel to offer a concrete plan to end the war because they’d rather have their internet discourse fueled by the destruction of Gaza, and they want to continue to call for the destruction of Israel, which they feel more people will find justified as long as the war continues. They also don’t want to hold Hamas responsible for continuing this war, because they've posted nothing but terrorist apologia for months.
They don’t want Biden to call for the end of the war, despite what they said during their months of “ceasefire now!” protests, and they don’t want him to take the lead in urging the world to put pressure on Hamas to agree to the deal, because then their “gEnOciDE JoE” rants and anti-voting excuses fall flat.
They’re angry that an end to violence would mean the end of an era in their internet life, where they finally feel important and have the wind beneath their radikewl, ratfucking wings. In summary:
Loving the new counterpoint that not only is posting activism, not posting is complicity. Why doesn't everyone with any fame or internet presence immediately release a lengthy but perfectly-worded statement telling us where they stand on every issue? Is it because they're evil??? It must be because they're evil
And then the usual answer is "they don't post online very much". Which is all very suspicious, don't they know everything of importance is done by posts on social media now
Okay I'm going to talk about this for the last time bc currently the stupidest manifestation of this I've ever seen is unfolding, and nothing can top it or explain this phenomenon better
So Amal Clooney was one of the lawyers who advised the ICC to charge Netanyahu with war crimes & issue an arrest warrant. But apparently there was already a backlash over her "not speaking up" which is already dumb, like, as far as I can tell she has no social media, but also she's a lawyer, she can't comment freely on cases, that could literally destroy the case
But she was trending bc people were saying she should be forgiven, for not posting. But also there are people adamant she not be forgiven. Because she should have spoken up sooner. Helping charge Benjamin Netanyahu with crimes against humanity is not good enough, she should have been posting, she needs to be held accountable for her lack of posting while she was, again, serving as a legal advisor on a international humans rights case against Benjamin Netanyahu.
Like when you're at the stage where people ask where a celebrity was, and the answer is "helping arrange an arrest warrant for Netanyahu", and your response is "why was she doing that instead of posting online" I really just have to conclude you think posting online is more important than anything else. Also that your online activism revolves around finding righteous ways to dislike celebrities you have entrenched parasocial relationships with that you rationalize by going "well I obsessively hate them so it's okay". But mostly the Posting Is More Important Than War Crimes Tribunals part
I think these are all excellent points, but one thing that I want to add is that many people currently mad at Amal Clooney are mad because the ICC is ALSO seeking arrest warrants for Hamas leadership. Unfortunately, there are a lot of people who seem to think that war crimes are ok when their side does it (and the Venn diagram between those people and people who think that posting is activism has very large overlap).
it's concerning what people are saying and thinking is activism. I've unfollowed someone who unironically reblogged something that said death to israel. how is that going to help? if anything that's just making a more hostile environment. support palestine but maybe cool it about what you say about israel considering why it exists in the first place
There are a few reasons for this, and the first is that the western left is so absolutely goddamn terrible about recognizing its increased and violent radicalization. I can't tell you how many posts I've seen to the effect of "the far right wants to kill everybody but the far left just wants healthcare for everyone uwu." First, by their own extremely warped and constantly biased perception, that would actually make the mainstream Democratic Party "far left." The party might disagree about how exactly the actual mechanism for better/more equitable healthcare should be implemented (etc. etc. if you oppose instant Medicare for All with no other transition period or hybrid options, YOU ARE EXACTLY THE SAME AS A FASCIST!), but that's now a central and uncontroversial plank of official Democratic party policy. But since as we know, BOTH SIDES ARE THE SAME!!!, clearly that can't be what the self-defined "far left" actually wants. Witness how we've had several days of intense and valedictory social media approval and worship of a mentally ill person's violent and public suicide, because it was done for the "right reasons." This person should have been given help and support, yes, and we never know what's going on in anyone's head. But if I was someone also contemplating suicide, this whole "it's the right thing to do and you should just burn yourself to death and announce it's for the Right Cause and you will have legions of adoring admirers" would be hella hard to resist. This is going to directly cost more lives.
We point out all the time that the far right has become a fascistic death cult of authoritarian personality, but the online far left is now absolutely just as willing to make "you should die and/or kill yourself and others for Ideology" a central part of their platform. We've had endless rhetoric about how the violent Glorious Revolution is the only answer and society is irretrievably broken. This is casual, constant, inescapable radicalization, and it's presented as the only way to "do" leftism. So of course the rhetoric gets increasingly insane and genocidal (while insisting that all they want is to "stop the genocide"), and it's more and more normalized. We've had people reblogging posts that are almost entirely lies, because they "want to highlight" one sentence or half-truth they agree with (and apparently decided the best way to do this was to uncritically amplify the misinformation, rather than making their own post and trying to push back on it). We've had people admitting they're afraid to lose friends or be attacked on social media because the Groupthink is so pervasive and violently radicalized. This is not normal and this needs to fucking stop.
Secondly, and this is inescapable especially in regard to this particular conflict, the western left is absolutely steeped in antisemitism through and through, and it has no desire either to examine that or even think it should. It has become absolutely mired in the "antisemitism is a Good and Necessary and Correct belief to have and it's not actually a prejudice, it contributes to social justice because all Israelis and/or all Jews are evil settler colonialists constantly genociding innocent Hamas and/or Palestinians." This is why, as I keep saying, it's not that hard to support Palestinian self-determination, statehood, dignity, freedom, and a stop to the indiscriminate slaughter of Gaza, while not actually thinking that the way to do this is just to be wildly antisemitic at all times and calling for the genocide of Israel to be substituted for the genocide of Gaza. That does not actually reduce the net amount of genocide in this world!!! I thought you wanted to stop it, not turn it loose on another group of people who "deserve it more!" JESUS CHRIST!!!
On that note, even if you don't agree with every single premise or point it makes, a lot of people on this website (and on Twitter, but yeah, uh, good luck with that) need to read the following article in order to understand, as I keep saying, how deeply virulent antisemitism has become an unquestioned tenet of virtuous faith among the western left. Content warnings for some very graphic depictions/discussions of violence, including sexual violence, but that's not an excuse. If you've found yourself posting or agreeing with any version of the "Jews/Zionists/Israelis are all collectively responsible for this while evilly torturing innocent non-Jews" thesis statement, READ IT. Y'know, read it anyway. Try to get the first and most basic grip on the fraught and violent history of antisemitism, which is quite literally the oldest prejudice in the world, and how that interacts with and negatively informs the way in which supposedly well-intentioned western leftists are reacting to the current situation. As I said in an earlier post, I don't care if your "good intentions" (the road to hell is paved with, etc. etc.) are solely about stopping the current slaughter directed against Palestinians. That does not excuse you from the consequences of the lies you spread and the genocidal violence that you advocate as a "better" or "more correct" kind of genocidal violence then that already taking place. So. Yeah.
If you run into a paywall, you can remove it by disabling JavaScript on the page (this can be done with most ad-blockers), or someone has also helpfully provided the full text as a pdf in this link. Read it.
Online activism is way more interested in making checklists of “no-no’s” and “virtuous things,” but not really interested in actual material analysis of situations. This is how you get bullshit like people who can write essay after essay after essay about how they’re better than you because you said the word “stupid,” but it’s crickets from them when it come to things like lack of access to health care or help with education; people who think it’s decolonization to argue if Armenians had white privilege during their genocide, to send dozens of suicide-baiting messages to a teenager who posted a selfie wearing a yukata she got as a gift from her Japanese host family, or to support Hindu nationalists who regularly attack Indian Muslims and other religious minorities; people who think the most important thing to call out is an anti-Nazi protestor having shitty white dreads, as opposed to the Nazis who punched and then doxxed her, and who would happily murder anyone who isn’t white/straight/cis; and trans lesbians getting accused of being TERFs, even while they endure harassment from actual TERFs.
It’s all about wanting a list of approved dance steps to perform wokeness for kudos, without really caring about actually trying to do something genuinely useful for people who are being oppressed.
