I've been thinking about conflict vs mistake theory lately, especially since the events of October in Israel last year.
I've been particularly trying to understand where support for Palestine (and Hamas, implicitly or not) comes from. Much has already been written about this of course, whether it's the bigotry of small differences or the trap of the "oppressor/oppressed thinking," the hierarchy of oppression, and so on.
What I found striking and want to discuss here though is the strain of thought responding to "how can LGBT+ support Palestine" by declaring, e.g., from Reddit:
It's easier to focus on getting gay rights when you're not being genocided.
Or from a longer piece:
The interviewer asks him, “What’s your response to people who say that you’re not safe in Palestine as a queer person?” Dabbagh responded, “First and foremost, I would go to Palestine in a heartbeat. I have no fear. I love my people and my people love me. And I want to be there and be part of the movement that ends up leading to queer liberation for liberated Palestinian people. If you feel that such violence exists for queer people in the Middle East, what are you doing to change that for that community? The first step is the liberation of Palestine.
I don't claim it's the most common strain of thinking, but to me this largely cashes out as "they are homophobic because of oppression/imperialism/Jews." As an aside, contrast with the way "economic anxiety" plays out in the US.
The part I want to focus on is this kind of blend of mistake and conflict theory -- there's conflict, yes, but it has a cause which can be addressed and then we'll all be on the same side. I'm skeptical of this blend, which seems to essentially just be false consciousness: if not for an external force you would see our interests align.
I think this mode of thinking is becoming increasingly popular however and want to point to the two most recent video games I put serious time into (but didn't finish) as examples: Baldur's Gate 3 and Unicorn Overlord (minorish spoilers ahead)
[Again, minorish spoilers for Unicorn Overlord and Baldur's Gate 3 ahead]
Baldur's Gate 3 was part of a larger "vibe shift" in DnD which I won't get into here except to say I think a lot of it is misguided. Nevertheless, there are two major examples of the above:
The Gith'Yanki are a martial, fascist seeming society who are generally aggressive powerful assholes. A major character arc for one of your team Gith'Yanki team members however, is learning she had been brainwashed and fed lies not just about the leader of the society and her goals, but also the basic functioning of the society. For instance, a much-discussed cure for a serious medical condition turns out to be glorious euthanasia.
The Gith have been impressed with a false consciousness, you see, and your conflict with them is largely based on a misunderstanding of the facts.
More egregious is the character Omeluum, who you meet early in the adventure. Omeluum is a "mind flayer" or "illithid":
Mind flayers are psionic aberrations with a humanoid-like figure and a tentacled head that communicate using telepathy. They feast on the brains of intelligent beings and can enthrall other creatures to their will.
But you see, even these creatures turn out to be the victim of false consciousness--Omeluum is a mind flayer who has escaped the mind control of the "Elder Brain." After fleeing, he happily "joined the good guys." You might think it's an issue that his biology requires he consume conscious brains, but fortunately he only feeds
on the brains of creatures of the Underdark 'that oppose the Society's goals', and wishes to help others of his kind by discovering a brain-free diet.
In the world of DnD (which has consciously been made to increasingly mimic our own world with mixed results), it seems that but for a few bad actors we could all get along in harmony.
Anecdotally, the last time I ran a DnD campaign it eventually devolved into the party trying to "get to the root" of every conflict, whether it was insisting on finding a way to get goblins to stop killing travelers by negotiation a protection deal with the nearby village which served both, or trying to talk every single cultist out of being a cult member. I'm all for creative solutions, but I found it got pretty tedious after a while.
The other game, Unicorn Overlord, is even more striking, albeit a little simpler. Unicorn Overlord is a (very enjoyable) strategy game where you slowly build up an army to overthrow the evil overlord. What you quickly discover, however, is that almost without exception every follower of the evil overlord is literally mind-controlled. The main gameplay cycle involves fighting a lieutenant's army, then using your magical ring to undo the mind control. After, the lieutenant is invariably horrified and joins your righteous cause.
I should note this is far from unusual in this genre, which requires fights but also wants team-ups. It's a lot like Marvel movies which come up with reasons for heroes to fight each other then team up, like a misunderstanding or even mind control. Wargroove was especially bad at this, where you would encounter a new friendly and say something like "Hello, a fine field for cattle, no?" but the wind is strong or something so they hear "Hello, a fine field for battle, no?" and then you fight. Nevertheless, the mind control dynamic in Unicorn Overlord is almost exclusively the only explanation used.
Funnily enough, I think in these an other examples this is seen as "adding nuance," but I find it ultimately as childish as a cartoon-twirling villain. The villain is still needed in fact (Imperialists, the Evil Overlord, The Elder Brain, The Queen of the Gith), but it's easier to explain away one Evil person who controls everything than try to account for it at scale.
Taken altogether, I can't help but think these are all symptoms of the same thing: struggling to explain conflict. The "false consciousness" explanation is powerful, but seems able to explain anything about people's behavior.
My suspicion is that mistakes and genuine conflict can both occur, but this blended approach leaves something to be desired I think. I had an idea a while ago about a potential plot twist for Unicorn Overlord where it's revealed you aren't freeing anyone -- you're simply bringing them under your own control but you don't notice. That feels a bit like the fantasy all of this is getting at I think: I have my views because of Reasons or Ethics or Whatever, and you would agree with me if not for Factor I'm Immune To.
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Notes -
Careful about "them" in the context of the Middle East.
The decision to go to war rather than accepting the 1947 partition plan was made by the governments of Egypt, Jordan, and Syria. To the extent that the Arab side is to blame for the 1967 Six-Day War (I am not going to get involved in that hoary old chestnut) it was a decision taken by Nasser for his own reasons, with the Jordanians and Palestinians taken along for the ride. Arafat is declared leader of the PLO by Nasser, and spends the next few years trying to set up a Palestinian pseudo-state in Jordan until the Jordanians kick him out. He then tries the same trick in Lebanon, during which time he gets UN recognition as the representative of "Palestine" based on lobbying by other Arab governments. Eventually Israel invades Lebanon in order to get Arafat, and he is smuggled out by the Americans as part of an American-brokered deal to stop non-Lebanese fighting each other on Lebanese territory. Arafat then hides out in Tunis seeking money from Saddam to pay for terrorism against Israel. "They" did bad things, but "they" do not meaningfully include "The Palestinians" if "The Palestinians" primarily refers to people living in Palestine.
For "The Palestinians" to have a chance of anything they need to have agency. The only time the actual human beings living in the West Bank and Gaza Strip were able to exercise agency was the First Intifada (1987-1993), which saw the emergence of a younger, bottom-up leadership based inside the territories - as opposed to the PLO which was funded by foreign governments and led by emigres. The new leadership was for obvious reasons more interested in the lives of the human beings living in the territories than the grand political narrative of "The Palestinian Cause" and was accordingly the first Arab voice to implicitly support a two-State solution.
My unconventional take is that the real missed opportunity was when Arafat was able to take back control of the Palestinian side of the negotiations and establish a Palestinian Authority led by PLO lifers rather than locals. (At the time Arafat was declared President of Palestine, he had spent four years in Palestine as a child and visited twice as an adult, one of those times being as an invading Egyptian soldier in the 1947-9 war) As of now all powerful factions in Palestinian politics (including Hamas and Fatah) are more concerned with using the Cause to appeal to foreign supporters than they are with the actual Palestinians.
I'd be more sympathetic to this if not for just how transcendentally ecstatic the Palestinians seemed about the Oct 7th attack. I know Palestinians are used by Iran and the UN (only slightly exaggerating) in their mission to eliminate Israel but even without these influences the widespread resistance to any form of peaceful co-existence with Israel seems entirely organic.
Of course the prospects for peace would be very different if the UN used the resources it pours into Gaza to deradicalise the population rather than funding Hamas. But that's not going to happen for the foreseeable future.
I feel compelled to ceaselessly remind everyone that Arab social media on Oct 7 was ecstatic and claiming the facade of Jewish capability was pierced, with the initial claims that the IDF was fully defeated and that Jerusalem was being returned. The celebratory mood called for the Arab armies to wipe out (re: kill) the Jewish people now that the hard work of defeating the IDF was done.
It is necessary to point out that my main source for this, the Gaza Now telegram channel, interspersed these calls to action with livestreamed footage of sexual violence (no PIV, but naked girls bleeding from their vaginas) slaughter of civillians in bunkers, including children. The smiley faces and heart emojis flowed as freely as the blood of screaming children, and I've seen that stupid leaf character enough to recognize laughter.
The arab world was absolutely ecstatic about oct 7, and the palestinians were basking in their moment of glory. Yes, the palestinians were exercising agency to be the unrepentant dickheads they have always been, but within their own information environment they were egged on by cheerleaders encouraging their self destruction.
The UNs failure to help Gaza lays bare its fundamental problem: the UN does not, in effect, exist. It is a facilitative entity superimposed on whatever local authority actually exists, and is at best a taxi service for invited externals to aid the local group. There is no way for.the UN to exert its will on an uncooperative local partner, and without that they exist as a fig leaf. Whenever the media reports that a UN worker is attacked, the framing is meant to imply some do-gooder New York Caucasian executive. The reality of course is that UN workers are inevitably local goons issued a blue vest doing their own thing with UN sanction. Someones level of screeching about Israel attacking UN sites inversely correlates to their understanding of the UN functions. See if these people mention 1701 or UNIFIL. Blankest of blank stares.
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