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Now hold on there. As much as I think progressives are full of it when they equivocate between getting comic book about rats taken out of a lesson plan, and Cancel Culture, they do actually have a claim to being more cancelled than anyone else, and that claim is BDS. I have never seen knives come out so hard after someone engaging in what is obviously protected speech.
Last I checked sanctions were a legitimate tool of foreign policy, and after 8 years of "it's a private company, it can do what it wants", I'm not entertaining, even for a millisecond, the idea that boycotting or divesting are somehow beyond the pale.
As for "openly dedicated to destruction of UN member state", we literally had a conference where they were planning how they're going to partition Russia, and that's just the latest I heard from Council on Foreign Relationesque ghouls acting like the actual planet Earth is the map in their Total War franchise game.
Talk about equality feeling like oppression, sheesh...
The issue here is not sanctions per se. Imprisonment is a legitimate law enforcement tool too, but if you advocate for Jews to be put in camps, you made several wrong turns on the way. BDS advocates for destruction of Israel (which inevitably would lead to genocide) and that's their goal. B, D and S are tools to achieve this goal. I still can't name any popular movement that calls for destruction of any country. And come into any university campus, and stand one day with "Free Palestine" sign and other day with "Support Israel" sign and count how many times you are spit on and how long does it take before somebody sucker-punches you and steals your sign - and you'll see for yourself its popularity. I mean, surely, US invaded Iraq, and kicked Lybia's ass and there's the Iran thing and so on - but I don't see anybody proclaiming Iran should be destroyed, and Kurds or Iraqis or whoever should take over. Sure, there are sanctions - which probably are very unpopular on the same campuses - but nobody says "Iranism" is a conspiracy to reforge our minds, and without it there would be no reason for Iran to exist. But for BDS, it is the goal. It's not because Israel did something or didn't do something. It's because there is Israel.
Who, when? I mean, Russia being fully formed fascist state, I wouldn't mind somebody finding the cojones to think what to do about it, instead of mumbling "we can't let things escalate" while they are escalating - but who are "they" and how exactly they are planning to achieve that? I'd like to read that plan, where could I find it? Does it include Ironman, Superman, Hulk and Flash stealing all Russian nukes, or do they just magically turn them off? I am very curious, please help.
I don't hang out all that much with these folks, but my impression is that this is completely false. They either want to establish an independent Palestinian state, or demand that Palestinians be given full citizenship and equal rights within the existing state of Israel. If you want to argue this just the first step on the slippery slope that inevitably leads to genocide... I'm actually quite sympathetic, but it's hard to work up the outrage when the truth is you're just being treated exactly like everyone else.
I could probably replicate the "Support Israel" effect with a Russian flag, this is because no one would interpret it as a statement like "I think the Russian people should have a country they can call their own", but as a statement of support for their war. Same applies to Israel.
https://www.csce.gov/international-impact/press-and-media/press-releases/decolonization-russia-be-discussed-upcoming
Ok, if we asked the BDS people to put "fully formed fascist states" in one column, and "not completely fascist states" in the other, where do you think Israel would end up? I'm not saying they're right, but they're basically using the same logic.
And by Palestinians they mean anybody who wants to claim part of Israel, which would lead to immediate destruction of Israel because 9 million country can not exist after granting citizenship and full rights to the same amount of hostile foreigners. Imagine US importing, say, 300 million Chinese at once and granting them full citizen rights. Only no, it's not the same - Chinese people don't really hate Americans that much and didn't spend the last 80 years trying to kill as many of them as possible. Maybe, say, US in 1943 asked to import 130 million Germans. Surely not all of them are Nazis, so it'd be OK, right?
I not only want to argue that - I want to argue that they know it, and that's exactly what they want.
Name any other country that is considered illegitimate until it accepts a hostile population equal to its own. In fact, name any other country that is not considered having sole discretion at whom to grant and withhold citizenship. Does Japan control who gets Japanese citizenship? Does Switzerland decide who gets to be Swiss citizen? Does Israel have the right to decide who gets to be citizen of Israel - without external interference? Oh no, no they don't. At least as far as BDS is concerned.
So wait, this is a couple of random professors, an ex-Russian journalist, a writer and one Ukrainian politician, so popular she didn't even bother to participate in the last elections, chatted about how "colonialist" Russia is - and you describe it as "planning how they're going to partition Russia"? You can't be serious.
I mean, if one can harness woke terminology to put some heat on Russia, that would be the first and only time where wokeness might come to some use, but there's absolutely zero chance anybody outside the room it happened in and any time after June 23, cared about what happened there or it had any effect on the surrounding world. You can not seriously believe this is how "planning to partition Russia" looks like. This is how "waste of taxpayer money" looks like. I hope they all had good time, at least.
So you are saying people can lie using the same words and same patterns as people telling the truth? Like, I could say "X is true" and be correct, and something could say "Y is true" - and be completely false? How could that be! You blown my mind!
Really, I think "people can lie by saying something is true while it's not" is not an argument against something else being true. Yes, they can. They are liars. So what?
Look, you don't actually have to explain to me why you think they're wrong. Like I said, I sympathize with your side more than theirs. I just object to the idea that BDS represents something no other nationality has to put up with, it's the logical conclusion of the discourse on "whiteness"/imperialism/colonialism. I get very strong "Radfem forced to wax balls" vibes from this. I understand the outrage, but can you please not lecture me on how it's all the fault of the patriarchy as you're trying to get me to express sympathy?
Have you followed the discourse around the Syrian refugee crisis? Anything on immigration or demographics?
Japan seems to be doing fine, but for western countries the answer seems to be: "yes, in theory, but if you advocate for actually exercising any of that control, you're an alt-right nazi".
OTOH the CSCE is an official US agency, while the BDS people seem like, dare I say, just a couple of kids on collage campuses. Currently they seem to have about an equal chance destroying the countries they've targeted (well, actually I'd bet on CSCE being more successful).
I'm not saying they're lying, I think they actually believe that stuff, but they're wrong.
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