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PaperclipPerfector  6mo ago (text post)   26777 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 22, 2024

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It's not just students. Faculty are now showing up in force to support the protests. And protests at Yale are if anything even bigger. New encampments are spreading to NYU, Michigan and others.

I've pointed out in the past that when liberal America slowly coalesces into a new consensus on a topic, then any opponent of that new consensus better have a great political machine. The only two examples I can think of are gun rights and pro-life activists. Both have scored important victories against liberals.

So how does things look for Israel? Well, AIPAC is certainly very formidable. But the support for Israel is cracking among the younger conservative crowd (e.g. Candace Owens), let alone the hard right (e.g. Nick Fuentes). It's not like Israel will start losing votes in Congress. If you look at the history of Apartheid South Africa, they still had a lot of support from the WH right up until the end. The political scene will be the most reactionary. In the case of Apartheid South Africa, the huge protests on universities began already in the 1970s. It would take 15 years for serious political change. And they never had a lobby as strong as the Israelis.

So I suspect political change will be slower, but I also think we're crossing a rubicon as I write this. I don't see things ever going back to normal for Zionists henceforth in the West, certainly not among leftists or increasingly many liberals. The Israel lobby always wanted and sought bipartisan support. They were remarkably successful in that for many decades. But that era has now decisively ended.

I think some share of goodwill from American liberals will be lost irreversibly, but it'll result in little more than Israel gaining more independence in its actual environment. It's not Ukraine.

On a longer time horizon, demographics will change towards less favorable for progressive causes except the anti-white ones specifically (as it's largely the fascination of low-fertility urban whites and not exciting to new growing strata), and Americans will largely forget this issue, or embrace a new paradigm, because they don't have awareness of long time horizons and Israelis do.

And, honestly, everyone is tired of victimhood Olympics. Jews can afford to embrace and feel pride in their natural social aggression, so prominently visible across the spectrum, in Dershowitz and Finkelstein both. But when it becomes normalized, Finkelstein's argument for treating Palestinians magnanimously is less coherent.

If you look at the history of Apartheid South Africa, they still had a lot of support from the WH right up until the end

The end of Apartheid coincides with the collapse of the USSR, not some sudden shift in external political pressure on behalf of activists. That there was relative certainty that South Africa would not immediately turn into a Soviet satellite regime because the USSR was too busy collapsing was what enabled a consensus on ending Apartheid. That they'd later turn into vaguely anti-western, mixed political system basket case anyway wasn't really a concern.

That they'd later turn into vaguely anti-western, mixed political system basket case anyway wasn't really a concern.

There was also a lot of confidence that liberal capitalist democracy was the natural state of countries, as long as there wasn't some special interfering factor. I think that didn't really start to fade until the Iraq War.

So how does things look for Israel?

Frankly, I blame Israel, either for failing to discipline the IDF, or for failing at PR. Those videos of Palestinians being shot dead for no apparent reason ought to have been treated like the pictures of naked human pyramids from Abu Ghraib, as a national scandal. Instead, what I've seen is justification via showing worse atrocities committed by Hamas. Maybe I've missed a debunking or something, but for someone who is essentially pro-Israel because they're a modern liberal democracy, this has been extremely disheartening.

Foreign protests and eventually sanctions didn’t really kill apartheid. The South Africans could have held on and non-aligned countries (Israel, amusingly, being a central example) would have continued doing business with them. The main reason apartheid failed was that it never had buy-in from the non-Afrikaner (largely Anglo, in some cases Jewish) white elite in South Africa who actually ran the economy and who had repeatedly chafed with the Afrikaners who controlled the entire politics of the country for fifty years via the national party (which was for much of its history not merely white nationalist but Afrikaner Calvinist ethnonationalist). Young whites, particularly urban, particularly in the middle and upper middle classes, increasingly and ever more earnestly opposed apartheid. The system lost the will to function, the older Afrikaners (who had steadfastly opposed non-Dutch European immigration well into the 1950s) no longer had the a popular support to maintain the system as it was. That process began in the 1970s, long before the US and UK implemented major sanctions (which were themselves not comprehensive in practice and which were - as you note - strongly opposed by Reagan and Thatcher at the time).

Rhodesia is a better example of a country that was more crippled by sanctions, but Rhodesia peaked at 300,000 whites while South Africa had 5.2 million, a number much more capable of maintaining autarky with high living standards and extensive domestic industry. In Israel, the domestic economic and social elite is much more aligned with ethnonationalism than was ever the case in South Africa, where Anglos never really cared for apartheid (which, pointedly, was never strictly implemented in Anglo-majority African colonies even if they had some segregation; even Rhodesia did not actually have codified apartheid like South Africa did).

The fall of apartheid was as much about domestic politics in SA after centuries of conflict between the Anglos and the Boers as it was about international pressure. If all white South Africans had been firmly aligned behind Afrikaner ethnonationalism it’s quite possible they would still be in charge today, but of course they were not.

Not to mention, of course, whites were something on the order of 10% of SA's population at the end of apartheid- total. Jews are 60% of Israel's population.

Spot on. And when South Africa became one of the dominions of the British Empire in 1912, her population was already less than 1/3 White. Racial minorities have never practiced settler colonialism with success. Apartheid was never going to work long-term.

One of the scariest things from my point of view is watching some Jewish progressives I know choosing, after a period of internal struggle, to take the side of Hamas. I could see that something had to give when they started being attacked by what they viewed as their own side. And I would have been surprised to see them abandon pretty much their whole progressive social networks and worldview under any circumstances, even to defend themselves. But it seems like many of them chose to thread the needle by simply becoming "one of the good ones".

I think it's simply the case that if you're a typical liberal Jew, you're probably reading sources like the NYTimes or the Guardian that underplay the gang-rape/civilian murder aspect of Oct 7th and choose instead to focus relentlessly on dubious claims of Israel deliberately targeting children (leaving aside that covers 15yo Hamas recruits armed with assault rifles), blowing up hospitals etc. It's not terribly surprising that they'd end up with a skewed view of the conflict.

It just points to the shallowness of these friendships. Others downthread point to the many charitable reasons people may choose to abandon their self-interest, such as @2rafa citing naivete and @FirmWeird citing personal growth, but you wouldn't have to abandon it if your friends had your own interests at heart. The progressive constantly eats its own as the cause celebre changes, and the it is simply the Jews turn on the chopping block once again. Black men, Hispanic men, Asians, and White Gays will be on back the block soon enough.

Scary? What exactly is scary about that? I'm not trying to get an own here, I'm legitimately curious because the only thing that comes to mind is that you're scared of changing your own mind after a period of internal struggle. Changing your mind over a serious or contentious issue as a result of a period of internal struggle is generally regarded as a positive development by most people, and they use terms like "personal growth" to describe it.

You seem to have missed...the second sentence?

I could see that something had to give when they started being attacked by what they viewed as their own side.

Unless, you didn't miss it, and "internal struggle" is a totally outta pocket euphemism?

I actually just interpreted "attacked" as the sort of attacks I've actually seen - shouting, protest signs, criticism, dialogue etc. I haven't seen any jews getting murdered or brutally assaulted in the west by left-wing activists in order to change their political views, though I'll happily update my post if it turns out there's actually a brutal pogrom taking place on American university campuses. Additionally, "internal struggle" is directly from the post I was quoting.

'People experiencing "internal struggles" and changing their minds, as a result of being attacked(shouted at, protested against, and criticized by their social groups), is good actually.' is what I was alluding to.

Compare.

Changing your mind over a serious or contentious issue as a result of a period of internal struggle is generally regarded as a positive development by most people, and they use terms like "personal growth" to describe it

and

Changing your mind over a serious or contentious issue as a result of a period of internal struggle --after being shouted at, protested against, and criticized by your social group-- is generally regarded as a positive development by most people, and they use terms like "personal growth" to describe it

I am, skeptical, that 'most people' would agree with the second formation.

I am, skeptical, that 'most people' would agree with the second formation.

Ever spoken to any vegetarians or vegans? Most of them would be more than happy to tell you about how much their life was improved by someone hostilely and aggressively telling them about the actual suffering their food choices were responsible for. I personally have changed my opinion on some issues because partisans actually showed me the cost in human suffering of my prior stance, and I don't think those people harmed or hurt me in any way.

They don’t typically think they’re taking the side of Hamas (some do but they’re in the extreme minority), they think they’re taking the side of a rainbow future one state solution where Jews and Muslims live together in peace, harmony and democracy. That is indeed hopeless naïveté, but no moreso than ‘defunding the police will reduce crime’, which they almost certainly also believe.

There have always been some Jews who’d rather not be part of the Jewish community. Some succeed, and we never hear of them as Jews again. Some are carried away by the Gestapo.

Every year, and as it happens it’s on this day specifically, we think of them briefly. From the parable of the four sons:

The wicked one, what does he say? "What is this service to you?!" He says “to you,” but not to him! By thus excluding himself from the community he has denied that which is fundamental. You, therefore, blunt his teeth and say to him: "It is because of this that the L‑rd did for me when I left Egypt"; `for me' - but not for him! If he had been there, he would not have been redeemed!"

There have always been some Jews who’d rather not be part of the Jewish community. Some succeed, and we never hear of them as Jews again.

Of course, the Early Life always remembers.

What do you mean by this?

The "Early Life" section of Wikipedia; it's a meme among the sorts of people who use (((echos))).

Right. Real classy.

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