Being forcefully pro-Palestine is the most efficient way to weed all the worst people out of your life.
It takes care of them all. Zionists. Islamophobes. Apathetic narcissists. Unthinking herd-minded right wing ideologues. Abuser-enabling “both sides” moral cowards. Emotionally stunted man-babies who turn every challenging conversation into an “allow me to play devil’s advocate” mental exercise to avoid feeling normal human feelings. Leaned-back, too-cool-for-the-current-thing victims of western meta-irony brain rot. It’s like spraying yourself with asshole repellant.
Supporting Palestine doesn’t automatically make you a good person; opposing genocide and apartheid is just the basic bare-minimum position we’re all morally obligated to take. But supporting Israel against the Palestinians absolutely does automatically make you a bad person.
Palestine is an interesting issue in that someone’s position on it doesn’t merely tell you about their politics, it tells you who they are as a person. If they can listen to you talk about all the horrific things Israel has done in Gaza and still have an objection to your position on the matter, then they’re not the sort of person you want in your life. If they can look at all those videos of shrapnel-shredded children and the satellite images showing entire neighborhoods pulverized to powder and then still think you’re the problem for opposing those things, then they’re showing you that there is something profoundly wrong with them as human beings.
I haven’t lost a single relationship I care about in these last three years. I’ve alienated a few obnoxious old acquaintances whom I’ve never liked, but all the people I actually value and want to keep in my life are fully on my side when it comes to hating Israel and supporting the Palestinians. Turns out I had done a pretty good job of surrounding myself with decent human beings in the years prior to the Gaza holocaust, but if I hadn’t I would have driven away the genocide supporters without a moment’s hesitation, and I would have been glad that circumstances forced them to expose their true nature to me.
You don’t even need to be that dramatic about it, though. Simply holding your position and refusing to be bullied out of it is generally all it takes to get such individuals to step away from you. If they know you think their whole worldview is wrong and that their values system is depraved, and they know they can’t talk you out of that perspective, then they’re probably not going to want to hang out with you.
In a world that has gone mad, it’s important to find little signposts of clarity to help you morally orient yourself so you don’t get swept up in the insanity with the herd. Palestine is one such signpost, because it’s such a blatantly obvious moral position to hold on to. But in a world that has gone mad, insisting on sanity will often turn the insane against you.
Hot take but socially isolating yourself is counterproductive to the cause. There’s the whole “it’s not my job to educate you” thing but that’s for marginalized people who cant go through life explaining their identity or tolerating hateful bullshit directed at them every day. If you’re mentally capable of doing so you should be tolerant enough of people who have dogshit worldviews that you can semi-passively educate them by being open, honest and not fucking weird or aggressive about your own beliefs. People can change faster than you think.
This post would go really hard if the context wasn’t cutting people off for their open support for fascism and genocide.
The main problem is that people who want to see every Palestinian hang from trees are fairly rare in the grand scheme and most who cheer on settler projects like Israel do so because that’s what their favorite commentator is telling them to do. The classic ‘politics as sports team’ understanders. Zero political understanding, zero material analysis. Zero knowledge. Just pure reaction.
If people are associating with those who have a vested material interest in the annihilation of the Palestinian people, or are truly, rabidly fascist enough to desire genocide, then the new question becomes why are you associating with such people to begin with.
This is an important point. There is probably some misunderstanding that goes on in these kind of conversations, due to the “persuade people” position assuming we’re talking about the politically illiterate and the “reject them without hesitation” position assuming we’re talking about the rabidly violent. Which one it is more like does matter substantially for what is a reasonable way to handle it.
Like I’m pretty sure nobody is trying to say we should go up to armed fascists and be like “but have you considered not being fascist?”
A fair point.
Organization are there to recruit and “change the minds” - you shouting at your uncle on thanksgiving is not productive, he won’t change his mind and stop being racist.
Thinking if you go enough ahm akshually 🤓👆 then suddenly there will be 300 new DSA/whatever members is liberalism. Basically the “save the planet”, by using paper straws but ignoring Taylor Swift’s using her private jet to get her groceries and therefore pumping out as much CO2 in one flight as a dozen African countries in a decade, but under a different name.
Thinking if you go enough ahm akshually 🤓👆 then suddenly there will be 300 new DSA/whatever members is liberalism.
That’s an uncharitable strawman, to put it nicely. Nobody said changing others’ minds is easy/effortless.
Organization are there to recruit and “change the minds” - you shouting at your uncle on thanksgiving is not productive, he won’t change his mind and stop being racist.
Organizations can be more effective at changing minds for a variety of reasons (like educational materials, consistent ideological line, trained techniques, material help that has a positive influence, etc.) but you don’t need to wait around for an org to start learning how to persuade people. If the racist uncle is a lost cause, but you see him at thanksgiving anyway, then why not keep trying different approaches each year and see if any do better? Is the uncle gonna pull a gun on you or is he just an asshole who likes to mouth off? Discerning the difference is important for knowing whether being too overt with your views is actually dangerous, or if you’re simply dealing with western chauvinist brain (which can be unlearned).
I tend to agree. I’m not gonna accost somebody and tell them “you must keep this person with awful views in your life”, but as a general mindset, especially those of us in the imperial core tend to be surrounded by varying degrees of reactionary/shitty views and would fast collapse our reach by rejecting anyone who doesn’t fit the mold.
BUT, big but on this one, this does not mean “you are obligated to do political organizing with people who have dangerously different views because something something big tent.” Organizing needs to have a principled, consistent ideological foundation if it is to be anything more than a vague non-profit / volunteer effort. Then in order to grow from that foundation, that’s where the first part comes in, not as an act of letting in just anybody to an organization, but as an act of growing through educating, building ties, and so on, until others are in sync with the organization’s ideological goals and can be a vital asset to it.
This is also distinct from one organization working with another organization temporarily in a “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” manner. When people try to translate that strategic mindset to individuals, they can fast end up with “big tent whole lot of nothing”. The pivotal difference with temporary org + org is that the principled ideological foundation can be independently maintained, in spite of the temporary allying. Whereas with individuals, it’s easy for the radical ideology to get subsumed by the inertia of maintaining the status quo and then it just becomes a crank in the crowd whose complaints are ignored rather than revolutionary organizing.
I agree, but I think our comrade knows these particular people better than we could, so I’m sure they would understand which among these people are simply far too intellectually dishonest, morally bankrupt, or self-absorbed and ego-driven to ever care about a clear-cut issue as Palestinian genocide. Some people truly are thoroughly gripped by their reactionary, Western culture and are completely resistant to change. I would imagine that only their personal experience and a dramatic change from how they engage with facts now to one in which they do things in good faith would be what changes their stance and worldview, really. For another to change someone this gripped by their education and tendencies really is a tough task as American culture is so complete and thoroughly rooted, down to its society’s cellular level with the individual.
Somewhat offtopic, so sorry, but wasn’t Caitlin Johnstone banned from Mastodon for not being sufficiently pro Ukraine or something like that? I wish I could follow her somewhere besides Bluesky.
