Israel-Hamas War Has Scrambled ‘Cancel Culture’ Tribes – The Daily Beast

2023/10/23 Leave a comment

Consistency is hard in practice…

After the tragedy, the farce.

While Israelis and Palestinians are burying their dead, pundits and activists in America are busy contradicting their principles to further their political claims.

Take America’s self-styled free speech warriors on the Right and the so-called intellectual dark web—you know, the ones who rail against cancel culture and woke censorship, making millions of dollars while complaining that they’ve been shut out of the institutions of journalism.

All of a sudden, now that it’s far-left voices being canceled, the response has been… mixed.

Meanwhile, the tactics and rhetoric of the left have contradicted everything progressives say they stand for in terms of solidarity and safety, at times spilling over into overt antisemitism.

Case in point: Harvard University, where a bunch of left-wing students issued (to my mind) an outrageous, shortsighted, and offensive statementholding Israel “entirely responsible” for Hamas’ massacre of more than 1,400 Israeli civilians, including the elderly, babies, and, as it happens, numerous peace activists as well.

There is much about this statement that is repellant: conflating legitimate resistance with kidnapping toddlers and grandmothers, denying moral agency to Hamas (after all, they can’t be expected to engage in moral reasoning), and not even mentioning the slaughtering innocent civilians part.

But even if the statement is wrong-headed, offensive, and even, in its gross insensitivity to the mass slaughter of Jews, borderline antisemitic, it is political speech, after all.

Yet in response, students have had job offers withdrawn, been doxxed by hard-right trolls (which has exposed them to death threats and harassment), and have faced calls from CEOs to have them blacklisted.

Meanwhile, Harvard, for the sin of not condemning the students (the president of Harvard did condemn the attacks and rightly noted that student organizations do not speak for the university), has itself been widely condemned, with donors and at least one Jewish foundation withdrawing their support. (Remarkably, in my online cohort of mostly liberal American Jews, there has been widespread support for this BDS-in-reverse decision.)

This is cancel culture writ large: unpopular political opinions being met with reprisals, firings, harassment, and worse. And it’s not just Harvard—similar controversies are also brewing at Columbia, Penn, and elsewhere.

And yet, “classical liberal” YouTube host Dave Rubin has called for pro-Palestine protesters to be deported, retweeting an asinine post analogizing the Jewish Voice for Peace protest this week at the Capitol to the Jan. 6 insurrection. (Another supposed free speech absolutist, Ben Shapiro, retweeted Rubin’s remark.) Newsweek senior editor-at-large Josh Hammertweeted a video of a protest outside the Israeli embassy in Washington, D.C., with the text, “Every single person here who is seen supporting Hamas and who is not a U.S. citizen should be deported posthaste.” (Meghan McCain gave it a retweet.)

To be fair, there have also been voices applying free speech principles even to objectionable speech acts. “Let the Activists Have Their Loathsome Rallies,” advised Thomas Chatterton Williams in The Atlantic. FIRE, the civil libertarian, heavily-Koch-funded free speech organization, has defended the right to free speech for pro-Palestinian voices and “recommended a pause” to the businesses seeking to punish students for exercising their free speech rights.

And Bari Weiss’ Free Press site ran a piece by Nadine Strossen (formerly of the ACLU) and Pamela Paresky entitled, “Even Antisemites Deserve Free Speech.” (Weiss herself seized on the latest extreme remark by Columbia professor Joseph Massad to continue her 20-year-long feud with him, and does not appear to have condemned the widespread canceling of left-wing voices.)

And because irony is truly not dead, the Center/Right has even tried to take a rhetorical trope from the Left, complaining that pro-Palestinian professors create a hostile, “unsafe” environment for Jewish students.

To be sure, this is sometimes true, as when a Stanford University instructor reportedly made Jewish students stand in a corner, alleging that this is what Israel does to Palestinians. Meanwhile, leftist students, who last month were focused on making sure every campus is a safe space for all, have harassed and targeted Jewish students in hideous ways. So much for “your opinions make me feel unsafe.”

It’s also true that some statements are not mere political speech, but are (potentially criminal) incitements to violence. For example, one UC Davis professor called for harassment or violence against “zionist journalists,” saying “they have houses w addresses, kids in school. They can fear their bosses, but they should fear us more.” That is chilling, and well outside the bounds of civil discourse.

But it is not the case that a professor’s support of Palestine is ipso facto hostile to Jewish students, who are depicted as snowflakes that melt at any exposure to anti-Israel opinions. Part of the problem is the efforts by some Jewish organizations (often catering to their right-wing donors) to define any speech that “demonizes” or “delegitimizes” Israel as antisemitic. But that is simply not true, no matter how often it is repeated.

Jewish Voice for Peace is an anti-Zionist Jewish organization. Are they all self-haters, trapped in some neurosis of internalized antisemitism? Or are they, in fact, sincere Jewish people with a hard-left political opinion?

To repeat, I found the Harvard student letter not only wrong-headed but personally painful to read, especially as it came out as I was doomscrolling through videos of murder and kidnapping at a festival site I attended a few years ago. But should all those students be canceled? Doxxed? Pilloried?

And conversely, is it not possible for left-wing activists to express solidarity with Palestine without equating all Jews with right-wing Zionists, harassing us, and taunting us while we are still reeling from the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust? The Left has done more to alienate progressive Jews in the last two weeks than in the last 20 years.

To be sure, neither left-wing activists nor American Jews are the real victims here. The victims are thousands of dead, kidnapped, orphaned, or traumatized Palestinians and Israelis who are caught between two extremist governments who reject the very notion of coexistence, and do everything to undermine it.

Seems like a lot of Americans are acting the same way.

Source: Israel-Hamas War Has Scrambled ‘Cancel Culture’ Tribes – The Daily Beast

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , , , ,

The Mentality That Explains Trump’s Dead-Enders

2020/11/18 1 Comment

Possible cult thesis:

In 1954, social psychologist Leon Festinger embedded himself in a cult called The Seekers, whose leader, Dorothy Martin, preached that a UFO would rescue them before destroying the planet on Dec. 21 of that year. When that didn’t happen, many sect members left. But most of the inner circle remained, inventing all kinds of rationales for why the prophecy didn’t come true (e.g. their faith persuaded the aliens to give Earth a second chance) and redoubled their devotion.

From this research, Festinger developed the theory of cognitive dissonance: that human beings will do just about anything to resolve contradictions between our deeply held beliefs about the world and the reality of the world itself. Cognitive dissonance is so unpleasant, so disordering and catastrophic for the ego, that no amount of absurd, tortured reasoning is worse than reality contradicting a deeply held belief.

Sound familiar?

I first encountered the concept of cognitive dissonance as a grad student in religious studies (I ended up writing my dissertation on a failed messianic movement) but it’s become a cornerstone of contemporary psychology in a variety of contexts. It applies to much more than religion: it is, I think, the best explanation for today’s political and ideological divides, and for the mind-blowing fact that 70 percent of Republicans say they think the election Trump lost was not “free and fair.”

All of us try to resolve cognitive dissonance, but the Trump movement has been a years-long exercise in it. Election denial is its latest manifestation. But before that came COVID denial, science denial, climate denial, ‘alternative facts,’ the inability of Trump’s most devoted fans to see him for the obvious con man that he is, and, at the movement’s very core, denial of the social and demographic changes that are transforming America.

In all of these cases, developments in history are contradicting deeply held beliefs—in fact, not mere “beliefs” but organizing principles of the world that create one’s sense of place within it. If Donald Trump legitimately lost the election, most Americans can put up with Socialism or Black Lives Matter or the Liberal Media or whatever else. If America is really, legitimately changing, then the white-, male-, straight-, and Christian-dominated world is gone and will never come back. If climate change is real, then the way I’ve been living my life has been causing harm, and has to change, even if that means government regulations and restrictions. If the Republicans are just duping me into supporting massive benefits for the ultra-rich, I’m a stupid mark. If Trump really is a con man with a bad weave and even worse makeup, then I’ve been deluded for four years. And so on.

Again, these aren’t mere beliefs; they are how people understand themselves and their communities. That’s what’s challenging about cognitive dissonance. It’s pointless to argue facts with someone in the throes of denial, because no twist of facts is too preposterous to entertain if the alternative is letting go of one’s entire worldview and sense of self.

Cognitive dissonance is also a primary reason that people resort to conspiracy theories, which Trumpworld increasingly resembles, not only in fringe manifestations like QAnon but in the allegation of widespread fraud in the presidential election, which, of course, has no factual basis whatsoever and is, at this point, simply a conspiracy theory writ large.

Conspiracy theories explain phenomena too difficult to simply accept: Plandemic explains how COVID-19 could upend the world, Trutherism explains how 9/11 could upend the world, QAnon explains how Trump has “not yet” uprooted the profound evil among American elites. And for believers, however horrible the conspiracy is—Cannibal pedophiles! Reptilian aliens!—it is less horrible than the possibility that no one is minding the store, that bad things happen to good people, that life is filled with randomness, chance, and change, and that most people actually don’t agree with your ideas, all of which are cognitively dissonant for human animals trying to find security in the world.

“Plandemic explains how COVID-19 could upend the world, Trutherism explains how 9/11 could upend the world, QAnon explains how Trump has “not yet” uprooted the profound evil among American elites.”

In this light, QAnon isn’t some weird, fringe phenomenon with no connection to populist politics. It’s a logical extension of the populist worldview. If “the people” are actually the majority, then a sinister minority—Jews, ‘coastal elites’, the media, the Satanic pedophiles, whoever—is actually in control. It’s a short jump from that to full-blown conspiracy madness. And when the anointed messenger of “the people” turns out to be a buffoon chiefly interested in his own enrichment, well, that must all be a ruse. Or a media conspiracy. Or whatever.

In fact, of course, America is changing not because of manipulation by shadowy elites, be they coastal, Semitic, pedophiliac, or reptilian, but because of demographics and social change on questions like sexuality, gender, race, and religion. The numbers are incontrovertible. But that would mean that the populists are actually wrong about what “America” even is. That would mean they are wrong about who they are; they’re not the “real Americans,” they’re just one subset of real Americans, and a dwindling one at that. That is intolerable.

To be sure, denial as a means of avoiding cognitive dissonance exists across the political spectrum. Plenty of progressives have been 9/11 Truthers, anti-vaxxers, and COVID deniers. Plenty more believe in astrology, pseudo-science, and the quackery of the “wellness industry” despite contrary evidence. In the phenomenon known as “conspirituality,” many have even co-opted right-wing conspiracies like QAnon and grafted them onto a New Age worldview.

Nor is right-wing cognitive dissonance new. Drawing on the McCarthy period, historian Richard Hofstadter coined the term “paranoid style in American politics” to describe the populist worldview, as alive now as then, that sees real America as simultaneously a beacon of strength and a citadel under siege by nefarious outsiders (communists, Jews, Muslims, immigrants, whoever). Someone is always out to destroy America, and it’s always five minutes to midnight.

Likewise today. Trump can’t be defeated fairly—that would mean that America isn’t what the “America First” crowd says it is, and that the identities of tens of millions of Americans are in need of serious revision. So it must be the fault of some ‘Other’: the media, the Democrats, the Jews, the great Satanic conspiracy.

The human aversion to cognitive dissonance is widespread, powerful, and connected to our core conceptions of the meaning of life and how to survive it. It is as primal as it gets. So no, my numerous data-filled articles about Trump’s lawsuits will not persuade a true believer.

Don’t worry, though; cognitive dissonance is so strong a motivator that it will eventually triumph over its current manifestation. When the facts are incontrovertible, all but a small hardcore of Trump’s supporters will simply tweak their meta-theories. God works in mysterious ways, after all. Or maybe Biden’s election was punishment for our sins. Or maybe, for those more secularly inclined, we were getting complacent under Trump, and now we’ll have to wake up.

Whatever it takes, Trump’s devoted base will find a way to preserve their beliefs in the face of his eventual loss. I suppose that’s a good thing: eventually they’ll figure out a way to explain that, too.

Source: The Mentality That Explains Trump’s Dead-Enders

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , , ,

The Tone-Deaf Israeli Reactions to the Pittsburgh Synagogue Shooting

2018/10/30 Leave a comment

Interesting account of the gap between Israeli and American Jews:

For Jews around the world, now is a time to mourn and come together, as the dead from the mass shooting at a Pittsburgh synagogue are buried. And yet it also reveals how far apart we are.

To be sure, most responses to the massacre were sincere and uncontroversial. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, as well as all of Israel’s leading politicians, issued heartfelt and apolitical responses to the massacre.

But not all.

In an interview with an Israeli religious newspaper, Rabbi David Lau, Israel’s Ashkenazic chief rabbi (a governmental position), declined to call Tree of Life Synagogue a synagogue, describing it instead as “a place with a profound Jewish flavor.” Other ultra-Orthodox newspapers have followed suit, referring to it as a “Jewish center.”

To American Jews who care about Israel, that’s a painful reminder that Reform, Conservative, and other non-Orthodox Jewish denominations are not recognized by the Jewish state. The state does not recognize conversions performed by non-Orthodox rabbis. And plans for a non-Orthodox prayer space at the Western Wall have been floated and canceled for a generation now—most recently by Netanyahu, who flatly broke his promise to American Jewish leaders to create one last year.

Nor is the tone-deafness exclusively on the right. Israel’s opposition leader, Avi Gabbay, said the attack should inspire “the Jews of the United States to immigrate more and more to Israel, because this is their home.”

Meanwhile, Diaspora Affairs Minister Naftali Bennett headed to Pittsburgh to offer condolences, saying, in part, “our hearts go out to the families of those killed, and we pray for the swift recovery of the injured, as we pray this is the last such event. Jewish blood is not free.”

First, sending the ultranationalist Bennett to “comfort” mostly liberal American Jews rubs salt in the wound. Bennett, perhaps more than any other Israeli politician, has legitimized open racism against Arabs, sworn his opposition to a two-state solution with Palestinians, and moved the “Overton window” of Israeli nationalism far to the right. Thanks to his party, Jewish Home, comments that would have been too racist for polite conversation a decade ago are now routinely made on the floor of the Knesset.

Second, Bennett’s line about “Jewish blood” is both creepily blood-nationalist and a common justification for harsh military responses against terrorists, their families, their neighbors, and even their whole villages.

What revenge is Bennett planning to take against Robert Bowers, anyway? Bennett’s rhetoric is tone-deaf, alienating to most American Jews, and part of the very hypernationalist crisis that brought this tragedy into being in the first place.

These and other comments point to a vast and growing gap between Israel and the majority of American Jews.

Take the nationalist populism of President Trump. Among American Jews, Trump’s approval rating hovers around 21 percent. Mostly liberal American Jews are appalled by his anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim, anti-media, and anti-science rhetoric. In Israel, however, 69 percent of Israelis express confidence in Trump’s leadership. If you assume that hardly any Israeli Arabs (21 percent of the population) share that confidence, that’s a roughly 85 percent approval rating among Israeli Jews.

There are many reasons for that widespread support. Trump has shifted the United States from being an “honest broker” for Middle East peace to being an unapologetic partisan for Israel, symbolized by the move of the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem (the status of which is still disputed under international law). Trump’s broadsides against Muslims and his anti-Obama birtherism resonate with the prejudices of many Israeli Jews, many of whom believe they are surrounded by hostile, uncivilized enemies.

“In any war between the civilized man and the savage, support the civilized man,” in the words of pro-Israel extremist Pamela Geller.

Most important, though, right-wing Israelis, together with the majority of Orthodox, right-wing Jews in America, have a fundamentally different understanding of Judaism than the majority of American Jews, whose experiences are colored by American liberalism and the immigrant experience.

For the former, Judaism is Am Yisrael, the Nation of Israel, a source of patriotism and allegiance. For the latter, Judaism may be a culture, or a religion, or a nation, but it is defined not by blood and loyalty, but by ideals of justice, fairness, and compassion. When those ideals are transgressed, liberal Jews see Judaism betrayed. Whereas, for many on the right, you’re either for us or against us, and if you’re against us, you’re anti-Semitic and that’s that.

“Pittsburgh is why most American Jews oppose Trump. Israeli leaders seem not to understand that.”

For the former, the lesson of the Holocaust is that Jews must always be strong and defend themselves. For the latter, the lesson of the Holocaust is that baseless hatred is wrong and leads to tragedy.

For the former, Jews everywhere exist in solidarity with each other. But progressive American Jews may find more in common with other oppressed minorities than with right-wing Jews, who oppress minorities themselves.

For the former, Muslims and Arabs, often confused with each other, are the implacable enemy of the Jewish people. For the latter, violent rejectionists—be they Muslim, Jewish, or Trump-loving-Christian—are the enemy.

For the former, supporting Israel means supporting the Israeli right’s vision of a strong ethno-state triumphant over its enemies. For the latter, supporting Israel means helping calmer, more rational voices prevail so that peace and justice can be achieved for Israelis and Palestinians alike.

Each side has biblical proof-texts, Jewish history, and plenty of emotional appeals they can make. We all have our friends or relatives who have died at the hands of terrorists, anti-Semites, or enemy soldiers. No one ever wins this argument. (We are Jews, after all.)

But the results are profoundly different conceptions of what it means to be a Jew.

When most American Jews hear Trump bash “media elites,” Muslims, Mexicans, Democrats, or victims of sexual assault, we see our deepest values transgressed, and we see ourselves in the crosshairs next, because we, too, are an often despised minority.

But when right-wing Israelis and American Jews hear Trump bash Israel’s enemies, they are encouraged and emboldened. They say anti-Semitism, which Trump has condemned, is totally separable from the white-nationalism, Islamophobia, transphobia, racism, and populism that he has tolerated or encouraged. They say Trump is on our side.

And yet it’s not just he said/she said. There are still facts. And the facts are that the alt-right’s most ardent members, people like Cesar Sayoc Jr. and Robert Bowers, do not separate anti-Semitism from their hatred of immigrants, Muslims, people of color, gays, liberals, and journalists. They say so quite clearly, in words and deeds.

In short, Pittsburgh is why most American Jews oppose Trump. Israeli leaders seem not to understand that.

Source: The Tone-Deaf Israeli Reactions to the Pittsburgh Synagogue Shooting

Filed under Antisemitism Tagged with , ,