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When Opposing Genocide Is Seen As Radical, Radicalism Becomes A Moral Imperative
(caitlinjohnstone.com.au)
this post was submitted on 10 May 2024
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Liberals construct a political fiction around themselves specifically so that they can feel like they are "good people" while actually providing material and rhetorical support for the oppressor.
They are not "good people" any more than anyone else. They're reactionary assholes stuck in their mythology and refusing to be honest and humble. As you mention, many have degrees and yet rather than this resulting in them acknowledging their own ignorance on a topic and then self-informing by reading proper sources they just look for whatever op-ed confirms their biases. They are more arrogant than they are educated.
As you've experienced, they just collect a series of bad faith talking points that are unassailable because they're actually just deflection. They serve to confuse themselves so that they can avoid discussing the horrors they actively support.
This is what "bad people" do btw. Not that you should think of them that way, exactly. The good vs bad dichotomy is not very useful. More useful is that they are our enemies, even if you may have a personal connection to them. They are fighting for dead Palestinian kids and lying about it. It's not entirely their fault because this is their political education, but eventually they do have to make choices when confronted, and most often I see the entrenched, "educated" liberal choosing racism to justify genocide over anything else.
There are times, especially at present, where I can't really tell where my optimism ends and my cynicism begins and it really keeps me up at night a lot. We are watching an entire society do an unspeakable evil day after day while complaining the entire time about how actually they are the real victim and they blame the other party for their own actions....which is generally regarded as behavior associated with malignant narcissistic psychopaths. Common sense would tell me that the inherent psychological need most people have to see themselves as a good person would be overall a net positive for better outcomes but shit like this really makes you start to question it.
Yes, there's a horror in seeing the inconsistencies within people, including those you like. I think one has to organize towards who they could be, or could have been, if we are able to succeed in our attempt to grow and educate. Who they are, as demonstrated by their actions, is frequently too much to bear while still associating with them in any way.
I don't think it gets any starker than supporting genocide. That should be a line where everyone recognizes they can't rely on cursory knowledge and guesswork like they usually do. But even that is clearly not enough. They're still just waiting for the next mass media rationalization to come by and let them off the hook. The latest one is Biden "withholding" weapons. They're all over that. It lets them, despite all contradiction, feel like they're on the good side a bit more.
To be clear there is a subset of liberals reached by the facts and who are curious and empathetic more than they are entrenched and rationalizing. They're in the left pipeline right now, especially the younger generations. They're high school students walking out to support the university encampments, having no framework for analysis or understanding but knowing that the horrors are unsupportable.
But there are also different tiers of commitment to liberalism. And as you ascend the tiers, only greater and greater shocks and social consequences will be able to reach them. Many will only have a "change of heart" when told to by their political class masters, and likely long after the prime moment for action has passed. Some may change when their peers shame them, as they are in a vulnerable pocket of empathetic or impacted people. But many will not be reached at all by any of this and can only be out-organized, not brought into the movement.
But if we build, we will divert people away from that path. People who would have politically developed into callous, ignorant liberals can be educated into anti-imperialists, socialists, friend of people's struggles. If we can't reach someone's friend or sibling or father, we can reach someone just like them before they become entrenched.
Our work is a long and difficult project but is also one that recognizes that we are a product of our conditions, our social circles, etc. We can impact that.