OK, so first of all, some of you freechuds tried to cheat and ask questions through the survey (please take it if you haven’t already). Sorry no. Also, if you wrote in the survey, ‘It would be great to meet up some time’ what do you think I’m supposed to do with that since you didn’t put your name or anything? Finally, some of you asked multiple questions. I’ll let it go this time, but next time I’ll just pick one.
Stanislas Richard
1) Why do you think Western leftists, and, really, leftists everywhere, are so obsessed with Palestine? I live in Chile, and here it is the only topic on which an unorthodox opinion, basically, disagreeing with the idea that a unified, democratic, secular state “from the river to the sea” (sic!) is feasible or even a good idea, will get you expelled from polite society.
This is an easy question. Within the Left there are three heuristics used to work out which is the good and which is the bad side in a conflict: (a) powerful (bad) vs. weak (good); (b) white (bad) vs. dark (good); (c) allied to America (bad) vs. opposed to the imperial hegemon America (good). This seems a bit stupid, and it is, because leftism is stupid, but if you rephrase it a bit I don’t even think most leftists would disagree with this characterisation. Different parts of the Left emphasise the three heuristics to different degrees, so when they conflict they will disagree. For example, is Russia the baddy because it’s big, or is Ukraine the baddy because it’s allied to America? When that is the case, different leftist activists cancel each other out, instead of reinforcing each other, and the movement as a whole loses interest. Israel is the one issue where all three heuristics give the same answer. At some level, hasbarists understand this, which is why they are always spamming people with pictures of Yemenite Jews and Falashas, and, while you or I might find this too cringe to contemplate, I think it actually does work a bit.
This also helps us understand why the Left was once mostly pro-Israel. Back then, Israel was perceived as good because it opposed English imperialism, and was standing up to the whole Muslim world. The second heuristic was less explicitly racialised, so Jews got points as a minority, even if they were whiter.
2) In your opinion, what does it mean to be an HBD liberal (I was made to understand that this is roughly your stance on things)?
I am not an HBD liberal, because I am not a liberal, but an HBD liberal is just a liberal who believes in HBD. Every liberal should be an HBD liberal, because HBD is true. It’s like being a ‘the world is round liberal’ or ‘salt is a compound of sodium and chlorine liberal’. As to what it actually entails, the biggest difference is that you no longer take disparate impact as evidence of discrimination. If there is a high IQ field in which Asians dominate and there are hardly any Blacks, then this is not evidence of injustice, it’s evidence of justice.
Deszcz
Would like to hear your thoughts about Dara Horn without having to wait for the book chapter.
Geez. Think of it like this. Most westerners are sympathetic to Palestinians when they see pictures of them crying outside wrecked buildings in Gaza, but they weren’t sympathetic to them when they were rampaging around kibbutzim kidnapping grannies. I guess ‘people love dead Palestinians’.
In other words, there’s a general bias in western morality towards victims and against victimisers. You can make the argument that this has gone too far, and we should rebalance moral norms to give more weight to qualities like competence, fitness or strength, and maybe I agree to some extent, but that isn’t what Dara Horn wants, she wants moral sentiments to be rebalanced specifically for the benefit of Jews. Jews should be loved when they are victims, and they should also be loved when they are running a 60-year military occupation. It’s not good enough for gentiles to apply their general standards of ethics consistently to Jews, they have to arbitrarily alter them in line with whatever is good for Jews. And what’s worse is that they already do do that, but it’s not enough! If liberal standards were applied consistently, Israel would already be a pariah state (unless it drastically changed its policies), but European countries fudge the issue because of Holocaust guilt and a certain degree of philosemitism. But that’s not enough to satisfy Dara Horn. Westerners aren’t allowed to merely bend their moral principles to favour Israel, they have to openly trample on them.
Zeb Naybar
Was Zionism actually a secret conspiracy by antisemitic goyim to shred the fabled verbal IQ of Ashkenazis by creating a movement that would facilitate their intermarriage with the arsim?
Hmm.
