Look, maybe it wasn't Gaza that got Bowman ousted, but it seems plausible, and maybe there's a lesson here about the electoral reality of being pro-Palestine in this country
Being pro-Palestinian would not cost one an election. Being anti-Zionist very well might, because anti-Zionism is a rejection of Jewish indigenous status, and even sideline Jews like myself have started to reconnect to that indigenous identity as the world once again shows its antisemitism.
I do get it. All these Hitlets call themselves "pro-Palestinian" but the reality is that they're just "pro-cause" and useful idiots, most of whom are simple minded white saviors trying to pass off their own guilt. So it's easy to confuse them with actually being pro-Palestinians like myself.
The "tell" is that they don't want peace. They'd be happy for Palestinians to keep fighting forever rather than ever accept Israel's existence and end the conflict permanently with settled borders. And also that they don't react when they see Palestinian kids used by adults to attack adult soldiers.
They'd call child services if they heard an adult tell a real kid, a kid who matters, that if they're having suicidal thoughts and wish they were in the afterlife already, where all their problems would be solved, then they should die in an act of terrorism taking out as many enemies as they can.
This!!! ☝️
There is _never_ a discussion — or even a peep — about peace from the pro-Palestinian side.
It is such a newspeak mixing of “anti” and “pro” that the movement should be studied for generations. They have truly perverted language and masked their true intents. And their intent is death.
I don't think that's what happened? A lot of other things about Bowman came out, like that he wasn't supportive of Biden's agenda, or that he didn't spend enough time in the district to the point of not even getting its boundaries right in his speech ("South Bronx").
Indeed, which is why I said "very well might" and what you said just makes the whole "he lost because Zionism" rhetoric an even larger load of bull shit, and why it is just a rehashing of the whole "Jews control the world" conspiracy vomit.
This is the same White supremacist neo-Paganism that makes guys from Milwaukee start "Viking" churches at strip malls. I'm sure there are some Jews that deluded, but not enough to swing elections.
You know what it is? These people think self defense is violence, and violence is self defense. Israel defending itself is violence, and that's bad, but Hamas trying to destroy Israel is just self defense, so it's good. These people are warped.
I have her muted, had no idea she even QTd me.
She's wrong, by the way. It's an important issue and I don't want it to "go away". I just want people to stop being insane about it.
I also don't oppose violence in the name of a good cause where there are few or no other viable solutions. But 1) violence itself has to be a viable solution, which it isn't for Palestine, and 2) if you're going to go that route, you don't get to cry foul when the other side is violent back.
"Violence" and "force" are often used interchangeably by many, but violence and force are different. Self defense can employ force, but that does not mean that it's violence.
Well, I'm guessing where you and I disagree is that I don't think even 30% of what Israel has done in Gaza over the years can be justified on the basis of self-defense.
One thing I have noticed about Israeli politics and defense policy is that they feel the need to respond to every provocation by swinging their dick around. The idea is that they *have* to respond to everything with overwhelming force to make sure their enemies know they mean business.
They sit around obsessing over all of us and it never occurs to them, "Are we the bullies?" I never think about ANY of them when they're not actually talking to me, and I don't remember which ones said which things because they all use the same talking points. But they remember US all righty.
Bowman went from beating Engel by 26 to losing to Latimer by 17 in 4 years. IMO much of that can be attributed to how Bowman reacted, first, to 10/07, and then subsequent criticism. Just one misstep after another. That rally he did a couple of days ago was….something.
The reality to be learned is that electoralism, absent direct grassroots action, is meaningless. The lesson should not- should never- be to subordinate or marginalize the pressing issue of genocide in Gaza.
This sounds really cool until you recognize that the end consequence will almost certainly be worse for Gaza, and also everyone living here, and also the millions around the globe who owe their peaceful lives to the liberal international order keeping a lid on a dozen ethnic conflicts
The problem with you guys is that you think of John Brown as an insane, violent radical for the most righteous cause (which is yours, of course) instead of what he actually was, which was a peaceful old-school Calvinist driven to violence by necessity.
Plucking him out of his historical context and dropping him in the present day is intrinsically silly, but even going on what we know about him, the idea that he would be running off to Gaza to fight alongside Hamas or whatever is absurd.
He used violence because he thought it was a useful tool in a world where most northerners were cowed by southern violence. Hamas's violence is entirely self-destructive. They face an enemy far too powerful to think they could ever expel them with guns and bombs.
This tendency to attribute to your political rivals the stupidest positions you can come up with is the behavior of a child, not a serious person. Find a single example in this thread where anyone attributed insanity to John Brown, or demanded that we personally go fight alongside Hamas.
I don't know what his take would be, but the idea of a "peaceful neoliberal order keeping global interethnic conflict in place" is grossly counter to about any reading of his narrative
What exactly is the "cause" you think John Brown would have supported? If the answer is "Peace in the middle east with full equal rights for Palestinians", then everything Hamas has done runs counter to that goal. If you think it's "Palestinian liberation", defined as kicking the Jews out...
OMFG. One of Brown's early influences was John Hudson, who advanced forcible resistance against slavery. In 1846, he joined the Free Church founded by black abolitionists, and by the time he met Frederick Douglass there had already formulated his plan for armed war/uprising against slaveholders
He stood shoulder to shoulder with and fought with those under the heel of an oppressive system. He advocated for freemen to take up arms to free those in bondage. The idea that he would not have sympathized with Palestinians kept under the boot of Israel is ahistorical and delusional.
The liberal international order is collapsing under its own weight. The electoral disadvantage you attribute to anti-genocide positions is A) poorly argued in itself, and B) if true, indicative that liberal democracy has lost whatever protective qualities you attribute to it.
That collapse can only be answered by somidarity between and international organization of workers. Your call to subordinate Palestinian life flies directly in the face of such. It's a cowardly posture, one that slinks towards our collective extinction.
"absent direct grassroots action" doing a TON of heavy lifting here, because yeah, obviously, electoralism is a *tactic*, not a strategy.
All the good stuff comes from organizing and direct action; elections are just a tool.
I for one never give up a useful tool when the stakes are high.
There is a progressive parenting group in my local school district I'm part of that was designed to fight against incursions from Moms For Liberty, and it has fractured slightly over Bowman, with certain onstensible progressives calling him antisemitic.
Look, maybe it was AIPAC spending $15,000,000 to kill his campaign. And - of course - was as a representative not a senator. And maybe there's a lesson here about money and power in this country.
