There is no communist paradise in Gaza so what would be the point of even the most devoted leftist throwing their lot in with that movement? It’s all based on vibes. For years the pro-Hamas American leftists excused “from the river to the sea” as a peaceful slogan for Palestinian liberation. When we would say “Bestie they are calling for a genocide of 50% of the world population of Jews for realsies,” they would audibly scoff saying “you think decolonization is violent because colonization is violent, baby it just ain’t that way.” Now that the whole world can see that this “decolonization” (truly a recolonization) project is indeed horrifically violent Jew-hatred, they either deny what happened or use decolonial theory and literature (literal Frantz Fanon quotes used to excuse gang rape) to forgive Hamas and say Israelis deserved it. And to what end? What would be the point of a collapsed liberal democratic state? Who has the guns and cash and knowledge of the basics of society to take over? Not the American left
A very insightful analysis. We seem to be exceptionally vulnerable to this kind of co-option, and older readers will be aware that “we have been here before”.
In the various legal proceedings brought against the Paedophile Information Exchange by the British authorities in the 1970s and early 80s, PIE had no more vocal (non-pedophile) defenders than elements of the Troskyist left, and left-anarchists. While it is undeniable that the charge under which prosecutors were finally successful in court, “conspiracy to corrupt public morals”, rested on a very shaky legal basis, the extreme left's support for PIE was motivated by the aim of “sowing mischief” for the purpose of social disruption in precisely the way you describe in your article; indeed, in private conversation, they made little or no attempt to disguise this. “Ordinary” gay men were held to have been entirely “recuperated” by bourgeois society, and thus no longer to have any “revolutionary potential”; I have little doubt that in 2023, they make the same judgment of “ordinary” lesbians, hence the need to seek out (or invent?) sexual minorities who have, or to whom they can attribute, the “pariah” status we used to endure.
Their entire modus operandi relies on making impossible and unreasonable demands, unreasonable not only to the bourgeois State, but also in their own judgment, and which they would not for a moment contemplate granting if they were ever to come to power – though how they could ever realistically hope to fill the power vacuum created by the total breakdown of civil society they aim to bring about, now that they have recklessly abandoned any attempt to retain or regain the support of the working class on which any real socialist revolution would depend, is a mystery. There seems little doubt that such a vacuum would in fact be filled by a fascistic regime which would make the “oppression” under which, allegedly, we currently suffer seem like a Pride Day picnic.
Because of the very real gains we have made in liberal societies, most gay men and very many lesbians have become politically complacent, and I think it is at least in part this which has permitted virtually all of our supposedly representative organizations to append some combination of the letters and symbols “2STAIQ+” to their names, whereas repeated attempts in the 70s and 80s to persuade us to rename our associations “Lesbian, Gay and Pedophile” failed. It should not be necessary to add, but I will do so anyway, that this comment concerns the wide-ranging, if apparently incoherent, tactics of the extreme left, and is not an attempt to draw any direct parallel between transgenderism and pedophilia.
I hate to write the obvious, but there is a reason the word is “queer”. No gay man in my quite large circle of ages from 18 to 98 call themselves queer. Most gay men I know find “queer” a slur. Queer is defined in contrast to “ordinary”, perhaps, or “conventional”, now apparently “sane”.
Mao had his cadre of hyper-revolutionaries. Guess what happened to them.
They lived happily ever after 😬
LOLno
They outlived their usefulness and he sicced the people’s army on them...
There is no communist paradise in Gaza so what would be the point of even the most devoted leftist throwing their lot in with that movement? It’s all based on vibes. For years the pro-Hamas American leftists excused “from the river to the sea” as a peaceful slogan for Palestinian liberation. When we would say “Bestie they are calling for a genocide of 50% of the world population of Jews for realsies,” they would audibly scoff saying “you think decolonization is violent because colonization is violent, baby it just ain’t that way.” Now that the whole world can see that this “decolonization” (truly a recolonization) project is indeed horrifically violent Jew-hatred, they either deny what happened or use decolonial theory and literature (literal Frantz Fanon quotes used to excuse gang rape) to forgive Hamas and say Israelis deserved it. And to what end? What would be the point of a collapsed liberal democratic state? Who has the guns and cash and knowledge of the basics of society to take over? Not the American left
A very insightful analysis. We seem to be exceptionally vulnerable to this kind of co-option, and older readers will be aware that “we have been here before”.
In the various legal proceedings brought against the Paedophile Information Exchange by the British authorities in the 1970s and early 80s, PIE had no more vocal (non-pedophile) defenders than elements of the Troskyist left, and left-anarchists. While it is undeniable that the charge under which prosecutors were finally successful in court, “conspiracy to corrupt public morals”, rested on a very shaky legal basis, the extreme left's support for PIE was motivated by the aim of “sowing mischief” for the purpose of social disruption in precisely the way you describe in your article; indeed, in private conversation, they made little or no attempt to disguise this. “Ordinary” gay men were held to have been entirely “recuperated” by bourgeois society, and thus no longer to have any “revolutionary potential”; I have little doubt that in 2023, they make the same judgment of “ordinary” lesbians, hence the need to seek out (or invent?) sexual minorities who have, or to whom they can attribute, the “pariah” status we used to endure.
Their entire modus operandi relies on making impossible and unreasonable demands, unreasonable not only to the bourgeois State, but also in their own judgment, and which they would not for a moment contemplate granting if they were ever to come to power – though how they could ever realistically hope to fill the power vacuum created by the total breakdown of civil society they aim to bring about, now that they have recklessly abandoned any attempt to retain or regain the support of the working class on which any real socialist revolution would depend, is a mystery. There seems little doubt that such a vacuum would in fact be filled by a fascistic regime which would make the “oppression” under which, allegedly, we currently suffer seem like a Pride Day picnic.
Because of the very real gains we have made in liberal societies, most gay men and very many lesbians have become politically complacent, and I think it is at least in part this which has permitted virtually all of our supposedly representative organizations to append some combination of the letters and symbols “2STAIQ+” to their names, whereas repeated attempts in the 70s and 80s to persuade us to rename our associations “Lesbian, Gay and Pedophile” failed. It should not be necessary to add, but I will do so anyway, that this comment concerns the wide-ranging, if apparently incoherent, tactics of the extreme left, and is not an attempt to draw any direct parallel between transgenderism and pedophilia.
I hate to write the obvious, but there is a reason the word is “queer”. No gay man in my quite large circle of ages from 18 to 98 call themselves queer. Most gay men I know find “queer” a slur. Queer is defined in contrast to “ordinary”, perhaps, or “conventional”, now apparently “sane”.
People don’t travel enough.