The people with glaring personality disorders had to go somewhere, after wokism collapsed. Politics and trying to control the world is a normal place for people with extremely defective psychology. The problem for them though is that they're all the worst people and therefore can only work each other up into ever greater stupidity amd hysteria and sideline themselves eventually into being no more than irrelevant public nuisance again. Third worldism is merely a movement of individual dysfunction that will gain some power by terrifying the normies for a while, but collectives of Cluster Bs will never build anything true or good.
Yes, "symbolic redemption" is the name of the game and there couldn't be two better candidates to supply it.
The Palestinians, a Western fetish object for the past half century, whose narrative of heroic rebels fighting for freedom and justice against colonial imperialism was crafted by the Soviet Union—and like so many spawns of the Soviets, what for them was a cynical strategy for power became holy writ for their Western academic epigones, who never met a radical pose they didn't like, esp if it meant they could stay safe on campus getting checks and tenure while other people bled and died for their status games and fantasies of leading revolutions. This is why every Palestinian grievance is confirmed and sanctified, why their every wound and calorie is detailed and tallied and every massacre they commit is reframed as a righteous battle against Oppression—Communism is a proxy Christianity with Karl as its prophet and capitalism as its Satan and the Palestinians are now the Communist Christ, the sacred spotless victim at the center of their moral universe, the savior we must bleed, kill and die for.
And against them is Israel with its sins of continuing to exist and refusing to be erased, currently being transformed into the newest iteration of the ancient Jewish scapegoat. (The Jewish scapegoat gets loaded with all the supposed crimes and neuroses of each age, as assigned by various moral, political, and ideological entrepreneurs. One generation they're too foreign, then they're too ubiquitous; then they're too capitalist, then they're too communist; then they're too weak and bookish, then they're too martial and aggressive etc etc.) Now the jargon-crafting moral bullies of Left Academia are the ones who get to create and desseminate the new list of crimes to be loaded atop the Jewish scapegoat: settler-colonial white-supremacist imperialist ethnostate apartheid genocide etc. And turning Israel into a pariah state and ultimately destroying it is the goal with "symbolic redemption" the reward.
Jew hate is back in style, which usually means that what comes next are marches denouncing Jews (uh, I mean "Israel"), pogroms, political extremism, conspiracy theories, fights in the street, social unraveling—we've checked a few of those boxes already.
After a few decades asleep and narcotized by cash and clicks, History is back!
This sets out so clearly what I’ve struggled to get my head around. Why the legions of well-meaning, but too-intense, busy-body types suddenly donned keffiyehs and water-melon earrings etc.
Intriguing essay. I always thought this was why Hitchens moved from Marxist to Neoconservative so effortlessly. Once working class material concerns were no longer fashionable, his revolutionary imagination took him to the Mideast.
As soon as Riboua tied the cause of Gaza to leftist revitalization, I knew what I was looking at. No surer way to become one of history's losers than to align yourself with international anti-Semitism.
Deeply shocked by the wave of antisemitism flooding Western European and North American metropoles and campuses (!) I'm aware of the need of an explanation for this phenomenon. But I wouldn't consider just a mouth piece of Francisco Franco this way replacing one evil by another.
The people with glaring personality disorders had to go somewhere, after wokism collapsed. Politics and trying to control the world is a normal place for people with extremely defective psychology. The problem for them though is that they're all the worst people and therefore can only work each other up into ever greater stupidity amd hysteria and sideline themselves eventually into being no more than irrelevant public nuisance again. Third worldism is merely a movement of individual dysfunction that will gain some power by terrifying the normies for a while, but collectives of Cluster Bs will never build anything true or good.
Yes, "symbolic redemption" is the name of the game and there couldn't be two better candidates to supply it.
The Palestinians, a Western fetish object for the past half century, whose narrative of heroic rebels fighting for freedom and justice against colonial imperialism was crafted by the Soviet Union—and like so many spawns of the Soviets, what for them was a cynical strategy for power became holy writ for their Western academic epigones, who never met a radical pose they didn't like, esp if it meant they could stay safe on campus getting checks and tenure while other people bled and died for their status games and fantasies of leading revolutions. This is why every Palestinian grievance is confirmed and sanctified, why their every wound and calorie is detailed and tallied and every massacre they commit is reframed as a righteous battle against Oppression—Communism is a proxy Christianity with Karl as its prophet and capitalism as its Satan and the Palestinians are now the Communist Christ, the sacred spotless victim at the center of their moral universe, the savior we must bleed, kill and die for.
And against them is Israel with its sins of continuing to exist and refusing to be erased, currently being transformed into the newest iteration of the ancient Jewish scapegoat. (The Jewish scapegoat gets loaded with all the supposed crimes and neuroses of each age, as assigned by various moral, political, and ideological entrepreneurs. One generation they're too foreign, then they're too ubiquitous; then they're too capitalist, then they're too communist; then they're too weak and bookish, then they're too martial and aggressive etc etc.) Now the jargon-crafting moral bullies of Left Academia are the ones who get to create and desseminate the new list of crimes to be loaded atop the Jewish scapegoat: settler-colonial white-supremacist imperialist ethnostate apartheid genocide etc. And turning Israel into a pariah state and ultimately destroying it is the goal with "symbolic redemption" the reward.
Jew hate is back in style, which usually means that what comes next are marches denouncing Jews (uh, I mean "Israel"), pogroms, political extremism, conspiracy theories, fights in the street, social unraveling—we've checked a few of those boxes already.
After a few decades asleep and narcotized by cash and clicks, History is back!
Thanks for the great work...
A very convincing analysis.
Excellent!
This sets out so clearly what I’ve struggled to get my head around. Why the legions of well-meaning, but too-intense, busy-body types suddenly donned keffiyehs and water-melon earrings etc.
Intriguing essay. I always thought this was why Hitchens moved from Marxist to Neoconservative so effortlessly. Once working class material concerns were no longer fashionable, his revolutionary imagination took him to the Mideast.
So well said
Very interesting, really. Thanks.
Thank you
As soon as Riboua tied the cause of Gaza to leftist revitalization, I knew what I was looking at. No surer way to become one of history's losers than to align yourself with international anti-Semitism.
Deeply shocked by the wave of antisemitism flooding Western European and North American metropoles and campuses (!) I'm aware of the need of an explanation for this phenomenon. But I wouldn't consider just a mouth piece of Francisco Franco this way replacing one evil by another.
Amen. Losing the Hitch, agreed or otherwise was and remains a devastating degradation of public discourse. G-d rest his godless soul. ;)