Hi Tim, I read your last two interesting pieces. They are good and really thought-provoking, if rather depressing. But I don't know why you refer in passing and without context in two separate pieces to 'eviscerating' or 'bombing' children in Gaza. They diminish your writing because they're unexplained and out of context, and obviously only a tiny corner of the wider truth. Unlike your analysis of the war in Ukraine, for example, your passing mentions of Gaza don't add anything to your arguments. They feel as though you felt obligated to mention it and therefore mentioned it - but you can't obviously mention everything anyway. Personally, I think you should leave Gaza, very different from Ukraine, out of it, or else analyse it properly (even though I might not agree with your analysis). All best wishes, Peter
Because I am horrified by the disproportionate response of the Netanyahu Government to localised security threats. It is downright evil (and I am happy to use that word). The articles are not about Gaza and, if they were, they would be nuanced, recognising, for example, Israel as a fact on the ground which may reasonably be expected to act to defend itself. What puzzles me is how many liberal Jewish people who maintain under ordinary circumstances a strong moral compass can accede to the extreme behaviours of the IDF and of the hard right Netanyahu Government. This Government is engaged not in genocide (I do not accept that argument because of definitional weakness) but in war crimes. I will continue to position Gaza in this way because it is correct to do so. By failing to pressure the Government in Tel Aviv to moderate its behaviour at the least while supplying armament, the 'Labour' Government has become complicit in these war crimes. Perhaps I shall write about Gaza some day but I honestly believe that all that can be said has been said on all sides. The fate of the Middle East is not core to the British national interest which is my primary focus. In fact, I am as resistant to the Palestinian cause overwhelming our national interests as I am that of Israel. My interest is largely limited to the brutally simple one of whether a sovereign Government (mine) should be supporting another sovereign Government (Israel) while it is engaged in war crimes. I think not. Since I do not give a damn about the alleged reason for war crimes or the justificatory history behind them (by anyone, including targeting civilians by Hamas), I simply expect Israel to behave better in defending itself as I would expect any nation to do.
Hi Tim, You can take that view about the Israeli government (which is in Jerusalem and not Tel Aviv by the way) if you want, but it just seemed to me to be a kind of add-on and not part of your main argument. Did you maybe put it in just because you feel upset about alleged war crimes, rather than because it fitted into what you were arguing? Peter
I stand corrected on the capital which tells you, I suppose, that the country is not top of mind for me. No, it was not an add-on but as much a part of the argument as anything else. It is an example of 'petty evil' - not the bombing of children which is 'true evil' but the complicity of my Government in it through arms sales and lack of public condemnation. In this case, you will note I was not actually attacking Israel so much as attacking the current British Government for whom I have some admittedly tiny responsibility. I have no responsibility for Israel. I would not expect Israel to listen to my opinion. I do expect to contribute to opinion in my own country in this small way. I am far less concerned about Israel than I am about this Labour Government. Israel at least has the slim excuse of perceiving itself as at threat. Our Government has no such excuse in being complicit in the disproportionality of response of the Israeli Right. Exactly why a British Government considers it necessary to support Israel without any caveat when it comes to war crimes beats me, given its wittering on about human rights and war crimes in just about every other situation.
Anyone who has read about the way advertising became weaponised and it's ability to target customers and change there from things they need to things they want will see how social media is used to harness people emotions. I see social media as a heroin for the Left, we can rail against the night, shake our fists, write another blog! I deplore the politics of the chessboard that is destroying Gaza and Ukraine but I feel that me going nuclear on a single issue that at some point will end, leaving a vaccum what will the activists do then? Be burnt out find a burrow 😁 social media and online meetings are not organising physical meetings, newspapers, newsletters etc in your community is organising political education and propaganda like the old days before this massive circle jerk!
You have succinctly made the point that I wanted to convey. There are several aspects of concern here. There is the 'neuroticism' of activism where a single issue feeds a personal neurosis which demands its replacement by another single issue when the first issue is resolved or which becomes part of a single issue movement if it is not resolved with no attempt at thinking through (and acting upon) the total condition of social existence. Our current culture has empowered activism as a political methodology. Activisms have converged in a transmutation of the classical left wing 'package of measures' approach to politics resulting in the identity coalition where it is axiomatic that you ally with and never critique other forms of associated activism in order to organise 'change' (a very superficial change). If you care about gender issues, it becomes axiomatic that you support sexual orientation, race, anti-imperialist, human rights and environmental issues without serious question as to the grounding of these positions and their relationships to each other. This ends up in the farcical position where the most aggressive pro-Ukrainian forces are LGBTQ+ and Green and they expect to pull everyone else along with them because of this unthinking solidarity. We end up with a 'progressive politics' originating in neuroticism and exchanging a realistic and rational assessment of any one situation set within a realist framework with an anxious and emotional one circling a shared normative fantasy. This requires that the progressive coalition never thinks about its own grounding because, if it did, it would collapse. Into this vacuum of thought, the 'third way' centrist politician can step and replace policy with rhetoric, delivering superficial reforms (such as diversity) to build a cadre that can support them in the street but which is never actually involved in changing the core inequities and oppressions that affect most people most of the time. Business interests can 'buy into' that rhetoric without having to change anything in their own structures of power and ownership. In fact, this system does organise 'physical meetings, newspapers, newsletters etc in [the] community' but simply to recruit more similar psychologically confused activists in a form of pyramid scheme that is fuelled by taxpayer-funded patronage following capture of the existing system's patronage trough. If you are in the arts or academia, for example, your access to funding depends on you becoming propagandist in some form for this apparently rising but now crumbling system. This is thus not the same as internally generated community political education (which the trades union-based educational structures and that of mining communities were typical in a previous age) which was directed at changing the prevailing system. The leading elements in the new system will do anything necessary to ensure that such a system of exploration and critism can never arise from below but can only be managed from above. Populism has filled this vacuum by allowing the 'normal' and the excluded (activists of the Right) the space to talk of things that they have been told they cannot talk about. Charismatic leadership like that of Trump and Farage on the Right but also Galloway on the Left emerge as a counterpoint to the 'guided politics' of the liberal left and business centrism but the cost is that (through no fault of any of these leaders) charismatic leadership merely vests potential neurosis on a leadership rather than on an idea. This is preferable only because the leaderships reflect normality for electoral reasons whereas centrists attempt to manipulate reality through their patronage of an intellectual class that is nowhere near as clever as it assumes it is. Populism is the temporary cure for the disease but it is not in itself good health.
Well the right is stealing the lefts ideas some the Left has forsaken, if a idea is right it is like plato "universal" it's true from whichever mouth it comes from, ordinary working people pick and mix ideas this approach is mirrored in polularism, I think that we have all the theory and ideas we need and none of the praxsis or discipline to carry it out. I aggree we have to many clever f#ckers the failure of the working class organisations to create leader like scargill has led to a weaker middle class group emerging. Thanks for replying
Hi Tim, I read your last two interesting pieces. They are good and really thought-provoking, if rather depressing. But I don't know why you refer in passing and without context in two separate pieces to 'eviscerating' or 'bombing' children in Gaza. They diminish your writing because they're unexplained and out of context, and obviously only a tiny corner of the wider truth. Unlike your analysis of the war in Ukraine, for example, your passing mentions of Gaza don't add anything to your arguments. They feel as though you felt obligated to mention it and therefore mentioned it - but you can't obviously mention everything anyway. Personally, I think you should leave Gaza, very different from Ukraine, out of it, or else analyse it properly (even though I might not agree with your analysis). All best wishes, Peter
Because I am horrified by the disproportionate response of the Netanyahu Government to localised security threats. It is downright evil (and I am happy to use that word). The articles are not about Gaza and, if they were, they would be nuanced, recognising, for example, Israel as a fact on the ground which may reasonably be expected to act to defend itself. What puzzles me is how many liberal Jewish people who maintain under ordinary circumstances a strong moral compass can accede to the extreme behaviours of the IDF and of the hard right Netanyahu Government. This Government is engaged not in genocide (I do not accept that argument because of definitional weakness) but in war crimes. I will continue to position Gaza in this way because it is correct to do so. By failing to pressure the Government in Tel Aviv to moderate its behaviour at the least while supplying armament, the 'Labour' Government has become complicit in these war crimes. Perhaps I shall write about Gaza some day but I honestly believe that all that can be said has been said on all sides. The fate of the Middle East is not core to the British national interest which is my primary focus. In fact, I am as resistant to the Palestinian cause overwhelming our national interests as I am that of Israel. My interest is largely limited to the brutally simple one of whether a sovereign Government (mine) should be supporting another sovereign Government (Israel) while it is engaged in war crimes. I think not. Since I do not give a damn about the alleged reason for war crimes or the justificatory history behind them (by anyone, including targeting civilians by Hamas), I simply expect Israel to behave better in defending itself as I would expect any nation to do.
Hi Tim, You can take that view about the Israeli government (which is in Jerusalem and not Tel Aviv by the way) if you want, but it just seemed to me to be a kind of add-on and not part of your main argument. Did you maybe put it in just because you feel upset about alleged war crimes, rather than because it fitted into what you were arguing? Peter
I stand corrected on the capital which tells you, I suppose, that the country is not top of mind for me. No, it was not an add-on but as much a part of the argument as anything else. It is an example of 'petty evil' - not the bombing of children which is 'true evil' but the complicity of my Government in it through arms sales and lack of public condemnation. In this case, you will note I was not actually attacking Israel so much as attacking the current British Government for whom I have some admittedly tiny responsibility. I have no responsibility for Israel. I would not expect Israel to listen to my opinion. I do expect to contribute to opinion in my own country in this small way. I am far less concerned about Israel than I am about this Labour Government. Israel at least has the slim excuse of perceiving itself as at threat. Our Government has no such excuse in being complicit in the disproportionality of response of the Israeli Right. Exactly why a British Government considers it necessary to support Israel without any caveat when it comes to war crimes beats me, given its wittering on about human rights and war crimes in just about every other situation.
Thanks for clarifying!
Anyone who has read about the way advertising became weaponised and it's ability to target customers and change there from things they need to things they want will see how social media is used to harness people emotions. I see social media as a heroin for the Left, we can rail against the night, shake our fists, write another blog! I deplore the politics of the chessboard that is destroying Gaza and Ukraine but I feel that me going nuclear on a single issue that at some point will end, leaving a vaccum what will the activists do then? Be burnt out find a burrow 😁 social media and online meetings are not organising physical meetings, newspapers, newsletters etc in your community is organising political education and propaganda like the old days before this massive circle jerk!
You have succinctly made the point that I wanted to convey. There are several aspects of concern here. There is the 'neuroticism' of activism where a single issue feeds a personal neurosis which demands its replacement by another single issue when the first issue is resolved or which becomes part of a single issue movement if it is not resolved with no attempt at thinking through (and acting upon) the total condition of social existence. Our current culture has empowered activism as a political methodology. Activisms have converged in a transmutation of the classical left wing 'package of measures' approach to politics resulting in the identity coalition where it is axiomatic that you ally with and never critique other forms of associated activism in order to organise 'change' (a very superficial change). If you care about gender issues, it becomes axiomatic that you support sexual orientation, race, anti-imperialist, human rights and environmental issues without serious question as to the grounding of these positions and their relationships to each other. This ends up in the farcical position where the most aggressive pro-Ukrainian forces are LGBTQ+ and Green and they expect to pull everyone else along with them because of this unthinking solidarity. We end up with a 'progressive politics' originating in neuroticism and exchanging a realistic and rational assessment of any one situation set within a realist framework with an anxious and emotional one circling a shared normative fantasy. This requires that the progressive coalition never thinks about its own grounding because, if it did, it would collapse. Into this vacuum of thought, the 'third way' centrist politician can step and replace policy with rhetoric, delivering superficial reforms (such as diversity) to build a cadre that can support them in the street but which is never actually involved in changing the core inequities and oppressions that affect most people most of the time. Business interests can 'buy into' that rhetoric without having to change anything in their own structures of power and ownership. In fact, this system does organise 'physical meetings, newspapers, newsletters etc in [the] community' but simply to recruit more similar psychologically confused activists in a form of pyramid scheme that is fuelled by taxpayer-funded patronage following capture of the existing system's patronage trough. If you are in the arts or academia, for example, your access to funding depends on you becoming propagandist in some form for this apparently rising but now crumbling system. This is thus not the same as internally generated community political education (which the trades union-based educational structures and that of mining communities were typical in a previous age) which was directed at changing the prevailing system. The leading elements in the new system will do anything necessary to ensure that such a system of exploration and critism can never arise from below but can only be managed from above. Populism has filled this vacuum by allowing the 'normal' and the excluded (activists of the Right) the space to talk of things that they have been told they cannot talk about. Charismatic leadership like that of Trump and Farage on the Right but also Galloway on the Left emerge as a counterpoint to the 'guided politics' of the liberal left and business centrism but the cost is that (through no fault of any of these leaders) charismatic leadership merely vests potential neurosis on a leadership rather than on an idea. This is preferable only because the leaderships reflect normality for electoral reasons whereas centrists attempt to manipulate reality through their patronage of an intellectual class that is nowhere near as clever as it assumes it is. Populism is the temporary cure for the disease but it is not in itself good health.
Well the right is stealing the lefts ideas some the Left has forsaken, if a idea is right it is like plato "universal" it's true from whichever mouth it comes from, ordinary working people pick and mix ideas this approach is mirrored in polularism, I think that we have all the theory and ideas we need and none of the praxsis or discipline to carry it out. I aggree we have to many clever f#ckers the failure of the working class organisations to create leader like scargill has led to a weaker middle class group emerging. Thanks for replying