Free Speech and Creepy Liberalism

imho the article is a bit overstated for dramatic effect

"Some argue that simply providing funding to some of the nonprofits, without any strings attached, or knowledge of how that money might be used is tantamount to subsidizing the harassment." -- ok, some argue. israel subsidizes nonprofits and some nonprofits that they subsidize may or may not have something to do w/ harassment. therefore it's tantamount to subsidizing harassment.

"What is known is that at least since 2010, a think tank closely linked to Israel named the Reut Institute has been working on a “delegitimization” campaign meant to call into question anyone who criticizes the existence of Israel." -- this sounds terrible, unless you think about it for a second. they are delegitimizing people who criticize the /existence/ of Israel. not ppl who criticize Israel. why shouldn't a think tank funded by a country delegitimize people who are opposed to the existence of that country?

"One former Israeli intelligence officer told an Israeli newspaper that the agency participated in “black ops”—covertly waging smear campaigns against critics of Israel and directing online attacks against them." -- black ops, very dramatic. what exactly does it consist of? oh, writing articles and blogs critiquing critics? this of course ends up being the direction of online attacks as well (nb iirc you are one of the ppl who believes that when glenn greenwald or that other dude who lost his blogging job tweet about someone they are directing harassment at them).

the course i think we've discussed before. imo universities should not be giving credits for any student taught courses. why is a student qualified to teach a course on a major complex geopolitical event? why shouldn't we be concerned that someone w/ a vested interest in that event wouldn't skew the material? he should be allowed to speak all he wants about it and have student orgs sponsor his talks etc but i don't think it's appropriate to give credits for that kind of thing (and i'd feel 100% the same way about a zionist student teaching a similar course - just totally inappropriate). re denying his permit that's shitty - not surprising that someone who hit the news as a critic of israel would get repercussions from the govt of the country he's criticizing but it still sucks.

ok, some argue. israel subsidizes nonprofits and some nonprofits that they subsidize may or may not have something to do w/ harassment. therefore it's tantamount to subsidizing harassment.

The argument is even worse than this. Israel subsidizes nonprofits, and some nonprofits, that we don't know Israel is funding, organizes harassment. It could be anyone, Sheldon Adelson is probably a good guess?

However, there seems to be a new level to the organizing and the viciousness, and it coincides with the establishment of a new agency in Israel, the leader of which has admitted they do some kind of this exact same thing. And yes, it could be a coincidence, but it does look bad.

And if - IF - it's true, then Israel is engaging in orchestrating cyber-attacks on American citizens, which could in a worst case lead to them being killed. Which is horrible, no matter the political opinions of the victims.

(on a kinda unrelated note, then yeah, I think everyone has a responsibility to combat harassment on the internet, and if you're behaviour results in death-threads, and you keep on doing it, I'll probably think less of you. Which is Greenwald. But ok, that's not as bad as Bruenig and Beijer, who also defends and validates campaigns of harassment. And what Canary Mission does sounds even worse, in doxxing potential victims. There are degrees to this.)

i think sometimes the accusation of "cyber-attacks" or "online harassment" are used v broadly. i read the article jezebel links to in the opening paragraphs that calls Sharoni a "shill" (and insinuates that this sort of thing incited the harassment) and while i thought it was dumb and poorly written i don't think it was abusive or out of line. this sort of thing can become a way of trying to suppress other ppl's free speech rights while masquerading as protecting others. i hate the whole "pox on both houses" discourse but re israel/palestine online activism it might be most appropriate - neither of these sides are innocent. they both demonize each other, make disingenuous arguments, dox, spread libel, get extensive funding from govt and non-govt actors (for the pro-palestinian version of govt funding harassment cf tuvia tenenbom's book), lie, misrepresent, call the other side evil shills, etc.

Israel isn't funding Sheldon Adelson btw. Adelson would be the guy doing the funding. Unless I don't understand what you meant? He's not a representative of the Israeli govt though he does have connections to Bibi.

Tuvia Tenenbom has written three books, none of which seem to be about pro-Palestine harassment campaigns. Could you be a bit more specific? Just a bit?

And yeah, I meant Adelson could be funding Canary Mission, etc. The Koch brothers could. It could be a false flag operation by George Soros!

xp it's called Catch the Jew!

it's about palestinian politics in general but a number of chapters focus specifically on european funding of anti-israel NGOs operating in israel and the territories

Hm, that doesn't sound at all like the same thing?

take a look and decide for yourself. the book is worth reading in any case (and is v entertaining and v readable). receiving governmental funding to produce partisan propaganda and conduct partisan political action is close enough to the same thing imo. one dramatic example: breaking the silence receives millions of dollars in funding from EU, UK and Spanish governments. breaking the silence funds a grassroots organization called Ta'ayush. Last year a Ta'ayush activist (Ezra Nawi) was caught on tape bragging that he poses as a Jewish buyer pretending to buy land, and then reports Palestinians sellers to the Palestinian National Security Forces, which considers selling land to Jews a capital crime. i don't know if this is the exact same thing as israel funding an NGO who funds activists who dox anti-israel speakers but it's v similar.

There's a big difference between partisan propaganda and political action, and black-ops and covert smear campaigns.

Posing as a buyer to report sellers to a military org to be murdered is much more black op than anything alleged in that Jezebel article.

My synagogue hosted a "countering BDS" workshop, I don't think this stuff is sinister or covert at all, and liberal American Zionists are perfectly capable of organizing it themselves without nudging from the Mossad.

(Secret smear campaigns against Palestinian students would be a different story, but that didn't come up at my shul)

Posing as a buyer to report sellers to a military org to be murdered is much more black op than anything alleged in that Jezebel article.

― Mordy, 13. februar 2017 20:49 (six minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Well first of all, that doesn't seem to be what happened? And second of all, there's a difference between funding a group where one guy goes off and does black-ops (which doesn't seem to be what happened) and funding a black-ops group (which we also don't know has happened).

He didn't 'pose' as a buyer, someone mistook him. And he says he suspected they were trying to set him up.

Smearing students is out of bounds imo. Arguing against professors and lecturers (and a student who is given a class to teach now falls into this category) is legitimate. It doesn't make sense to say that you can be a public intellectual and receive no pushback on your material. How come getting blowback in the form of emails and blog posts is illegitimate bc it is exhausting and makes ppl not want to do activism but organizing demonstrations against speakers and doing no-platforming is not illegitimate? A lot of this stuff seems to me to come down to "tactics in support of my cause are always okay, tactics against my cause are always wrong." I don't know if there are actual principles regarding the tactics themselves.

xp

A prominent Israeli campaigner for Palestinian rights was recorded saying that he helps Palestinian authorities find and kill Palestinians who sell land to Jews.

The recording was aired Thursday by the television program Uvda of Israel’s Channel 2. In it, Ezra Nawi, a Jewish far-left activist from the Ta’ayush group, is heard speaking about four Palestinian real-estate sellers, whom Nawi said mistook him for a Jew interested in buying their property.

“Straight away I give their pictures and phone numbers to the Preventive Security Force,” Nawi is heard saying in reference to the Palestinian Authority’s counterintelligence arm. “The Palestinian Authority catches them and kills them. But before it kills them, they get beat up a lot.”

In the Palestinian Authority, the penal code reserves capital punishment for anyone convicted of selling land to Jews. This law, which Palestinian officials defended as designed to prevent takeovers by settlers, has not been implemented in Palestinian courts, where sellers of land to Jews are usually sentenced to several years in prison. However, in recent years several Palestinian have been murdered for selling land. Their murders have remained unsolved.

Nawi was also documented obtaining information from a Palestinian who believed Nawi was a Jew interested in purchasing land. Nawi is seen saying he intends to give that information to Palestinian security officials as well. According to Uvda, an activist with the human rights group B’Tselem helped Nawi set up the would-be seller in a sting operation in which the seller would be arrested.

The recordings and footage were collected by right-wing activists who secretly recorded Nawi.

"According to Uvda, an activist with the human rights group B’Tselem helped Nawi set up the would-be seller in a sting operation in which the seller would be arrested." Well perhaps because that allegation is strongly denied, and presented completely without evidence, is why it's been left out in the other descriptions I've seen? And perhaps that is why the recording has been called 'McCarthyite' by critics?

Also, I just went on Canary Mission. Have you done that, Mordy? It's absolutely disgusting, and so far beyond the pale. It's basically a database of people to harass, including students. Links to social media and everything. This is organized harassment, and according to the article, it does result in death threats. If - IF - Israel has anything to do with this, it's basically trying to get American citizens assaulted. Which is completely different than 'no platforming'.

Even the Jezebel article doesn't suggest Israel is funding Canary Mission from what I can tell.

Re the recording, this isn't an Israel thread so I don't want to get into the veracity of it (though I've seen the video and I personally believe it to accurately represent the truth). My only point would be to say that we're talking about accusations on both sides and both sides have narratives that exculpate themselves and indict their ideological opponents. Both sides try to silence the other side and broadcast their own opinions. The pro-Palestinian side has a stranglehold on much of the academy (and many of the humanities departments) and use their hegemony to silence speakers they don't like and harass students who profess Zionist beliefs. The pro-Israel side has more reach into [some of] the elected government (and only in the US, and there I'd argue their reach is far less dominant than the anti-Israel reach into the academy) and otherwise is primarily contained [at least ideologically] in think tanks and mostly marginal media outlets. When we're talking about the academy there's at least more parity there than the Jezebel article is arguing.

x-post: Well, the whole crux of the article is that the rise of this kind of tactics coincide with the rise of Israeli involvement, but no, who knows who funds Canary Mission, could even more likely be Adelson for instance, and I constantly put in giant Ifs, don't I? But you keep on saying 'both sides' without including what the article says one side does.

I just think that if you read that article and come away thinking that Israel has a stranglehold on the academy you've gotten a misrepresentation of reality.

Well, sure, but that's never been what I've been arguing. When I was at UCSD it was the Japanese lobby who controlled everything anyway.

(the claim we're discussing about 'posing as a buyer' doesn't seem to have been on the video, though, so I don't know what you're getting at here)

https://www.facebook.com/allison.stanger.5/posts/10209936010371446

There was also an angry human on crutches, and I remember thinking to myself, “What are you doing? That’s so dangerous!”

amid the robotic and ursine rioters

invoking baldwin, smdh

jesus christ

A traffic sign with a concrete base was knocked over in the path of the car. Burger was warned to stop by hand gestures and verbal warnings from multiple officers and protesters standing directly in front of the car. Instead, he accelerated into them and the concrete base, wedging a student between the car and the sign post, pushing both for a couple seconds and generating sparks and loud screeching. Burger showed no signs of stopping the car so people attempted to slow the car down to ensure the safety of the pinned student. Fortunately, someone was able to yank the student up from between the car and the sign post before the student was injured or killed. The sign was righted and Burger continued attempting to build up speed, at times running into protesters at around 5 miles per hour, sending people onto the hood of the car.

http://www.middbeat.org/2017/03/04/middlebury-students-college-administrator-and-staff-assault-students-endanger-lives-after-murray-protest/

https://thebaffler.com/blog/middlebury-lehmann

What is it about the insistence that social domination takes multiple forms that drives soi-disant liberal devotees of sober and reasoned discourse so very crazy?

Baffler piece a bit disingenuous? However badly he expresses it, I think it's clear that Sullivan is objecting not to intersectionality as theory, but rather to what he sees as cultlike thinking & behavior among a group of people who have taken it as a central part of their orthodoxy. Like, "the Cult of Intersectionality" (to the extent that it exists) is obviously distinct from its doctrine.

also intersectionality in theory + practice tends towards a totalizing vision of the world so it's not a surprise the kinds of devotees it often produces

That may be true, i dunno. Maybe more so in practice than theory? I suppose I'd have to read theory to find out...

isn't the central theoretical claim of intersectionality that focusing on one form of oppression can often box out other forms of oppression? in the piece the author links to as emblematic it is specifically making the [now famous] intervention into feminism on behalf of black women; this is really the operative nature of the ideology. in practice what it necessitates is a totalization that when we discuss oppression we are discussing all possible oppressions. i have yet to see what theoretical non-political value it produces that couldn't be acquired by saying "some people are oppressed in more than one way" and/or "different people can be oppressed in different ways," i mean what appears to me to be v easy, natural critiques/understandings that predate the term. but as a political intervention it's easy to see how it operates. imho.

maybe that's a little unfair - i've definitely read pieces that make concrete policy + theoretical interventions and maybe using the term as an introduction one can more easily indicate where the previous lacuna existed. i just think it is something that by nature of meaning in language totalizes and congregates a wide variety of experiences (and arguments and claims) under one umbrella, and generally only operative against potential allies - it's never a critique lodged at right-wingers right? it's always assumes a kind of good faith that needs to be disabused of unconscious exclusions (lack of totality).

Anyway, that Middlebury thing sounds like some fall of Saigon shit. O_O at the stories from both sides & waiting for some definitive account to emerge.

is there any argument about what happened? i thought the only contentions were over like propriety and the limits of free speech, the heckler's veto, and whether murray is really a "racist" or not but the facts of what happened seem not in dispute?

oh nm i missed the link above the intersectionality link

isn't the central theoretical claim of intersectionality that focusing on one form of oppression can often box out other forms of oppression?

others are far better equipped than i to address this, but since we're talking... i gather that analysis of the interlocking nature of systems of power & oppression is a corollary concern.

it's never a critique lodged at right-wingers right? it's always assumes a kind of good faith that needs to be disabused of unconscious exclusions (lack of totality).

i think it's ideally a tool for constructive self-critique, clarifying goals and developing alliances, i.e. a path forward. not a weapon.

oh nm i missed the link above the intersectionality link

yeah, that's the stuff i'm boggling at, students mashed with cars, flung from hoods, bloodthirsty packs roaming the night in search of kill

That student account felt pretty disingenuous--the car was being pushed from side to side by someone. The fascist security staff could somehow not stop clear a path for the car move through the peaceful crowd

http://blackcontemporaryart.tumblr.com/post/158661755087/submission-please-read-share-hannah-blacks

apparently, there's been a small furor over a painting included in this year's whitney biennial. it's an abstract representation of emmett till's corpse created by dana schutz, a successful white artist. the piece linked is an open letter by writer/artist hannah black in which she recommends that "the painting be destroyed and not entered into any market or museum." black's letter also contain's the following argument, relevant to this thread:

The subject matter is not Schutz’s; white free speech and white creative freedom have been founded on the constraint of others, and are not natural rights.

Surely this will mend race relations in America

Not interesting iirc

off to bed then

Having your (pretty terrible?) work displayed in a prominent privately run art gallery is not protected speech

Belongs on race thread imo

apparently, there's been a small furor over a painting included in this year's whitney biennial.

at first read that as- ah, you're ahead of me

Same

Having your (pretty terrible?) work displayed in a prominent privately run art gallery is not protected speech

yeah, but destroying said work as the author wants done hits up against some free speech issues i think

The author is entitled to demand this and everyone else is entitled to not do that i don't see the free speech issue tbh

Oh I don't disagree her argument/statement is all passion and clearly aimed at her own peers rather than the gallerists or the artist

Any valid points worth discussing in the open letter are about race and "lived experience" as the ultimate arbiter. I don't care so much that she felt it was important to include destroying the painting as a stretch goal

I mean, if nothing else, she explicitly challenges the right to free speech in the text of the letter.

"White free speech" anyway. (Is this something like "bourgeois free speech"?)