Limmud: Israel foreign politics
Nov. 20th, 2018 09:19 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jackI'm being slow in writing up the limmud talks, but they were all so interesting I still wanted to.
This was obviously always going to be somewhat difficult, and if I already knew more about it, I probably wouldn't have wanted to listen to more, but as I knew very little, I was interested to hear. There were details I didn't really absorb, and although I got a general gist, I'm probably going to screw this up -- please post corrections in the comments.
The talk was by a senior political correspondant for Haaretz, a left leaning major Israeli newspaper, where much of her career is following the Prime Minister as part of the press corp, including going all round the world to wherever he's doing diplomacy with.
The background is that Israel politics has been drifting right over the last couple of decades, under quite a disliked Prime Minister. Contributing factors include the collapse in scandal of the centre left, and the large scale immigration of ancestrally Jewish people from Russia, who on average are less invested in Israel as a traditional homeland, and more invested in living somewhere reasonably safe. And even if many Israelis disagree, the drive for "all original Israel land should be Israel for religious reasons" and "we're being regularly bombed, we need to fight back" are ongoing.
But recently, the disturbing observation has been Israel forming friendly overtures with disturbing right wing governments like Saudi Arabia and those in eastern europe. And I mean, how did we get into that situation? If you had to pick two governments in the world you think might give Israel no time, you'd think a hardline muslim theocracy and a neonazi populist movement would be the top of the queue.
But often, pragmatism and being a right wing ideologicracy trumps the specifics of the ideologies. And I mean, both countries benefit from the legitimacy of having links with each other. If Israel can get even one EU country decisively on-side, they can block the EU from condemning Israel for things, or recognizing Palestine. For people who are concerned with protecting Israel, and don't care much that what Israel is doing to Palestine is awful, those are all the obvious things to do.
The questions at the end were always going to be a bit of a "this is not so much of a question, more of an extended political rant touching on extremely hot-button topics" fest. Considering the topic, they were surprisingly polite. There were several, "do you agree that the way Israel has been treating X topic is good/bad?" with the only response being "this isn't really what I'm an expert in, but if I understand right, I definitely agree."
And one basically saying, "How can you criticise the prime minister for doing that when Israel doesn't get more support elsewhere? What else do you suggest he could possibly do?" which got a lot of muttering from the audience and a summarised rehash of the session. And I mean, it was good to get an idea of the range of opinion in the audience, even if everyone was never going to come to an agreement in one panel.
That last 'question' did make a point of saying they didn't justify what Israel was doing to Palestine with settlements etc, so I infer that nobody did, or if they did, they didn't feel comfortable saying so openly.
Trapped in a sack
It was depressing thinking why many countries seem to have lurched too far right recently. Is it just always happening but happens to have a run of examples that look like a trend recently? Is it that we're aging out of the generations that remember "never again"? Is it economic upset leading to a reinforcing "economy doing badly -> more insular politics -> economy does worse" spiral?
That last one in particular was bothering me. As I said several times, it's common that when people feel insecure, they're more likely to prioritise finding mutual safety with "their people". If you've grown up where having enough food for your family was touch and go, you're likely to naturally prioritise ensuring that that doesn't happen, and however personally charitable you are, the idea of trusting the government to make sure everyone has enough is one you're very suspicious of. But more government investment, more international trade, more links between different groups, and less destructive conflict is good for everyone -- if we trust each other enough to have it.
But you build trust slowly, and being desperate can destroy it quickly :(
This was obviously always going to be somewhat difficult, and if I already knew more about it, I probably wouldn't have wanted to listen to more, but as I knew very little, I was interested to hear. There were details I didn't really absorb, and although I got a general gist, I'm probably going to screw this up -- please post corrections in the comments.
The talk was by a senior political correspondant for Haaretz, a left leaning major Israeli newspaper, where much of her career is following the Prime Minister as part of the press corp, including going all round the world to wherever he's doing diplomacy with.
The background is that Israel politics has been drifting right over the last couple of decades, under quite a disliked Prime Minister. Contributing factors include the collapse in scandal of the centre left, and the large scale immigration of ancestrally Jewish people from Russia, who on average are less invested in Israel as a traditional homeland, and more invested in living somewhere reasonably safe. And even if many Israelis disagree, the drive for "all original Israel land should be Israel for religious reasons" and "we're being regularly bombed, we need to fight back" are ongoing.
But recently, the disturbing observation has been Israel forming friendly overtures with disturbing right wing governments like Saudi Arabia and those in eastern europe. And I mean, how did we get into that situation? If you had to pick two governments in the world you think might give Israel no time, you'd think a hardline muslim theocracy and a neonazi populist movement would be the top of the queue.
But often, pragmatism and being a right wing ideologicracy trumps the specifics of the ideologies. And I mean, both countries benefit from the legitimacy of having links with each other. If Israel can get even one EU country decisively on-side, they can block the EU from condemning Israel for things, or recognizing Palestine. For people who are concerned with protecting Israel, and don't care much that what Israel is doing to Palestine is awful, those are all the obvious things to do.
The questions at the end were always going to be a bit of a "this is not so much of a question, more of an extended political rant touching on extremely hot-button topics" fest. Considering the topic, they were surprisingly polite. There were several, "do you agree that the way Israel has been treating X topic is good/bad?" with the only response being "this isn't really what I'm an expert in, but if I understand right, I definitely agree."
And one basically saying, "How can you criticise the prime minister for doing that when Israel doesn't get more support elsewhere? What else do you suggest he could possibly do?" which got a lot of muttering from the audience and a summarised rehash of the session. And I mean, it was good to get an idea of the range of opinion in the audience, even if everyone was never going to come to an agreement in one panel.
That last 'question' did make a point of saying they didn't justify what Israel was doing to Palestine with settlements etc, so I infer that nobody did, or if they did, they didn't feel comfortable saying so openly.
Trapped in a sack
It was depressing thinking why many countries seem to have lurched too far right recently. Is it just always happening but happens to have a run of examples that look like a trend recently? Is it that we're aging out of the generations that remember "never again"? Is it economic upset leading to a reinforcing "economy doing badly -> more insular politics -> economy does worse" spiral?
That last one in particular was bothering me. As I said several times, it's common that when people feel insecure, they're more likely to prioritise finding mutual safety with "their people". If you've grown up where having enough food for your family was touch and go, you're likely to naturally prioritise ensuring that that doesn't happen, and however personally charitable you are, the idea of trusting the government to make sure everyone has enough is one you're very suspicious of. But more government investment, more international trade, more links between different groups, and less destructive conflict is good for everyone -- if we trust each other enough to have it.
But you build trust slowly, and being desperate can destroy it quickly :(
Why are countries drifting right?
Date: 2018-11-21 04:13 am (UTC)More fully, for the last twenty years in most countries most mainstream politicians from major parties adopted an economically right-ish and socially left-ish consensus; so supportive of privatization, outsourcing, globalization, large-scale immigration, tuition fees, the EU, foreign aid, gay rights, identity politics, utilitarianism, etc. Certainly in the UK this applies to Major, Blair, Brown and Miliband. And this was also largely adopted (with nuances) by business, academia and other major society pillars. But this meant that both the traditional economic working class left and the social traditionalist right was basically abandoned. My sense is that in the US this might be a bit less true, with the Culture War being a clear dividing line earlier, but there's still an element where this has move to the fore.
A few other slightly randomly ordered thoughts:
- A great quote (from the Economist, but I don't have source handy) is that 40 years ago, the New York Times had a Labour Correspondent but not a Gender Correspondent. Now the opposite is true. The (actual or perceived) abandonment of the working classes by the mainstream left in favour of gender/race causes provides a big pool of voters that can be tapped (most 'far right' parties have some strong left-wing economic elements, e.g. Le Pen and Trump).
- There's a sense that the cultural left has got a lot more aggressive recently, moving from securing rights to actively trying to suppress its opponents' culture, e.g. tearing down statues, attacking faith schools, renaming sports teams. That's likely to make a lot of moderates (who might have been fine, e.g. with gay marriage) much more willing to contemplate voting for someone more hardline than they'd really like, as it's become an existential defence of their own culture.
- The fact that the traditional parties aren't really set up to deal with the new divide - they're basically all 'globalist'/'anywheres'/'open' - means that you get a wider variety of people/parties filling the gap which has opened up. And increasing the standard deviation on what's successful is going to lead to getting more 'extreme' options coming up, on both sides, particularly at a time of greater polarization.
I hope this comes across as constructive and none of it as too confrontational - I'm conscious we have very different politics, particularly on culture war issues, so if I've hit any sore spots or inadvertently caused offence, please let me know.
Re: Why are countries drifting right?
Date: 2018-11-21 03:22 pm (UTC)Assorted responses.
Perhaps I should have said "populist"? Or "extremist"? I'm not sure of the best terminology, I agree there's the axis you describe above which isn't exactly traditional left/right politics, which is what I was originally referring to.
I'm not sure I equate people like Corbyn and Sanders with "hard left" the way there's a "hard right". If they were nodding and winking at thugs firebombing abattoirs and investment banks, then yes, but I don't think they are. Obviously it's hard for me to be objective because I probably agree with them more than the right wing examples, but they seem to be as, or less so, left as was totally mainstream in government not so long ago. Part of what I mean by a scary drift is that, opinions that used to be mainstream now get called hard left.
Although I should acknowledge what is often called identity politics does seem like a big drift socially left even if there's been an economic rightward drift[1]. Although I'm not sure -- in some ways, we seem to have a ratchet that society keeps getting more progressive, with laws that endorse many anti-racism, anti-sexism, etc in many ways not standard fifty years ago. But in other ways, it seems like we regress: e.g. there seems to be a wave of xenophobia and transphobia that wasn't there not long ago.
And fwiw, many parts of the identity politics thing is basically what I want (we're getting to the caveats shortly). Whenever people post an outcry about something or other being mandated under the human rights act, I'm like "oh, good, I hope we keep getting good surprises like that, it shows the wisdom of enshrining human rights in bold terms". But OTOH, I admit there does seem to be a bizarre furore over saying the right things, in a way that seems disconnected from thinking or doing the right things. Like, if someone slips and says something sexist in such a way that shows they always think that but tried to avoid saying it, I've sympathy but limited patience for excusing them: they could have seen that coming, and they should have learned better, and people will only take "seriously, don't creep on people" seriously when there are consequences, and some people will have to learn the consequences the hard way.
But there does, possibly, seem to be a strange disconnect where there's an uproar about "a lifetime pattern of sexual assault" and about "someone said something thoughtlessly insulting once" and some people just fan the flames of both with no particular expectation that we'll take the first a lot more seriously than the second.
Those are all tendencies I see, both in the UK and the US and other countries. You seem to suggest some of the extremism is a reaction to the identity politics wave, I'm not sure that's true, I have complicated feelings about the suggestion, but I don't really know. I feel like I'm missing a big part of the picture somewhere.
However, I'm not sure how much any of that is actually relevant to Israel. I know I started this out by talking about how Israel, like many countries, has drifted rightward. But I'm not sure all those things that drove UKIP and Trump are what's driving Israel's movement. The UK/US had a whole lot of "I'm worried, I used to feel secure in society, now I feel less secure" driving a "burn the system down and put a strong charismaticist in charge" movement. But in Israel, people didn't need new reasons to feel insecure -- however much you condemn Israel's response, the risk of rocket attacks and of war from neighbouring countries is very real and has been for a long time. Now I think about it, they might both be a case of "feel less safe -> vote more extreme", but I think in the UK and US that's mostly an economic drive, whereas in Israel I guess it's the pre-exisiting geopolitics.
[1] Uh oh, is THAT the default tendency of society?
Re: Why are countries drifting right?
Date: 2018-11-22 04:19 am (UTC)I'm not entirely sure of the best terminology either. I quite like populist, or perhaps radical (both have the advantage that they could in principle be applied to both sides). The shift seems to be a cultural 'rightwards' shift rather than an economic one.
I have some sympathy for your feeling that it seems unfair that some of Corbyn's policies (e.g. nationalizing railways) are treated as equivalent to communism when they're basically core traditional left and were actually in place in the '70s. On the other hand, some of Trump's policies that have sparked outrage (e.g. banning transgender people from the military) would also have been uncontroversial in the '70s, so possibly 'policy used to be mainstream 30-40 years ago' isn't the best guide to whether it's currently radical/extreme! FWIW, to me, the areas Corbyn seems most equivalent to Trump in terms of moral repugnance are in foreign policy (Iran, IRA, Venezuela) rather than economically where I think many of his policies would be very bad practically, but aren't morally repugnant, if that makes sense. I don't see much sense in debating who is more extreme (I'd probably agree Trump is, anyway) and I think we agree there have been shifts to the more radical end on both sides, even if not equal ones.
I agree with you that equating lifetime patterns of wrongdoing and 'someone said something thoughtlessly insulting once' is unhelpful. We'll disagree about many of the specific cases and the desirability of underpinning Human Rights Act/Constitution-esque laws on human rights.
It seems worth unpacking a little what I mean about some of the shift to radicalism being a reaction to the identity politics wave becoming more aggressive. Imagine someone who's not that politically engaged, who doesn't agree with gay marriage (NB: I do support gay marriage; this is not a pen-picture of me), grumbles about Black History Month, wants to send their children to a faith school and has a strong identity with their local historical icons. On the first two, it seems more likely that they might think that even if they don't agree with it, live and let live if it means a lot to others - or even, if they opposed it, once it's in place realise it doesn't really affect them much. Whereas a (real or threatened) ban on faith schools or the removal of the statues of their icons does impact them much more directly by removing something they care about greatly. Regardless of one's view of the object-level desirability of each of these policies, it seems clear to me that the latter two would be much more likely to make a moderate contemplate voting for a radical candidate.
To flip it around, if the choice was between a moderate-ish Republican (someone like John McCain) or a Trumpian Democrat (nodding and winking at firebombing banks, to take your example from above), I'd imagine that people with your views would be much more likely to consider voting for the Trumpian candidate if the Republican pledged to ban abortion than if they pledged a wave of money for new faith schools or to put up some statues of George Bush.
P.S. Slightly tangential final comment on your point about some things seeming to go both ways at once. A good example is immigration: we have significantly tougher immigration laws but also significantly higher levels of net migration than in the mid '90s. Which is because the world has changed, but it means that people on both sides of the immigration debate can be unhappy, which makes things very difficult.
(1) Not suggesting the two are the same.
Re: Why are countries drifting right?
Date: 2018-11-22 04:05 pm (UTC)My best guess is that that's basically right, even if it's not what I was thinking when I started this post. My very limited understanding as I described before, suggested that many countries have had an upswing in populism recently, but whatever is going on in Israel (a) isn't that similar (b) has been going on for longer.
there are at least three major axes of politics there (economic right/left, hawk/dove, religious/secular)
I think those axes are present in many countries, but that we're used to something like economic left/right being the biggest, followed by social left/right, with the others somewhere below, whereas in Israel, the parties are traditionally aligned on economic left/right, but that's often overshadowed by religious/secular and hawk/dove.
one major factor could be the increase in anti-Semitic incidents and simultaneous decline in support for Israel in the west
I'd need to hear from someone at all familiar with Israel politics, but I'm very doubtful of that. My impression of Israel is being quite pragmatic about the west's support. Incredibly depressingly, there's been plenty of anti-semitism ever since Israel was founded :( And yet, countries supporting Israel militarily don't seem to be doing so much less, even if it might be time they did. I think that translates to not much being different: constant preparation against the west reducing support for Israel, but not anything particularly new.
Also, I agree there have been some really awful opinions from the left, and those have definitely made antisemitism worse, but the scariest things seem to be things like the synagogue shooting, Steve Bannon running around, people graffiti'ing swastikas, and that seems to have come from the populist-extremist-right[1] more than from the left :( I don't think this stands out as much in Israel, where people have felt under attack all along :(
[1] I agree that "populist right" tends to translate to "economically left at least in speech if not in deed"
Re: Why are countries drifting right?
Date: 2018-11-22 04:26 pm (UTC)I think Corbyn has been staunchly economic left since forever (in many ways in which I agree with him and in some which I don't), and other things, such as palling around with very questionable people on the grounds that they're both 'left' have come from that -- but I don't think he's significantly committed to that the way he is to "roughly labour policy from 1950-2000".
Whereas Trump. If he just represented social conservative views from 1950, if he said, "well, ok, maybe woman can vote but they shouldn't have jobs", etc, I'd think it was repugnant, and extreme compared to what I'd like to be true, but I'd agree that was an appropriate analogy to Corbyn holding 1950s economic views. But that's not why I think Trump represents extremism and populism. I think that's due to things like "holding mass rallies where he says things that make no sense and racists cheer wildly" and "ignoring constitutional requirements that previous presidents from both parties have kept to" and "appointing dangerous radicals who run nazi magazine websites as important members of his administration" and "placed cronies and family members into positions of influence" and "tried to squash investigation into his own election and financial fraud".
It's possible he's done even more harm by letting the economic-right wing of the republican party run rampant than by the populism he embraces, but those are the sort of things I think of when I describe him as an outlier, and are shared by other promise-the-moon-and-have-no-competence politicians like Farage, and perhaps by (more extreme) communist and fascist movements from earlier, but I don't think any of that was standard mainstream politics in the 1950-2000s.
Re: Why are countries drifting right?
Date: 2018-11-22 05:05 pm (UTC)We'll disagree about many of the specific cases and the desirability of underpinning Human Rights Act/Constitution-esque laws on human rights.
I expected a lot of disagreement and don't want to take off on too many tangents, but I got lost in the second half of this sentence, you mean, "whether laws like the human rights act or a constitution, should be underpinned by human rights"?
Re: Why are countries drifting right?
Date: 2018-11-22 05:49 pm (UTC)Right. You're talking about a difference between doing things that don't really affect people who don't agree with them, and doing things that people feel imposed on by? I would agree that's where a lot of tension comes from.
I have several different threads here.
1. There seems to be quite a lot of worrying populism movements. UK, US, many northern european far right parties. Brazil. Hungary, Poland. I don't quite know which count and which don't. But are they strongest in areas that had the strongest political correctness movements? My impression is that they correlated a lot with economic set-backs, and almost not at all with identify politics stuff. Is your impression different?
2. I agree a lot of problems come from when what A wants butts up against what B doesn't want, but I think there's no easy way to say what's reaching too far, because different people disagree what's 'our business'. Some people genuinely believe abortion is murder, if so, you can see why "let people choose for themselves" isn't an answer they like. Some people A think that they like statues to confederate leaders and if other people don't, they can just not look, other people B think that spending public land to remind people B that people A idolise confederate leaders who fought for the right to treat people B as subhuman, is very much people B's business.
2a. Indeed, this is a much longer aside, I've heard it suggested that traditional left/right culture depends a lot on what you consider interfering in other people's business, with (stereotypically) left leaning people saying "do whatever you like as long as it doesn't cross these lines" and right leaning people saying "well, I don't know if I want to ban it, but ideally everyone would live like X and they're betraying society if they don't"
Re: Why are countries drifting right?
Date: 2018-11-24 04:15 am (UTC)I agree with this.
I'd need to hear from someone at all familiar with Israel politics, but I'm very doubtful of that. My impression of Israel is being quite pragmatic about the west's support.
I'm happy to defer to your (likely) better knowledge of this. It makes sense that what seem to be biggish changes to us don't really register to people used to a constant backdrop of attack.
Also, I agree there have been some really awful opinions from the left, and those have definitely made antisemitism worse, but the scariest things seem to be things like the synagogue shooting, Steve Bannon running around, people graffiti'ing swastikas, and that seems to have come from the populist-extremist-right more than from the left
I think there are two separate phenomena, which are basically separate, though are occasionally linked.
- An increase in anti-Semitic violence, which I agree comes mainly from far-right extremists/hate groups.
- A separate decrease in support for Israel (and corresponding increase in support for the Palestinians) that is taking place most strongly amongst mainstream left-wing people and parties. This is obviously a legitimate political position (though not one I agree with), though potentially could have more geopolitical implications.
Re: Why are countries drifting right?
Date: 2018-11-24 04:25 am (UTC)I got lost in the second half of this sentence, you mean, "whether laws like the human rights act or a constitution, should be underpinned by human rights"?
Sorry, that was confusing.
I mean that I'm generally opposed to 'super-laws' like constitutions or the Human Rights Act on principle, regardless of what's in them(1). I see them as supporting the powerful, undermining democratic accountability and thereby stoking radicalism/extremism.
This is actually not a tangent at all, because I should have mentioned a related matter before as one of the general causes I see behind the rise of radical movements. My assessment is that governments have pushed off a lot of decision-making power to less accountable bodies, generally right-ish ones (e.g. WTO) on the economic side and left-ish ones on the cultural side (e.g. ECHR) in accordance with the aforementioned 'centrist' consensus. They did this to 'lock-in' what they thought were the right policies and/or direction of travel and it has been highly successful in doing so.
The problem is not just for those who disagree with the direction of travel, but that if a sufficiently large number of people don't, they'll look for alternatives, and if the only people willing to offer those are radicals/extremists, those will gain even more power. Whereas if you allowed a normal amount of policy fluctuation in response to democratic elections, that would let off steam and reduce the appeal of radicals and extremists.
TL:DR - every time a politician gets up and says they can't do something basic that the public think they should be able to do (e.g. remove VAT on tampons, reduce immigration) because [body / superlaw] says so, that reduces faith in democracy and strengthens the extremes.
(1) Though obviously I dislike ones with content I disagree with more than I dislike ones with content I agree with!
Re: Why are countries drifting right?
Date: 2018-11-24 05:00 am (UTC)Right, I think you've identified a really important distinction here between radical policies within the rule of law (nationalizing lots of industry, throwing transgender or gay people out of the military) and what we might call extra-judicial behavior like the examples you gave about Trump, which involve undermining the rule of law. Trump tends to get condemned for both equivalently, and populist gets applied to policies (e.g. leaving the EU) and things like Trump's rallies, but for clarity we could agree in this thread that distinction?
If so, I agree Corbyn is radical but not extra-judicial, and that Trump is both. My impression is that some but not all of the populist policies/leaders are extra-judicial: Trump certainly is and Duterte; Erdogan, Swedish Democrats and Haider seem much less so; people like Rees-Mogg aren't, and even Le Pen and AfD seem not too much like that.
I'd suggest most people who support/vote more rightwards don't actually like the extra-judicial stuff but hold their noses, which still takes us right back to your first question on why do so many more people seem willing to do this.
My impression is that they correlated a lot with economic set-backs, and almost not at all with identify politics stuff. Is your impression different?
Yes, that's not my impression. Philippines has consistently been growing at >6% economic growth; Sweden and Austria both did pretty well in the recession. Germany similarly, and AfD has grown there. Two of the hardest hit countries - Greece and Spain - elected radical left parties rather than radical right.
A degree of economic hardship has definitely enabled the movements but by itself I don't think it's explanatory (why didn't it happen in the '70s or early '90s?). I see the biggest correlation with (real or perceived) cultural threats, e.g. migration (Sweden, Germany, Austria, Hungary) and/or culture wars (UK, US). I guess the last two have immigration, too. Philippines and Brazil are probably more driven by corruption, which I guess is more economic.
I've heard it suggested that traditional left/right culture depends a lot on what you consider interfering in other people's business, with (stereotypically) left leaning people saying "do whatever you like as long as it doesn't cross these lines" and right leaning people saying "well, I don't know if I want to ban it, but ideally everyone would live like X and they're betraying society if they don't
I'd not heard that before, but quite like it. It seems to have some truth (at least at high level) with the caveat that both sides are often inconsistent.
I agree a lot of problems come from when what A wants butts up against what B doesn't want, but I think there's no easy way to say what's reaching too far, because different people disagree what's 'our business'.
I strongly agree with this. And sometimes it's a straight zero sum (e.g. Harvard admissions), and other times it's much more complex with different types of impact and second order effects (e.g. gay marriage, statues). I tend towards a more liberal approach - e.g. let same-sex people get married and let anyone put up the statues they want, regardless of who it offends - but there are clearly exceptions and plenty of cases where it's not that simple (especially when it's not just offence).
To return to the original question, I guess it's a question of escalation. To many of us on my side, the current position of the mainstream cultural left seems really extreme and intolerant: to give a few examples, seeking to criminalise parents who smack their children, the attacks on faith schools, much of the rhetoric around privilege, the attacks on heritage. Attacking children, education and culture are particularly potent fears, as these are particularly effective ways of destroying cultures imperialists have known and (wrongly) exploited through the ages.
Escalation also applies to means as well as policies. To return to the extrajudidical aspect, if one feels that the cultural left has embraced an extrajudicial model of enforcement and attack on opponents, with regular summary dismissal of those who say something that contravenes the norms, disqualification or sacking on the basis of unsubstantiated accusations and regular concerted calls (often successful) for removal against ideological opponents (Scruton, Eich, Caulfield, etc.) - and that this is tolerated and even supported by the mainstream centre - well, it becomes much harder for the mainstream to stir up a sense of outreach at summary immigration bans, or someone banning gender studies. There are differences, but if one is being subjected to all-out attack, it's harder to see why those are important.
I don't think what I'm saying implies 'it's wrong for the left to have escalated'. You may conclude that, given your objectives, strategically and morally it's right to have done so. But as an explanatory device, if one side escalates, it's not surprising if the other side does so too (and sometimes does so in a morally worse way).
I really wish we could deescalate. At the moment though it's really hard to see how to do so without losing by default.
Apologies, that ended up being a bit long but hopefully not too incoherent.
Re: Why are countries drifting right?
Date: 2018-11-24 07:00 am (UTC)Re: Why are countries drifting right?
Date: 2018-11-28 10:11 am (UTC)