/416/ Aufhebonus Bonus
Added 2024-06-06 07:00:03 +0000 UTCOn your questions & criticism regarding pro-Palestine protests.
[Patreon Exclusive]
In this episode we focus on the discussion generated by our episode that came out in early May on the protests on US campuses. We discuss the issues along a few axes:
How do ideas of victimhood relate to the material reality of international politics?
What really are the aims of the protesters and how likely are they to achieve them?
Are we cynical in our approach or conclusions?
How do the protests relate to populism and the end of the End of History?
What is the proper basis of nationhood?
How do these protests relate to the millennial Left?
We also deal with your points on Civil War, the state funding of culture, and whether Joe Rogan is a good male role model.
Readings:
Vulnerability as Ideology, Peter Ramsay, Northern Star
The victimological imagination, Matthew B. Crawford, Substack
Comments
Late to the party on this one but, having previously defended Phil's stance on the Israel-Palestine discourse in the west, I'm actually less convinced the more he expands on it, and am beginning to get the impression he is more interested in the discourse itself, rather than the conflict it concerns, which strikes me as perhaps mildly retarded. I think it's entirely reasonable to suggest that the Israel-Palestine conflict occupies an outsized space in the western political conscience relative to its material significance in part because of it's historical role in defining notions of victimhood which have in turn helped to define that political conscience. However it doesn't follow from this that the concept of victimhood bears no connection to material reality, nor that its utility in analysing that material reality is inherently compromised by its historical use by liberal imperialists. It can't simply be ignored that the Gazans *are*, by any reasonable standard, victims of Israeli aggression in a very real, material sense. Indeed, it is precisely this inescapable reality which is causing such consternation for an ideological consensus predicated in no small part on the question of victimhood. That isn't to say that this somewhat vulgar, one-dimensional Subject->Object relation is necessarily the best framework through which to understand the conflict — it has to be said that it is notably undialectical — but there's very obviously *some* truth to it, however simplistic, which it is simply absurd to deny. One suspects that Phil's consistent refusal to take these narratives seriously owes more to his own (admittedly somewhat understandable) cultural distaste for the kind of people who tend to be invested in them, rather than any particularly robust objection to the narratives themselves. If he objects so much to the victimhood framing, perhaps he should articulate an alternative framework. It woudn't necessarily be that hard, though I fear it may not be as libidinally satisfying as shitting on ones cultural enemies.
SeaWorldOrBust
2024-07-06 20:07:47 +0000 UTCI agree. Seems fairly obvious that a realist IR stance is different from a materialist one, simply because states aren't self-same entities that rationally pursue their own interests.
Richard R
2024-06-08 23:00:03 +0000 UTCI just don't understand why the bunga boys won't countenance the MIC as part of material politics. The US is spending $2tn on 'defence' this year.
Andrew Mountford
2024-06-07 10:04:06 +0000 UTC
