Israel/Palestine post 10/7 - follow-on events/thoughts as relate to other countries

there was also stupid Young Turks (which is maybe still a thing; isn't Cenk Uygur running for president now? that guy is a moron; also it's gotten progressively less left)

I think that name is less about loving the Ottomans and more about Cenk being from Turkey

Which is why he can’t actually run for president

xpost well yeah but it's a fucking stupid name. If there were a German-born US-based leftist youtuber would he call his show "Hitler Youth"?

well I don’t think Rod Stewart would have a big hit with “Hitler Youth” either

Junge Herzen sind heute Abend frei!

I'd be much more interested in a good, in-depth report on this total clusterfuck: https://www.columbiaspectator.com/news/2024/04/26/united-for-israel-march-draws-hundreds-multiple-incidents-of-harassment-reported/

yeesh that's some ugly shit

there is way too much to unpack in there and it would be nice to have a mainstream media that was capable of doing that for us and of showing these things to people who aren't seeing them and which might complicate some of their kneejerk affinities. maybe it wouldn't matter anyway at this point

xps I haven't come across ottoman apologism outside a turkish nationalist context (which includes the young turks thing) but I'm sure it's happening somewhere. but there is a lot of necessary revisionism going on against late european thought's othering of the empire in the service of nationalist and competing imperial interests and maybe this work can look like apologism in its more vulgar manifestations but it doesn't gloss over the many atrocities it just attempts to put them back into a european and international context they have been excuded from in a manner that has reified contemporary racialised categories in an unhelpful way

Most Turkish people I know well are secular AF and I have never once heard any of them say how fantastic the Ottoman Empire was. Lots of Ataturk reverence, though, because of the secularism (and they loathe Erdogan more than any of us loathe Trump).

that has also been my experience but I have also come across some light genocide denial (not from everyone) which I assume is much worse in overtly nationalist circles. because the ethnic cleansings were such a key part of the imperial/national transition you don't have to like the empire to defend them and if your experience has mostly been a lot of christians demanding you apologise for them I almost get it

various parallels could be drawn

I’ve had Jewish friends tell me that since the term ‘genocide’ was coined in response to the Holocaust, nothing else should actually be called that.

Xp suzy … yes, exactly, which is why the pro-palestine rhetoric using that term to describe zionism is… upsetting to some

Apologies if you all already know this, but Raphael Lemkin coined the term genocide in response to the Holocaust and because the Ottoman-led Armenian genocide had been largely ignored (a fact infamously cited by Hitler iirc). Restricting the term to the Holocaust would directly contradict the point of creating it in the first place.

At UPenn someone at the encampment spray painted “Zios Get Fuckt” on the Ben Franklin statue. University is investigating it as a hate crime.

I did know of Lemkin, and he also coined the term to describe the killing of vast numbers of non-Jewish Poles in the early part of WW2.

I didn’t know that suzy, thanks

I think if there’s any praise of the Ottoman Empire from the American left it is based on a centering of American/western Europe imperialism where what we do is the worst and thus other empires aren’t as bad

if i know american leftists probably also projection of contemporary US racial norms onto every other time and place and indulging in the more "positive" strain of orientalism

xps "zio" is just poor as slurs go so why would you waste a precious opportunity to desecrate a ben franklin statue on that? if they'd sprayed free palestine it would have been much cooler even though they'd probably be getting the same treatment

Ben probably would have supported a free Palestine

Also nationalism is humanity’s worst invention

A sea of flags, oceans of solidarity for Palestine. Hyde Park, London 27.4.2024 pic.twitter.com/MJlWOV4POL

— PSC (@PSCupdates) April 27, 2024

Ben probably would have supported a free Palestine

― Are you addicted to struggling with your horse? (Boring, Maryland), Saturday, April 27, 2024 12:21 PM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

Ben certainly supported getting fuckt

bloody press vests laid outside the white house correspondents’ dinner for all the palestinian journalists killed pic.twitter.com/hAJl3mb80Y

— emilie frank (@emiliepfrank) April 27, 2024

some crazy photos of the occupation at Cal Poly Humboldt (formerly Humboldt State University) in Northern California:

https://lostcoastoutpost.com/2024/apr/26/cal-poly-humboldt-offers-activists-two-hour-window/

a small group of pro-Palestine students occupied the South Mall at the University of Texas, and the university admin is helpfully sending regular dispersal orders via the emergency messaging system every hour or so to let any students who just got to campus know there's something exciting happening and they should all head over immediately and check it out

The cops maced a bunch of students at UT Austin today, didn’t they

according to the photo here right now, yes: https://www.statesman.com/

better link: https://www.statesman.com/picture-gallery/news/2024/04/29/ut-austin-protest-arrest-pro-palestinian-encampment-protests-photos/73454096007/

lawful protesting isn't even possible in authoritarian societies like the one Trump wants to transform America into. Just saying.

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) April 28, 2024

makes u think

Here's why Biden's actually the good guy

Okay sure sure, he's funding a genocide and crushing a peace protest with force but at least

Sorry, couldn't figure out a way to end that sentence

it's such an inane non sequitur. if anyone knows Rupar please tell him I'm going to vote for trump now because I saw that tweet

oh I thought he was being ironic! I was going to say "when u lost Rupar...

no, he was serious: https://bsky.app/profile/atrupar.bsky.social/post/3krbuopjfq22j

Biden will give protesters comfier prison cells than Trump will

Rupar is a joke

one really jawdropping part of the campus-wide email just sent by UChicago's president pic.twitter.com/NnuHRVZkut

— Helen Galvin Ross (@helengalvinross) April 29, 2024

Galaxy Brane

The kids are all right.

wtf: https://www.nbcnews.com/video/video-shows-tulane-protesters-clashing-with-police-on-horses-209961029804

I don't think this video really shows any clashing, more a handful of cops being incredibly fucking stupid and cruel to their own animals

They're cops, "fucking stupid and cruel" is part of the job description.

the link makes it sound like the protesters could've been the ones on horses, which would be awesome. But f course it's the bourgeois press imputing violence to the protestors. I feel like I haven't seen in my lifetime (born when we were hightailing it from Vietnam) the full power of the state and the media and the "adults" in this country to crush dissent.

Like not even in the run-up to the Iraq war even. No one set the hoses on the massive anti-invasion protest in DC before the invasion. They were just ignored.

I know cops-on-horses have long been used to intimidate and break up protests, but I 100 percent agree with the guy yelling "this is insane" in that video, putting horses in that kind of situation has to as scary for the horses as it is for the people on the ground.

has to be as scary ...

otm

<3 Women & Children First: https://blockclubchicago.org/2024/04/25/women-children-first-bookstore-will-replace-vandalized-palestinian-flag-window-with-mural/

it's always good to put skittish animals into a volatile situation, then when they inevitably get riled up and fling the officers from their seats, you can arrest the protesters for assaulting an officer by way of startling the animal.