He’s an old old man who had his entire career destroyed for categorically disproving Alan dershowitzs lies about Israel and continuing to fight for Palestinians regardless. He has bad takes on trans people, which should be ignored because it’s not what his work is about and he’s so old he doesn’t own a phone.
i personally think that the man who has fought against the genocide of palestinians literally his entire adult life and had one bad take about trans people a couple years ago probably doesn’t deserve to get executed by a revolution. asking this man to have takes on modern culture is just a dumb idea, and we should wall the people who got him to do it.
I personally don’t think it’s that hard to understand that liberation cannot be achieved for any oppressed group without liberation of every oppressed group
do you genuinely think trans liberation is contingent on either sacralizing or shooting an old man who has fought against the world’s two best propaganda machines his whole life? i’m not saying he gets a “bad trans takes” pass, just that it’s not a useful mental structure for building any kind of liberation. is your political project genuinely centered on finding jesus, or what?
that’s not what we’re talking about though. of course general full liberation, whatever we mean by that, will require intersectionality. my point is that do you think it’s actually worthwhile to discount every single person who has an uneducated and reactionary take that they spend very little time engaging with or defending? we’re not talking about a politician, or even a regular garden variety everyday transphobe reactionary. we’re talking about someone who has dedicated their entire life to trying to advocate for the specific and immediate case of palestinian emancipation. so we’re not talking about hypotheticals or building a communist movement in any particular place. we’re just talking about whether or not one should simply mentally dispose of the usefulness of norm finklestein despite his track record on the political situation of occupied Palestine.
Can I ask why you’re going to such great lengths to defend someone you have admitted yourself is a transphobe? Can you ask yourself why you thinking defending a transphobe is something that’s somehow valuable to leftism?
I’m defending an academic who got kicked out of academia for crossing Alan Dershowitz, an academic that has spent the majority of his time getting literally slandered, libeled, and sued for defending Palestinians. So I’m not defending his transphobia, I’m saying that his transphobia is an extreme L on his part that is bad for his own cause. But I don’t want to kill the man, and I think we have to consider him a genuine ally on the topic of Palestine. I’m not saying that all allies are allies on everything. Norm isn’t even a communist. But he’s also as old as my grandparents and didn’t drop his transphobia until he already had dementia. So I hope I answered your question in good faith, I’ll ask again, why do you think it’s productive to hate this old man for not being based on everything? I agree that he shouldn’t have said that shit. My grandma shouldn’t tell me that i’ll be mistaken for a girl for my long hair because that’s regressive and limited. For some reason though, I care a lot more about my grandma’s inability to have a meaningful material impact on my life and her life getting beaten by an alcoholic husband and that she has dementia. My point is that you seem to have this attitude that anyone that isn’t perfectly progressive on all identifiable issues is equally monstrous, and that itself is insane protestant type brainworms. it would be like saying should get the wall for his history of opposing LGBTQ+ liberation in Cuba for many decades. can you ask yourself whether that’s a reasonable standard for viewing people as valuable to leftism? i mean fidel even had a much larger impact on actual people because he wasn’t just an academic on an unrelated issue saying some hateful shit in his old age. he was the leader of the cuban revolutionary and his opinions impacted policy, impacted actual people’s lives for the worse.
and even if he’s not there, the math is really simple: you are really good at this one topic, you should be incredibly wary of making any statements on any other issues lest they make you look like a fucking asshole, lessening your impact on your main topic
part of the reason why it was so extremely frustrating to see norm saying that shit when he did. he spent his whole life fighting for a most righteous cause of liberation, and then shot through a ton of goodwill with people by saying that shit and doubling down.
This was truly not enjoyable to learn given I just discovered the guy days ago and really respected what he did. I still do, but with the massive caveat that he probably doesn’t want me to exist or some shit
no it fucking blows. if he has more shit to say to the public about something other than palestinian liberation, he can shut the fuck up and die for all i care. because my trans friends and comrades are worth more than one cis guy’s reputation. it just sucks considering how much effort he’s put into advocating for palestinians that he had that dumb shit to say at all. it’s like silvia federici to me i guess.
He’s an old old man who had his entire career destroyed for categorically disproving Alan dershowitzs lies about Israel and continuing to fight for Palestinians regardless. He has bad takes on trans people, which should be ignored because it’s not what his work is about and he’s so old he doesn’t own a phone.
So he’s based on Palestine but gets the wall anyway because there is no liberation without trans liberation. Fair enough
i personally think that the man who has fought against the genocide of palestinians literally his entire adult life and had one bad take about trans people a couple years ago probably doesn’t deserve to get executed by a revolution. asking this man to have takes on modern culture is just a dumb idea, and we should wall the people who got him to do it.
I personally don’t think it’s that hard to understand that liberation cannot be achieved for any oppressed group without liberation of every oppressed group
do you genuinely think trans liberation is contingent on either sacralizing or shooting an old man who has fought against the world’s two best propaganda machines his whole life? i’m not saying he gets a “bad trans takes” pass, just that it’s not a useful mental structure for building any kind of liberation. is your political project genuinely centered on finding jesus, or what?
I think liberation without intersectionality is impossible, yes
that’s not what we’re talking about though. of course general full liberation, whatever we mean by that, will require intersectionality. my point is that do you think it’s actually worthwhile to discount every single person who has an uneducated and reactionary take that they spend very little time engaging with or defending? we’re not talking about a politician, or even a regular garden variety everyday transphobe reactionary. we’re talking about someone who has dedicated their entire life to trying to advocate for the specific and immediate case of palestinian emancipation. so we’re not talking about hypotheticals or building a communist movement in any particular place. we’re just talking about whether or not one should simply mentally dispose of the usefulness of norm finklestein despite his track record on the political situation of occupied Palestine.
Can I ask why you’re going to such great lengths to defend someone you have admitted yourself is a transphobe? Can you ask yourself why you thinking defending a transphobe is something that’s somehow valuable to leftism?
CW: Mention of Domestic Violence
I’m defending an academic who got kicked out of academia for crossing Alan Dershowitz, an academic that has spent the majority of his time getting literally slandered, libeled, and sued for defending Palestinians. So I’m not defending his transphobia, I’m saying that his transphobia is an extreme L on his part that is bad for his own cause. But I don’t want to kill the man, and I think we have to consider him a genuine ally on the topic of Palestine. I’m not saying that all allies are allies on everything. Norm isn’t even a communist. But he’s also as old as my grandparents and didn’t drop his transphobia until he already had dementia. So I hope I answered your question in good faith, I’ll ask again, why do you think it’s productive to hate this old man for not being based on everything? I agree that he shouldn’t have said that shit. My grandma shouldn’t tell me that i’ll be mistaken for a girl for my long hair because that’s regressive and limited. For some reason though, I care a lot more about my grandma’s inability to have a meaningful material impact on my life and her life getting beaten by an alcoholic husband and that she has dementia. My point is that you seem to have this attitude that anyone that isn’t perfectly progressive on all identifiable issues is equally monstrous, and that itself is insane protestant type brainworms. it would be like saying
should get the wall for his history of opposing LGBTQ+ liberation in Cuba for many decades. can you ask yourself whether that’s a reasonable standard for viewing people as valuable to leftism? i mean fidel even had a much larger impact on actual people because he wasn’t just an academic on an unrelated issue saying some hateful shit in his old age. he was the leader of the cuban revolutionary and his opinions impacted policy, impacted actual people’s lives for the worse.
and even if he’s not there, the math is really simple: you are really good at this one topic, you should be incredibly wary of making any statements on any other issues lest they make you look like a fucking asshole, lessening your impact on your main topic
part of the reason why it was so extremely frustrating to see norm saying that shit when he did. he spent his whole life fighting for a most righteous cause of liberation, and then shot through a ton of goodwill with people by saying that shit and doubling down.
This was truly not enjoyable to learn given I just discovered the guy days ago and really respected what he did. I still do, but with the massive caveat that he probably doesn’t want me to exist or some shit
no it fucking blows. if he has more shit to say to the public about something other than palestinian liberation, he can shut the fuck up and die for all i care. because my trans friends and comrades are worth more than one cis guy’s reputation. it just sucks considering how much effort he’s put into advocating for palestinians that he had that dumb shit to say at all. it’s like silvia federici to me i guess.
Fuck, what’d she do?
she wrote an extremely transphobic book(s?), i think the one that people especially had a problem with was “beyond the periphery of the skin”
That’s a huge bummer
He could have easily just not said it, he had to know it was a bad idea, and it’s not even like it would endear him to anybody on the left…
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Okay nah fuck that, I’m not buying this goofy excuse|explanation. It’s bullshit and I don’t care, take your belief elsewhere.
I do not believe this has been a very good thread for you