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.
I’ll ask again, why do you think it’s productive to hate this old man for not being based on everything?
Probably because I care a lot about my trans comrades and anyone who isn’t their ally isn’t mine either. It’s a shame you don’t, apparently. Intersectionality isn’t that complicated and yet you are just rabidly defending a transphobe because he apparently has some good ideas on a topic that you care about more than trans rights
My dude, Finkelstein is an academic. He’s supposed to have good takes relative to the general population and relative to non-academic radicals. Like, that’s literally the role academics are supposed to play. “But Castro was homophobic!” Castro was too busy leading an army of militants that overthrew a comprador regime to be completely up to date on queer liberation. He’s allowed to have a few bad takes here and there since he didn’t sit on his ass all day reading books. And you quite conveniently left out the part where Castro did self-crit in front of the Cuban people for being a homophobic shithead and rightfully so. Where are we gonna see Finkelstein’s self-crit for being a raging transphobic piece of shit? Castro had to lead a nation facing a genocidal blockage, but still found the time to realize he made a grave mistake. What’s Finkelstein’s excuse?
you are treading on thin ice. this is really close to saying “i think you want to kill the man.” the vibe this gives makes me distrust your perspective. nobody has said anything remotely close to “let’s kill norm finklestein for his transphobia”
My point is that you seem to have this attitude that anyone that isn’t perfectly progressive on all identifiable issues is equally monstrous
infamousbit hasn’t said enough words to you for you to get this precise of a read on their ‘attitude’. you’re fabricating a portion of this whether you realize it or not
and that itself is insane protestant type brainworms
this is a big reach and does not help your image
it would be like saying castro should get the wall
again, you are fabricating a huge portion of this. nobody here is saying anything like this.
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.
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.
Didn’t Stalin have bad takes on it too?
Let’s throw out the bath water with the whatever.
Probably because I care a lot about my trans comrades and anyone who isn’t their ally isn’t mine either. It’s a shame you don’t, apparently. Intersectionality isn’t that complicated and yet you are just rabidly defending a transphobe because he apparently has some good ideas on a topic that you care about more than trans rights
My dude, Finkelstein is an academic. He’s supposed to have good takes relative to the general population and relative to non-academic radicals. Like, that’s literally the role academics are supposed to play. “But Castro was homophobic!” Castro was too busy leading an army of militants that overthrew a comprador regime to be completely up to date on queer liberation. He’s allowed to have a few bad takes here and there since he didn’t sit on his ass all day reading books. And you quite conveniently left out the part where Castro did self-crit in front of the Cuban people for being a homophobic shithead and rightfully so. Where are we gonna see Finkelstein’s self-crit for being a raging transphobic piece of shit? Castro had to lead a nation facing a genocidal blockage, but still found the time to realize he made a grave mistake. What’s Finkelstein’s excuse?
you are treading on thin ice. this is really close to saying “i think you want to kill the man.” the vibe this gives makes me distrust your perspective. nobody has said anything remotely close to “let’s kill norm finklestein for his transphobia”
infamousbit hasn’t said enough words to you for you to get this precise of a read on their ‘attitude’. you’re fabricating a portion of this whether you realize it or not
this is a big reach and does not help your image
again, you are fabricating a huge portion of this. nobody here is saying anything like this.
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.