God help them. The slaughter to come is probably beyond our imagining

  • a_blanqui_slate [none/use name, any]
    ·
    1 year ago

    I'm not telling the Palestinian resistors anything, I'm telling everyone here who is repeating the exact same folly celebrating at the breakout of ever hostility that has played out throughout history that there excitement and celebration is premature.

    It's the same "we'll whip johnny reb and send him crying" arrogance and disconnection that absolutely destroyed morale when it turned out into a bloody years long slog. Literally tens of thousands of Palestinians are about to die and pointing that out has a lot of piss babies here up in arms because I'm yuking their yum.

    • ferristriangle [he/him]
      ·
      1 year ago

      You are once again conflating messages of support with celebration.

      Yes there will be horror. There has been horror for the past several decades. Resistance is an act of hope. No one engages in resistance because they are under some false pretense that they will come out unscathed, but because what they are fighting for is worth the sacrifice.

      So it falls incredibly flat for you to come in here and tell people "Why are you sharing in the hopefulness displayed by the people resisting? Don't you know how much sacrifice they are risking?!?!"

      • a_blanqui_slate [none/use name, any]
        ·
        1 year ago

        This is what I responded to.

        listen bro being happy there had finally been any kind of response to the regular killings of Palestinian civilians is fucked up bro we need to weep for the lost Israeli souls as well bro c'mon bro

        Not support. The right to loudly be 'happy'. There are 300 other people in this thread expressing support for Palestine and I haven't said a peep against any of them. One can and many have shown support without acting like it's Christmas morning and that there are nothing but candy and nuts on the horizon.

        • ferristriangle [he/him]
          ·
          1 year ago

          Oh, so you didn't actually find some celebrating to reply to, you found someone mocking someone else for their both sidesism and used the word happy as the slightest bit of pretext to go on a comment spree ranting about people celebrating the loss of life.

          I'm sorry, your moral crusade is so clear to me now.

          • a_blanqui_slate [none/use name, any]
            ·
            1 year ago

            Look if no on is happy then don't worry about me, but given I'm getting the exact same "let people have their treats" response doesn't do much to convince me that's the case.

            • ferristriangle [he/him]
              ·
              1 year ago

              I guess I just don't understand what end you hope to achieve by policing people having a positive response to resistance against genocide and colonization.

              Are you just hoping to extol the virtues of stoicism?

              Because the point you keep trying to make over and over again is "you shouldn't be happy, do you know that resisting oppression will actually incite even more oppression?"

              Which is barely half a step away from a general defeatist attitude. Your position is basically "You're allowed to show support, but remember to couch it in extreme pessimism about the hopelessness of ever changing the world for the better." With friends like that, who needs enemies?

              I just don't understand why that's the hill you're choosing to die on. The most charitable interpretation I have is that you just picked a bad position to defend, and you need to stop trying to post through it

              • a_blanqui_slate [none/use name, any]
                ·
                1 year ago

                I'm extolling the virtue of sobriety, not stoicism. This isn't a football game where we get to cheer when good team score and bad team fumble. These are real lives at stake, and we should actually wait to see that this current uprising improves their lives before we decide it actually was a good thing.

                If Israel launches a ground invasion (which they will) and kills 200,000 Palestinians, and you ask us "was this good" everyone here will rightly answer no. That won't stop the uprising from being justified and understandable, but it will from being good.

                Liberationary struggle is not hopeless, that's clearly evidenced throughout history, but pretending every revolutionary act of violence no matter how ineffectual it is is good is exactly how you breed adventurism. We know this in a leftist context I don't know why it's so hard to transfer that to a Palestinian context.

                • ferristriangle [he/him]
                  ·
                  1 year ago

                  You're just using the logic that rationalizes pessimism as a virtue.

                  "If I'm pessimistic and I'm right then I avoid disappointment, but if I'm pessimistic and I'm wrong then I can be pleasantly surprised."

                  Which, if that's the the worldview you want to adhere to them more power to you. But if the only thing at stake is whether or not you have egg on your face for something that is incredibly good and justified in principle but might maybe later turn out to have been a blunder tactically, then I don't see what's so important about making sure everyone else is as pessimistic as you choose to be.

                  The "real lives at stake" will be at stake no matter how we feel about it, because our input has literally no bearing on how Palestinians choose to resist. And I don't see how second guessing the people who are putting their lives at stake is the more principled stance to take which you must endure everyone adheres to. The fact they have enough hope and revolutionary optimism to take action despite suffering under decades of genocide occupation is itself worthy of hope and optimism.

                  • a_blanqui_slate [none/use name, any]
                    ·
                    1 year ago

                    I don't see how "wait and see" is pessimism. There are lots of immediate consequences that can be reasonable inferred (like the death toll from a Israeli land invasion), and those immediate consequences are on the whole bad, so a realistic, not pessimist take on the situation is that the next few days are going to be very unpleasant for the Palestinians even if they do achieve strategic victories in the end. Maybe I'm taking a more consequentialist tack than you, but a move that is justified on principles but strategically folly is still a bad deal in the end.

                    The "real lives at stake" will be at stake no matter how we feel about it, because our input has literally no bearing on how Palestinians choose to resist.

                    At least we agree on that.