Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley):
Never forget October 7th 2023, that fateful day when Israelis were brutally massacred by Israeli tanks and Israeli helicopters and Israeli drones and Israeli soldiers and Israeli bullets, and also by Hamas a bit.
❖
I’m sorry but it’s just plain hilarious that we’re still expected to hate Hamas after spending two years being shown exactly what it is that Hamas has been fighting.
Only Israelis could spend two years committing genocide and then demand everyone feel very, very sorry for them on the anniversary their genocide started.
❖
Hamas commander: Put the baby in the oven.
Hamas fighter: One of these 40 beheaded babies?
Hamas commander: No, cook a different baby. Leave those 40 beheaded babies in the pile.
Hamas fighter: Heil Hitler.
Hamas commander: Heil Hitler. [Turns, explodes 200 cars with a grenade.]
❖
❖
The thing about October 7 is that if Israel supporters are going to insist on using it to justify everything that’s being done in Gaza, then the rest of us have no choice but to refuse to give a fuck about it.
If someone is using something as a weapon to hurt people, then you need to take their weapon away. If sympathy about October 7 is being weaponized for genocide propaganda, then you have an ethical obligation to withdraw your sympathy.
I don’t enjoy mocking and dismissing people who try to harness sympathy for October 7. It wasn’t particularly fun raining on the big sympathy parade the hasbarists threw for the second anniversary as they make a desperate effort to win back some of the global support they’ve been hemorrhaging all year. That’s just what you need to do when people are using something to facilitate crimes against humanity. It would be irresponsible to do otherwise.
❖
CNN’s Van Jones, who in 2021 was given $100 million by Jeff Bezos, recently came under fire for claiming that people oppose the Gaza holocaust because Iran and Qatar are running a massive “disinformation campaign” to show people dead babies in Gaza. He made a joke about how everyone’s seeing “dead Gaza baby, dead Gaza baby” on their phones which cracked up Bill Maher’s studio audience.
This is one of the ugliest, nastiest pieces of western media propaganda about the Gaza holocaust that I have ever seen, and we’re two whole years in. Only someone who thinks “dead Gaza baby” is a hilarious punchline would believe people need to be tricked by foreign influence campaigns into caring about dead babies in Gaza.
❖
Someone who is truly and sincerely worried about a rise in antisemitism will oppose the mass slaughter of children under the Star of David banner by a state which claims to represent all Jews while Jewish billionaires buy up media to silence criticism of that state and Jewish oligarchs openly purchase the president of the world’s most powerful government to ensure the facilitation of that state’s atrocities.
❖
Progressive darling Zohran Mamdani has come out and described Venezuela President Nicolas Maduro and Cuba President Miguel Diaz-Canel as “dictators”, just as the Trump administration ends diplomacy with Venezuela in yet another step toward possible war. So that’s some nice timing.
The Democratic Party is a US empire party. The very best Democrats just want a slightly more polite and humanitarian empire. All of them support war and militarism. All of them support the subjugation of the global south by tyrannical force. Everyone needs to get clear on this.
❖
It’s funny how white supremacists freak out about global birth rates, because it’s just the result of white supremacism getting everything it wanted. Whites spent centuries extracting wealth from the global south, and it turns out fertility rates decline the wealthier a population becomes. They plundered and exploited and enslaved and extracted from the darker-skinned people whom they viewed as inferior, and now those populations are the only ones reproducing at above replacement levels.
They’re freaking out because they understand their civilization will come crashing down without working-age people stepping in to keep the gears of the nation turning as prior generations age out, and now the only way they’re going to get those workers is by inviting them to immigrate from other continents. Those immigrants will have significant collective bargaining power because they are needed; they won’t just remain some permanently subjugated underclass. Eventually they start intermarrying with the white population, and before long humanity consists of lovely shades of tan. White supremacism loses, ultimately because it got everything it has ever asked for.
This is one reason why there’s so much overlap between white supremacism and Christian fundamentalism, by the way. White supremacists understand that they can’t have wealthy, educated women choosing when they do and do not reproduce, because it turns out having and raising children is a massive ordeal and a woman with rights and resources will only sometimes feel safe and supported enough to do it. So they need to find ways to turn them back into a man’s property and force them to churn out white children.
This is also a lot of the drive behind all the tradwife stuff, the incel stuff, the anti-abortion stuff, and the “your body, my choice” rape apologia you see on the far right. White supremacists are searching for ways to bump up white birth rates against the wishes of women. White supremacism is unworkable without male supremacism.
This is also why you see racists like Elon Musk simultaneously freaking out about declining birth rates and pushing AI like their life depends on it. They understand that automating society is the only way to stave off the future wave of immigration that will otherwise be necessary to keep civilization functioning. But it turns out AI is a bust, and that bubble is going to burst before long. Again, white supremacism loses in the end.
❖
❖
I saw a good tweet from Rage Against the Machine’s Tom Morello saying “It’s wild how people can effortlessly understand the righteousness of everybody from Robin Hood to Andor and then in real life simp for the Sheriff of Nottingham and the Death Star.”
This happens because in Robin Hood and Star Wars the storyteller is sympathetic to the rebel characters while the pundits, editors and reporters who tell the stories of our time are sympathetic to those in power.
David Attenborough can get you cheering for the seal or for the polar bear depending on whose journey is being followed as a sympathetic protagonist. The narrators in our stories are those who control the narrative.
_________________
The best way to make sure you see everything I write is to get on my free mailing list. My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece here are some options where you can toss some money into my tip jar if you want to. Click here for links for my social media, books, merch, and audio/video versions of each article. All my work is free to bootleg and use in any way, shape or form; republish it, translate it, use it on merchandise; whatever you want. All works co-authored with my husband Tim Foley.
Bitcoin donations: 1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2
Feature image via Adobe Stock.
I was at a silent vigil of the people who oppose genocide. The people who think that Israel has a right to commit genocide were right there too, but they were not silent. In our silence we could hear what the genocide supporters were actually saying. They were mostly sneering, suggesting that the women there were not feminists. They had signs that said marriage between different groups; zero tolerance. It was like a scene from The Handmaiden's Tale or any of those other books written about the dystopian future. I felt nauseous. When I don't feel nauseous, I feel angry.
There will never be peace in the middle east as long as israhell exists.