Chanting “death, death to the IDF” is violent and inappropriate at a music festival. “Fuck the IDF” would’ve been fine though.
No it’s not. Mass music festivals are perfectly acceptable places to make political statements. This has been done for generations now, i.e. Rage Against the Machine.
And when we say “Death, death to the IDF”, we are accurately talking about the IDF like the monsters they are. For a scathing rebuke of respectability politics, I defer to this essay:
I am so fucking mad, sad, angry, and enraged at the actions of the elite and the hateful reality they’ve structured; that the only honest way to express my emotions is to wave a giant neon hatecock in the face of these hypocritical lying shitmongers. I don’t care if they hear me – they would never care, even if I was “respectable.” But they can’t fucking ignore me. They can’t fucking look away. They can only shake their head and claim, ever more shrilly as our world spirals deeper into shit, that “You’ll never convince a moderate with that language!” Fuck you. I don’t want to convince moderates. I want to fucking change shit. I want to inspire people, to get them angry. And if that offends you, if my anger, my emotions, my rage at getting fucked over, over and over and over again, bothers you? Take a step back, and think about what you truly value. Is it the messenger? Or the message?
Mass music festivals are perfectly acceptable places to make political statements.
I didn’t say anything about political statements, I mentioned violent statements. There is a big difference between wishing death on people and expressing your disapproval with them, and anyone who can’t express the latter without the former should, generally, expect to be censured (and censored). The angry person you quote doesn’t even express violence.
I didn’t say anything about political statements, I mentioned violent statements.
Politics is already violence. For example, even though no gunshots are going to be fired, millions of vulnerable US-Americans are about to lose their state medical insurance. What is this if not social murder?
Politics is systematic social violence, but it is structured in such a way that the systemic aspects are abstracted away from all individuals.
anyone who can’t express the latter without the former should, generally, expect to be censured (and censored).
I reject this notion. For example, I support stopping the IDF from committing the genocide of Palestine. Do I support stopping them peacefully? Of course it would be fantastic if we could peacefully get them to stop what they’re doing, but…this would have to happen immediately, since every moment of every day the IDF is continuously destroying Palestinians. Said differently: we could only afford to work at the pace of liberal democracy if that pace was immediate.
This should not be even remotely controversial!
Like be serious for a minute: would you have a problem if Jews living under Nazi regimes and their allies said “Death to the Wehrmacht”? Well with 80 years of hindsight of course you would now not have a problem with that. But since it’s happening now in Palestine and on a smaller scale than the Nazi Holocaust, you’re having problems with coarse violent opposition rhetoric because you haven’t successfully learned to apply the lessons of the Holocaust to current events!
The term “social murder” is co-opting violent language to describe things that are not violent. I’m sure you can understand the difference even if you do like to use the term. What you mean is that the consequences of politics can be extremely severe, but once you see that is not the same as violence the way we both understand the term literally, you see that “politics is violent” is not a useful reply.
What you seem to be trying to say is that, because political decisions can cause mass deaths, violent language is by default justified in political discourse. That’s dangerous and wrong, and leads to politicians getting killed. And it’s not going to be right-wing politicians who get killed the most, because right-wingers are more l ikely to carry out political violence, once it becomes normalised through violent political discourse.
But this was about Israel more than the USA.
There are significant relevant differences between Britain and Israel today compared to German Jews and Germany in the late 1930s. But the same calculations need to apply when you allow violence into your speech: is it going to increase the risk of violence against innocent people? Anti-semitic assaults in the UK rose by approximately 50% in the wake of October 7th. (I was not able to find comparable figures for Islamophobic assaults, unfortunately), so this is against a backdrop in which Jews are at an increased risk of violence. So although “death to the IDF” does not call for violence against Jews in general, as the Chief Rabbi wrongly claimed, it does increase that risk.
Coming from the other direction, shouting “death to the IDF” does not materially call for justified action in a way that “fuck the IDF” does not; they are both merely expressing directionless disapproval. They will be seen too as calls for the governments to stop funding Israel, providing it with weapons, and associating with a government actively and brazenly carrying out ethnic cleansing.
We can also see that things are different for the people directly affected by violence. If a Palestinian shouts “death to the IDF” I don’t see that as unacceptable violent speech; I see that as an inevitable response to the violence enacted upon them. But Bob Vylan is not a Palestinian being attacked by the IDF so we shouldn’t give him the same latitude.
No it’s not. Mass music festivals are perfectly acceptable places to make political statements. This has been done for generations now, i.e. Rage Against the Machine.
And when we say “Death, death to the IDF”, we are accurately talking about the IDF like the monsters they are. For a scathing rebuke of respectability politics, I defer to this essay:
I didn’t say anything about political statements, I mentioned violent statements. There is a big difference between wishing death on people and expressing your disapproval with them, and anyone who can’t express the latter without the former should, generally, expect to be censured (and censored). The angry person you quote doesn’t even express violence.
Politics is already violence. For example, even though no gunshots are going to be fired, millions of vulnerable US-Americans are about to lose their state medical insurance. What is this if not social murder?
Politics is systematic social violence, but it is structured in such a way that the systemic aspects are abstracted away from all individuals.
I reject this notion. For example, I support stopping the IDF from committing the genocide of Palestine. Do I support stopping them peacefully? Of course it would be fantastic if we could peacefully get them to stop what they’re doing, but…this would have to happen immediately, since every moment of every day the IDF is continuously destroying Palestinians. Said differently: we could only afford to work at the pace of liberal democracy if that pace was immediate.
This should not be even remotely controversial!
Like be serious for a minute: would you have a problem if Jews living under Nazi regimes and their allies said “Death to the Wehrmacht”? Well with 80 years of hindsight of course you would now not have a problem with that. But since it’s happening now in Palestine and on a smaller scale than the Nazi Holocaust, you’re having problems with coarse violent opposition rhetoric because you haven’t successfully learned to apply the lessons of the Holocaust to current events!
The term “social murder” is co-opting violent language to describe things that are not violent. I’m sure you can understand the difference even if you do like to use the term. What you mean is that the consequences of politics can be extremely severe, but once you see that is not the same as violence the way we both understand the term literally, you see that “politics is violent” is not a useful reply.
What you seem to be trying to say is that, because political decisions can cause mass deaths, violent language is by default justified in political discourse. That’s dangerous and wrong, and leads to politicians getting killed. And it’s not going to be right-wing politicians who get killed the most, because right-wingers are more l ikely to carry out political violence, once it becomes normalised through violent political discourse.
But this was about Israel more than the USA.
There are significant relevant differences between Britain and Israel today compared to German Jews and Germany in the late 1930s. But the same calculations need to apply when you allow violence into your speech: is it going to increase the risk of violence against innocent people? Anti-semitic assaults in the UK rose by approximately 50% in the wake of October 7th. (I was not able to find comparable figures for Islamophobic assaults, unfortunately), so this is against a backdrop in which Jews are at an increased risk of violence. So although “death to the IDF” does not call for violence against Jews in general, as the Chief Rabbi wrongly claimed, it does increase that risk.
Coming from the other direction, shouting “death to the IDF” does not materially call for justified action in a way that “fuck the IDF” does not; they are both merely expressing directionless disapproval. They will be seen too as calls for the governments to stop funding Israel, providing it with weapons, and associating with a government actively and brazenly carrying out ethnic cleansing.
We can also see that things are different for the people directly affected by violence. If a Palestinian shouts “death to the IDF” I don’t see that as unacceptable violent speech; I see that as an inevitable response to the violence enacted upon them. But Bob Vylan is not a Palestinian being attacked by the IDF so we shouldn’t give him the same latitude.