The left excusing the barbarity of Hamas is no surprise
WE HAVE SEEN HOW ‘spontaneous sincerity’ has exposed the true thoughts, the naked antisemitism, existing on the Scottish Left – and especially that of the Scottish Greens – yet the larger question to be tackled is what radicalised people like Ross Greer and Maggie Chapman to such an extent? It’s time to deconstruct the driving forces which underpin this illiberal faux-progressive ‘new left’.
The ‘French Rise’ and the American Academy
Paul-Michel Foucault, born 1926, died 1984, likely a man you haven’t heard of but really ought to be familiar with. The French philosopher spent a lifetime on the political left. Having been a member of the French communist party, and having spent time working in the Soviet satellite state of Poland, he became disillusioned with the Marxism displayed in this era. He would go on, having witnessed growing general failures of orthodox Marxism to develop a postmodernism, based on scepticism of epistemic (scientific) certainties and rejectionism of “grand narratives”.
Philip Stokes, in his book ‘Philosophy: 100 Essential Thinkers’ provides a succinct summary of Foucault’s philosophy,
“The theme that underlies all Foucault’s work is the relationship between power and knowledge, and how the former is used to control and define the latter. What authorities claim as ‘scientific knowledge’ are really just means of social control.”
Foucault inspired a new wave of thinking on the left from the 1960s onward which we live with today. His questioning is the modern human sciences (biological, psychological, social) was on the basis that universal scientific truths about human nature are, in fact, often mere expressions of ethical and political commitments of a particular society. Foucault taught many on the left to reject notions such as universal scientific truths, arguing in fact they are merely products of ideology and power exercising themselves over knowledge.
As an aside, this perhaps offers some explanation as to why some of the illiberal faux-progressive ‘new left’ cascading across the western world today insist biological sex is merely a social construct. To the heirs of Foucault, universal scientific truths born out of modern (enlightenment based) human sciences are mere products of power over knowledge.
In this way, we identify something important about the madness consuming parts of the left in Scotland – these people really don’t believe in objective or universal truths.
Jacques Derrida is likely another French philosopher who you really ought to know more about. Born 1930, in French Algeria, died 2004, Derrida is the father of the deconstruction movement. Putting things simply, deconstruction attempts to show that the meaning of a work is unstable and could have multiple or alternative meanings. In short, you can actually ignore objective things like author’s intent. It is really a sort of lazy literary criticism, but its impact has led to things recognisable in our politics today, such as illiberal faux-progressives insisting that what you meant doesn’t matter, merely what they heard. Reading between lines which aren’t actually present, insisting on hearing ‘dog whistles’ where none where perhaps intended, suddenly everyone can be labelled transphobic, bigot, racist etc, all you need to do is follow Derrida’s lead and apply a form of literary criticism and apply it on all walks of life. In short, deconstruct. After all, this is postmodernism, and these people don’t believe in objective truths, merely an interplay of power hierarches.
We therefore have a broad outline forming:
- Power over knowledge
- Rejection of universal or objective truths
- Deconstructionism
- Postmodernism
How this became so widespread in the Anglosphere (but notice, not so prevalent in non-English-speakingcountries) is all the fault of the American academia. In the USA from the 1970s forward we can see what I call the ‘French rise’ in the humanities and social sciences departments in US universities. Foucault and Derrida became popular among leftist academics as they were compelled to slowly confront the inherent failures of orthodox Marxism. These two French philosophers offered up a chance to reinvent the wheel, casting out the notions of class consciousness struggles (and notions of solidarity) based on a Marxist scientific history concept (a “grand narrative” as Foucault puts it). Instead, a postmodernist creed based on self-reference (‘own personal truth’), came in, and power struggles between identity groups replaced those between social classes.
So, let’s add the final aspect of our broad outline:
- Identity politics
Et voilà! An illiberal creed rejecting foundational elements of the enlightenment is born, consumed by identity politics groups fighting in a struggle for power over one another. Postmodernism run amok.
This leads us to the final issue; how do the illiberal faux-progressive adherents (such as the Scottish Greens) identify who is victimized and victimizer? Which group is oppressor and which is oppressed?
Enter intersectionality and the antisemitism of the ‘new left’
This brings us to the final element which explains why this ‘new left’ has such a problem detecting antisemitism. We need to talk about intersectionality, the final component of our puzzle.
Many of us like to imagine our opinion matters, but I need to break it to you, for adherents of the illiberal faux-progressive ‘new left’ – it doesn’t. Instead, what matters is your opinion only relative to your identity – and where that identity ranks on the hierarchy of intersectionality.
Kimberlé Crenshaw, a professor of law at Columbia University coined the term ‘intersectionality’. She explained that intersectionality “was my attempt to make feminism, anti-racist activism, and anti-discrimination law do what I thought they should – highlight the multiple avenues through which racial and gender oppression were experienced…”
Almost like a Venn diagram, you detect how many identity groups you belong to which (often legitimately) opens you up to discrimination and see how they intersect. Translating this into hard reality (and away from ivory towers on university campuses) means that your opinion depends on how many victim groups you can claim to belong to.
At the bottom of the totem pole is the majority group in the Anglosphere, the ‘straight, white male’.
Here is a hypothetical example which seems pertinent to the moment.
Let’s say we have two gay people, one is African-American and the other is Hispanic. They don’t belong to the same victim group racially, but they do belong to the same victim group on the basis of their sexuality.
Intersectionality focuses on the places where various victim identities intersect, creating an “us” versus “them “paradigm.
This explains twitter posts this week where my some of my fellow gays are rallying for Hamas controlled Gaza against Israel.
That’s intersectionality at work. They’re united by their victim status that it doesn’t matter if Hamas Islamists would throw us homosexuals off of buildings or rape kidnapped Jewish women. How perceived victimhood intersects trumps all other considerations. It’s deranging, postmodern rubbish, but many profoundly believe it.
We saw this play out in real time when on live television in America Whoopie Goldberg insisted the Holocaust wasn’t about racism. Jews aren’t the victim; Jews are at the bottom of this totem-pole of victimhood.
Goldberg explained on The View: “Let’s be truthful about it because Holocaust isn’t about race,” “It’s not about race. It’s not about race. It’s about man’s inhumanity to man.”
When co-host Ana Navarro pointed out, “But it’s about white supremacists going after Jews.” Goldberg’s response was, “But these are two white groups of people!”
In Scotland, and across the wider English-speaking world, Jewish people are seen as ‘white’, educationally successful compared to other demographic groups and well-integrated into the majority society. In this way, antisemitism rears its ugly head on this illiberal ‘new leftism’ of Corbyn and the Scottish Greens. To folk like Goldberg et al Jews aren’t really victims of racial prejudice as Jews are “white”.
This is antisemitism as a product of the faux-progressivism of intersectionality, deconstruction, identity politics and rejectionism of universal or objective truths.
Goldberg’s comments are cut from the same cloth as what we witnessed this week with the Scottish Greens. They insist the Jews are somehow the “coloniser” in their own homeland, even as 1200+ are slaughtered. It’s their slaughterers who are the real victims. To people like Goldberg, Chapman and Greer, Jews are “white groups of people”, not applicable to be seen as victimised.
It’s also why Corbyn couldn’t detect the antisemitism on that wall mural he defended which pictured several apparently Jewish bankers playing a game of Monopoly, with their tabletop resting on the bowed naked backs of several workers. All the antisemitic stereotypes were immediately visible, but not to an identity politics ‘new leftie’.
It doesn’t compute in the minds of adherents of this scary worldview of the postmodernist ‘new left’ that Jews are victims of racial hatred.
It’s all a sordid mixture of the poverty of low expectations meeting a new form of Orientalism. There is no doubt in my mind that to some on the illiberal left that the ‘westernised white Jew’ of their imaginings in Israel cannot possibly be ‘oppressed’. In their Foucault and Derrida ridden mindset, it is instead the Arab they unwittingly orientalise.
This means for people like Greer and Chapman they can expect less from a Palestinian than the “white” ‘westernised’ Jew. It’s a sordid mixture of antisemitism, orientalism and the poverty of low expectations intermingling beneath a worldview where objective truth doesn’t exist, leaving only power hierarches of oppressor and oppressed.
The victims are the victimisers
To sum up, to the illiberal, identity politics touting faux-progressive ‘new left’, Jewish people aren’t victims – which is why people such as Jeremy Corbyn struggles to even identify antisemitism and Scottish Greens blame the Jewish victims in real time as they are being massacred.
Why? Because to someone corrupted by the writings of Foucault and Derrida, Jews can’t be victimised, but merely victimisers. It’s at the heart of the profound problem of antisemitism on the far left of our Scottish politics today.
“The world hates a Jew who hits back. The world loves us only when we are to be pitied.” Golda Meir, Prime Minister of Israel 1964-1979
Remember this, I beg of you all, as Israel steps up its response to Hamas.
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Photos by Sophie Brown – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=81533205
