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- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
Video footage broadcast Wednesday by Al Jazeera shows Israeli soldiers gunning down two Palestinians on the coast of northern Gaza, even as one of them waves what appears to be a piece of white fabric. The video then shows Israeli soldiers burying the bodies with a bulldozer.
Richard Falk, former United Nations special rapporteur on the human rights situation in the occupied Palestinian territories, toldAl Jazeera that the footage provides “vivid confirmation of continuing Israeli atrocities” and spotlights the “unambiguous character of Israeli atrocities that are being carried out on a daily basis.”
“The eyes and ears of the world have been assaulted in real-time by this form of genocidal behavior,” said Falk. “It is a shocking reality that there has been no adverse reaction from the liberal democracies in the West. It is a shameful moment.”
Geopolitical power disparities will exist for as long as different value sets and systems exist. I don’t think it would be wise to even attempt to do away with them. Do remember, the sole purposes of the state from antiquity onward was to offer security against organized violence. Something must do so.
Regarding the fix for the domestic issues, again, that’s the breakup of concentrated capital. We had similar issues in the 19th century, and you can look at the reforms of the late 19th and early 20th centuries to see how we addressed them. We can do so again, and probably should pretty soon here.
It’s not that I’m unaware of the challenges we face, or inherent weaknesses of our system. My position is that it is difficult to solve them without simply becoming vulnerable to a different form of tyranny. It takes many forms, yes? With the oldest simply being people coming to kill you and take your stuff, as the Gazans and Ukrainians, among others, are currently experiencing.
So you don’t see a problem or otherwise don’t see a solution for economic imperialism…? I’m confused by this statement. Liberalism offers only voluntary exchange as a guiding principle, am I right in assuming you’re OK with economic imperialism?
Ok… so do you have a problem with social democracies as opposed to liberal democracies? Anarcho syndicalism? What makes liberalism preferable to a democratic system that’s socially oriented instead of individually oriented?
To an extent, yes, I am okay with some economic imperialism. I would support laws that would restrict companies from working in overseas areas where slave wages are permitted, things like that. I do not see it as an all-or-nothing proposition though, it’s not yes/no, black/white.
I’m not advocating for liberalism, I haven’t been whatsoever. If you go back to my original comment, I was simply critiquing a statement of someone’s misunderstanding of it. I’m personally more left than that. I just support accuracy, not blind, wrong-headed criticism and hot takes. Just because someone may share my position does not give them license to spread misunderstanding. Misinformation is never okay, no matter the position, side or belief.
I do not support anarchism in any of its forms, however, I don’t think it can adequately maintain the military-industrial complex that modern warfare requires. Until warfare is a thing of the past, I don’t think it would be wise.
You misunderstand. Economic imperialism isn’t simply companies working overseas, it’s a nationstate wielding it’s economic advantage to establish market dominance over other countries. To my knowledge this is not a domestic policy issue but an international/Geopolitical issue. How would you go about breaking up a country that’s gotten too big? In this regard (and In regard to your first comment), liberalism is absolutely not “hands-off” or neutral, at best it’s ambivalent, but that sure as he’ll doesn’t mean it’s “hands-off”. You’re correcting an alleged misunderstanding with your own.
As for anarchism or social democracies or even communism, I’m not sure you really understand the terminologies. Anarchism doesn’t preclude a military, I’m not sure why you’d think that unless you took Anarchism to mean literally no governance at all. I don’t want to assume you haven’t, but I’d really recommend reading some lit on socialist economic structures, or even just some Locke and Rousseau to understand liberalism a bit better.
I was describing a single law I would support that would weaken economic imperialism. I was not saying that the law I proposed somehow solved it or anything, and that actually contradicts where I said I supported some. And please explain the difference between ambivalence/neutrality and hands-off.
A proper military-industrial complex requires a huge degree of coordination and stability across multiple independent sectors over many years. Only a large state is capable of managing the entire thing over the long periods of time necessary. An aircraft carrier battlefleet is a simply massive undertaking, requiring the efforts of millions of people over decades.
Sure. In this context, ‘ambivalence’ means having an internal inconsistency, whereas a true-neutral system would give no preference for a particular relationship. I mean it as liberalism claiming to support voluntary engagement and mutual consent in relations, but is ambivalent (i.e. internally inconsistent) about the relative power/influence between ‘consenting’ parties, to the extent that one party may not have any choice but to enter into a contract. Even though liberalism depends on the concept of mutual agreement, it has no answer to one party having outsized leverage against another, especially since its alleged benefit is mutual consent as a system of self-regulation.
It is the difference between ‘social contracts’ as a neutral observation of power dynamics generally, and ‘liberalism’ as an idealistic system of self governance.
Maybe if you take the US military as a standard, but even the founders envisioned a military comprised of independent militias. Besides, anarchosyndicalism traditionally acknowledges the need for a centralized government to ensure mutual security, even if they have strong feelings against a standing military the size of the current US one (with which I agree).
Anyway, I only posed that question to gauge your understanding of liberalism, since it seemed as if you understood it as something like “democracy”. I wanted to see what you thought the difference between liberal democracy and social democracy was. I haven’t been convinced you understand
Ah, that’s a fair distinction I suppose. That’s why I think we need more laws to limit how our companies are able to engage with less developed partners.
Even the British and French militaries have carriers, but all are large states. So long as the institution can coordinate the long-term strategic cooperation necessary to bring the pieces together, then I have nothing against it. It serves its primary purpose in this case.
I would describe a liberal democracy differing from a social democracy in the direction and degree of investment. Liberalism, as I said earlier, is philosophically hands-off. Ambivalent or neutral work fine as descriptors imo as well. You could say uncaring, if you liked. I do not really see the social contracts and mutual consent as envisioned by the people that wrote about it as being particularly real, in the minds of the people. And since they democratically control what happens, those don’t really end up existing.
Social democracy is focused more on equity for the populace. It does take those concepts more seriously.
Fair enough.
I’ll stand by my earlier assertion, that liberalism is anything but neutral, perhaps not in the way that you understand it as being hands off.
In practice, liberal states end up being self-serving (as liberalism encourages), and since capital is allowed to accumulate, the state apparatus ends up being used in pursuit of capital interests. Even if ‘hands off’ is accurate when it comes to domestic economic policy (it is usually anything but), at the Geopolitical level that power dynamic is amplified.
Which is why people argue Israel is a vassel state: Israel’s strategic function (to the US’s economic interests) is to project power in the oil-rich middle east. It’s why the US puts up with and runs cover for them even as they are objectively the aggressors in a lopsided conflict. Any other ally in any other conflict would have been given the boot at this point. They’ve clearly overshot defense and are squarely in genocide at this point. The US has every excuse to end that alliance, but they don’t because they have financial interests through them.
The petroleum resources of the Middle East haven’t been needed for a decade now, that understanding that held true for half a century has simply become out-of-date. All that remains is the commonalities, ethnically diverse democracies with a long tradition of cooperation. Which may soon come to an end, finally, though that would really infuriate our evangelical wing, which is a significant fraction of our entire population. I completely disagree that “any other ally would’ve gotten the boot”. Look at Turkey’s history with their eastern minorities. I’m sure I could think of more examples as well. Can you name a time we’ve ever, in our entire history, “booted” an ally for atrocities?
Self-serving I’ll grant, I think that’s somewhat inherent to liberalism as a concept. Liberty itself. Recall, my original comment noted a certain “liberty to oppress”. We do not seriously challenge China over the oppression of their Muslims, we never seriously challenged the genocide in Rawanda, we didn’t even seriously challenge South African apartheid without significant prodding. It’s not liberty for everyone, it’s liberty for those strong enough to seize it. People seem to want to project some sort of “goodness” onto the USA, and honestly, I don’t think a typical middle-American wants that. As a democracy, if half of us don’t want that, then… what? Recall, we would have let the world fall in WW2, had Pearl Harbor never happened.
This is why I don’t strongly argue with people that claim liberalism naturally leans right, incidentally, I think it does. It has more in common, in American practice especially, with fascism than anything more leftist. This is one of the things that makes us so vulnerable to falling into actual full-blown fascism, as existed in the mid-20th century. The nastiest kind, that conquers land with the intention of keeping it, and exterminates people that get in the way.
Make no mistake, we are an extremely violent people, culturally. Look no further than our mass-media. It’s up to us to reform our system in healthier ways, as our founders intended, before it’s too late. Because when I say hands-off, it’s hands-off our most animalistic natures sometimes, and lead poisoning on top of that. Political theorists really don’t seem to get that, that many of us pine for the darkest days of our history.
This is why it’s so incomprehensible and stupid, imo, that someone could seriously think something inherent in our liberal democracy stands against genocide. It doesn’t, to the point that we could do some ourselves in the coming decades, after leaving NATO and aligning with Russia instead.