Lemmee Tell You How to Revolt
Jeff Isaac's piece in Dissent has been bouncing around some discussions I have seen. It took me back to "We agree with your objectives, but we cannot abide your methods." You know what you get when you merge Dissent and Commentary.
A while back on a listserv where the debate was hot and heavy, I asked what slogan re: Gaza would be acceptable, and it was suggested, "Free, free Palestine," which I think is a) weak, and b) futile as a hope of providing guidance to young protesters. Now Jeff Isaac says even those words trouble him. What's left?
His objection to a union taking a stance on foreign policy smacks of allegiance to the hackneyed business unionism model, which implies unions never act for the sake of justice beyond the immediate material needs of their current members. Worse, he makes this a matter of abusing the diverse identities of union members, which implies some kind of ethnic bias in the protest’s objectives.
I am sympathetic to skepticism about the "intersectionality" claim. One of my pet peeves is that the significance of intersectionality, going back to critical race theory (the real kind, see Kimberle Crenshaw), is commonly corrupted. A benign connotation of intersectionality points to logrolling among atomized groups, which goes against the grain of class politics. It's Jesse Jackson's quilt all over again.
As Dissent associate editor Gemma Sack says in a constructive rejoinder to JI, his discomfort with words like "intifada" is paranoia and again raises the question, what is acceptable rhetoric that speaks to the horrors of the situation and reflects a justifiable, militant posture? JI criticizes maximalism. I would say maximalism is the right of the oppressed. It could be criticized on practical grounds, but the thrust of JI's essay is ethical. Contra JI, as far as ethics are concerned, I would say dwelling on the diverse rhetoric of decentralized agitation is morally tone deaf, in context.
I'd say JI's piece as well as the remarks he reports from Michael Weinman can be reduced to "Slow your roll." That's not what we need now. It is not surprising to see it rejected by those in the throes of protest.
I don't have much sympathy with Isaac's position. His post concerns the rhetoric used by the protesters. I don't pay it much mind. I am reminded of debates about whether the slogan should have been "One, two, three, four, we don't want your fucking war" or "One, two, three, four, stop the bombing, end the war." Big deal, I don't care. At the end of the day you're trying to put pressure on the government to stop the war.
While I agree mostly with Gemma Sack's response, I would add the following point that she doesn't make. Whatever the atmospherics of "From the River to the Sea", she fails to note that this is exactly the slogan that has been used by Netanyahu and his allies for decades within Israel, just with the winner and loser reversed. To me this is the key point of that. Americans by and large don't know this.
I also disagree with the tactical emphasis on demanding divestment by universities. To me it misses the point. It leads to embarrassments like settling the confrontation by the administration conceding that they will look into removing Sabra Hummus from university cafeterias. Out of such "victories", a movement cannot be built. It's too weak a foundation. It looks ridiculous. Better to have demanded something of the government, that is, an end to unconditional military aid to Israel, as Bernie Sanders, Ro Khanna, and other have done. The sixties' movements demands were of the government - END THE WAR - no matter how it was stated. I think today's young radicals have no faith whatsoever in the government and therefore don't even bother to demand anything of it, and so confine their targets to the "closer at hand" universities. They might want to rethink this.
Be that as it may, however convoluted the logic was, I must concede that the protests led to Biden's stopping shipment of big bombs to Israel and that's not nothing. But that wasn't what they demanded.
Max your link to "Jeff Isaac's piece in Dissent" goes not there but to Gemma Sack's response to it. You can get there from the response however.