As I have argued many times in the past, ordinary people and Leftist activists don’t speak the same language or even use language for the same purposes.
Ordinary people use language to communicate with others, and hence, we work hard to ensure that what we say creates a correspondence between what we are thinking and what our interlocutors understand. People lie, of course, but generally speaking words mean the same thing to us as they do to whom we are speaking. It’s an essential part of language.
“It’s ‘homophobic violence’ to notice that Hamas is responsible for violence against gay people.”
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— Legal Insurrection (@LegInsurrection) April 10, 2024
Leftists don’t use language that way. Postmodernism, critical theory, or whatever label you want to use for the ideology, holds that words are always expressions of power relationships. Speaking is as much a means of seizing power as bonking somebody over the head, and it is the most effective means of seizing power when you haven’t enough power to destroy your enemies.
It is in this context that you must understand the claims being made by “Queer” activists, and in particular the “Queers for Palestine” crowd.
You and I may look at the “Queers for Palestine” crowd as hopelessly deluded, which is why people joke it is like “Chickens for KFC.” It certain looks that way, if you think that what these people are trying to do is communicate.
They aren’t.
Describing Hamas’ brutalization of LGBTQ Palestinians needs to be labeled “homophobic violence,” university professors suggested at an event last month.
Associate Professor Maya Mikdashi took part in a discussion at the school titled “Palestine is a Feminist and Queer Anti-Imperialist Abolition Struggle” with University of Illinois professor Nadine Naber on March 20. During the event, Mikdashi pushed back on the complaint that Palestinians and Hamas mistreat LGBTQ citizens, claiming that the assertion itself is a form of bigotry.
“So I’ve been at protests where I’m then told, ‘Don’t you know what Hamas would do to you, if you were in Palestine.’ And we have to start naming this, actually, as homophobic,” Mikdashi said, as Naber vocally agreed. “You cannot rehearse violence to queer people and be like, ‘don’t you know … A, B, you would be…’ in really excruciating detail. I think we have to actually shift it.”
“It’s violence,” an audience member said.
“It’s homophobic. It’s violent,” Mikdashi agreed.
“Homophobic violence,” Naber affirmed.
None of this makes sense, you may think. On its face, it doesn’t. Hamas is filled with murderous gay-haters. They toss gays off of roofs, hang them, and treat anybody who violates their version of Sharia as badly as you can imagine.
But these people are not actually talking about homophobia or Palestine at all, except as what they call “signifiers.” These are terms that have meaning in the minds of their listeners. They hit emotional erogenous zones, and it is the emotion that they are tapping into.
Their speech serves the same purpose as a propaganda video staged to make Israel look bad. What you see is not real, and what you hear from them is no more real. It’s all about destroying Western culture.
And that is what “Queerness” is all about. It is lumped in with sexual preferences, but it is actually a political movement that has been connected to a cause that liberals love. It isn’t a gender or sexual orientation; it simply means “anti-Western.” Hence the easy connection to Hamas, which shares the same goal of destroying the West.
Given that Hamas has no chance to kill “Queer” Americans, there is no contradiction.
You see the same phenomenon with words like “genocide” or “inclusion.” The way Leftists use them has no relation to what you or I think of. You need a decoder ring to understand what they mean. They are loaded terms meant to trip our emotional reactions and get a desired response.
Supporting Israel is, of course, neither homophobic nor violent, but repeating this claim endlessly serves a purpose. It riles up the target audience and generates the hate they want to come out. Firing up the troops, who are useful idiots.
“We’re going to need our organizing to center queer and trans people not only because they are especially vulnerable to colonial violence and the racism and the doxxing, but they also embody exceptionally nuanced wisdom about Zionism because they are living it in all its complexity,” Naber said.
“Nuanced wisdom.” Do you really think she means that, or is it just a term like “safe and effective” intended to draw in people susceptible to gaslighting?
With Leftists, you cannot assume that what they are saying is what they mean.
This is not some secret, although the originators of this theoretical framework are notoriously opaque in their writings. This is what critical theory teaches: everything, including language, comes down to power. Critical theory is dominant in academia and, hence, the intellectual foundation of the Left.
What you and I see as contradictions assumes that logic, consistency, and genuine communication are the goals. They aren’t. It is all about seizing power, which is why these same people use intimidation tactics on their enemies when they can. It is, in their mind, the same thing–just different manifestations of their will to power.
As you can see by looking around you, what shouldn’t be working is indeed working with many people, just as “safe and effective” did with much of the population. People tend to assume that people say what they mean, which is why using language as a weapon works so effectively.
Israel is losing the propaganda war.
Read this again, realizing that it makes no sense but actually works with a segment of the population:
“We’re going to need our organizing to center queer and trans people not only because they are especially vulnerable to colonial violence and the racism and the doxxing, but they also embody exceptionally nuanced wisdom about Zionism because they are living it in all its complexity,” Naber said.
It is nonsense, but all the buzzwords hit exactly where the educational system has prepared people to react. “Colonial violence,” “racism,” “wisdom,” “lived experience.” Now go look at what they are teaching in schools and colleges. It’s all the same BS.
It isn’t about persuading anybody who isn’t already in the cult, but by doing that the cult members spread the hate like a “mind virus,” as Elon Musk calls it.
Do you think it is a coincidence that this is all happening at the same time that education has become an ideological echo chamber? Our schools and universities are where the cultural revolution is incubated. And it all starts with corrupting language.
Read the full article here
