I can’t embed it here, because reasons known only to the very stable owner of Xwitter, but you’ve probably seen the video of an Oakland city council meeting in which they debated adding a condemnation of Hamas to a resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
You’d think Bay Area progressives wouldn’t be inclined to support a medieval theocratic death cult. That’s because you think any of this shit makes any sense whatsoever.
The reactions are horrifying and delusional, an insistence that the victims were evil and that those who perpetuated great evil were actually the victims: “Israel murdered their own people on October 7!” “Calling Hamas a terrorist organization is ridiculous, racist, and plays into genocidal propaganda.” “I support the right of Palestinians to resist occupation, including through Hamas, the armed wing of the unified Palestinian resistance.” “As an Arab, asking with this context to condemn Hamas is very anti-Arab racist!” “The notion that this was a massacre of Jews was a fabricated narrative. . . . Many of those killed on October 7, including children, were killed by the IDF.” “To hear them complain about Hamas violence is like listening to a wife beater complain when his wife finally stands up and fights back!” “Did anyone else notice that those who oppose this resolution are old white supremacists?”
I’ve seen some people saying the video clips are taken out of context and they didn’t represent the majority of submissions to the council.
That may very well be true. But I suspect that if fifty people spoke at a city council meeting in Alabama and only three or four of them said the Ku Klux Klan were honourable patriots just trying to protect their traditional way of life and that ackshully most lynchings were false flag operations carried out by Black people themselves, I don’t think the “only a few people said that” excuse would fly.
Especially if that city council did what the wingnuts demanded of them, which is exactly what happened in Oakland:
You can say these folks represent the lunatic fringe, but they got their way; the city council chose to not condemn Hamas. The outcome of the war will not depend upon what Oakland city officials say about it. But there was a proposal to denounce what is self-evidently evil, and it was rejected, likely in part because of Oakland citizens like this.
Within this crowd, you can find those who insist Hamas did not perpetuate the massacre on October 7, and that it was an elaborate hoax perpetuated by the IDF. And you can also find those who believe Hamas committed the massacre, but that it was morally justified. Curiously, you almost never hear or see these two groups of lunatics arguing with each other.
I suspect these groups rarely if ever argue with each other because both interpretations end in the same place: All Israelis, including everyone of every age who got slaughtered that day, are the villains, and all Palestinians, including everyone who committed every atrocity that day, are justified heroes. And that’s all that really matters to these people; they will believe whatever they have to believe to preserve that foundational idea: that Israelis are the villains and Palestinians are the heroes, all the time, in every circumstance.
But it’s not so much the pro-Hamas activists I’m concerned about. Bay Area gonna Bay Area. It’s the reaction of the city council which concerns me.
If you went before Oakland City Council and made a big speech about how the Holocaust didn’t happen and also the Jews deserved it, I’d like to think some council members would very loudly object and tell you to sit down and STFU with this antisemitic conspiracy garbage.
October 7 denial is the Holocaust denial of 2023, with conspiracists like Max Blumenthal (because of course he is one) using many of the same tactics. That is, selective, misleading and out-of-context quotes, using early fog-of-war media reports as definitive evidence and their subsequent retraction as proof of a cover-up, and just plain making shit up.
However, Holocaust denial emerged in a pre-internet - even pre-television - age, and needed a long time to really become a thing. Even 9/11 conspiracy theories didn’t really spread widely until a few months afterward, with Loose Change (remember Loose Change?) spreading on torrent sites and pre-YouTube online video services. (Remember Google Video?)
Less than two months after October 7, thanks to Xwitter and TikTok - and fringe alternative media outlets like The Toronto Star - a narrative is already embedded on much of the progressive left and some of the right:
the October 7 attacks were justified and should be celebrated;
the October 7 attacks were a false flag by Israel;
all Israelis are legitimate military targets;
any Israeli women and children killed on October 7 were actually killed by the Israelis themselves;
Hamas does not represent all Palestinians;
when you condemn Hamas you are condemning all Palestinians; and,
there are absolutely no internal contradictions in any of this because shut up.
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