Liberalism: what will be the cost of dropping the masks?
They'll be terrible, but we don't have time to let it play out
Israel’s genocide is fully supported by the US, Canada, UK, France, and Germany - all mainstream political parties and major media endorse it and have publicly stated there are no red lines, no numbers of dead children, no amount of starvation or dehydration that would stop them from supporting Israel.
Florida State Representative Angie Nixon asked in Congress how many dead children would be enough. Republican Congresswoman Michelle Salzman shouted, “all of them.”
The Jeff Bezos-owned Washington Post is publishing editorial cartoons like this:
Combining racist caricature with genocidal incitement in an extraordinarily succinct piece of art. If there is a cartoon that summarizes the Western understanding of the world, this is it.
Tonight’s question is, what have these Western countries in the genocide bloc given up to support this open massacre?
For several centuries prior to the major decolonizations after WW2, the West offered one thing to the Global South: naked colonialism. The 2003 book Dark Vanishings: Discourse on the Extinction of Primitive Races 1800-1930 shows how Western elites filled their literature with solemn warnings, sometimes sad, sometimes exultant, that Indigenous peoples around the world were destined to go extinct to make way for their white racial superiors.
This was a period when:
White people would have picnics and watch lynchings in the US;
Canada was using starvation to push the First Nations of what would become the country’s Western provinces on to tiny fractions of their land;
Britain and France were conducting scorched-earth “punitive raids” all over Africa and the Middle East.
Germany drove the people of Namibia into the desert to die of thirst, got them to surrender by promising them food aid, then shipping them to death camps, a genocide openly declared ahead of time.
When it became clear that the colonized were nonetheless not going to go extinct, were going to win their independence, and likely go communist or socialist, the West revised their offer - from naked colonialism to neocolonialism. The new offer was this:
Economic aid and loans for “development”, to enmesh the new governments into economic dependency on the West while keeping their all-important commodities and the products of their labor flowing to the rich countries.
Weapons and training programs for the militaries (and police) of these newly independent countries, to ensure that the militaries would have direct, subordinate relationships with Western sponsors (and were not loyal to their own populations).
A package of international law, human rights, nongovernmental organizations, elections claimed to be free and fair, free speech, and support for nonviolent struggle.
Unlike the “authoritarian” communist bloc, the West promised peaceful avenues for change. Multiculturalism promised equality under the law regardless of where you were from or what you believed - you could leave your country and become Western, enjoying all the privileges of Westerners. Dissenters would be protected by law from state reprisal. Elections gave the people power over elites: the bastards could be voted out. If the bastards were particularly disrespectful of democracy (if they ignored elections and set up a dictatorship), they could be defeated through nonviolent struggle, with methods and manuals taught by US institutes and later, using US social media corporations to spread the word. There was always the United Nations to appeal to as well - to give succour to the refugees, to pass Security Council resolutions that were binding on all UN members, to “Unite for Peace” in the General Assembly if the Security Council failed.
If, as a leader of a Global South country, you didn’t like the new Western offer, you could get overthrown in a coup (see, e.g., William Blum’s Killing Hope, or the more scholarly version Lindsey A. O’Rourke’s Covert Regime Change).
As for the liberal package of law and rights - it was always an illusion, especially for Palestine But since Oct 7, 2023, the West has abandoned it wholly. Let’s look at each piece in turn.
International law? It may always have been a fantasy but Israel and the US are explicit that it doesn’t apply. Israelis who kill Palestinians are not charged with crimes. ICJ judgments are ignored; the ICC delays investigation - not that it would be respected if it made any judgments. The US has passed what is sometimes called the Hague Invasion Act, which states that the US would use military force against the court rather than allow its personnel to be judged for war crimes. Israel’s partners like Canada have pressured the International Court of Justice to drop the stances it has taken in the past. Israel had once signed the Rome statute, but then ‘unsigned’ it; the US has never been subject to it. Israel kills UN personnel and then trolls them, official account to official account, on twitter. The US vetoes resolutions at the UN Security Council and the General Assembly resolution is simply ignored.
Human rights? The mighty human rights organizations merely beg Israel to murder civilians in a way that respects human rights, and receive a contemptuous response for their trouble.
Elections? All Western political parties are disciplined in their support for Israel. In Ontario and in the US Congress (so far), parliaments have formally censured elected representatives (Sarah Jama in Ontario and Rashida Tlaib in the US) calling for ceasefire (or even short of ceasefire). For her trouble, Jama was also thrown out of her party, the left-wing NDP. Until there are anti-genocide political parties in the West, elections or the threat of elections are meaningless since there are no anti-genocide alternatives to vote for. There is no voting these bastards out. Not in the West.
Protected speech? On wonderful American social media platforms? Using the power of free expression and dissent to change genocidal policy? Besides direct censorship of Palestine and Palestine solidarity groups on the platforms, the pro-genocide bloc scours social media to try to get anti-genocide people fired from their jobs. They routinely lie and libel Palestine supporters, libel tens of thousands of protesters for peace at a time as “supporters of violence”, ignore Jewish pro-Palestine voices, and punish speech wherever they can.
Pro-genocide media figures have been advocating mass deportation (population transfer) as an answer to the large pro-Palestine rallies - calling for the deportation of hundreds of thousands of people for waving Palestine flags and chanting “from the river to the sea”. People in Canada have already been arrested for using the phrase. Germany, France, and the UK banned and criminalized the rallies before they happened; Canadian legislators called them “hate rallies”. More repression is planned, if they can get away with it.
You can say that these wonderful tenets of liberalism were always honored in the breach, applied with double standards, etc. But no matter how you argue it, we are in a major “mask off” moment and at least two questions follow from the dropping of these masks.
First, if it was so easy for them to drop these masks, what was the value of these masks in the first place? And second, what consequences are there, if any, to the dropping of these masks?
To the first question: the masks were very valuable and the cost of dropping them is still unknown - it will play out over years. The liberal package of ideas from free expression, to international law and the UN through to elections and nonviolent struggle as legitimate forms of popular struggle, was very important in several ways:
Winning a portion of the Global South and its elite to the Western agenda. Multiculturalism and equality under the law (getting rid of apartheid in the US and in South Africa, settlers leaving Kenya, etc.) were instrumental in the West being able to get people from the Global South to work for them (including in Western countries).
Dissipating rebellious energy. Appeals to international justice dissipate rebellious energies internationally just as appeals to electoralism dissipate them within the West.
Can the medical profession in a country work properly if doctors are petitioning for hospitals to be bombed? Can social media companies claim everyone’s attention if they are hunting grounds for libelers, doxxers, and people trying to get you fired? Can politicians displaying such public heartlessness expect the ear of those they wish to lead? Can schools and universities claim to educate students for the world if they punish them for speaking against genocide? Maybe this is just how the West works. The US seems to be able to run without a universal health care system and with frequent mass shootings, but other Western countries may not be so resilient. There may be lasting damage to the social order being done here.
Dropping these pretences could have major repercussions for the whole world order and for the functioning of these democracies.
But perhaps not. At the moment, Global South countries that are subordinate to the US are so far unyielding to the pressure of their own anti-genocide majorities. Some regimes have made rhetorical anti-genocide gestures while helping the US and Israel militarily. Egypt could unilaterally open Rafah crossing and end the humanitarian crisis in Gaza at any time, but does not. Jordan snubbed Blinken in a meeting but helps the occupation. Turkey accuses Israel of genocide but ships tomatoes and says interrupting business is infeasible. Saudi Arabia said they hold Israel responsible but shield Israel from Yemen’s missiles using US missile defense platforms operating from Arabian soil. India declared support for Netanyahu immediately and is apparently going to send 100,000 workers to replace the Palestinian labour force Israel had been exploiting (and is now murdering). The West is betting that this genocide won’t cause a crisis in the Global South.
And in the Global North? Western political parties have maintained solid pro-genocide discipline. Even if the rallies have shown that Western majorities are anti-genocide, they have nowhere, electorally speaking, to go. They mostly watch unreality and inverted reality on their screens, and are made to feel afraid of repression. Some tactical firings, suspensions of Muslim students, arrests of organizers, a bit of Islamophobic violence here and there - perhaps it need not reach crisis levels. The bet is that the genocide won’t cause a crisis in the Global North either.
Which raises the next question. If the Bidens and Trudeaus and von der Leyens are betting that everyone is going to go back to their normal lives after this genocide, was it really necessary to drop the masks? Why not let people demonstrate in London and Toronto and Berlin and Paris and ignore their demands like Western elites did in 2003, when the millions of demonstrators around the world were praised as a “second superpower” by the New York Times and then casually ignored by the US, who invaded Iraq anyway? Why label them as “hate rallies” and threaten mass deportation?
What is it about Palestine that moves them to such hatred to take bigger risks?
The simplest answer is that Israel is the West. It is Canada, it is the US, it is Australia and New Zealand. It is a settler colony. Western elites’ identification with it is total; for them to contemplate abandoning stolen lands to Indigenous people is inconceivable.
Aggressive wars like the ones in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan have led to humiliating defeats - but for a settler colony to take even one step back is impossible to contemplate. A prisoner exchange, letting Gaza have an airport, letting people come and go from Gaza freely… and now even utterances about freedom or the colors of the Palestine flag have become intolerable to the Western mind. In Israel this brain freeze has led to the adoption of a pseudo-strategy of saturation bombing followed by an open-ended ground invasion with no achievable political goal besides genocide. Among Israel’s supporters, it has led to the maniacal repetition of phrases like “Israel has the right to defend itself” even as Israeli officials talk about dropping nuclear bombs on Gaza or exterminating them all, and are killing, now, 1500 people a day, 140 children a day, and climbing.
But, like I said in my last piece, we can’t affect what is happening on the ground in Gaza or the air above it and we can’t wait for the ripple effects of the abandonment of liberalism. There are, however, things that the anti-genocide majority can do even against such a committed elite consensus.
The most successful actions have been:
Direct Action against the intertwined Western military-industrial complex that is supplying the weapons for this genocide (see, e.g., Palestine Action - https://twitter.com/Pal_action).
The legal and political defense of those targeted for their anti-genocide activities and views (see, e.g., Palestine Legal https://twitter.com/pal_legal or Legal Profession Against Retaliation https://twitter.com/canlawforpal).
The huge and growing rallies organized by, e.g., the Palestinian Youth Movement (https://twitter.com/palyouthmvmt)
If these continue to grow, so will repression and violence in the West.
The next step would be preparing to survive that and grow in spite of it.
In 1915, when Lenin lamented the fragmentation of the socialist movement in the face of World War I, he argued that antiwar work had to be done in spite of the difficulties posed by what appeared to be the unstoppable march to war.
He said such work “is not easy, to be sure. It will demand arduous preparatory activities and heavy sacrifices. This is a new form of organisation and struggle that also has to be learnt, and knowledge is not acquired without errors and setbacks.” As examples of what had to be done, he suggested “setting up an international apparatus for the purpose of carrying on propaganda... organise the publication of illegal literature on the necessity of starting revolutionary activities, etc."
He continued: “We cannot tell whether a powerful revolutionary movement will develop immediately after this war, or during it, etc., but at all events, it is only work in this direction that deserves the name of socialist work.”
So as to not end yet another piece with Lenin, I’ll mention Michael Albert’s book The Trajectory of Change. Michael was an antiwar student activist during the US war on Vietnam in the 1960s. The trajectory he describes in the title is one where demonstrations are not only building in numbers but also in commitment, radicalism, militancy. To roughly paraphrase him, a weekly rally with 250,000 people each week for a series of weeks is less likely to get elites to back off of a genocide than rallies that grow in number each week and where small but growing numbers are, instead of calling for, e.g., “ceasefire now”, are abandoning electoral lesser evilism altogether, calling for the end of apartheid, taking direct actions against the military industrial complex, etc.
Western elites have announced a willingness to transform their societies to make them more genocide-friendly. Dangerous times are ahead.
Thanks for including links to actions we can take here. I've been feeling so hopeless as a pro-Palestinian Jew. To see Jews talk and act like Nazis is intolerable.
No need to apologise for citing Lenin. His theory and practice stand head and shoulders above other working class leaders.