They’re just defending the status quo, while nominally supporting The Current Thing TM to look cool on social media.
Somewhat relevant: https://redsails.org/why-cant-we-be-friends/
Also: https://redsails.org/the-pitfalls-of-liberalism/
The most perturbing question for the liberal is the question of violence. The liberal’s initial reaction to violence is to try to convince the oppressed that violence is an incorrect tactic, that violence will not work, that violence never accomplishes anything.
The liberal is so preoccupied with stopping confrontation that he usually finds himself defending and calling for law and order, the law and order of the oppressor. Confrontation would disrupt the smooth functioning of the society and so the politics of the liberal leads him into a position where he finds himself politically aligned with the oppressor rather than with the oppressed.
The reason the liberal seeks to stop confrontation — and this is the second pitfall of liberalism — is that his role, regardless of what he says, is really to maintain the status quo, rather than to change it.
It’s the exact same play as when they pearl-clutch about Russia or China. That “neither Washington nor Beijing” shit when they have nothing but silence and cartoon crickets for the fuckery that Washington pulls. It’s all just a diversion so they can be crackerish about the Palestinian joint coalition.
They know their position is wrong, so they compensate by pretending their opponent’s position is more wrong. That way, they still get to be morally superior while still being completely morally bankrupt.
I don’t think they are “scheming” anything, scheming require to have some political orientation. For most of them, quoting Terry Pratchett, “they just want tomorrow to be identical as today”.
Bothsiding conflicts is the line of least resistance and least mental effort, think about some arguments you would present to discuss with the centrist and imagine (or just go to any social media to see) the most perfunctory, brain terminating cliche answer to those - this is centrism, they in fact don’t want to discuss this at all, if they engage, it is only because they see someone engage and feel uncomfortable seeing it so they try to shut that person up so that all is looking nice again and their jimmies remain unrustled.
this. liberals, centrists, they want things to remain as they are, and willingly deny that things are already bad.
Immobilism/conservatism is a political opinion
Naturally, but they don’t think so, they think status quo is not politics, it’s just something that is, like air or gravity.
because they are very wise, remember the solution to all problems is in the middle of the opposing views. if a slaver likes to own people and work them to death and a slave would rather not that the clearly the solution is a bit less slavery slaves should be worked only half way to death, similarly here Palestinians want to live israhell wants them dead so clearly Palestinians dying slower and thru more obfuscated mean is the solution.
Enlightened centrism
I agree with most of what’s been posted but I have a slightly different theory. Libs have a pathological desire to be seen as wise and competent, the adults in the room. Therefore, when other people expect them to actually have a stance on a relatively complex issue with history they can’t bullshit through, they’ll resort to simple thought terminating cliches.
“They’re both bad” isn’t much different from “It’s complex”. Both have a silent implied “… So shut up and go away.”
Ding ding ding, this is my experience exactly. Not just because of all of the obvious times that liberals do it, but because I use to be one of them.
Okay a lot of us used to be, that isn’t special. But I’m in my mid 30s, I was a liberal up until 6 moths ago, as I started to learn what marxism, communism, and socialism, actually was.
This isn’t my life story, the point is I’ve spent the vast majority of my life in liberal culture, and yeah there is a lot of circle-jerking in the libsphere about being “wise and competent” as you put it. It always felt strangely good to “see both sides” and play the middle field. I also see both sides now, but I’m more… principled in my beliefs.
As a liberal I might have said “Hamas are terrorists, but also Israel has done bad things”. This is just playing the middle field, that’s it, it gets you away from a complicated conversation with a surface level ‘nuanced’ view, and most white middle class people accept that.
Nowadays I would say “Sure, both sides have done bad things, but Israel is the clear instigator in this matter, and Hamas is an understandable reaction to it, and frankly if your home was taken at gunpoint and your whole family was under settler colonial occupation and Apartheid, you’d probably be okay with killing the ‘civilians’ occupying your home too”. Which is so much more controversial, but also more correct, most people probably would be okay going to war under these circumstances. White middle class Usonians just have no concept of what it’s like to be oppressed. To them, it’s too easy to blame the victims being oppressed, because they’ll never have to face the same situation anyway.
They don’t want anything to change. They would prefer it if the Palestinians kept dying slowly. One question I have asked which westerners just ignore is “all those innocent children and women being released, would they have been released if the Palestinians didn’t do what they did? Would the zionists spontaneously develop a conscience?”
Edit: they just expect certain people to be exploited and be perpetual victims that are sometimes granted sympathy by noble westerners.
They want the people being slowly killed to just be sad and slowly die off until it’s safe to make sports teams and/or Broadway plays based upon them generations from now.
“Both sides” shit always favors the status quo and more than that, the powerful over the less powerful. Consistently. That’s why.
Its the failsafe position.
A lib doesn’t have to consider the politics and history of the region, those nations, their interactions, and causes but still gets to have an opinion on the issue that they can feel okay about.
It’s one of the limits of mainstream ‘progressive’ politics in imperial countries that support Israel.
In some ways I think the whole ‘war on terror’, despite the fact that the US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are increasingly widely regarded as failures and crimes even in imperial countries, has been like a red scare against all kinds of guerilla/resistance fighters across the world (but especially Muslims).
The labels ‘terrorist’ and ‘terrorism’ have become tools for short-circuiting thought and discussion, and that’s very deeply ingrained. The Israeli media strategy surrounding Operation Al-Aqsa Flood understands this well, and takes full advantage of the fact that mainstream journalists in the imperial core will never call Israel a terrorist state or the IDF a terrorist organization despite the fact that for many decades now, for multiple entire generations, their primary ‘opponents’ have been not the armies of other nations but civilian populations (sometimes in neighboring countries, like Lebanon, and sometimes in land that Israel claims for itself, like Gaza and the West Bank).
The goal is to paint ‘Hamas’ (really the al-Qassam Brigades, and practically speaking the whole armed resistance) as brutes with a monomaniacal obsession with their own brutality. That’s what the equation to ISIS is trying to effect. And it has succeeded pretty well, imo. Liberals aren’t condemning Hamas as an explicit scheme but because they feel like doing so is totally obligatory, even for those opposed to the horrors that we see now unfolding.
That’s all speaking, of course of ordinary liberals. Liberal propaganda functionaries on TV, and elected officials are certainly sometimes more cynical or self-serving, more actively invested in the false equivalency. But whether they’re speaking sincerely or cynically, when liberals condemn ‘both sides’ in Palestine, the ‘terrorist’ label is doing its job.
Because liberals fetishize the mythical “center” as universally correct in all arguments. No further research or contextualizing is necessary for them.
So cowards who can’t take a stance
It’s called genocide downplaying. If they know they can’t get away with outright genocide denial, they go for the next best thing.
The entirety of liberalism is built on the contradiction that they’re the good guys while literally doing modern day nazism.
