the practice, especially common among leftists, of harnessing valor from one market, demographic, class, or cause, to capitalise on it in another context, at little to no cost.
Hey Aimee. I listened to your take on What's Left about NJR and his sacking from the Guardian. I was pretty disappointed with it to be honest. Not because I want to leap to NJR's defence, but more because the Guardian is a shit house Zionist newspaper, and you seem to be suggesting that NJR should have taken the knee for them. In the UK the Guardian spearheaded the smear campaign against Corbyn, and the sacking of NJR, whatever you may think about him, is part of their ongoing campaign to limit free speech and crack down on the left.
I think this might be misunderstanding Aimee's point. If I understand her correctly, she was only claiming:
1) NJR's original tweet was factually incorrect
2) NJR was not sacked - he didn't hold a position from which he could be sacked
3) Since the Guardian publishes a lot of stuff that is at least superficially critical of Israel, the idea that the Guardian stopped publishing NJR's columns just because he said something critical of Israel doesn't add up.
4) NJR's claim that he was fired for speaking truth to power is not only false, but a disingenuous way of boosting his anti-establishment cred.
All of this is compatible with holding that the Guardian ultimately does have some kind of Zionist agenda, and that it worked overtime to bring down Corbyn.
Hey Ben thanks for the considered response. I don't agree tho on any of your points tho.
1) NJR's original tweet was a joke. Something he undermined afterwards both by his follow up tweet and by then deleting it. He was parodying the fact that aid to Israel was tagged onto a Covid relief bill
2) I don't want to get into a semantic discussion about what "sacking" means. He was a Guardian columnist, then he wasn't. So whether you want to call it sacked, fired, dismissed, let go I don't mind. The point is that he no longer writes for the Guardian and this sends a message to other Guardian columnists. As it was supposed to do.
3) What do you mean by "superficially" critical of Israel? If you mean criticism that is in line with liberal Zionism I would still quibble with the line "a lot". What the Guardian certain does not do is publish *anything* about the power of the Israeli lobby. Either in Britain or the US. It publishes next to nothing, and certainly nothing recently, questioning the "special relationship" between the US and Israel which is what NJR was originally lampooning.
4) This is what I find so frustrating about Aimee's response. The only person who seems to be amping up NJR's anti-establishment credentials is Aimee who said that NJR refused to admit he was wrong and should have grovelled to the Guardian. Check the story. He *did* grovel. He did apologise. Which just goes to show how neutered and spayed NJR is.
What I expected Aimee to point out was that the whole episode reveals that NJR really is a careerist who puts his own access to MSM over and above political principle--and it still backfied on him. Instead what we got was a critique to the right of NJR. It surprised me.
OK I think I understand your original point better now. I grant you're right about 1 and 2, and to some extent 3. Although the Guardian does occasionally publish articles with headlines like "Israel does not have a right to exist", as far as I'm aware it hasn't published anything about the Israel lobby in the US or the UK, and that's arguably the most important point as far as western politics is concerned. Perhaps it is criticism of the Israel lobby - rather Israel itself - that the Guardian considers intolerable. You could plausibly argue that in a western context, the only real criticism of the latter involves criticism of the former.
I'm not certain about this, but I don't think Aimee's intention was to explain what NJR "should" have done - in the sense of some kind of moral obligation or whatever. As I understand her, she was trying to unpack the prudential reasons the Guardian would have had for keeping or dropping NJR as a columnist, and what NJR would have prudential reasons to do or not do if he wanted to keep working with them.
Perhaps the Guardian does have an unspoken policy of refusing to work with anyone who criticises the Israel lobby. If so, this would explain why they cut things off with NJR. But even if they had no such policy, they might have other good prudential reasons for ditching him:
1) (most importantly) they might still understandably view someone who says factually incorrect things on twitter about the Israel lobby - even if in jest - as a liability. Even a paper with explicitly anti-Zionist objectives might have this view, and might have some reason to react to NJR in a similar way. They might think that tweets like his make it harder for actual substantive critiques of the Israel lobby to get a hearing.
2) The way in which NJR positioned himself in his own account of things - being 'accommodating' and willing to have a few sit-down chats - suggests a pretty gross misperception of his own indispensability. I think that was part of her point in contrasting NJR unfavourably with Bashkar Sunkara - would you really want a working relationship with someone who reacts that way?
You might think there's something lamentable about the political climate that informs 1), and I'm inclined to agree with you about this. The idea that jokes which include factually incorrect stuff about the Israel lobby are somehow off-limits says something about the Israel lobby's problematic influence over western politics (and that's obviously putting it very mildly). But it's also the reality of the political climate at the moment, and part of being a competent political actor is reckoning with the likely consequences of your public statements.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8PUK96N0lZ4&list=PLDsgoyiw7VBgsMjOYhzPO0tLLmeUzrhpX
Fantastic stuff as always Aimee.
Hey Aimee. I listened to your take on What's Left about NJR and his sacking from the Guardian. I was pretty disappointed with it to be honest. Not because I want to leap to NJR's defence, but more because the Guardian is a shit house Zionist newspaper, and you seem to be suggesting that NJR should have taken the knee for them. In the UK the Guardian spearheaded the smear campaign against Corbyn, and the sacking of NJR, whatever you may think about him, is part of their ongoing campaign to limit free speech and crack down on the left.
I think this might be misunderstanding Aimee's point. If I understand her correctly, she was only claiming:
1) NJR's original tweet was factually incorrect
2) NJR was not sacked - he didn't hold a position from which he could be sacked
3) Since the Guardian publishes a lot of stuff that is at least superficially critical of Israel, the idea that the Guardian stopped publishing NJR's columns just because he said something critical of Israel doesn't add up.
4) NJR's claim that he was fired for speaking truth to power is not only false, but a disingenuous way of boosting his anti-establishment cred.
All of this is compatible with holding that the Guardian ultimately does have some kind of Zionist agenda, and that it worked overtime to bring down Corbyn.
Hey Ben thanks for the considered response. I don't agree tho on any of your points tho.
1) NJR's original tweet was a joke. Something he undermined afterwards both by his follow up tweet and by then deleting it. He was parodying the fact that aid to Israel was tagged onto a Covid relief bill
2) I don't want to get into a semantic discussion about what "sacking" means. He was a Guardian columnist, then he wasn't. So whether you want to call it sacked, fired, dismissed, let go I don't mind. The point is that he no longer writes for the Guardian and this sends a message to other Guardian columnists. As it was supposed to do.
3) What do you mean by "superficially" critical of Israel? If you mean criticism that is in line with liberal Zionism I would still quibble with the line "a lot". What the Guardian certain does not do is publish *anything* about the power of the Israeli lobby. Either in Britain or the US. It publishes next to nothing, and certainly nothing recently, questioning the "special relationship" between the US and Israel which is what NJR was originally lampooning.
4) This is what I find so frustrating about Aimee's response. The only person who seems to be amping up NJR's anti-establishment credentials is Aimee who said that NJR refused to admit he was wrong and should have grovelled to the Guardian. Check the story. He *did* grovel. He did apologise. Which just goes to show how neutered and spayed NJR is.
What I expected Aimee to point out was that the whole episode reveals that NJR really is a careerist who puts his own access to MSM over and above political principle--and it still backfied on him. Instead what we got was a critique to the right of NJR. It surprised me.
OK I think I understand your original point better now. I grant you're right about 1 and 2, and to some extent 3. Although the Guardian does occasionally publish articles with headlines like "Israel does not have a right to exist", as far as I'm aware it hasn't published anything about the Israel lobby in the US or the UK, and that's arguably the most important point as far as western politics is concerned. Perhaps it is criticism of the Israel lobby - rather Israel itself - that the Guardian considers intolerable. You could plausibly argue that in a western context, the only real criticism of the latter involves criticism of the former.
I'm not certain about this, but I don't think Aimee's intention was to explain what NJR "should" have done - in the sense of some kind of moral obligation or whatever. As I understand her, she was trying to unpack the prudential reasons the Guardian would have had for keeping or dropping NJR as a columnist, and what NJR would have prudential reasons to do or not do if he wanted to keep working with them.
Perhaps the Guardian does have an unspoken policy of refusing to work with anyone who criticises the Israel lobby. If so, this would explain why they cut things off with NJR. But even if they had no such policy, they might have other good prudential reasons for ditching him:
1) (most importantly) they might still understandably view someone who says factually incorrect things on twitter about the Israel lobby - even if in jest - as a liability. Even a paper with explicitly anti-Zionist objectives might have this view, and might have some reason to react to NJR in a similar way. They might think that tweets like his make it harder for actual substantive critiques of the Israel lobby to get a hearing.
2) The way in which NJR positioned himself in his own account of things - being 'accommodating' and willing to have a few sit-down chats - suggests a pretty gross misperception of his own indispensability. I think that was part of her point in contrasting NJR unfavourably with Bashkar Sunkara - would you really want a working relationship with someone who reacts that way?
You might think there's something lamentable about the political climate that informs 1), and I'm inclined to agree with you about this. The idea that jokes which include factually incorrect stuff about the Israel lobby are somehow off-limits says something about the Israel lobby's problematic influence over western politics (and that's obviously putting it very mildly). But it's also the reality of the political climate at the moment, and part of being a competent political actor is reckoning with the likely consequences of your public statements.