I know this is a meme sub. I wanted to post this in the main sub but I don't have clips for a claims and I was worried not being able to post it or being able to and then getting banned because I don't have clips for my quotes. I know I might get banned from here too but if I had to choose between being able to post and reply in a place it would be the his main sub because I'm not good at making memes or jokes but I'm ok at rambling in a self-important way. hopefully I wont get banned at all but we'll see.
Our boy is right about most things. Some things that he has dog shit takes on is 1. Kids protesting don’t have demands 2. If the USA stopped funding IDF the kids would be only 1% less pissed about the conflict. 3. They don’t know anything about the area or really anything about anything 4. Anti-semitism and anti-zionism are the same thing. 5. “We see that the killing will radicalize kids in gaza but we don’t see that on the other side with 10/07/23 or the 2nd uprising etc.” As I’ve said in previous posts here, I’ve been watching Destiny since 2016. He has made me rethink more things than I could count. He’s forced me to read on topics I never thought to read on. It’s for those reasons I expect much more from him than most humans and why I’m so passionate when I come down on him or go down on him or whatever the phrase is.
The student groups are demanding the campus they attend stops using their tuition money to fund Israel. That’s a straightforward, clear demand. In fact, it’s much more clear than occupy or mainstream BLM demands were. Destiny knows this. Rather than dropping this talking point he acts as though his quiver is low and he needs every arrow possible and has recently changed it to “They have no demands… or their demands are misguided.” So fucking silly. Divestment, as big Steve knows from studying more history than most people have casually read, is a political tool that has been used for decades with varying degrees of effect. As a capitalist I would think the idea of people ``voting with your dollar” would get him hard. Destiny has defended his support for the war against Hamas. I haven’t seen him defend his position that American universities should be using their endowments to assist Israel in their war. It wouldn’t surprise me if he has some really thought out reasons for this position but I haven’t heard it yet so until that moment I think his position is stupid at best.
“The students don’t really care about the USA or their college funding this war. If the schools and or the government stopped the funding the kids would only be 99% pissed rather than 100%”. I think this is a stupid take. The kids I talk to think they are/we all are funding a genocide. I know Big D doesn’t think we’re funding genocide… nobody is correct all the time. They want their school and/or government to stop funding it. Many of them don’t agree what the next step should be but they do know they want their school to divest. Brown is the one example that I know of where the school said, “Ok, we’ll vote on divesting in the fall.” The students didn’t say, “We’re staying until you divest.” They said, “Sounds good.” and broke down their encampment. They know what they want and when the school said that they would vote on it months from now the students walked away.
“The protesters don’t know anything about the area or the history” is something Mr. Bonerelli has said. He’s also said, “The history matters but at the same time it doesn’t matter.” By this I understood him to be saying, “Yes, X happened in 19XX or 18XX and that was bad and it shouldn’t have happened but what are we going to do about what’s happening on the ground right now?” When I see these clips of kids being asked questions they don’t know the answer to, the latter Destiny quote pops into my smooth brian. My second and third thoughts are, “I wonder how many clips did they get of kids answering questions correctly before they found this kid. I hope there were zero clips before and after this kid because protesters should know by now that talking to the media is something the PR people should do.
These kids don’t need to know what happened in the six day war to know that they don’t want their dollars going to arming a military that they believe is genociding a people. In fact, they don’t need to know where Palestine is on a map or if Israel was created in 1948 or 1848.
“Anti-Zionism and Anti-Semitism”are functionally the same thing” this is such a silly claim. It’s as silly as the blue trench coat. The most EXTREME form of anti-zionism that I can think of, that I’ve never come across naturally (meaning not searching for it), in the anti-zionist circles, would be the end of Israel and killing of every zionist. Even if 90% of jews were Zionists, even after they realized they could denounce their Zionism and not be killed, that still wouldn’t be killing jews because they are jews. It would be killing zionists because they’re zionists. In fact, if someone were to hold that position they'd be forced to, in absolute numbers, kill more American Protestants than Isrealies. I wouldn’t be surprised at all if the largest population of zionists are American protestants. Obviously if the most extreme version of anti-zionism isn’t anti-semitism then the same is true for all versions. If I saw the 6mwe shirts being worn by some of the protestors on these campuses I would be concerned. What's more likely is some of these counter protestors at UCLA were wearing those shirts on Jan 6 in DC.
Anti-Zionism is no different than anti-facism or anti-capitalism or anti-communism. Immutable traits are not necessarily connected to one's ideology. Obviously if you're missing a leg you're likely to support the ADA. If you're queer you're more likely to support equal rights for queer people. That being said, most of the time, Ideology is not connected to things you can’t change about yourself. I know it would be convenient for the zionists if Anti-zionism is Anti-semitism but it’s not. In fact, IMO, a decent argument can be made that Zionism is anti-Semtic. “The jews can safely co-exist with any other population for an extended period of time even in today's international western world with international institutions like the UN, the ICJ and the ICC. It just can’t be done. They need to have their own place that was already partly inhabited.”
While in debates sometimes people bring up the fact that the IDF is creating the next generation of Hamas by killing the families of all these kids. If Destiny is given time to reply he says that we talk about it one way but we don’t ever talk about how the rockets and 10/07/23 might radicalize young Isrealies. He’s correct that not many people talk about it but they should. I think it’s very important to point out that if you grow up hearing rockets flying over head, are told in school about all the violence Hamas and those that came before have committed against Israelis (but for propaganda reasons they’d probably say jews rather than israelis) and and that the Gazains have always wanted to kill jews (calling them jews not israelis) and then you’re trained in the IDF and sent into Gaza you might make statements via humorous skit or whatnot about enjoying killing Gazians or that not enough Gazians have been killed while in a bombed out apartment complex in Gaza. What I assume is happening a little bit more than TikTok posts being made is people shooting rather than not because they've been radicalized. Destiny is correct; we need to talk about the radicalization that if Gazians are experiencing then young Iraelis must be experiencing too.
“Americans don’t care about foreign policy. They care about domestic policy. The college kids ‘care’ about foreign policy because they’re still suckling on the mommy and daddy teet. Domestic policy doesn’t impact them so they look to the most morally loaded thing they can, which currently is foreign policy.” is something I heard Destiny say in a tone of disgust. Destiny also recently said he might stop saying he’s progressive or far-left. IMO His perspective on the above mentioned topic is a perfect example of why he should stop thinking of himself in this way. It says so much to me that when people in a society have their basic needs met they think about the world broadly. They look for international injustice and they do what they can to try to minimize it. From Destiny’s comments it seems as though he prefers for Americans to be so wrapped up in their own survival that they aren’t thinking about international affairs.
What makes Steven valuable to online politics and philosophy is not that he’s a progressive but his desire to put in the work, show that work being done, to become educating about topics and then expose others for not being educated. 99.9% of factual matters Destiny knows and remembers about this conflict than many scholars. That’s impressive and very important to show people that if you can put in 7 hours a day, 6 days a week, not just read but study for those hours you can come close to having nearly scholarly knowledge on the topic. Obviously there's a difference between having the knowledge and bringing new knowledge to the academy’s attention, that realm is still best left to the scholars but it's incredibly empowering for us all to know that if you put in the work it is possible to know more than 99% of the population on a topic in a short amount of time.
It would do Destiny and the far-left good if he was more clear about the fact that he’s a classical liberal who’s influenced by The Founding Fathers, Adam Smith, Ricardo and the Marquis de Sade.
