but personally I'd have some lines I wouldn't cross, if I knew they had experienced traumas as profound as the Holocaust. Point out what they're doing wrong, yeah, but I would steer well clear of associations with something like that, unless it was undeniably every bit as bad.
And that still holds even for people who aren't my friends, though maybe not for the same reasons: most people are very unlikely to seriously consider your arguments after you've made them furious.
View original postNo, I got that, I just rejected it. The article hasn't shown a change of thinking on the European Left, but instead has snown that it's been fairly consistent in the kinds of groups and behavior it supports and the kind of groups and behavior it condemns. The only thing that seems to have changed is that now Jews are in the crosshairs too. Since they've been happy supporting the Left until that point, it can only mean one of two things, neither particularily flattering:
View original post1. The Left is right to support the things that brings it in opposition with Jews, in which case, the group that finds itself in opposition to those goals needs to change its own behavior to realign itself with the "good guys." In this case, the Jews would be in the wrong for finding themselves at odd with the rest of the European Left.
View original post2. The left is wrong to support the things that brings it in conflict with Jews...in which case WHERE THE HELL WERE THEIR OBJECTIONS WHEN IT WAS JUST NON-JEWS GETTING HURT BY THESE POLICIES??
View original postThe author seems to be trying to argue a third point, which is that the things the left supports are fine, except when they bring it in conflict with Jewish interests, in which case special exceptions must be made.
I think he's just arguing that the Left is wrong on this - and to a large extent, those 'getting hurt' by the Left's simplistic views of colonialism and noble savages getting exploited by the West, were really just their own governments, and there wasn't much harm done. But not so in the case of Israel. Note I'm not talking about the Stalinist purges here - nor was that the main point of Palmer's article, I agree that that part of his article is weak for multiple reasons, but I don't believe he intended to suggest that the purges were only bad when they were aimed at the Jews.