Jonathan Iwry | Cause for concern

The Faithless Quaker| When it comes to activism, restlessness for change is not an excuse for analytical laziness

By Jonathan Iwry 09/07/14 6:01pm

P u ck Frinceton! Hail Gutmann! You thought you’d seen the last of me, didn’t you? I was worried I couldn’t handle the real world, but thankfully, the real world couldn’t handle me, either. So it looks like I’m stuffed back inside the collegiate womb for just a little longer. Let’s get back to work.

My fellow columnist Roderick Cook, who regularly writes compelling pieces on issues in the LGBTQ community, recently published a new piece calling for an expanded activist sensibility. This “intersectional activism” involves transcending one’s own personally relevant social causes to speak out against as many oppressive constructs as possible, thereby covering more ground and more effectively responding to the multilateral nature of oppression.

In the process, however, Roderick [whose preferred pronoun is “they”] drags in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, making ambiguous statements that seem to target Israel as their column’s primary example of colonialism, occupation and “state violence abroad.”

I agree with Roderick about the importance of looking beyond our immediate interests to instead adopt a holistic perspective on social justice. That’s exactly why I find some of their cursory references to Israel troubling.

Roderick refers to the importance of “combating racism, colonialism, ableism, state violence, misogyny, capitalism and other systems that seek to subjugate people.” This is a pretty standard set of ideological oppositions (plenty of which indeed deserve our attention) and something of a chant for the far left. Most of these references are vague and open-ended, but a couple of them seem to be aimed at Israel with surprising particularity.

It’s pretty clear from Roderick’s column that they consider Israel an example of colonialism. This is an especially frequent platitude among the far left these days — one in a broader collection of “anti-blank-isms” that overzealous activists use as substitutes for serious deliberation.

The problem is that people who preach these shopworn platitudes often reflect a lack of nuanced understanding. Although they claim to advocate progressivism and social consciousness, they risk taking a superficial collection of slogans as a package deal, seeing them as inseparable and thus collectively immune to dispassionate questioning.

(It’s also a stretch to say that capitalism “seeks to subjugate people based on their identities,” another example of a sweeping claim that presupposes a political standpoint rather than defending it.)

We can’t go around pointing fingers and echoing vague yet provocative ideologies just because our fellow activists espouse those views. We must ask ourselves at each juncture, “Am I really informed enough to make these assertions?”

Being knowledgeable about one political issue doesn’t necessarily qualify us to comment on others. Taking a widespread approach to social justice is praiseworthy, but only so long as it’s accompanied by good research, fact-finding and a tolerance for complexity.

We as readers might agree without any debate about the horrors of misogyny while considering colonialism — let alone moral assessments of the Israeli and Palestinian governments — to be a substantially murkier issue.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not morally incontestable in the same way as other topics on Roderick’s list, including women’s rights. It has unique empirical details that must be taken into account.

Even if I were to agree with Roderick’s singular stance on as broad and loaded a term as “colonialism,” it would still fall on them to explicitly establish what makes Israel’s policies condemnable. I understand that 700 words is hardly enough for a moral-political treatise, but weighty claims demand weighty defenses.

It’s not that I necessarily take issue with Roderick for the content of their views, but rather that their flippant treatment of serious issues undermines the very point they intend to make. Emphasizing activism with breadth is meaningless without also emphasizing depth. If you really want to develop an opinion on social and political issues, you must be willing to delve into the particular histories of each of the issues at hand.

Different situations have their own nuances, and not in every case of socio-political conflict is it easy to identify good guys and bad guys in such a clear-cut manner. Dealing recklessly in absolutes is ultimately a disservice to both “sides” of the conflict (if that’s not itself a superficial characterization).

I agree with Roderick that these are urgent times. That’s exactly why we can’t afford to let our sense of urgency eclipse our reason.

Jonathan Iwry is a recent graduate and LPS student who studied philosophy and history. His last name is pronounced "eev-ree." His email address is jon.iwry@gmail.com. "The Faithless Quaker" appears every Monday. 

Please note All comments are eligible for publication in The Daily Pennsylvanian.