You said you were a little afraid to publish this, but I for one am so glad you did. Since the oct 7 attack, I’ve seen nonstop Israel-Palestine content, which is absolutely understandable, but what’s so unsettling is how a huge majority of what’s going around is either 1) blatant propaganda or 2) clings so staunchly to the “good guys, bad guys” “oppressor/oppressed as a permanent identity of a whole people, forever” dichotomy. Probably, the truth of the matter is that the content that goes around on social media is short form content that incites fear/anger/reactivity, and doesn’t have physical room for analysis and nuance. Longer pieces like this, that take a cool-headed, empathetic, human lens, are critical. Thank you for writing it, even bigger thanks for posting it.
Profound and beautifully said, Natasha. I especially enjoyed your juxtaposition between the less bloody conflicts (e.g. Mean Girls) and the horrors we're seeing play out in present day, because like you, I see the correlations between their basic mindsets, which ultimately leads to the dehumanization of our fellows. Which naturally leads to one's own ability to commit atrocities.
During my service in the military, I recall quite lucidly the sorts of pejoratives my contemporaries (and shamefully, myself) employed to cover the large swathes of people who might have possibly fulfilled the roll of our "enemy". It wasn't until my departure from that uniformed career, that I came to realize the unconscious psychological tactic of such pejoratives, which served to dehumanize these people, further enabling us to become the very monsters we thought we were fighting.
Thanks for writing this! It reminded me of this James Baldwin quote:
"The roles that we construct are constructed because we feel that they will help us to survive, and also, of course, because they fulfill something in our personalities; and one does not, therefore, cease playing a role simply because one has begun to understand it. All roles are dangerous. The world tends to trap you in the role you play and it is always extremely hard to maintain a watchful, mocking distance between oneself as one appears to be and oneself as one actually is."
This is so clear and concise - and timely. Thank you! It is significantly easier to demonize others than to recognize our own potential for the same evil or our active participation in the evil we deplore. And valorizing victims can be a good way to absolve ourselves of responsibility. The Holocaust was carried out not by monsters but by ordinary people who were simply following orders: we prefer to see evil as something that is grotesque and alien, which allows us to disassociate ourselves from it. Hannah Arendt called this "the banality of evil" and, to this day, is criticized for "trivializing" evil and blaming the Jews for complicity in their own victimization. Parallels in the Middle East right now are painfully obvious.
I needed to read this—what challenges me is how to keep this view while also working toward change, convincing (some) others that that approach does not decontextualize history. But also, I’ve been around a lot of Palestinian Americans the past weekend at a conference for Arab American writers and they are intent on being subjects of resistance, not victimhood, but there are systemic forces that decry even acts of nonviolent resistance as a kind of violence. And forces that assume they’re siding with violence/terrorism unless proven otherwise. Which can force people into a position of victimhood. So it’s not necessarily/always that people want/like to be victims. The prevailing narratives push them there.
You said you were a little afraid to publish this, but I for one am so glad you did. Since the oct 7 attack, I’ve seen nonstop Israel-Palestine content, which is absolutely understandable, but what’s so unsettling is how a huge majority of what’s going around is either 1) blatant propaganda or 2) clings so staunchly to the “good guys, bad guys” “oppressor/oppressed as a permanent identity of a whole people, forever” dichotomy. Probably, the truth of the matter is that the content that goes around on social media is short form content that incites fear/anger/reactivity, and doesn’t have physical room for analysis and nuance. Longer pieces like this, that take a cool-headed, empathetic, human lens, are critical. Thank you for writing it, even bigger thanks for posting it.
Profound and beautifully said, Natasha. I especially enjoyed your juxtaposition between the less bloody conflicts (e.g. Mean Girls) and the horrors we're seeing play out in present day, because like you, I see the correlations between their basic mindsets, which ultimately leads to the dehumanization of our fellows. Which naturally leads to one's own ability to commit atrocities.
During my service in the military, I recall quite lucidly the sorts of pejoratives my contemporaries (and shamefully, myself) employed to cover the large swathes of people who might have possibly fulfilled the roll of our "enemy". It wasn't until my departure from that uniformed career, that I came to realize the unconscious psychological tactic of such pejoratives, which served to dehumanize these people, further enabling us to become the very monsters we thought we were fighting.
Thanks for writing this! It reminded me of this James Baldwin quote:
"The roles that we construct are constructed because we feel that they will help us to survive, and also, of course, because they fulfill something in our personalities; and one does not, therefore, cease playing a role simply because one has begun to understand it. All roles are dangerous. The world tends to trap you in the role you play and it is always extremely hard to maintain a watchful, mocking distance between oneself as one appears to be and oneself as one actually is."
This is so clear and concise - and timely. Thank you! It is significantly easier to demonize others than to recognize our own potential for the same evil or our active participation in the evil we deplore. And valorizing victims can be a good way to absolve ourselves of responsibility. The Holocaust was carried out not by monsters but by ordinary people who were simply following orders: we prefer to see evil as something that is grotesque and alien, which allows us to disassociate ourselves from it. Hannah Arendt called this "the banality of evil" and, to this day, is criticized for "trivializing" evil and blaming the Jews for complicity in their own victimization. Parallels in the Middle East right now are painfully obvious.
I needed to read this—what challenges me is how to keep this view while also working toward change, convincing (some) others that that approach does not decontextualize history. But also, I’ve been around a lot of Palestinian Americans the past weekend at a conference for Arab American writers and they are intent on being subjects of resistance, not victimhood, but there are systemic forces that decry even acts of nonviolent resistance as a kind of violence. And forces that assume they’re siding with violence/terrorism unless proven otherwise. Which can force people into a position of victimhood. So it’s not necessarily/always that people want/like to be victims. The prevailing narratives push them there.