Read on Twitter
This is the logical equivalent of saying, “Jews instigate anti-Semitism because so many of them support Zionism.” It’s a textbook moral fallacy that people concerned with combating anti-Semitism have been calling a foul on for decades.
It’s not bad only because it reduces complex bigotry to simplistic causality. Or because it rationalizes the bigotry of anti-Semites, who are irrational haters.
It’s bad primarily because it provides a practical smokescreen for a moral argument that is harmful. Let me explain.
It’s bad primarily because it provides a practical smokescreen for a moral argument that is harmful. Let me explain.
But before I do, let me be very clear about something. I see no evidence that James Lindsay is an anti-Semite or an antagonist of Jews. And it is my opinion that he is neither one.
Instead, this is about a particular mode of bad argument, which Lindsay has made here, but with which we’re all painfully familiar. To paraphrase it: “Just because I’m seeking to UNDERSTAND [Mad Lib terrible phenomenon here], that doesn’t mean I’m JUSTIFYING it.”
Perhaps the most notorious example of this method of argument is the “blowback” take on terrorism. The argument is always the same: “If [Western country that fell victim to terrorism] didn’t have such a provocative foreign policy, then this would never have happened!”
Those who continually make this argument—think of Glenn Greenwald, who shows up to every terrorist atrocity against the West as if he was the Westboro Baptist Church of foreign policy—shout incessantly that they aren’t justifying terrorism. They’re just highlighting *causality*.
But you notice quickly that it’s always the same group of people making this argument. And there’s only one causality they think is worth noticing.
It’s always the “anti-imperialists” who make the blowback argument. And the isolationists. The non-interventionists. The nativists. The “Global South” people. The “Democratic Socialists”. Some species of forpol “realists”. And others with overlapping sympathies and goals.
And these people who are so concerned to highlight purely practical connections of causality—they only seem to care when, in their judgment, OUR foreign policy creates terrorism.
They never discuss the causal relationship between 9/11 and a US drone blowing up an Afghan wedding.
They never discuss the causal relationship between 9/11 and a US drone blowing up an Afghan wedding.
So it becomes clear very quickly that the “blowback” people aren’t making a purely practical argument. They’re advancing a moral argument behind a smokescreen of causality. They’re either afraid to admit what they really think or—now back to Lindsay—they’re monomaniacs.
Lindsay’s whole thing is anti-Wokeness. People who are calling him a Jew-hater should consider that 1) he extrudes virtually everything through that lens and 2) he was either pressed for content or seized with acute galaxy-brain when he made that tweet. He’s not anti-Semitic.
Anti-Semitism is a hot topic now—finally! “Wokeness” even more. A few of us have been writing for years now that Jews are the tremor deep in the reactor of capital-A Antiracism.
Lindsay sees this. So he used a smokescreen of causality to press his crusade against Wokeness.
Lindsay sees this. So he used a smokescreen of causality to press his crusade against Wokeness.
I’ll leave you with three appendices to this thread.
1) I’ve been on the Jews & “Wokeness” beat since 2015. Here’s the big piece I did on it in 2016, but I’ve broken this thing down throughout my writing. https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/anti-racism-erases-anti-semitism
1) I’ve been on the Jews & “Wokeness” beat since 2015. Here’s the big piece I did on it in 2016, but I’ve broken this thing down throughout my writing. https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/anti-racism-erases-anti-semitism
2) The late political philosopher Norman Geras—a brilliant man you should fall over yourself to read—is the one who originally explained the poverty and disingenuousness of the “understanding, not justifying” style of argument. He said it best. https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2005/jul/21/july7.iraq
3) Don’t do this. And especially, don’t do this to my friend, @CathyYoung63.
