I think some of what the user said was backwards, like I commented in the first thread about this, but I agree that this is a microcosm of liberal hypocrites and how they use their own “rules-based” international order (and of course that the treatment was ridiculous and undeserved).

Firstly, I’m arab - we have long been smeared by Westerners as all conspiratorial and anti-semitic when we said anything bad about Israel. Including by Western Leftists. So there’s your starting context for why this is problematic and how it’s weaponized for Zionism, including by the very type of people who populate this website.

I’ve been called a conspiracist by Liberal Zionists more times than I’ve been called an anti-semite, they are interchangable left-punching tactics. Calling socialists conspiracists for claiming factual actions of the CIA is another way this manifests. It’s a left-punching attitude with built in pro-Liberal normalcy bias.

We now know for a fact that the CIA was heavily involved in Hungary and the “conspiracists” who claimed it all along, the “tankies” were correct the whole time.

The respectable left (aka the Electoral Left and Synthetic Left) is everyone from Bernard to Mamdani to Chomsky to the DSA to Jacobin to Current Affairs to prominent journalists. Every single prominent and public leftist in the West basically. This site was run by ‘respectable left’ admins who had latent zionist biases, and there was a massive struggle session over it. The kind who call everything anti-semitic and conspiracy theories, while cleaving to the ‘normalcy’ of public opinion. For an overly online example, compare r/socialism to r/trueanon basically, which one has more correct opinions and organic growth/activity? It’s the “conspiracists” not the “respectables”.

For a less online example, I stopped attending DSA when younger because I was called a conspiracist and anti-semite for bringing up criticism of Israel and the US involvement in Syria.

Liberal Zionism among the left is heavily concentrated in the electoralist and squishy types. Principled anti-Zionism is heavily concentrated among the “tankies” and “conspiracist” wings.

The “anti-semitic left” and the “conspiracy left” turned out to just be the actual left, who were correct about everything. Israel and the Epstein affair has proven this in the last 3 years.

There’s definitely a contingent of people that feel viscerally repulsed by “cringe”. They can’t handle it.

They need exposure therapy, we should be cringier.

We can reject behaviors on a basis other than vague aestheticized social pressure, because that rejection should be for a reason that isn’t just “vibes” or something happening to be or not be convention.

I think it’s quite easy to tell someone not to spout off about shit they are ignorant about with authoritative confidence, but I can just tell them as much (or “No investigation, no right to speak”) without needing to resort to a concept like “cringe”.

You could take the position those actions are cringe from the perspective of a socialist sure, but I don’t know if it’s useful to address the phenomena I’m criticising which is that “cringe” is almost exclusively targeted at queer and socially odd or neurodiverse people.

I would use a different word entirely to describe those reactionary behaviours purely because I want to reduce the targeting of these groups the “cringe” is almost always used to attack.

I 100% get where you’re coming from though and you’re not wrong, my point is mainly about strategy.

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