The Submission is the Point, Part II

The Rome Pride Parade has banned Keshet, Italy's LGBTQ Jewish organization from having a float in their parade. They say it's because Keshet failed to "distance" itself from the "ongoing genocide in Gaza." Specifically, they did not expressly use the word "genocide" to describe what was happening in Gaza.

Before we proceed further, let's read what Keshet did say while under lying under the gaze of Rome Pride.

They said that, as a Jewish (not Israeli -- Keshet has no affiliation or connection to the Israeli government) organization, "the conflict in the region is not our area of expertise." Nonetheless, they said they "feel close to the suffering of the Palestinian people." However, they also explained their hesitation around using the specific word "genocide", including their experience with how those using that word frequently ended up targeting the entire Jewish, not Israeli, community for culpability: 

We are especially concerned with the sentence that we keep on hearing that ‘the Jewish people are carrying out what they were subjected to,' a sentence that does not just refer to a conflict or a government but ends up connecting what is happening to the whole Jewish people.

Agree with Keshet's stance or not, this hardly seems like the sort of intractable political gap that should make them personas non grata. If it were the case that Rome Pride was hoping to find a mutually acceptable arrangement with Keshet; a way that they could stand together even if they didn't fully agree together, this would seem to more than satisfy that.

This is a critical point to make. I don't doubt that there are differences in how the leaders of Rome Pride and the leaders of Keshet perceive what is happening in Israel and Palestine. And sometimes differences are simply too large, and the gulf is too wide, such that there is no hope for reconciliation. But there is a distinction between how a group acts when it views its interlocutor as a partner whom it hopes to be able to stay in fellowship and community with, with whom it would be terrible and agonizing if it were forced to cut ties with, versus when it sees the other as an enemy, to either be placed under vassalage or  be met on the battlefield. In the former case, you look for how you can harmonize, for how differences and distinctions can be absorbed in the spirit of a broader common ground. In the latter you desire disagreement; you try to throw up as many redlines as possible, you are excited to find a reason to say "no".

And it's very clear how Rome Pride saw its relationship with the LGBTQ Jews. What they wanted out of Keshet was not something that could be mutually acceptable. What they wanted was submission. Knowing why Keshet didn't want to use that specific word, knowing that its demurral had nothing to do with refusing to extend care and concern for Palestinians or even with expressing solidarity with Israel and everything to do with their specific experiences as Jews and how they were being actively marginalized -- that only made the prospect of submission all the more alluring. They wanted Keshet to bend before them, and if they didn't bend, they were happy to see them break. JTA reports that Rome Pride announced Keshet's exclusion within 15 minutes of the end of the two parties' meeting. That is not a timeline that speaks to an organization that was earnestly attempting to find common ground and would only announce exclusion as the last resort of completely irreconcilable differences. That is the timeline of a group that was ready and eager and excited to righteously announce their expulsion.

All of this is familiar. And again, it is not about finding common ground; it is entirely about asserting dominance. Two years ago, I wrote about the Israeli artist showing at the Venice Biennale, who elected to close her exhibit until "a cease-fire and hostage release agreement is reached." You might have thought those protesting her presence would be elated, that she was publicly taking a stand against the war. They were in fact furious. They hated that the artist (a regular presence at Israeli anti-war demonstrations) did this voluntarily, of her own accord, when what they wanted was for it to be wrested from her. Nothing would satisfy them unless they felt that their target was beaten and broken. What might appear to be a mutually agreeable resolution is despised not in spite of but because of its mutuality: "if they agree, then it was not imposed, and if it was not imposed, then there was not truly submission."

Rome Pride says they are "fully capable of distinguishing between the Israeli government and the Jewish community." But they also hold Keshet "responsible for having failed, and continuing to fail, to distance itself from the ongoing genocide in Gaza," Which raises the question: why should they need to "distance" themselves? What makes them so close?

It is, of course, because they're Jewish. Keshet's concern -- that the term "genocide" was being used to demand collective responsibility and collective culpability from Jews, not Israelis -- was entirely vindicated. They understood the game. All Jews understand the game. How many years ago did Steve Cohen write this immortal passage?

Every Jew on the left will know that terrible syndrome whereby, whatever the context and wherever one is, we will be tested by being given the question "what is your position on Zionism?" Wanna support the miners—what's your position on Zionism? Against the bomb—what's your position on Zionism? And want to join our march against the eradication of Baghdad, in particular the eradication of Baghdad—what's your position on Zionism? And we all know what answer is expected in order to pass the test. It is a very strong form of anti-Semitism based on assumptions of collective responsibility. Denounce Zionism, crawl in the gutter, wear a yellow star and we'll let you in the club.

Cohen's insight is that this practice is not about ensuring overlapping values or common interests. It is about domination. That's why Cohen, who is in fact anti-Zionist, is deemed to fail the test -- he does not abase himself enough; he does not make it clear that he acknowledges being beneath those demanding his supplication.

And so too here. Leave aside the fact that last year's Rome Pride march saw the Jewish marchers attacked and harassed in despicable fashion. That is more standard-issue thuggery, albeit thuggery that is rightly viewed as part of the context for Rome Pride's decision this year. This year, Rome Pride demanded a show of self-abnegation from the Jews. The Jews refused to give them one, and Rome Pride deemed that unacceptable. That's what happened. Do not get caught up in thinking that there is some deeper or more essential ideological gap here. The submission was the point.

Rage Induced by the Machine

I don't really use Facebook anymore. It's an open tab and an app on my phone, so I check it periodically out of habit, but it's not part of my basic rotation.

I'm a millennial, so I started using Facebook in college, when it was limited to college. I didn't at all mind it expanding to "everyone" -- hey, I was graduating too -- and for quite some time it did exactly what I wanted it to do: served as a convenient vector to keep up with friends who had flung themselves around the country. And that would still be a nice use today -- I'd love to know what people are up to these days. So many cute babies!

But alas, these days Facebook is essentially worthless. No, that's too tame -- it's actively malignant. When I open Facebook, it defaults to an algorithmic feed that maybe shows an actual friend's post once in every half a dozen. The majority of posts are either AI slop history lessons or, more often, polarizing political ragebait. The irony is there isn't a clear side to the ragebait, though for me it's mostly Israel- and antisemitism related. But it's invariably someone angry about something and expressing their position in the most inflammatory way possible. Every time I click through to read more, I feel myself becoming a worse person.

And that's not even the bottom of the pit. God help me if I read comments. Even on the rare occasion I get a basically neutral news article or press release, the comments are just full of people being their absolute worst selves. In the wake of the San Diego shooting, here are some of the comment categories that stood out to me as repeated themes:

• On posts by Jews or Jewish institutions condemning the shooting, ostensibly Jewish people blasting the condemnation because Muslims have it coming and Jews should never defend them even from terrorist violence.
• On posts about how the shooter harbored antisemitic views, non-Jewish people blasting Jews for "making it all about you" (what?).
• On any post by anyone, saying this all traces back to Israel.

Again, these were not isolates -- these were categories. I'd see comment after comment like this. The inescapable feeling was grief, anger, and despair over how awful my fellow humans are. It took effort to remind myself that this is not in fact all humans, it is a very limited and non-representative subset. But it was, again, damaging me to keep reading these. When one is swamped with instances of people being terrible, it makes you more terrible too. Even though I know that most people's responses to San Diego shooting are normal, it hacks your brain into thinking that this is how the world is.

That's what Facebook is these days -- an algorithmic machine that tries its level best to make people the worst versions of themselves because that sort of person will engage more. Such a price would be too much to pay even if Facebook was useful as a catch-up tool with old friends -- which it isn't.

And sure, to some extent this is a problem with all social media. But not like this. I actually like Bluesky, and Reddit has been decent since I stay away from politics. Facebook really seems to be in a category of its own (perhaps along with X/Twitter, which I don't use at all anymore) in terms of the intensity with which it pushes awful messaging.

(It's one saving grace right now is that my reel algorithm is mostly handing me standup comedy clips from comedians I actually like. But to by honest, I suspect most of those clips are stolen bot reposts -- not the least because they're increasingly cutting off before the actual joke gets told. Even when you find something good, Facebook finds a way to make it awful).

Galindo Goes Down

There's plenty to talk about regarding tonight's election results in Texas. We won't have "Big John" Cornyn to push around for much longer, as he was smashed by hyper-corrupt Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. This maybe gives Democrats a shot at the Texas seat -- Paxton is generally viewed as a weaker candidate against Democratic nominee James Talarico -- but regardless I shed no tears over Cornyn's defeat. He was a far-right Republican for his entire career, and a leopard ate his face. And even though Paxton is (somehow) objectively "worse" than Cornyn in every respect, it also scarcely matters in the Senate -- either man would be a lockstep vote for the GOP agenda. Cornyn reaped what he sowed, and he career ended without dignity. He deserved nothing better.

But given my interests, I want to talk about the results of Democratic runoff in the San Antonio-area 35th district, where Johnny Garcia, a moderate Democrat and sheriff's deputy, defeated antisemitic extremist Maureen Galindo by about a 64/36 margin.

On the whole, this is good news. No margin is wide enough not to be a little disconcerting when it comes to a candidate who proposed creating "castration centers" for "American Zionists" and ranted about Jewish/Israeli/Zionist control of the world, but approaching a 2:1 margin (which has been widening over the course of the evening) is pretty emphatic for a candidate who won a plurality in the opening round and at least initially carried the endorsement of the other two runners-up. And one doesn't know how much of even Galindo's residual support came from people who still hadn't heard much about antisemitic views or assumed it was the usual contretemps over Israel. Galindo is orders of magnitude worse than Graham Platner, Nazi tattoo and all. But most of Galindo's most offensive remarks didn't really come to public attention until after the initial round of voting, and as much as coverage seemed ubiquitous to someone like me with my media diet, I cannot stress how much of an outlier I and every single person reading this blog is when it comes to the amount of attention we're paying to this race. That Garcia's margins have climbed over the course of the evening suggests that later-deciding voters -- who had more time to hear about what Galindo was about -- broke against her.

Overall, given the end results it seems clear that Galindo benefited from being seen as "the progressive fighter" in a context where many Democrats want that over all else (even as that presentation was aided by GOP money). Once people started learning about who this woman was with more specificity, a lot of that support melted -- and that's a good thing, since a big fear many of us have is if Democratic voters follow in the GOP footsteps of just voting for whatever avatar best is perceived as channeling incandescent "anti-establishment" rage. Where that sort of outlook drives voting behavior, antisemitism becomes not a burden but a boon -- further proof that one is sticking it to Power (where Jews are inherently associated with capital-P Power). The resounding rejection of Galindo suggests that is not where we are as a party, and that's a very good thing.

Credit also should go to the progressive elected establishment for being absolutely clear they'd have no truck with the likes of Galindo. The rapid mobilization against her from more moderate Jewish Democrats like Jared Moskowitz and Josh Gottheimer was one thing. But Talarico immediately disassociated himself from Galindo, AOC gave a no-holds-barred denunciation, and Greg Casar publicly backed Garcia. This matters because on his own merits Johnny Garcia, a Blue Dog sort, is not the type of Democrat these Democrats tend to promote, and one can imagine a universe where they just try to skate past Galindo's "rougher edges" given the overwhelming importance of kneecapping Democratic moderates. That didn't happen here. A few gadfly commentators aside, nobody was treating Galindo as anything other than despicable.

Having said all of that -- and all of that is reason for good cheer -- I think we would be foolish not to recognize that there is a real appetite in some progressive circles for what Galindo represents, which is to say, for overt and uncompromising antisemitism dressed in the barest fig leaf of "anti-Zionism". It is not a majority, it is not even a large minority, but it isn't entirely trivial either. Whether this appetite is first-order commitment to Jew hatred, or whether it flows indirectly from a more inchoate lashing out at anyone and anything associated with "the establishment", I'm not sure. But we shouldn't pretend that this is not a force moving through American politics, and we shouldn't pretend it has no traction in Democratic circles. It does, and that's why it was so important -- and again, so heartening -- to see the party rally against it without reservation and turn it back. 

Once again, the main difference between Democrats and Republicans isn't that they have cranks and we don't. The difference is that our cranks lose in our primaries, and theirs become presidential nominees. Let's keep it that way.