Hamas and the Transformation of Our Political Culture
The response in the U.S. to the attacks should be a wakeup call.
On October 7th, Hamas launched a surprise dawn attack on Israel, indiscriminately killing, raping, and kidnapping civilians, leaving over 1,400 dead. It was an unmitigated horror and tragedy, the details of which are chilling to read.
You might have expected a certain kind of reaction in the U.S. and throughout the West.
In recent years, our leading cultural institutions have seemingly become hyper sensitive to matters of injustice, harm, and oppression, even going so far as to wring their hands over language that contains no animus but that might, nevertheless, possibly wound someone’s sensitivities.
They have been quick to issue official statements condemning incidents like the killing of George Floyd or the Supreme Court’s striking down of affirmative action.
They have been places where people lose their jobs or at the very least are obliged to offer extravagant apologies for the slightest offenses against ideals of inclusion and sensitivity.
They have featured scenes of protest by students and others sticking up for the rights of the oppressed.
So you might have expected these same centers of cultural leadership, the places that have spoken so loudly about justice, to quickly and clearly condemn the rape of innocent teenagers, the murder of babies, and the killing of Jews on a mass scale.
But this isn’t what happened. Instead, we witnessed the opposite.
The Chicago chapter of Black Lives Matter posted a cartoon image of a terrorist flying a paraglider — presumably on his way to gun down Jewish teenagers — with the message, “I stand with Palestine,” including the comment, “That is all that is it!”
A statement signed by 34 Harvard student groups declared they “hold the Israeli regime entirely responsible for all unfolding violence” and declined to condemn Hamas’s actions in any way.
Student groups on other campuses held pro-Palestinian rallies while a Cornell University professor enthused publicly about the violence in Israel, declaring, “It was exhilarating! It was energizing!”
University presidents like Minouche Shafik of Columbia University or Martha Pollack of Cornell couldn’t quite bring themselves to condemn the attacks, instead encouraging examination and debate of “difficult issues that affect our world” (Shafik) or digressing on the tragedies happening elsewhere around the globe (Pollack). Many have remained silent.
Nearly 2,000 professors and students in sociology, from universities all over the country, have signed a statement condemning the “genocide” being carried out by Israel and insisting Hamas’s actions need “contextualizing.”
I wouldn’t hold my breath for corporations to begin rolling out trainings and appointing HR staff to root out antisemitism in their midst.
(For more extensive coverage of the response to the Hamas attack with plenty of other examples, see articles by Volodzko, Weiss, and Kisin.)
What’s going on here?
This seeming inconsistency and selective outrage on the part of the social justice left alerts us to a fundamental shift in the moral philosophy of our culture’s elites. Recent events are showing us just how widespread this shift is.
A New Way of Thinking About Injustice
Let’s remind ourselves of the perspective that used to be dominant in the West. It assumed a universal and transcendent ideal of justice to which all human actions ought to conform. It prized ideals like freedom of conscience and expression. It proclaimed a moral equality of all persons that called for equal treatment under the law.
This perspective is enshrined in the Declaration of Independence. It lay behind the abolitionist movement that ended slavery. It is front and center in Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous speech on the National Mall and in his Letter from a Birmingham Jail.
However, the tide of ideas going by the label “woke” that has so quickly swept through the commanding heights of the culture sees matters of justice and injustice very differently.
The woke perspective is essentially Marxist in inspiration. Marx proposed that the fundamental root of culture was in economic arrangements — how things were owned, produced, and distributed, and who has power over whom. Historically, he said, there has always been some class on top and other classes underneath. The ruling class maintains its position by creating a whole system of laws, norms, and ideas that undergirds and justifies the present arrangements.
In such a picture, everything is about economic power, even when it seems to be about something else. Importantly, even a society’s understanding of justice is simply one more masked tool of the elites for maintaining their privileged position.
Some important implications flow from this basic understanding. For one thing, those who are worse off economically have a new way to see themselves. No longer are they, say, unfortunate; instead, they are oppressed. They have no reason to put up with their oppression and ought to set about throwing off the yoke.
For another, while there may be practical constraints on how they accomplish this there are no moral ones, for moral norms, recall, are just veiled tools of oppression that keep the powerful in power. Who else, after all, but property owners would proclaim the immorality of theft?
And so life is transformed into a no-holds-barred struggle for power. Marx’s disciples in the twentieth century took all this to heart, leaving in their wake a sea of blood, intolerance, and oppression.
The neo-Marxism of the woke differs in some respects from classical Marxism. Most significantly, its focus isn’t on economic classes but on groupings according to race, sex, and sexuality. But key elements are consistent. Everything is about the struggle of the oppressed against the oppressors. And everything in culture is a hidden expression of dominance on the part of the powerful.
Crucially, this includes the moral norms that used to be taken for granted in the West. Things like free expression, a priority on reasoned discourse, and respect for those with whom you disagree are all just ways for the oppressors to stay in power. They play to the strengths of the dominant group.
Gone is the idea of universal moral norms that apply to everyone. In the past, when someone like MLK spoke of racial discrimination as injustice, he meant it went against a divinely-ordained norm we are all obliged to recognize. For the woke, racial discrimination is injustice in the sense that it is an instance of the oppressor group (whites) asserting power over the oppressed group (non-whites). Injustice is, by definition, what oppressors do. The oppressed are incapable of it.
For the person who embraces traditional ways of thinking about injustice, there would be an inconsistency in condemning George Floyd’s death while celebrating or excusing Hamas’s actions.
For the woke, however, there need not be. Andrew Sullivan helpfully summarizes:
“Do you see now why some of us have been calling out this “social justice” movement for years? It should not be a shock to know where BLM stands. Their founder, Patrisse Cullors, urged us “to end the imperialist project called Israel” as far back as 2015. And from the perspective of critical theory, Hamas is obviously in the right. CRT emphatically places the rights and dignity of the individual far below the right of the non-white masses to defeat “white/Jewish supremacy.” Of course they support Hamas. Palestinians are merely punching up — and that exonerates them of any moral culpability. Just as African-Americans cannot commit a hate crime, so Hamas definitionally cannot commit terror.
Once you see the world in this way — as groups of the oppressed and oppressors, with the oppressed always justified in their resistance to the oppressors — the rights of individual Jews, or whites, or Asians, or even dissident non-whites are irrelevant. It’s all about “power structures” and “systems” and “context”. All morality is relative to privilege. There is not a trace of universalism among the woke left, not a single objective measurement of morality except what is justified in response to “oppression”.
And ideas matter. Grewal, the Yale professor quoted above, responded to this week’s bloodshed with admirable woke clarity: “There is no question who the oppressors are [and] who the oppressed are. And somehow people are confused by this. White supremacy never stops being shocking to me.” The actual victims of the Nazis are now their equivalent.”
Yes, there have been and will continue to be real instances of oppression that ought to be opposed. Yes, the Palestinians have suffered and have legitimate grievances, and we ought to be concerned about their rights, too.
But it is a tragic mistake to abandon the view that all humans, simply as humans, are owed a certain level of respect and concern and embrace one that first asks which group one belongs to. That’s not a path to ending oppression, but to merely creating new forms of it.
Why It Matters
Anyone paying attention to all of this who holds to more old-fashioned ideas, for instance that the slaughter of innocent children is always evil, will be disheartened. It is discouraging to see an ideology that encourages the dehumanization of innocent victims because they belong to the wrong group taking hold in institutions throughout our society.
Beyond being discouraging, however, it is also, frankly, dangerous.
I recall having had students in one of my classes several years ago read an article about how Christianity provided a foundation for treating one’s political opponents with tolerance and respect. One young woman wrote something to the effect of, “Interesting. But I don’t see why we would want to treat our opponents with tolerance and respect. They are enemies and should be treated accordingly.”
I remember at the time thinking: Pleasant, friendly young people like this have no philosophical opposition to a regime that would imprison or perhaps execute me if it decided my views (or class?) placed me in the camp of “the enemy.”
Likewise, those who have deeply absorbed the woke ideals on college campuses are demonstrating that violence against those thought to be enemies doesn’t bother them.
This should shock no one who has been paying attention in recent years. The rise in the past decade of students shouting down, attacking, and otherwise interfering with speakers on campus whose views they reject is telling. This is violent behavior. Mild violence, yes; but violence nonetheless. If someone is willing to shout over top of you to deprive you of the ability to speak, what else is he willing to do?
But maybe this is just a small minority who think behaving in this way is acceptable? Alas, no. A study last year found 37% of college students said it was acceptable to block other students from attending a campus speech. Sixty-two percent said shouting down speakers was okay. Twenty percent said violence to stop a speaker was at least sometimes acceptable.
Bear in mind that these numbers represent an average across many campuses. At the most elite schools, the numbers can be significantly worse.
Imagine a country where those in positions of power throughout the land — in government, journalism, business, and education — think physically prohibiting, even sometimes violently, speech you disagree with is fine.
You’re imagining the United States in about twenty years when everyone who still believes in freedom of speech and the importance of tolerance is retired, replaced by those who think the only thing that matters is overcoming the “oppressors” (whoever that happens to be at the moment) by any means necessary.
The author of a recent editorial in The Wall Street Journal shares my concerns.
“I have heard commentators worried that cancel culture and suppression of diverse opinions might lead to a “soft totalitarianism.” If only. We need to recognize that some of those who justify Hamas’s atrocities would be ready to perform them against their designated enemies. And unlike Dostoevsky’s Turks or today’s Hamas, they would have high-tech means at their disposal to extend their reach. I fear that the horrors of the 20th century may prove only a foretaste of much worse in the near future.”
I’m aware that this all sounds rather dramatic. It should. It is a serious matter whether one lives within the borders of a land where your neighbors recognize and respect universal norms governing the treatment of others, or one where the treatment you are subject to turns upon your economic class, racial group, or the ideas you express.
There is an urgent need at the present moment for us to do three things. First, recognize the incredible value of a tolerant political order that upholds rights like the freedom of speech and conscience. Second, recognize that such a political order is both historically rare and incredibly fragile. It takes effort to maintain it. Third, take seriously the task of teaching and inculcating a moral philosophy that undergirds a free society, especially with the young.
I don’t think it is too late to avoid the bleak future towards which our present trajectory points. But it is most certainly time to get to work.
Thanks, Sandy. I like your last line. Many people have many reasons for legitimate frustration -- and the corresponding passions. The difficult thing for us is to see clearly in the midst of such things. I was thinking recently of Jesus' words as he contemplated his contemporaries, "If only you knew what would bring you peace -- but it is hidden from your eyes."
I remember vividly when I stopped watching network news. Bill O'Reilly yelling over and interrupting his "guests" with his opinions was too much. Then the ongoing corruption and wealth of our leaders, the wealthier getting wealthier while the poor, and then Middle class not able to meet rent, food, bills. People are struggling and angry. I've seen a rapid change from an independent, free choice view to one of entitlement view of life. This happens throughout history when the gap between rich and poor occurs. I hear more youth (to me that means 40)cheering for the Palestians than Israel. Taking sides is a dangerous place to be, just as you describe. It is an explosive emotionality war everywhere to want justice but there is no evaluating, listening, dialog in. , it's I'm right, you are wrong, mind closing events. It's passion uncontrolled out of frustration of so little resolution of humanity needs met.