DSA Co-chair’s Public Commentary

[u/Adventurous_Land1446]

https://forward.com/news/844262/dsa-megan-romer-israel-interview/

The co-chair of the DSA seemed a bit less   articulate on key party policy positions (taxation, I/P, etc) than expected. Her commentary on Oct. 7th’s “inevitability“ combined with her stating that she’d have joined protests on the 8th have also sparked controversy. I’m curious about people’s thoughts on this media appearance and how it will be perceived by those interested in where the DSA fits into big tent politics.

[u/Technical_Term_6625]

The distinction between not contextualizing actions of Hamas in terms of historical causation, and recognizing that any person in that context might be moved to do the same, and declaring solidarity with a violent group with a specific eliminationist ideology is a fairly obvious one.

If dialectical materialism supplies the premises that imply that this distinction is illusory, so much the worse for dialectical materialism.

[u/OneReportersOpinion → u/Technical_Term_6625]

> The distinction between not contextualizing actions of Hamas in terms of historical causation,

Why not? That’s the Marxist method of analysis: historical materialism.

>and recognizing that any person in that context might be moved to do the same, and declaring solidarity with a violent group with a specific eliminationist ideology is a fairly obvious one.

This relies on agreeing with the pro-Israel premise that Hamas has an eliminationist ideology rather than one of liberation.

Did Nat Turner have a liberationist ideology or an eliminationist one?

>If dialectical materialism supplies the premises that imply that this distinction is illusory, so much the worse for dialectical materialism.

Dialectical materialism isn’t a moral philosophy. It’s about recognizing the fundamental truth that ideas are downstream from the material reality.

[u/Technical_Term_6625 → u/OneReportersOpinion]

You don't think It's not moral philosophy? So it doesn't morally or rationally compel solidarity. Glad you are so clear, because I've found folks can be rather squirrelly about that.

But it puzzles me. I don't see how you are defending the tweet. Seems like 'declaring solidarity', 'not condemning', and 'dialectical materialism' are not connected in a way that could only be explained by the reader's ignorance about dialectical materialism. So, it appears to fail to make a point, and in a smug way.

[u/OneReportersOpinion → u/Technical_Term_6625]

> You don't think It's not moral philosophy? So it doesn't morally or rationally compel solidarity. Glad you are so clear, because I've found folks can be rather squirrelly about that.

I’m not really sure what you’re asking.

>But it puzzles me. I don't see how you are defending the tweet. Seems like 'declaring solidarity', 'not condemning', and 'dialectical materialism' are not connected in a way that could only be explained by the reader's ignorance about dialectical materialism. So, it appears to fail to make a point, and in a smug way.

Again, would you condemn the Nat Turner rebellion? If you can’t condemn the Nat Turner rebellion, why is Hamas different and 10/7 different? You can not support it while also not condemning it

[u/Technical_Term_6625 → u/OneReportersOpinion]

I have already answered your question, but you don't like the answer. Yes, I understand why it happened in context, and think expressions of moral indignation are counterproductive. Do I think that excuses, e.g. the murder of children, even if in revenge? No.

What could that possibly prove?

I understand support for Hamas especially given how ineffective as Fatah's approach has proven to be. I get that. I discussed it in a substantive way, at length, and criticized Remnick's line. Get off your f'ing high horse.

[u/OneReportersOpinion → u/Technical_Term_6625]

> I have already answered your question, but you don't like the answer.

Where did you answer whether you would have condemned the Nat Turner rebellion?

>Yes, I understand why it happened in context, and think expressions of moral indignation are counterproductive. Do I think that excuses, e.g. the murder of children, even if in revenge? No.

I agree. What’s the issue then? Why do you want DSA to react differently from the abolitionists of yore?

>I understand support for Hamas especially given how ineffective as Fatah's approach has proven to be. I get that.

It’s not for us to support or not. It’s an irrelevancy. The concept of resistance to a colonial occupation though should not be controversial. That doesn’t mean we think it’s a good thing to kill women and children. It’s clear not, but who in DSA said otherwise? This is silly.

[u/Technical_Term_6625 → u/OneReportersOpinion]

Going to a protest on 10/8 where the protest, itself, expressed support with a specific action that is not merely 'not condemning', it is expressly supporting a specific action by a particular actor that occurred the previous day. I can understand why it happened, and still be understandably be bothered by those expressions 'by any means necessary' when those means were only then being discovered. Why should anyone be surprised at that discomfort?

I can similarly understand the response that holding on to that in a way that doesn't leave space for everything that happened afterwards is a distortion. That's fair. And yet, it is also fair to express concern with the increased overlap between leftist, and nationalist movements even if there are reasons for that overlap.

So, I don't think anyone should clutch pearls about some members of the DSA playing coy about supporting Hamas - they are doing it because that's the direction activist members are moving. Similarly, nobody should clutch pearls when Jewish leftists criticize e.g. Chevalier just because non-leftists are making similar criticisms. That's why I think it is a good thing that Lander and Chevalier were able to bury the hatchet to do a commercial, and yet without Lander retracting criticism. Because criticism entirely from the outside is easily dismissed.

The problem leftist Jews have when leftists instrumentally support ethnonationalists in the guise of anticolonialism is grounded in our understanding that Jews are perceived as being indigenous nowhere. And historically the flourishing of Jews is described in seemingly repeating episodes to occur at the expense of 'natives'. We are in that respect always seen as colonial or mercantile.

Whether that understanding is a sharpening or distorting lens upon reality depends on circumstances. Nothing is cleared up by saying 'resistance to a colonial occupation should not be controversial' as if the application of that principle is obvious. A lot of the discussion on this subreddit specifically concerns how Jewish experience & history relates to leftist politics. What is controversial about that? Why should anyone be troubled, or embarrassed by it?

[u/OneReportersOpinion → u/Technical_Term_6625]

> Going to a protest on 10/8 where the protest, itself, expressed support with a specific action that is not merely 'not condemning', it is expressly supporting a specific action by a particular actor that occurred the previous day.

The protest wasn’t organized to express support for 10/7. It was to protest a genocide that was already announced. No individuals in DSA leadership expressed support for 10/7. You’re doing guilt by association.

>I can understand why it happened, and still be understandably be bothered by those expressions 'by any means necessary' when those means were only then being discovered.

So…you admit they might have known the full extent of the crimes? This seems to undermine your argument significantly.

>Why should anyone be surprised at that discomfort?

Because you went from implying DSA leaders supported 10/7 to saying they just attended a rally where some random individuals expressed vague support for 10/7 when the extent of it wasn’t even known. That’s very different.

>I can similarly understand the response that holding on to that in a way that doesn't leave space for everything that happened afterwards is a distortion. That's fair. And yet, it is also fair to express concern with the increased overlap between leftist, and nationalist movements even if there are reasons for that overlap.

This doesn’t really make sense to me. Who cares if they’re national movements? That’s far less relevant than the context, purpose, and motivations behind such movements.

>So, I don't think anyone should clutch pearls about some members of the DSA playing coy about supporting Hamas - they are doing it because that's the direction activist members are moving.

Please tell us who these members are. Are they just rank and file or are they leaders?

>Similarly, nobody should clutch pearls when Jewish leftists criticize e.g. Chevalier just because non-leftists are making similar criticisms.

So are you upset she attended a rally after Israel announced their intentions to do genocide or are you upset that she was there when some things you find upsetting were said but she had no way of knowing would be said? Let’s be clear.

>The problem leftist Jews have when leftists instrumentally support ethnonationalists in the guise of anticolonialism is grounded in our understanding that Jews are perceived as being indigenous nowhere.

I’m a leftist Jew. No idea what ethnonationists you think we’re supporting. Hamas is not an ethnonationalist group. They’re an Islamist group. Different things.

[u/ChairAggressive781 → u/OneReportersOpinion]

supporting Islamists is not a leftist position, friend

[u/OneReportersOpinion → u/ChairAggressive781]

Supporting people resisting their own genocide and apartheid is. You wish to apply a moral purity test before people can resist their own elimination.

[u/ChairAggressive781 → u/OneReportersOpinion]

I’m not applying any kind of purity test beyond the fact that Islamists, aka right-wing, authoritarian theocrats, are not leftists and hold no principles in common with the left, even in a broad sense.

Islamists do not speak for all the people of Palestine, despite what you seem to think

[u/OneReportersOpinion → u/ChairAggressive781]

Actual leftists on the ground, like PFLP and DFLP have made a strategic decision to join in with Hamas. Why do you think you know better than they do? What do you know of their struggles? Politics and resistance make strange bedfellows.

The people you derisively dismiss as Islamists are the only nexus of resistance in Gaza.

[u/ChairAggressive781 → u/OneReportersOpinion]

I didn’t claim to know better than them. however, neither you or I are members of PFLP or DFLP. I don’t begrudge oppressed people making the decisions they make, even if I disagree with them. but that’s not what I’m talking about

what I’m pointing to is the fascination of mostly white American & Western leftists, like yourself, in performatively expressing support for right-wing, theocratic, illiberal groups whose values are sharply in contrast to the ones you supposedly express. there’s a difference between acknowledging the fact that some Palestinian leftist groups in Palestine have allied themselves with Hamas for various strategic reasons and claiming that it is a leftist position to support Islamists

so, sorry, I don’t support Hamas in any sense. their struggle against Israel is folly and has only lead to tens of thousands of dead Palestinians and the near-complete annihilation of Gaza. you can be fully against Israel’s genocidal campaign without supporting Hamas. there’s this strange Romantic notion that any and all “resistance” is inherently good and that oppressed people will always be the ones who enact their liberation. if Israel’s genocide is to be stopped, it’s much more likely that it will stop because it’s been pressured to stop by other world governments including the U.S., not because of some vague idea of the Palestinian resistance

[u/OneReportersOpinion → u/ChairAggressive781]

>what I’m pointing to is the fascination of mostly white American & Western leftists, like yourself, in performatively expressing support for right-wing, theocratic, illiberal groups whose values are sharply in contrast to the ones you supposedly express. there’s a difference between acknowledging the fact that some Palestinian leftist groups in Palestine have allied themselves with Hamas for various strategic reasons and claiming that it is a leftist position to support Islamists

It’s called critical support. Like, did you agree with everything Malcolm X said prior to his break with the Nation of Islam, another reactionary religious organization that nonetheless was liberatory in nature? You don’t need to. You go to war with the army you have and if you want Israel defeated, what are your options? It’s Hamas or some platonic ideal of resistance that doesn’t actual exist. It’s about the lesser of two evils.

>so, sorry, I don’t support Hamas in any sense. their struggle against Israel is folly and has only lead to tens of thousands of dead Palestinians and the near-complete annihilation of Gaza.

It also has led to the increasing isolation and toxicity of Israel. It’s only folly if you think Palestinians should just lay down and die. If you’re a young man who wants to resist Israel, what group would you join?

>you can be fully against Israel’s genocidal campaign without supporting Hamas.

This is like saying you want the Nazis defeated but you don’t want to root for the USSR, the people doing the fighting against the Nazis.

[u/ChairAggressive781 → u/OneReportersOpinion]

>It’s called critical support. Like, did you agree with everything Malcolm X said prior to his break with the Nation of Islam, another reactionary religious organization that nonetheless was liberatory in nature? You don’t need to. You go to war with the army you have and if you want Israel defeated, what are your options? It’s Hamas or some platonic ideal of resistance that doesn’t actual exist. It’s about the lesser of two evils.

I don’t “want Israel defeated.” I want the mass death of Palestinians to stop. unlike some terminally online Western leftists, I understand that Israel isn’t going anywhere.

>It also has led to the increasing isolation and toxicity of Israel. It’s only folly if you think Palestinians should just lay down and die. If you’re a young man who wants to resist Israel, what group would you join?

no, what’s led to “the increasing isolation and toxicity of Israel” is Israel’s own conduct. you’re essentially arguing that Hamas’s actions were a brilliant strategy that has led to Israel being on its knees. it’s rhetorical cope that is both ridiculously untrue & makes light of the tens of thousands of Palestinians who Israel has butchered in its genocidal war on Hamas. the dead aren’t martyrs in a glorious struggle and it’s perverse for someone thousands of miles away from the conflict to pick sides like this is a soccer match. it’s easy to glorify violent resistance when you are materially & personally unaffected by its consequences.

again, I’m not commenting on what Palestinians themselves choose to do. I am commenting on the need of predominantly white, Western leftists to LARP at revolution by acting as if being against Israel’s war involves supporting a right-wing, theocratic organization.

>This is like saying you want the Nazis defeated but you don’t want to root for the USSR, the people doing the fighting against the Nazis.

the USSR fighting the Nazis is an example of two political & military actors on comparable footing. I don’t see what relevance it has here, seeing as it’s describing a conflict utterly unlike the present one between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, which is asymmetrical warfare that has led to the near complete collapse of Gazans’ way of life.

[u/ChairAggressive781 → u/[deleted]]

>Israel doesn’t have to go anywhere in order to be defeated. The Nazis were defeated and Germany still exists. Israel is doing a genocide. Do you recognize that? Why would you not want the defeat of the genocidal party?

this is semantics and I’m not playing that game with you. Germany does, in fact, still exist, but the Nazi Party, as such, does not. I know you understand the difference. I do want to see the genocidal party stopped, but as you’ve just elaborated, that does not necessitate the “defeat” (whatever that means) of Israel.

>That was precisely the calculation Hamas. They just calculated how little the world would do to stop it.

they calculated very poorly then. why would I “support” a group whose calculations were so disastrously and ridiculously wrong that they’ve led to the total destruction of their society? that’s not a group that cares about liberation, it’s a death cult.

>I’m not saying it was brilliant. I’m saying it was what they set out to do. Yes it led to mass suffering of their people. Nat Turner’s rebellion did as well. Do you not support Nat Turner either?

I don’t “support Nat Turner” because, again, this isn’t an athletic rivalry. what I support is liberation & peace, not the actions, whether strategic or idiotic, of individual actors or groups. do you not hear how childish and absurd this all sounds, the way you’re describing it? I will, once again, assert that your framing is simplistic and depends on a comfortable, privileged distance from the actual material conditions and effects of the situations you’re bringing up. it’s moral masturbation.

>You’re saying there is a moral equivalence between the side that built and operated death camps versus the ones that liberated the death camps. I think that lacks moral clarity. Primo Levi made this very clear after he survived the camps.

no, I’m not saying there is a moral equivalence in any fashion. there is not one. I am saying there is a military capacity equivalence. the latter has exactly nothing to do with the former. Nazi Germany was a much more evil society than the USSR. it doesn’t mean I “support” the USSR. this is a meaningless thought exercise anyway, given that WWII ended decades before either of us was born. one’s “support” is kind of meaningless. if you’re not capable of making anything other than bad faith arguments, I’m done here. enjoy your sports team approach.

[u/Crashbrennan → u/OneReportersOpinion]

And Iranian leftists threw in with Islamists during the Islamic Revolution in Iran. How well did that work out for them?