Democrats have entered a kaleidoscope of sophistry, double meanings, and evasion to avoid the messy reality of what a ceasefire actually entails.
  • TheOubliette@lemmy.ml
    5·
    1 month ago

    It is worse than simply saying they want ceasefires and then doing the opposite. They are coopting and redefining the term itself to mean, “surrender and meet our demands”. This has at least four functions:

    • It maintains a maximalist position that prevents negotiations because their designated enemy side will have to balk at the ridiculous demand for full capitulation.

    • This then creates rhetorical space for claiming the designated enemy are the actual people gumming up the works.

    • It makes the designated enemy reasonably skeptical about ever negotiating in the future (it is a commitment to the escalatory path).

    • It short-circuits the milquetoast anti-warism “ceasefire now” demand by impeeial core liberals that was always an easily cooptable demand that flew in the face of what the resistance actually wants, which is the end of the Zionist project, I.e. settler colonial apartheud and permanent ghettos and refugee camps. Both Biden and now Harris, who both sold this cooption back in March and May and so on, have been able to claim support for ceasefire while giving the obvious greenlight, which is material and diplomatic support, for Israel to exterminate large swaths of the native population.

    The only realistic demand there has ever been is to end material support and bring every Zionist criminal to the Hague. While the genocidal American state would balk, it would be unable to coopt this demand, thereby having the potential to lead to two actually useful outcomes:

    1. More people gaining consciousness of the parties’ commitment to genocide and apartheid.

    2. Attempts by the political class to pander that might actually have some material impacts, though they would of course fall short.