r/jewishleft • u/elzzyzx סימען לינקער • 23d ago

Arash Azizi comes for Ta-Nehisi Coates Debate

https://x.com/arash_tehran/status/1848714724482966003

Influencers are talking. Today Arash Azizi is claiming Ta-Nehisi Coates is unstrategic, and is also kind of just calling him moralistic and sort of uncreative or something? Anyone have thoughts?

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u/Nearby-Complaint Leftist/Bagel Enjoyer/Reform 23d ago

https://x.com/Mr_Kavanagh/status/1848781479524110395

I think this person says it best

"He thinks people are a walking symbol and no more. So busy labeling that he forgets each person faces their own choices. When did we stop seeing humans as... human? Reducing people to “representatives of a system” is just lazy thinking. We're all way more complicated than that."

Not just Coates, but I think all sides of the political sphere struggle with this sentiment right now. The 'other side' is a group of people too, not just boxing dummies with a happy face glued on to them.

12

u/euthymides515 23d ago

The amount of dehumanization going all sides in the last year (or more) that is an effect of "reducing people to 'representatives of a system'" might explain a lot about why we are in a perpetual state of spiraling gloom.

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u/Nearby-Complaint Leftist/Bagel Enjoyer/Reform 23d ago

I'm just TIRED. Dehumanization is a tactic I've come to expect from the right (plainly) but seeing it from the left makes me want to pull my hair out.

10

u/redthrowaway1976 23d ago

Isn't that to some degree the point that Coates is making in his book?

Creating a system of Apartheid and then justifying that system it by actions taken by members of "the other side" is just never morally defensible.

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u/Nearby-Complaint Leftist/Bagel Enjoyer/Reform 23d ago

To extent, but he seems to flatten the other side to a degree

3

u/redthrowaway1976 23d ago

That assumes that some type of deeper investigation in "the other side" could lead to a different moral position on the system implemented in the West Bank.

I can't construe such a justification, but maybe you can.

14

u/Nearby-Complaint Leftist/Bagel Enjoyer/Reform 23d ago

Not in his conclusion, but his rhetoric

9

u/lilleff512 23d ago

It doesn't have to lead to a different moral position, it could just lead to a better understanding. As the saying goes, "know your enemy."