There's a ex ante / ex post distinction that's interesting here. Ex post, I agree averring "blowback is inevitable" to justify an indefensible act is indefensible and often racist. Ex ante, to say "blowback is inevitable if we do X" might be correct and wise.
I guess I think that there is some utility in policy arguments of the form "we shouldn't do this action because it would be extremely unpopular among [some kind of collectivity] and might provoke blowback". 1/
If we say all blowback is mere racism, that would amount to conceding veto power to racists, which would render arguments of that form illegitimate. But because I don't think blowback is entirely reducible to racism, arguments of that form remain colorable to me. /fin
I certainly agree that it would be very racist to claim random Jews being stabbed is like when an embassy is attacked. I don't think that I am being racist in claiming they are both encompassed by common uses of the word blowback, although of course you are free to disagree.
I guess then this is the nub of our disagreement? I think blowback is commonly used to describe multiple categories of violence, including both utterly indefensible random murder and more intentional (tho also usually indefensible) forms of political violence. You don't agree this is a common usage.
Your thread is very well put. But boy is this stuff difficult to talk about.
Do you not agree that the word "blowback" is commonly used to describe how actions like embassy bombings are motivated? Again, I think we mostly agree those are bad too, but they are of a character distinct from random murder. I think blowback, whether it ought to or not, frequently describes both.
(I take a minute! Sorry! I did give you one.)
Again, my inclination is to more to let the comparison discredit organized state violence than to credit decentralized violence. 1/
But I do think it's not uncommon to describe, say, attacks on US embassies as "blowback" to American policy. Do I think that most of those actions are legitimate or defensible? No, absolutely not. 2/
But then I think most military action is not so defensible either. I do think there are similarities in character. /fin
I guess I don't think I am broadening what people understand the definition of blowback to be. I think that you are perhaps narrowing it to indefensible cases, like the case that provoked your comment. We both condemn the actions that define the circumstances in which the argument is being made.
I certainly don't mean to be minimizing racist violence (against what would be my own race, not that it matters). I certainly am not "opposing" any condemnation of murdering random humans. Perhaps I am witless having responded to what seemed to me a not-so-defensible generalization in this context.
I am responding to the general claim you made about "blowback". Context collapse is always a risk with this form of social media, but I do think I was responding to a pretty general claim made by a person (whose thoughts I enjoy reading!) who frequently opines on public matters.
I am absolutely not suggesting that.
You wrote about blowback in the general case. I am writing about blowback as a general phenomenon. We agree that random violence against British Jews is stupid and illegitimate, just like we'd agree that bombing random civilians in a war is.
Actions characterized as "blowback" often involve logic and reason. Just like military action is often indefensible murder of civilians ("war crime") but not always, decentralized violence on the grounds of defending or pursuing a national project can be senseless or meaningfully goal-directed.
To be very clear, my inclination in all of this is not to use the comparison to exonerate blowback but to condemn violence, organized and disorganized, in general. But I think it's a hard moral road to hoe to say states can do war but stateless collectivities may never pursue goals with violence.
Hi! Let's speak civilly. Neither of us are daft. A Ukrainian drone that strikes a Russian target may or may not be pursuing a legitimate aim. We have to know what the target, and then make judgments. 1/
"Blowback" that takes the form of murdering a random civilian is never legitimate. Neither is military action against a random civilian. Both are unfortunately common. 2/
However, "blowback" may take the form of attacking in some fashion prominent institutions, members of a military, etc. 3/
That the "resistance" (a word I dislike because it is often too exonerative) is not an organized state military does not necessarily render the action less defensible or moral than if it were. 4/
In either case, the action may be by ordinary human standards really fucking immoral. But if you sometimes exonerate one, you must either sometimes exonerate the other, or else adopt a standard that organization by a modern state somehow alters the character of goal-directed immoral action. /fin
participation in a national military project is, by the definition of this thread, racist. you're a soldier. you bomb an enemy factory. the individuals you kill have done nothing wrong, nothing to harm you. their conationals may have harmed yours. "blowback" is more decentralized, but similar logic.
when you use “thermostatic” to describe American politics, you are implicitly acknowledging that the two- party system makes people stupid. in a multiparty system, sure, people get a taste and then want to throw the bums out. but they have to actually think and decide which bums they wanna put in.
social media is exhausting. socializing with people who share your worldview, who pitch in to elevate some professionals you hang with to advance it, is invigorating. as i think @resnikoff.bsky.social put it, it's time to put the party back in parties. or the genuinely social back in civil society.
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Great thread.
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i like to re-up this one every once in a while. www.interfluidity.com/v2/7964.html