but this is just a false analogy. insisting on education in a common language and other assimilative, group-identity weakening policy that gets labeled genocide is nothing like a precursor to or a signal of intent to exterminate. 1/

on the contrary, it may well prevent the kind of persistent ethnonational fragmentation and chauvinism and insularity that brings conflict to the level of extermination. /fin

it doesn’t follow that no prior norms should be enforced as a matter of abstract logic. 1/

as a matter of historical experience, however, i claim that strong norms of “national self-determination” established and celebrated post-WWII, that still receive widespread deference even today, should not be respected or enforced, should in fact be understood as dangerous, harmful, vicious. /fin

i am very happy to support a prohibition of extermination as a moral rule that outsiders might even coercively impose (though in practice they rarely will). 1/

i am not remotely happy to support the same prohibition of “genocide” unless genocide is carefully defined to mean extermination, in which case why do we need the separate crime? 2/

it is sometimes legitimate, sometimes necessary, for states to insist on schooling in a commom language, disfavor signage in minority languages, encourage assimilation to common norms and customs. 3/

all of these practices are sometimes described as “genocide”, sometimes not unreasonably in the sense their intent and predictable effect will be to reduce the numbers of and weaken the identities of some component groups. 4/

strongly, sometimes coercively, assimilative tactics are not my preference. i prefer pluralistic liberalism. 5/

but insisting on pluralistic liberalism under all circumstances at all times amounts to imposing constraints under which many state building and even state maintaining projects will violently fail. 6/

yes, extermination should be taken off the table as a strong moral norm (even though it’s a norm nearly all incumbent states will have violated at some point in its history.) 7/

but taking the broad range of practices that might undermine subgroup identity and numbers off the table is too costly a restriction. /fin

(i’m sorry before writing my long thread i somehow did not see all of yours. i like the Wimmer conclusion and think it broadly right about desirable end states. a successful state project will involve some combination of assimilation that reduces subgroup difference…

and recognition that gives subgroups a stake in the project where difference remains! the dispute is whether a moral rule can insist that the contours of the eventually desirable settlement can be imposed as a constraint…

prior to the negotiations, struggles, accommodations inherent to the state building project. my claim is that’s a terrible idea that in practice has done a very great deal of harm.)

integrating a state is a difficult, always ongoing project. human beings have and generate wide ranges of identities that don’t color between territorial lines. often the putative rulers of the putative states are shit. under the best of circumstances it’s a project that often fails. 1/

it’s a project that demands diplomacy and creativity. these are (proto)states we are talking about coercion and violence are in the toolkit as well. 2/

there is no cookbook right or wrong way to manage the project. should an affiliative group be granted some formal autonomy and recognition, or will that sew division? should we celebrate, even tolerate, linguistic diversity or insist on a unifying official language? 3/

all of these choices have tradeoffs. is it right or wrong to insist minority communities be schooled in the majority’s language and in majority norms and customs? it depends. it can be a legitimate choice. 4/

insisting that some affiliative communities (who decides? who judges?) have rights against the state to prejudge these choices is a well intentioned form of sabotage, ultimately in no one’s interest. 5/

no moral code written in Geneva can foresee the circumstances, adjudicate the trade offs, understand the particularities of local, overlapping identities, the potentials for conflict and for accommodation. 6/

granting “rights” is actually imposing constraints, and though perhaps well intentioned often (in fact i would claim usually) undermines a state construction project in ways that harm all residents of the territory to be governed, often especially the minorities ostensibly protected. 7/

(empirically outside advocacy of minority rights often both emboldens the minority while rendering other groups less tolerant and willing to accommodate the minority identity as it becomes perceived as a foreign threat or site of influence against the domestic sovereign.) 8/

it’s well meaning, sounds moral and good, but is a hubristic, mischievous, deadly project in practice. 9/

are there instances if vicious treatment of “unprotected” minorities, of genocide without any external meddling, of integration projects that violently fail with no intercession by liberal-internationalist arrogations? 10/

absolutely. formation of a state legitimate to substantially a territory’s entire population is a very hard problem nearly always, and very few ultimately “successful” projects did not involve some measure of coercion, exclusion, even extermination. 11/

but those projects are less, not more, likely to resort more to ugly tactics when they do not have the full range of potential accommodations or insistences from which to choose. 12/

when they lack the confidence to be indulgent because they perceive accommodation as forced surrender to an unintegrated subgroup, especially if managers of the putative state perceive accommodation as imposed by foreign powers, violent suppression becomes very likely. 13/

a state is sovereign. rights claims are claims against the sovereign. 14/

a liberal state that maintains sovereignty despite granting and then respecting strong rights claims against it is the most desirable form of state, but also rare and difficult to sustain and emerges from confident sovereignty rather than before it. 15/

pretending outsiders can insist on such a state by fiat, and correctly identify the form of rights claims and for whom that should be respected, prior to a process of integration and negotiation is just absurd. 16/

it sabotages worthy projects and encourages ugly conflicts that might otherwise have been avoided. 17/

(i’m sorry to have gone on so long and somewhat repetitively!) /fin

as @phillmv.bsky.social points out, though, part of the problem with engaging sea lions is they will just waste your time. 1/

i think "no platforming" and gatekeeping is a failed project, and it is absolutely on us to engage the public in opposition to viewpoints and ideas, and outright lies and propaganda, they won't in any sense be protected from. 2/

but it is on us to be strategic about how we engage. often taking the bait to debate is a poor use of our time. 3/

i was listening to the recent "Know Your Enemies" podcast on minority voters moving right. know-your-enemy-1682b684.simplecast.com/episodes/w-d... 4/

it struck me how the TPUSA crowd engaged people not in the context of hostile debates, but in circumstances where they could be friendly, hosts, providers of connection. 5/

it's our responsibility to make the case for a decent and civilized world. we can't prevent grifting barbarians from spreading their worldview. but pitched battles on terms set by the grifting barbarians may not be the best way to meet our responsibilities. /fin

right. there was this neoliberal intuition that corporations could be forces for good. they are managed and dominated by educated professionals! Marx i think has been vindicated a bit. as power shifted, the same corporations that boycotted North Carolina now build their new data centers in Texas. 1/

capitalist corporations are not moral actors, and it was foolish of liberals to imagine that they could be other than by ensuring that their financial incentives were always to be. /fin

oh, to the degree the word genocide has any productive meaning i'm very willing to apply it, as are i think nearly all honest interlocutors at this point. (i know a prominent poster here says otherwise, but whatever.) 1/

i don't think there was anything inevitable about Israel/Palestine arriving at this juncture. you can find plenty of fascists at Israel's founding and plenty of Arab fascists around an before if you look, but there are always fascists in and for every community. 2/

there really were moments when some kind of civilized accommodation might have been possible. assassinating Rabin really mattered. 3/

it's true that for three decades now Israel's ruling coalition has mostly been fascist, but that fact is not independent of how the miserable national projects played out on the ground. having your kids blown up on school buses and in shopping malls may make a fascist of anyone. 4/

fascism is a contagious illness. when one group of fascists casts you as the enemy preventing the flourishing of the people, those so identified tend understandably to adopt an obverse view, and then whoever wins, the fascists do. 5/

what's worth noting about Israel/Palestine is how unexceptional a story it is. this is what happens when ethnonational identity trumps formal identity in a state that provides for the rights of all of its residents. avoiding this story is why formal territorial states and should be supported. 6/

also unexceptional is that devoted ethnonational partisans outside the zone of conflict or the nascent state that must integrate to resolve the conflict do terrible mischief. 7/

by supporting the cause of their side while not suffering the consequences of failing to find a path towards peace and integration, they fan the flames. 8/

any nascent state more identified with one side than another perceives outside partisans of the other side as foreign actors seeking to weaken and undermine the state, so those who support accommodation risk being perceived as traitors. 9/

Israel/Palestine is so normal, so predictable, so straightforward a case of why prior, sentimental, an ethnicity-is-like-an-extension-of-family tribal groups are a terrible thing at attach rights to or define states around. 10/

It's not an unusual story. It's the most usual. It's just in the spotlight, and being so in the spotlight with such emotionally involved audience members has made reaching a settlement all the more difficult, and that has made the scale of the tragedy much greater than it might have been. /fin

to the degree it is effective, yes, the people who own the platforms will be most effective at it. which gets us back to @sjshancoxli.liberalcurrents.com's original point, some progressive version of "we" imagined that we governed, controlled in some sense, the platforms so it could work… 1/

but it turns out that fascist plutocrats do, and the old "free speech" story that people at the bottom of social hierarchies are most vulnerable to gatekeeping do hold some water after all. /fin

What do you mean by sensitive? The situation is ubiquitous. Usually, when it comes to this point, it is in fact resolved by ethnic cleansing. See Nagorno-Karabakh, 2023. See the aftermath of constant civil wars throughout Africa. See the aftermath of WWII. 1/

What makes Israel/Palestine so sensitive is that the rest of the world has wound itself up in the conflict, external partisans on both sides have emboldened and entrenched the two absolutely disgusting ethnonational projects. 2/

That has helped bring the situation to the point where any sort of integrated state (which might encompasses anything from French imperialism of internal neutality to US-style pluralism to Franco-Canadian style internal accommodationism to UK/Belgium-style regionalism) is impossible. 3/

Well meaning outsiders, whether diasporic liberal Zionists, or Arab nationalists who insisted Palestinians maintain permanent refugee status rather than be resettled, have made the conflict infinitely worse, helped to prevent any earlier human and humane settlement. 4/

In any case, the conflict has reached the point where the only likely settlement will be some kind of population transfer. Perhaps morally it ought to be the Jews of Israel that leave, but I suspect that's less likely. 5/

The language first of "national rights" — both of Jews, then of Palestinians — made this problem, and then the language of "international law" kept it simmering by absurdly keeping "a people" stuck in limbo when conflicts in fact end only by integrating the populations made refugees elsewhere. 6/

And now it will be a very hard pill to swallow, after all of the foolish, useless "sacrifice" and "martyrdom" for both detestable national projects, that "ethnic cleansing" will be the solution. Or it won't, and the Palestinian population will continue to be immiserated. 7/

Or Iran or someone else will throw in a monkey wrench, and a big war will become a regional etch-a-sketch. 8/

And if we collectively survive that war (only an if), the population transfers that will inevitable result at its end will be an afterthought, we'll have stopped worrying about "ethnic cleansing". /fin

Perhaps part of the issue is the same people who defined both genocide and ethnic cleansing as crimes in legalistic terms had just engaged in mass ethnic cleansing throughout Europe, which they felt was necessary after WWII. 1/

They then called both these things crimes, but left extermination and murder a lesser thing. 2/

So when we reason about these things, we often fail to notice that ethnic cleansing and extermination are both miserable things, both should be absolutely avoided, but if one has to give, ethnic cleansing is preferable to extermination. 3/

The State of Israel, a miserable ethnonational project, has decided that it can no longer live with or even beside another miserable ethnonational project, the Palestinians. 4/

Given the prohibition of both options to achieve that goal, Israel adopts a superposition, placing the population it will no longer live beside in conditions that will slowly exterminate it unless somehow the other option is made available. 5/

This is the outcome of foolish legalism based on national rights, rather than making hard decisions that privilege the welfare of actual living but perhaps soon-to-be killed humans. /fin