Note: this post has been edited
A few things and then i'm never mentioning any of the right wing bloggers again:
1)The first post on this blog was posted before i was actually using this site to blog. I shut down my previous blog after Dan Kruger attempted to use something i said against Ben Healey in his ONHSA-backed aldermanic campaign. I apologize only for the poor sentence construction and rather thrown together nature of the prose.
2)Perhaps it wasn't particularly productive to call James Kirchick (the only person i did refer to by name) a fascist. I stand by the statements i made last spring, which Kirchick was nice enough to post on his blog. He keeps a file on me -- I'm kind of flattered. I don't know the others or their work and have thus been relatively mum. Indeed, in the last 24 hours, i've found right wing yale blogs i didn't know existed. Regarding fascism, I think the Bush-Cheney-Levin project fits under this descriptor. I also thing that the activities of CampusWatch and the Daniel Pipes disciples are not only well in line with this project but also are certainly analogous to the aforementioned political ideology in ways which even right wing professors (Jim Sleeper, anyone) have found disturbing. Name calling isn't particularly productive under any circumstances, and my ire at seeing friends ridiculed and attacked on Kirchick's wensite could probably ahve been better directed into organizing than blogging.
I'll put aside the ridiculous epithet of "sadaam supporter" (which one right-wing yalie blogger, seemingly swimming in an ocean of white privilege and denial called me today, and which is ridiculous and fairly McCarthyist in its aims. Sadaam Hussein was also a fascist, one supported by Bushes, Rumsfelds, Wolfowitzes, Bakers and Cheneys until his presence was no longer welcome followin the instantiation of GHWB's New World Order.)
The other epithet, however, I won't dismiss so easily. How dare you call me a
jew-hater? I am jewish. I wear my unpronounceable last name like a badge. I love being jewish. I love many jews. Lots of Jews kick ass. So do lots of Muslims, Christians, Buddhists, Aetheists, Pagans, and Muppets. What i don't like is what zionism, colonialism, and racism have done to jewish communities. I don't like the right wing identity politics that people like Kirchick and Johnson espouse when it comes to debates about the middle east on campus. And yes, I respect Amiri Baraka even though there's tons of shit i disagree with him on. I am not ashamed of being Jewish, nor am I ashamed of Israel, though i oppose the Israeli state's settler colonialism and colonial occupations with as much fervor as i oppose the American occupation of Iraq, because Israel is a state, and, like the one I live in, It's one we need to struggle against through nonviolent direct action, and not one i have enough of a stake in to fel ashamed of. Nor is shame or hatred any kind of basis for a liberatory politics.
Being called a jew-hater by you is kind of like being called a Klansman by rumpus for denouncing Yale's racism during the last strike.
