I think the focus on the Holocaust as the premiere example of a genocide has warped people’s brains a little. See genocide is always when you put people into big prison camps, shoving a bunch of people into a walled off strip of land and bombing relentlessly it isn’t genocide cuz there’s no big camps, China has camps tho!
The first instance people encounter a concept can have really dire consequences, unintentional or otherwise. It really boils down to proper education, of course, but sometimes we just can’t help what people do with their brains after. You explain a thing, later on they use that education as an anchor to understand some new thing by noticing parallels. Most of the time that’s decent, it’s educated guessing which is a lot better than just guessing. But this whole thing with zionism shows the pitfalls.
Another example was how the right wing stole the words “deep state” and used it for their own myopic delusions. After that I had so much trouble explaining that concept to anti-MAGA libs. I had to just toss the term and full on use Marxist substructure and superstructure. Because my effort to draw from the well of common vernacular had been poisoned.
I’ve shocked a few Libs by explaining that the “Deep State” was coined by a Turkish journalist to describe a real thing in the Turkish government and military where there is a bunch of powerful un-elected officials who operate according to the same ideology and end up driving the direction of the government regardless of what elected politicians want to do.
Oh for sure. Another term people just assume started with conspiracy cranks or activists is “military industrial complex.” Made up by that famous peacenik radical hippie Dwight Eisenhower
I think people are mostly just sick of hearing about it. Usually if I see mention of the MIC in the wild, it precedes a completely misguided explanation of some particular instance of US imperial aggression.
I think the focus on the Holocaust as the premiere example of a genocide has warped people’s brains a little. See genocide is always when you put people into big prison camps, shoving a bunch of people into a walled off strip of land and bombing relentlessly it isn’t genocide cuz there’s no big camps, China has camps tho!
The first instance people encounter a concept can have really dire consequences, unintentional or otherwise. It really boils down to proper education, of course, but sometimes we just can’t help what people do with their brains after. You explain a thing, later on they use that education as an anchor to understand some new thing by noticing parallels. Most of the time that’s decent, it’s educated guessing which is a lot better than just guessing. But this whole thing with zionism shows the pitfalls.
Another example was how the right wing stole the words “deep state” and used it for their own myopic delusions. After that I had so much trouble explaining that concept to anti-MAGA libs. I had to just toss the term and full on use Marxist substructure and superstructure. Because my effort to draw from the well of common vernacular had been poisoned.
I’ve shocked a few Libs by explaining that the “Deep State” was coined by a Turkish journalist to describe a real thing in the Turkish government and military where there is a bunch of powerful un-elected officials who operate according to the same ideology and end up driving the direction of the government regardless of what elected politicians want to do.
Oh for sure. Another term people just assume started with conspiracy cranks or activists is “military industrial complex.” Made up by that famous peacenik radical hippie Dwight Eisenhower
I think people are mostly just sick of hearing about it. Usually if I see mention of the MIC in the wild, it precedes a completely misguided explanation of some particular instance of US imperial aggression.