No One Wants Independence

I just gore the right ox, is the way I usually put it.

That’s what I usually say when people write to me, indignant and passionate, to tell me that they’ve canceled their subscriptions. They will frequently rattle off a list of things they liked about me, principally independence or a synonym of it. Sometimes they say “I thought you were independent/heterodox/iconoclastic” etc. This might be because I believe, to pick an example, that the verdict against Amber Heard was a disaster for free speech, or because I think a negotiated settlement is the only way to avert catastrophe in Ukraine, or because I defend the rights and identities of trans people. These are all, you will notice, opinions that are more consonant with regular left politics than with what is now frequently called “heterodoxy.” Many of my readers are lefties who endorse these values, despite what some in media will tell you; many read me because they value the architecture of my mind and my command of my instrument as a writer. But yes, a meaningful portion of my readership hates the righteousness of the social justice approach to left-wing politics and pays me to scourge it.

The point that I make, if I choose to reply, is this. Every reader is free to do with their money whatever they want. But it’s a profoundly weird (if surprisingly common) rhetorical move to say “I support you for your independence, but you wrote something I disagree with, so I’m not supporting you anymore.” It should go without saying - saying stuff that you don’t agree with is an expression of my independence, and it’s strange to endorse independence in the commission of telling me that you expected me to adhere to your own views. Subscribe or cancel as you will. But are you really out to support independence of thought if you don’t support it when that independence results in an opinion you don’t like? That’s why I say “I just gore the right ox.” I think a lot of people sincerely believe that they support me because of my independence, but in fact support me because they like it when the social justice set gets skewered and I do the skewering better than anybody else. I’m a convenient tool, and when that tool gets pointed in a direction they don’t like, I cease to be convenient. I am a political nailgun. Which, you know, is fine; you can read what you want and subscribe to what you want or not all based on your own impulses. But I think it’s useful for us to understand that independence is a stalking horse for our ordinary opinions.

I am frequently aligned with a set of people and institutions in the opinion-writing game, a sort of countercultural tendency made up of those in journalism and analysis who are seen as defying the conventions and conformity of our industry. I recognize that there are reasons for that, and being labeled that way has certainly been financially beneficial for me. But it’s never been a comfortable suit for me to wear. I never, ever intended to be seen as heterodox. (Which by the way is an ugly word.) This has always all been about saying what I believe to be good and true. I have been a critic of traditional media and its culture, but the point was to reform it, and my decades-long exasperation has always been a confusion over what I take to be common-sense beliefs about what our media is for and should do. Likewise, I never particularly saw myself as a dissident leftist; I just felt like the discourse of the left had taken a turn that didn’t make any sense. I’m sometimes called an “unorthodox Marxist” or an “old school Marxist,” which if you notice are opposite notions. Somewhere along the line “self-identified old school Marxist” began to be used when I was introduced on podcasts or at events, despite the fact that I have no recollection of ever calling myself that. I never wanted to play the “I’m not like the other girls” game with being a leftist. I just have my interpretation of what it means to be a socialist in the 21st century, and it appears to seem idiosyncratic to others.

There’s this big edifice of rebel media, for lack of a better term, where people sell analysis pitched as unorthodox to readers who ostensibly are looking for independence. But I suspect that most of that is window dressing; people like it when commentators affirm what they already believe and don’t like it when they don’t. That might be a bit depressing, but it strikes me as the basic reality.

I say this, obviously, in light of the reaction to Monday’s post on Israel and Palestine. (I really don’t want this to become a forum on Israel and Palestine, and I’m tempted to turn off comments again, but I won’t.) A position on this issue was much requested, and at some point not saying something amounts to saying something, so I wrote a piece. And I said the same thing I’ve always said: basic liberal democratic principles require that the land historically referred to as Palestine has to be the site of peace and prosperity for every kind of person who lives there, an egalitarian and multi-ethnic state with equal political and legal rights for all. I also pointed out that Israel enjoys hegemonic military power over the region and that every meaningful institutional actor in the United States is aligned with the Israeli government. See Joe Biden’s comments thus far, which express limitless support for Israel and then, in the barest and weakest terms possible, urges caution or restraint in entirely vague terms, barely able to mention the existence of the Palestinians. That imbalance of influence has everything to do with our apprehension of this conflict. That does not strike me as radical position. But even if it did, that would seem to fit comfortably into the dimensions of what so many readers have told me that they value, my independence. Yet it appears Israel is not an ox I can gore. Is that independence?

In the piece, I made it plain that I reject Hamas and their actions on both moral grounds and in the interests of the Palestinians. Yet my inbox alighted with pieces outraged that I didn’t “denounce Hamas.” But I said very clearly all that needs to be said about Hamas. Theocratic ethnonationalist movements are obviously completely incompatible with everything I’ve asked for. I just didn’t do that in the way prescribed by the current emotional moment, loudly, with performative anger. And I focused on the actions of the Israeli government, as I always do, because Israel is the dominant power and the only entity that can create the conditions necessary for peace. The whole post was about that, about that simple logic. If independence means anything, it must entail the refusal to say what you are being compelled by others to say. Luckily for me, I have an oppositional personality; where my political convictions might fail, my petulance won’t.

The figures of the “Intellectual Dark Web” are almost all lining up exclusively in loud support of Israel. They are also people who define themselves, at their very core, as being anti-establishment. But support for Israel is the establishment. Jordan Peterson is a radical flame-throwing subversive rebel, on this issue, in that he perfectly mirrors the opinion of the Democratic president, the divided Congress, the Republican party leadership, far-right Zionist anti-Semites, moderate Democrats, suspenders-clad Wall Street conservatives, respectable liberals, professional centrists…. It’s odd, the way anti-establishment sentiment gels so easily with what everybody else thinks on this issue! Odd, and an indication that no such orientation can ever endure as a meaningful movement. You can’t have an intellectual movement defined primarily by the fact that it’s made up of people who could plausibly appear on the Joe Rogan Experience. The terms of such a thing are too self-interested, the underlying ethics excessively tuned to flattery, the basic political logic inextricable from the requirements of building some kind of career. I don’t know of a historical figure who really would satisfy the concept of true moral independence, genuine rejection of all convention and conformity. Maybe GG Allin.

Consider this piece from the Free Press. Its author argues that the way to stop campus leftist groups from engaging in “extremism” is to pressure donors to threaten to stop donating - using economic power to compel universities to shut down groups that are critical of Israel. Fair enough. Adults can petition university donors to do whatever they wish and those donors can withhold funds for whatever reason they’d like. But please consider the opposite scenario. Suppose Teen Vogue ran a piece encouraging donors to universities to stop donating in an effort to pressure universities into reducing pro-Israel sentiment. That’s a story that the Free Press dines out on for weeks, right? It’s a textbook example of the “illiberal left,” right? It’s an unacceptable imposition on free speech and free inquiry, right? I suppose that they could claim to be demonstrating intellectual independence by supporting Israel in a hostile culture. But then you again face the inconvenient fact that this hostile culture is mostly defined by a bunch of college students, while on the supposedly independent side you have the State department, and the Department of Defense, and Congress, and both political parties, and the editorial board of every major newspaper….

The reality is that Bari Weiss runs The Free Press and she’s a passionate Zionist. Which is 100% fine. She and they can print whatever they’d like. But I would gently suggest that what is motivating their coverage is that support for Israel and not an attachment to the abstraction of free thinking. That’s not an accusation of hypocrisy; it’s an observation about what really motivates people. There’s nothing wrong with that. But the shibboleth of free inquiry is powerfully incompatible with this sort of moment, a moment when people are calling for moral absolutism and the insistence that we all pick sides.

From The New York Times:

A coalition of more than 30 student groups posted an open letter on the night of the Hamas attack, saying that Israel was “entirely responsible” for the violence that ended up leaving more than 1,400 dead, most of them civilians.

The letter, posted on social media before the extent of the killings was known, did not include the names of individual students.

But within days, students affiliated with those groups were being doxxed, their personal information posted online. Siblings back home were threatened. Wall Street executives demanded a list of student names to ban their hiring. And a truck with a digital billboard — paid for by a conservative group — circled Harvard Square, flashing student photos and names, under the headline, “Harvard’s Leading Antisemites.”

Again, I invite you to ask yourself, and be honest: what if this was being done to college students because of their support for Israel? Would that not trigger the exact same cascade of dueling narratives and back-and-forth coverage that we’re all so familiar with? I’ve been talking about campus politics for a decade or more now. For years I’ve said “please stop trying to restrict the free speech of right-wing students” because that is consonant with my values. Now I am saying please stop trying to restrict the speech of left-wing students, because that is consonant with my values. And I’m wondering if it’s ever possible to divorce your beliefs in rights and process from your substantive political preferences and (especially) the resentments that define your place in culture war. The recent evolution in the ACLU is so depressing because for decades they managed to epitomize that very kind of integrity. But a certain kind of person gets a job at the ACLU, and in the past decade the culture of that kind of person has pushed further and further away from the principles the ACLU stands for. And what you have to conclude is that culture is stronger than ideals; at the root of all of this is the desire to belong. And the current culture war over Israel is deeply influenced by a little-examined but essential question - belong to what? It is from those turbulent waters that spring endless pieces with titles like “I Didn’t Abandon the Left, the Left Abandoned Me.”

This comment section will quickly fill with people condescendingly explaining why a failure to support Israel, or the perception of supporting Hamas, are necessary exceptions to the principle of free expression. But you see, my friends, once you admit exceptions, there is no principle.