Bérubé on bloggingheads

I've been a fan of Micahel Bérubé for a while. (Given the difficulty of typing his name, my consistent effort should be proof of that.) Though I would have probably gotten a B in one of his classes for this, here's a review I wrote of Rhetorical Occassions. (Hurry, as Newsvine will take it down fairly soon* and, in all honesty, it's one of the best bits of writing I've done.) With some help from an editor/friend, I wrote in an imitative comic style - which I've since learned not to try on my own - and I know I got at least one conservative to read his book!

Anyway, he's gone and become a blogginghead. (Complete with a pronunciation of "ZOMG".) It's worth watching through, but it gets especially exciting where they start talking about 'rootless cosmopolitans.' They actually don't mean Jews there, but I think it still has relevance to what I imagine my audience is.

Also, the bit on Nader demonatrates a few things I would try to argue - especially that a section of the left that thinks it's anti-racist is indeed anything but.

*In all honesty, because they don't like having uppity Jews around (and I'll continue to characterize it that way until they either invite me back in such a way that indicates my speach won't be heavily censored or at least get rid of even just the obvious antisemites).

If you can't put it down, pick it up

That's advice Buddhists give a fair bit. Usually, we start with "put it down" which means "don't worry, try to forget about it." But if you can't put it down, pick it up - you'll learn something. I first heard that actually from Hyon Gak Sunim who told me about a fellow novice monk (when sunim was younger) who had trouble not masturbating. "If you can't put it down, pick it up." Ha!

Anyway, being a relatively young Buddhist, I'm not always so great at putting stuff down. My temperament is such that I put a lot of things down easily - too much so, even, so that I often lack motivation - but there are a few things I have tremendous trouble putting down. If you've been reading this, you probably have a good idea what they are.

Anyway, I recently got email from someone at Newsvine, and it's part of the reason I've had something on my mind:

What do you mean they banned you? Why? Last I heard it was a suspension? Thought you were back with another byline. Seen a guy around I'd have sworn was you. Time to start a bring ignoblus back campaign!

Funny thing, this is the guy who made the argument that got me banned.

I kept arguing -increasingly focusing on the one argument- that when a member of an oppressed minority group tells you they are offended -in my case if I say, "hey, that's antisemitic"- it's important to listen. You don't have to agree, but you should do what you can to understand what that person is saying. It's not always easy, but you really should try to make an extra effort to listen. I would go on noting that if you then act to silence that person, which often happens as minorities are seen unfairly when they react legitimately to stereotypes and discrimination, that's an act of discrimination far worse than what might originally have been said. On the other hand, listening can be an act of compassion strong enough to win over others even if what you originally said was truly horrible. That's a pretty standard anti-racist line. Perhaps my formulation isn't the best, but I would expect anyone who claims to be concerned with racism or antisemitism to take that argument seriously.

So, when he wrote, in response to a seriously antisemitic article (that portrayed Ann Coulter as a victim of a "Zionist" witch hunt for antisemites in order to stifle criticism of Israel - really):

I call this phenom the real new anti-semitism the throwing around of the label at anyone who is critical of Israel. How this helps Israel in its need to make peace with its neighbours is unclear.

This is an attempt to marginalize Jews when they express concern about antisemitism, and attitudes like that are an important element of Jewish oppression. (By coincidence, I recently saw an episode from the third season of Cracker, with the same argument but about gender. "Women need rape," with the explanation that it gives them power over men.) I expressed my feelings openly and honestly. I did make one mistake, though - I was too intimidated to confront the person who wrote such a hateful article head on, and I picked this comment to challenge instead.

But what he said is exactly the sort of thing I spent a lot of time on Newsvine arguing against, and it shouldn't have been a surprise to him that I'd take offence. And then it comes to:

I will take legal action against you if you do not take this statement back.

Now we're talking about using legal means to enforce censorship on Jews who complain about antisemitism. Wow! Carried forward, the claim that I was stifling debate was used to get me banned. And the hypocrisy of claiming that I was the one stifling debate!

Yet here he is surprised that I was banned (?!?!) and trying to be friendly? What can I do?

Well, I don't know. I wrote an email back that will probably be interpreted as attacking rather than confused. Perhaps it was attacking, even. I went back and forth between feeling compassion for someone who was trying to reach out and frustration with someone who refused to listen even as they expect friendship. I only know that I can't make him think anything.

I have to just trust the situation. If he can see clearly, perhaps he can learn from me even when I make mistakes and react with anger instead of compassion. If he can't see clearly enough, he can't learn no matter how good my teaching is.

It's very tough for most of us not to expect a Buddhist teacher to give us something. Not gonna happen, and that expectation is something I've had no trouble putting down. What I have tremendous difficulty putting down, though, is the feeling that I can give someone else something other than just compassion. In some sense, it's why I'm writing here, hoping to teach. That's my ego. Even in becoming a Buddhist, on some level it's a desire for spiritual fame, a desire to be seen and admired for being wise. Then people will listen and I can help - but that attitude is a serious impediment to me being wise or to others listening. No matter how right I am.

More on Sari Nusseibeh (and James Russell)

After the email (reproduced almost word for word in this post - the last sentence was absent in the email) I felt compelled to send to James Russell, condemning his condemnation of Sari Nusseibeh, he responded to me:

Mr. Nusseibeh's words speak for themselves; and I stand by my resolution to oppose him and his institutional Jew-hatred. I regret your disagreement with my views, which you have every right to hold and to express. But might I observe that your epithet "McCarthyist" is childish: I know what McCarthyism is, since relatives of mine were blacklisted when I was a boy. I am not doing that, but stating merely what I will do myself and what I think personally. Others are free to collaborate with Al Quds as they please.

Yours faithfully,

JR Russell

Of course, as for what Nusseibeh's words were, I don't think they say what Professor Russell does. I think he's misreading them, and I'd be happy to debate on those grounds. When Nusseibeh responded he explained what he had said -I think it's best that the debate remain centered on what was actually said- that was taken out of context:

I explained that, as part of a package deal, return on my view should be confined to the Palestinian State (in addition to compensation, etc.). I added however that the other side of the coin of my position (confining the return of palestinians to within the borders of a future Palestinian State) was that Jews also will have no right to claim to "return" to within the borders of a Palestinian State, and will be confined in the exercise of this "right" to the State of Israel (meaning their claim as Jews to return and settle anywhere in "Judea, Samaria, etc." will not be substantiated). I certainly did not mean by this statement to exclude Jews from being able to live in an Arab State, or vice versa. At this point the issue of whether Palestinians can accept confining their return to within Palestine came up, and I said this had to be accepted if Palestinians truly wished to have a two-state solution. But in any case, I said, Palestinian leaders should express themselves honestly on this matter: demanding a two-state solution entails, from a practical point of view, confining the exercise of the right of return. Insisting on the pursuit of a full implementation of the right of return implies a pursuit of a one-state solution. I am personally indifferent to what we (Palestinians) should put up as a vision [ig: though, in fact, Nusseibeh has consistently argued for a two-state solution, and been branded a traitor by many Palestinians for it]. Indeed, I said, I was the first to call for such a solution. However, I added, PLO strategy has been going in the other direction, and it is a direction whose implications we should own up to.

Nusseibeh's position as a philosopher is that practical concerns sometimes bring rights into conflict, so that achieving certain rights requires abandoning others. It's in that vein that he advises Palestinians to abandon the right of return, and it is not objectionable that he advises Jews to accept the same framework of prioritizing their (our) right to national self-determination over our "right" (for those, unlike me, who think we have one) to the whole of the land between the river and the sea.

As for whether it's fair to call Russell's declaration McCarthyist, I think it is, in that it casts aspersions on anyone remotely connected to Nusseibeh. He originally wrote that:

In response I declare that I refuse to teach or collaborate in any way professionally with any person having any connection whatsoever to Al Quds University, which must be regarded as an anti-Semitic and racialist entity. Furthermore I will oppose by every possible means, including prosecution under the laws of the United States, any association or cooperation of Harvard University with Al Quds. I urge all scholars and teachers of good will to join me.

That is not nearly the same as what he wrote in his response to me, that:

Others are free to collaborate with Al Quds as they please.

(The fun thing is that we can make this whole debate clear by actually referring to what people said. We can debate the meanings and implications of what people said. Of course, that's radically unlike the insinuations of those antisemites who arrogantly shout "Don't you dare call me an antisemite!" -Because, of course, Jews make a hobby of calling people antisemites without reason.- Those people aren't concerned with the actual matter of what was said. In the case of my having been banned from Newsvine -read the link if you're even tempted to blame me for that- those who spoke out against me never made any reference to anything I had said or objected to. Their arguments were equally valid -which is to say invalid- whether the original statement I had voiced objection to was not antisemitic, midly antisemitic, or openly genocidal.)

How we got here

This is me, for the moment: I might touch on the ongoing struggle that keeps me from posting where I'd prefer, but it's a matter in process, so I'll be reasonably polite and stick to bare facts. For now. But I still have things to say about the rest of the world. Chavez isn't going to get away with his raid of a JCC in Caracas without me calling him a fascist. And I have tales of my trip to Korea that some people might like to hear.

A word about the moment: There was once in China a great master of the Diamond Sutra by the name of (as Koreans remember him) Dok Sahn. When he heard that there were Buddhist monks who didn't study the sutras, he set out to challenge them. Along the way, he stopped into a humble spot for lunch. The woman who ran the place promised him his lunch for free if he could answer one question. The Diamond Sutra says that the past is past, the future hasn't happened yet, and the present is so fleeting that it's already gone. So, the woman said to Dok Sahn, "The Diamond Sutra says that past mind, present mind, and future mind don't exist. With which mind will you eat your lunch?"

So, the bare facts before I eat my lunch. I was a regular poster on Newsvine. The site contains a great deal of what I would call blatantly antisemitic hate speech, despite terms of service that explicitly forbid "hateful, or racially, ethnically or otherwise objectionable" material.

One example I pointed out to the staff of the site:

But the average (so-called Christian) American merely echoes the mantra of his Zionist masters as he has been trained to do all his life.

In response to the longer message to the staff which included that example among others, I was told:

If [name of someone who regularly posts Holocaust denial, antisemitic conspiracism, and other hate speech] honestly does believe that the holocaust did not occur, then it is up to him to provide evidence to support that view without violating our TOS. In that respect, I think he is doing a relatively good job of heading up a controversial view without regularly crossing the line. He has crossed the line and we have contacted him and asked him to make some changes, to which he has done accordingly.

The best thing to do, if you are offended by or do not agree with [name of someone who regularly posts Holocaust denial, antisemitic conspiracism, and other hate speech]'s postings, is to either ignore them altogether or to provide alternative sources of evidence and opinion to those discussion threads or to your own column. Having multiple points of view represented is a part of what makes Newsvine a good place to learn.

I and many other users feel that this is a pretty shallow response that demonstrates a gross ignorance of just what the major tropes of antisemitism are, but the main thrust of the message is something I can live with. Let ideas win out over other ideas. So I did what I could to explain what antisemitism is. When I came across something I felt was antisemitic, I was appropriately polite but honest about it. Well, not so polite with some people as with others, but in each case appropriately polite to the situation. Until I was told:

However, if I find even the slightest trace of you referring to, implying or otherwise painting someone - anyone - as an anti-Semite again, your account will be terminated permanently and without prior notice.

I don't have time to research and debate the intricacies of your discussions with Tom and other users about neo-Nazis, anti-Semitism and such. So, purely as a matter of conservatism I am erring on the safe side and saying that you cannot accuse Newsvine users or staff of anti-Semitism or other forms of hatred toward specific groups of people.

There is no "if I honestly do believe" clause for me. No possibility of "heading up a controversial view without regularly crossing the line." (Even though my view is hardly controversial in most circles.) So, they've refused to deal with the problem themselves, and now they refuse to let me even address it. Their reasoning at all times includes a disinclination to understand the issues. I can hardly blame people whose expertise is in computer science rather than, say, minority studies, Jewish history, or journalistic ethics for failing to already have a well-formed understanding of the issues. But I can blame them for censoring me. [Update: They banned me, without me having written anything on Newsvine at all, let alone "the slightest trace" of anything. I originally left this out because it wasn't clear if they had banned me or merely suspended my account.] Hey, it's not a problem if there's nobody pointing it out, right?



This is just for people who want an explanation of what's going on. It is, of course, my view, though I've tried to be pretty fair. There's a lot more I could say, but I won't on this forum at this time. It is actually a fairly important matter - with Newsvine being a fairly large site, owned by MSNBC, a major news outlet - that ought to be openly debated on Newsvine.

I've posted it here, for now, since I can't post it there. Now, for lunch.