queers for palestine

For many, the idea that one ought to support marginalized people in the face of oppression and injustice seems like it should go without saying. It is synonymous with rightful moral conduct in civilized society. As it turns out, there is some distance one must travel to arrive at the realm of action from the realm of thought. In dialectical terms, this is the gap between theory and praxis.

Identitarian language has been incessantly hammered into the cliches of popular culture to the point where it is often impossible to discern meaning when they are shouted in the streets. Terms like liberation, oppression, solidarity, and marginalization so often appear in the vapid expressions of demonstrators who do not possess even the slightest understanding of the intellectual origins of the slogans they chant.

The ignorance is by design.

To anyone who knows what really happens to openly homosexual individuals in Palestinian society, an absurdity like "queers for Palestine" is just that - a position so disconnected from the realm of possibility that no sane and grounded person could hold it in good faith. But this understanding is deeply flawed. Dialectical theory, like any religious belief system, is rife with contradiction. Instead of resolving contradictions, however, the aim of theory is to build abstractions until the contradiction is obscured to the point of meaninglessness.

In theory, it does not matter what Palestinians do to gay people. Both Palestinians and gays are marginalized, therefore they should stand together in solidarity against oppression. Voila, contradiction abstracted.

This dangerously naive form of anti-thought is powered by the same defective neuronal circuitry that leads people to accept demonstrably false propositions as truth.

Comrade: the fact that the real world is messy and full of contradiction must be abstracted away for the revolution to succeed.