memes

yeah, i think holding up any single person for being good is stupid moralizing. we have because we like his takes on dead nazis, not because literally everything he did was good and based. marx himself had plenty of reactionary ideas, obviously we all tend to find his work useful and moving regardless.

Stalin wasn't making videos about "gooning" in 2023, but yeah let's go ahead and hold them to the same standard because historical context isn't a thing.

Finkelstein has the time and energy to learn about and care about gooning enough to talk about it but doesn't have the time and energy to learn about and care about trans rights, and y'all are defending him like he's some liberation hero. Pretty fucked up

I mean, that's essentially the grounds on which i'm defending him in general. just that he's consistently been one of the lonest and loudest voices on are particularly important topic that's currently gotten heated up to active genocide again. he's also an old old man who's brain is melting. what i think is that no one should let him be near a camera again in his life because he said that dumb transphobic shit. also yeah, agreed on castro. i think castro improved himself greatly, especially on this issue, and i think it would have been the obvious counter to my point to mention that he was sort of busy not reading and actually dealing with shit. i understand that. but my general point is just that no one is orthodoxically perfect, and it's odd to expect a dying old man to put it together. like this post in general, do people think norm is encountering the term "gooner" while browsing the internet? it should be upsetting to people that someone taught him this word. that's essentially my only take i'm trying to have. that he's an old old man who probably doesnt deserve "the wall" for something he said after his brain started melting from his fucking ears. it's like parenti having had bad takes on the same in my opinion. if norm finklestein shows up saying transphobic slurs at my friends, i'll beat his wrinkly ass. but that's really just not what's going on in my opinion. i hope this doesn't come across as combative, i'm really just trying to sincerely talk about where the line should get drawn on how we think about certain people. maybe norm has been way more out and about on this than i think he was, and i'm basking in my own ignorance. i also recall he wrote a very stupid book about cancel culture, and it was something no one should have let someone in his condition write. but i'm not trying to put him on the pedestal, i'm not saying he shouldn't be consistently and regularly rebuked for his very bad takes. it just seems distracting to me considering the ongoing genocide at hand.

Where are we gonna see Finkelstein's self-crit for being a raging transphobic piece of shit?

when dementia becomes curable?

You are the only one coming off as rabid here. It's entirely possible to have a good faith conversation about this. Your interlocutor appears to be attempting that, and you're coming off as entirely hostile from the offset and unwilling to engage with the responses.

yeah this is not a useful attitude for leftists, friend. I care a lot about my trans comrades and I'm trying to stay polite when being accused of not. i hate transphobia and most transphobes, and most of all our society that materializes that social hatred against trans people. but please, for the love of god, try to be a better materialist about this. norm finklestein has had a meaningful material impact on people in favor of not supporting the genocide of palestinians. surely it's possible to understand the good he's done, the bad he's done, and the overall complexity of the person in question. are you trying to have a good faith discussion, or just attempting to make personal attacks? i want to make very clear, this man is not my hero, and i don't have personal heroes. i just reject the idea that you should discount literally everyone if they aren't a fully intersectional force for good. i recognize the vast amount of good he's done advocating for palestinians and the relatively small amount of damage he's done to trans people.

Just to be really really clear though:

Asserting that I care more about Palestinians than trans people is 1) a disgusting equivocation of two mostly unrelated movements for liberation and 2) almost a cruelly unserious thing to throw out there while over 10,000 Palestinians, half children, have been ethnically cleansed in the last month. We are literally only having this discussion because Norm is in the news advocating for a ceasefire and rights for Palestinians.

To put it in your style:

Palestinian freedom isn't that complicated and yet you're rabidly attacking a Palestinian advocate because apparently he had some bad ideas on a topic you care more about than the ongoing active bombing of a population center that is more dense than fucking Tokyo

I don't think that's reasonable, but it seems like that's how you're comfortable having a conversation with your comrades