Natalie

The desire to caveat statements like "Israel is committing genocide" with "this is not a political statement it's a statement of fact" is darkly fascinating to me. It's such an immediate, spineless cession of rhetorical territory. It's a capitulation to the fundamentally reactionary position that any discussion of "politics" is just bickering about whose team should win. But as soon as you posit that the stage of debate for questions like "how do we put an end to systemic oppression and wholesale slaughter" is in a arena that is somehow divorced from the actual way change is enacted in the world—in a word, politics—you've bargained away your ability to talk about actually doing anything about it. You're just faffing about in an idealistic daydream.