Dueling -- or Logrolling -- Apartheids
RFK Jr. and Jordan Peterson defend apartheid Israel, Chomsky has advocated vaccine apartheid. Musk and the rest of Big Tech are for speech apartheid. Don't pick an apartheid, pick them all apart.
Some were surprised by RFK Jr.’s recent statements in support of Israel as his campaign manager Dennis Kucinich looked on. I’ve been wondering about his position on Israel for some time.
Kennedy claimed that he had initially lauded Roger Waters because he was unaware of Waters’s criticisms of Israel and because of his alleged stance on the pandemic. As someone who saw Waters’s show in DC last year, I can report that whatever the considerable merits of the show, it was eerie that there was no mention of pandemic policies. (Waters would make an appearance the following day at a protest at the “Department of Justice” regarding their persecution of Julian Assange, where I was among the speakers, and he insisted that people at this outdoor protest wear a mask — I reluctantly wore a keffiyeh.)
An irony in all this is that both Kennedy and Waters were targeted by the establishment for making references to Anne Frank.
Meanwhile, Noam Chomsky, who has been a virtual god-head for much of the left for decades in 2021 demanded that the unvaccinated should have the “decency to isolate” themselves from the rest of society and “if they refuse to do that, then measures have to be taken to safeguard the community from them.” “How can we get food to them?” asked Chomsky. “Well, that’s actually their problem.”
There has been a remarkable lack of accountability for embrace and advocacy of such policies with the official end of the Covid emergency last month.
Similarly, Jordan Peterson, who has become something of a god-head on the right, and has objected to Covid vaccine mandates, gave a disinfomercial for Israeli leader Netanyahu late last year, effectively enabling Israeli apartheid, apparently helped along by Ben Shapiro.
It appears that to gain standing as some sort of dissident icon, you have to be against one form of apartheid — but for another form of apartheid.
Meanwhile, the South-African-born military contractor Elon Musk has explicitly advocated the notion of Freedom of Speech, but not Freedom of Reach for Twitter. As I’ve argued, this is a direct assault on Free Speech.
Decensored News has reported: “Elon Musk To ‘Authenticate’ All Twitter Users, Create Two-Tiered System of Speech.”
Also, Musk has promised to tell people why they are shadowbanned — something Decensored News notes he hasn’t actually done yet — but the South African system of apartheid, as I understand it, was quite transparent in terms of telling people exactly why they were targeted and restricted. Does that make it any more justifiable?
(I should say, having directly experienced the uncertainty of both the Israeli system (to an extent) and opaque Big Tech censorship, having some level of certainty of outcomes does reduce stress when dealing with oppression.)
It’s quite likely that the people who will be most targeted by Big Tech are the people who are taking a principled position against apartheid based on ethnicity — and on medical choices, and any other illegitimate reason.
This may be a recipe for fueling various camps of hypocrites, endlessly calling each other names — and muting those who are critical of all the hypocrisies and attempting to articulate a system of meaningful equality that can move us forward in a positive manner.
None of us are free, [if] one of us are chained.
Now it's time to start making changes,
And it's time for us all to realize,
That the truth is shining real bright right before our eyes.
I am not far from Chomsky's position on vaccine mandates, and here's why: because unvaccinated people could kill or permanently main me, my partner, or my 84-year-old mother, whom I now visit often to spell her also-vulnerable spouse. All four of us are extra vulnerable for hospitalization, death or long-term disability due to COVID, for multiple reasons of health and age.
"Death" is now less likely, since Paxlovid, and likewise hospitalization, since the COVID-induced hospital crisis has abated. But neither risk has been eliminated entirely, and Long COVID is nothing to trifle with, as everyone now knows it can be long-term (permanently? Who knows?) debilitating.
Bottom line, other people do not have a right to subject me to their dangerous decisions. I have no control over whether they get on my bus to work sick (where we might share air for 90 minutes). Or my plane to see Mom 3,000 miles away (I know multiple people who have knowingly flown with COVID, altho it's worth mentioning that the airport is a lot more dangerous than the plane since the latter has good air exchange vs airports).
I had a friend hug me before she disclosed (actually, she *never* disclosed to me) that she was an unvaccinated anti-vaxxer. At the time I was extra vulnerable due to a health condition that left me immune-compromised.
Why should other people have a right to threaten my life, my ability to support myself through work, my health, the life and well-being of my spouse and parents, when free (at least they were, for years), safe and effective vaccines are available?
I lived under South African apartheid, towards the end. I worked in AIDS control and prevention when Cuba quarantined part of their population against AIDS. These are different circumstances that cannot logically be grouped together under the banner of "apartheid."
Basically, it's one thing to create two-class societies based purely on identity, whether that is nominally (or purportedly) religion, ethnic identity, or the bogus thing we call "race." That is discriminatory, repulsive, and oppressive.
Medical decisions, on the other hand -- *public health measures* -- that keep some people (who, it bears repeating, have accessible and safe options) from maiming and killing others through their recklessness and insistence on personal "freedom," are quite another. We can debate things like involuntary quarantine, but it's a logical fallacy to lump these two quite different categories together.
The one constant in these apartheid positions is that the only way to supposedly be intellectually principled is to choose a side and doggedly stick to it despite evidence to the contrary. Thanks Sam.