Video footage broadcast Wednesday by Al Jazeera shows Israeli soldiers gunning down two Palestinians on the coast of northern Gaza, even as one of them waves what appears to be a piece of white fabric. The video then shows Israeli soldiers burying the bodies with a bulldozer.
Richard Falk, former United Nations special rapporteur on the human rights situation in the occupied Palestinian territories, toldAl Jazeera that the footage provides “vivid confirmation of continuing Israeli atrocities” and spotlights the “unambiguous character of Israeli atrocities that are being carried out on a daily basis.”
“The eyes and ears of the world have been assaulted in real-time by this form of genocidal behavior,” said Falk. “It is a shocking reality that there has been no adverse reaction from the liberal democracies in the West. It is a shameful moment.”
It’s not an ideological statement to observe that liberalism abdicates the power of state governance to economic and capitalistic structures, nor is it ideological to observe that economic structures can -and do- wield just as much coercive power over individuals, states, and institutions as any state structure can.
However, asserting that “liberalism is inherently hands-off” is an ideological statement, because it pretends as if market and capital systems and structures are somehow outside of its responsibility even though those structures are central to its functioning as conceived by Locke and Hobbes.
To pretend as if the US’s economic power is some kind of aberration of ‘true liberalism’ is just absurd, though not surprising because I doubt Hobbes or Locke could have imagined the scale of influence and domination a liberal democracy like the United States now enjoys.
Partial abdication, I’ll grant that. What is ideological is to assume that something else exhibiting coercive power is some inherent negative. Liberalism specifically does not want a full monopoly on coercive power to be in the hands of any single system or institution. Instead it spreads it out.
That you see that as some negative or flaw is simply representative of your own position. Many institutions wielding coercive power is not inherently dangerous, just perhaps inefficient.
But it does nothing to prevent it from accumulating, and does even less to prevent a state from accumulating too much power. A sovereign state that is dependent on the economic support of another that is 50+ times its size is no more free from tyranny than one living under the imperialist occupation of a monarch.
I don’t see anything negative about spreading power into as many hands as possible, but I’m not delusional enough to believe liberalism can achieve that if it ignores the inherent power in capital.
Liberalism was foundational to transitioning away from monarchical power, but was simply ill-equipped (possibly intentionally so) to anticipate the inevitable failures caused by ignoring/denying the existence of power exercised through capital and the accumulation thereof.
I can agree with that.
Did you really say exhibiting coercive power isn’t inherently negative? I’d say in both imperialism and Neocolonialism it certainly is as it’s used to exploit the global south population and resources at their expense.
No, I said: What is ideological is to assume that something else exhibiting coercive power is some inherent negative.
It can certainly be considered negative. Considering it so is ideological, however.
I don’t see how exhibiting coercive power can be considered positive or neutral, especially in the context of imperialism or neocolonialism
That’s fine. My point is that other ideologies would disagree. Fascism, for instance, is an ideology where coercive power is considered positive.
Is your point that dehumanization is necessary for coercive power to be considered a positive? If so I agree.
I don’t understand how you consider institutions that wield coercive power to not be inherently dangerous. Seems like they certainly are for the people getting coerced.
You keep trying to put words in my mouth. All I was saying is that all of this is ideological in nature. Because someone was trying to say it wasn’t.
What is or isn’t dangerous, the importance of humanity, the role of institutions, this is all ideology.
I was trying to understand what you’re saying when you say
Because the danger of coercion to the people being coerced is very real for any ideology. I agree that whether wielding coercive power is seen as a positive or a negative depends on ideology.