I think we are dealing with parallel lines. On one line are people like most of us on this board who can think and analyse a situation and make a judgement based on facts as well as our opinions. On the other line there are people who have set views which no amount of persuasion of argument will change, and in many cases it may not matter, but I wonder what proportion of people on both lines are liable to be swayed by argument and change places when the time is ripe. People who voted Labour all their life voted for Mrs Thatcher in 1979 because they felt the country needed the kind of radical change she proposed -and they got what they voted for, even if in the long term they were not better off. Zionists who believed they were creating a secular, democratic and socialist Israel in 1948 now find the government dominated by intolerant, anti-Arab nationalists and religious extremists who barely existed in 1948 (and it doesn't mean the Orthodox Jews who perished in the Holocaust would have been 'natural' religious extremists had they survived to live in Israel or the Occupied Territories, these days some of the most extreme were born in the USA). At some point between 1948 and 1977 Israelis became disenchanted with the Labour Zionism of Ben-Gurion and his generation and turned toward the nationalism of Menachem Begin. We are still living with the consequences of that. But just as there are bigots in Israel, as Blackchubby pointed out in an earlier post, there are plenty of obnoxious people on the left who don't sound like they are going to change their views any time soon, we just have to live with extremists and hope they get tired and go away and do maybe mellow over the years.Quote:
Originally Posted by broncofan
But what has happened in Israel has happened elsewhere as people feel the 'system' they were born into no longer works to provide them with the financial security and opportunity they believe they or their parents had (even when this is not true), and believe the alternatives they are being offered will produce the goods. But it is a depressing thought that anyone in 2017 would question the reality of the Holocaust, it means that each generation must maintain the arguments it has to prevent them from decaying and becoming subject to criticism and abuse.
It is thus ironic that anyone who views history as a continuous stream of progress, would have to explain how something as phenomenal, and positive as the internet has become a global vehicle of hatred and lies. On the one hand it suggests that the gains that we have made since the 1960s are still being challenged, but it raises the question did 'we' ever manage to change 'their' minds on issues of race and gender to name just two issues relevant to HA? This apparent division in society, as evident in the UK as it is in the US, suggests that a core group of people will cling to their concept of the nation, their sense of belonging, and that at times of economic distress, blame others for their predicament without offering a sensible solution to the problem that does not refer the matter back to the State itself. Here, what we have seen since the end of the Cold War is that far from releasing formerly oppressed people into a new world of liberty, opposition to democracy and liberty has remained strong and actually grown in places where they were not supposed to, Russia and Turkey being two good examples, while the process that unravelled the Communist states has only briefly touched the state in the Middle East where democracy and liberty are still subject to the owners of the State.
The lowest point so far has not just been the blatant lies that were told in the UK during the EU Referendum campaign, but the ease with which elements in the US have revived a form of politics thought redundant, using a language that is crude and provocative, to take ownership of a space in the public discourse which most of us thought had been left behind, precisely because being crude and provocative does not tend to lead to sensible policy-making or, crucially, produce the end-result which is an improved standard of living for all, and a more hopeful vision of their future. What is supposed to be political change, threatens to become political destruction, or translates political change into a bonfire out of whose ashes a new phoenix will arise, which is great unless you are one of the people turned to ash in the process. A grim lexicon to use when one thinks of the time when people really were turned to ash so that others could build their brave new world. It would be easy to slip into despair but the challenge is to maintain the kind of politics 'we' want with the language it deserves and not become redundant and expand the spaces used by those who promise everything and deliver nothing.
