Reflections on the travails of working with American ‘progressive’ activists today

I like to think, borrowing from Deleuze the idea that theoretical thinking should be polemical or or combative in this sense, its enemy ‘personae’ being objects of thought, not participants in some imagined social theater in which people posture with positions that manifest their beautiful selves or souls in order to seek supportive approval from the other participants so that they feel suitably situated in the Heimat of the happy house of a support group.  I have an argument to make that I wanted to address to certain people based upon the affirmations they were asserting, which are propositional claims, not advertisements for identities or personal dating ads.  A group of people meeting for a purpose, let alone in the context of some (already) shared political project (which is not in doubt or question), surely they do not need to check each other out to decide if they want to be drinking friends, or do they?  Yet, I was wrong in this sense: Americans today don’t think and talk usually in the way I prefer and expected; it’s quite old world.  So I am in the awkward position of objecting theoretically on a point that I cannot be opposed to practically.  It isn’t possible.  I returned to America from studying in France and found my old social problems as misfit in most places (not all) redoubled.  If I see people again in this organization, with its wonderful and very professionally organized work, which for years now has done so much to bring to popular attention the very idea that Jews within Judaism can unproblematically oppose Israel’s violence towards so many of its residents and neighbors, I am going to act with caution and studied courtesy.  I will at the same time continue, wherever I can, to try to explore in the writer’s work of thoughtful experimentation, to try to work not just at some sort of righteous enforcement of the recognized commanding truths as some would act in teaching their kids, but also to try to think as carefully as possible, as I do, in my perfectly amateur way, in this hobby of me of writing blog posts that some people tell me they find useful, and in this to say what I think about some of the important matters we should quarrel about.  In this it is good, not bad, to be as sharp, as possible; thinking and writing are for ‘cutting’ as Foucault put it. 

Yes, in America you must be very careful about what you say to anyone.  It’s peculiar to life here, and I here this confirmed frequently by people from many places.  So you want to say what you think is important not directly even with the people you would address directly if you could.  It is even harder in America because our culture has in salutary but sometimes confusing ways some developed extended consequences in its forms from the lack of a distinction in modern English between polite and familiar address, linguistically distinct in most European languages, and we also curiously identify the affirmation (or negation) of statements with that of the position of enunciation and its representational remarking, as distinct from what it is that I am asserting or claiming, is what someone wants to call attention to. 

Allow me if you will a bit of digressive fun here (or skip this paragraph if you prefer), because this seemingly banal point is relevant.  From “This is the case” one infers the expanded form “I assert/believe/claim/propose/humbly suggest, etc. that ‘this is the case’”, and sometimes, the fact that this is what I am saying (to you, here and now),; or, as is expected for the sake of decency by some people, “It is my opinion that ‘this is the case’,” when what they mean is something like “I am not pretending to be some tryant who would seem in saying something to dictate obedient assent to the belief…”, violating their liberty of opinion, by daring to assert in its shortened form what otherwise is obviously a proposed, hypothetical assertion, as if it might merely be left as understood that people are perfectly free to disagree and so also could just say things they think are true, the contingent status of which not needing to be constantly reestablished and anxiously avowed.  It would just be left obvious that it is their opinion, as well as that they take it for true, could be mistaken and wrong though they hope not, would like you to agree and since they also think the matter important expect you will if you find it true, and might be willing to supply the evidence they observe and their reasoning, but also do not mean to annoy, interrupt, be otherwise impolite, nor even commit a lèse majesté if the enunciating “I” is not an authority authorized to make the statement in the instance).

Now, the important matter of enunciation consists of the fact that what I have said is not only a bit of information that has, making use of the convenience that you are there to receive it and I to get it in front of your attention, but also something I do in a peculiarly interpersonal, in way, as Buber thinks, intimate, way, because this bit of information, perhaps inevitably just in being said (more proximate to someone in the audience, hearing it, than would be something written and visible but also with a presence that is more variable, and for the recipient who is now a reader at more disposition, and here I this is true of emails though they are often not recognized as having this literally less compelling character) is said by me, and that, as in Buber, when “I” say something “to you,” if not in published writing where addressor and addressee are effectively unmarked and anonymous, it is a pertinent fact also that ‘there you are’ and ‘here I am’, which may be philosophically the condition of love, as well as revelation if what is presented may demand not only our attention to it but to the person presenting the statement and along with it their person, who, like the speaker, may also be demanding recognition and love.  How do comrades in a political discussion group show or avow and demonstrate the love while also talking critically about the ‘it’s’ or thingly matters of the topics at hand?  For any statement addressed to a person or read as such is liable to be misread, even and especially we who are supposed to think rigorously, and with a demanding insistence that is also rational and democratic on what is just, and at the same time cultivate the love we owe to the comrade and colleague no less than the neighbor, stranger, friend, etc.  

II.
  
I had begun to reflect with some pique on the problem of something like communitarianism, while contemplating participation in a group of Jewish leftists who are a subgroup with their own distinct interests within that organization, and who, in what I thought was the context of discussing being against the war while remaining committed to Judaism, were talking about how we, or they, must become spiritual humanists in the American New Age style (in France where I studied this basically does not exist and is very strange, and also funny), ransacking the archive of non-Western cultural traditions, which gave me the odd sense that I am back in Southern California in the 1970s, with neo-hippies people looking for communes, enlightenments, every kind of (ancient) religious Orientalism, hoping to save their souls somehow, in what I think was the latest replay of the faddish trends of people doing this from the Transcendentalists to Madame Blavatsky.  My reaction was that all of this is alright perhaps if that’s what you need (since after all we have freedom of religion in America and both the Jewish worlds and more relevantly here those of political activism are quite inclusive), but it has almost and probably exactly nothing to do with what we all want to do right now, which is stop this fucking war and everything that has led into making it possible): 
 
That the group excluded me from further participation on the grounds that ideas that are expressed may not be discussed critically and debated, because to negate a concept or proposition and speak against it is to attack the person proposing it, thus insulting them, which was immediately said of me, that is to affirm norms of consensual conformity on the grounds that such groups are not mean for discussion, even when ideas are proposed and assent demanded or expected (at least dissent is unwelcome, though passing over in silence might have been allowed), is to affirm the very communitarian idea of identity (and identitarian idea of community) that I believe must be refused (which I have proposed not as policy to be enforced but as claim to be articulated; it was not welcomed, not addressed, and not refuted or replied to; the refutation was personal, ad hominem, attacking me for being impolite while attributing the motive and responsibility for this to me, making clear that that is not permitted.  The organization’s corporate directorship, informed by one of the intolerant offended persons who researched by personal blog to find an excuse to reject me, then sent me a letter announcing my expulsion, saying that my posts, which do not mention persons or organizations by name, indicated that I might make some people uncomfortable (which, ironically, would not likely have happened in any part of the Israel/Palestine territorial complex itself). Alas, American culture has in it, except maybe among the black and hispanic poor people in neighborhoods like mine who argue with each other quite freely, this mandatory flattery and affirmation, so that political discussion groups are all effectively support groups of a kind.  But we are opposing fascism, in Jewish Palestine and America, and I am interested in studying and inquiring into what are fascism’s elements and how we can make ourselves if not the happiest spiritual community in the Jewish world at this time, at least as non-fascist as we can, recognizing that this is not a simple task but a difficult one.  Principle one for me is that in discussions on the left must follow the norm of participatory democracy, which is not a corporate administrative state but a revolutionary one, which is that statements and positions are to be criticized and debated. 
 
The letter I received, from their Managing Director, reads:
 
”It has come to our attention that several posts you’ve shared on your personal website could potentially violate the policies we asked all conference attendees to agree to: namely, “any behavior deemed inappropriate, discriminatory, harassing, or intolerant toward any other attendee, speaker, staff member, or third party.”  After careful consideration and review, we regret to inform you that we must revoke your attendance at this year's conference due to violating those policies. This decision was not made lightly, and it reflects our commitment to maintaining a respectful and inclusive environment for all attendees.”
 
I am told that “this decision was not made lightly,” and also “after careful consideration and review.”  Yet  no information is provided as to what I had said that they found offensive.  I wondered if perhaps what was important is not anything I had said but the fact that someone had complained. Not that I had something someone didn’t like, but that someone didn’t like something that I had said. These are not the same thing in fact at all: In the one case, the problem really is what you did, in the other it is only that someone says they were offended, and the fact alone is all that matters. An insider I consulted who was in the group reading the email posts in question said I had insulted the person, but in fact they objected to what I said not about them but some ideas, which is not the same thing. My remarks were not ad hominem; their treatment of me and of what I had said was. In this corporate policy declaration of legalese worded vaguely enough that it can obviously be applied as in their wise judgement they decide they find it in their interest to do, and which actually says nothing except that whatever I said it somehow can be taken as violating their official declaration of principles or prescribed attitudes, written in the typical blindingly opaque corporatese, especially and perhaps only because someone complained (in administrative legality often the accuser is always right).  And the violation is actualy said to be found not in what I had said in the discussion group that someone was actually complaining in consequence of, but, so they say, because of something they found that I had said somewhere, in this case not to the putatively offended persons nor in any discussion organized by them and occurring on their property and involving their resources (as their subgroups with their email chats may be supposed to), but in my own proper literary space.  If I had written a poem they didn’t like and published it in an obscure magazine (my website, whose few readers include apparently the fewer people still who, annoyed be me for whatever cause or reason, have consulted it searching for actionable dirt) is, surely, more obscure still), they might have cancelled me for that.  I have heard that some companies now demand of their employees that they sign over access to all of their social media accounts, as the bosses intend to surveil, censor and approve or delete anything they post or write, anywhere.  In the corporate state political nonprofits do what they can for their mission on behalf of their stakeholders, but those of them who are rank and file volunteer workers and participants in their political actions apparently relinquish all personal liberty, like professional revolutionaries on the old Leninist model, which now applies in place of the otherwise open informality of discussion when and if the leaders see fit.  No specific conditions of participation that I am taken to have violated were stated in advance; rather, these principles are applied by the judges with hermeneutic creativity in a dubious ex post facto way, which actually renders compliance impossible, which may be part of their purpose in this case.  And that would be of course the reason for not being informative at all with me as to what I was actually accused and summarily convicted of doing.  If they did this, I could challenge it.  I would do what in Jewish communities in thd old world would be done by going before a rabbinical court or bet din.  I would be allowed to make my guess.  But this is not a situation of justice and legality, but business and interest.  They wanted me excluded, and the most effective way to do that was to tell me this while giving me no information that could enable me to make any appeal.  Their decision obviously is not based on any viable reason.  Someone doesn’t like me, and the kind of extreme legal caution that corporate businesses regularly take is the operative norm.  It has occurred to me it is probably only in now defunct societies with minimal but real pretensions to a democracy of workers because the state was socialist, that complaints such as mine would make much sense to anyone, supposing as I seem arrogantly to do something like some kind of rationality of decision in something like a participatory democracy, such as employees might want to have (in the United States today they do not) if summarily fired (here, the bosses are always right, and to justify this companies are compared to persons and decisions about people in them are treated like matters of who to befriend or date, liberty in which is obviously every individual’s right).  It also occurs to me that ‘progressive’ social organizations and meetings should conduct their participations and discussions in ways that model the more democratic society that might be key to an alternative to the fascism that is so much also what we oppose when we oppose the corporate state that uses universities that host research and study to supply munitions for wars of annhilation and that also shut down protests and do these things while make decisions with little transparency or semblance of the democracy that they once depended vitally upon in their internal operations, as these problems are in fact very much bound up together.        

So I am not told what were the reasons given, including the specific allegation and its alleged facts, nor the reasoning behind the interpretations of those facts to the inference that I can be regarded as one who does (or might—their wording is carefully proleptic, anticipatory, on this, as they are inferring from the complaint, according to what they say, not that I have engaged in “behavior” (meaning written speech, the examples of which are not cited) that might be “deemed” (so considered in the wise judgement of the appropriately designated authorities who would perform this “deeming”) that as “inappropriate” (meaning irrelevant, in which case people reading with discretion might just ignore them, or that they don’t follow implicit directions as to what may and may not be said?), “discriminatory” (meaning they believe I want those who disagree with me to be excluded, when I have no power to do so, nor made any such attempt, unless it is inferred that the expression of a disagreement is an attempt to exclude?), “harassment” (I suspect their criteria for this are as loose as corporations that are enforcing chilling speech code policies and rapidly cancelling those whom the majority speaking as a chorus, whose speech represents the common opinion but does not actually propose anything and of course cannot be refuted but only followed), or “intolerant,” not towards positions taken that some person might articulate but towards persons themselves, including “third parties,” whoever they might be (never have I named any person or entity in the arguments I make, generally, in my blog posts, and am now determined more than ever to confine there unless and excepting when it is quite clear to me that my opinion is welcome, as I now see it was unwelcome here on this point). Then they go on to say that I am suspected of only “potentially violating,” as one who “could” do so, they infer or suppose, their rules and principles (in which case they could reasonably be expected to just explain them to me, along with the relevant operative interpretation of this policy language they are relying upon, and which did surprise me).  Though you might think that if my putative violation is only ascribed, or imagined, as “potential,” they could just ask me to not do whatever it is that feared I might do.  Now they say I have violated “these policies,” though there is zero clarity as to how they are convinced this is the case, though their speaking of “careful consideration and review” does suggest the likelihood that some dissenting viewpoint (which Jewish traditions from the Talmud on welcome and expect) either was considered or might be, though of course I was not invited to submit any, as the decision was made unilaterally, without any right accorded me of participation, rebuttal, or appeal.  If they were to ask me to agree to not speak combatively to others or write as I did, I would have little problem there. 
 
I note, here addressing also how many readers are today disposed: If, reading these remarks, they respond in the sort of perfunctory way corporate agencies and many people in informal contexts usually do, one expects they will give a quite rhetorical tone to their reading of my reflections, focusing on perceived purposes and ends, possibly even claiming as so many people will that it is really the manner of my speaking and writing they do not like, including partly my admittedly somewhat scholastic manner of elaborating my thoughts with care, though anyone who knows my writing knows that is my style, and there is good reason to think it appropriate in a context like this where it seems to me worthwhile to try to make my thinking clear, especially with people who judge, media style, summarily, based on immediate and first impressions, seizing on what they see as a tone, possibly even misreading that tone in accordance with their own prejudices or predispositions to judge in a way based on impressions to which ‘evidence’ is reduced rather than the careful attention and sound reasoning the openness to which if not participation in they indicate they engage in themselves, as Talmudic judges do and, alas, corporate executives and their parliamentary or adjudicative bodies do not.       
 
At the risk of being absurd, I return to the above considerations on the problem of saying something when you are, alas, saying, or taken as saying, it to someone (which could be nastily unfair if you don’t know them well enough and their morals really are right on all points though have dared assert that X is F and not G, or that, whatever.  Must I say, to be polite, “I don’t mean to offend you, and affirm in solidarity your desire and motives etc., and (support group-like) the valid things you are saying, but… all the same, I disagree with what you were saying.  Your enunciative intention is good and I love you, we’re all so beautiful here, and I am saying this as a way of asking to be excused so that you are not offended, when I say, I disagree that X is F; I think X is not F, in fact it’s G, because (and then I say why), as if we are all adults and not permanent adolescents of that strange American kind.   In an aside, an observing member of the group told me I must affirm a general claim they are asserting in order to criticize a minor aspect of it, but I think the issue is plain speaking, clear thinking, and the minimal “democracy” of dialogue.   
 
I had joined this group based on an email list because I wanted, very much in fact, to find a group of observant religious Jews in New York City where I live (or in an online form) who meet for daily and shabbat prayers and the like.  I am one of the many Americans in the Jewish world, even in New York where there more of us than in any city outside Israel, who has felt isolated in the context of this divisive war, because every shul or synagogue I know of,  including some that I otherwise quite like, is Zionist, supports Israel, and may utter some diplomatically conciliatory or thoughtfully comprehensive remarks about regret or even opposition to this genocidal war, I know from experience that I am not welcome in one of these places, and I would love to find a place where I am.  Yes, I overreacted to some people saying things I thought made little sense.  I have written this post along with similar things partly to clarify what I think are some important points, and of course a slight reflection reveals and reminds me that even among leftist Jews, one avoids talking too much when more sustained argument is best made in writing, where no one will get the impression of an attitude which is possible and problematic in fact, and into which I and anyone, including others of us, might easily stray.  The main point we all agree on is we are into Judaism and anti-Zionists.  I come from traditions and tendencies where friends argue with each other, as political groups used to, and I know that as that can be divisive in destructive ways, there are practical advantages to keeping debate out of discussion groups, though it continues to surprise me how much young Americans of this generation manage their social life with conversations in which disagreement unless carefully stage managed is unpleasant, just as American company bosses think “to argue” means to act like a disobedient nasty brat who talks back and makes himself unpleasant (which I may have done, and am sorry considering that it seems to be so, since one must always follow where possible the normative practices of the country or place one is in), rather than what it means in philosophy (which was my field), can still mean to us critics and writers, and what it means in those democratic spaces that involve “debate.”  It does trouble me that young Americans today when they discuss something only “share” their opinions, basically expecting affirmation.  They affirmation they want is personal and is a form of love.  That I so annoyed and offended these comrades ultimately saddens me, as my bad.  We are fighting an adversary, and set thereof, certainly not each other.  It seems sometimes that must be made clear.  That’s where we are.     
 
I now am quite uncertain if I would want to attend their conference if they relented and said they wanted me.  I am a writer, have translated pieces for the anti-Zionist cause, and as a film critic and writer, I like to think, ideally, that in everything I do where I can, I will try to be considerate of the cause of the Palestinian people and ending this horrifying war.  I doubt now that I want to engage very much in organized protest actions where I risk being arrested, and have insufficient knowledge of political social movement and organization strategy to likely be able to contribute much to their planning, which I believe is being done by them for some time now in a way that is so professional and successful in getting the attention we want for this most vital of causes that I am profoundly admiring of their leadership, which I am happy to follow.  I am now working on trying to see what else I might usefully contribute to this cause as a translator, interested in both the Palestinian liberation movement and developing possibilities within Judaism that are genuinely non-nationalist and anti-Zionist, which is a hill that is both very steep to climb and one yielding ample useful elements of such a worldview for those who would.  One lesson for anyone participating in any activist group or subgroup within it is surely to keep your eye quite fully on the mark of what is useful.  Writers on the left and professional activists who work with organizations and plan and engage in protest actions are distinct but overlapping types of people or social roles.  I do want to think about and discuss what we should do.  All the other things we can think about or want as we look around the places we live and the larger world our government is so prone to destructively intervene in, those things will stay with us, we will tarry with them, and of course among the many practices today that have been creatively developed among liberal and progressive Jews who are often so eager to live the most fully ethical lives, diversity must rule and dissenters from a practice as distinct from a idea or proposition can only politely leave that chatroom for their preferred one.   Solidarity around our common purpose, I don’t think this is in doubt.  We are engaged in the (nonviolent) civil combat in the context of a war against a people who are our political friends.  To fight an enemy you need to be a group of political friends.  We writers and Jews can be quarrelsome people, and we struggle with what is good and who we are involved with, as I still try to find and work at the best role, the best work.  It is not easy to be a good comrade, and it will not be easy to win this struggle.  I have been assured by an insider that those matters and questions that do need to be discussed and argued indeed are.  
 
We are anti-fascists and are also trying to be.  This has external and ‘internal’ dimensions.  In the short term, only perhaps, it may be comforting to recognize that our directly political challenges are the simpler ones here.  I am a materialist.  Today political groups on the left are not defined by ideological rigor the way they were in the old days of classical Marxism.  There are great practical advantages in this.  Yes, it’s a separate, or, for tactical reaons, importantly separable, matter, all the considerations of the spirituality notions, and the question of when and how you can discuss, debate, and argue.  If an organization becomes so consensual that what happened to me as I have described above is common, it is probably both a shame and a loss.  Does it matter to their effectiveness?  Perhaps it only matters to some idea of ‘social movement’ organizations being participatorily democratic in the sense that allows what I above dared to call ‘argument’ (in a use of the term I dutifully explain), or even to those movement gatherings that are not run by organizations with a basically non-profit corporate structure that could operate as they did with me, though I believe they need not, as universities today sometimes, and increasingly do, but at one time did not quite, with faculty and even student committees playing a role in governance that involved open debate, though even corporations can, if they choose, be transparent when disciplining members and would-be participants, disclosing rather than concealing the thinking that is otherwise merely announced, applied, and enforced.  That is sad; is it necessary?  They acted with me as if responding to a threat, something corporations do constantly as they manage and police their employees and those participants who status is stakeholders is negligible in their calculations.  Then they issue in legalese a memorandum informing the fired, demoted, or disciplined party putatively who has been found guilty be mere accusation of whatever, usually slight, transgression the person is deemed in their risk-aversive cautionary measures that are meant to keep a fence around a narrowly defined organizational mission.  And of course in our media-driven popular culture now acquaintances do this often informally with each other.  It is not a problem of the left or right (though the far right blames it on the left only to defend its much greater concentration of decision-making authority effectively in private hands); it is a problem of our corporate state and its culture that the left is stuck dealing with.  Many public organizations and membership-based nonprofit ones that do wonderful things are sites of real struggle between those defending the organization’s dedicated purpose (even against people on the inside who certainly share it) and those who push in opposite directions within them.  The progressive political organization that avoids these problems may suffer in consequence.  I found myself wondering as a consequence of these events what if anything I might do with them that could be productive and that they might welcome my doing.  The signs so far have been discouraging.  Larger patterns that they fit that are not particular to any persons, including such as myself, and that are particular and telling of, not anything proper to left politics or the thinking that drives it, but to other forces and tendencies in contemporary American society.  (That this company is headquartered in California may well contribute to my problems, though that is an uncertain supposition; people there typically consider themselves ‘liberal’ in ways I think are conservative, linked to their more privatized and property-obsessed culture, a little discussed but interesting historical fact.  As every New Yorker knows, here where you encounter people daily in trains on the street as they live and move not so much enclosed in sealed private compartments, we allow a certain contentiousness that they usually don’t).  If this (admirably in staging protest events) professionally run outfit is like an army (corporations are, it has been said, organized on that, hierarchical as well as bureaucratic, model), then the question is only what if any well-slotted role I would fit.  Though it was a conference I had originally, in response to an invitation, signed up for, which suggests some openness of direction as to either what all or some of us might do, in the situation of the current crisis we are in together and troubled by, raising tensions.  Organizations plan and act, rank and file members chat and affirm various possibilities presented, and many of us wonder what we can do, and how, and here as with so many things, my heart is with everyone among us who finds that many of the important questions are ones to which we are still seeking the answers.  It might be delightful, and work well, if organizations that are practically devoted to a task, whose members are there because they support it, would approach every topic that is of tangential interest to some participants for whom it intersects with their other values, identity projects, and sometimes even political commitments involving other issues (which people on the left and liberal-left often share) as worthy of discussion in some manner, but not in a way that is a condition of the work they are organized to do together.  That might be more interesting and useful for those seeking a coffee hour, and would almost certainly be more efficient and effective for the tasks at hand.