Emotion and Speech: Post-Truth

Over the last month, we have seen something hazardous in Western streets and colleges. All this was triggered by the events of October 7. We can argue whether Israel took the bait from Hamas or not. In my view, they did not. They did precisely what Hamas had not expected them to do. This is to negotiate with terrorists as they did for private Gilad Shalit. He was exchanged for a thousand Hamas fighters in Israeli prisons. Some were some of the most committed who went back to Hamas.

A few of those people helped plan the October 7 raid that led to 1400 dead Israelis and 240 hostages from multiple nationalities. Given Israel did its best to recover one private, it would not be crazy for Hamas to expect Israel to exchange these people, including babies, for every Hamas prisoner in Israeli prisons. This has not happened. Instead, Israel has launched operations in Gaza, less so in the West Bank, with some exchanges on the northern border with Hezbollah, as well as some in Syria.

This is not about Israel. It’s about the West and the reaction of young people to these events. It is also about universities and how some ideas have polluted the discussion. Mind you, I was there when they became a thing. In my mind, they have utility when examining history but should not become a theory of everything or replace morality for context.

Ideas and College

So, let’s talk about college. This is not me being physically there. It critiques what we see in places like Harvard, Cornell, Columbia, Concordia, and USC. We are seeing a spike in antisemitic acts at colleges. One 21-year-old Cornell student is facing prison time for threats.

We have had other events where a healthy discussion on campus has been replaced with intimidation. It’s primarily Jewish students who feel unsafe. However, there is also a spike with Muslim students. However, it seems to be lower. That said, some people have been fired for cause. And Muslim students at places like McGill now celebrate terrifying their fellow Jewish peers.

The video posted on Twitter is an incitement to violence. Sadly, it’s not just McGill. It’s Western universities. They range from San Diego State to Columbia, Cornell, McGill, and others. Most involve the removal of posters with those whom Hamas took hostage on Oct 7.

As the last month has passed, this poster removal was not a spur-of-the-moment thing. It’s organized, and it’s about erasure. People are triggered by the reality of what happened on Oct 7. They want to erase it. In many cases, they call this propaganda or even deny the events of October 7 happened. I don’t have to wonder what is the Venn diagram of Holocaust denial. Except this is happening in real-time.

This brings me to college and at least the American so-called left. Why are these people doing this? Part of this is the need for more analytical rigor. Part of this is plain old antisemitism. When a Columbia professor said early on that there was context to the Oct 7 pogrom, my ears perked up. Yes, I was there before in Deconstruction and post-modern thought. It was the glory days of the end of the Soviet Union and the collapse of Marxist ideology.

This had consequences for our studies of Russia as well. They went away, and while post-colonial studies did everything, they never touched the Russian empire. However, colleges and the humanities, in particular, got much wrong.

So, what happened after the collapse of Marxism? Many colleges and my advisor recommended it as a tool of historiography went with both Michelle Foucault and Jacques Derrida. I read the Archeology of Knowledge and Madness and Civilization on my way to my master's thesis project. They were invaluable in analyzing the Spanish Inquisition of the late Bourbon period in New Spain and the rise of the Latin American Enlightenment. My subject was Fray Servando Teresa de Mier Noriega y Guerra.

Madness and Civilization was especially good at setting the stage for the power relationship between the crown, the church, and one of the intellectual founders of an independent Mexican state. Like other academic tools, it helped us understand a past that is in some ways alien to us. While the end stage of the Spanish Inquisition was no longer burning conversos at the stake, it was still using corporal torture to obtain confessions from my perch in the late 20th century. That’s alien. This is where Foucault was useful. I could have used the tools of economic history, including, yes, Marxism. There is an excellent history of the British Empire using these tools. Read E.P Thomson to understand how the British working class took shape.