Safety, shibboleths, and sincerity in a time of war
A repuke of Zadie Smith's New Yorker essay on activism, Israel-Palestine, and the use of language
Thomas Chatterton Williams dared me to write this piece.
Okay, he wasn’t daring me specifically, but a challenge is still a challenge. And of course Williams isn’t really looking to find a better, competing piece. He’s just defending a friend and disingenuously throdding out the notion that people would rather heckle doers than do something themselves. Well, invocations of Roosevelt aside, I’m answering the call.
My actual insight, and yes ire, is squarely aimed at a piece Zadie Smith published via in the New Yorker on Sunday. The main thrust of it is that protestors are good, war is bad, Israel-Palestine is complicated (yet also oddly simple), and we should all aim to be more understanding of each other. If your eyes are already glazing over, it gets better (read: insipidly worse). The predictable reactions from ardent “anti-zionists” (as they’d call themselves) and/or pro-Palestinian activists have ranged from the justifiably unimpressed to the insane and libelous. I won’t join them. I thought Smith’s New Yorker piece was ultimately trash, but I won’t ad hom the woman herself or pretend she’s incapable of good work. I will, however, call out bad work when I see it. Let’s begin at the beginning. (I’m going paragraph by paragraph so as to avoid any claims of cherry-picking.)
In the introduction, Smith introduces the idea of “the danger of a politics without a philosophy.“ She speaks of “a politics unmoored, unprincipled, which holds as its most fundamental commitment its own perpetuation.” Honestly true and wise stuff, I’ll admit. I’d agree with her sentiment about the pitfalls of such politics, and I’d go further to say it applies to many modern activists and their various movements. She follows up in a short, numbered list the two principles she sees as driving the protests: the first being a “duty” to fight for “the weak” against “oppressive power” and the second being a “duty“ to do “by any means necessary.“ Again, sensible enough, even if one might quibble on the particulars (which she does get into in the very next paragraph).
Smith explains how these principles can be interpreted and acted upon. She notes that there is an urge to see “by any means necessary“ as a justification for violence, even homicide, yet she notes that the better side of valor here is actually to put one’s own life under threat, not those of any supposed oppressors. This is the path of Ghandi and MLK, she notes rightly. Even if one isn’t literally, mortally martyring oneself for a cause, many activists have historically been willing to suffer huge reputational and legal harm, and we should respect that commitment, per Smith. Two paragraphs in and we’re on pretty solid ground so far. I’m sad to say it won’t last.
Towards the very end of that paragraph, and throughout the succeeding one, Smith imbues people like road-blocking attention seekers and soup-on-art vandals with an unearned degree of moral weight and strategic acumen. I will agree with the notion that they are putting themselves in danger, which itself a principled stance and very alien to most of us. However, I would caution against reading as much into it as Smith does, since these same activists are overwhelmingly teens and young adults. Science has already shown that impulse control and overall brain development is slowed in young people from adolescence to college age. These kids, if I may call them that, aren’t thinking with the same level of reason and risk assessment as a fully grown, working adult. To ignore this or actively pretend otherwise is a grave mistake.
As she goes on, Smith admits to opting out of a protest that would align with her politics but imperil her visa status. She clearly feels a degree of guilt and shame over her seemingly hypocritical choice, and this is naturally influencing her views on the apparently more principled youths in her midst. She references the protests of the latter half of the 20th century, notably Civil Rights and the Vietnam War. She equates those latter day students to today’s campus agitators. And this is where she not only makes a crucial mistake, but really begins to flounder throughout the rest of the essay. I should also note that there are several more paragraphs yet. Another of the piece’s great weaknesses is its overwritten and overlong nature. I will try my best to avoid the same pitfalls here.
The people acting out on college campuses today, many of them not even students themselves, are far from principled and open to consequences. They overwhelmingly wear facemasks, assault or harass journalists who try to document their activities, and bemoan any penalties they suffer as both shocking and unacceptable. Smith does at least grok that these people are less principled in some of their harassing actions and toxic language (its a central theme in her article), but she fails to see, or at least admit, that the protestors here are actually a malicious presence on these campuses. Moreover, they’re acting out with an inpunity granted by both external sanction from political follower travelers (including school admin in some cases) and an unearned sense of moral superiority. Smith, for all her attempts at moderation and language policing, is actually part of this problem in some regards.
She does continue to have spots of insight and good lines, like when she says, “the point of a foundational ethics is that it is not contingent but foundational. That is precisely its challenge to a corrupt politics.“ Too true. These protestors betray their cause and their nominal civil disobedience forebearers with their own cruelty and craven disregard. But then in the next paragraph she begs the question on the “ethical necessity” of a ceasefire (a complex proposition that many oversimplify for reasons of naivete or obscurantism). Then she cooks the proverbial goose, and herself, with the line, “there is a dangerous rigidity to be found in the idea that concern for the dreadful situation of the hostages is somehow in opposition to, or incompatible with, the demand for a ceasefire.“ She goes on, “surely a ceasefire—as well as being an ethical necessity—is also in the immediate absolute interest of the hostages, a fact that cannot be erased by tearing their posters off walls.“ It all sounds nice, thoughtful, and nuanced. In reality, it’s a thoroughly under-researched and ill-advised bit of prattle.
No, a ceasefire isn’t some simple, obvious answer to the war in Gaza, nor to the greater Israel-Palestine conflict that’s raged, both hot and cold, for seveal decades now. Like a Pro-Palestine activist said recently on Twitter - be wary of those who call for peace without attending to justice. What would a ceasefire look like? (People who blithely call for one rarely address this thorny question.) Who has the most to gain from it at present? What happens when (not “if”) it’s inevitably broken again? After all, that’s exactly what Hamas did on October 7th, 2023 to set off this whole new stage of brutal warfare. They broke a previous ceasefire! And that wasn’t the first time Palestinian forces unilaterally did so.
It’s rather rich that Smith says the following in the next paragraph: “young people … insist upon an ethical principle while still being, comparatively speaking, a more rational force than the supposed adults in the room, against whose crazed magical thinking they have been forced to define themselves.“ (Emphasis mine.) These kids aren’t the voices of reason, and the only “magical thinking” I’ve seen on offer so far is from people of all ages who insist that “ceasefires” can solve everything regardless of how they’re outlined, adjudicated, and enforced. Smith continues, “the equality of all human life was never a self-evident truth in racially segregated America. There was no way to ‘win’ in Vietnam. Hamas will not be ‘eliminated.’“ Wait, Hamas categorically cannot be eliminated? Says who? And why, praytell, would someone say this? Coalitions in pursuit of justice have eliminated Nazis, Fascists, and yes, even terrorist groups. Many times before, both in the recent past and more distant history.
Another area of disagreement between Smith and I is on the morality of how Israel has prosecuted this war. It will come as no surprise to keen observers that I, as well as several others (including journalists and the International Court of Justice) do not consider it genocide (a term Smith avoids) or even a “monstrous and brutal mass murder” (a direct quote, and one that’s not especially less damning than the “g” word). I freely grant that mistakes have been made. I even allow for the possibility that some in the Israeli war cabinet—a mixed government coalition, we must remember—have vengeful bloodlust, a sentiment which is shared and acted upon by certain IDF operatives. And yet, what of the actual facts on the ground? What of the harsh realities inherent to war? Those quick to condemn Israel should check the history of how other nations acted in comparable conflicts. It’s funny how a piece that preaches nuance and understanding in some areas can be so bought in on a Manichean moralty fable vision of war in other contexts.
Smith speaks of “dead children” as a focal point that can “refocus [our] minds on reality,” yet she never considers that such images may be propagating for reasons of crass propaganda as much as any other factors. Yet the crux of my gripes aren’t even with a difference of opinion on I/P, where I admit my own biases may cloud my judgment. My primary concerns are with more provably undercooked, even outright false, claims and arguments she puts forward. “To send the police in to arrest young people peacefully insisting upon a ceasefire represents a moral injury to us all. To do it with violence is a scandal,“ Smith says. Yet she neglects to address what precipitated those police actions, including calls for help from faculty, other students (the vast majority do not cosign the activities terrorizing their schools), and even humble janitorial staff.
Smith goes on, “as to which postwar political arrangement any of these students may favor, and on what basis they favor it—that is all an argument for the day after a ceasefire.“ Nonsense! We’e talking about the central factors motivating the protests, and what these agitators ultimately want. It’s not a tangential digression or ad hominem to ask “why are you doing this” or “what governmental outcome to do you favor beyond a simple armistice.” Again, Smith fails to grasp the truth of the matter(s) on which she opines. “One state, two states, river to the sea—in my view, their views have no real weight in this particular moment.” Sure. Just as the territory lines or war debts don’t matter regarding Russia-Ukraine, right? “After a ceasefire, the criminal events of the past seven months should be tried and judged, and the infinitely difficult business of creating just, humane, and habitable political structures in the region must begin anew.” More wishcasting. But we’re sadly not done yet.
After repeating for the umpteeth that “ceasefire” is the “ethical” must of the moment, Smith turns her sights on the revolutionary phrase-mongers who use slogans, mantras, and buzzwords as tribal signifiers and loyalty tests. This is the infamous and eponymous section about “shibboleths.” She laments how we seemingly just utter certain words or phrases by rote, and fail to actually consider what they mean. Oh the irony. She is right to call out people who demand group fealty before treating a stranger with basic human decency and understanding. Yet she never stops to ask herself whether she’s doing the same thing in a slightly different fashion.
Ultimately my read on this piece is that it fails as both good writing and good polemic. I’m unmoved by the prose, not swayed by the thesis, and certainly impressed enough with most of the discreet observations. A few good barbs does not equal a cohesive, compelling whole. I would rather read a better crafted, and better argued, screed that challenged more than just a few basic assumptions. One that offered a true perspective beyond platitudes. Whatever our feelings on the war or the protests, no one is served by an essay like Smith’s, except maybe effete intellectuals who’d rather self-soothe about how everyone else is missing something than reckon with the possibility (nay, likelihood) that they are.