"NECROPOLITICS" -- How US & Israel Are Ushering In A New Age Of Casual Immorality & Staggering Cruelty
Once you are taught to cease to identify with others on the basis of their humanity, the work of necropolitics is complete.
Three-year-old Ahmed Shabat survived an air strike on his home in Beit Hanoun, in mid-November. But his father, mother and older brother were killed, leaving him orphaned and legless. We and the Israelis did that. Three…years…old. BBC, 12/4/23.
Could we be more cruel? Given our history, no doubt.
By Mark Taylor
DeMOCKracy.ink (7/29/24)
In the immediate world of my fairly liberal community there is literally no discussion of the obscene genocide our country is fully participating in. Early in the slaughter, I approached the minister of a very liberal LGBTQ-etc flag-flying congregation in my neighborhood about the possibility of forming a peace and justice committee to host educational activities and some level of action to respond to the genocide. She nervously said she’d get back to me, and didn’t. I occasionally see her in the community and she gives a nervous smile and quietly scurries away.
I see no lawn signs opposing the genocide. No bumper stickers. A nearby home had an Israeli flag on their porch for a few days. The small Palestinian flag pin on my book bag is the only such image I have seen.
Protests I have attended involved driving two to four hours.
Could we be more cruel?
Here, safe in small town life in the Upper Midwest, life rolls comfortably along. Unless you seek it out in the news, there is no hint of the suffering, racist death campaign, brutal dismembering of children and the cruelty of a spreading polio epidemic wracking Gaza. Could we be more cruel? Given our history, no doubt. But we have become comfortably immune from the reality of what our government is arming, funding and running lies and diplomatic cover for. Cruelty in our name and on our dime, but unspoken.
As Guardian columnist Nesrin Malike notes below, there is a name for such deadly obtuse, entitled privilege: Necropolitics, which divides the world into the safe and unsafe brutalized deathworlds of the living dead.
Independent columnist Caitlin Johnstone observes in her column below, the active editing away of such issues in favor of our privileged norm is to exile the grotesque reality of the deathworlds we create, profit from and rest upon. It is the first step in our mass delusion and spiraling, limitless casual cruelty.
The Endless US/Israel Genocide Is Hurling The World Toward Normalizing Obscene Levels Of Death, Suffering & Casual Cruelty
What world emerges after this? The war on Gaza is simply too big, too live, too relentless for its forced normalisation to occur without unintended consequences. The end result is all of humanity degraded; the end result is a world in which when the call comes to aid people in need, no one will be capable of heeding it.
By Nesrin Malik
The Guardian (7/29/24)
On Wednesday, Benjamin Netanyahu received a standing ovation after his speech to US Congress. It was a moment that seemed to usher in a new phase of the war in Gaza – one in which it is not only tolerated as an unfortunate necessity, but is seen as something for which unquestionable support will continue without limits, without red lines and without tactical discretion. Israel’s relentless erasure of families, homes, culture and infrastructure – without end or indication of when any of it will satisfy its goals – is now just a part of life.
At the same time, the presumptive Democratic contender, Kamala Harris, makes a nonsensical appeal that “we cannot allow ourselves to become numb” to what is happening and that she “will not be silent”, when the only thing that matters is that the US continues to arm and fund Israel.
It all represents a dissolution not only of international law, but a fundamental human law. Of the transgressions that upend everyday life, death by murder, as has been alleged, is perhaps the worst, most degrading crime. The sanctity of human life, the notion that it cannot be terminated without the highest justification, is what separates us from barbarism. And so as the past nine months have unfolded, with each landmark episode of killing, there were many moments when you thought: surely this is it?
Hope torched by reality
When the first grey children were pulled out of the rubble. When unarmed civilians were captured on camera being picked off by drone missiles. When the five-year-old Hind Rajab died, waiting for help among her dead relatives, and when the ambulance workers dispatched to help her were killed. When World Street Kitchen workers were struck by precision missiles. When a man with Down’s syndrome was attacked by an Israel Defense Forces (IDF) dog in his home, and then left to die after soldiers removed his family and prevented them from returning. But the war didn’t stop.
There have, of course, been attempts to preserve and enforce the fragile rules of international and humanitarian law. And again, you hoped that, as the judgments came, they would usher in the end of the assault. When the international court of justice (ICJ) declared that Palestinians had a plausible right to protection from genocide and asked Israel to halt its Rafah offensive. When the international criminal court (ICC) made an application for an arrest warrant for Netanyahu. And when the ICJ found Israel responsible for apartheid.
In that effort, they were joined by millions of protesters around the world whose actions roiled their domestic politics in a way that suggested the situation was not tenable. But the war has found its place again, nestled within the status quo. The issue of Gaza played out through our parochial politics and overlapped with its discontents. It produced protest votes that helped to send a record number of independents into parliament in the UK and delivered electoral upsets for establishment politicians. University campuses in the US witnessed historic scenes of protest and heavy-handed policing.
Acceptable ‘deathworlds’ of necropolitics
Even though what has come about is a landmark shift in global public opinion on Israel, it still matters not a bit to those in Gaza who are not even aware of what is happening as they dodge bombs, seek food and dig up their dead. All that came of it was even more defiance and belligerence from Israel, condemnation of legal judgments from its allies, and the vilification and dismissal of large numbers of people who just want the killing to stop. All of this seems to say: yes, this is the world we live in now. Get used to it.
What does getting used to it look like? It looks like accepting that there are certain groups of people who can be killed. That it is, in fact, reasonable and necessary that they should die in order to maintain a political system that is built on the inequality of human life. This is what the philosopher Achille Mbembe calls “necropolitics” – the exercising of power to dictate how some people live and how others must die.
Necropolitics creates “deathworlds” where there are “new and unique forms of social existence in which vast populations are subjected to living conditions that confer upon them the status of the living dead”. In those deathworlds the killing of others, and the destruction of their habitat through epic military capabilities whose impact is never experienced by the citizens of the countries responsible, confer even more value on the humanity of those in the “civilised” west. They are exempt because they are good, not because they are strong. Palestinians die because they are bad, not because they are weak. …
Achille Mbembe: On The Path Towards Death & Today’s Necropolitics
By Ian Withy-Berry (2/21/21)
This video is about necropolitics (necropower), the means by which governments dictate those who live and those who die. It builds off the ideas of Achille Mbembe in his 2003 piece "Necropolitics." … The video concludes with an exploration into the relation between freedom and death and the question: what is the necropolitical of today?
16-minute video
"Bad On Foreign Policy But Good On Domestic Policy" Is Just American Supremacist Psychopathy
Saying a US politician is “bad on foreign policy but good on domestic policy” is like saying “Sure my husband spends his weekends murdering hitchhikers, but he’s a good provider and he knows how to fix a flat tire.”
You’re talking about genocide, nuclear brinkmanship, mass military slaughter and deliberate mass starvation, and you’re placing these things on the same moral level as a candidate’s position on student loan debt.
By Caitlin Johnstone
Caitlin’s Newsletter (7/29/24)
Another annoying thing about US presidential elections is how all the liberals start babbling in unison about “foreign policy” and “domestic policy” like they’re two equal things which should be compartmentalized and separately considered.
“Okay sure, Kamala is bad on foreign policy with her support for what’s happening in Gaza and all, but she’s a lot better than Trump on domestic policy,” you’ll hear them say with increasing frequency and urgency.
Leaving aside the arguments one can make that Kamala Harris is actually quite bad on domestic policy, this separation of “foreign policy” and “domestic policy” is a dishonest talking point which only resonates with sloppy thinkers, and arises from a rather ugly underlying worldview.
American supremacist worldview
Splitting up “foreign policy” and “domestic policy” on questions of right and wrong only makes sense if you believe harming foreigners is more morally acceptable than harming Americans. “Kamala is bad on foreign policy but good on domestic policy” just means “American lives are innately superior.” It can only feel true from the inside of an American supremacist worldview.
Murder and abuse is wrong regardless of where in the world it happens to occur. The fact that it isn’t happening to you or anyone you know personally doesn’t make it more ethical, it just makes it more tolerable for you if you’re the sort of person who only cares about yourself and your loved ones. The fact that both Donald Trump and Kamala Harris support committing genocide in Gaza shouldn’t feel any more acceptable to you than if they supported committing genocide in Detroit. Morally speaking, there is no difference. …
Read the rest or 6-minute video
Never liked politics as always saw it as lies. However, had to change course on 7/10. I have done my research. My life basically has had to be on hold with what is happening in Palestine. I have resented it at times as i fought my battles when young. Retirement should not have been about this. 10 months in and a never ending onslaught of the worst evil ever. This is US. They laugh at us and tell us straight to our face: if Israhell had not been we would have had to invent it. They DID. US has to be the worst evil that has ever existed. This is reality. No more gimmicks, no more BS.
We are hopeless and lost. There is no lie this nation will not tell; no treaty we will not break; no pain we will not inflict; no child we will not kill. Recently, I stared at a post by a semi-retired Methodist minister who has a fairly large following on Facebook. He has not posted anything of importance on the genocide or proxy war in Gaza, but when the fire at First Baptist Church Dallas occurred he asked for everyone's prayers for the people of the church. Many of his followers included the praying hands emoji in response. Too many of my "progressive" friends are piling on now defending the ludicrous drag act at the Olympics opening ceremony. Hopeless and lost.