What do you think, is this take on Biden’s recent comment appearing to advocate for a permanent ceasefire in the war in Palestine too optimistic?
"This is a 180 like we’ve probably never seen in US foreign policy. Biden is now essentially calling for a ceasefire When less than 3 weeks ago the White House officially called a ceasefire “wrong, repugnant and disgraceful”… He literally went from saying Hamas could benefit from a ceasefire to saying Hamas benefits from continuing the war…
This feels like a watershed moment. Washington normally never cares about world public opinions, especially on matters of wars. All the more because it’s normally extraordinarily powerful at shaping the narrative in whichever way it seeks. But not this time. This time - maybe for the first time - Washington lost the propaganda war in a stunning way, almost immediately.
It’s of course due to the unprecedented scale of the massacre in Gaza, and the sheer cruelty of it: very, very hard to spin this in a positive way… Also probably due to the fact this is a 75 years old issue so people have had ample time to educate themselves, as well as organize myriads of associations and groups to counter the narrative.
But I think there’s more to it. I think that this reflects - particularly among the younger generations - an overwhelming desire to break with America’s militarism, with the cruel ways of the American empire. A desire to revendicate loud and clear the fact that all human lives matter, not only those that are aligned with the West. And this also signals the emergence of extremely powerful antibodies against war propaganda: too much of it has led to a form of immunity, people just don’t buy the bullshit anymore.
Important as well, this reveals once again that we now live in a multipolar world, where America’s relative power is vastly diminished. The America of the early 2,000s could afford to say “fck you, what are gonna do?” to the entire global South and they’d have been right: what were they going to do? But today, and this undoubtedly played a role in Biden’s decision, Washington just can’t afford to act in ways the entire global South disagrees with (except India, and now Argentina…).
It’s not all positive. The most worrying aspect of this war to me is that it also revealed a broad international coalition of far right parties and movements all united by an extreme Islamophobic ideology. So extreme that they don’t see any problem with killing Muslim women and children by the thousands (alongside journalists, UN workers, etc.). Le Pen in France was Israel’s staunchest supporter, Geert Wilders in the Netherlands, Milei in Argentina, Modi in India, pretty much all the Republicans in the US, etc. All 100% aligned with the Netanyahu government whom they see as the flag bearer of the war of civilization they want to embroil us into. And they’re gaining ground, scarily enough: both Wilders and Milei got elected during the war… Even more scary to me, this war revealed a media ecosystem - particularly in Europe - that is woefully unequipped to question these guys. Heck in many countries such as France (which I followed closely), the media were largely behind them and Macron not only did little to fight their ideology but insanely empowered it by, for instance, organizing a “march against antisemitism” and letting Le Pen join in alongside the French government.
So maybe one of the most important fractures in the world right now isn’t so much “the West vs the rest” (or even less “democracy vs authoritarianism” which I’ve always found to be utterly ridiculous framing) but an ideological fracture - that exists within both within the West and global South countries - between, simply put, people who don’t see a difference between human beings no matter their religion, culture or ethnie, and people who hierarchize all this, believing some races/religions/cultures must prevail over others.
Maybe this is me being an utopist but approached the right way, this fracture could actually be a blessing in disguise because it could ironically unite the world in a common fight for humanity. The ideas around “treat every people the same, have mutual respect, respect all civilizations, all cultures” is something that resonates enormously throughout the global South, in China, in Africa, in much of South America. It is also - as this war reveals - something that now resonates very strongly in large parts of the Western electorate: it is similar ideas that drove millions and millions of people to protest for Palestine on the streets of London, Ottawa or Washington. And that arguably forced Biden to back down, as we’re seeing here, which shows its potency. So maybe this is THE way to avoid the West/rest conflict or the new cold war that’s being imposed on us.
Human nature seems to demand conflict, something to rally around, to fight for and against. Why not make it a worthy fight, fighting for humanity, for equality, against the forces of hatred and division? Where the enemies aren’t for once based on race or religion (the Chinese, the Muslims, etc.) but on the contrary are those in our midsts who keep wanting to create these enemies? Again, I know this is widely idealistic but this type of idealism - shared by many - just made the president of the United States back down, so maybe it’s not THAT unrealistic…"
It can’t be denied that the imperial narrative control machine is very strong and does manage to convince a lot of people when it comes to Russia and China, but in this case i still think it is a good sign that it failed so spectacularly despite all of the mainstream media’s propaganda efforts and the billions of dollars invested into trying to control the narrative both online and off. The fact is that we have been seeing protests of a size we haven’t seen since the Iraq war, and in which the youth plays a large role much like happened during the Vietnam protests. And unlike is usually the case this time they show no signs of weakening, if anything global outrage continues to grow. Now maybe the whole ceasefire ploy is designed to push the issue back into obscurity and demobilize people while the imperialists continue to slowly and quietly advance the ethnic cleansing of Palestine. But i think that Al-Aqsa Flood represented a paradigm shift and the resistance will no longer allow things to go back to business as usual and will do whatever it takes to keep the issue in the view of the public so that people can’t simply look away from the atrocities that the Zionist regime is committing.
Maybe both mine and this Twitter user’s analyses are too optimistic, but lately i can’t help but feel hopeful when i look at the bigger picture. Things are possible now in the new multipolar world that simply were not possible before, and maybe a lot of our more doomer instincts are because we have grown so used to how things were before.
I do especially appreciate that the message of the protests is overwhelmingly oriented around the actual victims in Palestine and not the uwu IDF soldiers getting owned, unlike with thwir respjse to Vietnam where the Vietnamese were barely a concern.
Indeed, they spend billions on anti-China and anti-Russia propaganda, it is constantly hammered down our throats how “savage and violent” they are, and yet a decent chunk of the population doesn’t fall for it, despite the US media control being so dominant in the world. US propaganda tactics are slowly but surely beginning to fail, and while comfortable petite-bourgeois types (or those with petite bourgeois aspirations) do fall for it, they do so out of material interest, not because it is actually convincing.