More generally, leftists profess many values which are upheld the most by western civilization (e.g. support for sexual freedom, women’s rights, anti-racism, etc). But then in conflicts they often side specifically against western civilization. This seems like a straightforward example of pessimization.
Not at all. The trend is that in any given context, American leftists tend to support the ‘weaker’ group against the stronger group, regardless of the merits of the individual cases. They have a world model that says that that most social problems come from “big” people hurting “little” people, and believe the focus of their politics should be remedying this. In the case of Israel-Palestine, Israel and the United States are much more militarily and economically powerful than Gaza, so ceteris paribus[1] they side with Gaza, just as they side with women, ethnic minorities, the poor, etc. You may disagree with this behavior but it’s fairly consistent.
By contrast, the argument that Israel is a bastion of western values and therefore leftists should support its war against a smaller neighbor is kind of abstract. The immediate outcome of Israel winning the war is just that Israel gets stronger, not that women in Gaza become more free. There’s also a thing there about Gazans being brown and Israelis not, etc...
None of this has anything to do with liberals pessimizing their own values, and it feels like you must have a blind spot somewhere if you’re reaching for that explanation when there’s a much simpler and more obvious one readily available.
Liberals’ protests in support of Palestine are additionally amplified as a result of a media diet that drip feeds them an artificially strong amount of Israeli war crimes, instead of western liberal hysteria.
As per my post on underdog bias, the question of which group is actually weaker and which group is stronger is often a pretty subjective call. I even discuss in the post the example of Israel, where you could see it as the “stronger” group (vs Palestine in particular) or the “weaker” group (vs all the Muslim countries surrounding it).
There are plenty of cases where leftists support the stronger group against the weaker group—most notably Soviet and Chinese repression of dissidents and minorities. E.g. it took Solzhenitsyn publishing Gulag Archipelago to finally get leftists (even fairly “mainstream” leftists) to stop lionizing the USSR.
Even insofar as leftists tend to support the weaker group, there are almost no cases where they do so as strongly as in Israel vs Palestine. So there’s still something important to be explained here even accepting your claims.
Not at all. The trend is that in any given context, American leftists tend to support the ‘weaker’ group against the stronger group, regardless of the merits of the individual cases. They have a world model that says that that most social problems come from “big” people hurting “little” people, and believe the focus of their politics should be remedying this. In the case of Israel-Palestine, Israel and the United States are much more militarily and economically powerful than Gaza, so ceteris paribus[1] they side with Gaza, just as they side with women, ethnic minorities, the poor, etc. You may disagree with this behavior but it’s fairly consistent.
By contrast, the argument that Israel is a bastion of western values and therefore leftists should support its war against a smaller neighbor is kind of abstract. The immediate outcome of Israel winning the war is just that Israel gets stronger, not that women in Gaza become more free. There’s also a thing there about Gazans being brown and Israelis not, etc...
None of this has anything to do with liberals pessimizing their own values, and it feels like you must have a blind spot somewhere if you’re reaching for that explanation when there’s a much simpler and more obvious one readily available.
Liberals’ protests in support of Palestine are additionally amplified as a result of a media diet that drip feeds them an artificially strong amount of Israeli war crimes, instead of western liberal hysteria.
A few responses:
As per my post on underdog bias, the question of which group is actually weaker and which group is stronger is often a pretty subjective call. I even discuss in the post the example of Israel, where you could see it as the “stronger” group (vs Palestine in particular) or the “weaker” group (vs all the Muslim countries surrounding it).
There are plenty of cases where leftists support the stronger group against the weaker group—most notably Soviet and Chinese repression of dissidents and minorities. E.g. it took Solzhenitsyn publishing Gulag Archipelago to finally get leftists (even fairly “mainstream” leftists) to stop lionizing the USSR.
Even insofar as leftists tend to support the weaker group, there are almost no cases where they do so as strongly as in Israel vs Palestine. So there’s still something important to be explained here even accepting your claims.