A reader sent me the link to a Substack article titled "The Revolution Will Not Be Hashtagged", from a publication named BettBeat Media and an author named Karim. The About page doesn't help me to further identify the author.
The article rightly notes how the live-streaming of a genocide in Gaza has not put a stop to the genocide. It speaks of the algorithmic censorship: "The algorithm ensures you preach only to the choir. And it makes sure you mistake the choir’s applause for the sound of change."
The article concludes,
Those in power understand this perfectly. They are not afraid of your posts. They are afraid of what you might do if you stopped posting and started acting. They are afraid of general strikes, of port blockades, of civil disobedience that disrupts the flow of commerce and the machinery of war. They are afraid of organized, disciplined, sustained collective action that imposes costs they cannot ignore. They are not afraid of hashtags. They have never been afraid of hashtags.
The people of Gaza cannot be saved only by our awareness. They need us to make their suffering politically and economically unbearable for those who enable it. They need us to act in ways that matter, not in ways that perform. And every day we substitute the performance for the act, we become complicit in the very atrocity we claim to oppose.
Put down the phone. The revolution will not be hashtagged.
In other words, just posting about it on social media isn't going to get the job done. Real actions on the ground are required.
The irony is that this article itself is, of course, a digital message whose discoverability will be dependent on the algorithims, presented on a platform designed to encourage social sharing.
I maintain a different view about the utility of social media. Notwithstanding the algorithmic manipulation and the media's function of manufacturing consent for criminal government policies, social sharing is a vital act. Don't feel guilty about doing it. Don't feel guilty for taking a moment of your time to help get information out.
If you can do more than that, great. Do more. But don't not take that simple action. Without readers sharing my own work, I simply could not continue to do independent journalism. Do share information on social media. Do help raise awareness, even if your message reaches just one other person with eyes to see and ears to hear.
The claim is made that "They are not afraid of hashtags." But they are afraid of you spreading the truth. Hence the censorship.
I appreciate the article’s message about the need for people to take offline action. It's not my purpose here to assess the value of the actions suggested or to propose additional or alternative deeds. Instead, I am saying that online action does matter, so keep it up.
I also want to respond to the following criticism of Norman Finkelstein, an intellectual giant whose advocacy for Palestinians' human rights is unsurpassed among Americans. About Finkelstein, Karim writes,
Chris Hedges once wrote that the liberal class, in its capitulation to corporate power, had abandoned its role as the conscience of the nation. What we witness now is something even more degrading: the conscience itself has been captured, commodified, and rendered inert. The liberal poster, the progressive influencer, the leftist with a following: these figures perform the aesthetics of dissent without any of its costs. They curate feeds of righteous anger. They build brands out of other people’s suffering.
One of our most credible Palestinian contacts has accused Norman Finkelstein of precisely this: a man who once publicly declared he had given up on Palestine, only to resurface years later as a prominent critical voice once the genocide made the cause impossible to ignore. To respect their privacy, I will not name this contact, but their point stands: when advocacy becomes a career, can the advocate be accused of benefiting from the suffering? The genocide is content. Resistance is a genre. And at no point does any of it require these figures to risk anything: their comfort, their safety, their social standing, their job, or even their afternoon.
This criticism of Norman Finkelstein is unwarranted. And it could apply equally to me. I also stopped writing about the Palestine conflict for several years, until "Operation Al Aqsa Flood" occurred on October 7, 2023, and Israel responded with a genocidal assault on the Gaza concentration camp.
It certainly isn't true that Finkelstein has borne no cost for his dissent. His academic career was literally ended because of it. The fact that he has nevertheless managed to earn a living as a top scholar on the subject of Gaza can hardly be held against him.
On the contrary, that feat deserves our praise and admiration, not our contempt.
Everyone has to make a living. Exchanging labor for dollars is not an activity fairly characterized as mere selfish greed. It’s a means of survival that everyone capable of productive labor engages in. Producing what others value can be equally selfless an act as it is a self-interested one.
And Finkelstein explained precisely why he stopped writing about it for a time, which wasn't at all becaue he'd "given up on Palestine". It was because he felt he had nothing more to say. He’d said it all already.
Finkelstein understood that it was up to all of us to learn from his works and those of other scholars, and to share the knowledge—including of course on social media—with the goal of affecting the paradigm shift required to render it politically infeasible for Israel to continue its crimes against the Palestinian people.
I related completely to Finkelstein's sense of having already said what needed saying. That was exactly how I also felt. I'd essentially exhausted the communication of my message with the publication of Obstacle to Peace: The US Role in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict.
More core message was that Israel's crimes could not continue without US support, and therefore it was up to use to effect the paradigm shift required to render it politically infeasible for the US government to continue that policy.
No matter what claims or arguments would come up in conversation, I could just point people to that book to better understand the situation or to correct misunderstandings about the nature of the conflict. I continued to write about the subject after publishing that book, but mostly just to reiterate its content in various complementary ways.
Also, during the course of writing that book, I had become a father, and I had my own son's wellbeing to prioritize, which did not diminish my desire for the children of Gaza to live in peace and prosperity, but time is a limited resource, and a parent can hardly be blamed for putting their own children's interests before other parents' children. I mention my son on my book's dedication page, calling him "my daily reminder of why it's worth fighting for a better future."
To protect my own son's wellbeing required a shift in the focus of my work to domestic policies violative of parental rights. I hadn't anticipated it, but this shift in focus resulted in a significant increase in financial support from readers interested in what I had to say, which enabled me to continue doing journalism while remaining totally independent. Far from being lucrative for me, advocating Palestinians' rights just never paid the bills.
So if you can make a living advocating Palestinians' rights, I say, more power to you. Good for you. If you provide value to society, then you ought to receive recompense for that productive labor.
Of course, anyone who criticizes the government of Israel and the US government's support for Israel's crimes against the Palestinians is going to be personally attacked and stupidly accused of "anti-Semitism". You can't let that intimidation tactic stop you. You cannot let such intellectual dishonesty and moral cowardice make a coward out of you, too.
When I started writing again about the Palestine conflict after 10/7, I had a massive flight of subscribers from my newsletter, including many donors, who'd signed up to receive my articles on the topic of health freedom. The hate mail poured in from health freedom advocates who followed Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.'s lead in supporting and defending Israel's genocide in Gaza. The vitriol eventually subsided, but I still get the occasional subscriber throwing the stupid accusation of "anti-Semitism" at me, and my donation income has yet to recover.
I speak out and advocate Palestinians' rights not because it's fun or lucrative but because my conscience compels it.
Finkelstein's own conscientious compulsion is tangible in his incredible body of scholarship on the subject, his immense knowledge and brilliant insights, and I do not question his motives or sincerity.
It is of course a truism that we outside observers who advocate peace and justice take no share in the suffering of the victims Israel's criminal violence. But that, too, can hardly be held against those of us who’ve dedicated much time and energy into raising awareness and speaking out against Israel’s crimes against the Palestinians—and the US government’s support for it.
There's no need for such virtue signaling as this hollow criticism of Norman Finkelstein that he merely takes advantage of the Palestinians' suffering for personal gain, at no cost to himself. Everyone who advocates Palestinians' human rights is in this together. Let’s not have such vindictiveness against a man who has battled so formidably for the cause.
