- cross-posted to:
- chapotraphouse@hexbear.net
- cross-posted to:
- chapotraphouse@hexbear.net
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That “I” in “IOF” still looks bad to me. I think zionist terrorist would be better still.
ZOF for Zionist Occupying Force maybe?
This isn’t the strategy you think it is. If someone who isn’t already on board with what you’re saying sees/hears “IOF terrorist,” they’re going to either not grasp what you mean and be confused/think you made a mistake, or get what you mean and see it as petty, edgy, and reaching. It’s like calling U.S. troops terrorists: it’s not actually going to land with anyone besides those who already agree with you.
Remember, it doesn’t matter how right you are, what matters is what gets people to change their minds.
“Israeli soldier” pushes back on the “defense force” euphemism but isn’t going to confuse anyone and won’t be written off as too hot of a take.
I get what you’re saying but im personally at the point where ive ran out of things to say to the people who sit on the center of this, what else is left to explain while people are actively getting genocided?
The time for changing minds was years ago, now the only people left defending isreal are literal genocide apologists
the only people left defending isreal are literal genocide apologists
I think there are lots of persuadable people out there who very deeply want to believe the U.S. does not do these sorts of horrible things (or at least doesn’t do them anymore). They don’t see a genocide and think to apologize for it, or deny the reality of what they see – they start from the premise that of course we aren’t doing genocide, and reject anything that challenges that too directly as biased or misleading. It’s a set of mental reflexes designed to avoid uncomfortable contradictions like “if the U.S. is right now doing a fast-motion genocide under a president I voted for, how do I respond?”
There’s another large group of people who aren’t really genocide apologists: people who don’t follow politics of any kind very closely, and who have a similar reflexive rejection of anything they see as too radical of a political stance. These are the folks who nod along to all of our critiques of capitalism and the U.S., but punch out when you label those critiques socialism or communism.
Yes I suppose you’re right, my frustations more lie in the people who take it a step further and dont just fence sit, but actively cheer on the IDF; I just cant be bothered trying to convince someone whos baseline is posting memes about dead palestenian children. We should keep appealing to the uneducated or misninformed but not the ones who know better.
The ghoulish ones offer a great propaganda opportunity for us if anything else. Their sociopathy on full display is jarring and almost enough to snap many people out of their comfortable apathy to the status quo. As long as we’re there to capitalise on that, of course.
Then just drop the “terrorist” part.
The IDF is, in fact, an occupying force.
it doesn’t matter how right you are, what matters is what gets people to change their minds.
Imagine talking to someone who says “Barack Hussein Obama” every time they talk about Obama. You’d recognize them as a crank and write them off. If you listen to anything they say, you’re immediately going to view it through a hostile lens.
That’s the type of reflexive dismissiveness we want to avoid. “IOF” reads like “Amerikan” reads; people who do not already agree with us will either think “oh I can ignore this” or read it just to look for places to disagree.
At some point you’ve gotta make “your point.”
If you spend all of your rhetorical energies smoothing out ALL the sharp pointy bits of your arguments to pre-emtively appeal to somebody, you’re just doing the work of your opposition.
Everyone who does persuasion for a living (salespeople, marketers, lawyers, political writers, think tanks, etc.) puts tons of effort into carefully refining their approach. The details are enormously important, especially when you’re talking about communism and anti-inperialism in the imperial core, where a century of propaganda and hostility has primed most people to immediately dismiss those ideas.
You’re worried about watering down your point. Compare “Israeli soldiers are indiscriminately killing Palestinians” with “IOF terrorists are indiscriminately killing Palestinians.” The first one doesn’t water down the point at all, but you don’t sound like a crank and you don’t give people the opportunity to quibble over an academic question like how “terrorist” should be defined.
Sysnthesis yo… “Israeli Occupation Forces indiscriminately kill Palestinians.”
I move to improve upon this earworm-- strip the appellation of “soldier” from every uniform fielded by the Five-Eyed Empire. Anglo-Amerikans, British, Canadian, French, German, it doesn’t matter; if you align with the crackerverse, you are no longer a soldier, you are a terrorist.
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