• Cyrus Draegur@lemm.ee
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    3 months ago

    wow viking_hippie did a way better job than i ever could have expressing the things i wanted to communicate in lieu of any ability on my part to streamline and organize my thoughts in a concise but thorough manner…

    but even though i’m very much NOT a fan of shapiro and i mostly agree with everything viking just said, that one bit about “Palestinians are too battle-minded”, iirc, was from an editorial he wrote in college back in the 90s, and while it IS a vile position to hold… not everyone was gifted with foreknowledge that it was baseless propaganda.

    I learned better since the 90s myself that, no, the middle east has NOT in fact ‘always been at war throughout all of history’, ACTUALLY. If i sound somewhat salty right now it’s out of shame for my past. I myself didn’t learn until over a decade later that the middle east’s history had a shit ton more nuance.

    None of us are immune to propaganda. As much as I dislike shapiro’s present positions I actually want to give him the benefit of a doubt that MAYBE he no longer actually espouses this position to this day, and I couldn’t find evidence (perhaps just skill issue??) either way.

    So, TL;DR: it’s healthy to pump the brakes and ask ourselves how legitimate some of the criticisms of someone are, EVEN IF the rest of the criticisms are unfortunately accurate.

    I’m not out here to demonize someone. I only set out to qualify exactly why I prefer Walz over Shapiro. Thank you both for being good sports about it!

    • Viking_Hippie@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      [It] was from an editorial he wrote in college back in the 90s, and while it IS a vile position to hold… not everyone was gifted with foreknowledge that it was baseless propaganda.

      True. However, as I pointed out in another comment, he’s had 30 years to correct the record and didn’t until doing so became advantageous to his career prospects.

      Coupled with his much more recent statements about the protesters, I don’t buy that he’s actually evolved on Israel at all since the 90s when, as you so rightly point out, the vast majority of people in the West didn’t know better than to believe the Hasbara.

      • Cyrus Draegur@lemm.ee
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        3 months ago

        … oh dear gods, now that you mention it, he literally fucking WORKED FOR Hasbara, in 1996.

        I was gonna say “If I was embarrassed about something I did in the past I wouldn’t want to bring it up either” but Shapiro literally CREATED some of the rhetoric that tried to brainwash me when I was a kid. What the FUCK man… D: