What does "moderate" mean these days? Marisa Kabas asks. Columbia University apparently is trying to "make donors happy at the expense of students." And on March 4, 77-year-old Rep. Al Green of Texas "stood up and shook his cane at the criminal president, and when he wouldn’t sit down, was removed from the chamber...Two days later, every House Republican and 10 House Democrats voted to censure Green, who is Black, for his protest."
"You cannot give an inch" to current Republican leaders, yet
"for some reason certain people who are supposed to be the opposition seem willing to give them a mile. It is, in a word, deranged.
We’re seeing this in the continued manufactured controversy on college campuses like Columbia University where students are exercising their First Amendment rights and adults in power will do anything to stifle them—including making nice with Trump after he canceled $400 million in grants and contracts to their university in the name of combating antisemitism.
“But let me be very clear: Columbia is taking the government’s action very seriously,” Katrina Armstrong, Columbia’s Interim President, wrote in a statement Friday [March 7] (also sent as an email to alumni). “I want to assure the entire Columbia community that we are committed to working with the federal government to address their legitimate concerns.”
Siding with antisemites in the name of fighting antisemitism is both frightening and profoundly stupid, and playing nice with terrorists will get you nowhere.
* * *
Right now there’s too much appeasement and not enough fighting. If we really want to restore order to the federal government, if we really want to fight antisemitism, if we want to achieve anything that would benefit the greater good, we must push back at every single turn. Trying to appeal to a voter who will congratulate you for scolding a member of your own party [as did the 10 House Democrats who voted to censure Green] for peacefully protesting fascism is a losing game because that voter does not exist."
— Marisa Kabas, The time for a spine, The Handbasket, March 9, 2025
Citing this new post by Columbia, Combatting Antisemitism, someone says on Mastodon that the approach seems to be: more rules, more surveillance, more cops.
Relatedly:
"Holding fast to our empathy, caring about people we don’t know, and having compassion for those who are struggling are all immensely important in this increasingly cold and harsh world. But it isn’t radical. Framing empathy as something bold and transgressive is reacting to the fascist onslaught we’re facing rather than taking the time to stake out our own position and perspective.
* * *
Something doesn’t have to be radical to be good. I value empathy, both yours and mine, regardless of whether or not maintaining it is a radical act. At the same time, I value clarity around what constitutes a radical approach and outlook. I value it right now, as we engage in an increasingly overt and all-out struggle against oligarchy, more than ever. And so I want to draw a line and help ensure that we orient ourselves toward real radicality in our thought and action.
* * *
Getting down to the root means getting down to systems and that which upholds them. And we have to orient our goals towards those systems. It is never enough to simply change individuals and their mindsets. That is necessary for change, but not sufficient. Improving conditions is likewise necessary, but not sufficient to constitute radical change. We must get down to the systems that dominate us, and replace them.
* * *
Fostering our empathy is part of this process, but helping people shift internally must be paired with external action to move us toward radical change. “Being radicalized” is not something that can happen inside our heads. It’s not something that can happen alone. You cannot grasp the systemic roots by yourself. Without collective action we remain Schrodinger’s radicals. Anything could be inside that box: a radical, a moderate — the truth can’t be known until the rubber meets the road."
— J. P. Hill. What radicalized you?: Never cede the framing. New Means. Feb 20, 2025
Moderate enablers are doing evil:
"Because of their deliberate decision to emigrate from observable reality and immigrate into a dark land of coddled ignorance, smothering complacency, delusional fear, and celebration of greed, cruelty, and bigotry, American Republicans and their so-called "moderate" enablers are the very worst people on the planet right now, and, given their deliberate demolition of as many centuries of human progress as they can get away with, and their acceleration of a global catastrophe that threatens the suitability of this planet for human life, they're a strong candidate for the very worst people in the entirety of human history."
— A.R. Moxon, The Worst and the Dimmest: It's not a coincidence that we're being led by the least qualified monsters available; it's a deliberate strategy. Facing the Worst - a series about directional alignment. The Reframe. Feb 16, 2025
Moxon is saying that the Republican leaders, and anyone organized to support them, are radically evil:
"the Republican Party—which has for much if not all of my life operated as a hate group—is now a vector for an astonishing level incompetence and cruelty and corruption and bigoted hate that somehow seems destined to succeed at its main objective, which is the demolition of human society and the suffering and death of billions and billions of humans, all for the almost incomprehensible enrichment of only a handful of people, all of them among the very worst human beings this planet has ever produced—the most uncaring, the least intellectually curious, the most disconnected from their own humanity, the most gleefully malicious and deliberately destructive, with an all-consuming greed at the center of their being that renders them almost alien in their bland but fathomless evil. And one thing I know about Republicans is that they either love it or they don't give a shit, and you'll know it too, if you ask them."
I think Hill's point above, though, is that empathy isn't the polar opposite of radical evil. It's just a normal default state for humans. It's a neutral middle. The polar opposite of organizing to do evil is organizing to do good.
Indeed, Moxon goes on, inviting us to
"imagine a totally different system, one that might not have been imaginable before, a better one that not only does not seek to devour any people at all, anywhere at all, ever, but one that refuses to do so, and refuses to accommodate or tolerate people or systems who do.
Because remember, we are about playing the right game, and the right game is demolishing the billionaire system. The way you score points in the right game is by repairing broken things and paying all the natural costs of maintenance and repair.
The reason we face the worst is not to fall into despair.
The reason we face the worst is because it helps us imagine the best."
Riffing off this Bluesky post (Feb 25, 2025): Yes, decent humans have to support equality and diversity. Meanwhile, if your opponents destroy your talking points by claiming that they support equality and diversity (when they don't), you need a plan beyond just repeating your talking point that they stole and lied about. Unfortunately, there's no high road for you to take. You have to keep being a good person, but you also have to play a little dirty.
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