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Norman Finkelstein’s previous books include The Holocaust Industry, Beyond Chutzpah, and Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict among others. He has the highest regard for the Civil Rights Movement, after all—although he would deny that that was identity politics. G. Kelley, have written competent defenses of identity politics, and Finkelstein certainly isn't arguing against the necessity of incorporating anti-racism, anti-sexism, anti-homophobia, and other such "woke" agendas into popular movements. But John Stuart Mill's On Liberty is the text he primarily grounds his argument in, and he quotes from it liberally in his chapter on the right of even Holocaust deniers to make their case in public forums such as a college campus.
Aside from Obama himself, the most satisfying skewering, I found, was of Samantha Power, the "Battleaxe from Hell…downright evil…[whose] conscience only bestirs at the suffering of victims of official U. S. were instances of cancel culture; so is the corporate media's treatment of virtually everyone on the left; so is the woke treatment of anyone who publicly strays from the party line. Too much identification with some imposed identity such as race is exactly what leads to irrational racial hostility (including against whites), sexist hostility (also against men), and other divisive social forces.This phrase is what is sometimes known as a malaphor or a mixed idiom, which is a phrase that blends two similar figures of speech to create a new one, that may or may not make much sense. Second, one would certainly not love all the individuals who are alleged to constitute "one's people. A poor condition book can still make a good reading copy but is generally not collectible unless the item is very scarce. This issue bears, of course, on Finkelstein's own career, but he is hardly the only academic to have been disciplined in recent decades for alleged "incivility" or taking unpopular political stands. The vacuousness of contemporary identity politics is best exposed by considering its "great minds," the Crenshaws, Coateses, Kendis, and DiAngelos.
Doesn't it conclusively demonstrate the inanity of a standard commanding restrained and temperate language? I would place myself, and I would place you, my young friends, upon grounds vastly higher and broader than any founded upon race or color… We should never forget that the ablest and most eloquent voices ever raised in behalf of the black man's cause, were the voices of white men. But if the likes of Marx wouldn't qualify for a tenured appointment at a first-rank university, isn't that a reductio ad absurdum? On Robin DiAngelo's morbid obsession with diagnosing "racism": "She is the monomaniacal Captain Ahab in pursuit of the White Whale. Finkelstein knows cancel culture from the inside, and it is unsurprising that he resolutely opposes it.Nor would I even try, because I couldn't possibly reproduce the distinctive Finkelsteinian humor—and most of this very long chapter consists of (factually grounded) ridicule, directed at nearly everyone in Obama's presidential coterie, a "revolting retinue of bootlickers. That such a person can be widely considered to be more or less on the left is a crushing indictment of the state of the left. Whites," says DiAngelo, "control all major institutions of society and set the policies and practices that others must live by.
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