Headline: Ukraine, Gaza and the rise of identity geopolitics
Sub-headline: The global conscience moves in mysterious ways
https://www.ft.com/content/c9173148-22d9-444b-8a8c-b14585a7db26
Rachman sets the stage:
Early in the Gaza conflict, a TikTok video of John Kirby went viral. In the first frames, the White House spokesman is composed as he describes civilian casualties in Gaza as part of the “brutal, ugly” reality of war.
For the Biden administration’s critics, that video summed up America’s double standards.
The threat of a famine in Gaza is currently making global headlines every day.
Like Gaza, Sudan borders Egypt. But the Sudanese conflict — and last week’s warning — has been largely ignored by the wider world.
Efforts to free the Israeli hostages held in Gaza have become a centrepiece of international diplomacy.
Go a little further back and the world’s capacity to ignore mass killing and suffering — particularly in Africa — is stark.
The slogan “Black Lives Matter” that began in the US was resonating globally in 2020.
Here after the bourgeoise political chatter gideon.rachman@ft.com arrives at his point:
What is it that causes some tragedies and conflicts to command the world’s attention and others to pass almost unnoticed?
The answer seems to be something that can be called identity geopolitics. A conflict is much more likely to spark international concern and outrage if large numbers of people identify with those who are fighting or suffering. Europeans look at fleeing Ukrainians and imagine their own cities under bombardment. Many Muslims and Jews identify with the warring sides in Gaza.
‘Identity Politics’ can only be defined as a politics that is dismissed out of hand, as prima facie without merit, by its critics, who set an imaginary standard as a singularity? In sum a politics that is out of step with the Technocratic Babblers/ Political Conformists. Rachman simply widens it’s parameters into ‘identity geopolitics’. Six more dazzling paragraphs of Rachman’s political/moral acrobatics and The Reader arrives here:
The issue that caused a real crisis in US-Saudi relations was the murder of a single prominent journalist, Jamal Khashoggi. His horrific story had the power to move emotions and shift international politics — unlike the deaths of thousands of other victims, who were destined to remain anonymous.
World politics still seems to live by the infamous phrase, often attributed to Stalin: “A single death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic.”
This report from The Australian of 2024 paints Khashoggi as an ‘Insider’ rather that as a ‘Dissident’ :
https://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/the-times/jamal-khashoggi-real-crime-was-not-to-be-dissident-but-an-insider/news-story/d896af404e97340035e332ebfd33226c
Newspaper Reader & Political Cynic