I can’t tell you why (or if) there aren’t protests on college campuses- campii. But I can tell you why Washington DC is A-OK with Saudi Arabia: oil.
Sure, you’re a liberal…
By the way, what are you organizing?
I kind of wonder if S. Africa was a particularly strong issue with the US Left in the 80s and 90s because it resonated very strongly with the US black community, who felt like they were facing a lot of the same issues here in the US.
The Saudi assholery doesn’t have the same level of visceral identification that apartheid did- there are lots of countries that still oppress women, lots of countries that are religiously unfree, lots of them are hostile toward a free press, and lots of countries that are essentially assholes on the world stage. Saudi Arabia seems to be where those things intersect, but no one of them really gets anyone’s goat in particular as far as Saudi Arabia is concerned.
Maybe you should quit beating up your straw man image of what Tucker Carlson told you liberals are like.
Fuck the entire Middle East. Let’s resume the crusades and fuck some shit up. Loot the area and take the oil.
The fundamental problem with (some on) the left is taking identity politics to preposterous extremes. We saw an example of this recently in the extreme reluctance of some liberally-minded posters to criticize Huey Freeman’s obvious racism and other bigotry - because he belongs to an oppressed social group.
A prominent example - how did the modern left develop a consensus that Israel is deemed an evil oppressor? Jews have faced an existential threat within living memory, the culmination of centuries of oppression, and they are a nation of a few million surrounded by hundreds of millions who still literally want to destroy them. One might expect that Israel deserves as great an “oppressed” status as anyone - a status that (by the logic of excusing other oppressed groups) would presumably excuse their bad acts. Yet the consensus of the modern left is that the only power relationship that matters is the power that Israel holds over Palestine: Israel is deemed “oppressor” (and therefore enemy), while the Palestinians are deemed “oppressed” (and therefore allies). This has led to a surreal situation where some LGBT groups oppose Israel and support Palestine, on the basis that Palestinians are “oppressed allies” - even though Israel is one of the most socially progressive nations, supportive of LGBT rights, while LGBT people suffer extreme persecution (even risk of death) in Palestine.
Many in the modern left seem to have adopted a similarly one-dimensional approach to Muslim peoples in general, placing them in the “oppressed allies” category. This leads to extreme reluctance to criticize misogyny, homophobia, etc in Muslim societies. People who do so - even if the critics are themselves Muslims - risk being labeled “Islamophobes”.
Power relationships are important, and many of us in privileged social groups are blissfully unaware that they exist, we are clueless what it’s like to live as a member of an oppressed group. Modern social theory holds many important truths. But many in the modern left seem to have gone completely off the rails in how to apply these insights to practical politics.
Could we produce enough of our own energy via fracking and renewables to be able to cut all ties with Saudia Arabia?
Too sandy to fuck.
Oil and strategic position. Simple as that. Since the world needs oil, and many of our allies actually get a large percentage of their oil from the region (the US doesn’t so much anymore), it’s vital to protect not just the sources but the logistics routes. Which means we need allies and strategic basing in the region. Saudi pretty much fulfills all of those boxes, so we tend to cut them some major slack wrt foreign policy.
Why individuals or political groups in the US don’t rail against them is another matter. I’m fairly sure the left doesn’t care about geo-political realities, so my WAG is that they don’t attack a lot of that because they perceive it’s a Muslim/Arab thing and they don’t want to be seen criticizing their culture (or, ironically perhaps, their religion) and they don’t want to be criticizing non-whites. That’s just my WAG though…they don’t seem to have the same issue tearing into Israel, so you’d need to get their take on this (my guess is Israel is seen as western, and therefore fair game, while SA is seen as Arabic and Muslim, so off limits so to speak).
We could reduce our dependence on oil just by burning all the strawmen liberals from this thread. Has no one spoken out against the murder of Khashoggi? Has the long-term oppression of women and homosexuals gone unremarked? Did no one protest the Saudi Crown Prince visits to the US and UK?
How did you adopt the view that one can’t be both oppressed and oppressor? Israel faces an existential threat while simultaneously imposing one on the Palestinians - should that not be remarked upon? And Israel is a modern state with a disciplined military while the Palestinians are a fractious, ungovernable group - should we not expect more from Israel?
I hear this accusation from conservatives far more than I observe it in liberals. It is possible to defend Muslims against Islamophobes (note the lack of quotes) while at the same time decrying religion-driven misogyny and homophobia (something hardly unique to Islam), and indeed I see a lot of this. If you have examples of liberals excusing misogyny and homophobia in Muslim countries, examples that don’t involve conservatives making the faux-outrage-driven argument “you should hate Muslims for their misogyny and homophobia”, I’d be interested to hear them.
The left is full of outrage over Saudi Arabia. You don’t read about it because the major media in our country are not interested, nor are the most important politicians.
But you can’t blame the left for this one, not credibly.
Which liberal posters were reluctant to call him out for his misogyny and ableism? Name names.
I think you’re wildly misrepresenting what happened, but I could be wrong.
South Africa also differed from Saudi Arabia in that Saudi has been under self rule, for the most part, and South Africa was ruled by colonialists.
It is harder to criticize a government for what they do to their own people than it is to criticize a system that oppresses the vast majority of the population in favor of foreigners.
Saudi Arabia has problems, but we do not have neighbors who are directly contributing to that problem. (I had a neighbor growing up who spent half the year in South Africa, where he had businesses, and man, he was one hell of a racist.)
Nonsense. Huey Freeman is black and he got his ass handed to him on this board. Asahi and the one or two others who defended him were also criticized for doing so.
Liberals have no problem condemning bigotry wherever they find it. If they condemn white men for bigotry more often, it’s because white men produce more than their share of bigotry.
As I said above, I think it’s an issues of priorities. Liberals don’t defend the Saudi/Wahhabi regime and they don’t have a “hand off” policy on it. They see it as a problem. But they don’t see it as one of the top ten or even top twenty problems in the world. And there’s only so many hours in the day.
Obviously I’m criticizing such a one-dimensional view of Israel, or of Muslims or anyone else. Israel should not be demonized as it is by many on the modern left. It certainly should be criticized for bad acts against Palestinians; but on many social issues, it should rightly be seen as a strong progressive ally.
This board skews older, and the majority of us are traditional rights-based liberals. You and I may have no problem condemning bigotry wherever we find it. But the views of those who supported Huey (“black people cannot be racist”) are not unusual on the modern left. If you haven’t noticed that, well - I think you just have your head in the sand.
I don’t know if you can call people who have lived there for 200 some-odd years “colonialists” after 200 years.
What you had was a white overclass descended from the original colonists, and a large black underclass descended from the natives.
But there were a lot of parallels with historical America and contemporary America with regard to race relations, and I think that’s why there was so much interest there.
Had it been say… the Italian immigrant population oppressing the mestizo population in Argentina, you wouldn’t have seen nearly so much outrage due to the lack of historical parallels and obvious skin color parallels.
Wow, talk about your way off the mark insults…
I think because a big part of the left is resistance to what are seen as western power structures. Saudi Arabia, being a foreign, brown skinned, Muslim developing nations isn’t part of the power structure.
Fwiw, most people only protest domestic violence when men are the aggressors and women the victims. When lesbians or gays do it, or women do it to men most people are silent.
A good portion of calls for justice are just efforts to uphold or resist the existing power structure.