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Noah Smith 🐇🇺🇸🇺🇦 Profile picture
@Noahpinion
May 2 • 9 tweets • 3 min read • Read on X
The Palestine protesters have created a dream Palestine that is almost entirely disconnected from the real place, in which all of their fantasies of a perfect society are realized.

This is a bit like what weebs do with Japan.
FromTheRiverToTheSeaboos
Most weebs don't actually want to live in Japan. They want to live in a local subculture of their own creation, whose values are based on gentleness and romance -- the ideals that attracted them to Japanese fantasies and made those fantasies resonate.

noahpinion.blog/p/weebs
Similarly, most Palestine protesters would never live in the actual Palestine, no matter how "free". They want to live in a subculture of their own creation, whose values are based on revolution and resistance -- the ideals that attracted them to the Palestinian cause.
Their half-implicit fantasy of Palestine is not of a reactionary populace locked in a grubby zero-sum ethnic battle with its neighbor. It's of a permanent protest encampment that is forever resisting and rebelling against injustice. That's the place they want to live.
This is why they see Palestine as an omnicause -- a neverending resistance movement against capitalism, the West, climate change, homophobia, transphobia, etc. If your fantasy is of permanent struggle, you never want to run out of things to struggle against.
Fukuyama was right, of course. There are some people who want to struggle -- not to overcome things, but because the feeling of struggle itself is a lifestyle and a way of building community and identity. And they will build that community by struggling against whatever ya got. Image
I think for most of these folks, it's less about the desire to fight the power, and more about the desire to A) feel like a person who fights the power, and B) build community with other similar people. Identity and community are deep-seated, universal human needs.
And I think this is important. Online life devoured many subcultures and killed a lot of in-person interaction, and young people want that back.

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More from @Noahpinion

Noah Smith 🐇🇺🇸🇺🇦 Profile picture
Mar 24
Comparisons between the Cultural Revolution and the Woke Era get laughed at. The Woke Era didn't use violence, of course. But the *motivation* of people wanting to overturn social hierarchies, especially students wanting to overturn academic hierarchies, is recognizably similar.
In 2010s America, there was a widespread desire to overturn local social hierarchies -- the classroom authority of teachers and professors, the cultural power of entertainment stars, the authority of nonprofit execs and heads of civic organizations.
In 1960s China, overturning local hierarchies happened via physical mob violence. In 2010, it happened through online mobs destroying people's reputations on social media. Obviously, the second is far preferable to the first. This is why economic development is good!
Read 10 tweets
Noah Smith 🐇🇺🇸🇺🇦 Profile picture
Jan 19
Here are some countries that did catch up to other countries.

Poland caught up to Portugal: Image
South Korea caught up to Japan: Image
Ireland caught up to the UK

(graph ends before major Irish tax shenanigans begin) Image
Read 13 tweets
Noah Smith 🐇🇺🇸🇺🇦 Profile picture
Jan 10
This thread asks how we should deal with inborn inequality, and concludes that the best solution is noblesse oblige.

I think the best solution is public goods.
Public goods have two advantages:

1. They engender material equality more efficiently than any other economic intervention, and

2. They create an equality of respect, through the habit of mutual use.
Although rich people may pay more for a train or a park, when they ride the train or walk in the park, they are equal in social status to everyone else on the train or in the park.

This creates a feeling of equality throughout society.
Read 6 tweets
Noah Smith 🐇🇺🇸🇺🇦 Profile picture
Dec 7, 2023
1/Here's a thread in which the Economist's Mike Bird tries to rebut my recent post about decoupling. I think this thread is useful for understanding why the doubters are making the mistakes that they're making.

Let's go through it!
2/Here was my original post. I've updated it with a response at the bottom.

noahpinion.blog/p/stop-saying-…
3/Here's @Birdyword's first mistake. To say there's a "case for doubt" means that there's a possibility that decoupling isn't happening.

But just look at FDI into China. It just went negative for the first time in recorded history. That's definitely real. That is decoupling!
Image
Image
Read 14 tweets
Noah Smith 🐇🇺🇸🇺🇦 Profile picture
Nov 20, 2023
Illegal immigration went into reverse for over a decade, but as of 2021 it's positive again.

pewresearch.org/short-reads/20…
Image
Just over 1 out of 5 U.S. immigrants are unauthorized, according to Census data. Image
Illegal immigration from Mexico continues to go in reverse.

The typical unauthorized immigrant is no longer Mexican. Image
Read 8 tweets
Noah Smith 🐇🇺🇸🇺🇦 Profile picture
Oct 31, 2023
The reason Israel's bombing campaign in Gaza is bad isn't because civilian casualties are never acceptable when fighting against evil, but because bombing Gaza seems like it will not actually do much to eliminate Hamas, and will simply kill civilians for no purpose.
"The Allies leveled German cities, Hamas are as bad as Nazis, thus it's OK to level Gaza" ignores the fact that even if strategic bombing had been as effective as people thought (note: it wasn't), leveling Gaza will not produce a WW2-like outcome.
"The ends don't justify the means" should apply to the actual outcome, not just the goal you have in your head.

If the outcome is "everyone just keeps on hating each other and fighting forever", then no, the ends do not justify the means.
Read 9 tweets

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