Disloyal ‘Allies’
Woke allyship requires a near-identical worldview and presumes no reciprocity. The Contemporary Left judges everyone by a stringent Marxian measure and leaves no option for difference of opinion.
The Gaza war became the time of reckoning for American Jews. When the National Association for the Advancement of the Colored People sided with the antizionist cause, Eli Wiesel’s son, Elisha Wiesel, published a statement:
My mother came to the US in the early 50s, after having been a refugee across Europe who narrowly avoided the Nazi death camps. She was a passionate Zionist, and upon seeing the racism that existed in the Jim Crow era, she quickly became a card-carrying NAACP member and began regularly attending civil rights protests.
Our family is betrayed beyond words that the NAACP is asking the United States government to end its military support for Israel. The Jewish people are fighting for our lives against an enemy that has raped, butchered and murdered our family members, and has announced it’s intention to do so again and again.
Shame, shame, shame on you @NAACP.
This is becoming a watershed moment in American Jewish history. The son of two Holocaust survivors and activists, one of them a Nobel laureate, is not alone in feeling betrayed. According to the latest AJC survey, less than half of American Jews still describe themselves as liberal. To be sure, they didn’t turn conservative overnight, but nearly one-third are now self-identified moderates.
Because the conservative label is still rare, it’s safe to assume that no tectonic ideological shifts occurred. To this point, Wiesel’s statement does not indicate that he is less committed to what he sees as justice and equality. But there is a sense of betrayal, a realization that the contemporary woke Left has little use for such quaint concepts.
With his thoughts appearing on X/Twitter, woke Jew Rafael Shimunov immediately jumped in to scold Wiesel:
Solidarity is not transactional. Shame on you for attempting to turn it into a currency and damage the work of Black liberation instead of trying to understand why so many people, the majority of US Jews, Americans and the world oppose this genocide.
On substance, Shimunov doesn’t have a leg to stand on — the charge of genocide in Gaza is transparently libelous, and the majority of Jews and Americans of all ages support Israel. But it’s telling that he abandoned the central principle of woke solidarity, the promise of allyship.
When Jews marched with blacks against Jim Crow laws, the word was not on anyone’s tongue. It entered the American lexicon at the height of the Black Lives Matter movement during the lockdowns in 2020. I tend to believe that a great many Americans misunderstood its meaning.
The word sounds conspicuous because it seems like those using it are going out of their way to avoid saying friend, perhaps not to give anyone the idea that they can be breaking bread with the cool kids. Perhaps they were looking for a synonym for comrade — that one is forever tainted by the Communist connection.
In the woke view, an ally supports another group’s cause to the point of self-abnegation. Anti-woke writer James Lindsay cited the following social justice definition:
A person who takes action against oppression out of a belief that eliminating oppression will benefit members of targeted groups and advantage groups. Allies acknowledge disadvantage and oppression of other groups than their own, take supportive action on their behalf, commit to reducing their own complicity or collusion in oppression of these groups, and invest in strengthening their own knowledge and awareness of oppression.
According to this model, allies are drafted disproportionately from a background considered adversarial to the woke protagonist. They are expected to continuously educate themselves about their own supposed advantages and work on behalf of others.
Lindsay reminds us that allies are supposed to relinquish any kind of leadership ambitions and follow the diktat of the so-called marginalized group. They are not allowed to do as little as basking in the glory of good allyship — that’s considered performative. It’s hard to imagine this situation not turning abusive. At the peak of BLM, we’ve witnessed all sorts of frankly masochistic behaviors, like white people putting themselves in shackles to act out the black experience. Elsewhere, Lindsay explained how the idea of allyship is a part of woke cult dynamics.
Such relationships contrast directly with the traditional understanding of what it means to be an ally. Political allies form reciprocal relationships based on mutual interests. Interestingly, the Cambridge Dictionary and Merriam-Webster currently define an ally as either a sovereign supporting another sovereign or a helper. Why not a servant or a slave? I suspect that the second definition was added in 2021.
Note how different the two definitions are — the sovereign is not assumed to be entering any treaties in an act of self-abnegation. Alliances between states are often formed out of necessity, for every party’s benefit, and regardless of ideological contradictions. The Allies had to overcome almost irreconcilable differences in World War Two to fight the Axis powers. The union led to victory but didn’t outlive the war.
Woke allyship requires a near-identical worldview and presumes no reciprocity. The Contemporary Left judges everyone by a stringent Marxian measure and leaves no option for difference of opinion. The woke will not help out a staunch supporter—or even try to understand his position—just because he once worked for them. This is why Shimunov declared that “solidarity is not transactional.” But, unlike morality, solidarity should be transactional; a relationship between parties and loyalty is expected.
In a woke understanding, antizionists are a priori morally correct because they defined themselves as colonial victims. In reality, they are neither, but to explain this is to dismantle the comfortable worldview in which today’s Left dwells. Thousands of years of Jewish history prove that it’s possible to be a thriving minority underdog dreaming of returning to the Holy Land. This narrative directly opposes The Communist Manifesto and is nearly impossible to incorporate into a communist cause.
Individual Jews may fare very well within the woke structure, but this will be achieved at the expense of the Jewish community. In the contemporary American political climate, individual rights have given way to group privileges redistributed by the elites. Because Jews are seen as privileged, indeed hyper-white, opportunities like college admissions and job offers will be taken away from Jews as a group.
Four years ago, many people misunderstood what being a woke ally meant. Asians and whites, or even homosexuals, should expect to be on the receiving nod of the allyship stick. The word promises understanding and mutual interest, but to enter this kind of relationship is to commit one’s community to ideologically inspired abuse.
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Comments
Maybe some of the “woke” will now wake up to reality and self preservation.
Not possible, by definition. To be woke is to not just deny reality, but to actively oppose it. Such people are incapable of waking up.
Jews are smart white people oppressing dumb brown people, is all that matters to the woke.
BLM was based on marxist template. Ally is being used as the new replacement word for comrade.
No, comrade is a word for equals. Ally means, “You will suck up to me and say the words I tell you to say, but we are not friends and we will never be friends.” It’s like a horse or a dog you own that does all the work you ask of him, but when he’s done you never pet him.
Such high blown sentiments, but it comes down to whose ox is being gored.
After reading your post I looked out and sure enough my poor ox was lying there in a pool of blood.
That has a clever tone, but falls as flat as the ox.
“contemporary woke Left has little use for such quaint concepts.” It is not just contemporary left, it is in left’s DNA as history demonstrated over and over again,
One uncomfortable question is what other groups have, by and large, consigned onto this narrative? Feminists were the the key cosigner IMO to the oppressed v oppressed narrative. Women were individually and collectively far too willing to adopt or just accept and free ride this narrative for their own benefit. For decades they gained power and influence until the shift in tribalism began to end centered on race and ‘gender’ (trans). The feminists, largely affluent, white and credentialed, were being pushed out of the ‘oppressed’ category and into that of the ‘oppressor’. When the narrative delivered negative impact/consequences to them it was suddenly no longer a societal good. Academia was first to fall to it, then gov’t bureaucracy then corporations. Other groups have followed this same path of endorsing tribalism so long as the negatives created were external to them and they accrued some benefit but when those negatives become internal then suddenly .. ‘Oh, golly, gee whiz folks….maybe we should slow down, reverse this’.
The tribalism genie is out of the bottle and the only choice is to either eliminate tribalism or not. Until every group understands that the pendulum of reward and punishment, favor and disfavor based upon tribal group membership exists, no matter how small, it will fester, grow and return to plague us. IMO it is better by far to eliminate tribalism, to stop handing out incentive or disincentive, favor or disfavor based upon tribal group and reestablish individual merit, individual accountability and individual responsibility as the only metric we use to differentiate among us in our society.
The tribalism genie was never in the bottle. Some gullible white folks believed tribalism was gone for a generation and western civilization is now on the brink of being totally replaced.
True just as cancer is never in the bottle either, that’s why we have screening for its presence even in people who haven’t yet been diagnosed. Some people were gullible enough to lower their guard. Other people manufactured reasons for tribalism to benefit themselves (which at minimum was a tacit endorsement of other forms of tribalism) by jumping on board the tribalism train to get their share of the plunder or grift offered by tribalism.
A few of us kept trying to tell everyone else that maintaining any system that provides incentives or disincentives, rewards or punishment based on tribalism would lead to…..well, what comes after our current moment… The sudden and very vigorous pushback against the current system that craps on them based on tribe. When the majority or just a substantial minority choose to enforce their own version of tribalism in which all the benefits exclusively accrue to their dominant tribe and they force all the negative effects to fall exclusively upon those outside the dominant tribe.
Every tribe eventually decides whether to accept or reject the current structure of tribalism. History seems to indicate that the period of accepting unfavorable outcomes based upon tribalism is finite. Eventually the disfavored tribe pushes back, sometimes very hard indeed to create a replacement system that benefits their tribe or at minimum doesn’t disfavor their tribe.
I am quite afraid that my hope of a world without tribalism will result in people that look like me bring subjugated for a time.
If every tribe but one advocates for itself, then what happens to that tribe?
“If every tribe but one advocates for itself, then what happens to that tribe?”
I think your use of the future tense is inappropriate here.
Every tribe has already been at some historical point on both ends of the ‘stick’. Better if all tribes agree to throw the stick into a wood chipper…but many tribes will refuse to give up their temporary advantage. When the group(s) currently getting the short end eventually gain control of the stick ….no whining from those selfish groups who are temporarily in power when that stick is taken away and shoved where the sun doesn’t shine. Better by far to get rid of the stick once and for all then be vigilant to prevent its regrowth… but humans are flawed, selfish, jealous, prone to anger and resentment so it is unlikely to happen voluntarily or by unanimous demand.
I think it was Rasmussen who described current politics as what happens when the largest ethnic interest group in the country notices the game is interest group politics, and starts acting like one.
The folks with the big plans do get all wee-wee’ed up when the folks they’re trying to screw notice, and start voting their own interests.
“Tribalism for me but not for thee” is a fair summation of what has happened.
Each special group believes that they deserve special consideration and that they can grace other groups with their reflected consideration. A white progressive woman can ‘help’ the “brown people” this way. And it works until someone kicks your special group to the curb. Which always happens.
I kinda agree with your summation except that it doesn’t include or even reference what I see as the largest contribution to Tribalism and the overlay of Marxist oppressor v oppressed. Namely it seems to let folks off the hook. Those who were complicit in building and maintaining support for the current system of tribalism for decades right up to the moment they found themselves labeled as ‘oppressors’ who have a sudden conversion… I mean …welcome to the party, better late than never… but these folks shouldn’t expect to fully trusted until they repeatedly demonstrate their newfound beliefs over a long duration. Nor should they be given a prominent role. Like new congregants they need to learn, grow and demonstrate their understanding before they do much more than listen.
Keeping some level of accountability is important. Those who argue it isn’t or that we can worry about ‘how’ we got here at some later time never seem to want to hold the after action review to point out the errors or who made them so we can all learn from the mistakes and recall who is prone to bad decision making. I really don’t trust those who want to skip those steps.
Once again the ones who claim to be the victims of racism are the real racists here.
“The word sounds conspicuous because it seems like those using it are going out of their way to avoid saying friend… In the woke view, an ally supports another group’s cause to the point of self-abnegation… allies are drafted disproportionately from a background considered adversarial to the woke protagonist.”
At the risk of being seen tooting my own horn, this is entirely insightful, and more “traditional Americans” need to understand it..
I have said over and over that “ally” is nothing more than yet another leftist neologism — this time, for “slave.” Instead of physical chains, a psychological guilt trip is used.
“None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.”
–GOETHE
Spot on.
I think “serf” tracks a bit closer, but the term isn’t widely understood.
In the woke lexicon, if I am a victim I am free of accountability. If I am an oppressor, I am doubly accountable: both for myself and the unprivileged. Heads they win, tails we lose. I would be more concerned about my privileges, which I inherited from my parents and grandparents, and which I intend to transmit to my children and their children, if I saw more of the unprivileged working hard to do the same.
If you’re on the side of the October 7 attackers, then you’re on the wrong side.
This displays the racism that is the core issue of leftists. They choose to support Hamas over Israel because of racism.
Ally in the Woke lexicon would seem to share significant overlap with the term useful idiot, but on steroids.
It would seem to be a member of a so called oppressor group who betrays their group for the benefit of a so called oppressed group. They commit to lifelong self-flagellation and cultic indoctrination with death being the only release.
j ews as a whole never realized OR WERE AFRAID to realize that the naacp was never on their side and it was always a one way street
to the bank