 Oscar winners who don't speak out on Gaza this weekend will be complicit in genocide. Notes from the edge of the narrative matrix. Ralph Nader has an article out arguing that the real death count from Israel's onslaught in Gaza is probably at least 200,000. This could very well be true. It is definitely suspect how the official death count has been hovering around 30,000 for weeks while we know people are being deliberately starved at an incredibly fast pace and the massacres haven't stopped. We've seen severe death count lags before in places like Yemen where in 2017 the media stopped counting at 10,000 deaths and just kept repeating that number for ages. Every Hollywood celebrity who fails to speak out against the US-backed genocide in Gaza at the Oscars this Sunday is complicit in that genocide. If you're given a major platform and your government is committing genocide you are morally obligated to use that platform to condemn your government's actions. I always get Israel supporters in my comments going, if you think what Aaron Bushnell did is so great then why don't you do it too? I am not brave enough or selfless enough to follow Aaron Bushnell's example. No one is. That's why what he did is having such a massive impact and it's why Israel supporters have been freaking out about him ever since. It was a superhuman act of protest. Shallow, vapid people are incapable of understanding and appreciating what Aaron Bushnell did. They've no internal framework for it. When they dismiss him or disparage his motives they're just telling you there's not much to them as people. They're asleep at the wheel of life. A political party which views opposing and active genocide as a fringe extremist position is not a political party that should continue to exist. After seeing how horrifyingly murderous and reckless this Democrat president has turned out to be I hope U.S. leftists have fully let go of all the guilt liberals tried to heap on them for not rallying behind the Democrat in 2016. It was all a lie. They're as bad as Republicans. Over and over again you see people enter western mainstream political parties with the stated goal of changing them from the inside but instead it changes them. They think the problem is that the party just doesn't have enough nice people in it but it turns out trying to change a mainstream political party in the western empire by putting nice people in it is like trying to change an abusive cult by putting nice people in it. The cult doesn't change. The people who go in just get indoctrinated. The cult isn't bad because there aren't enough nice cult members. The cult is bad because its entire purpose, function and founding doctrine is bad. A mainstream political party in the imperial core exists solely to promote the interests of the empire. Everything in it is geared toward this purpose. That is its nature. If you join it, you either embrace its doctrines and help it act out its foundational purpose or you get kicked out of the cult. You cannot change it. It can only change you. How many times does this have to happen before people learn the lesson? The western-backed genocide in Gaza should be showing everyone that western governments don't make the odd looking foreign policy decisions they make because they understand foreign policy better than ordinary people. They make those decisions because they are corrupt and evil. That's always been the case. It's just far more obvious now. You can see just by looking at how universal support for Israel is among U.S. officials and lawmakers compared to the general public that any random schmo off the street is more likely to make correct and moral foreign policy decisions on behalf of these governments than the empire managers in charge. And that's why real democracy is continually subverted in those nations. If the people were actually in charge of the foreign policy decisions made within the imperial core, the empire would no longer be inflicting the violence and tyranny necessary for its continued existence. A whole media industry is sprouting up around mainstream journalists just reading the gray zone and presenting its findings as their own original reporting because the gray zone is considered naughty enough to steal from. At this point I just automatically assume that any Israel supporter who interacts with me is acting in bad faith, partly because it's been my consistent experience with them and partly because in order to still support Israel in March of 2024, you have to be a bit sociopathic. Most of the Americans will call you an anti-semite for criticizing Israel, would have mocked you and laughed at you if you called them racist for criticizing Obama or sexist for criticizing Hillary Clinton. It's the exact same logic, but it's okay when they do it. After watching a pro-Palestine activist go off the deep end recently, I think it's probably a good idea to issue a few basic reminders to anyone who's speaking out about this issue. Don't deny the Holocaust unless you want to help delegitimize the pro-Palestine movement. Don't try to make Israeli atrocities about Judaism or Jewishness unless you want to help delegitimize the pro-Palestine movement. Don't conflate Jews as a global collective with a murderous apartheid state unless you want to help delegitimize the pro-Palestine movement. Don't say Jews rule the world unless you want to help delegitimize the pro-Palestine movement. It's not hard to make these distinctions and the overwhelming majority of pro-Palestine voices have no difficulty in doing so. It's also not hard to see what messages Israel apologists will forcefully amplify as evidence that the entire pro-Palestine movement is anti-Semitic and that everyone needs to shift the focus from stopping an active genocide to fighting an imaginary anti-Semitism crisis. This isn't about Jews. It's about settler colonialism and the geostrategic objectives of the Western Empire, both of which we've seen manifest in countless examples that have nothing to do with Jewish people. Zionism is just one belief system the Empire managers will utilize to advance their agendas of planetary hegemony just as they deal with Christian fundamentalism, Islamophobia, humanitarianism, conservatism, progressivism, and in any other world view that can be exploited to their advantage. In short, don't let your opposition to Israeli atrocities turn you into a moron. Don't let your support for the Palestinians turn you into a tool of the Empire. Stay on top of that shit. Please and thank you.