If you are expecting to read my usual Left Coast column, I tell you now that you will be disappointed. I write, today, from a place of horror—about the massacre unleashed against civilians in Israel this past week, and about the morally cretinous bloodlust reaction some who fashion themselves as being on the “left” seem to have experienced in its aftermath, but also in despair at the ghastly collective punishments being unleashed from the air on Gaza residents by Netanyahu’s far-right government and the Israeli military.
While you’re correct that it would normally make sense to read it that way, the only reason anyone is talking about babies at all is that the IOF invented a story about “40 beheaded babies” and then immediately said they would not investigate it or provide any evidence. Given that context, I don’t think it necessarily makes sense to interpret it as bioessentialist, but rather as an angry (incorrect) reaction to all of the “Hamas are evil baby killers” propaganda.
To clarify, this is not meant to justify the removed comment which was deranged regardless. Just because the evil settler genocide army is making things up about killing babies, that doesn’t suddenly mean that killing babies is good.
yeah this is closer to the mark for me, I get a bit skeptical when ppl start dredging up the romanovs, or all the french children dessalines killed, or whatever fantastical (or even fictional…) potential outcome, as a cautionary tale of what could happen if revolutionaries were to get carried away… like, it’s just incredibly unrelatable to be this ridden with anxiety about potential excesses when more restraint is honestly the last thing we need rn. on the dessalines thing e.g., black jacobins is pretty critical of that whole debacle bc of the geopolitical consequences for haiti but iirc james pretty explicitly rolled his eyes at the white people shuddering in horror at atrocities, it’s just such a weird thing to be concerned about