The House passed a GOP-led resolution on Tuesday to censure Rep. Rashida Tlaib over comments critical of Israel and in support of Palestinians amid Israel’s war against Hamas.
The move amounts to a rare and significant rebuke of the Michigan Democrat, who is the first Palestinian-American woman to serve in Congress. The vote was 234 to 188 with four Republicans voting against and 22 Democrats voting in support of the censure resolution.
The resolution, which was introduced by Georgia GOP Rep. Rich McCormick, advanced earlier in the day after a Democratic-led effort to block the measure failed.
Its most famous usage was the PLO in the 1960s when it explicitly was a call for the dismantling and expulsion of all the Jewish people in the old territory of Mandatory Palestine to generate an Arab ethnostate. That’s why people keep saying “It’s a dogwhistle” it’s not easy to say “Oh, the old call for ethnically cleansing the area just took a new, happier meaning!”
Tangential, but I think that is a uniquely millenial mindset.
Boomers and the like? They always just said “Stop being a snowflake, it is just words” or “Gay means stupid” and so forth.
Whereas millennials grew up learning “words have meaning and they hurt”. And basically everyone knows the homophobic slur that means “a bundle of sticks” and what the implication of that is.
Which… led to a strong push to argue that “we are taking the word back”. The obsessive focus on “wait, he used a soft ‘r’, not a hard ‘r’” with respect to the n-word. Or the completely asinine South Park Libertarian approach of “I am not talking about gay people. I am talking about obnoxious motor cyclists” and so forth. And we still see it show up. This is “a rallying cry for freedom” not a call for counter-genocide. Or “I am not saying being ‘gay’ is bad, I am saying it would be funny if this person I don’t like is gay” and so forth.
And a lot of it comes from influencers who wanted to keep saying slurs or doing racist caricatures basically arguing that they are using a different definition or whatever. And our parasocial relationships means we argue for it too.
Whereas gen z tends to acknowledge things are slurs and dog whistles. Now, there is the issue of people who just don’t care and are intentionally using the hateful interpretation but… at least they are honest bigots?