“Do you condemn Hamas?”
An exercise in performative morality.
I lowkey don’t even know who Hamas is.
This would have been the most honest answer for 80% of people who were asked this question in the mainstream media; in reality not knowing who Hamas is, is actually the point. The demand for condemnation comes before understanding. That being said, this article isn’t really even about who Hamas is because I have listened to a plethora of podcasts and I still don’t really know—because the structure of this world is way more complicated than the idiotic newsbytes that the idiotic colonial media feeds us.
Tareq Baconi, wrote this book Hamas Contained (2018) on who they are that I heard was pretty detailed and “factual.” I use quotes because that is what the West calls their perspective, and anyone else who presents facts and evidence is biased. Like STFU. I don’t even know why the “other side” tries to present facts to begin with, when they are automatically dismissed.
On this podcast, he talks to the host about his new memoir. He wrestles with what the point of his memoir is at this stage in the genocide, when Palestine is destroyed, Hamas has been decimated, and Palestinians are being actively starved. I like to think the divine has a plan for the world seeing as an alternative view is horrific; Baconi talks in the podcast about how Hamas tried everything else prior to October 7th, but nothing worked until this.
I’m not here to defend Hamas—I still don’t even know who they are. Recently, my friend told me she was defending Hamas on a date with this guy who was in the military.
I was like, “Why would you defend Hamas on the fifth date!?”
To which she asked, “When is a good time to defend Hamas—the sixth date?!”
Touché, my friend. Touché.
Condemnation Before Understanding
The question “do you condemn Hamas” is a binary question with a presumed yes-or-no answer posed by the West, which presumes the right to dictate right and wrong, WHILE LITERALLY COMMITING A GENOCIDE. HOW INSANE IS THAT.
This question is for Western audiences and Western media to decide who is worth listening to; like what?? Most of the world is saying one thing GENOCIDE IS WRONG - but the west is controlling everything and debating morality. I guess debating morality is easy to do when one has none.
They are starting at a baseline that presumes they have the right to decide who is worth listening to, based on the answer to that question; there is no actual choice, or nuance. AND THAT IS THE PROBLEM WITH THE COLONIAL WEST. They do not hold the ultimate key to who is right and wrong, but they act like they are God herself, and we all believe them.
How the West Thinks
Everyone needs to watch The Last Kingdom on Netflix to understand how the West thinks. You’ll see in that show how they conquered Europe by fighting with the Danes. I don’t know if this is historically accurate, but honestly what does that even mean when history is written by the victors anyway. It’s a great show and the actors are foine. I hear the book series it’s based on is also really good.
You’ll see how they treat the “other,” regardless of skin color. Their primary goal is always whatever they want, and it doesn’t matter who or what they betray to get it. Their goal is noble, so they are noble. It’s giving ends justify the means. Another bullshit western axiom that we all debate as if it’s a transcendent principle.
They justify their conquering in the name of God and truly believe they are morally justified in what they do—actually scratch that, they just weaponize religion to say what they want it to say. Conflation of church and state much? This is their modus operandi, and quite frankly it’s extremely effective. They conquered the whole earth with this method, and now the colonized sing hymns the world over—except when melanin-pigmented individuals fuse the divinity with their assertions of self-determination then they are extremists, then they are terrorists.
Same god, different rules maybe?
The Colonizer’s Relationship to the Divine
Frankly, I think the colonizers should be proud they taught the colonized one thing: how to weaponize people’s fear of the divine, of the truth, for greater ends—a healthy respect for the transcendent weaponized by those who are above belief for their own ends.
Ironically the oppressed’s true fear of divinity and respect for the truth is what keeps them fighting against the odds; do you believe something so strongly you’re willing to die for it? The oppressor doesn’t believe in anything strongly enough that they are willing to die for it, that’s why they are always self protective and obsessed with security.
They constantly use religion to justify selfishness while saying they are doing it for the “common good.” Ya okay, just say you want power and silver like the Danes did in The Last Kingdom (if anyone can find me the descendants of those white men, I’m starting to be more open-minded, seeing as my billionaire is nowhere to be found—I’ll settle for a millionaire). #growth
Divine Right Never Left
Yet at the same time that the West rejects the idea of God, they also claim moral superiority and to be above accountability.
By claiming to be above such childish, superstitious concerns such as divinity they weaponize that idea for their own ends. They claim to be god, that they act on behalf of the divine. That is literally the basis of their culture; I will harp on the idea of “divine right” till I die.
Apparently this idea faded with the various revolutions and the Enlightenment, but it actually didn’t - it just transformed into the verbose ideas of western philosophers that form the basis of this neoliberal hell we live under. If the last 300 years showed us anything, it is that men don’t actually believe in divinity, and the ones that actually do are murdered, and the ones that remain prefer the approval of other men over divinity.
They justify their violence, their raping of the earth, because at the end of the day they don’t fear the divine—they feel that they have the favor of the divine if they succeed in conquering the earth, because their success is evidence of God’s favor. Like are you for real? I honestly commend them for the level of delusion they operate under.
That’s why I think we can be fearless as Americans or really as anyone trying to decolonize the world. If they were that delusion to colonize it, I think we can be as delusional to decolonize it.
Truth Without God
There’s this other podcast where Norman Finkelstein—Fink, as I will heretofore refer to him—talks about his current state of affairs and the history of his work. Fink is a highly detailed political scientist studying the Holocaust and the colonization of Palestine.
He specifically argues that he’s not trying to bring hope but he also does not want to be a part of this world, a world that lies. He says he’s dedicated to the truth. He says he is an atheist. He says that he will fight for the truth to the utter end.
To which I ask: to what end? How does he know there is an end? What if the world is a cycle? What if “the end” is strictly a linear view of the world that is the colonizer’s means of control?
Fink’s parents were Holocaust survivors who ended up believing that the idea of the divine was dangerous and to be disdained because of what it caused—or how it hijacked the minds of people. He is similar; not wanting to be associated with the zealous, but wanting to be known for his “factual” work.
This is a colonial viewpoint, might I add—that to be secular is to exclude the idea of the transcendent or divinity. This is absurd because to truly be “secular” one would have to have a plurality of ideas and not specifically exclude any. Secularism, as practiced by the west, is not neutral. Secularism is a colonial construct, by the colonizer claiming to be above everyone.
Ironically, it’s Fink’s passion that makes his work matter at all. I don’t know if it’s a consequence of patriarchy or his history that he disowns his emotions and fire as if they were the bane of existence. Obviously, I think it’s a consequence of colonialism that he is like this, so it’s all of the above. There’s no one right answer.
I think he’ll be remembered for his passion for the truth over the detailed accurate nature of his work, probably to his chagrin.
White Colonial Daddies and Value Systems
I was listening to another podcast where they were talking about the philosophy of Marxism and other western philosophers embedded in western thought such as Kant.
To be completely frank, I think men trying to define systems of value are the actual problem, because they are so innately selfish any value they purport as a real value only benefits them; this prevents them from being good spiritual leaders—or leaders in any sense. Don’t even get me started on men as religious leaders. To me, MARX is also a white colonial daddy.
Marxism, I would argue, doesn’t sufficiently address colonialism instead thinking of it as an unfortunate consequence. Marx just said what was happening in terms of capitalism was gonna fail and posited a different framework that also failed, might I add. It failed because the value assumptions underlying it were baseline colonial.
I find, with men, it doesn’t really matter what they say so much as what they do. In this regard, they are more straightforward than women.
Renaming Ancient Truths
Instead of ascribing a label to fall under that is some white colonial daddy who said something one time in some tome and then sorting into different camps, I think maybe we should name the principles or the ideas that we ascribe to. It takes longer to communicate, but I think that is the point. Speed of communication is the cause of misunderstanding, so we just keep acting without thinking and become cogs in the capitalist machine.
Additionally, white colonial daddies rename principles that have existed since the dawn of time to give themselves legitimacy.
For example, the phrase “dialectical materialism” has been all the hype these days in socialist circles. Are you kidding?? Dialectical materialism is renaming or synthesizing philosophical principles that were originally based in ideas of spirituality that were denigrated in all other cultures—but because patriarchy took over all spirituality, one has to distance themselves from that.
And those who want to have hope because the alternative is nihilism and don’t want to ascribe to the idea of god take Kant’s “transcendental idealism” and run with that formlessly; in the west, this means pure self-focused feelings and doing whatever feels right, which is completely different from the intuitive knowing of what is true.
Is there such thing as good or bad so much as true and untrue?
Museums, Materialism, and Control
Both Marx and Hegel and Kant, whose ideas form the basis of most current western thought, are white colonial daddies that I frankly don’t give a shit about.
I’m personally sick of deepthroating Western philosophies that are linear and have minimal bearing on the lived reality of 99% of the globe—because 99% of the globe doesn’t think like this incurious, fearful population.
And if you look at the core concepts of dialectical materialism, you will see baseline colonial assumptions of materialism, binaries, and class divisions—because they cannot understand the world from a perspective that is not their own. So instead, they impose their viewpoints on everyone and try to get them to fit into their boxes.
Have these ideas now become realities in a globalized world? Probably, maybe, but they don’t have to be, in fact, I would argue that we are on the brink of change.
All these “new” ideas have existed in other societies and cultures, and they are much more developed, integrative, and ACCURATE to those people in their time and in their land.
The colonizers should just spare us all and say they have no understanding of themselves so they keep trying to find it by collecting pieces from everyone else. MUSEUMS ARE A COLONIAL PROJECT.
That being said, does anyone want to go with me? 😀
(Anything can be redeemed so everyone chill tf out-that being said it may take a couple millenia.)
Who Gets the Right to Condemn?
Asking “do you condemn Hamas” implies that one has the power and the authority to do so. At the end of the day the question is not about Hamas. It is about who is deciding who gets the right to live.
The only appropriate answer to that question is:
I get the frame rejecting the “do you condemn Hamas?” question but calling this colonial while refusing to articulate any moral standards governing political violence, civilian harm, or collective responsibility is a refusal of ethics, not a critique of power. Elevating uncertainty about Hamas into virtue while implying justification for violence is selective ignorance paired with moral endorsement. Hamas leadership offers no account of future governance, ethical life, or political responsibility beyond political Islam, and naming that is not a Western frame — it’s a basic political question. Collapsing ethics into geopolitics reduces morality to power, reproducing the same logic being criticized. And repeatedly invoking colonizer versus colonized while rejecting binaries simply grants moral immunity to one side and illegibility to the other. That isn’t decolonized ethics; it’s ethics ceded to resentment and power.