The 2024 Student Encampments: Strategic Radicalism and the Struggle for a Free Palestine
August 22, 2024
“Being revolutionary… is not about raising ‘revolutionary’ slogans … What is truly revolutionary is raising a slogan that is principled and morally consistent and yet conducive to action on the ground that can lead to real change towards justice”
- Omar Barghouti, Co-Founder of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (B.D.S) Movement in 2016 as quoted in Al-Shabaka.
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A social movement necessarily contains divergent perspectives on tactics and strategies. This is due to the dialectical nature of the world. People compelled to a cause and mobilizers alike develop different approaches, messages and framings. This is also the case for the pro-Palestine movement on campuses, which fights for academia to speak out, disclose and divest from Israel. The analysis of this movement reveals splits around crucial issues, namely in the controversy surrounding the Palestinian B.D.S National Committee call for strategic radicalism, acceptance of compromises and moderation in optics with regards to armed resistance.
It is necessary to explore the opposing viewpoints within a Marxist framework so as to reach the correct line. Thus, this article gives theoretical expression to the ongoing comradely debate, critiques the rising adventurist1 tendency and argues for strategic radicalism, while also repudiating the weaker liquidationist2 position.
As the movement builds power, contradictions between the tendencies sharpen. This is an objective, and expected, process rooted in material changes. As students globally take sustained direct action, new terrains offer divergent choices. The pressure on senior management of academic institutions leads them to repress, concede or a combination thereof. In turn, whether student activists should accept compromises is a flashpoint of the ideological clash.
In addition, the significant expansion of the movement brings fresh debates to the fore. It is no longer restricted to militant vanguards but snowballs into the mainstream, creating new collective challenges. The question of optics is constantly discussed. Whether to express principles in the most ‘pure’ fashion, mobilizing the most militant, or fine-tune messaging to attract wider layers of people is especially salient when it comes to armed resistance and the decolonization process. The tension between radical politics and mass appeal is thus clear.
In short, the fundamental questions are firstly, that of compromises, and secondly that of optics.
With sober analysis, the intricacies of each issue is revealed. With applied dialectical reasoning, the correct line is identified. It is on this basis, grounded in concreteness, that the investigation starts.
Compromises
Where encampments concluded deals with academic bureaucrats, the outcomes are diverse, but share some common features. Here, they are measured by divestment, cessation of academic, financial and supply-side ties to apartheid, genocide and settler-colonialism by the state of Israel. None of these deals fully encompass and match one-for-one the demands put forward by protestors. The reader finds a non-exhaustive table of encampment locations which concluded deals with academic institutions, and the terms of those deals, in Table 1.
Table 1, A Non-Exhaustive List of De-Encampment Deals’ Outcomes
The commonality is that all of them, for at least one aspect of divestment, contain a process with an undefined outcome, rather than an instantaneous end to all complicity. As a result, without exception, these deals are met with criticism by the adventurists for ‘capitulation’, ‘liberalism’, ‘Zionism’, ‘wreckerism’, ‘reformism’, ‘collaborationism’, ‘opportunism’, ‘chauvinism’ and so on and so forth. The archetype of the ‘sell-out’, ‘gravedigger’ and ‘traitor’ becomes a motivator of hypnotic behaviour that compels the adventurists to brand all deals with the same label.
These accusations are hurled at comrades who fought bravely, in the face of repression by academic institutions, the state and employers for the cause of Palestinian liberation. They are prevalent on social media platforms and organizing group chats that are the forums for support, strategising and mobilizing around encampments. Between different people and tendencies, the level of criticism differs, but the same line of reasoning is present within all of them.
This criticism, of course, is not substantiated by engagement with the actuality of the movement, but appears as a lashing out against the imagined boogeyman of capitulation. Nevertheless, its main tenets are as follows:
1. It is the case that accepting a process with an undefined outcome is never victory, and is necessarily a delaying tactic from the academic institution. Reformism through negotiations is the death of progress, and represents opportunism.
2. Therefore, nothing less than an instantaneous end to all complicity through divestment is acceptable.
3. Finally, this means that protestors who accept half-measures betray Palestinians and engage in performative theatrics as opposed to genuine revolutionary action.
In order to understand the hinterland of this line of thinking, multiple factors have to be considered. Undoubtedly, socialists play key roles in encampments, and hence the diverging opinions are ultimately rooted in the socialist movement, its history, tendencies, specificities etc.
Firstly, in the collective psyche of the movement, there is massive emphasis placed on leadership. Due to socialism’s own history of capitulation in moments of revolution, modern socialists are hyper-fixated on the possibility of ‘betrayal’ by insufficiently radical leadership. Thus, the psychohistorical element plays a role, the burning desire for revolution, overpowering the sober analysis of the present.
Secondly, there is widespread vulgarization of Marxism, with the movement dominated by superficial analysis that insists on its own purity. As Paul Mattick wrote in the introduction to Anti-Bolshevik Communism from 1978, the movement is entangled with:
“a set of ideologies that have no relevance to the requirements of social change in capitalist nations. They find their inspiration not in the developmental processes of their own society but in the heroes of popular revolution in faraway countries, thereby revealing that their enthusiasm is not as yet a real concern for decisive social change”.
Echoing this, Lex Von Clark writes in Ultraleftism Ascendant in 2024 that adventurists:
“revel in the subcultural status afforded by their arcane ideologies and small sectarian communities, always using the most radical (and often the most opaque) language possible to distinguish themselves from ‘normies’. Rather than running campaigns based on widely and deeply felt issues, they shout only the most revolutionary slogans and demands, denigrating anything less as cooptation and compromise”.
Thirdly, dialectical materialism has been overshadowed as Plekhanovian mechanical materialism is resurgent. Combined with the commodification of Marxist ideology, the result is vulgarisation and reduction to one-dimensional, superficial and pre-packaged formulas. Within socialist spaces, online and offline, this is translated into the dominance of a hyper-moralising, identity opportunistic and condescending discourse described in Mark Fisher’s essay Exiting the Vampire Castle from 2013.
To deconstruct (1), (2) and (3), it is necessary to understand the nature of the encampments, and the deals brokered with senior management, the academic bureaucrats. Students and workers within an academic institution are in the exploited class, while academic bureaucrats are in the exploiting class. Students are treated as cash cows, and workers are made precarious, while academic bureaucrats, supported by state under-funding, transform the institution into a business that seeks profit and ignores ethical considerations. Because of the distinct positions of the student and academic management, any deals that are made between students and academic bureaucrats are inherently class compromises regardless of content.
With regards to (1) (“It is the case that accepting a process with an undefined outcome is never victory, and is necessarily a delaying tactic from the academic institution”), the adventurist assumption is that then it follows, that the institution’s superstructure cannot act contrary to the nature of its economic base, profit-seeking, except under direct pressure. A deal, therefore, in which no more direct pressure exists, is doomed to fail. However, there is recognition implicit herein that there is nothing stopping, from a technical perspective, the institution from divesting either way. They are capable of divesting if they want to. The argument thus rests on a mechanistic linkage of the economic base and the superstructure. Within the adventurist’s paradigm, academic bureaucrats are compelled to a robotic fulfillment of the ceaseless self-expansion of value. This is crude economic determinism of the Plekhanovian type that sees human behaviour strictly defined by the laws of a given mode of production, which is a falsehood.
In reality, the economic base structures human activity, but does not determine it immediately. As V.I. Lenin wrote in Conspectus of Hegel’s book “The Science of Logic” from 1914, “Man’s consciousness not only reflects the objective world, but creates it”. The economic base provides a terrain of opportunity for the march of history, limits it to comply with its own laws, but releases the creation of concrete outcomes to the realm of fundamentally human activity in the sphere of the superstructure, before repeating the process.
Thus, individual actors situated within capitalist power structures are not automatons that have been programmed to follow a rigid set of rules that implement the laws of capitalism. There is no mechanistic linkage between the profits from complicity and the behaviour of academic bureaucrats. For example, it is possible to imagine that a university divests, invests in ethical ties to regain lost finances, or even allows a loss to occur. In fact, agents in capitalist societies make such decisions all the time, entering antagonism with one set of agents, establishing symbiotic relationships with yet another set of agents, etc. The renewable industry threatens the fossil-fuels; the vegan food-shop competes with the butcher’s across the corner; the fair trade coffee-house suffers a reduced profit but prides itself on virtue. In the mind’s-eye of the capitalist, one finds not the mathematical expressions of the laws of capital, but ‘conscious life activity’3 as Karl Marx puts it in the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts from 1844. The laws of capitalism must be followed but this does not mean that the motivator for agents’ behavior is their implementation, and so, a variety arises which ensures that their specific configuration in the superstructure is not a monolith. As Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari recognized in Capitalism and Schizophrenia from 1972 and 1980, capitalism is unmatched in its ability to control the flow of desire for its own ends, ever-shapeshifting, at its core an elasticity which at the same time shapes the human will but bends to it.
Given the flexible nature of capitalism to be organized according to the human will, any event relating to it has to be analyzed according to its own terms, both base and superstructure. Divestment is perfectly within the limits of capitalism and so is a permissible course of action. Therefore, there are various factors which influence whether the academic bureaucrats honor the agreement. The demographics of the institution; the public pressure on the authorities in its country of location; the personal attitudes, morals and values of the bureaucrats; the continuing pressure applied by protestors through the threat of renewed direct action; proclamation of an exploratory or promised intent of divestment shattering bureaucratic stasis; the strength of the Zionist pressure lobby and others.
Thus, capitalism is a general tendency with localized variations, and the student, the worker and the academic bureaucrat are abstract categories, if drawn from real humans. Localized variations of capitalism do not follow pure capitalist logic, the ‘ideal average’ that Karl Marx was studying in Capital: A Critique of Political Economy from 1867, 1885, and 1894, which was an extremely abstracted, highly theoretical schematization. The conclusion is that the demand of divestment itself is reformist and not necessarily revolutionary.
It is clear that there is no underlying problem using reformist means to advance reformist ends. To achieve divestment, protests are used to apply pressure on institutions, which then help win in seat-at-the-table negotiations. Therefore, at this point, the students and the institution have struck a ‘deal’, representing a ‘moment’ of the class struggle in the local context, un-sharpened but also transformed. Students wait for the next move by the institution, positive or negative, to see whether the terms of the compromise are actualized. A compromise is effective for the moment it is in, by being a step in the construction of a political movement that is able to hold the institution to account and make more advanced demands later. If it transpires that the institution betrays the terms of the compromise, the movement must then begin ramping up pressure, and keep fighting. Previous struggles have seen compromises, backtracks, partial successes, etc. until eventually becoming victorious, so demanding immediate rupture, rejecting half-measures, and refusing to negotiate with the authorities is a mistake if one wishes to progress the cause of Palestine.
In his 1971 work Post-Scarcity Anarchism Murray Bookchin warned about the pitfalls of authoritarian vanguardism, observing that the internal logic thereof, whether concretized by parties or as a general attitude, leads to the stifling of local initiative in pursuit of “theoretical competence”, the “larger view” and thus “subordination” of grassroots movements to “directives” from above that lack understanding of specific contexts and the organic ways in which they progress the cause. By labeling the students brokering agreements with the powers that be with various pejorative terms, the revolutionary nature of the demand is asserted, rather than its reformist nature, in an authoritarian vanguardism that prematurely imagines the encampments to be the imminent outbreak of socialist revolution, and seeks to substitute capitulatory leadership for revolutionary leadership.
In reality, the students are following the general schema of achieving reformist demands. The institution shows engagement, offers that the demand works its way through the system for possible fulfillment, and the protestors stop. A reformist demand necessarily implies an element of trust, because it is underpinned by faith in the system and in essence relies on the system for its implementation. If this trust is betrayed by the institution, new escalation can be prepared by the protesters. While protesters might view the de-escalation as stripping them of the hard-won high ground, it is in fact inevitable, for better or worse, that the demands progress through the system. Yet, the demands are not given by the authorities. The demands are won by the self-organization of the protestors through the use of power. It is precisely in this that lies the possibility for the advancement of the movement, the growth of its base following partial successes and the widening of the scope through the shrewd utilization of what has already been achieved to achieve even more.
It is possible that in each of the encampments, escalations, negotiations, etc. could have benefited from improved tactics and strategy. Importantly, however, against the armchair critics who lack understanding of specific contexts, such decisions need to be taken with the local context treated as essential. If not, then this too, represents a form of authoritarian vanguardism to dictate from outside, as is the trend in online and offline spaces. The need for a concrete analysis of concrete conditions, the ability to account for the totality of base and superstructural factors rather than rely on dogma and mechanicalism, shows itself yet again. Demonstrably, student negotiators know the nuts-and-bolts of the local context, including the crucial superstructural factors, because of their inherent submersion thereof, and thus are best placed to make the correct decisions and likely to err less.
For example, it is entirely possible that the timeframe has to be this or that for logistical reasons, spanning from the bureaucratic structure of the university that makes it so that divestment is not an executive decision but of a specific committee, the need for the decision to pass through multiple checks and balances, or be researched thoroughly by research sub-groups so as to justify divestment. Accounting for whether the tie to apartheid is an investment, supplier or academic, removing them may run into various challenges. If it is an investment, it is possible that the university has an external investment manager, and invests in a common fund, requiring investor consent from all others invested in the fund to remove. If it is a supplier, there may be contractual reasons for having to wait. When it comes to academic ties, the trickiest of them all, a long and drawn out process must be set up so as to transcend the limitations of so-called academic freedom, which researchers may hold dear, and to justify cutting ties without endangering an academic’s research (who may then legally challenge the university, etc.). Therefore it is counterintuitive to ramble about the need for immediate divestment and cutting of ties, absolute demagoguery to demand such an unrealistic goal, and even more disappointing to criticize how students on the ground leverage their power on the university.
These logistics are frustrating, but must be engaged with rather than decried. Students on the ground are the most able to understand a given move by their respective institution. They have not betrayed their convictions if they recognize the need to accept a compromise.
In the meanwhile, a victory is achieved in the sociocultural realm, advancing the cause of Palestinian liberation. The propaganda, and in fact any form of coverage, for the solidarity movements means death-by-a-thousand-cuts for the social legitimacy of Israel, leading to public support with a micro-political revolution, inspiration for more political activity and the destabilization of cultural hegemony. This translates into material victories through quiet divestiture even beyond the academic institution, meaning the investments that are not made, rather than cut, in Israel as organisations seek fool-proofing from controversial stances and future protests. As the world wakes up to the brutality of Zionism, the movement gains steam, and the consciousness of millions shifts.
In addition, encampment agreements contain future avenues for tackling problematic ties in a formal setting that may arise, scholarships for displaced people, building of links with Palestine, immunity agreements from disciplinary processes and other sociocultural initiatives which shift public opinion. As a thought experiment, imagine if each encampment concluded a better-or-worse agreement with their respective academic institution. There would, necessarily, be a multiplicity of outcomes from the myriad ‘processes of investigation’ that the academic institution undertakes, and statistically, this necessarily ends up being overall progress. If the agreement had not been made at all for the sake of purity, no progress would have been made. It is thus unwise to insist on the rigid binary between the instantaneous end of complicity and the reformist processes. Beyond the binary, it is crucial to note that campaign demands are often bundled. While calling for a ceasefire, divesting and increasing the flow of aid to Gaza share the same forum of public mobilization, each requires varying approaches. When students accept deals, they balance the unique parts comprising the overall demands, which must be done pragmatically rather than based on blind revolutionary ideals that could forego tangible wins. For example, an attitude of overestimating the actions of academia in the West in delegitimizing the occupation, and therefore insisting on symbolism such as institutions proclaiming the right of resistance rather than material action. To cut ties delivers blows to the claims of legitimacy of this occupying force, but it is not the words of institutions in their statements that will restrain the genocidal regime. If adventurism is insisted upon, it could hurt the solidarity movement, by disregarding wins that can be used to build towards victory and appearing unreasonable from a public relations perspective. The construction of a serious political movement requires flexibility in parts for the benefit of its totality, while respecting local variability, so as to grow mass appeal.
When Leila Khaled said in 2024 in an interview to the Peoples Dispatch that “liberation is not achieved at the negotiation table”, she said it in relation to the armed Palestinian struggle against the state of Israel, not about the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (B.D.S) campaign. Leila Khaled was not talking about academia’s investments In Israel, and divestiture, but about the fight for Palestinian liberation, including armed resistance, against an ethno-nationalist settler-colonial fascist state. Marxists have to understand their own contexts, not transpose ready-made formulas. It is our mission in the West to push for divestment principles, pressure the Zionist entity, use whatever methods we can to do so and in this way contribute to the overall struggle.
The inability for adventurists to contextualize divestment from Israel as a reformist rather than revolutionary demand is problematic. Capitalism existed before Israel and it will exist after Israel. The identification of Israel with capitalism-as-a-whole rather than its part leads to the conclusion that divestment is a revolutionary demand, leading to morbid symptoms. It results in, for example, uncritical, as opposed to critical support only appreciating its role in upholding the axis of resistance, for Iran, Syria and Iraq as part of a campist anti-imperialist framework. Dialectics, once a tool of liberatory politics, is now in service of dogmatists who conceive of the world as a battle between good and evil, a Christian duality that traces back to Plato, rather than as a set of complex social relations defined by the mode of production.
The truth is that the end of Israel is a blow to Western capital, which is only a part-in-whole, and an opportunity for non-Western capital, another part-in-whole, both of which make up the whole of the capitalist totality.
The transformation from a reformism to revolution, cannot be conjured by adopting an adventurist line towards compromises, imposed by taking over the decision-making of self-organized students, and believing in an idealist analysis for which objective conditions do not exist. The substitution of the actual, living, breathing movement, from which possibly revolutionary moments may arise, for reductive, dogmatic and undialectical insistence on the immediacy of the revolution, is the hallmark of adventurist thinking. The Marxist must never tail behind the movement, nor be over-confident and engage in adventurism, but remain the center of it, providing theoretical guidance to build the movement further, patiently explain but never force their will on the masses, upholding the principle of organic vanguardism (as advocated for by Gramsci and others). The lingering question of transitioning from reformist demands to revolutionary demands without adventurism must now be answered, and the correct line identified.
In parallel to the decay of Israel, Western capitalism destabilizes, the confidence of the masses grows, and a revolutionary situation may appear if coupled with the right conditions at home, including the participation of the working class, but it is wrong to herald a worldwide socialist revolution as being immediately and necessarily tied to the liberation of Palestine.
Whether it be in the heart of the empire or in countries where imperialist ties are weak, students asking their academic institutions to speak out, disclose and divest are putting forward a reformist demand. In the West, with enough pressure on liberal-democratic institutions, outweighing the presence of the Zionist lobby, the demands are achievable. In the case of the demand acting as a maximalist catapult, in instances where configuration of capitalism is rigidly fixed to the Zionist entity, the students enter into conflict with the state forces on this initially reformist basis. The situation can turn revolutionary thus in various ways.
Firstly, if the demands are met, and the students link up with workers outside of the academic institution, the struggle continues and puts forward revolutionary demands. Secondly, if the demand cannot be met, and the ensuing conflict with state forces begets the support of workers outside of the academic institution, the struggle continues and puts forward revolutionary demands. This, however, requires an explosive growth of revolutionary ideology and organizations, a mood amongst the masses which is not-yet-present, and the declaration of socialist demands.
Without emphasizing the importance of this larger link, treating divestment as an intrinsically revolutionary demand is a form of adventurism which posits that the political situation has advanced and class contradictions sharpened more than they truly have. It is a mistake to treat the demand as one of its moments - the revolutionary moment - before the transformation from a reformist struggle to a revolutionary struggle has taken place. In a revolutionary situation, a complete antagonism between classes develops and they, instead of compromising, are looking for perpetual fight until one class overthrows the other. The attitude of the adventurist stems from this mistake. A reformist demand cannot be made in a revolutionary way without a revolutionary situation.
The socialists partaking in the encampments should heed the wisdom of this sober analysis. Neither the subjective nor the objective conditions are present to afford the abandonment of reform in favor of revolution. The task is precisely to win deals, raise confidence and spread revolutionary politics through leadership. Socialists participate in various reformist structures with reformist demands, such as student unions, trade unions, local councils, single-issue groups, etc. to win reforms and spread revolutionary politics. However, for revolutionary ends, revolutionary means must be used, such as the growth of revolutionary organizations, assemblies, mutual aid networks etc. This principle must be firmly applied, in opposition to the liquidationist position that dissolves socialist politics through participation in bourgeois political parties. Within the encampments, the fight for a liberated Palestine under capitalism as well as the possibility of socialism are dialectically entangled. This entanglement must be resolved by pushing for reform under capitalism, winning or losing, and advocating for systemic change.
Optics
The total rejection of optics as unprincipled moderation is the gravest mistake of the adventurist. It must be understood that the solidarity encampment movement is a cultural, economic and political war, and derives its authority from mass appeal. On the other hand, the armed resistance derives its power from military means. While both are opposed to Zionism, and therefore must never adjust optics to appeal to the allies of its diametrical enemy, the former is distinguished from the latter by its need to appeal to an ever-existing as-of-yet not involved layer of people for political mobilization. In this case, optics should be understood not as liberal public relations which targets all, but as the strategic presentation of principles which targets some, thus also avoiding liquidationist positions. While interlinked by the end goal of national liberation for the Palestinian people, the diverging nature of the struggle at home versus in the settler-colony mandates divergent approaches to optics.
Messaging, slogans and flags are crucial reflections of underlying aims and principles, and therefore have to be represented with the utmost precision. In order to bring the movement to mass support, disciplined, rather than infantile, communication to the wider public is a must. A well-oiled approach to communication results in optics that appeal to people.
Our position in the Western world is one of solidarity, through the convincing of masses, the pressuring of authorities and institutions, to enact policies favorable to the liberation of Palestine. This singular aim must be carried out with the utmost maturity, cognizant of its world-historic role, and with great attention to the particularities of each country, city, community, etc.
Sadly, the optics debate is constantly misrepresented in socialist discourse. When the B.D.S National Committee published its advice on conveying support for the armed resistance, it was met with backlash, and subsequently retracted. It stated that the right to armed resistance, as long as it avoids deliberately targeting civilians, as recognized under U.N Resolution 2625 and 1265 respectively, should be defended. However, the advice cautioned not to “advocate for, raise slogans for, or otherwise support” the armed resistance, as it “would likely harm the movement” due to public relations, intensified repression and legality concerns.
In this debate, it is crucial to understand the difference between the defense of a principle and its presentation within the concrete context. It is possible to defend a principle and present it in differing ways. In this lens, it is not a matter of principle, but one of optics. With the understanding that the B.D.S movement derives its authority from mass appeal, whereas the armed resistance from military might, it is clear that neither of the opposing viewpoints hold any practical consequences for the liberating forces. The principle remains untouched as its pursuit is framed according to the context in which it is being pursued.
Understanding the interlinked, yet separate, struggles, the B.D.S movement clearly should seek answers not in an imagined consequentiality of armed resistance, but from within, its tactics and strategy being judged on whatever is best for its own growth. The right to resist must be defended with the utmost vigor in public discourse, and in fact stressed as the primary driving force for the liberation of Palestine. Flipping the usual argument on its head, it is exactly the recognition that only Palestinians can liberate Palestine, naturally bolstered or hindered depending on the level of worldwide solidarity, that necessitates the politics of palatability.
The defense of this reality thus need not translate to raising the slogans, flying the flags, displaying the leaders of the armed resistance. It is critical to defend this principle, but it is totally unhelpful to engage in alienating behaviors designed to provoke, posture and be the most radical person in the room. The trend of pretending to be a resistance fighter, brandishing flags, chanting slogans and glorifying leaders reveals a cosplaying element to the movement that shows it is ignorant of the differing contexts in which it operates. Activists on the frontline of delegitimizing the apartheid state and draining it of western support are not the first line of Palestinian liberation fighters and have no practical reason for acting like they are.
While taking to the streets and engaging in militant acts is necessary, the self-propelling drive to display escalating levels of irrational militancy is not. It is not uncommon to see statements on anti-colonial violence by the adventurists far surpassing that which is the accepted consensus in Palestinian society. These reckless statements fall far short of the need to precisely present the idea of a liberated Palestine where all people can live in equal terms. For example, the creation of a settler-class need not end in the expulsion or worse of a settler-class, rather than in the dissolution of a settler-class into a liberated society.
The claim that all Israelis are settlers, none of them civilians, and thus must all be expelled or worse, substitutes liberatory decolonization politics for a reactionary, brutalizing and violent framework of expulsion and destruction. It is a fetishization of violence, steeped in the logic of the guillotine - a term coined by CrimeThInc. in a 2019 article titled Against the Logic of the Guillotine - that does not accord with the core principles of the liberation movement. The Israeli population is both a settler-class and the potential citizens in a liberated Palestine, reflecting the dialectics of change. There must be no ambiguity between a liberatory and a reactionary framework of decolonization.4
While insisting on the right of oppressed people to armed resistance, all violent acts need to be contextualized, none celebrated, some defended as a driving force of liberation. Hamas itself, in its report on the October 7th insurgency, denies deliberately targeting civilians and admits faults, in a nod to international law. The right of the Palestinian people to resist, decolonize Palestine and self-determine the future of their country towards a liberatory framework is secured by both, the prevailing opinions of the Palestinian people as well as the restriction on nations to act contrary to international law especially in the targeting of civilians and forced population displacement.
Thus, the advice was not aimed at sabotaging those who are rightly supporting the armed resistance through the defense of the inherent right, but at those who are expressing support in counter-productive ways. This fixation comes at the cost of losing focus on achieving wins for the movement. The consequences will be dwindling participation, negative media attention that shapes the debate and gives academic institutions excuses to refuse demands as well as hesitancy on the side of reformist organizations - political parties, non-governmental organizations, human rights groups that would never engage in direct action but are useful tactically and strategically - to support encampments. The advice issued cannot be divorced from this context, one in which the adventurists have moved from a needed defense of the right to resist to reckless grand-standing that reaches far beyond what is required at this historical juncture.
Adventurist Evocation of Palestinians
The identity opportunism of adventurists is present within discourse. When comrades debate compromise and optics, the adventurists retort with ‘betrayal of’, ‘insult to’, ‘treason of’, ‘racist towards’ etc. Palestinians. A recurring theme is that by whatever time the divestment process is completed, there will be no more Palestinians left. Additionally, there are sentiments that express that ‘white individual’, the ‘American’, ‘the European’, the ‘Westerner’, the ‘Western settler’, the ‘Western colonizer’ etc. is unable to formulate tactics and strategies due to their inherent biases arising from dependency on the empire. This hinders discussion on crucial movement-building questions, due to fear of being labeled as a traitor to the cause.
When evoking Palestinians, it is akin to a wizard conjuring an apparition, and coincidentally, the Palestinians that the adventurists have conjured appear to be of one opinion, in agreement with the adventurists. In reality, the evocation of Palestinians, who are a diverse bunch of people with varying opinions, is an emotive tool. They do not speak with one voice, one ideology and one mind. They are not a monolithic source of political authority and theory. Also, participation in actions of the movement can pose a serious threat to some Palestinians. This effectively means that a considerable number of Palestinians who have all sorts of views are excluded from interacting with the movement and voicing their opinions; it would be hardly possible therefore to state exactly what opinions Palestinians hold. Therefore, each opinion from Palestinians needs to be evaluated according to their own merits, as applicable to the local context.
Within encampments, the centering of Palestinian voices is best done with the adoption of the 2005 Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions call, universally supported in Palestine, as well as the adoption of the Thawabit. However, calls to base decision-making on nationality transcends the principle of intersectional solidarity and veers into liberal identity politics. This is opposed to socialist democracy. The pre-figurative horizontally-organised structures of the encampments reflect embryonic peoples’ councils as the foundation of a socialist republic, which do not base voting rights along identitarian lines, but along participation in the production process. Thus, it should be rejected.
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The hinterland of adventurism is crude economic determinism, authoritarian vanguardism and a lack of understanding of dialectics. The rejection of compromises as well as that of optics is a sub-optimal approach for the pro-Palestine solidarity encampments on academic campuses. On the other hand, strategic radicalism, which champions reforms as a stepping stone to revolution, and recognizes the necessity of optics, while rejecting liquidationism, is the way forward for Palestinian liberation and the socialist movement.
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1 - Adventurism is characterized by an inability to think tactically and strategically about issues such as compromises, the wielding of extreme slogans and engaging in risky and daring direct action in small numbers, for no other reason than to appear the most revolutionary, to the detriment of mass participation.
2 - Liquidationism is characterized by the abandoning of the revolutionary political programme, and of principles, and their voluntary dissolution into non-revolutionary forces.
3 - The ability to bring an ideation into reality.
4 - Without advocating for a change in the slogan, which the author believes is tactically and strategically wrong, this is the ambiguity that Normal Finkelstein was wanting to clear when he warned about optics.
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