Haze

Y’all are actually so weird for celebrating politicians who run as alternatives to the establishment while enthusiastically embracing the very people responsible for the atrocities they claim to oppose. Yes, that includes war criminal Obama and Gaza genocide supporter Bernie Sanders. It’s one thing to vote for someone as a political calculation. It’s another to celebrate their compromises, excuse their alliances, and act like they’re revolutionary leaders.

There’s something depressing about watching Abdul El-Sayed’s campaign, a political moment that should represent a break from the Democratic Party’s status quo, still reproduce some of its most troubling contradictions on Palestine. Abdul called out Israel’s genocide, challenged Zionism, and rejected continued American military support. These are meaningful departures from the party establishment. Yet he’s also repeatedly condemned acts of Palestinian armed resistance while explicitly assuring Zionist Democrats that there’s room for them in the party’s big tent. Zionism, an ideology used to justify the dispossession of Palestinians and a state carrying out genocide, is accommodated as a legitimate political disagreement within the Democratic Party. Yet Palestinian resistance to that dispossession and oppression is treated as something that must be continually condemned and disavowed. These are not morally equivalent positions. I’m not saying El-Sayed must endorse every act of Palestinian resistance. I just don’t think American politicians, particularly those who claim to support Palestine, should presume the moral authority to condemn the resistance of a people whose oppression their own government funds and enables, while simultaneously reassuring Zionists of their political legitimacy. It’s possible to recognize the significance of El-Sayed’s candidacy and the pressure he’s resisted without abandoning criticism of the concessions he’s made. Political pragmatism doesn’t justify surrendering principles in the name of winning, especially when I don’t think he even needs to do that to win. The Democratic Party needs people like him and the other insurgents more than he needs them. Whatever happens tomorrow, electoral victory cannot be the measure of political progress especially if it’s built on the principles that were abandoned along the way.