The AJPlus exception! Fascism for thee, but not me


I am not a media person, so I do not understand the deal with AJPlus and its “woke” journalists.

AJPlus is owned by the Al Jazeera Media Group, which is a catspaw of the government of Qatar. Qatar is a Salafi petrostate run for the benefit of the Thani family and is run like a capitalist caste state. I’ve been to Qatar. It’s a fine place if you have money, but perhaps less fine if you one of the laboring classes.

I don’t begrudge Sana Saeed for making a living, but I doubt she would begrudge herself that opportunity if she was on the outside looking in.

The world is complicated. I dislike engaging in guilt-by-association but woke journalists at AJPlus do it constantly. It’s like they don’t see the glasshouses that they live in.

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Kirbmarc
Kirbmarc
4 years ago

To woke people the only country that truly matters are the United States, every other country is just an afterthought.

Lots of tropes used by woke people make no sense outside the US: the idea that people from places as far apart as Mexico and India are all “brown”, that islam is “a religion of brown people” (it’s so ridiculous when Albania and Mali are both muslim-majority countries), that “you can’t be racist against white people” (just ask Polish people in the UK or Italians in Germany).

Qatar simply isn’t a concern for the vast majority of woke people.

thewarlock
thewarlock
4 years ago

The unholy alliance between radical leftists and radical islam/radical islam sympathizers is one of the biggest dangers to humanity

Bhumiputra
Bhumiputra
4 years ago

I have seen a lot of hand wringing on this here and among the right wing in general. Is there a simpler explanation? May be in feminist view, the oppressiveness of a system is inversely related to number of sex partners a woman typically has. I remember reading a Twitter article arguing why Harem is actually feminist. Hence conservative Islamic Middle East is condoned since divorce and remarriage is very common. The liberal west achieves this by serial monogamy. Only cultures which insist on man + woman life long marriage are looked down in feminist circles. Modern leftism seems to be entirely driven by feminists. This is the only correlation that I found that explains a lot of what is going on.

thewarlock
thewarlock
4 years ago
Reply to  Bhumiputra

it is often argued that hypergamy is natural for most heterosexual women

Saurav
Saurav
4 years ago

“Fascism for thee, but not me”

I think its true in all group identity dynamics. Yesterday was having this argument with a Bhadralok who argued coalition govts are always better than majority government, and how govts should always be changed every 5-10 years, to have checks on party . This from someone who’s own state was ruled for flat 40 years by a majority Govt.

Everyone loath a dictator , but only of the opposing team.

Deep Bhatnagar
Deep Bhatnagar
4 years ago
Reply to  Saurav

You are mixing domination or hegemony with fascism which is the real problem because when big groups don’t have hegemony then there are elite coalitions which take up the same space in the form of NGO, Civil society, Policy researchers etc.

No matter which system one choose it is impossible to avoid hegemony, what should be focused on instead is to find the available methods in each system which can provide fair treatment to others even if the overall system favors one side over the rest.

principia
principia
4 years ago

You see this with “liberal” Zionists in the US all the time. They spend enormous amounts of time agonising about supposed nazi dangers lurking everywhere but then shill for Israel, though in a more sophisticated manner (Mondoweiss has many examples how the NYT does it).

I have a rule of thumb. Want to know how progressive someone *really* is? See how they act when they are in the majority. Most of these woke activists are superficially woke for their own ethnic self-interest, not because of any underlying commitment to liberalism.

Chittadhara
Chittadhara
4 years ago

Can the world take a fucking break from watching endless documentaries on world war 2 and labeling everything they don’t like as fascists? It is as if there are only two historic events, fall of rome and world war 2.

https://imgflip.com/i/4hbq1b

AnAn
4 years ago

I don’t understand what Sana Saeed is writing. Is she implying that Rachel’s friends are fascists?

How does she define fascist?

Does Sana consider herself to be a fascist?

Milan Todorovic
Milan Todorovic
4 years ago
Reply to  AnAn

Nice to see you are back, commenting after covid sabbaticals. Just to update you where we are up to.

We are just talking about “beautiful human group… of high stature …from the east coast of the Adriatic Sea” (Pittar Eugine, 1924) who influenced Proto-Germanic language. Cheers, stay negative.

Brown Pundits