Horizontal Hierarchies

and how Hamas fractured the Left and cancelled Hannukah

Cancel culture was always going to eat itself. In a non-nuanced world, with little appreciation for facts and historical context, bad information is going to get used in nefarious ways. Siding with vibes and herd mentality over objective reasoning and rational thinking is not a sustainable power structure. Here we discuss how mimesis and status games can subconsciously lead to harmful downstream consequences.

Horizontal Hierarchies

When I was a kid, my mom posted a comic on the refrigerator that I still think about to this day. I wish I could find it, I think it was The Far Side, but it goes something like this:

(Image of teenagers standing around smoking looking very emo/goth)

“Teenagers trying to rebel and be different by dressing exactly the same.”

This obviously maps to memetic theory, wherein teenagers see others acting rebellious, and they want to be that, so they mimic it. This can be adhering to any sort of clique that was resonant, whether it’s skater, goth, stoner, jock, etc. Joining a group gives you a feeling of identity, and it gives you a sense of status or superiority over other groups. “I’m goth because I’m too cool to adhere to your mainstream lifestyle.”

Personally, I’ve always had an identity crisis. I was simultaneously in all groups, which also meant I was in none. I can relate to everyone, but I can only identify with the unidentifiable. Anyways, I don’t want to make this about me, but it helps me see things through this sociological lens.

The funny thing about status is that it is all perception. A goth feeling superior that they aren’t part of society, will look down upon a class president who values society very deeply, and vice versa. High school is a great example of these emerging structures, because they are so ubiquitous across the world.

From another vantage point, say, as an adult, you see these clique battles and laugh because you recognize it is just in-fighting between groups on the same horizontal plane. Plenty of goths grow up to run for office, and plenty of former class presidents fall into drugs. You can’t always see it from the plane that you are on, but rest assured that whatever clique battle or status game you are subconsciously playing (and we are all subconsciously playing some), is a horizontal hierarchy, and someone on a different plane is laughing at you.

This is US politics in a nutshell. The in-fighting, jockeying for position, but all within the limited framework of the particular party that you belong to is actually comical to (I would argue) the majority of people.

Here I have three examples of Horizontal Hierarchies: the genderism game on the Left, the somehow newly burgeoning IVF debate on the Right, and the wild and inexplicable backlash against Israel from the Left (which I believe is the first major fracture in decades). The Right has been fractured since like 2016, so no nothing new to report there.

The first two examples are more analogous to each other, so I will cover them in tandem. The final example is a little more nuanced so I will explain it with further detail.

The Gen Z gender fluidity issue is exactly the same as IVF protestation. If I lose some subscribers here, that’s fine, you probably weren’t built for this world anyways. The goal in both instances is to be different by being exactly the same. When you are identifying as something non-traditional, and someone mis-genders you, there is power in calling that person out. Cancel them because I have been mis-gendered! Now, I have no problem with someone identifying as whatever they would like, and other people’s personal sexual preferences are of no concern to me, but it is patently obvious to anyone existing on a different plane that this issue not about self-identification and acceptance, it is about recognition for being different, and the power that it gives you. LGBT became LGBTQ became LGBTQIA became LGBTQIA2+ became a list of 50-100 genders and identities depending on who you ask. The struggle between being inclusive and being unconforming is in conflict. Whenever society thinks they have all the genders covered, wrong! You’re not cool, you’re not hip, you’re not in-the-know, you’re not progressive enough.

Likewise with IVR (in vitro fertilization), it started with regular pro-life, anti-abortion activists. But now since SCOTUS has shifted further to the Right, pro-life sentiment has been enshrined in the legal landscape, making it a “cultural norm” (even though it’s not). So now that pro-life policy is “accepted”, it means people on the Right have to find new ways to distinguish themselves. They have to be even Righter. They need to be different by being exactly the same. Enter the resurfacing arguments against IVF. Due to the fact that embryos are people too, and that during the process of IVF many embryos are put to waste, it creates conflict with the pro-life agenda. This is not a new staple of the religion, but it’s resurfacing angst is. Just like within the Left, a new Horizontal Hierarchy emerges saying: you’re not cool, you’re not hip, you’re not in-the-know, you’re not conservative enough.

The goal here is to be perpetually unrepresented, as that yields power through protestation. Politics has obviously tapped into these groups, as the loudest voices get the most attention, and thus the fringes of each party end up driving it.

Now, as I said at the beginning, the Right has been internally fractured for some time now, while the Left has had the upper hand (even during the Trump years) in terms of solidarity, as the identity politics game has suited their cause more. Labeling people and claiming “isms” or “phobias” is a great way to divide and conquer, but unfortunately it could never be a long term strategy. Eventually you will label and “ism” some group incorrectly, and the consequences may not be trivial.

Aaand that is exactly what has happened.

To start, let’s first establish that the Jewish community is a major donor of the Democratic Party in the US. Estimations say that upwards of 25% of political donations come from Jewish donors. Also, let’s acknowledge the Holocaust, the Yom Kippur War, and the fact that since the creation of Israel, there are very little to no Jews anywhere in the Middle East except Israel, due to persecution. It would be fair to label the Jewish people as an “oppressed” people, by any objective measure, if we were into the whole labeling thing.

The oppressor/oppressed dynamic is the most important feature of the identity politics of the Left. Of course fighting against true oppression is noble, and it has been extremely beneficial to society with things such as ending slavery, ending segregation, suffrage, and allowing gay marriage. However I think the majority of people are starting to see that it has gotten out of hand. Affirmative Action was proven to be unsuccessful by many objective metrics over its 30 year run, and there was not much push back when it was struck down by SCOTUS.

In fact, the backlash the decision did receive was kind of icky, and very telling as to what identity politics is.. which is racism. Here is a tweet I captured at the time of a Democratic aide’s reaction:

“No black person will be able to succeed in a merit-based system”. Ouch. Now, giving this person the benefit of the doubt, she probably means well, but the Freudian slip is a microcosm of the movement. These people are oppressed based on the color of their skin, and we must fight to tear down the oppressor (white people).

This very simplistic view of the world has been placed haphazardly onto the Israel/Palestine issue. Jewish people (who are mostly white and wealthy in America) are oppressing Muslims (who are relatively poorer, mostly darker skinned in America, and still reeling from 9/11 Islamophobia). The American Left sees the rich white oppressing the poor dark, and all of a sudden they are up in arms protesting for Palestine. It’s the Israeli’s who are the oppressor!

Ignored are the heinous crimes committed by Hamas. Ignored is the fact that the majority of Gazans approve of Hamas’s leadership. Ignored is the fact that the stated mission of Hamas is genocide. And ignored is the fact that if Israel wanted to, they could completely wipe Gaza off the face of the earth (they have nukes). The thought experiment that I have heard come up several times is to imagine that the roles were reversed, and Hamas had the nukes. Would they hesitate to use them? Probably not.

The entire issue has been denigrated down to simple racial identity politics. The funny part is (if any of this is funny), is that in the Middle East many Israelis are actually quite dark skinned, and Palestinians quite light skinned.

So what happened? Far-left protest groups starting protesting in college campuses, making the Jewish students feel.. erm.. oppressed? Osama Bin Laden’s Letter to America went viral on TikTok with many people sympathizing with his position. And just a few days ago the President’s from Harvard, MIT, and UPenn refused to publicly state that calling for genocide was against their school’s code of conduct.

All of this is stemming from the Horizontal Hierarchy of trying to outprogressive the other progressives. Look at me, I’m so forward thinking, Bin Laden was right, it’s America that is the problem. Thankfully, the moderate Left swiftly stepped in and disassociated themselves from the faulty faculty. But the damage has been done, the fracture has occurred, and the bigger questions like “wtf is being taught in our Ivy League schools?” are starting to arise.

I don’t think the Left can survive this fracture in the short term. They need the youth to be angry against the Right, but without Trump spewing headlines every day, what hot topic issue is going to drive Gen Z to the booth? The heads of the Democratic party cannot realistically associate with the far-Left on this issue as they risk serious shortfall of donations, as well as moderates and independents turning Red for at least a cycle. Even if you put all the wokeness back in the bus and turned it around, the Left is stuck with Biden (who cannot win against anyone due to Anti-ancestralism), and Newsome, who is being proactively vilified by the Right the way they did Hillary. It’s a tough spot to be in.

I’ll leave you with the innocuous Hannukah Instagram post by the VP and her Second Gentleman, along with three top comments. Remember, these are the supporters! Yeesh. Hannukah, you have been cancelled..

Let me know if you enjoy this type of content. This Substack is still experimental and I am figuring out which direction I want to go in 2024. I might just switch up completely and do near-future sci-fi, who knows!