The Dying Art of Disagreement

What I learned from a bruising few days on social media

“Aggressive violent man in a fight, with a bloody fist” (iStock / Getty Images Plus)

This kind of thing hasn’t happened to me a long time.

On Monday morning, I saw on Twitter/X that New York magazine had just published a profile of and interview with the writer Ta-Nehisi Coates about his forthcoming book (partially) about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Coates makes very clear in the interview that he endorses from top to bottom the position advocated by the most militant pro-Palestinian activists: Israel is committing genocide and ethnic cleansing in Gaza; Palestinian resistance is equivalent in purity and righteousness to those who marched against Jim Crow in the American South during the 1950s and ’60s and against South African apartheid in the 1970s and ’80s—while Israel’s position is equivalent in wickedness to the brutalizing forces of racism and oppression in both contexts.

Such views are quite widespread on the left, and especially online. The only thing that makes Coates’ rehearsal of them unique, in the interview at least, is the blunt and vulgar language in which he expresses his position. Not just those who unwaveringly endorse the actions of the Israeli government of Benjamin Netanyahu, but even (and perhaps especially) those who insist on a more nuanced and complex account of the conflict, are “motherfuckers” whose opinions are “horseshit.”

I am one of those motherfuckers with horseshit opinions—and my immediate response to being labeled as such was exactly what you’d expect and what Coates and New York magazine must have anticipated: I got angry and tweeted out my anger. And the response to that was exactly what I should have anticipated. For the next 48 hours, my “mentions” on Twitter/X were a bloodbath of vituperation, as hundreds of leftists defended their view of the world and Coates’ honor by coming at me—assuming Israel is guilty of genocide and ethnic cleansing, declaring it morally indistinguishable from Nazi Germany, and ridiculing me by using schoolyard taunts (lots of “Lamon Dinker” and “Damon Stinker”) to try and put me in my place.

And my response to the onslaught? I blocked people. Lots and lots of people.

How We Disagree With One Another

I share all of this here not because I want to argue out the Israel-Palestinian issue in this post. I wrote some agonized essays on the subject in the aftermath of the horrifying events that took place in southern Israel nearly a year ago. You can go back to read those if you want to be reminded of where I stand—and why Coates’ remarks angered me. My views and loyalties remain just as they were, and just as conflicted, today.

Neither do I want to engage in an extended bitch session about Coates’ evolution as a writer. My view is that he used to be an interesting and original thinker, but, as his public stature soared during the latter part of the Obama administration and opening of the Trump administration, he became a tediously predictable and doctrinaire leftist with little distinctive to say. I liked to think that his decision to quit making his living as a journalist and intellectual at that time in favor of writing fiction and comic books served as confirmation of this judgment—and perhaps even that, at a certain level, he agreed with it. But now he’s back issuing facile pronouncements in the tone of a biblical prophet about the most intractable conflict in the world, and one the international left deems the world’s most pressing problem. So I guess not.

The real point I want to make is different. I’m interested in what this little episode reveals about the civic devolution of our public life.