The Internet reflects the world.
The world is getting its war on.
Netizens whom I’ve always taken to be serious analysts of important events have been taken in by the ineluctable logic of war.
Timnit Gebru, who last year was warning about the risks of large language models at Google, is now a pro-Palestinian activist, ignoring October 7 and preferring to shout “genocide” at Israelis. Rachel Bitecofer, who last year was an important Democratic Party analyst, is now opposing any cease fire and demanding Hamas surrender first.
They’re not alone. Everyone, no matter their view on the Gaza conflict, feels the strain of mass death. So why are we all calling for more of it?
No one has clean hands. Extremists on both sides have been calling for the utter destruction of the other for decades. The Netanyahu government has preferred Hamas to the Palestinian Authority, giving free rein to settlers attacking West Bank Palestinians. Hamas built its military infrastructure under hospitals and refugee camps. It knew they would become military targets in today’s war. It initiated the war with the brutality of October 7.I’m getting it from both sides. I’m being called an anti-Semite and anti-Muslim. Both sides are, technically, Semitic peoples. Most Israeli immigrants in recent decades came from Muslim countries.
The Biden Administration hopes that by holding Israel tight, it can mitigate the worst abuses and re-start a peace process after the shooting ends. That seems naïve right now. But there are no good policy choices. Even sending Netanyahu to the Hague, and demanding the same for Hamas’ leaders, is unlikely to create much calm at this point.
The winner here is Vladimir Putin. Hamas is creating martyrs who will give this war to your grandchildren. Putin is taking attention away from his war against Ukraine and splitting the global alliance opposing him.
More important, authoritarians are letting extremism destroy this global Internet. No government trusts it completely anymore. Every government now seeks to redefine it as an instrument of its own policy. Criminalizing speech, criminalizing thought, that disagrees with the government of the moment, makes democracy impossible.
Everyone screaming into the void right now needs to think about what is at risk, take a step back, and acknowledge that every issue has multiple sides.
