Gaza and the Extremist's Gambit, Chinese Techno-Nationalism, Upcoming Digital Q&A
Why "Senseless" Violence Often Makes Strategic Sense
Gaza and the Extremist’s Gambit
Does “senseless” violence make strategic sense?
I tackle this question in a short essay published this week at Mosaic Magazine. Read it here: “The Extremist’s Gambit Helps Explain Why Hamas Attacked Now.”
The piece was prompted by the many expressions of shock and puzzlement I read on social media when news of Hamas’ desert massacres spread across the internet. “There is a temptation to explain away heinous violence as a product of irrational emotions or beliefs,” I write. “Hamas terrorists, under this schema, murder Israeli children and partygoers under the influence of unquenchable ethnic hatreds, fanatical religious doctrines, or simply a perverse taste for cruelty itself.”
Long term readers will know that I am skeptical of this logic. In a past series of essays (see here, here, here, and here) I have laid out the strategic rationale behind the barbarity displayed by many terrorists, revolutionaries, militias, and state leaders who fear that time is not on their side. I call this strategy the “Extremist’s Gambit.”
The Extremist's Gambit "is a set of tactics designed to force a fearful or apathetic majority to see things the way the extremist does."As I put it in Mosaic:
To understand the strategic logic at play, imagine any two populations of human beings divided on a question of consequence. In this model, the various policy responses to the controversy might be ranked on a 100-point scale, with the most extreme responses possible occupying points 0 and 100. (To illustrate with a historical case study: armed pro-slavery secession from the United States might be at position 0; fostering slave revolts in the style of John Brown would fall somewhere near 100). There will always be motivated individuals who crowd towards the extremes, but only rarely do we find a majority there: most people simply want to live with as little political drama crowding in upon their lives as possible. This poses a terrible problem for the extremist. He knows that the man with views on the 45-mark will never gladly adopt the 10- or 15-mark solutions the radical is hawking. It does not really matter if this moderation is based in fear, greed, apathy, or genuine moral principle. What matters is that this willingness to tolerate the status quo places the moderate closer to the moderates of the other side than to the radicals of his own.
The world of the extremist is filled with such men—ostensible allies altogether too ready to equivocate, procrastinate, negotiate, or defer decision off to some later date. If the radical believes his position is eroding none of these are tenable solutions. To reverse the long slide of defeat things must change. The extremist must find some way to radicalize those otherwise inclined towards compromise.
But how to do this? In terms of our model, the extremist must find a way to change the politics of the situation from a 0-100 sliding scale into a binary choice between 0 and 1. In other words: Where thoughtful men once queried “what is your preferred policy outcome given the means at our disposal?” they now must demand “whose side are you on?” That political environment gives the extremist far greater room for maneuver.
Read the full thing HERE. You may also want to read my follow up blog post to this piece, where I speculate on why Americans find it so difficult to accept that there might be sound strategic reasoning behind savagery, why we prefer to think of savage violence as the result of explosive emotion instead of cool calculation, and the how all of this might be related to “friend/enemy” rhetoric gaining force on the American right.
Chinese Techno-Nationalism: Introducing the Industrial Party
Over at the Center for Strategic Translation we have translated a 2011 piece by the Chinese techno-nationalist Wang Xiaodong: “A Study of the Industrial Party and the Sentimental Party.” When Wang wrote this piece he was an outlier on the Chinese scene: today both the attitude he personifies and the specific policies he advocates are championed by many in the Communist Party of China. Wang has a flair for the dramatic:
“Democracy is not the only universal value. Science is a universal value. Industrialization is a universal value. Unlike Westerners, we want to make sure industrialization benefits everyone. This is China's universal value.”
Wang writes of bullet trains and manufacturing hubs, fighter jets and foundries. In the manufacture of copper wiring and steel beams Wang finds an objective measure of strength and progress. Nationalists who fret about American financial might, cultural prestige, or discourse power confuse the byproducts of strength for its source. “What is there to admire in the American financial industry, in Hollywood, in the Grammys, or in the NBA?,” Wang asks. “Let the Americans sing and dance while we smelt our iron.”
Key to Wang’s argument is the idea that unlike the abstract moral values that guide many political movements, technological progress can be measured. The material transformation brought about by industrialization is inseparable from physical reality. It provides an objective measure of success. The Chinese people must be laser-focused on this material success—which means first catching up to, and then surpassing, Western technological might.
The problem is that not all Chinese understand the stakes. Wang introduces a novel set of terms to distinguish those who instinctively understand his program from those mystified by it. He calls the former group the “party of industry” [工业党]:
Members of the Industrial Party, as the name implies, are inclined toward further industrialization. In terms of their intellect, they are more suited to work in industry. That does not mean that everyone in the Industrial Party is an engineer, since I consider myself a member but do not work in industry. People in the Industrial Party are similar to scientists or engineers in the way they think about things.
Opposite the industrial party is what Wang calls the “party of sentiment” [情怀党]. Like the Odes-memorizing literati of old, China’s sentimentalists waste their time debating the merits and meaning of media, rhetoric, and art. Some are part of China’s “left.” Others are part of China’s “right.” But, left or right, they are all preoccupied with things that do not matter. They argue about political philosophy, history, and the deeper meanings of movies, music, and novels (readers will find Wang’s claims reminiscent of the American technologists who wonder why people waste their time arguing about “representation” in superhero films when the AI revolution is just around the corner). They do not realize that technology is the crowning achievement of mankind. Wang believes that this truth is only grasped by those who value statistics over sentiment and material victories over intangible moral values. According to Wang, these are the people who—for the sake of humanity’s future—must run China.
Read Wang’s full argument for China’s techno-nationalist future, as well as our analysis of where his arguments fit into the broader history of Chinese techno-nationalism, HERE.
Patreon Exclusive Content: November Digital Q&A
Every month I have 90 minute Zoom call with my Patreon supporters to discuss current events, ideas I have written about in recent essays, or ideas I would like to refine further before I publish them for the world writ large. The next Digital Q&A will occur on Tuesday, November 7th, at 8:00 PM EST. We will be discussing my piece on the Extremist’s Gambit. Up for discussion will be the following questions: do events in Israel and Gaza match the logic I have laid out? How much explanatory power does the logic of the extremist’s gambit really have? What other historical examples of this pattern can we find? Why do we prefer to think of human violence as the product of explosive emotion instead of cool calculation? As I am not an expert in Middle Eastern politics I welcome feedback on what I have gotten right and wrong in this most recent piece.
Patreon supporters can find the Zoom link to this discussion HERE.
The Scholar’s Stage blog also has a forum exclusive to Patreon members. Some of the more interesting discussion threads active over the last two weeks:
Does Yuri Slezkhine’s book on apocalyptic thought among the Russian revolutionaries have anything to teach us about U.S. politics today?
Did the Effective Altruism movement actually accelerate AI research?
Book recommendations for the Japanese colonial period of Taiwan’s history.
That is all for this month folks!
The foundational theme of your thesis - that the desperate often feel they have no choice other than to commit an extreme act to trigger the general public to either support or oppose them - is a good start. But the essay itself falls apart because it deflects itself into a a false black and white narrative in which Mao, Lenin, and 'Hamas' are the 'bad' people and their opponents are the 'good' people.
That narrative is far more CIA and Mossad neoliberal war propaganda, than reality.
Here's a more tenable essay founded on the same premise, but using objective facts and analysis to paint a much more accurate picture of what is happening in Palestine and Israel, and to better explain the actions of the Gazans in their attack on Israel, by comparing that attack to similar strategies used by the Allies, and in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, in World War II.
Why Gaza's Attack On Israel Made Sense To Palestinians & Why It Doesn't Make Sense To Call It "Barbaric"
LINK: https://ericbrooks.substack.com/p/why-gazas-attack-on-israel-made-sense
Interesting and I think very accurate analysis--but I'd consider using a more traditional state-based lens. It occurred to me a few days ago that Hamas is acting like a state (a widespread terror attack reminiscent of the Tet Offensive) while simultaneously claiming the protection of a non-state (a group of displaced people, a people oppressed by a tyrannical imperial power, etc.). The problem every guerilla group eventually faces is that force is only truly effective to get What You Really Want when conducted by disciplined, professionally-trained and -equipped regulars; and organizing one of those gives your enemy something to smash...and he usually will if you had to guerrilla him in the first place. The enemy may be too far away, have other things to think about, etc., but if you mess with a state you'll tend to get the horns.
If the state surrounds you, is vastly better-equipped, and has a plausible belief that you are an existential threat, 'tis better to tread lightly. You haven't conducted a terror attack. You've entered the State Vs State arena by invading a sovereign state. Hamas has, I think, lost the ability to control the perceptual narrative, at least in terms of people who decide whether and how to fight wars. They're not just a horrible fringe group anymore. They deserve a full-state response, or so the thinking will go.
More recent perspectives have argued that Tet was a long-game play by the North Vietnamese Army to remove or neutralize the VC, who presumably would get a share of the post-war pie otherwise. I leave it to the reader to think about whether there may be any parallels here.