{"id":326795,"date":"2026-05-07T07:08:29","date_gmt":"2026-05-07T07:08:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=326795"},"modified":"2026-05-08T07:14:02","modified_gmt":"2026-05-08T07:14:02","slug":"caitlin-johnstone-oh-no-the-people-who-defend-genocide-think-im-bad","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=326795","title":{"rendered":"Caitlin Johnstone: Oh No, The People Who Defend Genocide Think I&#8217;m Bad"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3>And Other Notes<\/h3>\n<h1 style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>Caitlin Johnstone \u2013 Caitlin\u2019s Newsletter May 5, 2026<\/strong><\/h1>\n<p><em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=tGs2cacwGfg\">Reading by Tim Foley<\/a><\/em>:<\/p>\n<div align=\"center\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"YouTube video player\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/tGs2cacwGfg?si=mgPYL1n_ZgvueEA2\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><br \/>\n&#8212;<\/div>\n<p>Israel supporters really expect you to be intimidated when they mob your replies yelling at you and calling you names. Like oh no, the people who defend bombing hospitals think I\u2019m bad.<\/p>\n<p>Yeah sorry there\u2019s nothing you can say to me to make me sit here and go along with the latest fake antisemitism scare or whatever the current narrative of the day happens to be. You don\u2019t get to assault free speech throughout the western world to protect the information interests of a genocidal apartheid state and then demand I be silent about it. Yell, scream, call me names all you want\u200a\u2014\u200aI\u2019m going to call the bullshit what it is.<\/p>\n<p>Good luck with your emotions about it.<\/p>\n<p>\u2756<\/p>\n<p>The other day I posted a <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/caitoz\/status\/2049377883437912176\">36-minute video<\/a> on Twitter compiling various mainstream TV news reports about Jewish Zionists who were caught staging fake antisemitic incidents to advance their agenda, with <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/TaroWheel\/status\/1885475845537423757\">links<\/a> to each individual story. It got ten thousand shares and almost a million views. Normally when I have a tweet go viral criticizing Israel or Zionists I get high-profile hasbarists quote-tweeting me and calling me an antisemite, but nobody touched this one. None of them wanted to inadvertently bring more attention to that tweet than it was already getting.<\/p>\n<p>\u2756<\/p>\n<p>There are two types of people: ardent anti-Zionists, and everyone who ignored the video footage coming out of Gaza from 2023 to 2025.<\/p>\n<p>\u2756<\/p>\n<p>On social media I\u2019m seeing Zionists trying to revive the debate about whether Israel is guilty of genocide, which is just silly. The debate is over, guys. It\u2019s been over for a long time. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.caitlinjohnst.one\/p\/israel-is-committing-genocide-this\">Every relevant human rights group<\/a> says it\u2019s genocide. Zero comparable human rights groups say it\u2019s not. The end. You lose.<\/p>\n<p>\u2756<\/p>\n<div align=\"center\">\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">You listen to normies who aren\u2019t super into politics describe why they\u2019re anti-Israel and you realize most of them have just never been challenged on it by anyone around them or any of the media they consume.<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Noam Blum (@neontaster) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/neontaster\/status\/2050614403704234232?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">May 2, 2026<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>I sometimes see Israel defenders saying that the average person who sides with the Palestinians lacks an intimate familiarity with all the facts about the Israel-Palestine conflict. Really that\u2019s just saying the average Palestine supporter hasn\u2019t been confronted by a trained hasbarist who\u2019s learned to gaslight people into thinking genocide and apartheid aren\u2019t happening. And it\u2019s true, most haven\u2019t. If they practiced arguing with such hasbarists extensively, though, they\u2019d soon learn the hasbara arguments are fallacious and the claims are false.<\/p>\n<p>An internet debate bro is always going to have an advantage over someone who doesn\u2019t yet understand the debate. That\u2019s why hasbarists do what they do; they\u2019re taking their practiced debate tactics to people who aren\u2019t familiar with them, like a Brazilian jiu-jitsu practitioner taking a kickboxer to the ground where he\u2019s not familiar with the techniques.<\/p>\n<p>But it doesn\u2019t take much learning to understand that all their arguments are piss weak. That\u2019s why all hasbarists eventually collapse into empty name-calling.<\/p>\n<p>\u2756<\/p>\n<p>So here\u2019s the thing: you actually do need to work on your trauma. Your inner wellbeing is in fact your responsibility.<\/p>\n<p>I totally get the increasing pushback against the liberal emphasis on trauma and inner peace because of the way it shifts the burden onto the individual and lets the system off the hook\u200a\u2014\u200abut the truth is we need both. The need for collective revolution doesn\u2019t excuse you from your responsibilities for your own actions as an individual, any more than your work as an individual takes the blame off the system for the abuses it inflicts upon the collective.<\/p>\n<p>It is true that our society\u2019s focus on individual healing is used to deemphasize the need for systemic changes, but it is also true that many on the left use the abuses of capitalism and the fucked up nature of our society as an excuse to blame all their misery on the system instead of taking responsibility for their own inner condition and doing the hard, scary, confrontational work necessary to heal.<\/p>\n<p>It is true that a huge amount of our stress and psychological issues are at least partially due to the economic and social pressures inflicted upon us by an unjust system. But it is also true that there are plenty of miserable people who have all their material and financial needs met, because they haven\u2019t healed their trauma and done their inner work. Utopia could dawn on us tomorrow and most of us would still find ways to make ourselves unhappy until we bring the inner tendencies which give rise to our suffering into consciousness.<\/p>\n<p>We need both sides of the coin, and in fact each side of the coin complements the other. Just as a healthy system will lead to far less misery and dysfunction among individuals, doing your inner work as an individual will make you much more useful in bringing about the revolutionary changes necessary for the rise of a healthy system. You\u2019re not going to be any use to anyone in a revolution where you\u2019re too neurotic to function or get along with other people.<\/p>\n<p>We all have problems that can\u2019t be fixed under the current status quo, and we all have inner wounds we won\u2019t be able to fully heal right away. But that doesn\u2019t mean we are powerless. Our happiness and inner clarity isn\u2019t fully bound to the whims of the ruling class. We can\u2019t fix everything, but we\u2019ve all got a responsibility to do what we can, in our community and in ourselves.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">_______________<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">Caitlin\u2019s Newsletter is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.caitlinjohnst.one\/subscribe\">consider becoming a free or paid subscriber<\/a><\/strong><\/span>.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.caitlinjohnst.one\/p\/oh-no-the-people-who-defend-genocide\">Source\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On social media I\u2019m seeing Zionists trying to revive the debate about whether Israel is guilty of genocide, which is just silly. The debate is over, guys. It\u2019s been over for a long time. Every relevant human rights group says it\u2019s genocide<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39262,"featured_media":326797,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[61,37],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-326795","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-Commentary","category-Israel_Anti-Semitism_Zionism_and_US-UK_allies"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/326795","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/39262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=326795"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/326795\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":326796,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/326795\/revisions\/326796"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/326797"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=326795"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=326795"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=326795"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}