I see it on almost every single post about Gaza (and Lebanon). Mondoweiss put up this:
Pretty straightforward and powerful language! The whole post is a linguistic point to drive home the crime that is taking place. But the top comment is:
There is a necessity for strong, clear language that identifies the crimes at hand: occupation, colonialism, apartheid, imperialism, genocide, etc. We do need to name what we're up against. But at this point the linguistic argument just seems like a circular game targeting everyone who already agrees.
The precise language and phrasing of every piece of pro-Palestine media is picked over by the comments to identify how each and every word used is the wrong one in an arbitrary linguistic treadmill.
I think this retreat to rhetoric is a result of the (understandable) sense that there is simply no productive action to take. In the imperial core, the "democratic" systems have clearly laid out there is no room for public input or disagreement, even in language, and the global south has yet to build the political will and coordination to meaningfully disrupt the genocide outside the resistance axis itself. So I get it, and I'm not trying to attack or demand the people who have arrived at this point.
However, we need to break from this next version of social media inactivism. What is happening in the Levant is all the horrible things we've named it, and we should not let that be forgotten. But people desperately need to take action in the real world. There is so little the anti-imperialist left in the US can do to halt the genocide simply because our organized numbers are so small. That's created an anti-organizational gravity, where any group is called ineffective/symbolic because they are in the stage of organizing where the movement must be created and directed. If people bickering over these terminology debates would commit to organizing (and I'm sure of them have), we would be one step closer to building the power necessary to assault capitalism and imperialism.
Words don't matter. Go do shit.