Murder by Philosophy: The Peril of Revolutionary Ethics ~ Elder Of Ziyon

Friday, May 23, 2025

Murder by Philosophy: The Peril of Revolutionary Ethics

I read the manifesto of Elias Rodriguez, and was struck that he had a fairly consistent philosophy. Not being an expert (yet) on philosophy, I asked AI to tell me which philosophical framework he held, and the most consistent one was the Revolutionary Ethics ideas of Frantz Fanon and Che Guevara.

Briefly, this philosophy says that violence is a "moral" response to oppression, especially colonialism. It holds that violence against oppressors (or their agents) is necessary to dismantle unjust systems and restore dignity to the oppressed.

In short, if you are oppressed, you have a license to murder (within limits.)

Rodriguez extended that philosophy to saying that anyone who identifies with the oppressed - like himself - also has the right, and possibly the responsibility, to murder those deemed to be oppressors.

Going even beyond that, prominent Palestinian writer Susan Abulhawa espoused her own philosophy in a tweet justifying murdering Jews:

Natural logic: when governments fail to hold Israel accountable for an actual holocaust being committed before our very eyes, no genocidal Zionist should be safe anywhere in the world. What Mr. Rodriguez did should come as no surprise. In fact, I’m surprised it has not happened sooner. Human beings with a conscience literally cannot bear to witness such evil day and day out being inflicted upon the bodies, minds, and futures of an utterly defenseless people, by such a hateful, racist, colonial state.

For this "human rights activist," not only employees of the Israeli government but indeed all Zionists should be targeted with death.

This is still a philosophy. The idea would not be derided in academia - it would be respected, as Fanon's ethics are. Fanon himself is a kind of superstar in many academic circles.

Having ethics has nothing to do with being a moral person. Ethical systems are internally consistent frameworks for evaluating right and wrong. Too many academics seem to confuse logical coherence - which is what they prize most of all - over whether the philosophy itself is moral. Instead of doing what philosophers are supposed to do, to use their minds to determine how people should act, they are too often dazzled by intellectual edifices that hold up ideas that are utterly immoral. An ethical system can be perfectly consistent - and utterly evil.

In the project I've been working on, I use antisemitism as an easy metric to determine if a philosophy is moral or not - if it accepts or encourages hating Jews, then it is by definition immoral. The fatal flaw with how Fanon is taught is assuming that Israel is a colonialist state, ignoring Jewish indigeneity to the region. If the system allows anyone to define "colonialism" in ways beyond the actual meaning of the word, it can be twisted to attack Jews who support returning to the lands of their ancestors that they yearned for over two millennia, which is as anti-colonialist as can be imagined.

People who cheer murdering Jews and Israelis swear that they are moral people. They have an intellectual framework that justifies targeting a young couple outside a Jewish museum. But these people are not moral.

If philosophy treats the ethics of "revolution" as being on par with, say, Christian ethics or Kantian deontology, then it has failed in its main purpose of discerning right and wrong through critical inquiry. Instead of taking a stand against using coherent frameworks to justify violence, too many philosophy majors appear dazzled by the elegance of a well-crafted theory to the detriment of any real analysis of what is moral - and the value of human life.

As we saw on Wednesday night, creating these theories is not merely an academic exercise. It has real world consequences. Elias Rodriguez is an intelligent person who likely has never even been exposed to any serious criticism of the theories he espouses. When revolutionary or reductionist systems gain academic respectability, they trickle into activism, politics, and even state policy - potentially affecting millions of lives.

It is not only a crime of commission, of elevating malign ideas as ethical. It is also a crime of omission, because Jewish ethics - time tested, flexible, robust, and checking all the boxes of a successful moral and philosophical framework - are largely ignored in philosophy departments. Maimonides and Samson Raphael Hirsch and Joseph Soloveitchik, if taught, are relegated to "Jewish studies."

Fanon’s ideas are venerated. Jewish ethics is relegated. Why? Because Fanon is seen as ‘novel,’ and Jewish ethics is ‘old’ - as if wisdom is a flaw and novelty is virtue. Which means the people who lean on their philosophical studies when they make political or editorial decisions will tend to have more respect for Che Guevara's ideas than those of Pirkei Avot.

Philosophy matters. When it fails, people die. When it ignores centuries of lived moral wisdom in favor of the latest theory that justifies hate, it fails not only as scholarship, but as a guide for humanity.

If university philosophy departments are are serious about teaching morality, they need to revisit the proven frameworks that have sustained communities for thousands of years, and stop dignifying every murderous abstraction as a worthy ‘philosophy.’ The world can’t afford more Rodriguez manifestos.