A key to understanding the meaning of political statements

Discussions about the meaning of various political statements constantly get sidetracked by unresolvable disputes over what a writer or politician’s supposed real or personal intention was when he said something. At VFR I have repeatedly argued that in politics it is not a speaker’s private intention that matters when he speaks, but the content of the statement and the political and moral positions his statement helps to advance. Below are excerpts from the discussion in 2003 in which this idea was first articulated.

To set up the context, the entry concerned Bat Ye’or’s idea of “theological dhimmitude.” I wrote:

The theological form, which she calls Liberationist Palestinian Theology, involves the recognition by collaborationist Christians of a Christianity rooted in Islam rather than Judaism, thus denying Christianity’s Jewish matrix. As Bat Ye’or writes, “This would place Palestine, and not Israel, at the origin of Christianity, making Israelis usurpers of the Islamic-Christian Palestinian homeland.”

Reading Bat Ye’or’s article, I now understand better what American Conservative editor Scott McConnell [in an article telling how he became a champion of the Palestinians cause] was doing when he approvingly quoted a Christian minister who described Mary the mother of Jesus as a “poor Palestinian woman.” Consciously or unconsciously, McConnell was invoking the Revisionist Palestinian Theology which is aimed at removing Israel from its central place in the Christian world view, as a preparation for removing Israel from the world.

In the ensuing discussion, some commenters argued that McConnell was innocent and that delegitimizing Israel and the Jews had not been his intention. One reader said that the minister McConnell quoted was merely informing people about the historic name of the land.

I’ll pick up the exchange there:

There are some interesting points being made here about the fact that the area in question was known by the Romans as Palestine; I did not know what Ron tells us, that they didn’t call it that until the 2nd century as an attempt to dispossess the Jews. But I still think the comments are somewhat missing the main point. Informing people about the historical name of the land was _not_ the minister’s intent when he called the most famous Jewish woman in the world a “poor Palestinian woman,” and it was not the meaning that the phrase had for McConnell. The meaning it had for him was to displace the Jews symbolically from that land and put the “Palestinians” in their place as the rightful objects of our solicitude.

Posted by: Lawrence Auster on September 18, 2003 4:01 PM

I agree with Mr. Auster. The pretexts are unimportant and, frankly, the private intentions of the individual speakers are unimportant; the weltanschauung is everything.

Posted by: Matt on September 18, 2003 4:10 PM

The historical name was not the main point, I agree. But I think that Mr. Auster’s interpretation is still not correct. It is not necessary to impute evil motives to McConnell here. The meaning is what McConnell said the meaning was: “the Palestinians, many of whom are Christian, are people deserving of dignity and rights.” It is hard to remain a Christian and deny that. It is a fact that many, if not the majority really are innocent victims. They are victims primarily of the tyranny of their leaders, but they are also victims of Israel’s actions—some justified, others unjustified.

Posted by: Thrasymachus on September 18, 2003 4:24 PM

Re Thrasy’s comment, if all McConnell had meant was that the Palestinians have dignity and rights, then WHY would he couch that supposedly well-meant idea in terms of such a gross (and obviously anti-Jewish) re-writing of history?.

When an Afro-centrist says “Socrates was black, Beethoven was black,” he’s not just making an historical comment (leaving aside the truth or falsity of that comment); and he’s not just seeking to include blacks in Western culture; rather, he is seeking to do to Europeans what he falsely accuses Europeans of having done to Africans: to steal their identity, culture and achievements and claim them for themselves. Calling Mary a “poor Palestinian woman” has a similar kind of ideological intent.

Similarly, when Jesse Jackson called Mary single homeless woman, he was obviously seeking to appropriate the Bible for his own political purposes. What is it so hard to see that McConnell was engaged in a similar attempt?

Posted by: Lawrence Auster on September 18, 2003 4:36 PM

I see what Mr. Auster is saying. That was simply not how I read the minister’s words, however. I viewed the word Palestinian there to refer to the area, not the race. If the minister is of the normal variety, he is probably convinced that race does not exist. To me, the statement was a simple expression that all of the people in “Palestine” are the same in at least one fundamental way: they are human beings. And I am reasonably sure that is how McConnell understood it from his other words on the subject.

Posted by: Thrasymachus on September 18, 2003 4:46 PM

I am less concerned with McConnell’s personal spiritual culpability than I am with the objective contribution his remark makes to the zeitgeist. Mr. Auster is right about the effects of the remark, so who really cares what McConnell _intended_?

Posted by: Matt on September 18, 2003 5:29 PM

This is a important distinction, which we should all remember. There is a natural tendency to focus on the personal intentions of an individual rather than on the larger meaning and effect of what he is saying.

Posted by: Lawrence Auster on September 18, 2003 5:50 PM

Posted by Lawrence Auster at February 09, 2009 03:04 PM | Send