It could be that a blue octopus is just a blue octopus

The world is full of ardent do-gooders and fanatics and impassioned activists running about claiming our attention for what they perceive as a looming catastrophe or injustice.   But the world keeps bubbling along.  Occasional real issues pop up here and there, but most of it is noise.  

Sorting the noise from the signal has been a challenge since Marconi's first message radiated weakly across the ether back in 1897.  But what is real versus what is sensed, perceived, feared has been with us  since we heard the first bump in the night, worried as we were about enemies and predators lurking in the dark around the communal fire.  

Over the past ten or fifteen years, as I have sought to construct an epistemic ecosystem that provides timely and useful knowledge, I have found myself more and more often electing to follow or pay attention to a class of people whom I did not used to take into much account.  They are people I now consider to be windows into realities of which I am not fully aware.

People who are bright, accomplished, articulate and do believe sincerely in what they are talking about.  Sincerely, credibly and passionately. Sometimes their world is arcana - Medieval French illuminated manuscripts say.  They are impressive.  I know a little about such manuscripts.  I am frequently pleasantly surprised when I learn more.  But I do not actively seek out such knowledge.  Instead, I pay attention to those sentinels who do care.  When I see them getting excited about something, then I pay attention.

And it isn't just arcana.  It can be big issues as well.  Forecasting, environment, economic development, statistics, space, the history of science, poetry, military history, etc.  Things I am actively interested in and do seek out.  But time and attention are limited.  I still identify and pay attention to those who are more expert and more focused and more knowledgeable than I am and with whom I am in reasonable agreement.  But I also now pay attention to those who serve as sentinels.  People with whom I have less in common, less shared worldview, or less agreement but who I trust to let me know to pay attention to things out there not on my radar screen and who serve as windows to show me something of a world about which I do not know enough.

Eva Barlow is one such sentinel (The curious case of the octopus whistle).  A "Music journalist, an activist, a Twitter provocateur, and an impassioned and vocal Zionist and feminist."  Not my normal cup of tea.  I cannot and do not accept everything as she represents it.  But I do pay attention when she rattles the wire.  When she points out that there is something going bump in the night.

Which is a long lead up to a very current but minor mystery.  A storm in a tea cup centered around the lamentable Greta Thunberg.  Sometime yesterday or the day before she released a photo of herself and three friends (?) with the childish handmade signs crafted by those of the clerisy (or their handlers) who think to merely express an opinion is sufficient to make the world better.  In this case, the opinion was that she supports the people of Gaza and Hamas in their terrorist war against Israel.  A crude hatefulness curiously popular among the clerisy and the left, but not per se unexpected.  

To be clear, Thunberg is noise, not signal.  The clerisy and the mainstream media for unknown reasons are enamored of her but there is no there there to repurpose Gertrude Stein's saying.  A cipher.  A vestment of supposed right thinking for the wrong thinkers.

Thunberg is the noise I am accustomed to ignoring and this is the sort of thing which I am accustomed to gliding right over.  The mainstream media want my attention and in this case so does the internet ecosystem, but - No interest.  And usually like a headache after an aspirin, it goes away.

But this Thunberg support of terrorism kept bubbling all the live long day. I expected it to evaporate and it did not.  Why?  Not curious enough to investigate, but perplexing.

Sentinel Eva Barlow might have the answer.  Her, I will pay attention to.  I am not sure I can believe her explanation because it seems incredible.  But the world is often inexplicable and there is plenty I do not know or understand.

The signal?  Perhaps Thunberg is not just a supporter of barbaric terrorism but perhaps she is also an antisemite.  I would have said that supporting barbaric terrorism was a sufficient evil but perhaps it is a compounding evil when antisemitism is added in.  

And how do we get to the antisemitism?  Via, believe it or not, the plush toy octopus perched comfortingly by Thunberg's shoulder.

Tonight as we welcome in Shabbat, and the Hamas Caucus plead for a ceasefire (sorry, never gonna happen until every single member of Hamas is dead), I really just wanted to come back to the most amazing – and I mean truly amazing – thing I have seen in two weeks, and that is Greta Thunberg’s antisemitic dog whistle. Sorry, octopus whistle…

[snip]

Now, for years, some of us have tried to talk about the climate change movement’s inherent antisemitic bias. Surprise, surprise, like all social justice causes, this one is also for some inexplicable reason against Israel. At climate change marches everywhere, you will see Palestinian flags inexplicably present. Why? It’s not because a Free Palestine will help the environment. Oh no. You know this one by now. It’s because a Free Palestine will genocide all the Jews, and then the Jews won’t be around any more to ruin the climate. We control the weather, remember?

I am a lifelong environmentalist though largely unaligned with the advocacy aspect of the environmental movement.  I believe in the importance of the environment but not the coercive governmental control advocated by most environmentalists.  And environmentalism is definitely distinct from the ideological and financial interests which drive purported AGW.  Climate change is obviously real, but to argue that we either understand it or can predict it is really thin ice.  

But are environmentalism or climate change movements characterized by antisemitism?  I would not have readily advanced that position.  But once pointed out, I do see how Barlow gets there.  The environmental movement, and certainly the climate change movement, are largely advocated by the Left and the Left tend to be a safe harbor for antisemites.  Makes sense at a simplistic level.

But Barlow goes further.

Anyway, let’s go back to Greta’s Instagram portrait. I had a feeling about Greta for a while but I kept it to myself. She’s got her self-hating Jewish friends to stand with her (although her one token is - in fact - sitting down). And curiously, over her left shoulder there, looking very enraged, and very angry is her fluffy blue Octopus. And no, that’s not a euphemism.

That’s right. Greta had the infamous Nazi cartoon blue octopus just right there over her shoulder while she was making this profoundly peaceful pro Hamas statement that wasn’t remotely antisemitic. She deleted it, and said she had no idea that her oppressed octopus had antisemitic connotations.

“I was completely unaware” - Greta Thunberg re: antisemitic octopus

She said the octopus is an aid she uses as an autistic person to show her emotions, insisting she didn’t know about any historic ties to the issue of Jewish survival. Perhaps it wasn’t such a good idea to leave school prematurely, Greta. Do I buy this excuse? No I don’t.

Ahh.  That's what all the fuss is about.  Thunberg the victim claiming innocence through self-diagnosis as being on the autism spectrum while advocating support for barbaric terrorism but disavowing that she is also antisemitic.  Apparently barbaric terrorism is fine but antisemitism is a bridge too far for Thunberg.

Well . . .   That is a lot of noise for signal but thanks to Barlow I can look through that particular window and see something I did not see before.  A greater awareness of the affiliation in some people's minds about environmentalism and antisemitism and a greater greater awareness of the sensitivity among some for historical antisemitic symbology than I could have perceived.

Barlow goes on with other material and details but her central point is:

But incredibly it is real life. We are now at a point in the oppression olympics of the human experience that an autistic person can blame the bad Jews for not letting her express her basic feelings with her antisemitic octopus, who is sooooo angry at the Jews because the Jews are to blame for climate change. She’s using her antisemitic Jewish friend who she’s turned into a Nazi to help her make the point she’s been making for years, but now she can’t effectively tell us how furious she is because we’ve cancelled her antisemitic Beanie Baby octopus. We’ve suppressed her rage and her voice, and she’s so angry about it she’s going to have to buy another ten more of these fluffy pissed-off octopi to express the extent of her antisemitism. 

A fair conclusion?  I have an aversion to standing for Thunberg and I certainly can't condone her support for barbaric terrorism.  But is she an antisemite?  Thunberg might be young and uneducated and not know about the association between blue octopi and Nazi antisemitism.  But I am reasonably old with a slew of education credentials . . . and the blue octopi would not have been a first association for me either.  

Does Thunberg support barbaric terrorism.  Quite obviously yes.  She inexplicably does.  Is she an antisemite as well?  Quite possibly.  I might even go with "probably."  But I wouldn't hold this blue octopus as the nail in that particular coffin.  Suggestive? Possibly.  Definitive?  No.

Barlow is one of those sentinels on my epistemic walls.  She alerts to things I can't see, and shows me things I would not have otherwise considered.  I am not certain her case is strong but I am interested to see that she makes the case at all.  Because I did not understand what the kerfuffle was all about in the first place and now perhaps I do.