Larping for Palestine

This season, I'll be mostly wearing ...

Photo (detail) by Spencer Platt

 

 

Those on the woke-left are usually very sensitive about the idea of cultural appropriation - i.e., the borrowing (or theft) of elements belonging to a minority culture by members of a majority culture and the parading of these elements in a manner that is both inauthentic and disrespectful in that it disregards any context of meaning. 

 

It is, say those who speak out against it, another form of colonialism in which marginalised and oppressed peoples are robbed of their identity and intellectual property rights, or reduced to the humiliated status of exotic other [1]. 

 

However, many of these same people are happy to wear a keffiyeh in order to show their support of the Palestinians. For this, they say, is not cultural appropriation, it is rather an act of cultural celebration and political solidarity. 

 

I have to admit, I'm not entirely convinced by this ... 

 

For one suspects there's a certain hypocrisy at work here and the creation of a double standard based on the (questionable) belief that it's okay to don Arab headgear when one is on a protest march, but not when one is attending a fancy dress party. 

 

In other words, if one is (posing as) an angry militant, fighting for social justice and to preserve the dream of Revolution - or if one acts in the sincere belief that one's ideology is grounded in Truth - then, apparently, all your actions can be justified.

 

But for those of us who recall Tom Wolfe's essay on radical chic [2], what we are witnessing now on university campuses in the West is just another form of posturing and performance on behalf of privileged young people searching for a fashionable cause via which they can signal their virtue; be that BLM or freeing Gaza.

 

As Kat Rosenfield writes, it's almost a parody of the student activism of the 1960s; more live action role playing in front of the TV cameras than real protest [3]. 

 

But it's also, of course, the chance to feel powerful and to pretend your life has some purpose; the opportunity for comraderie and community. But when this bonding exercise involves the bullying and intimidation of Jewish students, then maybe its time to remove the keffiyehs and stop larping for Palestine.      

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Cultural appropriation is something I have discussed and written in defence of elsewhere on Torpedo the Ark. See, for example, the post published on 5 August 2016: click here.  

 

[2] See the post 'Radical Chic: On Puncturing the Fourth Wall of Excess and Spectacle with AOC' (15 Sept 2021), in which I refer to Wolfe's essay from 1970: click here.

 

[3] Kat Rosenfield, 'Columbia is a parody of radical activism: LARPing students care more about partying than Palestine', UnHeard, (26 April 2024): click here.

 

 

For a related post to this one, click here.  

 

 

Radical Chic: On Puncturing the Fourth Wall of Excess and Spectacle with AOC

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in her 

Tax the Rich dress (Met Gala 2021)  

 

 

One of the results of the conjunction between politics and fashion is the sloganised garment. 

 

That is to say, an item of clothing printed or painted with an ideological statement in the (magical) belief that the right few words can help bring about social and cultural change (or, at the very least, piss a few people off).  

Hugely influenced by the designs of McLaren and Westwood - and members of the Clash on the sleeve of White Riot - I used to buy into this belief myself and would regularly paint punk-situationist slogans on the clothes I wore: click here.

 

But when Katharine Hamnett started producing her line of oversized politically-correct t-shirts - Save the World, Choose Life, etc. - it was clear that a once genuinely provocative practice had become purely an exercise in virtue signalling.   

 

And here in 2021, at the 75th annual Met Gala, things reached a depressing new low when Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez appeared in a couture white gown designed by Aurora James (creative director and founder of luxury brand ​​Brother Vellies) emblazoned with the words Tax the Rich in large red letters. 

 

For this wasn't a political use of fashion, but a fashionable use of politics and it doesn't make AOC an anti-capitalist icon bravely confronting the wealthy at their own event - minimum ticket price $30,000 - it makes her a clown invited for their amusement. Whilst she posed for pictures, protestors from Black Lives Matter were (literally) being arrested in the streets outside.  

 

Defending her decision to attend the Gala and wear the dress, AOC claimed on Instagram that she had not only started a conversation about taxing the rich, but 'punctured the fourth wall of excess and spectacle', which is a rather lovely sentence, albeit one that reveals the depth of her pomposity and self-delusion. 

 

One thinks back, in closing, to that marvellous term coined by Tom Wolfe in an essay from fifty years ago - radical chic - to describe the adoption and promotion of trendy left-wing political causes made by numerous celebrities, socialites, and intellectuals ... [1]

 

Unlike actual militants and real-life revolutionaries, those parading their radical chic are mostly interested in advancing their own position and being seen to be what we now describe as woke. It is, ultimately, a form of decadence - and insulting to the very people on whose behalf they claim to speak [2].      

 

 

Notes

[1] See Tom Wolfe, 'Radical Chic: That Party at Lenny's', New York (June 8, 1970): click here to read online. 

      The above essay can also be found in Wolfe's Radical Chic & Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers, (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1970) and/or The Purple Decades, (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1982). 

    

[2] Just to be clear: as much as the hypocrisy of someone like OAC can be galling, I'm not writing here in support of actual militants and/or real-life revolutionaries - i.e., the kind of political ascetics and terrorists of ideology who resort to violence in order to achieve their aims and impose their beliefs.

 

For a sister post to this one on whether we should tax the rich, eat the rich, or kill the poor, click here.