Banned at ‘Guernica’

Friday, March 15, 2024

The progressive literary magazine sees a staff revolt and retracts an essay on empathy and complexity in Israel/Gaza.

Posted by Gal_Tuesday at 09:51 PM | 5 COMMENTS | permalink | Comment on This Entry |

Comments

Admin's note: Participants in this discussion must follow the site's moderation policy. Profanity will be filtered. Abusive conduct is not allowed.

I don't know how much interest this will have for folks on the DR, but I first heard about the issue earlier in the week and read a few articles on the topic, including this one:

An elite literary journal imploded over an essay about the war--because it dared to humanize Israelis as well as Palestinians

Guernica staff resigned en masse after a co-publisher declared a piece by a Hebrew and Arabic translator an apologia for Zionism'

forward.com

I don't understand the rationale behind cancelling Chen's article. Beware of purity ponies of all stripes.

#1 | Posted by Gal_Tuesday at 2024-03-15 10:02 PM | Reply

Did these people see the painting?

#2 | Posted by LegallyYourDead at 2024-03-16 10:02 PM | Reply

Interesting. I've never heard of Guernica. The Nation wrote quite a smack-down of their hypocrisy in taking down the essay: "If this is what passes for the left today, God help us. Guernica's cringeworthy backpedaling is redolent of the self-denunciations of Stalin's purge victims or the coerced linguistic self-flagellations of academics during Mao's Cultural Revolution...Maybe if the magazine had a different name, say Free Speech Sucks or Too Lazy to Think the Issue Through, this behavior wouldn't be so loathsome and hypocritical."

Ouch.

There is a lot of thought in The Nation's take on this:
www.thenation.com

The original link Gal provided also has the link to the original essay. I'm relinking it here:
web.archive.org

Thank you, Gal.

#3 | Posted by YAV at 2024-03-16 11:14 PM | Reply | Newsworthy 2

Yav, thanks for posting the Nation article. I hadn't seen it. Glad to see so many calling out the Guernica editors.

#4 | Posted by Gal_Tuesday at 2024-03-17 10:15 AM | Reply

Anyone ever hear of Guernica?
Guess I'm not an elite progressive.

#5 | Posted by mattm at 2024-03-18 10:20 AM | Reply