How To Lose Friends And Alienate People
Maybe we need to shut down the internet for a bit?
NOTE: I’m traveling at the moment so no podcast this week. Our apologies!
by Ben Cohen
Domestic and international political conflicts present fantastic opportunities to wreck friendships and exacerbate family tensions. I several people whose families were torn apart in the Trump years, and I’ve had a few good friendships ruined over political issues like vaccines, Trump, and antisemitism.
I think much of this has to do with the online nature of our discourse. When you don’t have face to face discussions with people and instead interact over social media and group text, a lot of nuance is lost. It is also easier to dehumanize someone when not in front of them, particularly when conversation is reduced to written words, images, and emojis. I’ve often found myself enraged by someone’s tweets, only to see or hear them on a video explain the same position in a human voice and understand their position in a whole new light. The difference can be shocking.
The latest explosion of violence in the Middle East has caused extreme tension in friendship circles to the point where many people have cut off lifelong friendships almost overnight. This can be enormously distressing to people who can suddenly find themselves socially isolated in close-knit friendship groups. Some of these friendships will heal, some won’t, but it can be a traumatic experience to be shut off by those close to you over a political position you have taken.
I’ve been trying to be as open minded and patient as I possibly can be during this enormously difficult time — mostly to avoid the breakdown of friendships. I’ve seen several friends post things I find incomprehensibly insensitive in the wake of the Hamas attack on October 7th, including the Black Lives Matter image of the Hamas hand glider. I have to keep reminding myself that a lot of people have a surface level understanding of the conflict, don’t know many Jews, and have close Muslim friendships (or are Muslim themselves).
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If you have been immersed in left wing identity politics circles for example, defending Palestinians even directly after the attacks on October 7th is not an irrational position to take. If you really do believe Jews are white oppressors colonizing brown people’s land, then the Hamas attacks were arguably justified. You could even argue that it is a more moral position. I don’t happen to agree with the world view that brings people to this conclusion, and I think some subconscious antisemitism has played a role in it, but I am trying to keep in mind that these are not always inherently bad people. I have several friends who have taken this position and they are generally very good people. They would, I believe, be more sympathetic to the Jewish perspective if they knew more Jews or sat down with a Jewish person to discuss recent events. For my own sanity I am not interacting with these friends online, but in time I hope our relationship in the real world goes back to normal.
Let us know whether you have lost a friend or family member over politics:
Similarly, I can understand that if I were Palestinian, my perspective would almost certainly be completely different from the one I have now. Just as Jews have been minimizing the brutality of the Israeli invasion of Gaza, Palestinians have done the same for the actions of Hamas. Why? Because we are tribal by nature, and in extreme situations we take refuge amongst our own and point the finger at the “other” for the cause of all our pain.
The internet and social media has made all of this infinitely worse. Our real life tribalism gets transferred over to the virtual world where our worst traits are amplified by greedy algorithms. Anger and hate create clicks, which means big profits for tech companies and worse relations for the rest of us.
My colleague Bob Cesca has a theory that to save itself, humanity needs to shut down the internet for an extended period of time. It is a joke, of course, but sometimes I think he might be onto something.
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I feel for you, discovering how revolting some 'social justice' 'friends' now that their masks are off after October 7th, celebrating a massacre before a single bomb fell on Gaza. I'm sure it was a similar phenomena for German Jewish intellectuals in the 30s when their friends started championing Nazism. And similarly, I disagree about your assumption these are only thoughts expressed online. There are (Jewish) leftists I know who are saying despicable pro Hamas shit face to face, and doing despicable anti Jewish things in person. Those are people I will not talk to ever again - it's not about their 'politics' it's about their hateful actions. I could theoretically forgive someone who did that and was actually contrite about it, but I doubt any of these Hamassholes will change. Till then, cutting them out is good for my mental health, and a clear signal that their behavior is beyond excusable.
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"The latest explosion of violence in the Middle East has caused extreme tension in friendship circles to the point where many people have cut off lifelong friendships almost overnight. This can be enormously distressing to people who can suddenly find themselves socially isolated in close-knit friendship groups. Some of these friendships will heal, some won’t, but it can be a traumatic experience to be shut off by those close to you over a political position you have taken."
I can't tell you how many friends I've lost because of this. I've been called a Nazi, a fascist, an apartheid supporter/enabler", and even worse than that, by people who suddenly feel quite liberated to say that Israel has absolutely no right to exist and that every Jew who lives there should "go home" (like the vast majority of them weren't born there), and who then feel equally free to make life a living hell for Jews in every country in the world that isn't Israel (proving, ironically, how important it is that Israel continues to exist). I've unsubscribed from numerous Substacks and/or political newsletters (well over 20 at this point) because the overwhelming majority of people who comment on them, and who I previously saw as friends, or at least allies, have openly accused my fellow Jews and I of either engaging in genocide or, at best, being complicit/indifferent to it. Maybe some of these relationships will return, but I suspect that in my case alone, they will not. It will take me a very long time to get past what has happened and been said over the last ten weeks.