i'm mostly a lurker because the drama is fun, but do you guys genuinely think Destiny looked worse than Norm in the debate, or are u all just hyper coping?
Let me give you some perspective.
I came into the debate far more sympathetic to the position Destiny was supposedly advocating and absolutely loathing Finkelstein, but I walked away with a deeper disgust for Destiny while feeling sympathetic to Finkelstein’s person.
I have a graduate degree in an area of the Humanities that overlaps with Finkelstein’s interest in the Middle East. The man has a well earned reputation in Higher Education as being dysfunctional and combative with just about everybody and I’ve personally seen him get taken apart by knowledgeable scholars because his familiarity with primary sources and the languages they are communicated in is lacking. Finkelstein’s training is more geared for social science and the conceptual tools he employs are not suited very well for defending the positions he stakes out.
That being said, Finkelstein actually has some accomplishments under his belt that merit some level of respect. More importantly, he can actually have meaningful disagreements with people and conduct himself in a respectable manner. I’ve also been told he actually isn’t that bad of a teacher and that students generally enjoy his classes because he can be provocative without crossing a line.
By contrast, Destiny’s accomplishments are all related to being an influencer on social media. The guy didn’t obtain his audience because he dedicated 5 to 10 years to disciplined research into a topic where he developed substantive beliefs that he can articulate to audiences and defend against epistemic peers. At best, Destiny has a surface level understanding of the Israel/Palestine conflict and hasn’t expended one percentile of the effort required to actually develop ideas enough to actually see them in print in a refereed publication.
This “debate” was a total mismatch and the fact that Destiny approached it exactly like he’d approach a “debate” in Discord was infuriating. He didn’t have anything meaningful to say, brought no insight into the discussion, and couldn’t even be a charming conversation partner. Instead he just did the old routine of asserting a bunch of shit, getting in his little digs, and then waiting for the other person to stop talking before launching into something else.
The sheer hubris of thinking he had something to contribute is incredibly off putting. We aren’t talking about horse cocks with Vaush here, but actual world events where thousands of people are being subject to brutal violence, and he couldn’t even set aside his Napoleon ego for that
