I'll Burn That Bridge When I Get to It! Heretical Thoughts on Identity Politics, Cancel Culture, and Academic Freedom is a 2023 book by American political scientist Norman Finkelstein. Inspired by an open letter published by Harper's Magazine titled "Letter on Justice and Open Debate", the book criticizes what Finkelstein calls "cancel culture" and "woke politics", arguing that anti-racism, feminism, and LGBTQ movements undermined working class solidarity and were an elitist grift. The book criticizes Edward Said, Kimberlé Crenshaw, and Ibram X. Kendi, defends Noam Chomsky, Woody Allen, and Rachel Dolezal, and mocks transgender people. Different reviewers' assessments of the book varied. For examples, Peace News criticized Finkelstein's use of the word "woke" and his treatment of transgender people but otherwise praised the book as a "powerful and much-needed critique",[1] and The Black Agenda Report criticized the book as a "temper tantrum that is so vulgar, vacuous, inchoate, and graceless that it could just as easily have been written by Tucker Carlson, Bill Maher or Sean Hannity" which moreover fails to grapple with settler colonialism.[2]
In 2020, Harper's Magazine published an open letter titled "Letter on Justice and Open Debate" that criticized what it called cancel culture, a former publisher of other works by Finkelstein invited him to write a book about cancel culture.[1] Contextualized by the Pew Research Center as being related to social phenomena in which people "go online and call out others for their behavior or words", the meaning of cancel culture is contested, variously described as accountability or censorship.[5] Alan Dershowitz called it an "illegitimate descendant" of Stalinism and McCarthyism that stifles free speech and creativity.[6] The mythological narrative[a] of cancel culture generated substantial fear but as of 2023 had not caused meaningful consequences for significantly prominent politicians, business people, or institutions.[6]
Publication
Tariq Ali at Verso rejected the manuscript for publication.
Multiple presses which have previously published books by Finkelstein rejected his manuscript when he submitted it to them. Tariq Ali, an editor at Verso Books—publisher of Finkelstein's 2000 The Holocaust Industry—wrote to Finkelstein, explaining the rejection of his manuscript, that "[m]any of your books are so methodical and precise—forensic in explaining an opponent’s thought and a devastating deconstruction—that we were all a bit taken aback by this one".[4] Finkelstein's manuscript was ultimately published by Sublation Press as I'll Burn That Bridge When I Get to It! Heretical Thoughts on Identity Politics, Cancel Culture, and Academic Freedom. The book is 544 pages long and upon release sold for £24.70 (GBP).[1] To promote the book, Finkelstein interviewed with alternative media outlets on the Internet.[4]
Content
I'll Burn That Bridge When I Get to It is divided into two parts. The first part comprises four-fifths of the book's total length and argues that identity politics, or "woke politics", Finkelstein's words pervaded the politics of the United States and had "distracted from and, when need be, outright sabotaged" American politician Bernie Sanders's presidential campaigns in 2016 and in 2020, which Finkelstein considered "a class-based movement that promised profound social change".[1] The book contends that the struggles of women, transgender people, and people of color were exaggerated and that activism on their behalf undermined working class solidarity.[4]
In the first chapter, Finkelstein writes about how Edward Said criticized Noam Chomsky for neglecting to learn from or cite Palestinian authors while writing about the Nakba. Finkelstein defends Chomsky and argues that "it could have been that the Jewish scholarship was of higher quality" than that written by Palestinians.[2] The remainder of the book's first part takes the form of strongly worded polemics attacking public figures who address racism in the United States, including Kimberlé Crenshaw and Ibram X. Kendi.[3] Finkelstein also defends comedian Woody Allen, former United States president Bill Clinton, and former activist Rachel Dolezal.[2] He mocks transgender requests to use preferred gender pronouns, writing, "I'll tell you my pronouns if you tell me your net worth".[4]
The book's second part is about academic freedom. Finkelstein argues that Holocaust deniers should not be barred from teaching, adding that he thinks they would "inoculate students" against their own claims anyway.[1]I'll Burn That Bridge When I Get to It then sketches four historical cases about academic freedom involving Bertrand Russell, Leo Koch, Angela Davis, and Steven Salaita.[7] Finkelstein characterizes himself as having been cancelled.[2] Bemoaning his own, as he saw it, cancellation by Democracy Now!, he repeats a sexualized joke he made to a Democracy Now! staffer that she "look[ed] so young, you could be one of Michael Jackson's playmates", in his words.[2][3]
Reception
I'll Burn That Bridge When I Get to It received limited attention upon its publication. The Drift, a literary magazine, reported that "[b]eyond a small corner of the Internet, few took notice of the book".[4] British pacifist newspaper Peace News called the book's publisher, Sublation, "a hitherto little-known" press.[1]
There have been reviews that made different assessments of I'll Burn That Bridge When I Get to It. British pacifist newspaper Peace News praised the book as a "powerful and much-needed critique" that is "likely to infuriate or offend" the reader, who is still "encourage[d] to read it".[1] American progressive website Common Dreams "hope[d] that his book and his example will inspire young idealists to follow in his path".[7]The Black Agenda Report, an outlet for African-American leftism, criticized the book, calling it a "preening, patriarchal pity party" and a "temper tantrum that is so vulgar, vacuous, inchoate, and graceless that it could just as easily have been written by Tucker Carlson, Bill Maher or Sean Hannity", public figures of the American political right.[2]The Drift argued that I'll Burn That Bridge When I Get to It "lacks a compelling critique of liberal identity politics—instead, much of it reads like a meandering diatribe".[4] According to Avant-Garde: A Journal of Peace, Democracy, and Science, Finkelstein's liberal targets are "worthy of contempt", but Finkelstein himself "lacks the empathy and moral authority to make his critique seem like anything other than bitter, gleeful, ad hominem attack", such as in his mockery of activist Angela Davis.[3]
Peace News criticized Finkelstein's use of the word "woke" as an "unfortunate decision" because of its association with right-wing politics as a pejorative against "everything that they don't like", such as "Black people in TV dramas".[1]The Black Agenda Report argued that the Black vernacular phrase "stay woke" originated as a watchword to remind the community to avoid "being caught off-guard by white betrayal, such as that demonstrated by Finkelstein", and that while Finkelstein is "partly correct" in criticizing liberalism in the United States as elitist, he fails to recognize that settler colonialism, not multiracial liberalism, originated the white-unifying identity politics that undermine working class cohesion; the Report concluded that I'll Burn That Bridge When I Get to It has a "nativist tone", expresses "white insecurity", and is the "European settler's cry for help, and an exercise in white respectability politics".[2]
Multiple reviews noted how I'll Burn That Bridge When I Get to It handled the topic of gender. Avant-Garde and The Black Agenda Report criticized Finkelstein's defensive presentation of his comment to the Democracy Now! staffer, the former stating that "[i]t does not take a puritanical sensibility to be thrown off guard by [the] anecdote" and the latter pointing out that it could be a trauma trigger for a victim of sexual assault.[3][2] According to The Drift, the book "spotlights Finkelstein's most reactionary position: his view on transgender rights", as he considers the transgender rights movement disingenuous and mocks advocacy for access to gender-affirming surgery.[4]Peace News noted that while I'll Burn That Bridge When I Get to It states that transgender people warrant "compassion, for sure", Finkelstein nevertheless has a "a blindspot when it comes to trans people".[1]The Black Agenda Report criticized Finkelstein's "coarseness" in sexualizing transgender people who ask for others to use their preferred pronouns.[2]Common Dreams complimented the same transphobic quotation as a "Finkelsteinian zinger" the publication "can't resist quoting".[7]
Notes
↑ In this case myth refers to the sociological sense of cultural narratives, rather than the popular sense of falsehood.
The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering is a book by Norman Finkelstein arguing that the American Jewish establishment exploits the memory of the Nazi Holocaust for political and financial gain and to further Israeli interests. According to Finkelstein, this "Holocaust industry" has corrupted Jewish culture and the authentic memory of the Holocaust.
Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media is a 1992 documentary film that explores the political life and ideas of linguist, intellectual, and political activist Noam Chomsky. Canadian filmmakers Mark Achbar and Peter Wintonick expand the analysis of political economy and mass media presented in Manufacturing Consent, a 1988 book Chomsky wrote with Edward S. Herman.
Identity politics is politics based on a particular identity, such as ethnicity, race, nationality, religion, denomination, gender, sexual orientation, social background, caste, and social class. The term encompasses various often-populist political phenomena and rhetoric, such as governmental migration policies that regulate mobility and opportunity based on identities, left-wing agendas involving intersectional politics or class reductionism, and right-wing nationalist agendas of exclusion of national or ethnic "others."
The Dershowitz–Finkelstein affair was a public controversy involving academics Alan Dershowitz and Norman Finkelstein and their scholarship on the Israeli–Palestinian conflict in 2005.
From Time Immemorial: The Origins of the Arab–Jewish Conflict over Palestine is a 1984 book by Joan Peters, published by Harper & Row, about the demographics of the Arab population of Palestine and of the Jewish population of the Arab world before and after the formation of the State of Israel.
The propaganda model is a conceptual model in political economy advanced by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky to explain how propaganda and systemic biases function in corporate mass media. The model seeks to explain how populations are manipulated and how consent for economic, social, and political policies, both foreign and domestic, is "manufactured" in the public mind due to this propaganda. The theory posits that the way in which corporate media is structured creates an inherent conflict of interest and therefore acts as propaganda for anti-democratic elements.
The Case for Israel is a 2003 book by Alan Dershowitz, a law professor at Harvard University. The work is a response to common criticisms of Israel. The Case for Israel was a New York Times bestseller. It also led to the public controversy known as the Dershowitz–Finkelstein affair.
Hegemony or Survival: America's Quest for Global Dominance is a book about the United States and its foreign policy written by American political activist and linguist Noam Chomsky. It was first published in the United States in November 2003 by Metropolitan Books and then in the United Kingdom by Penguin Books. It was republished by Haymarket Books in January 2024.
Edward Samuel Herman was an American economist, media scholar and social critic. Herman is known for his media criticism, in particular the propaganda model hypothesis he developed with Noam Chomsky, a frequent co-writer. He held an appointment as Professor Emeritus of finance at the Wharton School of Business of the University of Pennsylvania. He also taught at Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania.
Noam Chomsky is an intellectual, political activist, and critic of the foreign policy of the United States and other governments. Noam Chomsky describes himself as an anarcho-syndicalist and libertarian socialist, and is considered to be a key intellectual figure within the left wing of politics of the United States.
Norman Gary Finkelstein is an American political scientist and activist. His primary fields of research are the politics of the Holocaust and the Israeli–Palestinian conflict.
Woke, the African-American English synonym for the General American English word awake, has since the 1930s or earlier been used to refer to awareness of social and political issues affecting African Americans, often in the construction stay woke. Beginning in the 2010s, it came to be used to refer to a broader awareness of social inequalities such as racial injustice, sexism, and denial of LGBT rights. Woke has also been used as shorthand for some ideas of the American Left involving identity politics and social justice, such as white privilege and reparations for slavery in the United States.
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Cancel culture is a cultural phenomenon in which an individual thought to have acted or spoken in an unacceptable manner is ostracized, boycotted, shunned, fired or assaulted, often aided by social media. This shunning may extend to social or professional circles—whether on social media or in person—with most high-profile incidents involving celebrities. Those subject to this ostracism are said to have been "canceled".
The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure is a 2018 book by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt. It is an expansion of a popular essay the two wrote for The Atlantic in 2015. Lukianoff and Haidt argue that overprotection is harming university students and that the use of trigger warnings and safe spaces does more harm than good.
Kathleen Mary Linn Stock is a British philosopher and writer. She was a professor of philosophy at the University of Sussex until 2021. She has published academic work on aesthetics, fiction, imagination, sexual objectification, and sexual orientation.
Homonormativity is the adoption of heteronormative ideals and constructs onto LGBT culture and identity. It is predicated on the assumption that the norms and values of heterosexuality should be replicated and performed among homosexual people. Those who assert this theory claim homonormativity selectively privileges cisgender homosexuality as worthy of social acceptance.
"A Letter on Justice and Open Debate", also known as the Harper's Letter, is an open letter defending free speech published on the Harper's Magazine website on July 7, 2020, with 153 signatories, criticizing what it called "illiberalism" spreading across society. While the letter denounced President Donald Trump as "a real threat to democracy", it argued that hostility to free speech was becoming widespread on the political left as well.
Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything About Race, Gender, and Identity—and Why This Harms Everybody is a nonfiction book by Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay, published in August 2020. The book was listed on the bestsellers lists of Publishers Weekly, USA Today, and the Calgary Herald.
Trans: When Ideology Meets Reality is a 2021 nonfiction book by journalist and gender critical activist Helen Joyce that criticizes the transgender rights movement and transgender activism. It is published by Oneworld Publications, their fifth book in the Sunday Times bestseller list. Reviews of the book ranged from positive to critical. In 2023 it was shortlisted for the John Maddox Prize.
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