Polls have revealed a stark divide among Americans; Boomers and GenX tend to support US policy in the Middle East, while most Millennials and almost all of GenZ overwhelmingly find it illegitimate. The difference appears to be in narrative exposure. Older Americans were subjected to many years of mainstream coercive messaging without much of a counter opinion, while younger Americans see through the Israel lobby’s strategic targeting of the narrative, even AI-sock puppet accounts on social media.

Philosopher and Social Theorist Jurgen Habermas argued that power structures like governments that communicate rationally with the public in a deliberative manner, provide a basis for the legitimacy of policy. 

But when they communicate in a coercive or strategic way, they lack support and therefore lose legitimacy, which is a basic condition for the use of power by a legally constituted government.

It is a mystery to no one why TikTok is being targeted, as it provides a counter to the dominant narrative.

The Biden administration has forthrightly attempted to communicate with the American people rationally in order to clothe their Middle East policy in legitimacy, such as when Secretary of State Antony Blinker recently stated (with a straight face), “What separates Israel, the US and other democracies when it comes to incredibly difficult situations like this, is our respect for international law.”

But then funnels American taxpayer dollars to support what Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and B’Tselem all describe as an apartheid government.  

According to polls, GenZ sees right through Biden and Blinken’s Communicative Rationality to the naked truth that the administration’s messaging of policies in the Middle East is in fact coercive and strategically communicated. 

In his Theory of Communicative Action, Habermas contends that there are two rationalities we want to look at concerning how we communicate with each other.  

Communicative Rationality focuses on social sincerity
in the attempt to resolve a problem.
It is inclusive and open-minded, resolution-oriented. 

Strategic Rationality is more akin to strategic messaging,
or public relations that speaks past people.
It is focused on persuasion and is coercive in nature. 

Think of Strategic Rationality as the type of communication that a car salesman has when you are considering a purchase. His communication of the features and benefits for the consumer is motivated by the commission he will earn if you buy, not the pursuit of truth or consensus problem-solving. 

But when people feel coerced by Strategic Communication, legitimacy falters.

We recognize Biden and Blinken’s salesmanship motives as being antithetical, even offensive, and in the eyes of GenZ, US Middle East policy is viewed as illegitimate.   

Other legal organizations such as the International Criminal Court, which focuses on Communicative Rationality through painstakingly detailed research and discovery, tend to agree with GenZ. 

Even some Israeli newspapers have said that the road to The Hague is paved with comments by its own coercive leaders. 

With no end to the Biden administration’s illegitimate Middle East policy in sight, and Trump’s authoritarian nature as the only other realistic option, the greatest minds of GenZ should forsake American politics altogether, join the great humanitarian cause and make it an international power structure by their retirement. 

Eamon Loingsigh