Barack Obama says what is happening to Palestinians is “unbearable.” But he also is discouraging people from engaging in what he called “TikTok activism,” or social media advocacy that can obscure context.
The former president’s remarks about the Israel-Hamas war come from his recent sit-down with the “Pod Save America” podcast. The full interview is set to air Tuesday.
If there’s any chance of us being able to act constructively to do something, it will require an admission of complexity and maintaining what on the surface may seem contradictory ideas — that what Hamas did was horrific and there’s no justification for it, and what is also true is that the occupation and what’s happening to Palestinians is unbearable. And what is also true is that there is a history of the Jewish people that may be dismissed unless your grandparents or your great-grandparents or your uncle or your aunt tell you stories about the madness of antisemitism. And what is true is that there are people right now who are dying who have nothing to do with what Hamas did.
But Obama bemoaned how conversations about the war are playing out on social media, saying: “The problem with the social media and trying — TikTok activism, and trying to debate this on that — is you can’t speak the truth.”
He added:
You can pretend to speak the truth; you can speak one side of the truth. And in some cases, you can try to maintain your moral innocence, but that won’t solve the problem. And so if you want to solve the problem, then you have to take in the whole truth. And you then have to admit nobody’s hands are clean, that all of us are complicit to some degree.
President @BarackObama on the violence in Gaza.
— Pod Save America (@PodSaveAmerica) November 4, 2023
Full interview out Tuesday. pic.twitter.com/U42Jy2Aa4y
Ever since the eruption of the Israel-Hamas war, social media has shown that it can be an informational hellscape, with misinformation, propaganda and invective aplenty.
The chaos online inspired me to write this blog post, in which I encouraged social media users to reflect on whether they were truly helping their cause — or if their posts were simply meant to self-gratify. I made a similar argument in a recent appearance with this blog’s namesake, Joy Reid, on “The ReidOut.”
.@_Jahan on misinformation on the Israel-Hamas war spreading on social media. (via @TheReidOut) pic.twitter.com/6jxS11w7pc
— The ReidOut (@thereidout) October 24, 2023
It’s notable to me that Obama, whose team arguably used social media activism to great effect during his campaigns, would decry “TikTok activism.” And to be clear, this wasn’t the first time he has voiced such criticism of social media.
But here we have yet another indication of how perceptions of social media seem to be changing — a sign that these spaces, once thought to be democratizing and unifying forces in our society, are increasingly being seen as chaos agents.
Ja’han Jones is an MS NOW opinion blogger. He previously wrote The ReidOut Blog.