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href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/steven-salaita/guide-surviving-canary-mission">https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/steven-salaita/guide-surviving-canary-mission</a></font>
<h1 id="reader-title">A guide to surviving Canary Mission</h1>
<div id="reader-credits" class="credits">
<p class="node__submitted">
<span class="field field-author"><a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/people/steven-salaita"
typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label
skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Steven Salaita</a></span> <span
class="field field-blog">- </span><span class="field
field-publication-date"><span class="date-display-single"
property="dc:date" datatype="xsd:dateTime"
content="2016-12-20T19:40:43+00:00">20 December 2016</span></span>
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<p>So, you’ve been profiled by Canary Mission, a group of
anonymous stalkers who post online dossiers of students
and professors they deem insufficiently enamored of
Israel.</p>
<p>What should you do?</p>
<p>We’ll get to that in a moment. First, let’s examine
what Canary Mission hopes to accomplish with these
dossiers.</p>
<p>According to its website, the goal “is to expose those
who promote lies and attacks on Israel and the Jewish
people” for the purpose of … nothing, apparently: by
accessing these profiles, “the public will become better
informed about those involved in hate movements in their
communities.”</p>
<p>In earlier incarnations, Canary Mission was more
forthright about its <a
href="http://www.jpost.com/Blogs/The-Cutting-Edge/Inside-Canary-Mission-416703">desire
to punish</a> the employed and to damage the
employment prospects of those still in college, who dare
to speak out for Palestinian rights. This intent is
obviously unchanged despite the high-minded rhetoric
about public service.</p>
<p>All settler-colonial movements sanitize violence with
declarations of altruism. Canary Mission’s attempt is
laughable, although, to be fair, Zionists have never
been good at concealing their aggression.</p>
<h2>More than punishment</h2>
<p>Canary Mission’s desire isn’t simply to punish. We
misread the confluence of myth and power on campus when
we reduce Zionist thuggery to frameworks of individual
punishment. This misreading is understandable because
getting profiled forces us into stances of
self-preservation.</p>
<p>While Zionist thugs indeed aim to punish individuals,
they do so on behalf of a greater purpose, which is to
render themselves ubiquitous in deliberations about life
and learning. By identifying anti-Zionists as deviant,
they also identify themselves as normative to those who
oversee and legislate campus life.</p>
<p>In their minds, awash with the messianic compulsions of
settler-colonization, they alone should determine campus
customs and cultures, ethics and etiquette, curriculums
and syllabuses, inclusions and expulsions. They want
decision-makers to constantly feel on the brink of being
shamed. And they are aware that despite their uncivil
language, most upper administrators are sympathetic to
their cause. They therefore attempt to conjoin the
genteel affectations of the ivory tower with the sleaze
of political repression.</p>
<p>Another function of Canary Mission’s profiles is to
facilitate sexist, racist and homophobic abuse.</p>
<p>The site is kind of like a navigation system for
trolls. Canary Mission names people who run afoul of its
genocidal preferences knowing that those people (and,
with luck, their employers) will likely enjoy
spectacular invective.</p>
<p>Whenever Canary Mission tweets at me, which happens
regularly, my mentions get inundated with assholes,
bullies and <a
href="http://www.alternet.org/grayzone-project/roseanne-barrs-bizarre-evolution-national-comic-sensation-racist-twitter-troll">Roseanne
Barr</a>.</p>
<p>In a sense, Canary Mission plays a vital role in the
corporate university. By targeting students, the
organization conditions them for a postgraduate
existence in which dissent is fiercely opposed.</p>
<p>A useful skill for corporate advancement is knowing how
not to offend sites of power. Canary Mission is
contemptible for reinforcing this coercive system, but
it isn’t crazy for suggesting that potential employers
want to root out troublemakers.</p>
<p>The era of online dossiers, then, provides students a
sort of pre-professional training extraneous to the
curriculum but central to the spirit of preparing
impressionable youngsters for the demands of good
citizenship.</p>
<h2>To confront or ignore?</h2>
<p>In some instances – when one has been libeled or
antagonized in person, for example–it may be useful to
directly confront Canary Mission, but on the whole I am
skeptical of this strategy.</p>
<p>Attempting to convince Zionist thugs not to engage in
thuggery seems pointless. Besides, asking Palestinians
to interact with Canary Mission feels a bit like asking
saplings to have a chat with the logging company.</p>
<p>Another strategy is to ignore Canary Mission
altogether. Until now, this has been my approach for
both philosophical and personal reasons.</p>
<p>Philosophically, I don’t like validating fanaticism as
something that can be arbitrated through dialogue or
debate. It’s also a bad idea to center Zionists in such
a way that they occupy the subject position in
conversations about Palestine.</p>
<p>Personally, I don’t care to spend energy on those who
wish to harm students and colleagues. That energy is
better spent protecting people from harm.</p>
<p>With Canary Mission’s increased activity, however,
students and instructors are expressing concern about
being targeted for punishment. They aren’t necessarily
afraid of Canary Mission; they simply don’t trust the
management at their own institutions.</p>
<p>Plenty of universities, after all, have admonished
students and employees selected for abuse by outsiders.
It’s important, then, to think together about how to do
intellectual and activist work in difficult conditions.</p>
<p>We should honor the personal choices of Canary
Mission’s victims and continue building support systems
that are both inclusive and unassailable.</p>
<p>Whatever anybody chooses to do, it’s critical never to
lose sight of the fact that we’re first and foremost in
opposition to Israeli settler-colonization, the
progenitor of rinky-dink groups like Canary Mission.</p>
<h2>The unity of repression</h2>
<p>Canary Mission exemplifies the problems of the
corporate university more broadly: donor meddling,
institutional racism, adamant Zionism, right-wing
structures, top-down governance, arbitrary
decision-making, shadowy influences and political
suppression.</p>
<p>Those interested in justice for Palestinians (and other
colonized peoples) can pursue different values. Ask
department heads, deans and provosts on your campus to
release statements reaffirming our right to criticize
Israel (or any other state) and disavowing public
blacklists as anathema to pedagogical custom, scholarly
interchange and academic freedom.</p>
<p>Given the history of successful Zionist meddling in
campus affairs, administrative silence can rightly be
seen as a form of tacit approval. Zionists who meddle
certainly view it that way.</p>
<p>University administrators love discussing their
devotion to open inquiry, campus safety and principles
of community. It should therefore be a no-brainer for
such noble characters to vocally oppose efforts to harm
their own faculty and students.</p>
<h2>Anonymous known entities</h2>
<p>Websites that profile leftists raise interesting
questions about the role of anonymity in public debate.
The proprietors of Canary Mission, for example, aim to
publicize individuals (often with outlandish hyperbole)
but insist on remaining anonymous.</p>
<p>Canary Mission has been <a
href="http://www.alternet.org/tea-party-and-right/modern-day-mccarthyists-are-going-extremes-slime-activists-fighting-israels">linked</a>
to the far-right, pro-Israel and anti-Muslim demagogue
Daniel Pipes and other pro-Israel organizations and
individuals, but no one has explicitly taken
responsibility for it.</p>
<p>The obvious takeaway is that those proprietors are
cowards and hypocrites. But we do well to move beyond
the obvious and consider broader structures of power.</p>
<p>No matter how much they protest to the contrary, the
basis of sites like Canary Mission is defamation. They
identify sentient individuals and then transform them
into fixed, sortable profiles.</p>
<p>The individuals are embellished and manipulated into
sensationalized political objects under constant
scrutiny, a type of surveillance, really. The content of
the profiles can change, but the aspersions they
generate are permanent. Anonymity entails a lack of
personal accountability.</p>
<p>The supporter of justice in Palestine can be named, but
the accuser purports to occupy a universal position of
virtue that requires no identification.</p>
<p>Anonymity, then, is an implicit profession of
establishmentarian principles. The colonial state makes
it a point to name those who challenge it.</p>
<p>Targets of Canary Mission harassment needn’t attempt to
out the precise individuals behind the site, though for
journalists it’s probably a worthwhile endeavor.</p>
<p>Their individual identities matter less than their
collective performance of colonial violence. Anonymity
is the perfect symbol of their adamant commitment to
dehumanization.</p>
<h2>Post-profile pride</h2>
<p>Upon being targeted for recrimination, think about an
ethical disinvestment from those who want to cause you
harm.</p>
<p>Canary Mission’s proprietors are clearly terrible
people, so accept the occasion to distance yourself from
the organization in the concrete.</p>
<p>When Palestine is liberated, we want it to be better
than Israel.</p>
<p>The very basis of our activism is creating something
more just and humane than the Zionist state and its
corollaries.</p>
<p>We can perform that desire by enacting an ethics of
democracy and empathy. Doing so is a rebuke of those
accustomed to getting their way through insult and
intimidation.</p>
<p>It is also a reaffirmation of the values that led us to
decolonial politics. In other words, as unpleasant as it
is, getting attacked by Zionists is an opportunity to
become an even better activist, scholar, and community
member.</p>
<p>It’s a reminder to be mindful of not reproducing in our
own communities the techniques and strategies central to
Zionist organizing, which thrives on authoritarianism
and coercion.</p>
<p>The very notion of a free Palestine is useless if we
can’t model integrity and generosity in the communities
that prefigure its liberation.</p>
<p>Canary Mission isn’t a threat to Palestine activism.</p>
<p>By trying to stifle individuals who represent a
movement, the organization merely amplifies its own
weakness in the presence of ideas. It is fully in our
power to make this work more satisfying than dangerous.</p>
<p>What to do if you’re profiled on Canary Mission?</p>
<p>The same thing that got you noticed in the first place,
of course: criticize the hell out of Israel.</p>
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