I'll Burn That Bridge When I Get to It

I'll Burn That Bridge When I Get to It! Heretical Thoughts on Identity Politics, Cancel Culture, and Academic Freedom

Author	Norman Finkelstein
Published	2023
Publisher	Sublation Media
ISBN	979-8-9867884-2-5

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", 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.

Background

Norman Finkelstein wrote it.

Norman Finkelstein is an American political scientist who has been popular among certain antiestablishment political scenes that interact on the Internet. In retaliation against Finkelstein's criticism of Zionism and the Israeli apartheid against Palestinians, Zionism advocate and Harvard University professor Alan Dershowitz led an effort that successfully pressured DePaul University, Finkelstein's then-employer, into denying him academic tenure in 2007. He was thereafter underemployed, maintaining income through speaking fees and teaching adjunct courses. In the 2020s, Finkelstein argued that the Russian invasion of Ukraine was morally justified and mocked transgender people for sharing their preferred gender pronouns.

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. 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. Alan Dershowitz called it an "illegitimate descendant" of Stalinism and McCarthyism that stifles free speech and creativity. The mythological narrative of cancel culture generated substantial fear but as of 2023 had not caused meaningful consequences for significantly prominent politicians, business people, or institutions.

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". 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). To promote the book, Finkelstein interviewed with alternative media outlets on the Internet.

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". 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.

Edward Said is mentioned.

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. 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. Finkelstein also defends comedian Woody Allen, former United States president Bill Clinton, and former activist Rachel Dolezal. He mocks transgender requests to use preferred gender pronouns, writing, "I'll tell you my pronouns if you tell me your net worth".

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. 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. Finkelstein characterizes himself as having been cancelled. 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.

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". British pacifist newspaper Peace News called the book's publisher, Sublation, "a hitherto little-known" press.

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". American progressive website Common Dreams "hope[d] that his book and his example will inspire young idealists to follow in his path". 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. 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". 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.

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". 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".

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. 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. 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". The Black Agenda Report criticized Finkelstein's "coarseness" in sexualizing transgender people who ask for others to use their preferred pronouns. Common Dreams complimented the same transphobic quotation as a "Finkelsteinian zinger" the publication "can't resist quoting".