When the Face Cannot be Seen: Ethics, Solidarity and Politics

In this episode, we look at why so many political arguments on the left collapse into confusion, hostility, or pure repetition. People talk about Syria, Ukraine, Gaza, imperialism, campism, and solidarity as if they’re debating the same thing, but they’re often answering different underlying questions. Philosophy doesn’t solve that, but it helps us see what those deeper questions actually are.

We start with why internal dissent matters. If we cannot create space to disagree with each other, we will fail to do it with people whose experiences do not line up with our ideological expectations. That failure is what turns solidarity into ideology and people into symbols.

From there, the episode explores what I’ve called “abstraction”: the moment when ideas replace living voices. Syrians become proxies. Ukrainians become NATO assets. Palestinians become political symbols. Once that happens, the person disappears.

We then turn to Emmanuel Levinas and the idea that responsibility to the other person comes before any political interpretation. Levinas offers a powerful corrective to our worst habits, but he also failed to apply his own ethics when asked about Palestinians. This moment reveals something larger about how politics shapes recognition before any ethical encounter can happen.

Drawing on Judith Butler and Frantz Fanon, the episode examines how political and social structures decide who gets to appear as fully human in the first place. When recognition is blocked at that level, no ethical framework can stand on its own.

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Music: Doom "Means to an End." The singer is repeating "Let's all be friends, means to and end."