The beauty of Trump's administration is being both pro-Israel and antisemitic. Might discredit both.
That's such a succinct way of putting it.
Except for the obvious bit of unfounded optimism at the end, it's the only literally accurate description of the situation.
Why can't progressive or liberal objectives excite the bile ducts of America's bitter, obsessed shut-ins?
I'm serious.
Being pro-Israel and anti-Semitic has been a constant of right-wing America from way back. Now that the anti-Semitism is out in the open with Bannon's neo-Nazi Duginist protofascism, it creates rather an awkward situation; because the simple fact is that so long as the American neo-fascists remain nominally pro-Israel, it's easy for the Israeli far right to convince themselves that realpolitik not only demands their silence, but actually benefits them in vividly demonstrating Israel's indispensable nature to formerly-critical Jews. It's a ticklish business because it's quite easy for this gambit to backfire in spectacularly tragic fashion and discredit Netanyahu and his ilk for quite some time.
discredit Netanyahu and his ilk for quite some time
In service of my having any flickering hope for Israel's future, can you explain how this would work?
Well, Bannon's Alt Reich associates would clearly like to commence to terrorizing and excluding Jews from American public life pretty much immediately. (Cf. recent events in Dick Spencer's hometown of Whitefish, Montana.) It would depend on whether Bannon shares these inclinations and has the latitude to act on them; clearly immigrants and Muslims are his chief scapegoating targets for now, but the anti-Semitism is clearly important to the Pepe enthusiasts and a failure to follow through on it could open fissures in the movement (as could attempts to follow through on it). If he does throw his weight behind that kind of thing, and there begin to be Alt Reich campaigns online and in meatspace to, say, intimidate and marginalize Jewish public figures (entertainers, politicians, what have you), I think it would be pretty devastating to the Israeli right's credibility and rhetoric, and that their counting on American Jewish misery to shore up their own position might well backfire.
Some of the pushback is already manifesting in normally pro-Israeli quarters, but it would presumably depend on if Bannon crosses the line and finally manages to activate, say, Sheldon Adelson's moral breakers. Assuming other development, like the Russia scandal, don't overtake the whole business.
This article scared the shit out of me.
1/5.1: This is also the evangelical two-step for ages now.
The idea that Sheldon Anderson has moral breakers to activate seems improbable to me.
I've never watched "Third Rock," so I don't know.
Sheldon Anderson being the love child of Sheldon Kornpett and Benedict Anderson.
I'm only vaguely aware of who we're talking about.
The guy who used to own the basketball team and had a mistress who could have sex with but not go out in public with black men, right?
I used to blithely assume that the descendants of East European Jewish immigrants to America had "become white," just like the Irish. These days, I'm not so sure. I have been truly (and no doubt cluelessly and naively) shocked by some of the anti-Semitism that has been more or less openly circulating over the past year.
The hard-core, neo-con, pro-Israeli-state contingent is a vocal and obnoxious minority. Their awfulness cannot, must not, excuse any move toward anti-Semitism, in my opinion. The vast majority of Jewish Americans are way liberal, and reliable Democratic voters; and we only wish the rest of America would think and vote like they were (non-neo-con) Jewish.
I have been truly (and no doubt cluelessly and naively) shocked by some of the anti-Semitism that has been more or less openly circulating over the past year.
You're not alone. Pretty much all the Jews I know, including myself, have been blindsided by this.
The vast majority of Jewish Americans are way liberal, and reliable Democratic voters; and we only wish the rest of America would think and vote like they were (non-neo-con) Jewish.
As I've mentioned elsewhere, it is encouraging to see the major US Jewish organizations pushing back hard against the Trump administration's Islamophobia, despite how far some of them (looking at you, ADL under Abe Foxman) had gone in conflating legitimate criticism of the Israeli government with antisemitism. Turns out we're all on the same page after all. The neocons are a rounding error compared to the American Jewish population as a whole.
19.1: AIMHMHB I have a Jewish friend who left London for NY because she got sick of the antisemitism - I will have to catch up with her when I'm over next and find out how things compare now...
Anecdotally, I feel like Europe and America have been very different in terms of the extent of antisemitism in recent years.
To elaborate, it seems like traditional white Christian antisemitism is much more virulent in Europe than in the US, the recent rise of Bannon et al. notwithstanding. All the major far-right European parties seem to have significant antisemitic elements. In addition, and probably relatedly, Islamic extremism in Europe seems to have a much more antisemitic cast than similar extremism in the US. Recent Islamist terrorist attacks in the US have generally not targeted specifically Jewish institutions, in striking contrast to, e.g., the attack at the Brussels Jewish Museum.
This is actually rather odd, if you take at face value the idea that radical Islamist terrorist attacks are motivated by outrage at Israeli government policy toward Palestinians. Palestinians are a much higher percentage of the American Muslim and Arab populations (which have a lot of overlap but are far from identical; a large number of American Arabs are Christian) than is the case in Europe, where Muslim populations are drawn largely from either former colonies or countries with historic ties to specific European countries. So French Muslims are largely Algerian, Spanish ones are largely Moroccan, British ones are largely Pakistani, and German ones are largely Turkish.
American Arabs and Muslims are not just disproportionately Palestinian but also mostly middle-class professionals and small-business owners; we don't have the kind of frustrated Muslim underclass excluded from society and living in impoverished slums that is allegedly common in Europe. (I say "allegedly" because I have zero personal experience of any of this and am going purely on media accounts. FWIW, all of the American Muslims I have personally known are middle-class.)
It's genuinely unclear to me what the connection might be between traditional white European antisemitism and Islamic extremist attacks on Jewish institutions in Europe. Maybe there is none. The quasi-mainstream far-right parties that are explicitly antisemitic are also even more virulently Islamophobic, after all. But I do wonder about whether there is some connection, since it's so different from how things have gone in America.
21, 22: I'm sure you're right. I meant more how the US when she arrived compares with the US now.
I'm sure the amount of overt antisemitism has increased recently, just based on my own personal experience.
All the major far-right European parties seem to have significant antisemitic elements.
Not sure that UKIP does, particularly. And AfD is much more anti-Muslim than anti-Semitic as far as I know, though Alex is probably better informed on this.
Hm, interesting. I admit my impression is just that: an impression.
I will say, though, that as an American Jew I am essentially not worried at all about being the victim of an Islamic extremist terrorist attack, and much more worried about being the victim of a white nationalist terrorist attack. (And vastly more worried about the latter than I was a year ago. But still not very worried.) I get the impression that European Jews don't feel quite the same way.
But again, just an impression. I don't have any data for any of this.
And I should really go to bed. It's quite late here.
There was a time when the American far right affected philo-Semitism (and pretended its "support" for a very narrow slice of Israel was the same thing). That's gone mostly out the window, but I don't think it's particularly a change, just an unmasking. I generally take the same to be true of Europe's far-right parties, though they are still trying to keep it on the down-low and to pretend their Muslim-hatred is some sort of twisted defense of diversity and secularism.
22 A lot of Islamophobic European far-right nationalism draws from American Islamophobic discourse. It's all there from Melanie Phillips to her BFF Anders Breivik and everyone in between.
And AfD is much more anti-Muslim than anti-Semitic as far as I know, though Alex is probably better informed on this.
It depends. Frauke Petry's faction (typical populists, grumpy Facebook boomers) aren't particularly anti-semitic and are at daggers drawn with Bjorn Höcke's faction (alt-right
Twitter nazis), who are as anti-semitic (and anti-Muslim, and racist, and generally horrible) as they can be in Germany without being arrested for being a threat to national security (which sometimes happens).
Meanwhile the old gentlemen faction (basically, ordoliberal econ professors with blogs, who are wrong but at least they're not nazis) is being ripped to shreds between the other two factions. Petry, having beaten them mercilessly to get to the party leadership, just got most of them to vote to expel Höcke from the party, except for the ones who cynically lined up with him hoping to be eaten last back when it looked like he was going to win.
kind of fascinating that each group maps onto a social media application:0
kind of fascinating that each group maps onto a social media application
Twitter needs to die. I keep saying it...
In the future cold war between Twitter and Facebook, I'm hoping to develop a sort of Titoist non-aligned status for blogs. "The best passport in the world" and all that.
More Crouchbackist, really. "At last his enemy was clear. It was the modern world in arms..."
This is good: http://theweek.com/articles/680134/democrats-please-dont-lose-heads-over-russia
36: no, it's full of shit.
"Clinton was and is belligerently hostile to Russia and their allies" - the link here is to a pathetic NYT article from late October that, to put it mildly, has not aged well over the subsequent four months. Lots of quotes from elderly Seriously Concerned men thinking that Clinton is being a bit irrational with all these allegations of Russian influence.
"the Obama presidency had many pointless provocations of Russia, particularly the effort to extend NATO ever farther east" - use of the word 'provocation', like 'mud people' or 'rootless cosmopolitan' or 'running dog', is always a bit of a giveaway that someone is drinking the wrong kool-aid. And the idea that it was Obama who oversaw the eastward expansion of NATO is a downright lie. The former Soviet states that joined NATO - Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia - did so in 2004. The former Soviet satellite states that joined did so in 2004 or in 1999. The only expansion of NATO that Obama oversaw was the addition of Croatia, which was never part of the Warsaw Pact, and Albania, which was at odds with the USSR for most of the Cold War because of Hoxha's fondness for Maoism. Not to mention that the perceived pointlessness of their membership depends strongly on whether one actually is, say, a Latvian worried about having one's home town receive the BM-21 civic beautification plan next time Putin wants to distract his people from another bout of economic bad news, or a grinning Brooklyn idiot from the New Republic.
And then we have Clinton being "furiously aggressive" towards Russia and the link here is to the same POS NYT story, which has no evidence of her fury aggression at all, merely speculation from Elderly Serious Men that she might become hysterical and irrational if she were elected.
Oh, and before you say "but Ukraine was in the NATO Partnership for Peace! It was on the glide path to membership!" - yes it was, it had been in PfP since 1994, and so had Russia.
It wasn't as bad as all that. You're not wrong, of course, but for lefty nonsense, it's not that nonsensical. The central points are sound.
22
I wrote my BA thesis on the headscarf ban in France, and did some fieldwork in Paris. One thing that got totally erased in the Anglo media was that a majority of French Muslims supported the headscarf ban, because I argued they are French Muslims, and therefore share the same sorts of values and conceptions of the state as other French people.
I think that our (usually unconscious, generally well-meaning) attempt to separate out "Muslims" from "Europeans" ends up downplaying or erasing how much Muslims, especially non-immigrants, are members of the society they live in. Thinking about it that way, it's not surprising European Muslims are more anti-Semitic because Europe is more anti-Semitic than the US.
I also think you're right about the underclass, in that it's easier to recruit terrorists from a pool of under or unemployed young men who feel alienated and hopeless about their future. In France, fundamentalist Muslim preachers are called "paradise-dealers," and like drug-dealers, they're seen to offer a temporary and unhealthy out from the misery of life in the banlieues.
There are some missing commas. It should be
because, I argued, they are French Muslims...
a majority of French Muslims supported the headscarf ban, because I argued they are French Muslims
And (I speculate based on only rudimentary knowledge) the sides line up differently.
In the US "ban headscarves" lines up with "this is a Christian country and we hate and fear non-Christians who are not real Americans". On the other side you have "we don't mind what colour you are or what religious symbols you wear" and "bring us your huddled masses yearning to be free".
But in France, "ban headscarves" can line up with "ban all religious symbols in public spaces" and "keep the Catholic Church the hell out of our republic", and on the other side you have "the Church is the pillar of the State" and "this Dreyfus must be up to something".
it's easier to recruit terrorists from a pool of under or unemployed young men who feel alienated and hopeless about their future
Hence why we should be so worried about the MRA/Gamergate/redpill sorts of universes.
42
Right, my point is French Muslims are French, therefore they viewed the ban like other French people did, whereas the American and British left viewed it as straight up French racism, and assumed that French Muslims would oppose the ban.
Further to 37: the progressive Left has its own salient of pro-Putin ballwashers, some of whom simply never evolved beyond seeing Russia as the wronged party in Dubya's policies a dozen years ago and who as a result have become all-day suckers for Russian ploys and misinformation (not to mention stale anti-Clintonisms from the Nineties). Putin is perfectly willing to exploit useful idiots at both sides of the political spectrum, and that sense there's really not as much distance between certain Bernistas and the far right as they like to think there is.
36: Roger, someday you're going to link something that's not dumb as shit, but I have become so reflexively accustomed to shallow argumentation and silliness from your links that I won't believe it when you do.
How is it that people can say shit like this?
But does that mean the Russians were entirely responsible, as is often heard in center-left circles, for Clinton's loss? Of course not.
Cooper is rebutting a strawman here, as evidenced by the fact that he fails to supply a link to something that is "often heard." Personally, I haven't heard anyone claim that Putin was the sole force leading to Hillary's defeat. Among the other factors routinely mentioned by the "center-left": the media, Bernie, Comey, Wikileaks, the Electoral College, Hillary's errors, racism, sexism, etc.
On the other hand, if we want to give Cooper the benefit of the doubt and say that he is rebutting an argument that is actually made, then he's just wrong. In a close election, any significant factor can be decisive, and it's entirely reasonable to suppose that absent Putin's influence, Hillary would have won.
Intriguingly, BTW, there is someone alleging that the Comey letter was directly engineered by Russia. Not sure what to make of that yet.
Castock, Whitefish isn't Spencer's hometown. He's a Texan. Beginning in his late 20s, he's sometimes holed up in the basement of his mother's second home in Whitefish. Maybe not the basement.
Anyway the rejection from Whitefish has been about as complete as you could ask for.
It's a common mistake.
The whole Spencer thing has been something of a boon for resistance organizing (and my God what a pathetic bunch of snowflakes this new 'master race' turns out to be). It's always important to have a tent pole. The race for Zinke's seat -- Spencer had laughably said maybe he'd toss his hat in the ring -- is another. We're expecting the race to become nationalized in pretty short order . . .
47: I'm a bit skeptical, but it's true that when you hear the phrase "15-year old girl online", the first thing you should think is "phishing?" It's a standard phishing gambit.
47: I got as far as this and then my credulity gave out: The hacker group's name, sources say, is a pun. The letters USSR in Cyrillic look like the American letters "CWA".
No, they do not. The letters USSR in Cyrillic look like this: CCCP. This is basic stuff. There is no W in Cyrillic. The closest to CWA would be the equivalent of S-Sh-A and I am not aware of anything in particular in Russian with this acronym.
S-Sh-A is the cyrillic acronym for USA in Russian.
53: oh, right. Still, doesn't inspire confidence.
Google translate says there is ("свобода"), but the alternative facts go back to Reagan.
Anne Helen Peterson wrote a really good article at Buzzfeed on Whitefish and their racism/white nationalist problem.
Putin is perfectly willing to exploit useful idiots at both sides of the political spectrum, and that sense there's really not as much distance between certain Bernistas and the far right as they like to think there is.
RT was advertising on billboards in Williamsburg for much of 2016.
56. And "krasniya" means both "beautiful" and "red." Wired for communism, I tells ya.
(Not to mention "mir" being both "peace" and "world." Psychedelic, man.)
I can't help being a little annoyed by the conflation of the various communities in the Flathead, though. It's true that the county went 65% for Trump. However, "urban" Whitefish south of the tracks went 52% for Clinton, and north of the tracks went 58% for her.
59: I thought "beautiful" was "krasiviy"? Or is this one for blog imeni Standpipe Bridgeplateovitch?
"Mir" also means "self governing rural community". Now that's meaningful!
47,52,etc... :
Ignoring the implausible but unnecessary elements, assume that Weiner's interlocutor was a catfisher (catfish?). How would the conspirators know that Abedin used her work email on Weiner's laptop? The article purports that the NY field office were prepared to plant emails on there, but that is a very fiddly business. You have to get the date stamps right, the registry keys, all sorts of nonsense. So, you need not only corrupt FBI agents, but competent ones. It's more likely that they'd just seize Hubedin's laptop, claim it as relevant, and proceed as before. Still, a stretch.
57: I can't remember if it's ok to admit to journalist crushes but if it is I think I have one. If not, I deny everything.
This comment is on background.
"Mir" also means "self governing rural community". Now that's meaningful!
I told youi! We're an Anarcho-Syndicalist commune!
I am actually not sure which of the three possible meanings was intended for the space station. I do like the idea of a space station called the Russian equivalent of "Hamlet" or "One-Horse Town", though.
"Mir" may mean both peace and village, but you only have to live in one to realise this is some fine, fine historical irony.
I think "mir" meaning both "world" and "village" has more potential for philosophical wittering, though. "Ah you see what Marx meant about the idiocy of rural life! The ignorant Russian moujik, so uninterested in events outside his own village that the boundaries of his fields might as well be the edge of the world!"
Curiously, Marx quite seriously contemplated the idea that Russia would be able to sidestep the Feudalism > Capitalism > Socialism > Communism path my using the Mir structure to go straight from Feudalism to Socialism. He corresponded with Vera Zasulich about it, trying to persuade her that capitalist development wasn't as important in Russia as in western Europe.
65: Ditto. Started with her celebrity writings. The academy lost out.