As more and more westerners grow disgusted with Israel and their governments’ support for its depravity, the far left is going to talk to the public about the difference between Zionism and Judaism, about the western empire and its interests in the middle east — and meanwhile the far right is going to blame it all on Jews.
Which of these sounds like the easier argument to make? Which is simpler? Which is more digestible? Which is less challenging to the cognitive biases of a population already propagandized to view their nation as inherently virtuous: a perspective which highlights the west’s culpability for the atrocities we’re backing in the middle east, or a cartoonish perspective which blames it all on the subversive manipulations of a sinister religious minority? Caitlin Johnstone
Not long ago I was reading – don’t recall where so can’t reference it – how for the time being The Jews are off limits for far-right vitriol; their place taken since 9/11 at least by The Muslims. But that was never going to be a durable state of affairs. Many have told of Israel’s behaviour fueling anti-Semitism: the real kind, as opposed to the bogus kind driving witch hunts like the one that handed leadership of the British Labour Party to Keir Starmer. And while those – not all of them anti-Semitic, btw – who insist that Israel rules the West through its powerful lobby are wrong …
People tell me Israel controls the US. When I ask how, they tell me AIPAC. But the arms industry spends far more. So do the Banks, Big Pharma, Big Agriculture. A cartel of industries fund think tanks producing papers which become policies and bills that the media sell to the American people. That’s how it works and the Israel lobbyists are a tiny fraction of that. if Israel truly controlled the US, all its forces would be in the Middle East. But they’re also in Ukraine and South Asia because the US is waging proxy war in all three. Brian Berletic …
… Caitlin Johnstone, writing this morning, points out that this will be a hard argument to make. One, it’s intellectually demanding. Two, it’s emotionally bitter medicine given that Westerners, the most propagandised people on earth, 1 are nurtured cradle to grave on the evidence-defiant notion that West is best.
The Backlash Against Israel’s Western-Backed Crimes Will Fuel The Far Right
US public opinion is turning hard against Israel as both parties bend over backward to send it expensive weapons and silence its critics — and US public opinion is seldom good at making subtle distinctions
A new Pew survey has found that a majority of Americans now have a negative view of Israel, with 53 percent of respondents now holding an unfavorable view of the Zionist state — up from 42 percent just three years ago.
This comes as Benjamin Netanyahu announces after his latest meeting with Donald Trump that negotiations with Iran will necessarily have to include a “Libyan-style” dismantling of the nation’s civilian nuclear infrastructure in order to avoid the war that the US is openly preparing to wage. This, naturally, is a complete non-starter condition for Iran. 2
It also comes as Trump’s US Citizenship and Immigration Services announces that it’s going to be screening the social media posts of immigrants for “antisemitic” speech, which of course in practice means criticism of Israel and its atrocities. This is just the latest in the Trump administration’s relentless efforts to prevent Americans from seeing or hearing any political speech which goes against Washington’s official position on Israel.
Developments like these can be expected to assist the rise of the far right in the west. US public opinion is turning hard against Israel as both parties bend over backward to send it expensive weapons and silence its critics — and US public opinion is seldom good at making subtle distinctions.
“Antisemitism” is fast becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy. As westerners tire of having their speech rights taken away by their government to protect the interests of a state that’s committing genocide under a Star of David banner, a lot of them are going to blame Jews for this. As western governments bend over backwards to help murder Israel’s enemies in the middle east, a lot of westerners are going to blame Jews. As the drums for war with Iran beat louder and louder and parents fear their children will be sent off to die for Israel, many will blame this on the Jews.
I am not saying this is a good thing. It’s a very bad thing. But it’s also reality.
As more and more westerners grow disgusted with Israel and their government’s support for its depravity, the far left is going to talk to the public about the difference between Zionism and Judaism, about the western empire and its interests in the middle east 3 — and meanwhile the far right is going to blame it all on Jews.
Which of these sounds like the easier argument to make? Which is simpler? Which is more digestible? Which is less challenging to the cognitive biases of a population that’s already been propagandized to view their nation as inherently virtuous: a perspective which highlights the west’s culpability for the atrocities we’re backing in the middle east, or a cartoonish perspective which blames it all on the subversive manipulations of a sinister religious minority?
Those of us who oppose the criminality of Israel and its western allies from the left will do all we can to keep the far right’s arguments from gaining traction, but it won’t be our fault when we fail. It will be the fault of the western governments who’ve spent all this time stomping out the civil liberties of their citizenry in the name of fighting “antisemitism” while raining military explosives on the middle east and backing the slaughter of tens of thousands of children under a Star of David flag.
We can expect to see some nasty hate crimes against Jews in the future, which the Zionists will be all too happy about because then they can point to those incidents and say “This is why we need Israel! This is why we need a Jewish state to protect us!”
But of course this won’t just affect Jews. Immigrants, racial minorities, LGBTQ people and other marginalized communities will all be harmed by the rise of white nationalist factions whose popularity benefits from an increase of anti-Jewish sentiment in our society. The mainstream “MAGA” movement, as ugly as that’s been, is still far less dangerous to these groups than the overtly Hitlerite factions will be if they come into significant power in the future.
This does seem to be where things could be headed, especially if the economic situation gets as dire as it looks like it might get, and even more so if there’s a war with Iran. It can all be easily avoided by simply ceasing to stomp out free speech to protect Israel, ceasing western warmongering in places like Iran and Yemen, and ceasing to back Israel’s genocidal atrocities against Palestinians.
But it looks like our rulers are bound and determined to drag us into a very dark direction instead.
* * *
- Westerners the most propagandised? Ask yourself: how else could the class rule denied only by liars and ingenues co-exist with the semblance, even one fading as quickly as it now is, of democracy? Or how a West which has for five centuries looted, enslaved and slaughtered the peoples of the global south could assume an Enlightenment based moral superiority, while Americans whose country is premised on genocidal ethnic cleansing compounded by slavery has a God-given licence to police the planet?
In a post of two years ago, revealing both the ‘political’ and ‘spiritual’ sides to Caitlin Johnstone – You don’t have to choose between being happy and being informed – the Melbourne blogger wrote:
Western civilization is dominated by a power structure that has invested more heavily in “soft power” (mass-scale psychological manipulation) than any other in history. It pervades our media, our internet services, our art — literally all of mainstream culture.
The politicians lie, the news media lie, the movies lie, the internet lies, the advertisements lie, the shows between the advertisements lie. They lie about our world, they lie about our government, they lie about what’s important, how we should think, what we should value, and how we should measure our level of success and worthiness as human beings.
- Since Iran sits on the Hormuz Strait, through which half of China’s oil imports pass …
… the trillion dollar question is: how will Beijing respond to a direct attack by the US on Iran? That question became more pressing this week with China’s refusal to blink in the face of Trump’s tariff wars, of which more in a forthcoming post.
- On the alignment of Zionism (including that of Itamar Ben-Gvr and Bezalel Smotrich) with Western empire, my 2019 review of Israel: a beachhead in the middle east by Stephen Gowans gives historic context while developments since 7/10/23 are analysed in my four posts on US Neocons & Israel’s far Right: Part 3.
The question of Israel is just the same as any other question. The right wing, the Neo-liberal establishment and the rest of ‘normal’ society (e.g. The Guardian and similar (even) further right sources etc.) approve of Israel because it is basically a part of that whole Imperialist/Capitalist/ anti-South jigsaw. That includes mainstream Jewish ‘establishments’ wherever they might be – even if some of them are upset by Israeli actions, they still cling to the supposed ‘lifebelt’ – and will be even clingier if anti-semitism rises – which is what suits the Zionist government as it increases immigration to Israel. (Recently depleted by Lebanese, Yemeni and Palestinian actions).
On the other hand, leftists etc. disapprove (to say the least). There are also pretty courageous young people in Israel who refuse to join the Army, and anti-Zionist websites such as Mondoweiss, etc. – even a number of Holocaust survivors who have compared Israel to Nazi Germany. It’s all down to political position. I’ve been looking at this now for fifty years now, and I’m more and more sickened and appalled by the immunity granted to Zionism by the UK, EU and US – every one of them morally bankrupt. But that’s politicians for you – I remember being appalled by similar political actions as far back as 1960.
“All in all, it’s just another brick in the wall”
Since you finish by quoting Pink Floyd, let’s add to the list of heroes not only Israeli journalists like Gideon Levy but a Roger Waters who, along with Brian Eno, puts the safe “radicalism” of so many other “stars” to shame through his refusal to be cowed by a Lobby which – mine and Brian Berletic’s assessment notwithstanding – can be career terminating.
(And even more so for standing against the propaganda blitz on Assad, though that’s a tad off topic here.)