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Of all sad words of tongue and pen, the saddest are these, Hanania was right again *
Two months ago, Richard Hanania predicted that Nick Fuentes and the groypers would become a major force in mainstream Republican politics. At the time, there was a fair bit of TheMotte discussion (including by me) which could be described as dismissive. Some choice quotes:
Yeah, about that... A few days ago Nick Fuentes did a full interview with Tucker Carlson. This was a mild surprise at most, given that Tucker has been dabbling in less-than-sympathetic viewpoints on Israel and Jews as of late. A lot of people thought that this would be the nail in the coffin cementing Tucker as a fringe figure, and that his days headlining major conservative events would end.
This appears not to have happened:
The Heritage Foundation is the Conservative Establishment think tank. It doesn't get more mainstream than them. What is striking is that the statement doesn't just contrast America with Israel, it contrasts Christians with Israel, a tacit acknowlegement of the legitimacy of Christian discomfort with Israel specifically because of their rejection of Christ. This isn't quite total groyper victory, but one can see it on the horizon.
From a realpolitik perspective, I think this is bad. The groypers are right that Israel doesn't act in America's interests and that many American Jews have dual loyalty. That's how coalitions work. A few billion dollars in aid and geopolitical cover is a small price to pay for having the ethnic group that controls international finance and global media on your side. Rooting-out infidels might be a good strategy if Christ is King, but if he isn't, and it turns out we're all alone on this big round rock, then the groypers are blowing-up the conservative intelligentsia for no good reason.
*Apparently this is a series now.
Israel does not get our support because the gentiles are doing some dispassionate analysis on the benefits of supporting Israel. If that were the case, there would be nothing to criticize. Israel is getting our support because Zionists who consider Israel the most important country in the world relentlessly lobby for Israel, and have been doing so for decades, sometimes smearing opponents as antisemites. Truman complained about their advocacy, Nixon complained about it. Congressmen in the 80s who criticized Israel would lose their seat. “They Dare to Speak Out: People and Institutions Confront Israel's Lobby” was written in 1985! We are not talking about a new thing. Mearsheimer’s analysis on this has gone uncontested. Israel gets our support because of advocacy networks (including media influence) and, at least in one recent instance, a secretive cabal of billionaires that likened itself to the Sanhedrin, the leader of which funded Epstein’s child trafficking blackmail operation that ensnared Bill Clinton, Trump, and British Royalty.
Even if you love Israel, you should want America to have the upper-hand in deals. We can continue to support them if they gradually pay us back. Israel has subsidized synagogues, healthcare, and education. When America funds Israel we are funding some Israeli’s man’s lavish parties and vacations, because he doesn’t need to pay as much in taxes for his nation’s defense. We are funding Rabbis, as they benefit from Israel’s subsidies for religious institutions; this includes Rabbis in America who studied in Israel or are funded through an Israeli organization. Meanwhile, Israel is applying tax pressure on the Orthodox Church of Jerusalem; they are required to pay taxes while not receiving the same subsidies as Jewish institutions. Meanwhile, Israel-connected billionaires are putting down funds to get rid of Thomas Massey. To me this is all offensive on principle, not because of the dollar amount.
This is a point I've brought up privately to Jewish friends of mine: Israel is burning through goodwill that they and their parents and their grandparents have spent decades building in the American public. When I came through public school, I studied the Holocaust more often than any single event outside of the Declaration of Independence and the Walking Purchase. I read at least three full books in the curriculum that I can remember: Night, Numer the Stars, and of course The Diary of Anne Frank. There might have been more that I'm forgetting.
Making sure that every American public school student learned that the Holocaust was the worst most uniquely horrible thing that ever happened in human history, often taught with questionable historicity (shoutout @SecureSignals), was a project of lobbying by Jewish groups. Making antisemitism into the worst, stupidest, lowest class, most unacceptable prejudice was a project of lobbying. Making Nazi gangs into the world's worst villains that don't need to be humanized in Sons of Anarchy or Breaking Bad wasn't an accident, nor was it a project of a few weeks. Making Nazi into a swear word and Hitler into secular-Satan was a project of decades.
This was what gave the Jews a special exception from the liberal world order in Israel for decades, what allowed them freedom of action. And now it seems to me that they've pissed a lot of it away on a few years of mowing the Gazan grass.
Just so I understand your argument, you're saying that Israel/American Jews built goodwill by pushing Holocaust education in school and anti-Nazi/antisemitism propaganda? What have they now done differently to burn the goodwill? Is it this:
Because the American right writ large does not give a shit that Israel has turned Palestine into rubble. After October 7th, plenty of people here were gung-ho for a little genocide/purge. Precious little of the conversation in this thread is focused on Palestine, whereas most of the standout comments focus on Jewish control of Media/Finance/Hollywood and other institutions.
So it begs the question - why is the American right turning against Jews now, and what changed in the last 20-30 years that enabled it? Decentralization of the media and sources of information has disproportionately benefited fringe people like Fuentes at the expense of traditional media. Cynically, and depending which movie screen you're watching, this either makes it harder for Israel to spread their propaganda or lets Fuentes spread hateful antisemitic tropes.
Neither has much to do with American or Israeli Jews 'burning the goodwill of the American people,' nor is there anything they could really do differently to mitigate it.
Yes, I'm saying that generations of Jews made specific efforts to denormalize and taboo antisemitism through lobbying and cultural efforts. I don't think this is a controversial statement, or one that requires a conspiratorial reading. I think that's pretty much been the stated goal of many Jewish or holocaust remembrance organizations for decades. The ADL on their website specifically calls out in their page on their history and mission that in the 1950s they:
While in the 1960s they used:
And in the 1970s they:
Later on in the 2000s they will:
The ADL is just one organization that has worked on this project, but at no point has their goal been conspiratorial or secret: they want to put Holocaust education on curricula, they want to create Holocaust education materials and get them into the hands of teachers and students to produce a world where the vast majority of American students (who are paying any kind of attention) are exposed to these narratives. This built up cultural goodwill over the course of seventy years is being burned over the past three.
Pew finds that 53% of Americans now have an unfavorable view of Israel, up from 42% before the war. This includes a supermajority of Democrats, 69% up from a narrow 53% majority before the war. But worse, Republicans under 50 now have a 50% unfavorable view of Israel, up from 35% before the war.*
This all happened since 2022. Do you think the media environment changed significantly enough in that time, or immigration altered demographics sufficiently, or some other factor intervened, that across the board Americans left and right turned against Israel? You think it has nothing to do with Israel's behavior, and that Israel could not have made any choices to mitigate that decline? That's a bizarre take given the obvious correlation between Israel's actions in Gaza and the decline in American public opinion on Israel.
You can certainly argue that the emergence of social media, particularly those outside the control of traditional media guardians like Xitter and tiktok, was necessary to publicize what happened in Gaza without censorship; but if nothing was happening in Gaza, there would have been nothing to publicize. Maybe this is all propaganda from Israel's jew-hating enemies, but without the war, the war could not be the site and opportunity for an external maneuver by those enemies. The temporal correlation is way too strong to argue that the conduct of the war has not had a disastrous impact on public opinion around Israel. And saying Israel had no choice about how to conduct the war is absurd.
Now, goodwill exists so it can be used. Were Israel burning goodwill to permanently solve the problem, I may not support their solution, but I could respect the decision. Israel's actions thus far have not solved their problems, they have amounted to mowing the grass.
The most dangerous mechanism on for Israel, though, is one I myself see on this very forum.
We've had our resident Jew-Posters since before 2023, and I generally either ignored them or argued against them. Now I find myself upvoting them, agreeing with them, when the conversation turns to Palestine. Orthodox Ivy League liberal lawyers in my social circle are horrified finding themselves agreeing with Marjorie Taylor Greene more than they agree with Chuck Schumer, or seeing tweets from Fuentes or quotes from Darryl Cooper and agreeing with them. When Israel makes the antisemites correct about one thing, they risk making people look at the rest of their thoughts. It's a very bad dynamic for the Jewish People.
Have they tried?
*Gallup shows similar across the board declines during the war, but in less detail.
I am not sure what "one thing" do you mean, but it does not matter - I am rather set back by the argument itself. Are you saying if the State of Israel, over all its, admittedly short, but still multi-decade history, commits a mistake, that validates the views of antisemites that all the Jews are evil, secretly want to (or already do) rule the world and it would be better for everyone if they were exterminated? Because that's what the "rest of their thoughts" are. I mean, yes, that's horrible for the Jewish people, but this does not look good for any other people either. And, may I ask, is this the criteria that applies to everyone, or specifically for Israel alone - that if they ever wrong then everything their enemies ever said about them is true?
It doesn't matter, it can be anything. Lie about the weather, about inflation, about what is a woman, about crime, about race, about massacring civilians in refugee camps. Whenever you intentionally create a situation where you are obviously wrong and your enemies are obviously right, you lose credibility and they gain credibility. Whenever you lie and your detractors tell the truth, you become seen as less trustworthy and they become seen as more trustworthy.
When you hand your opponents a golden opportunity to be publicly right about something, you are making a mistake. The Democrats saw this with the trannies, allowing the Republicans to be right about something so easy and so obvious increased Republican credibility and reduced Democratic credibility. Republicans saw this during the end of the Bush administration when they were trying to say that Iraq and Afghanistan weren't disasters, they looked into it and they aren't disasters. Lying to the public is dangerous. Don't piss on my back and tell me it's raining.
This is the core idea of Yarvin's Antiversity, a truth machine that will contain only facts, and break the power of the Cathedral by being more credible than the Cathedral.
When Israel lies about civilian casualties in Gaza, and antisemites tell the truth, it increases the credibility of Israel's most insane and deadly detractors. This is more dangerous for Israel than it is for an American political party, because Israel's existence is far more tenuous than the existence of one of the two American political parties. Jewish organizations in America spent decades working to make sure that any mention of Da Joos turned you into a pariah and a laughingstock, Israel has spent the last few years causing nice liberals to give MTG and Candace Owens a hearing on some issues. That's, like, really bad and stuff, for Israel.
But that's not what is happening. Nobody has a reliable count of civilian casualties, and Hamas - which is the only people who have anybody on the ground - are notorious grotesque liars. It could be Israel's figures aren't accurate either, but that doesn't mean Hamas' Arabian Nights type tales are true. As for the rest of antisemites, they don't have any other independent sources, so they either use Hamas numbers or pull them right out of their asses.
If by "that's" you mean antisemites lying about Israel (and as we already established, they can not but lie) then it may be bad, but it's inevitable - they will always lie about Israel, that's their nature as antisemites. It's just a fact of life, you can't avoid it.
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