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Notes -
A short introduction to Liberal Zionist rhetoric, and why they usually just keep quiet.
A day ago a very interesting interview between Krystal Ball and Rep. Adam Smith took place. The topic of contention was Israel.
tl;dr: Openly defending Israel as a jewish ethnostate is OK as a democrat.
The interview starts off cordial enough. Adam establishes himself as the typical neo-liberal everyman who can sympathize with the plight of the downtrodden AND the military industrial complex (What a guy!) whilst Krystal fronts the now typical faux radical left 'not everyone in the DSA is insane, actually. At least I'm not' media personality that goes hard on the issues that pull on the heart strings.
Where things go south unexpectedly is around the 11:30 mark. Krystal compliments Adam on his recent strong voting pattern against aid to Israel, specifically the Thomas Massie amendment, and asks him to explain his thought process and change of heart. Adam waffles on a bit about his opposition to the Netanyahu government, a typical Liberal Zionist talking point, but then suddenly veers off the rails:
This is not out of context, this is the argument. Yes, Liberal Zionists are democrats. Yes, they are against the Netanyahu government. Yes, they believe in the concept of Israel as an explicit ethnostate. He believes it is not possible for Palestinians to represent jews in Israel. Two ethnic groups can not coexist. They are definitionally in a zero sum game of survival. That's the establishment democrat Liberal Zionist view for jews in Israel.
Understandably, Krystal catches on to this
Neo NaziZionist talking point that's somehow found its way into her otherwise progressive liberal leftist studio:Adam replies, a little more flustered than before:
Mein Kamerad... Krystal replies:
To which Adam retorts:
Which is the extent of his argumentation that isn't a soft recital of the many permutations of ethno nationalism argued for on the old /r/AltRight, RIP.
Krystal, to her credit as a host, tries to segue this into something else and asks why the US taxpayer should care about a jewish ethno supremacist project in the middle East, which Mike Huckabee would have been happy to answer. But Adam can't really seek refugee in the Scofield Bible so he doubles down on
Neo NazismZionism for jews:Well OK.
To all the Adam Smiths of the world. Why is having an ethnostate good for the jews but not anyone else? Why don't jews benefit from diversity in their western style open democratic society like everyone else? Why doesn't the magic freedom dirt in Israel transform your third worlders into engineers and scientists like it allegedly does everywhere else in the west, who would be just as jewish as anyone else in a few years. How is it possible to represent anything the Democrats have represented the world over and then believe this for Israel in the back of your brain?
Adam arrived to this interview ready to earnestly make the point that ethnonationalism is good for jews. He wanted to say this and he did. And I get it. Because he's not wrong. It's just that he believes it's wrong for everyone else. Most Liberal Zionists must understand that this contradiction is impossible to defend, which is probably why they don't talk about it at all. Hell, I'm starting to believe they can't even conceive of it. The Dual Morality is so strong it probably doesn't even register as a contradiction. But to hear it from the horses mouth is flabbergasting.
This is not only supposed contradiction in Liberal Zionist thinking, but for the rest of progressives as well. The thing is that much of their sociology is driven by ideas similar to that of W.E.B. Du Bois, author of The Souls of Black Folk. He invented that concept that progressives use even today when they talk about Black folk. He is an interesting character as he was a black man who studied in Germany in 1890s. The word "folk" in his book is literal translation of German concept of Volk of second half of 19th century German romantic nationalism. Volk is an organic group tied by language, blood and shared history, it together creates Hegelian Volkgeist - this Hegelian Geist is what Du Bois means by Souls. By the way the modern Zionism is literally a child of the same movement, it is literal national awakening similarly to what happened in Europe around the same time.
Progressives can be viewed as continuation of romantic national awakening movement, they just want to carve out different nations. You have Black Nation and Native Nation and Queer Nation, that is what they mean when they use the term community. They also use the rest of romantic vocabulary; these nations have their own culture: Queer Culture and Black Culture, they have their own art and history and mythology. If it does not exist, then it is fabricated in the same way romantic nationalists created creation myths for their own nations. Some if these identities are literally related to blood such as Black or Native in the same way romantic revolutionaries viewed that. Of course there are important differences: progressives are generally integralists as opposed to romantic revolutionaries who were all about separation and creating state to serve their definition of nation.
But the thing is still there, they just combine this idea of various nations living under benevolent roof of multicultural imperial state - of course led by learned, enlightened progressive people like Krystal Ball - which protects and arbitrates between these various nations living under its roof. She is not there to deny existence of Jewish nation, she is there as a bureaucrat in court of Austrian Empire arbitrating disputes between Hungarians and Slovaks and other acknowledged Volk to uphold multicultural intersectionality, while Adam Smith is something like Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson who is there to fiercely advocate for Slovaks. But it is not exactly against the whole idea, there are many literal Black Nationalists inside progressive coalition with their own fierce advocates. They just have to know when to shut up and give authority to intersectionalist beurocrats if they clash with other nation - e.g. religious Black Folk with Queer Folk. Liberal Zionists are in the same situation, they are advocates of oppressed group and that is fine. However they should just read the room and see that powers that be decided, that now is the time for Palestinian Volk and that they should bow down and make concessions.
It seems contradictionary: you have imperialist ethnonationalist progressives? Come on. But it makes sense if you take their ideology seriously. Moreover, living with contradiction is part and parcel of this ideology, it is at its core a Hegelian project which loves contradictions, synthetizing contradictions via philosophical "revolution" in a spiral is the core of what "progress" means, how we achieve the ultimate synthesis of all contradiction in progressive eschaton of ultimate Social Justice and true voluntary equity.
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