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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.
Smith realizes that an Palestinian majority in Israel would turn the country into a failed state and result in a genocide, but does not believe a third world majority in America will turn American into a failed state and/or result in a genocide.
He is wrong about the latter (on the first count if not the second, though it doesn’t really matter), but is this hypocrisy? If anything, it is the bigotry of unreasonably high expectations for the migrants, and for their countries’ assimilation of them, for the supremacy of their culture and political system.
This is underappreciated in analysis of the liberal defense of mass immigration, so often painted as simply self hatred, an unlikely thing because many progressives are the standard type of arrogant narcissist politician and they usually don’t hate themselves, not even deep down.
Most people like Smith do not actually believe that the immigrants will make the country worse, they think everything will be fine. They are convinced of their ideology. They are smart enough to know that ethnic and tribal conflicts exist in the world, but they don’t think it could happen where they live. It is not that they believe they deserve worse, but that they think they are better.
This is just begging the question- why does Smith believe that though? His perspective was browbeaten into our collective consciousness with incessant moralism from motivated actors directing cultural institutions. If he believed otherwise with respect to mass immigration to White countries, he would be racist, which remains one of the most damaging accusations you can make against someone's political beliefs. This is why people like Krystal exist, she learned her lessons, and now there's a strong contingent of the left-wing that sees the strong contradiction between those values that constitute their moral consciousness and the Zionist project.
Liberal Values triumphed over South Africa and forced it into suicide, the notable difference being South Africa was a White country. So this isn't derived from some pragmatic analysis, modern "liberalism" means that Whites have to accept demographic replacement (otherwise you're racist) and oh yeah you have to support Jewish ethnonationalism (otherwise you're antisemitic).
I’m not saying it’s derived from pragmatic analysis, politics is always emotional. I’m saying that “we must have mass immigration to European countries even if it makes them much, much worse” is a poor way to frame the liberal position because broadly speaking mainstream liberals like Smith do not believe it is going to make these countries much worse. Elite American liberals are not unaware of tribal conflicts. They created Kosovo, they beat themselves up about not intervening more in Rwanda, they deal with countless tribal and religious conflicts in the State Department that they attempt to varying degrees of success to influence and where they regularly pick winners. They just believe in American exceptionalism. That it couldn’t happen here, in part because they’re in charge.
The people who believe we must accept the whole third world no matter what out of power and privilege even if it makes everyone’s life much more difficult tend to be on the radical left, de-growth types, ban new construction types, the oppressed are always right types, black and brown bodies types, Palestine flag / watermelon emoji types, people who hate Matt Yglesias (who again supports mass immigration out of a misguided belief in assimilation) as much as the right types. They are also almost always anti-zionist leftists of the kind you discuss, too.
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