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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.
I mean, he's correct as to the issue there, right?
A one-state solution is impossible because nobody wants it. The Israelis don't want it, because they correctly believe that it would mean the end of Israel as a Jewish state, and it is an explicitly-understood goal of Israeli policy that Jews must always be a dominant majority in Israel. That was the whole reason Israel was created in the first place - for there to be a Jewish state. This isn't a secret anyone is exposing - they say it explicitly. Meanwhile, the Palestinians don't want it, because... I'm not sure if you've noticed, but the Palestinians hate the Jews. They do not want to co-exist with them. One of the reasons why Israeli Jews don't want a one-state solution is because they - still correctly - believe that the most likely result of that would be a lot of dead Jews.
The people saying, "Why can't you just all be one state together with equal rights regardless of faith or ethnicity?" are either being disingenuous or stupid. It is obvious to anybody looking at the situation honestly why that cannot work.
Moreover, don't we allow other states to do this? Israel is not unique in holding itself to be the nation of a particular ethnicity, favouring people of that ethnicity, and making policy with a deliberate eye to maintaining that ethnicity's dominant status in its homeland. Japan is probably the most famous other one, and we generally accept that the Japanese have a right to decide how they want to run Japan. Most Middle Eastern countries are like Israel in this respect - just ask the Turks about nationality.
Israel is different to the United States in being an ethno-state, but ethno-states are common. The US is the weird one, not Israel.
'My fellow whites' is morphing into 'My fellow neo-nazis? Well, as a fellow neo-nazi, Of course he is right. I would welcome this brother with open arms into the pan-nationalist fold. As anything else? No, he's actually wrong in the most racist way possible. It's a declaration of war against modern liberal societies and their moral identity.
The ideological priors that underpin that identity are very robust and ubiquitous in western societies, from being taught in elementary schools to being depicted in pop media. There is only one race, the human race. We are all inherently good, of equal worth, moral character and our faults are only a product of environmental circumstance. Openness and trust good, prejudice bad. We can all learn and better ourselves if given the chance and resources. Immigration is advertised as a universal good. Economically, culturally, morally and to the exclusion of any preservative conception of an ancestral or genetic ethnic identity. It's actually a moral duty to improve the conditions of others to help elevate them to the privileged point you coincidentally occupy today and any conception of your ancestral lineage or future progeny or majoritarian ingroup bias that exists to the exclusion of others is the greatest moral evil in existence.
'Anyone who doesn't functionally grasp and agree with the principles of Neo-Nazism is disingenuous or stupid'? Apologies if I'm misinterpreting this and you are saying modern liberalism is 'working' for the west. But regardless of that I don't remember anyone proclaiming modern liberalism needs to work to the benefit of ethnocentric jews in particular. We all have to share this earth. Palestinians and jews included.
Sure, it sucks jews are a global minority and will definitely go extinct under this paradigm, but that's the case for most peoples. We will all end up beige.
We generally accept that democracy is good. Stating that non-Japanese people would be incapable of participating in it in Japan without destroying it for the Japanese is the most illiberal and racist thing I've heard in years.
Ethno-states can only be alleged to be common as a result of history and circumstance. But nigh every first world nation, including Japan, is transforming away from that. That is the direction of modern liberalism. Israel is unique in that it's demanding a different direction for itself for profoundly illiberal neo-nazi reasons.
Where are you getting neo-Nazis? Do you think that any group that wants to remain ethnically/culturally/religiously distinctive, in any way, is neo-Nazi?
I think a one-state solution in Israel is impossible for pragmatic, historically contingent reasons. This group of people and that group of people are unwilling to co-exist in the one state. You can judge one group or the other or both immoral, but I'm not making a moral judgement. I'm saying that, like it or not, you cannot jam Israelis and Palestinians together into the one state. Neither group will accept that.
I do not blame Jews (or members of any group) for not wanting to go extinct. No group has an obligation to embrace its own obliteration.
You then bring up 'democracy' for some reason even though I didn't touch on that in the slightest. I think that ethno-states are common, and I did not say that ethno-states are morally impermissible. I think that national communities have a right to self-determine and that includes the right to be an ethno-state. The Japanese people are morally permitted to constitute themselves as an ethno-state, for instance. This is a different and unrelated question to that of democracy. You can have a democratic ethno-state, a non-democratic ethno-state, a democratic non-ethno-state, and a non-democratic non-ethno-state. They are unrelated axes.
I don't think Israel is unique in being or wanting to be an ethno-state, and there are plenty of comparable nations. I just mentioned Azerbaijan, for instance. You can say that ethno-states shouldn't exist if you like - that's your own judgement. But I'm not forbidding that. Some countries are ethno-states and some countries are not ethno-states and I'm fine with this.
The case you are making for Israel is the case every neo-nazi has made for their own country. All of your assertions derive from illiberal worldview that is directly tied to the modern conception of neo-nazism. The idea of ethnostates as a coherent concept in the first place is going over the line, let alone that they could ever be good.
You're not engaging with the contention. We can agree between the two of us to any illiberal view on the world for the preservation of our peoples and whatever else, but what's the relevance of that to the discourse relating to the reigning powers that be who are liberal and don't agree with us at all? Who'd denigrate the very idea that there are coherent and exclusive groups in the first place outside of the conception that the one that is better off should help the one whose worse off.
I already explained why this line of thinking is invalid. Ethnostates can only be alleged to be common as a result of history and circumstance. But nigh every first world nation, including Japan, is transforming away from that. That is the direction of modern liberalism. Israel is unique in that it's demanding a different direction for itself for profoundly illiberal neo-nazi reasons.
To highlight this further with your example of Azerbaijan, if Azerbaijan was becoming an economic powerhouse, with opportunity that would make the life of foreign immigrants better, would they or would they not be obligated to open their borders to immigration under liberal priors? I'll repost them here:
Which one of these do you disagree with? What do liberals call people who disagree with their core values? Who do you think you are to them?
The Palestinians and Israelis can make peace and if the neo-nazi conception of Israel has to perish for that peace to happen liberals have no reason to care. It's a process that's already ongoing in the west. Why shouldn't it happen to Israel?
I don't think that's the case. Neo-Nazism is a much more specific, narrow family of ideologies than that. The analogy to neo-Nazism is not helpful or relevant here because neo-Nazism is obviously not the same thing as ethno-nationalism simpliciter.
You're talking with me, though. I don't have an army of ghosts behind my shoulder, and I'm not going to take the heat for this imaginary audience you appear to be bothered by. It's not an argument against me if some other group of people somewhere else think ethno-nationalism is always wrong. I don't think ethno-nationalism is always wrong, clearly the Israelis don't think ethno-nationalism is always wrong, Americans who support Israel don't seem to think that ethno-nationalism is always wrong, and as far as I can tell a great many people all around the world don't think that ethno-nationalism is always wrong.
Well, I don't accept that Israel is unique in that regard - there are plenty of other nations that are ethno-nationalist, some in a quite assertive way. You just don't seem to think they count. At any rate, I think that nations may constitute themselves in an ethno-nationalist way if they want. That's true for Israel, Azerbaijan, or indeed Japan. Who cares about 'the direction of modern liberalism'? Okay, it's true, there are people and organisations in the world who think that ethno-nationalism is always wrong. But those people are not everyone or everywhere, they're not me, and they don't appear to be controlling the situation in the Middle East.
What more do you want me to say? If 'modern liberalism' forbids ethno-states, then modern liberalism is wrong. That was easy.
What difference does it make whether they're rich or not? That's not germane to the point under discussion.
I'm sorry, is this meant to be a gotcha? I have said already that I think ethno-nationalism can be acceptable and that ethnic or national groups can set the terms of entry. That implies, for instance, that I think the statement "immigration is a universal good" is false. Certainly it means that I disagree with the statement "immigration should always be permitted". I think it is acceptable to have a preservative conception of an ancestral ethnic identity - come on, I just said that I think you can't blame Jews for wanting to maintain 'Jews' as a distinct ethnic, cultural, and religious group, and what's good for the goose is good for the gander.
Should I keep going through it? I think you've come up with this aggressive maximalist, even strawman, conception of liberalism, and you're... uh... who are you disagreeing with again? You don't appear to be disagreeing with me.
You're clearly angry at someone, but that someone is not me and does not appear to be in this conversation.
If I'm clearly angry it's because you're not interacting with the topic on the level ideological priors that drive beliefs or tactfully sidestepping the factual points that don't line up for you. I don't buy the sudden 'ethnostates are OK, actually' now that the topic is Israel. Or the idea that, coincidentally, ethnostates have just happened to be bad idea up until this specific point. Or the idea that, just now, we're going to walk away from all the moral priors of the liberal world, including the belief that populations can change in their belief and behavior.
If that doesn't apply to you, and you're here as a non-biased rational actor who just judges things on thing at a time, with no moral code or overarching ideological view, fine. But I genuinely don't believe you at all. I think that if I bothered to walk through your comments I'd find a moral quandary where your disposition is the polar opposite to what it is in this case.
I mean, they are okay. It's just demonstrably true that there are a huge number of them in the world and even liberal Westerners treat most of them as legitimate.
I take the subtext of your complaint to be that you think the United States should be an ethno-state, and specifically a white ethno-state. It's true that most Americans don't want that. It's true that liberals generally consider the idea of turning the USA into an ethno-state to be grossly immoral. If you ask me specifically, I think the idea of making the USA an ethno-state is ridiculous - it requires going against the last few centuries of American tradition and it's extraordinarily impracticable.
Perhaps less centrally, maybe it's also that you think European countries should be ethno-states, and my view there is that some are, many are not, and I agree that institutions like the EU think that ethno-states are bad and that EU countries should not be that way. I also think there's a significant groundswell against that point of view, and over the next few decades I expect that groundswell to get stronger.
To get even more provocative, I think that probably you are a neo-Nazi, or at least neo-Nazi adjacent, hence your bizarre attempt to drag neo-Nazism into this discussion. The impression I get is that your worldview is that countries, especially white countries, ought to be ethno-states, that an international progressive liberal consensus forbids this, is gradually destroying the identity and heritage of white countries, and that this consensus treats Israel as an exception to the rule, because this consensus is heavily Jewish and Jews are hypocrites who promote their own racial welfare while undermining that of whites. I trust you don't need me to explain why I think that's wrong.
But ultimately going back to the top-level comment, my feeling is - you, me, and Adam Smith all agree that ethno-states are okay. It's rather bizarre of you to be angry that Adam Smith holds a perspective that you and I both share. I think your real complaint is this:
In other words, this is just garden variety anti-semitic rambling about the supposed Jewish conspiracy.
The United States is not an ethno-state, and there is no plausible pathway to making it an ethno-state. This is not because of the Jews. They did not do this to you. America is not an ethno-state because Americans don't want it to be. It's not some sort of Jew-influenced false consciousness, and if you remove the Jewish influence the people will rise up, like what Marxists think will happen if you remove the capitalist class. No, it's genuinely that most of your countrymen disagree with you. Deal with it.
It's not a question about what the public wants. The moral order is dictated to the people and then the people vote for the speed by which the moral order will be implemented. Your object level analysis is just inaccurate and perfectly illustrates this.
If we broach the factual terms, such as the reality that the first immigration law signed in the US limited immigration to white men of good character, that's never been relevant to a modern liberal. Or the Hart-Celler act. Under your conception, the US was a white ethnostate until that point in the 1960's. Or how the majority of Americans have supported segregation or worse for longer than they have not. Modern liberalism just paves over that with propaganda about a nation of immigrants and an entire genre of diversity propaganda. And you're just blatantly dipping into that modern liberal framework when it's convenient.
But that's exactly the thing, that framework is universalist and totalitarian. It applies to all. So when a person like you or Adam try to carve out an exception that contradicts that entire framework on the basis that the survival of a specific ethnic group is actually super important, and they can't coexist with any other ethnic groups because those ethnic groups are unchanging in their hatred of them, then yes, I do wonder if this is not just the Dual Morality that's alleged to afflict many diaspora jews rearing its head yet again. What even else do you call this sort of thing?
Because it turns out that when the shoe is on the other foot and they are dealing with other members of their group in their homeland, they prefer the same thing I prefer for my group in mine. Even though that's what I've been told all my life is really bad and evil. They want segregation, all of a sudden, rather than to rely on the fundamental moral good of all people. It doesn't make any sense.
The case for open societies was never made on a case by case basis. It's an absolute and complete moralizing ideology. Saying that you believe in it for one case and not another doesn't work.
There's no explanation given by you or anyone else for this. You're just not supposed to notice.
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