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Culture War Roundup for the week of March 18, 2024

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Candace Owens out at the Daily Wire

This is less than 24-hours after the ADL publicly attacked Candace, and Mediaite reports:

Owens’s departure comes after months of tensions between her and Daily Wire co-founder Ben Shapiro over her promotion of various anti-Semitic conspiracy theories.

Her promotion of so-called antisemitic conspiracy theories has definitely been noticed on DR Twitter, and she's been engaged in public spats with a certain Rabbi Schmuley. So this isn't really a surprise, but it's a significant development that DR critiques of Zionism are making their way into Right-wing mainstream, as other rhetoric has in the past 10 years.

Candace is breaking from the Zionist right at the same time Tucker Carlson has turned heel on US support for Israel, and even Alex Jones who is notorious for his "the Chicoms are behind everything I love Judeo-Christian values" schtick - his willingness to humor every conspiracy theory to his audience except ZOG - yesterday accused Israel of Genocide.

I have a lot of criticisms of Nick Fuentes and his movement, but there has to be credit where it's due. I remember the Bush years, support for Israel was simply axiomatic and it was unthinkable for anybody to believe any differently. That has changed, and Zionism now faces a pincer movement of critique from both the Left and the Right, with the Right-wing critique of Zionism growing in influence among younger audiences.

The right's support of Israel never made sense. Israel has created a perpetual refugee crisis on Europe's border, it costs a fortune in foreign aid, and it is a PR nightmare. Meanwhile, ADL, AIPAC and every mainstream jewish groups work against the interests of social conservatism in western countries. Simping for the Israel lobby while the ADL wants to ban conservatives off Twitter is a one way relationship. Israel is oppressing Christians and has sponsored terrorist groups in Syria. Israel works to destabilize the region when the rest of us benefit from it being stable.

There is absolutely no reason to burn political capital defending some of the bloodiest and most brutal wars in recent history in the middle east. Israel can't really provide any tangible benefit to social conservatives in the west. Especially not when Ben Gvir who is Minister of National Security of Israel wants to relocate large numbers of Palestinians in the west.

Had Israel supported similar politics in the west as they promote in their own country, it could have worked. But "nationalism for me, open borders for thee", will upset the left in the west that doesn't like nationalism as well as the right in the west that doesn't like the "open borders for thee"-part.

Had Israel supported similar politics in the west as they promote in their own country, it could have worked.

You're doing what SS and his crew do, and assuming that Jews are all part of an orchestrated ZOG movement. Jews in the West are generally sympathetic to Israel, obviously, but Israeli political concerns are very different from Western ones - Israelis generally are not trying to get Western countries to open their borders. They don't care. They actually do have specifically Israeli concerns, they aren't seeing everything through the same lens of "Jewishness" that people who hate Jews do.

As for why conservatives have traditionally supported Israel, it's pretty simple: even if most conservative Christians don't particularly like Jews, they dislike Muslims even more, and geopolitically, a local boot to put on Arabs in the region is very useful.

And that's without addressing the Christians who genuinely do believe that support for Israel is Biblically mandated.

Evangelical Christians used to love Israel. A lot. Like the way cringe weebs loved Japan, but even scarier. They pushed for carte blanche support of Israeli foreign policy, massive military aid funding, direct US support and intervention to ensure the survival of the Israeli state. They donated money and material support to settlers and and private security forces for settlements. And they were vocal supporters of the Netanyahu government. They basically thought that America’s entire spiritual purpose was to keep Israel and the Jewish people alive. Israel’s response to that massive war chest of foreign political support was to crack down on Christianity in Israel (which is negligible), and to intensify rhetorical denunciations of Christianity. A high ranking member of Likud stated that spitting on Christians in the street and other forms of low level violence and harassment was “part of traditional Israeli culture” (Edit: this wasn’t anyone in Likud, this was a settler activist, and his statements were harshly criticized by most of the the higher ranking people in Likud’s government, including I believe Benjamin Netanyahu). At home, American Jews (who thought Israel was cringe and unnecessary anyway) led a 20 year crusade against Christianity, succeeding in driving it out of politics and a lot of public spaces. Then starting in 2012 American Jews acted as the tip of the spear for a racialist movement targeting Anglo Americans with Southern and Midwestern evangelical whites being on the top of the shit-list. Unsurprisingly, Evangelical support for Israel and American Jews has cooled significantly in recent years.

A high ranking member of Likud stated that spitting on Christians in the street and other forms of low level violence and harassment was “part of traditional Israeli culture”.

Who?

This part I think I got wrong, it was Elisha Yered, a settler activist who is otherwise a bit of a nut, and was denounced by most of the government. It made the rounds on Twitter several months ago. I will work on editing my above post to reflect that when I can figure out how the formatting works.