Netanyahu thought that although this was a horrible situation, that the Gaza problem and the Hamas problem were were contained and that Hamas would be happy running its little fiefdom in Gaza and Netanyahu could concentrate on stealing the rest of the Palestinian West Bank. And he brought into his government when he came back to power late last year, the most extreme. I mean, this is beyond fascism, the most extreme parties in Israel, the religious Zionists and the Jewish power. I mean, these people are terrorists and they some of them actually have been on the State Department terrorism watch list, not allowed in the United States in the past. And he brought them into the cabinet. He made one of these guys, the minister of national security. It put the other in the finance ministry and then gave him responsibilities as a civilian for overseeing the Palestinian West Bank. And both of these ministers who are extremists were also squatters on Palestinian land in the West Bank and wanted to steal the rest of it to bring in more settlers.
„beyond fascism“. In 2015-2016 I became quite aware that while I was reading people like Sheldon Wolin, Chalmers Johnson, Chris Hedges, Noam Chomsky and nodding my head in agreement I didn’t have as much theoretical knowledge as I’d like of some of the concepts I was reading about. When Wolin writes of „inverted totalitarianism“ what, really, do we mean by „totalitarianism“? What does Robert Paxton mean by „fascism“? Happily there is no shortage of material to read on this.
Less happily I found it difficult – no here really „impossible“ is much more fitting – to even begin to discuss anything like this with coworkers, family, acquaintances. Even to attempt discussion on „fascism“, like „capitalism“ immediately makes it clear that one is to be avoided. Also clear was that the part of Sinclair Lewis’s It Can’t Happen Here which was obviously fantasy was the idea of any significant resistance posed to American political movements which cheerfully wrap themselves in a US flag while stamping the bloodied corpse of democracy into the mud. A vapid obese American public is alternately captivated/bored. Thank God Trump is not in the White House! What else is on Netflix?
Now Americans watch „beyond fascism“ commit genocide day after day in Gaza. At a Palestine demonstration yesterday I asked two young Italian women what properly to call Meloni. They were surprised at the question: she’s a fascist, of course. They quickly proceeded to explain the background for this, how appropriate the term is given her associations, backers, platform, actions.
Public political discourse in Germany, as in the US, is extremely narrow, and shows no signs of broadening. The question of whether dystopia will manifest as more 1984 or more Brave New World has become moot. We are the beneficiaries of a world where we can have both. „Can have“? We wouldn’t have it any other way, this seems daily apparent.
