The Left-cult of actionism

Jürgen Habermas is certainly more worthy of citation that Jonah Goldberg. Russell Berman writes an interesting article from a conservative position in the latest Democratiya, "From ‘Left-Fascism’ to Campus Anti-Semitism: Radicalism as Reaction," in which he cites Habermas and others. Berman, of the right-wing Hoover Institute, might be aiming to mainstream Goldberg/Horowitz, but I think he accomplishes something anyway. I distrust his attacks on "a growing illiberalism in the academic world" as poorly targeted. But many of his comments indeed seem to be critiques from the left of an ornate and insubstantial Left that is more liberal -in the sense which Leftists use as a rejoinder- than liberals.

Neither fascism nor antisemitism are exclusively right-wing affairs. No prejudice has ever failed to find a home on the Left while it pervades society, despite the Left's insistence that it is above and apart from the society of which it is the Left, but beyond that there have always been left roots of antisemitism. Almost as soon as Marx wrote "On the Jewish Question," antisemitism took form as Bebel's "socialism of fools."

And, despite attempts to describe fascism as Bush's style of corporate cronyism (a critique that misses the point of the fascist's favored analogy to the corporation, which focused on hierarchy and leaders and deplored the ability of corporate heads to bully a weak leader), fascism developed as a third-way critique of both Capitalism and Communism. Under the same circumstances as Social Democracy.

What Russell Berman (no relation to Sheri, I'm sure) says of Habermas is that:

...he expressed concern about the movement's tendency [in the 60s] to combine an indifference toward consequences with an oblivious actionism, as if the decision to act at all were always more important than any consideration of consequences.

This might fail as a complete description of fascism, but it is, I think, a key aspect of fascism's appeal. To do something. The urge to do something will make people do anything.

This is a key argument of the Boycott Israel movement, and while it may not be fascistic as such (the parallel to the UCU's disclaimer that criticism of Israel is not antisemitic "as such" is entirely intended) I find it troubling for exactly the same reasons I would under other circumstances. Something, we are repeatedly told, must be done - and that something is apparently not the One Voice movement, the Seeds of Peace program, or any other cooperative project for peace. Nothing that would require engaging with people who disagree, diluting the boycotters purity.

Those who disagree, even just a little, may be cast out of the Left. (Can we understand "the Left" here as some post-national replacement for the nation?) Anyone who claims that the situation is complicated and requires a measured response is denounced in terms I doubt we could distinguish from fascistic anti-intellectualism.

So everything productive, and there are productive things to be done, is illegitimated as by an overdetermined anti-theory. What "must be done," instead, is to make Israel a "pariah state." And, following immediately, pariahs of all the Jews who support the existence of Israel, whether or not they support the supposed crimes (I say supposed, because the crime that motivates this anti-theory seems always to be an alibi to cirticize Israel's mere existence) that the boycotters claim to be their motivation.

In other words, Baker levels the charge that Jews cannot be, or have difficulties being, reliable and trustworthy anti-Zionists. Noam Chomsky has faced similar accusations: his career argument against Israel as an agent of Washington now faces denunciations from more radical anti-Zionists as a white-washing camouflage for the reverse hypothesis, the hypothetical Israeli domination of Washington, which is nothing more than the colorful antisemitic fantasy of conspiratorial Jewish world control. [13]

Indeed, there is something fascistic about denouncing the Jewish "internal Other" so, creating a standard of assimilation that is ultimately impossible. The Différance remains. More importantly, when we recognize that many boycotters are not as antisemitic as Baker, defining Différance remains in the control of gentiles.

Obama, the progressive patriot

Jeff Weintraub and Andrei Markovits have written a fairly remarkable article about Barack Obama's campaing at the Huffington Post. Also available at Weintraub's place, with a bit of additional stuff.

Hagee II

I'm willing to call Hagee's dispensationalist views antisemitic. Despite being among the most philo-semitic expressions of dispensationalism, it's problematic to view Jews as role players in your worldview. A philosemitism that reduces, that leads a gentile to tell me what how I should think and feel as a Jew. But, with that said, the criticism of Hagee hasn't always seemed sincere. Often, it's been kinda funny. How many of those gentiles who are vocal in criticizing Hagee's antisemitism can lay claim to standing up to neo-Nazis the way he has.

Hell, I've found plenty of these "liberals" endorsing Holocaust deniers and apologizing for blatant bigots. Not to offer a pass to Hagee, but to call on others to be more consistent in challenging antisemitism when it comes from the left, here's what Hagee has said. The quote is taken from Shmuel Rosner (unfortunately, no more direct link - scroll down):

What has been disappointing has been to see my life's work - the great passion of my life ? mischaracterized and attacked. I have dedicated my life to combating anti-Semitism and supporting the State of Israel. In taking a stand for Israel I have received death threats from anti-Semites and neo-Nazis, and I've had the windows of my car blown out beneath the windows of the rooms in which my children slept. To hear people who know nothing about me or my life's work claim that I somehow excuse the Holocaust is simply heartbreaking.

Let me be clear -- to assert that I in any way condone the Holocaust or that monster Adolf Hitler is the worst of lies. I have always condemned the horrors of the Holocaust in the strongest of terms. But even more importantly, my abhorrence of the Holocaust and anti-Semitism has never stopped with mere words.

I have devoted most of my adult life to ensuring that there will never be a second Holocaust. I have worked tirelessly to eliminate the sin of anti-Semitism from the Christian world and to ensure the survival of the State of Israel.

The fact is that all people of faith have had to wrestle with the question of why a sovereign God would allow evil in the world. After Auschwitz, this question became more urgent than ever.

Many people simply could not explain how a loving God would permit such horrors. After the Holocaust, they abandoned their faith in a sovereign God who intervenes here on earth. While I disagree with this conclusion, I would never denigrate those who arrived at such a conclusion.

But I and many millions of Christians and Jews came to a different conclusion. We maintained our faith in a sovereign God who allows both the good and the evil that is in the world. We therefore search the scriptures for an explanation for that evil. We believe that the words of the Hebrew prophets such as Jeremiah may help us understand the mind of God. But our search for an explanation for evil must never be confused with an effort to excuse it.

Hagee

I often get a weird feeling when people talk about John Hagee. The exception is Rebecca Lesses over at Mystical Politics. Or rapper, Y-Love. But when someone like Sunny Hundal does it, it can bug me.

I don't mean to pick on Hundal, but I'm partly more aware of what he says because I listen more to and appreciate his work more than a lot of other people. His article is far less troubling than it could have been, and is based particularly on a talk2action post that I appreciate wholeheartedly. But I do think what I say is relevant to his article. He doesn't have the same record talk2action has.

Hagee is illiberal in a million ways, all deserving of criticism. He's Islamophobic and homophobic. He's perversely anti-Catholic. He expresses a Christian worldview that's fundamentally intolerant. He blamed Hurricane Katrina on the immorality of the people of New Orleans. It's no surprise now that he blames the Holocaust, in part, on the Jews. So do the fundamentalist Jewish (and anti-Zionist) group Natura Kartei (known for participating in Iran's Holocaust Denial festival). It's a consequence of a fundamentalism that deals simplistically with the matter of a benevolent G-d allowing bad things to happen to good people. Right-wing fundamentalists like Hagee and NK, simply refuse to accept that these were good people in an essential way.

Hagee is more powerful and important in this world than NK, so it makes sense to pick on him. And when Barack Obama's pastor, Jeremiah Wright, was attacked, it makes sense to point to Hagee, whose endorsement John McCain had sought out. Hagee should be attacked. And McCain should suffer politically for his association.

But why do gentiles pick, of all Hagee's sins, his antisemitism to highlight? Sometimes it goes further than merely highlighting his antisemitism, so that Hagee is used as a weapon against Jews. I think there's a hidden assumption about the role of Jews in politics -that antisemitic theme of Jewish power- that needs to be unpacked. In any case, it places Jews at the center of politics, promoting such a view of Jewish power.

Though I think relatively few Jews actually like Hagee, some do because of his hawkish views on Israel. His beliefs about Israel stem some both from honest repentance for Christian antisemitism and from a view of Jews as pawns in a Christian apocalyptic story. Usually, only the apocalyptic side is mentioned. In a hostile world, Jews often feel the need to seek protection from a less immediate threat, and some find Hagee to be less immediately threatening than some of the folks who hate Hagee. Hagee offers at least the promise of protection tinged with a patronizing, antisemitic fantasy that's difficult to take seriously. Many of those who attack him have a fantasy of dismantling Israel that's difficult not to take seriously.

It doesn't suggest to me that I've an ally in the fight against antisemitism when gentiles attack Hagee's antisemitism. It makes me feel used, for someone else's political agenda. Like antisemitism is worth fighting just because it's a weapon against the right (a right identified with Jews). At a time when Jews are feeling particularly abandoned by the Left, it's especially hurtful. It's an asterisk at the end of "We care about antisemitism, too" that belies the statement.

War is Peace.

A dove and an AK-47.

It's one thing to be against the Occupation. It's another to support violence in the service of ending the occupation. It's entirely another to support violence in the name of peace.

Ignorance is Strength.

Advice from a Bu-Mu to the New Atheists

Religion doesn’t poison everything. Self-righteousness does. Self-righteousness is something that Hitchens and his boys have a heap of in their anti-God books.

It might be more productive for hardcore atheists to put aside questions of God’s existence and explore the question of what exactly is this self that’s getting all righteous. And to do so with the same spirit of scientific inquiry that generates their very reasonable skepticism in the concept of a supreme authority.

As a BuJu (which I prefer to Jubu, which means "housewife" in Korean), I appreciate this advice.

This is my Private Life on the Outside

I've spent a good bit of the day in the time honored tradition, popular among both Jews and antisemites, of looking for hints of Jewishness in a particular Jew's artwork. When the artist is highly assimilated, though, this can be maddening. Perhaps what seems to be Jewish really comes from some other influence. In fact, many of the more common themes, like the performance of normality, are also common in the works of gays and almost inherent in any artistic sensibilities.

Christian nation, make us alright
Put us through the filter and make us pure and white
My mind has wandered from the flock you see
And the flock has wandered away from me
Let's talk of family values while we sit and watch the slaughter
Hypothetical abortions on imaginary daughters
The white folks think they're on the top ask any proud white male
A million years of evolution, we get Danny Quayle

Even when there are more or less explicit references (often to not being Christian rather than to being Jewish), we can't even be sure that it isn't Jewishness serving as a metaphor for alienation. All we can be certain of is that the themes could stem from a Jewish identity. That uncertainty, tentativeness, like my 'whiteness,' almost becomes the very mark of Jewishness. Sometimes there's an attempt to transcend assimilation by reaching back for the ghosts of a Jewish heritage, but what to make of such a reconstructed Jewish identity?

"My strongest link to my Jewish background is musical," he said. "I found myself drawn to Russian and Eastern European musical roots. I got into Gypsy music, and I discovered that the difference between that and klezmer was very narrow. It's very much a part of my consciousness. I feel a kinship with Russia, even though I've never been there."

And if we find that missing piece, how will we feel if it reappears?

Oh..
You can tell a dirty story
In the old conservatory...

But don't go in the basement!

You can make a scene
On the mezanene

But don't go in the basement!

And where does it get you to mimic those others? To risk overdoing it? Could we be the schlemiel whose every attempt at self-improvement (assimilation) is pathetic? Or worse?