I agree with everything you wrote, but in the current political climate (in America and around the world) the Politics of Resentment now extends far beyond the Jews alone.
There is an aggrieved majority who feel left behind, left out, and betrayed. And demagogic leaders skillfully leverage that frustration and anger and resentment to their own ends, always pointing the finger at scapegoats: “They,” the demagogue tells his followers, are to blame for your discontent, “they” are taking over your country, “they” are replacing you.
Early in his career Hitler stirred up crowds with the claim that “they stabbed us in the back.” When asked who exactly were “they,” he said it didn’t matter; people could project any enemy onto that word. The basic key was this: “they” are not like us.
Perennially, of course, “they” were the Jews. Long ago Nietzsche called anti-semitism the “ideology of those who feel cheated,” and here in our modern year of 2017 the world witnessed hundreds of tiki-torch-carrying angry white males winding their way like an evil snake through the University of Charlottesville campus chanting “Jews will not replace us.” (White males especially feel themselves under attack by wide-ranging demographic, economic, and societal changes.)
But in today’s neo-fascist world “they” now take many forms: Muslims, Mexicans, immigrants, globalists (especially, of course, international Jewish bankers like George Soros), socialists, liberals (with their “radical” liberal agenda), elites, intellectuals, LGBQ folks and blacks and all those “others" who seem to get special privileges. In the politics of resentment, “they” are the problem, and neo-fascism is the solution.
Madeleine Albright in her 2018 book Fascism: A Warning, said that "in the end, it is always about giving them someone to hate." Jews took the brunt of this paranoid hatred for millennia, but now (with Jewish voters a very important voting block in the US) "they" have many new faces and names. Now George Soros and Liz Cheney are somehow linked together as the dangerous "others."
Mostly I am reminded by W.B.Yeats's terrifying image in The Second Coming: "and what rough beast slouches toward Bethlehem to be born."
All we have are our votes and our voices in a battle we must not lose.
I have also added my voice at Neo-Fascism: A Warning. I hope you find something of value there. No matter what the results of Nov. 8, I will continue with this project.
Noah,
I agree with everything you wrote, but in the current political climate (in America and around the world) the Politics of Resentment now extends far beyond the Jews alone.
There is an aggrieved majority who feel left behind, left out, and betrayed. And demagogic leaders skillfully leverage that frustration and anger and resentment to their own ends, always pointing the finger at scapegoats: “They,” the demagogue tells his followers, are to blame for your discontent, “they” are taking over your country, “they” are replacing you.
Early in his career Hitler stirred up crowds with the claim that “they stabbed us in the back.” When asked who exactly were “they,” he said it didn’t matter; people could project any enemy onto that word. The basic key was this: “they” are not like us.
Perennially, of course, “they” were the Jews. Long ago Nietzsche called anti-semitism the “ideology of those who feel cheated,” and here in our modern year of 2017 the world witnessed hundreds of tiki-torch-carrying angry white males winding their way like an evil snake through the University of Charlottesville campus chanting “Jews will not replace us.” (White males especially feel themselves under attack by wide-ranging demographic, economic, and societal changes.)
But in today’s neo-fascist world “they” now take many forms: Muslims, Mexicans, immigrants, globalists (especially, of course, international Jewish bankers like George Soros), socialists, liberals (with their “radical” liberal agenda), elites, intellectuals, LGBQ folks and blacks and all those “others" who seem to get special privileges. In the politics of resentment, “they” are the problem, and neo-fascism is the solution.
Madeleine Albright in her 2018 book Fascism: A Warning, said that "in the end, it is always about giving them someone to hate." Jews took the brunt of this paranoid hatred for millennia, but now (with Jewish voters a very important voting block in the US) "they" have many new faces and names. Now George Soros and Liz Cheney are somehow linked together as the dangerous "others."
Mostly I am reminded by W.B.Yeats's terrifying image in The Second Coming: "and what rough beast slouches toward Bethlehem to be born."
All we have are our votes and our voices in a battle we must not lose.
I have also added my voice at Neo-Fascism: A Warning. I hope you find something of value there. No matter what the results of Nov. 8, I will continue with this project.
https://neofascism.substack.com/