This article, discussing the ongoing pogrom in Israel, reminds us that we’re not the only country in which a fascist future is a real threat. It’s one of history’s ironies that Israel is far ahead of us on that front.
Off the subject a bit: this is just one of many stories that the media feels is less important than the deaths of five entitled rich people who decided (with the exception of one who was pressured by his father to go) to board an unsafe submarine.
The Israeli pogrom, and this historical moment generally, happen to mesh a bit with a book I’m currently reading, and a PBS series my wife and I are currently binge watching on my Ipad, it being the first quasi-television viewing we’ve done in years.
The book is The Rope, by Alex Tresniowski, which I picked up at a gift shop in Deerfield. It’s about a murder of a little girl in Asbury Park, New Jersey in 1910, the quick arrest of a black man against whom they had no evidence, the attempt to lynch him and the ongoing threat to do so, Ida Well’s campaigns against lynching, and the efforts of an honest detective to find the real murderer.
The PBS series is Seaside Hotel, a Danish series (sub-titled). We’re currently in the 5th of nine seasons. It takes place at a hotel in Denmark, where the same guests come each summer. Each season is a summer. It started in 1928 and it’s now 1933, and Hitler has taken over in Germany.
Tresniowski describes a number of lynchings, which certainly find their echo in the events in Israel. It seems that when the white folks decided to lynch a black person, the authorities would either step aside, put up a feeble and meaningless defense before letting the lynch mob get its quarry, or, in the case where the event was a white mob attacking communities of black people, like the Israelis are currently attacking the Palestinians, direct the forces of the law against the black people defending themselves instead of the white people doing the attacking. Like Netanyahu, the white politicians would, of course, condemn the violence, but for various reasons, the perpetrators could never be identified. You can be sure that the same will hold true in Israel.
In Seaside Hotel, only one character appreciates the Nazi threat. He tries to convey his concerns to the others, but they all pretty much ignore him, as they have other things to worry about and, anyway, Hitler can’t possibly be that dangerous, can he? It will all turn out okay in the end! It reminds me too much of the present attitude of so many in our country, particularly in the media, where the threat of fascism is ignored (witness the media’s now somewhat abandoned lavish praise for Ron DeSantis and his great -tough ultimately disastrous- response to COVID), and/or its proponents (Boebert, Greene, Gaetz) mocked. The fact that these very people have virtually full control of the Republican Party (see, e.g., the recent censure of Adam Schiff and the ongoing subservience to full on fascist Donald Trump) rings no alarm bells. We may be lucky, and avoid a fascist future, but we can’t do it without recognizing the threat.
Once again, it should go without saying, that the Democrats have to start calling this out for what it is.
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