It Is *Dancing*!!!!
A trenchant posting.
Not being Jewish myself, I wonder this:
Has the cheapening of "anti-Semitism" into a kind of political slogan been driven predominantly by Gentiles, with a few right-wing Jews riding on their bandwagon, or has it been driven by Jewish politicians who are simply extraordinarily short-sighted and shabby (Mr. Netanyahu springs to mind)?
I'm not the sort of Jewish that counts, so I'm no more qualified on that front than you. I only calls 'em like I reads 'em.
Both explanations are good - the vast majority of people participating in the reassignment of the meaning of 'anti-Semitism' are indeed gentiles with a political, economic, or eschatological interest in a violent, unstable, oppressive Israel. On the other hand, you always have your short-sighted Jews participating in the mess - Dennis Prager springs to mind, and so does Ben Stein and pretty much every right-wing Israeli leader to reach out to American bigots (like Nixon, who was treated as a godsend [I considered doing the dash thing, but decided against it - I'm a secular humanist and that's patronizing anyway] and ranted and railed about the "basic deviousness" of the "Jewish race", calling them all spies). But the archdeacon really is Podhoretz.
'Is it good for the Jews?' is a perfectly valid political question. Politics is all about groups reaching compromises to get everyone as much of what they want as possible; if it becomes about the winner taking all over and over again, it becomes tyrannous and violent. That's high-school civics. But Podhoretz pretty much created the archetype for the modern Jewish neocon. Their Christer and agnostic counterparts talk a big game about "America's interests" when discussing their own personal (usually short-term) interests, and to keep good with the anglos so do they - but they also use a deeply corrupt version of "Is it good for the Jews?" - in their malignant screechings it becomes "What's in Israel's best interest now?" And that usually boils down to, surprise surprise, what's in their personal, short-term best interests.
A major economist described uninhibited growth as the ideology of cancer, and while it's not quite the same thing, the crude hedonistic fixation of the new right on personal gain (almost always financial) comes very close. And it's not much of a stretch to call the neocons a cancer.
To answer your question somewhat less long-windedly: it's a product of most of the gentile neocons and all of the Jewish neocons engaging in that solipsistic, nearsighted self-fixation they're so fond of - 'good for Israel' is good for them, and who cares if it's not good for their children - and there's a tiny minority of gentile neo- and paleocons, like Robertson and Savage (who was born into a Jewish family, but seems to hate the Jews with a fiery passion nowadays), who know exactly what they're doing and have axes to grind and money and fame to earn by grinding them.
I'm terrified whenever I think about it. Blumenthal's video made me want to cry when I first saw it, if only because I never realized how self-conscious so many of these people are about the contradictions in their ideology. They're so crass and cynical; I think a lot of people just assume they're cretinous morons because it's easier to deal with than the horrifying idea that they know exactly what they're up to. It's so damned evil.
On a lighter note, thank you so much for commenting! It's been lonely so far, but we're having a lot of fun with it.
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