Wednesday, November 06, 2013

Are you with Israel or Turkiyeh?

Will Israel Go Fascist?

Fascism is notoriously difficult to describe.  As a reviewer of the book of Robert Paxton's McConnell cites in this piece points out, when JFK said "ask not..." he said something that sounded fascist, but wasn't really fascist.

But McConnell quotes Blumenthal quoting a woman on a bus asking "Are you with Israel or Turkiyeh?" when discussing the Israeli commando raid on the Gaza flotilla.  I think this is one of the hallmarks of fascism: The treatment of one's political unit as a football team, which one supports no matter their behavior.  It drives me nuts, frankly, that questions of policy that must be hashed out and debated from multiple perspectives get reduced to "If the other side suggested it then its wrong."  That happens, to some degree, with people on the left, but so rarely its counts as a unicorn sighting.  Its common on the right, however.

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