Monday, June 02, 2008
The Anti-Totalitarian Future?
In the New York Times, Stephen Farrell reports there are only a handful of known Jews left in Iraq. What was presumably the last operating synagogue closed in 2003 when the chaos became too dire. Matthew Yglesias derives the following from the story:
... the upshot of the factoid about the synagogue seems to be that the U.S. invasion actually turned Iraq into a less hospital [sic] place for Jews than was Saddam Hussein's rabidly anti-Zionist rapacious dictatorship.
That's precisely the upshot a "reality-based" liberal would take from it, but it's historically illiterate. To be fair Farrell's article encourages a hasty reader to make that interpretation, but in Yglesias' case this appears to be just anti-Bush snark. One is wrong, the other wrong-headed. In The Assassins' Gate, George Packer makes it clear that Saddam's "anti-Zionism" -- the euphemism used by both Yglesias and Farrell -- so thoroughly poisoned younger generations of Iraqis that Iraqi Jews had basically become cryptids by the time of the invasion. The synagogue that closed in 2003 must have been an outlier.
Gate also illuminates the quote at the end of Farrell's piece, in which the main interviewee's father laments that he "used to spend more time with Arabs than Jews". He, an octogenarian, is referring to comity with Iraqi Muslims of his generation, their children and their childrens' children. These are people who formed their opinions about Jews before the anti-Semitism of the Baathist regime corrupted the later generations.
Insofar as it's particular to them, the situation today for Jews in Iraq has only a little to do with the Gulf actions. Our latter invasion has inflamed the Baathist die-hards and Islamist conspirazoids, but those processes were well under way during the inter-war years. It's true the chaos resulting from the stupidity and incompetence of the occupation has accelerated and amplified all kinds of violence. But to fold up your Times, rest it beside your latte, tisk and tick off Baathist Jew-hatred as one more "upshot" of Bush's war is just dilettantism. It collapses the history of Iraqi anti-Semitism -- which replayed across the Arab and Muslim world -- and yokes it to a cheap, partisan point.
Neoconservatism is the mullet of American politics. If Obama becomes President, a "reality-based" liberalism will be in the ascendant. It's interesting to consider what these people choose to notice and when.
Postscript: An older, related post.
Labels: bush, iraq, liberalism, matthew yglesias, new antisemitism, reality-based community
Thursday, January 17, 2008
Regressive Progressives
Kevin Drum nails it with respect to the Ron Paul racism controversy.
It's plain that Paul knew what was being published in his newsletters. It's plain that he was familiar with the well-developed strategy that inspired the early-90s turn to racist demagoguery. It's plain that he knew it was a key part of his fundraising appeal. Paul can weasel all he wants, but it's plain that he endorsed a strategy of overt appeals to racist sentiment in order to build support for his political career. If he's given all that up since then, it's only because he no longer needs it.
This whole affair highlights one of the reasons that I wish everyone would stop swooning over minor candidates who play the part of bold truthteller. When you have no chance of winning and therefore nothing to risk, it's cheap and easy to stick to your guns. But as Ron Paul has shown, back when it actually mattered he was willing to do whatever he needed to raise money and rekindle his political career. I don't doubt that he'd do it again if anything serious were on the line.
This whole affair highlights one of the reasons that I wish everyone would stop swooning over minor candidates who play the part of bold truthteller. When you have no chance of winning and therefore nothing to risk, it's cheap and easy to stick to your guns. But as Ron Paul has shown, back when it actually mattered he was willing to do whatever he needed to raise money and rekindle his political career. I don't doubt that he'd do it again if anything serious were on the line.
I wrote about this here, in light of the irony of so-called progressives flocking to Paul because of his "bold [truth telling]" about Iraq (and, inevitably in the penumbra of Iraq, our alliance with Israel). There have always been self-styled progressives who are really reactionaries, favoring isolationism, conspiratorial superstition and the scapegoating of Jews, among other intellectual pathologies. French socialist suspicion of Leon Blum and the Jews in the lead-up to war with Hitler is a good historical analogue. Cognate forces were at work prior to American involvement in World War II, and now the Iraq War has again separated regressive progressives from their comrades of better conscience and driven them into alliance with the far-Right fringe they mirror.
Labels: illiberal liberals, iraq, new antisemitism, war on terror
