What the hell is going on with the American right
What the hell is going on with the American right
On a related note, it’s amusing how there’s a bit of a civil war they’re having over blaming Brandon for enabling Israel’s genocide, and blaming him for “funding” Hamas and not helping them enough. Going by the comments.
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It’s been very funny actually watching the right try to decide if they’re pro-Palestine or pro-Israel. I look at my (former) friend’s Twitter sometimes and he’ll share pro-Palestine and pro-Israel memes pretty equally. It’s really always been like this, /pol/ used to have struggle sessions over whether to be pro-Palestine due to antisemitism or pro-Israel due to hating Muslims.
I think there’s something else going on though which is the deepening of the dem/gop divide based on financial/petit bourgeoisie class divisions. The gop is not so “pro-Palestine” as they are anti-globalization. They try to pass this position off as an antiwar or anti imperialist position, and they’ll make gestures towards being pro-Palestine, because they know such positions will win them political points and undermine the dems antiwar reputation, and also maybe win over a few inexperienced leftists, but then they’ll turn around and talk about going to war with China, bombing Iran or invading Mexico. So the anti-globalization thing is more a reaction to these wealthy financial elites profiting off global exploitation while they undergo a process of proletarianization at home partially due to the financial elite’s globalization projects. Ukraine and israel are in the financial elite’s interests, to keep open and expand these markets and markets in those regions. It is not in the national/petit bourgeoisie’s interest as such markets compete with them, and they’d much rather more isolationism and protectionism.
Maybe someone can explain better than me. But that’s sort of the materialist explanation. But of course you also have contrarian brainworms and, I’m convinced, some former leftists and bush/Obama era libertarians who went hard right due to stupid stuff like Covid lockdowns, pronouns, and the trans panic who still retain some former positions like being pro-Palestine (or, at least, anti-flattening a hospital, maybe they’re two-state solution types or something)
Good take. I think you also can't underestimate the evangelical love for Isn'trael as a vehicle for Armageddon either. Even though the material motivation (for the petty boug) for the stance may have passed, it's got its own momentum.
There might even be an angle about proletarianization breeding doomsday cults/beliefs which have fueled that Israel support but I'm not smart enough to fully connect that dot.
As a former evangelical, I want to add that I don’t think (and this is all anecdotal supposition) the motivation to bring about Armageddon is really the driving motivator outside of some Pentecostal circles.
IMO the bigger driver is that - as weird as this sounds - the existence of Israel somehow in their minds validates the historicity of the Old Testament. Israel belongs to the Jews because God says so and they conquered it. So the present existence of Israel is sort of “proof” of all these historical claims.
Biblical inerrancy (and thus, the idea that the Old Testament is real history) is suuuuper important to evangelicals. It’s a core tenet, and it’s why so many of them cling to Young Earth Creationism and a literal flood, despite those things being as likely as a flat earth.
Oh and a lot of it is just your standard racism against brown people. Racism is just so pervasive in the evangelical church it’s hard to separate that out as an independent factor.
my read is just it's mostly a sense of ecumenism cause they read some of the same scripture and share "judeo-christian values" etc
totally. that's where i am at. trying to make the narrative of "look, this is a western european political project to maintain a settler-colonial presence in the middle east. we're backing one outsider ethnic group and letting it run wild on the indigenous peoples, in an effort to prevent any sort of pan-regional multi-ethnic project from emerging and challenging the western hegemony. the religious conflict is the tactic, the beachhead is the strategy" is way too complicated and looks morally repugnant. so instead, it's been decades of fomenting the most unhinged religious zealotry among evangelicals. that is always america's move: find the religious wackos, wind them up, and set them loose. because they will heel turn against any socialist/communist formation at the blink of an eye.
so after 50 years of arming some religious nuts and winding up others, the boiler is full of fuel and the pressure release valve has snapped off. the stage is set for both political parties to tear themselves apart over this shit. in the lead up to the iraq war, the pressure against anti-war protests and to deplatform them was near universal. empire didn't need threats and laws from lawmakers to be silenced. this one, it's like this constant stream of explicit threats (like the BDS bans, the slander against DSA) and obvious lies (hamas rocketed their own hospital, trust us) from the mouths of newsreaders.
like they are pulling all the levers to manufacture consent but struggling to get traction, meanwhile the right-wingers can't figure out if they're supposed to be pro-israel, anti-semites, or wait until JFK jr. reappears and tells them what to do.
None of them are pro-palestine. Some of them are anti-israel because they hate jews and think israel represents jews, but they would rather everyone in palestine be massacred than a pluralist, equal, democratic single state with full rights and political representation for palestinians.