[Graffiti on my house. Not because of me I might add. It’s everywhere.]
Make no mistake about it: we are witnessing the return of fascism .
Make no mistake about it: we are living in the 1930s.
This isn’t hyperbole. This isn’t exaggeration to make a point. It is an accurate representation of what is happening right here and now.
All the elements of Nazi dehumanization, legal division and linguistic misrepresentation are right here in front of us. The boycotting of Jewish businesses, the ideological takeover of universities, the antisemitic tropes of Jews being “baby killers”, the inability of the State to control the streets, the unpunished attacks on synagogues, the belief that the Jews control world affairs, the classifications by race ( with Jews being privileged of course), the call for the Final Solution (“one solution, intifada revolution”)...we could go on and on.
We haven’t reached the extermination camp phase yet, but we are just being warmed up. Only yesterday, on October 7th no less, the Spanish TV network RTVE (La2) was non-stop publicising its blood libel documentary “Expediente Genocidio” through television advertising and ever-present mastheads during daily quiz programs. Or should I say quiz pogroms. Not only is the genocide claim an utter lie without a shred of credibility, but it has become official Spanish government and media policy. Even on October 7th - especially on October 7th - the powers-that-be here were sure to indoctrinate the public that the Jews, on their day of mourning and a Jewish feast day, were bloodthirsty oppressors.
On the very street where I live, there is graffiti plastered on every public trash can, and even on my block of flats, stating “Israel, Nazi y Genocida”. Have the police arrested anyone for the destruction of property? Has the law been enforced here? What do you think! The government of Sánchez have become early stage Nazis. The opposition parties completely reject the PSOE-led reich, of course, but they don’t control the media, the law or any branch of civil society (except the Civil Guards). Even were they to reach government, they would be unable to stop the rot. Jews are not safe in Iberia and where the Jews are not safe, liberty is dead and the West is dead… that is if the West ever arrived in Spain.
The situation hasn’t reached that point in the UK. Indeed, it is foolish to compare Spain, antisemitism ground zero, with a country which from Oliver Cromwell in the 17th Century all the way to the 1960s never even saw one Jew die because they were Jewish. As I said before, it is Anglo Liberty, and not European civil law, that stands between a world of civilization and a nightmare of barbarism. The people of the UK are, for the most part, very welcoming and warm towards the Jews.
Only this week I have been trying to buy a house in England. Although I am doing so in the heart of Berkshire, in a town with barely a Jew, I am - by coincidence - making the purchase off a man called Solomon. When he was a little slow to respond last Friday, the blond-haired, English estate agent said:
Hi Daniel,
Just to keep you updated as to where we’re at. With recent events within the Jewish community and it is a Jewish company that owns the block, they’re dealing with stuff at the moment but Solomon the owner has promised a call back on Monday regarding your increased offer. …”
********
Hi Harmony,
Thanks for the update. I did half suspect that this was the case given Solomon’s unavailability last Thursday on a Jewish holy day. As a Jewish person myself, it should say that there is another festival on Tuesday/Wednesday and if he is religious, he won’t be available on those days either. So we need to wrap this all up on Monday if at all possible….”
This is just a snapshot. The ordinary people of the UK, of all faiths and none, are horrified by the hate marches on the streets and the antisemitic attacks on synagogues. They don’t justify antisemitic violence on the basis of foreign affairs. If this estate agent had been Spanish, one can imagine that a) Solomon would have changed his name, b) not revealed his religion and c) the agent would have made some snide remark about “genocide”. Meanwhile I wouldn’t have responded to Harmony revealing my own faith.
It should also be said that senior politicians and political figures in the UK are starting to speak of these “demonstrations” in the same terms as Guerre and Shalom. Robert Jenrick has said that they are a “fucking disgrace”. Michael Gove has stated that they are “hate marches”, should be limited to 1 or 2 per year and the organisers should pay for the cost of policing. Matthew Syed, standing for the Conservatives at the next election having previously stood for Labour, has exposed the hate on these marches for the Times. Meanwhile, even moderate left-wing politicians, from Keir Starmer and Shabana Mahmood down, have now admitted that there are hateful elements on these marches and have asked nicely for them to avoid sensitive locations and particular days of the year.
From the last sentence, we begin to see the true British problem. It isn’t, like in Spain, that the government itself is antiSemitic. We could argue that it’s tone death to Jewish concerns. We could argue that it’s made some horrific policy foreign policy choices. We could argue that it’s restricting free speech amongst those who call out Islamist hatred. But it would be inaccurate to say that they are Pedro Sánchez in disguise. Starmer, with his Jewish wife, and Lammy, with his Jewish constituents and football team, are perfectly aware of Jewish voices. Neither are the UK population as a whole hostile to Jews. My experience of living here has been of a country where I can proudly proclaim my religion is the most rural and conservative of locations.
[Flood, Martyrs…how subtle.]
The problem is that the government, whatever its beliefs, does not control the streets, even if it wanted to.
The problem is that the police cannot keep law- abiding citizens safe.
We have reached the situation where the government has had to ask nicely - to plead - for a tiny minority of the population to respect the safety and liberty of British citizens —and then they get ignored with impunity.
We have reached the situation where the police are so scared of public disorder on the part of thugs that it is Jewish and Iranian counter-protesters that are arrested just so as not to provoke the mob.
Then as a result of the police being tied up protecting the public from “pro Palestinian” fascists, they are unable to protect Jewish synagogues from vandalism, Jewish worshippers from murder, old ladies from burglary and corner shores from shoplifting. Put simply, there’s been a complete breakdown of Law and Order and where law-abiding citizens cannot trust in the police force to protect them, they will lose all faith in the State and democracy.
The seriousness of the situation cannot be emphasized enough. The State gains its legitimacy from its status as an all-powerful Leviathan: it has the monopoly on law-making power and the monopoly on the use of force. The individual gives up some of their sovereignty on the contracted promise that the State institutions will protect them from harm.
Where neither Jews nor homeowners nor shopkeepers are protected, the State loses all legitimacy.
Where the minority is free to make its own laws, the State loses all legitimacy.
Where the fascists are protected from punishment, and stabbings lead to suspended sentences, the State loses all legitimacy.
[Martyrs, October 7th …we know what this means.]
It is my contention that the rule of law has completely broken down and that therefore the vast majority may invoke John Locke’s right of rebellion. The authorities no longer have the will, resources or power to protect the life, liberty and property of citizens. Where a law-abiding Jew cannot walk down the street with a Kippa or a State in David necklace, the social contract with the State has been breached.
In these circumstances, the citizens have the right to establish a new State where they declare that fascism has no place on our streets. Any organisers who persist should bear the cost of policing on the day of their “protests”. Any who refuse should face arrest, lose their jobs and face reputational consequences. We, the brave, must engage in non-violent counter protests in the streets. We must withdraw from the EHCR, repeal the Human Rights Act and do everything we can so that activist lawyers and judges are stopped from keeping this fascism in the streets on the basis of “free speech”. In the very last resort, embattled communities may need to be given the right to bear arms and maintain a militia US style –just to protect their lives and liberties. God forbid it comes to this. But at the moment the government and police are powerless, and have lost authority in the eyes of citizens, particularly the vulnerable minorities.
We never thought that the Holocaust would happen again because we believed that the Nazis were extreme-right, while all the extreme-left wanted to do was be nice and be against racism. Now we have learned the truth, that in fact, the Nazis - the National Socialist Party - were the most extreme sort of ultra-ultra-LEFT radicals. They had a command and control extreme socialist State, a radical, racist ideology, no respect for the old Constitution and wished to take over the institutions of the nation. They lied through the media, they lied through academia, they lied through propaganda and they fought for their racism in the streets. They silenced opposition voices through violence.
Precisely the same can be said about Nasser, the ultra-socialist Fascist of Egypt. He was an avowed Leftist, seeking and achieving revolution over the old, conservative, monarchical State. Yet, through his internationally-exported revolution in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon, his foreign conquests in Yemen and in 1967, his nationalisation of the Suez Canal in breach of the 1954 Anglo-Egyptian Treaty and his attempted genocide in Israel (the Fedayeen, the 6 Day War), he showed himself every bit the Hitlerite, ultra-left fascist. That's not my language: Eden, MacMillan, the French, even the United Nations, described him in those terms in 1950s.
[Nasser, the ultra-left Hitler of the 1950s]
The Stalinists, the Nazis, the Nasserists, the Qutbist Islamists, the Palestinianists: all are ultra-left radicals. They all threaten the socially contracted, rule of law State.
So who are the extreme-right? There is no such thing as extreme-right free marketeers because by definition they want absolute individual freedom, perhaps so much that the poor and vulnerable are unprovided for.
There is such a thing as extreme-right conservatives. Examples include the Al-Saud monarchy of Saudi Arabia and the Francoist regime in Spain. These are regimes which are the very opposite of radical. They wish to entrench overbearing religion. They wish to maintain to the letter ancient conservative traditions. They wish to impose the old ways by force and kill / imprison all free-thinkers. They are awful and illegitimate forms of government - I would hate to live under them - but they are not “fascist”, because they are ultra-conservative, not ultra-radical, which is one of the many reasons that Hitler and Franco detested each other —-and the Al-Sauds detested Nasser.
What we are seeing in modern Spain and modern Britain isn’t ultra-conservative Francoism - religion is on the wane along with ancient traditions - rather it is radical rebellion that is in the ascendancy amongst the elite classes. We are seeing Nazism, Stalinism, Fascism: We are witnessing a radical takeover against the wishes of the small c conservative majority and against the safety of vulnerable minorities.
I don’t mind telling you that I’m scared. Not scared as the Spanish should be, where the government itself are the dangerous radicals, but scared in the UK context that our beautiful, liberal democratic, legitimate Lockean Nation is unable to meet the challenges of an attempted ultra-left takeover.
Please spread this article. The main way to fight back is for the decent British majority of all backgrounds to know what we’re up against.
This is heartbreaking. The arc is pushed back toward darkness, deliberately, to make life impossible for an already pressed people.
Daniel, let me apologize in advance for an overly long comment. Read it at your leisure.
I’m sorry to hear that the situation in Spain has become so dire. It does indeed feel like the 1930s. Good luck getting your new house in Berkshire. Though I fear that the UK, with its growing, radicalized Muslim population, is drifting in Spain’s direction. And I don’t think “Neville” Starmer will do anything, other than asking nicely, to stop it.
You’re spot on about Franco being an ultra-right traditionalist Catholic conservative and not a fascist. A distinction many historians fail to make.
Yesterday, on the two-year anniversary of the October 7th Mini-Holocaust, there were pro-Hamas demonstrations in New York City. The “Flood New York City for Gaza” rally. I expect they will become even more common once the Jew-hating Zohran Mamdani is elected mayor. At least Mamdani, as a local official, can be held in check to some extent by President Trump, who, unlike Starmer, is determined to control the streets of America’s cities. And since Mamdani was born in Uganda, Thank God he can never run for president!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ap9xum-2AnY#:~:text=Anti%2DIsrael%20Protesters%20in%20NYC,%2D%20/%20nypost%20Facebook%20%2D%20/%20nypost
In the US, the Second Amendment, the right to bear arms, is the ultimate safeguard against government tyranny.
Liberalism has worked for Jewish Americans, unlike for Jews elsewhere, at least until recently. Franklin Foer, writing in “The Atlantic” last year, finds that antisemitism is making a comeback in America, especially on woke progressive intersectional Left. The pro-Hamas campus and street protests, with their harassment of Jews, their pure hatred of Jews, and their hatred of America, are one consequence of the unholy red-green alliance between the woke, illiberal, intersectional Left and radical Islamism. It’s a sign of possibly worse to come: 1930s Germany in 2030s America. Foer fears that a golden age of assimilation, acceptance, and prosperity for American Jews is coming to an end. I hope he is wrong.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2024/04/us-anti-semitism-jewish-american-safety/677469/
https://archive.ph/mFH0h
NYU, where I got my PhD., is as much a center of pro-Hamas agitation as Columbia, which I take as a personal affront. So, I have stopped giving money to my graduate school alma mater. Remember, German academics and university students were among Hitler’s most enthusiastic supporters. Higher education, instead of helping people become more enlightened, often just makes them more vulnerable to totalitarian ideologies like fascism and communism, and to intellectual mind viruses like antisemitism.
Sadly, when it comes to Israel and the Jews it is just not possible for most people to be fair and balanced, or engage in calm, reasoned discourse. Myself included, even though I try.
Israel and the Jews push too many hot buttons for too many people – religious, historical, cultural, psychological, and political – for Jews, Christians, and Muslims alike. Friends and foes of Israel, living in alternate realities, committed with passionate intensity to uncompromising positions, engage in take-no-prisoners ideological jousts that inevitably devolve into incoherent paroxysms of righteous anger and rage. And yes, most of the anger and rage against Israel, these days largely on the Woke Intersectional “globalize the intifada” Mamdani/AOC Left, but also on the Paleoconservative Israelophobic Buchanan/Carlson Right, is driven by antisemitism. Walter Russell Mead called this new incarnation of Jew-hatred the “Israel Outrage Industry.”
https://archive.ph/1bblV
Jew-hatred seems to be encoded in the cultural DNA of the Christian and Post-Christian West, and in Islam: the Jews rejected Christ and the Jews rejected Muhammad. With the decline of Christianity in the post-Enlightenment West, religious Judeophobia was transformed into race-based antisemitism which culminated in Nazism and the Holocaust.
That is why so many people in the world are obsessed with a conflict over a tiny sliver of land that has no direct impact on their lives. Yuval Noah Harari writes that Judaism played a minor role in history, other than giving birth to the ethical monotheism universalized by Christianity and Islam. One that certainly does not justify antisemitic obsessions about Jews secretly controlling the world. But proclaiming yourself the enemy of those who rejected Christ and Muhammad, and are “settler-colonialist” oppressors to boot, is a great way to virtue signal.
https://archive.ph/TeINS
The late Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish once told an Israeli journalist that the only reason the world pays any attention to the Palestinians is because the Jews are their enemy. There is simply too much historical and emotional baggage for all involved.
https://www.democracynow.org/2008/8/11/mahmoud_darwish_poet_laureate_of_the
https://youtu.be/RfT9gMFLPLc?si=HB91gcRR08N2kdoU&t=2373
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hrvzKOYeQZY&t=190s
You point out that “it is Anglo Liberty, and not European civil law, that stands between a world of civilization and a nightmare of barbarism.” This is what I tell my students on the first day of an American history class:
The Madisonian sweet spot is the ideal of Liberal Democracy: government is strong enough to defend liberty, promote economic growth and prosperity, and provide key social services, but does not repress its own population. Government is both effective and constrained. In Hobbes’s metaphor, a “shackled Leviathan.”
Liberal democracy was not an inevitable historical development. Winston Churchill famously said that democracy is the worst form of government except for all the others.
Consolidated Liberal Democracy has been the rare exception in world history. Various forms of oppressive, hierarchical societies and authoritarian or despotic governments have been the normative lot of mankind. And it is the nature of all governments, including democratic governments, to drift toward tyranny, unless there is strong pushback from an engaged civil society.
For most of history governments and their ruling elites have been despotic, rapacious, repressive, and malevolent. Outside of the Consolidated Liberal Democracies of North America, Western Europe, and parts of East Asia, this is still true today.
Most governments and ruling elites don’t want to improve the lives of their people. They want to exploit and rob their people. And if the people resist being robbed and exploited, the ruling elites will use the iron fist -- the coercive power of government -- to pound them into submission.
Democracy is a rare occurrence. There is no set of structural conditions that foreordains democratic outcomes. Luck, even good and bad weather, has played a decisive role. Had there been calm, clear weather in the English Channel in that crucial August of 1588, there would have been no “Protestant Wind” to destroy the Spanish Armada, and Anglo-American Liberal Democracy would have been strangled in its cradle.
Anglo-American Liberal Democracy is the ONLY HUMANE FORM OF GOVERNMENT mankind has ever developed.
American exceptionalism rests on British exceptionalism. America was born into the right traditions, at the right time, and in the right place. America could not have come into existence except when it did, where it did, and how it did.
It was little more than a chance of history that the offspring of Anglo-Saxon liberalism would sprout on the other side of the Atlantic, institutionalize its heritage with an independent constitutional republic, expand across one of the most habitable and thinly populated territories in the world, feed off massive immigration from the Old World, and so create on a continental scale what is by far the world’s largest concentration of economic and military might. And liberty.
Contingency—dumb luck (or Divine Providence, the Hand of God)—played a large role in the United States’ emergence in the New World and for its later ability to rescue the Old World.
Had it not been for the United States and its vast human and material resources, and its commitment to liberty, Consolidated Liberal Democracy may well have lost the great struggles of the twentieth and now twenty-first centuries to the tyrannical ideologies and regimes of Fascism/Nazism, Soviet Communism, Islamic jihadism, and now the authoritarian state capitalism of a revived Communist/Imperial China, with its nightmarish Orwellian surveillance state. I sincerely hope and pray that America remains an exceptional nation committed to liberty, the City Upon a Hill.
Apologies again for the long comment. Happy Sukkot and good luck with the house buying.