As we near the inauguration of Trump 2.0…
Dear Liberal/Democrat friends concerned about growing fascism, authoritarianism, revanchism, and white supremacy yet who make the “exception for Palestine.”
I share your concerns about Trump and the right. Many of the days ahead will be dark.
However, I don’t think you understand how fascism develops. (That is my charitable interpretation.)
Aside from the fact that supporting Palestine is the principled position, your silence (at best) during the past year (past 100 years), your “exception for Palestine” undermines all your other stated values, especially as you warn about fascism and “saving our democracy.”
If you can make a convenient exception for indigenous Palestinians being eviscerated by an ethno-nationalist settler state—weapons provided by a Democratic administration—you will also make exceptions for further border militarization (under a Democratic administration), exceptions for homelessness criminalization in California (under a Democratic governor and Democratic mayors), or exceptions for “cop cities” (under Democratic city councils). This is not to say that the two parties are the same. This is to say that the selectivity of your outrage undermines your outrage.
I currently don’t trust that you will fight fascism until it affects your property values and/or your ability to go on vacation and/or your kids’ ability to go to ___X____ university and reproduce your social class, if not rising to a higher class. And maybe when fascism “arrives,” it actually won’t even affect your property values, etc. If the “market” is still “good,” maybe you will thrive. (That is my less charitable interpretation.)
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“Whoever is not prepared to talk about capitalism should also remain silent about fascism,” Max Horkheimer, “The Jews and Europe,” 1939
Riff: “Whoever is not prepared to talk about imperialism should remain silent about fascism,” Nicos Poulantzas, “Fascism and Dictatorship,” 1974
Riff on riff: “Whoever is not willing to talk about settler colonialism should be quiet on fascism,” Alberto Toscano, “Israel, fascism, and the war against the Palestinian people,” 2023
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I don’t know that the Dems would have won if they had supported an arms embargo on Israel or had any slightly just policy for Palestine. Likely still not. But I think stopping the genocide and supporting the liberation of Palestine are principled positions, regardless of electoral outcomes.
Aside from the basic moral value to not subjugate people, the destruction we sow aboard eventually destroys the institutions here. The racial extraction and oppression in the colonies comes home to roost. The illiberal exceptions we make eventually eat away our liberal democracy. Chickens Come Home to Roost: the U.S. Empire, the Surveillance State a | Verso Books
We have learned from history, from thinkers like Aimee Cesaire, Hannah Arendt, and Michel Foucault, to name a few, that the racialized and often gendered violence and repression we visit abroad in the (neo)colonies eventually boomerangs back to us.
The murderous Nazi violence that came back to Europe in the 1930s had its antecedents and its formation in places like Namibia and Tanzania in the 1800s (and also less directly, but still cited by Hitler, in US slavery and Jim Crow and US genocide of Native Americans.)
And then one fine day the bourgeoisie is awakened by a terrific boomerang effect: the gestapos are busy, the prisons fill up, the torturers standing around the racks invent, refine, discuss.
People are surprised, they become indignant. They say: “How strange! But never mind – it’s Nazism, it will pass!” And they wait, and they hope; and they hide the truth from themselves, that it is barbarism, the supreme barbarism, the crowning barbarism that sums up the daily barbarisms; that it is Nazism, yes, but that before they were its victims, they were its accomplices; that they tolerated that Nazism before it was inflicted on them, that they absolved it, shut their eyes to it, legitimized it, because, until then, it had been applied only to non-European peoples; that they have cultivated that Nazism, that they are responsible for it, and that before engulfing the whole edifice of Western, Christian civilization in its reddened waters, it oozes, seeps and trickles from every crack. (Aimee Cesaire, Discourse on Colonialism)
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In the weeks since the election, Democrats and liberals have not changed course. (MAGA is meanwhile licking its lips for its chance.). In the weeks since, the House has passed resolutions “to terminate the tax-exempt status of terrorist supporting organizations.” Do we not see how our complicity in Palestine sets the table for MAGA to come after other causes we care about? In the weeks since the election, Democrats closed ranks with Republicans to stop an (all too late) weapons stoppage resolution in the Senate. The US continues to veto ceasefire resolutions in the UN Security Council.
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I ask you, which of us sitting in this hall would willingly submit to the indignity that Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank have been subjected to for decades? What peaceful means have the Palestinian people not tried? What compromises have they not accepted–other than the one that requires them to crawl on their knees and eat dirt? (Arundhati Roy PEN Pinter Prize acceptance speech)
While it’s very late, it’s never too late to get on the right side. (I’m being charitable again. We should all be charitable to each other)
So where do we start?We start with Palestine.
Our struggle against MAGA fascism is tied to the struggle for Palestine. The fanatic, brazen, fascist ethno-settler state of Israel is the dystopia that MAGA dreams of.
Solidarity with Palestine is in fact a strategic lynch pin to our struggle against the right, capitalism, and empire.That must begin with principled defense of Palestine solidarity activists’ right to free speech, assembly, and organization. If they can deny these frontline fighters those rights, all of our rights will be in jeopardy. (Ashley Smith, https://tempestmag.org/2024/12/resisting-authoritarian-populism-pt2/)
