Easy. And firmly. And by the way, go fuck yourself for even thinking for a moment I won't stand by every fucking word: Netanyahu willfully interposed in an American election, violating all prior political norms, and made himself and his government complicit...
https://twitter.com/BizDevBen/status/1056745734014361600
...in the ascension of an authoritarian executive who was already running as an advocate and agent of race baiting, white grievance and white nationalism. This was known, yet the Israeli prime minister declined to exercise neutrality in the election although urged to do so...
...not only by the US political party opposing the authoritarian, but by a host of Israeli foreign service and intelligence officials who knew that interposing in an American election in such an unprecedented fashion would carry long-term costs and risks. The authoritarian...
...was elected and has for two years since utilized racial fearmongering, implications of Jewish financial cabals, and assaults on democratic norms such as an open press or the rule of law to attempt to consolidate power and engage his political base. He has overtly encouraged...
...violence against reporters, against dissidents and all of those opposed to his authority. Violence has resulted, with the shootings of reporters and the targeting of blacks, Jews and immigrants and members of the opposing political party by the authoritarian's followers....
...who are fed a steady stream of conspiratorist horseshit so acutely racist and anti-Semitic that the name of a Holocaust survivor can now be invoked as a fixed dog-whistle for Jewish conspiracies against white nationalist America. The authoritarian has championed...
...the claim that reporters, who are being sent bombs or shot to death in newsrooms are "enemies of the people" and specifically, in the instance so critical to the tragedy in Pittsburgh, that a Jewish financier is paying brown-skinned people to journey to our southern border...
...and menace our nation. This specific, vicious and batshit-crazy notion found favor throughout the president's base and has even been repeated by elected officials in his party. It is the precise preamble to a gunman walking into a synagogue and declaring that all Jews...
...must die and killing people where they worshipped. The authoritarian takes no responsibility for the breadth, scope or effect of such outrageous rhetoric and promises more of the same if he continues to be criticized by a free press, by political opponents or by dissidents...
That Netanyahu is not the critical factor in this dry run of American fascism is not a claim of my OT. Nor is it claimed that he anticipated or desired the inevitable outcome of supporting an authoritarian demagogue in our electoral process. What is claimed -- and it is precise..
...and accurate is that Netanyahu, and by extension his government, stands among those who are now complicit in serving to bring about this experiment in American fascism -- a venture that has now claimed the lives of reporters in Annapolis, African-Americans in Kentucky....
...and American Jews in Pittsburgh. Anyone who supported the rise of Donald Trump -- and further, anyone who still supports him at this late moment -- is complicit in tolerating, rationalizing and accepting this violence. That American Jewry would be an inevitable target of...
...the white supremacists with whom Bannon, Miller and Trump have made common cause is as certain as it is obvious to anyone who understands the history of American racism and anti-Semitism. This does not make...
...Netanyahu responsible for firing the shots. Of course, not. It makes him complicit in committing himself and his government to the course of helping to create an American political moment in which shots would be fired. He is not a white supremacist or a Nazi or a racist....
...but he is explicitly, and to American Jewry in particular, now a historical figure on a par with Von Papen -- a craven fuck who persuaded himself that he could work with the authoritarian and control the dynamic and that the cost would not fall on him, his country or tribe....
...In Pittsburgh, the grievous miscalculations and cynicism of Bibi Netanyahu have delivered bloodshed. His miscalculations are not singular -- again, many forces and influences have produced this American tragedy -- but he shares in the complicity. And American Jews, most of...
...whom continue to bravely resist this slide into authoritarianism, knowing that when the rule of law and open speech die, they come for the Jews thereafter, have eyes and memory enough to know what he did in our election. So fuck him. And fuck you. And don't ever think...
...that I've spent any part of a career in journalism, in essaying or in drama putting words on paper without thinking hard and deliberately about what I mean to say, what I do not mean to say, and what matters when it is time for any writer to speak honestly to people in power.
APOLOGIES: Just noticed that in the 10th take the first sentence is an unintentional double-negative. It should read that a claim that Netanyahu is a critical factor is not evidenced in the OT. Typing too fast, alas.
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