AnthonyJK-Admin
The success of Zionism in pushing the expansionism and Ersatz Israel Manifest Destiny bigotry lies not in some "JOOOWISH globalist conspiracy", but in the ability of AIPAC and their donors to play all sides of the field and buy out support from multiple sides.
The Christian Zionist vision of an expansive Israel in order to play out the End Times fantasy of Jesus' Second Coming (never mind the fact that all the actual Jews are either killed or converted back to Christianity)....
AnthonyJK-Admin
...plays best to otherwise rabidly antisemitic conservative Christians who still see Jewish folk as "Christ killers" and "money changers". But, since they hate Muslims and people of color even worse than they do the Jewish folk, because White Supremacy, they are willing to give ZioNazi Jews full support and arms to spread their wings and further Tim LaHaye's fantasies.
AnthonyJK-Admin
The *liberal/"Left"* wing of Zionism, on the other hand, plays upon the more benign and progressive vision of Jewish folk as more tolerant and accepting of underprivileged folks, more openminded on issues of race, gender, and sexuality (exactly that that inflames the Christian Right), and the ultimate victims of ethnic cleansing (the Holocaust) deserving of reparations.
The problem is, though, all that progressivism is throttled within a kind of "White Man's Burden" mentality...
AnthonyJK-Admin
...that tended to see the majority Palestinian population in the Middle East as either quiet people simply living their lives and wanting to be left alone at best; or, not-so-forward looking dark-skinned people who could use some "liberal enlightenment" to smooth out the dark edges of their "savage" culture.
Basically, the same mentality clash that supported post-colonial USA "Manifest Destiny" against the First Nations domestically, and the Mexicans and Afro-Carribeans abroad.
AnthonyJK-Admin
This was the original concept of the kibbitzum settlements in OG Israel; to spread some socialist love to a benighted Arab diaspora supposedly hungry for Western knowledge.
Problem is, because of the highhanded means that the state of Israel was founded, and its full backing of the Western powers, the mostly Islamic Arab states didn't take such enlightened liberalism so kindly; and they responded with military strikes.
AnthonyJK-Admin
Which Israel repelled with then modern armor and weapons from the West (1948 and 1967 wars). And, also, the fervor of "self-defense" and being the "underdog" surrounded by all sides by enemies. Hence, Zionism as a nationalist ideology grew and enveloped BOTH wings, liberal AND right-wing.
AnthonyJK-Admin
And, with the US and the West feeding and nurturing Israel as their fulcrum of power in the Middle East, alongside Iran and Saudi Arabia as a balance, combined with the Cold War bringing in new fresh, and mostly conservative, immigres to settle in the "land of the Jews", it was inevitable that sparks would fly, and tinder explode.
AnthonyJK-Admin
Zionism really began its hard Right turn in the 1980's, when the fall of Iran to the fundamentalists essentially jolted American foreign policy, and the rise of the neoconservatives and Christian Zionists began to really sink their teeth into the mentality of Zionism and transform it into a nationalist right-wing movement.
Marti
@AnthonyJK https://youtu.be/mmVQ8E6srA8?si=4UBdG2GgVwZPXqyN good video on this from Owen Jones.
GNU social JP is a social network, courtesy of GNU social JP管理人. It runs on GNU social, version 2.0.2-dev, available under the GNU Affero General Public License.
All GNU social JP content and data are available under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license.