“The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.” Hannah Arendt, “The Origins of Totalitarianism” (1951)
Please share widely!
Here are a few of the things I’ve seen on Fox News in the past two days:
Here is Desmond Tutu echoing Hanah Arendt on recognizing the difference between fact and fiction.
“The incoming Biden administration should forthrightly acknowledge Israel as a leading state sponsor of nuclear proliferation in the Middle East and properly implement US law.”
Joe Biden should end the US pretence over Israel’s ‘secret’ nuclear weapons | Desmond Tutu | The Guardian
Whether Israel or Iran I don’t think one nuclear power has the right to tell other countries they can’t be.
Really?
So you think no nation has the right to tell North Korea that they may not be a nuclear power?
Do you think the world will be better and safer place if Israel, Iran, North Korea, and all the other wanna-be world powers each have their own nuclear arsenal? Turkey? Syria? Libya?
I encourage you to rethink this comment and perhaps walk it back.
Agreed. Israel and North Korea already have nuclear arsenals, of course. In the case of Israel, no US official will say it publicly. Followers of Hannah Arendt take note.”the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.” Hannah Arendt, “The Origins of Totalitarianism” (1951)”
I know at first the Israeli nuclear program was secret, but I thought it was common knowledge now.
There is a law that foreign aid cannot go to a country with a rogue nuclear program (ie. not part of the international agreement on nuclear weapons.) Rather than observe that law, there is a ban on administration officials saying out loud what is common knowledge.
Congress approves aid to Israel all the time. BTW, what have they done to you? There are things I wish they would do differently too, but they are our closest ally in that region and most democratic. You seem to constantly slap them around.
There is still a law on the books that prohibits aid to a nuclear rogue state–that’s a fact. And there is still an agreement by the administration to simply not mention that Israel has nuclear weapons–that’s the fiction.
The quote from Hannah Arendt which is the subject of this post is about not recognizing the difference between fact and fiction.
A government that uses fiction to avoid facts is on its way toward totalitarianism.
Sorry you don’t like my attitude.
Ordinary statutes get overridden by subsequent statutes all the time. If Congress passes a law authorizing aid to Israel, then they are overriding, or at least carving out an exception, to the law you refer to, which is absolutely their prerogative. I don’t see the problem with officially acknowledging the truth by either the US or Israel.
I’ll leave it to one of our lawyers to clarify — I’m pretty sure that legislation awarding aid is not a “subsequent statute”. A statute that overrides or replaces an earlier statute generally includes language that explicitly states that the override is intentional.
The problem with acknowledging the truth is that it creates a dilemma regarding aid to Israel.
Either:
A further question is what to do about the 20-odd years that the US awarding generous aid to Israel while knowing full well that Israel is one of those rogue nuclear nations.
The problem with officially acknowledging the truth about US aid to Israel is that such aid is illegal under long-standing US law.
Pretty sure there is long standing legal doctrine that says that the most recent action is the prevailing one. Therefore, if Congress passes a bill today saying no aide to unacknowledged nuclear states, and that list includes Israel, but tomorrow passes a bill authorizing aide to Israel the latter prevails and implicitly nullifies today’s bill at least with respect to Israel. Besides, we’ve always been about as supportive of Israel as we have our NATO allies. I doubt very highly that the legislation you and Bob refer to would ever have been either enacted by Congress or signed by a President regardless of the party of either if anyone thought or intended it would apply to Israel. An act of Congress by definition cannot be illegal unless it runs afoul of the Constitution.
The world would be better without them as nuclear powers and I support negotiated deals such as the one Obama struck with Iran. What about us, though? How is it not the very definition of hypocrisy to hold on to our nuclear weapons, but tell other countries they can’t have theirs?
It is hypocritical. We are reaching the point where it may be untenable.
In an earlier era, the “great powers” — US, Soviet Union, and China — could be relied on to avoid using nuclear weaponry. There have been no nuclear exchanges since the US attacks on Japan at the end of WWII. As crazy as it was, the strategies of deterrence and mutual assured destruction successfully avoided nuclear calamity.
The additional players that joined the “nuclear club” have been largely responsible — the UK, France, India, and Pakistan.
It is shameful that, as you say, it is common knowledge that Israel has nuclear capability while the US pursues an explicit policy denying that reality. The issue, as Bob points out, is that it is explicitly illegal for the US to send foreign aid to any nation pursuing nuclear capability.
The issue, as we enter the mid 21st century, is that America is itself becoming a rogue nation. Donald Trump was a symptom, not a problem. The GOP has spent the last year pursuing the overthrow of representative democracy and the imposition of autocratic white-supremacist rule.
A nation led by the likes of Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley, Marco Rubio, and Rick Scott cannot be trusted with the unimaginable power of the US nuclear arsenal.
The emergence of a religious cult whose extremist practitioners advocate and practice suicide bombing was a fundamental game changer. Self preservation has always been a bedrock principle of the world’s nuclear management strategy. Al Qaeda and then ISIS show the limits of that strategy.
Extremists who today employ suicide bombers can be expected to tomorrow employ nuclear weapons if the latter become available to them. Even if it is hypocritical, the US should everything in its power to stop that outcome.
Today’s GOP is using the same suicide-bomber tactics as part of its war against the US rule of law. Persuading tens of millions of people that vaccines and masks are part of a liberal plot to kill them (and that is their message) is suicidal. It IS killing GOP followers, by the thousands.
QAnon is just as dangerous as AQ and ISIS — yet we refuse to admit that.
Sending an unvaccinated teacher into a public schoolroom or an unvaccinated nurse into an emergency room is no different from strapping a bomb onto a suicide bomber. Each is an act of terror, and each shows utter contempt for life.
We cannot put the nuclear genie back into the bottle. That’s why we MUST NOT allow our own domestic terrorist party (the GOP) to gain control of our nuclear arsenal.
The very future of humankind is at stake.
Well, this can answer the age-old question of “why they hate us”, but you do also slide into hyperbole toward the end of this comment. QAnon are just a bunch of conspiracy nuts (a trait you sometimes seem to share albeit in the other direction) rather than terrorists. An unvaccinated person is not a suicide bomber. We should do everything we can to keep nukes out of the hands of non-state actors, but you listed actual countries above and I’m still uncomfortable with a do-as-we-say-but-not-as-we-do position on our part.
A “bunch of conspiracy nuts” that include at least one sitting member of Congress among them and that are frequently encouraged by most influential person in today’s GOP (Donald Trump).
It’s pretty clear that you haven’t lost a loved one from an unnecessary COVID infection. The death toll from COVID in the most recent three months is nearly all in the red states, and it is nearly all unvaccinated victims. It numbers in the hundreds of thousands — at least ten times the death toll of the 9/11 attacks.
You are much more eager to dismiss the totally unnecessary deaths of something approaching 200,000 people (not counting people who die because care facilities are overwhelmed with unvaccinated people sick with or dying from COVID) than me.
Are you ok with North Korean, Syria, Libya, or Iran having nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them?
I’m not.
I would prefer the nations you list not have nukes, but we don’t have much moral leg to stand on as long as we keep ours.
I’m going to be less sympathetic if someone unvaccinated themselves contracts COVID, but I’m not concerned about being in that person’s presence since I am.
The most recent big news story involving QAnon was about them believing JFK Jr. would rise from the dead in Dealey Plaza and reinstate Trump. Nothing to do but laugh at this point, or possibly feel sorry if you can muster that compassion.
“I would prefer the nations you list not have nukes, but we don’t have much moral leg to stand on as long as we keep ours.”
But we do have leverage in the real world to prevent other nations from getting nuclear weapons or discouraging nuclear rogue states. There is no moral imperative to subsidize either countries with nuclear ambitions or rogue nuclear powers.
I’d prefer to subsidize Israel than some of the non-democratic regimes we prop up in the name of stability, or formerly anti-communism.
Cutting off aid to antidemocratic and apartheid governments would be my preference, Christopher, but you seem to keep drifting off the point of Fred’s post, which is that a government or society that obliterates the line between truth and lies is on its way to totalitarianism.
You are the one who brought up Israel and seems bent on lumping them with the worst of state actors. They aren’t perfect, but they are our strongest and most democratic allies in that region.
Name the other rogue nuclear powers.
That’s not the point. There are other states that are problematic in other ways. I’d rather aide Israel than certain others regardless of nuke status.
We do not need to subsidize any non-democratic regimes anywhere.
There is no compelling national interest in supporting any Middle East nation-state.
I agree with your first sentence, but not your second.
Everyone is entitled to their opinion, but here are the facts, Christopher.
1) There is an active nuclear program in Israel
2) the response of the government is to pretend there isn’t–by simply refusing to comment.
3) The US policy neatly fits Hannah Arendts description of a country heading toward totalitarianism.
What you or anyone thinks of Israel is beside the point.
I reject your item 3 above. No state is going totalitarian because the US aides Israel.
The US is literally on the brink of fascist totalitarian autocracy in no small part because of the inability and/or unwillingness to separate fact from fiction on the part of a huge and growing number of Americans.
The overwhelming majority of today’s Republicans believe — according to reliable current polling — that the 2020 election was stolen by Joe Biden and the Democratic Party. This same audience also believes that COVID is a hoax created by the Democrats to “take over America”. Interestingly, a competing belief is that COVID is a chemical weapon created with secret US funding and unleashed on the world by China.
Clear and obvious lies and hypocrisy about Israel is a contributor to the cynicism and distrust that fertilizes the soil of these absurd conspiracy theories.
The US is going totalitarian in no small part because the US continues to flood Israel with subsidies even while Israel violates the letter and spirit of the laws that allegedly constrain US foreign aid.
Your final paragraph above is nuts. Israel is nowhere close to the reason for our domestic political strife.
I didn’t intend to say that Israel is the reason.
There is nothing “nuts” about observing the continuing trend towards totalitarianism in the US. I did not intend to blame Israel for this.
The fault is entirely our own. We committed well-documented crimes against humanity during and after the 2003 Iraq invasion — and did nothing about them. We continue to subsidize Israel even after they thumb their noses at our policies against nuclear proliferation. Israel flagrantly and brazenly imposes Apartheid in the occupied territories, and we continue to subsidize them. Saudi Arabia kidnaps, murders, and dismembers a respected journalist living in the US and we do nothing.
These acts are precisely what Hannah Arendt warned of in 1951 in the thread-starter. The fact that we are being driven head-long into totalitarian white-supremacist rule in 2022 while our government blurs or hides the line between fact and fiction is not coincidental.
We are approaching the one-year anniversary of an attempted overthrow of a duly-elected government. During that year, the GOP has been passing state-level laws to make that overthrow easier. We have done absolutely NOTHING about it.
There no reports of federal grand juries empaneled by the DoJ to address this insurrection. The House committee is still showboating, even while showing the GOP that it has no teeth whatsoever. Steve Bannon is not in jail. Sitting House members who publish material depicting the assassination or attempted assassination of a president and another sitting member of congress is ignored.
If there is anything “nuts” about these exchanges, it is that some of us flatly refuse to admit what is happening in plain sight all around us and has been happening for more than year.
I continue to read and hear in the news items that suggest progress continues to be made regarding January 6th and adjacent matters. Let’s judge at the end rather during the process.
The House select committee continues to make frequent statements about the progress of the select committee. That isn’t “progress”, it’s PR.
There have NO reports of grand juries being empaneled by the DoJ. There is NO evidence that the DoJ is pursuing anyone at the highest levels of the insurrection.
At the current pace, and given the current political climate of the country, the GOP will retake the House later this year. At the current pace, NONE of the key players will have even been forced to testify by then.
The GOP is likely to take power in January 2023. The House select committee — and all its “progress” — will be discarded at that time.
Ye of little faith! Regarding DOJ absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, and the 1/6 Committee will almost certainly hand over whatever evidence they have collected (which is usually the subject of the news I’ve heard, BTW) to the DOJ when their mandate is about to expire.
Indeed! So the DoJ will do nothing until at least sometime in 2023, at which point it will BEGIN to consider whether or not any crimes were committed in 2020.
The coup is likely to be completed by the time the DoJ gets around even looking at the issue!
What would have happened if the US had waited three years before even beginning to respond to the attack on Pearl Harbor?
What would have happened if the US had waited until 1863 to even BEGIN responding to the attack on Fort Sumpter?
Your comment demonstrates my concern.
Well, we BEGAN to respond on January 7th. It turns out there is a grand jury regarding these events. You must appreciate how more critical it is than usual in this case to get every duck in a row before you make a move. The defendants still have their rights to pursue appeals and motions and this takes time. I’m not really sure what you expect more can be done more quickly that does not result in show trials and denial of due process. The 1/6 committee has become a subpoena factory (as have NY officials on separate matters) and there seems to be little appetite for backing down. Your Chicken Little act does nothing to advance the ball down the field either.
How much evidence has Steve Bannon turned over to anybody? Zero.
How much time has Steve Bannon spent in jail? Zero.
How much has Steve Bannon paid in fines or penalties? Zero
Steve Bannon’s case is the furthest along.
The grand jury you cite is consumed with rounding up hundreds or thousands of bit players with no power and no money.
The concerns I raise are not my “chicken little act” — they are being raised all over the political spectrum by a large and growing number of attorneys with deep experience in such matters.
A year is long enough.
The enemy has already sacked the Capitol — that happened a year ago. The enemy has already occupied multiple key states.
We need Ulysses S. Grant, and we’ve got George B. McClellan.
As much as the historian in me chuckled appreciatively at your comparison of Union generals, I still think your timeline expectations are too high. I fully expect Bannon to carry out his threat/promise to avail himself of every last possibly appeal, motion, delay, etc. A quick Google search notes he pled not guilty in November and a trial date was set for July 18th. That does try one’s patience I’ll admit, but I don’t know how it compares to other lag times. Keep in mind too that as good as it might feel to tar and feather him out of vengeance for what he has wrought, I believe the only charge is contempt of Congress, nothing violent or seditious.
Overall, these are very hard cases to make individually because even though the overall impact was outrageous each individual’s action was pretty minute. Some “just” trespassed in the Capitol building; some “just” vandalized; some “just” disrupted a Congressional proceeding; some “just” made verbal threats. I suspect many did multiple of the above and many got caught up in the moment and never intended to do anything other than rally on the Capitol grounds. As for Trump and his circle, they can easily argue they did nothing worse than typical rally speeches. Yes, they used metaphors that could be construed violently if taken literally, but the only comment that may have crossed the line is Giuliani’s suggestion for trial by combat. I am of course thankful that this event does not seem to have been a lot more violent including the use of firearms, but in some ways prosecutions would be a lot easier if it had. To be clear, I think there is still plenty of room for legal accountability, but you do have to follow the facts and the law, rather than emotion, in each case.
Please summarize any compelling national interest of supporting any Middle East nation-state — specifically including Israel.
Foreign aid keeps nations on our side and Israel in particular is the one stabilizing democratic country in that part of the world. Plus sometimes the direct national interest isn’t obvious, but it is still good to help a consistent friend and partner, particularly one that has to often still defend its very existence.
Quotes from West Wing S04E12 Guns and Butter – YouTube
The US addiction to fossil fuel is the only reason that “that part of the world” matters to the US. Any realistic effort to address climate change begins with curbing that addiction.
In the absence of a US addiction to fossil fuel, there is no reason for the US to care what happens there.
Israel has not behaved as “a consistent friend and partner” in at least a decade — certainly not since Mr. Netanyahu took power.
None of the things you mention strike me as being any sort of compelling national interest.
You took the words right off my keyboard. I would add that getting the Evangelical vote with regard for Israel for Republicans is a key reason as well. As far as getting the Jewish vote, I’m not so sure.
It needs to be said, especially for those of us not familiar with Evangelical dogma, that this faith tradition asserts that the Book of Revelations is literally true.
During my younger years, the run-up of nuclear weapons was often cited by right-wing religious extremists along with Revelations as a sign of the “end times”. These extremists believed that a nuclear holocaust would begin in Israel, and they fervently pursued subsidies for Israel and for our nuclear program in order to hasten these “end times”.
There is no love for Jews among the Evangelical community. Many of them regard Jews as “the crucifiers”. The widespread support for subsidizing Israel is viewed by many as providing a “homeland” so that Jews can be expelled from “real America”.
We should not forget that a similar movement to create a “black homeland” in Liberia during the first half of the 19th century was viewed as a solution to the “problem” of freed blacks in America — the movement that created “Liberia” existed to relocate freed blacks to Liberia.
The right wing and GOP has ALWAYS pandered to bigotry, racism, and superstition. The final “K” in the “KKK” stands for an epithet describing Jews (the middle stands for “Katholics”.
None of us should entertain any delusions about the nature of right-wing and Evangelical “support” for Israel.
These attitudes exemplify why today’s GOP is not deserving of respect from any civilized person.
The problem is that we tend to associate the word “extremist” with minorities and those without power. That was the case at one time with the Republican Party. Romney and Cheney were at the core while Greene and Boebert were the extremists on the fringe. Should the Republicans take control of the house in 2022, Romney and Cheney will be viewed by the party leaders as extremists.
There is always a reason to care what goes on in another part of the world, which has gotten metaphorically smaller over the years thanks to modern technology. I fully agree that for both security and environmental reasons we need to quit fossil fuels, but free, stable, and prosperous countries everywhere will always be within the realm of our interests and values. My foreign policy tends to be a cross of Presidents Wilson and Carter.
Jed Bartlet appoints Will Bailey as Deputy Communications Director – YouTube
Justifying a real-world policy with quotes from a TV show. This kind of makes the point that you don’t know the difference between fact and fiction.
I believed in the ideals of the show before I saw it, but use the clips because they articulate my views better than I could myself. Wilson and Carter of course also predate the show. In another clip I couldn’t find from the same episode about a Bartlet doctrine he points out that we as long as a missile launched from another part of the world can reach us, we better darn well care what happens there. Engaging the rest of the world supports both our interests and values.. I am disturbed by what I sense as an isolationist streak on this thread.
There is nothing “isolationist” about observing that a nuclear-capable Israel is every bit as much a threat to the US as a nuclear-capable Iran.
I’ve said, repeatedly, that the US should do all in its power to prevent North Korea, Iran, Syria, Libya, and similar rogue nations from becoming nuclear powers. There is absolutely nothing “isolationist” about that.
I include Israel in that list. That inclusion does not make me “isolationist”.
Nuclear Israel as much a threat to us as nuclear Iran – what, pray tell, are you smoking? Israel is far from perfect, but enough of the false equivalence already!
I might as well ask you the same question.
I think that an Israeli leader is as likely to launch a nuclear strike against Iran, Syria, Libya, or any other neighbor as North Korea is to launch a strike against the US.
Russia and China are just as committed to defending their client states as the US is to defending Israel. I think a nuclear strike against any ME state by Israel would very likely be followed by a nuclear strike against Israel at a minimum.
Once two volleys have been fired — Israel against Iran and then Russia against Israel — I think all bets are off.
There is no “limited nuclear exchange” in the modern world. If you think that a nuclear exchange such as I describe can occur in the middle east without significant blowback to the US, then you’re the one blowing dope.
I stand by my assertion that a nuclear-capable Israel is just as much a threat to the US as a nuclear-capable Iran.
I do not accept your premise about Israel being as likely to launch.
Really? When Benjamin Netanyahu publicly states that Israel “will do everything to prevent Iran from arming itself with a nuclear weapon” (https://www.jpost.com/middle-east/netanyahu-warns-that-israel-will-act-to-counter-iranian-nuclear-threat-669033), do you claim that Israel has taken its nuclear arsenal off the table?
How many actual attacks has North Korea launched against South Korea or Japan in the past decade? How many times have North Korean military operations destroyed targets in South Korea? Israel has been far more hostile towards Iran than NK has been towards SK.
The world is fortunate that cooler heads in Iran, Russia, and the US have so far managed to head off a nuclear confrontation between the two.
Your faith in Israel is misplaced.
I’m sorry if I’m not articulating it very well, but to me it is just so obvious that NK is more likely than Israel to launch an unprovoked attack. If we’re doing a count of actual instances, it’s zero all around (except of course for us in 1945).
“I can see you make a habit of missing the point” Walking Dead season 1
My own point is quite simple – Israel on balance good, others we’ve mentioned on balance bad.
To paraphrase Einstein — things should be as simple as possible and not more so.
You have oversimplified reality to the point of irrelevance.
ANY nuclear exchange puts the entire world at risk — it doesn’t matter who starts it and doesn’t matter who the target is.
Your overly simplistic reduction is dangerously naive.
I basically agree with “any nuclear exchange…”, but still feel we don’t have much leg to stand on as long as we keep ours (not that we should necessarily unilaterally disarm either).
And there it is in a nutshell. Christopher doesn’t want to hear anything bad about Israel because “Israel. . . good, others . . bad” And why does he think Israel good? Because he doesn’t want to hear anything bad about them.
When Christopher acts this way it’s just hem being silly. But when the whole government acts this way . . .well Hannah Arendt or Desmond Tutu could tell you what comes next.
Israel is good because it is democratic and not stuck in another century.
The US is failing that standard.
A substantial Supreme Court majority, with lifetime tenure, is imposing “originalism” on our entire legal system. That is the epitome of being stuck in another century — the 18th century.
The GOP is, as we speak, dismantling representative democracy in America with the full-throated and often violent support of tens of millions of Americans.
Our refusal to apply any discipline at all to ourselves and to our allies is part and parcel of the thread-starter.
Israel is not “good”, just as South Africa was not good, so long as Israel continues its brutal oppression of Palestinians.
If I were anyone except maybe a Palestinian I’d rather live in Israel than any other country in that part of the world. Comparing Israel to SA via use of the word “apartheid” is a little too Godwinesque for my tastes. I think I’d rather be a Palestinian in Israel than a black person in SA previously too. I really don’t understand the hate on this thread for such a strong ally, and the funny thing is in other contexts I’m the one who comes off as anti-Israel.
I agree we have our own house to clean first, but that may include nukes if we want any moral authority to deny them to others.
I sat 20 feet away from the late Desmond Tutu at All Saints Parish in Brookline twenty-odd years ago and heard him use exactly the same language to describe Israel’s behavior then. That was before the outrages of Mr. Netanyahu.
It was the focus of his entire homily.
Surely Mr. Tutu was more able to decide what is and is not “Godwinesque” than you or me.
I disagree with your characterization of this commentary as “hate”.
It appears to me that you have decided what you will and not hear about Israel — and you belittle and dismiss anything that differs from that.
There’s no need for you to speculate about what you would do if you were a black in SA or a Palestinian in the occupied territories — each group already speaks clearly for itself.
I encourage you to listen what people who know more about the situation than you are saying.
My own view of Israel can basically be summed up by the tag line of J Street – “pro-Israel, pro-peace”. I mostly agree with them except I’ve never been convinced two states are viable. I would have a single state with devolved powers for West Bank and Gaza. I believe that if Israel were serious about peace, they would stop building settlements and if they insist on the land then the people come with it with all rights of citizens.
This is the most chilling quotation I have heard all year, in a chilling year. We are in an imminent danger that is obvious to anyone familiar with authoritarianism and modern history.