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Jews Protested to Warn of American Fascism Rising. How Come Nobody Else Cared?
When America's Jews are Warning It's Happening Here, All Over Again…Maybe the Rest of Us Had Better Start Listening
I saw recently via my Twitter feed that Jews have been protesting this administration's barbaric "policies", en masse, across the country. Thousands of people, in more than fifty places. Many were arrested. Now, you probably haven't heard about that. Why not? Because establishment media didn't think it was worth covering much — if it covered it at all.
Wait — the entire American media establishment…didn't think Jews being alarmed enough…to warn of fascism rising again…that they protest en masse across the entire country is…kind of important? That it matters enough to make headlines? What the? Isn't that kind of ignorance-bordering-on-denial-verging-on-complicity…by the guardians of democracy…exactly what makes a society vulnerable to authoritarian fascist collapses, surges of hate, political destabilization…in the first place? Let's think about all this — it's meaning, it's urgency, and it's twisted irony.
It doesn't take a genius to figure out why Jews are protesting. America is now a country that has all the following things: Concentration camps, kids in cages in them, kids being tortured in those cages, after being separated from their families…after having their homes and workplaces "raided" by "law enforcement" agencies. I could go on, but you know the litany as well as I do.
For many Jews, I imagine, that raises clear parallels to the Holocaust. Not it's end, perhaps. But it's roots. It's beginnings. It's genesis. It resembles what the Nazis did to pervert, corrode, and savage German democracy — and turn law, government, culture, and society into a vessels of fascism. I'd bet if I was Jewish, I'd see pretty clear, alarming, shocking, disturbing, and horrific parallels to historic fascism, from dehumanization, to demonization, to politically sanctioned persecution of unpeople, to institutions of collective violence against those considered subhuman, to the capture of the state by hardcore supremacists. I'd see history repeating itself — or at least beginning to.
I can't speak for Jews. I'm not a Jew. Go ahead and tell me I'm all wrong. Yet reading my Twitter feed, I saw comments — I paraphrase — that went something like this. "My parents said all this reminded them of the Gestapo and the SS." "These camps are beginning to remind my elders of the ones they survived." "My grandparents are warning that this is just how Nazism rose." My God — supremacists are killing people on the streets — just like they did before the atrocities began." "We can never let this happen again." "It's happening here — right in front of our eyes." It's true that I use the word "fascism" more freely, less cautiously, than they did — but I want to cut to the heart of the matter.
We should and must take it very, very seriously — lethally seriously — when a historically persecuted minority warns us that our society is becoming something ugly, dangerous, and violent. That we are now plummeting into the depths of a kind of abyss. That "it" is happening here, and it is the real thing. We should all pause and reflect on it, with the utmost concern. Why? Not just because we value and treasure them as equals — I'll come to that part.
Because they would know best, my friends. They are the ones with primary experience, with first-hand knowledge, with direct and lived suffering. They can therefore see, feel, and know things that the rest of us cannot. Who would know better if genuine fascism was rising again than…the Jews? It's so absurd it's almost a punchline. Who'd be better equipped to warn us of it? To see it first and best? It doesn't take a genius to see that much. Wait — so how come we don't?
Persecuted minorities, having been historically traumatized, feel the future long before the rest of us do. They feel it in dread, anxiety, despair, shock. They feel it deep down in their bones. They don't need statistics and charts to tell them what's coming. And that's precisely the point. Their intuition is much, much stronger than the pundits' (bad) logic. How many American establishment pundits got a single detail of Trumpism right? None of them. All of them dismissed camps, raids, all the various horrors we see today…just a few short years ago…as impossibilities, jokes. So who should we be listening today…if we want to understand the future…pundits who are perpetually wrong…or the persecuted?
That's true in a broader context. In Islamic societies that went fascist, it was the Christians and the Jews who should have been heard. In China today, it's Muslims. In Africa, it's different ethnic minorities who have long been divided and conquered. The point is that a society must — must listen — to its persecuted minorities. A society that cannot do so is one that adds greatly to its risk of collapse. Minorities, especially persecuted ones, serve a vital but unseen function in democracies — they are the alarms to be heard in times of crisis.
There's an organizational theory that helps make sense of all this, if you need one. The theory of weak signals, coming from the edges. It's the outsiders in a society, those at its edges, who have the most sensitive antennae for change. For transformation and upheaval. It's the person closest to the waves who can see the waters of the tsunami recede.
But his weak signal — he is just a lone voice — must be heard, carried, and amplified, all the way down to the town, city, and village. People must cry: "The man on the beach says there is a tsunami coming!" Then preparations can be made. Lives can be saved. But if the weak signal from the edge is not amplified — who is ready for the flood?
Now, Jews are doing their job as members of a civilized society — which is standing against fascism, and warning the rest of us of its dangers. I admire them and respect them immensely for that. It takes real bravery, wisdom, the courage to confront a difficult truth. No, not every Jew — let's be adults. Just enough of them to protest across the country. Enough of them, at least, to make a ripple. But do you know who's failing? The rest of us.
The establishment media's failing to pick up their weak signals, and amplify them, so the rest of us take the idea of a fascist collapse seriously. They are completely cowed, broken, intimidated. Have you noticed how not a single public figure — not one, apart from AOC — will say the words "concentration camp"? But when the nation's Jews are protesting because the camps are beginning to remind of very real, historical concentration camps where atrocities were eventually committed…who's the brave one, who's the one unafraid to tell the truth…and who's too cowardly and weak and arrogant to hear it?
It's often said, incidentally, by "white nationalists" that America's media is "run by Jews." Of course it's not. In point of fact, America's media is more like 4am at a frat-party…of unwitting white supremacy. Even the good guys are unknowingly captured by the norms and attitudes of white supremacy. That is why they can't call fascism fascism, or concentration camps concentration camps — why they can't tell basic truths. It would offend white elites — and that is the greatest tell of all that America's media, because it still happily complies with old, ingrained racist norms, isn't fit for fighting fascism. That is why Jake Tapper can put (actual) Nazis on CNN — but has never once interviewed the last surviving Nuremberg Prosecutor, who says that these are indeed crimes against humanity.
(Is that just ignorance? Is it just arrogance? Or is it fair to say that's racism — even if it's not knowingly intentional? Jake probably isn't a racist. But he's not exactly acting much differently from one, either. If we asked a hardcore supremacist to choose between putting a Nazi on, or the last Nuremberg Prosecutor…he'd make exactly the same choice that CNN does, over and over again. Do you see my point? So how can a corroded, captured, functionally racist media…fight fascism? But what other kind of media won't cover Jews protesting a nation with camps, raids, "family separations" (which are an actual form of genocide"), and supremacist massacres? It must by definition be racist…unless it's on another planet. Isn't one proof of the other?)
I'm sorry to have to say all that — Americans hate it when I do. But they are going to have to think about all this much more clearly if they want to keep a democracy. A media that won't cover Jews warning en masse of rising fascism is a media that isn't worthy of the airwaves it's entrusted with. It is a disgrace and a failure both. It is a shocking abdication of the most basic responsibility.
Who else is failing, though? You didn't have to hear about the protests on CNN or MSNBC. I heard about them on Twitter. What I didn't see, though, was the average American — which is to say the white, black, Hispanic, or Muslim American — caring very much. The average American didn't do the job of amplifying weak signals, either. Why not? What does that tell us? Is the average American that dull, too? Is he, just like the media, happy to comply with the toxic norms that are now ripping his society apart? "Who cares if the Jews are protesting! What would they know about fascism!" Oh, wait. Maybe a lot.
And that is a problem, my friends. Americans don't seem to understand exactly what their persecuted minorities are trying to warn them about. That they cannot be a silent majority anymore.
Their first job to listen. Then it is their second job to speak out. And it is their third job to oppose. Let me break those down. To listen: to hear the voices of persecuted peoples who have gone through exactly such cycles in history before. They are the ones who know best what is coming. If they are not heard — what power does a society have to think, anticipate, know? To speak out: once the signal is heard, it must be amplified. "The Jews say this is rising fascism. They would know. We had better take it seriously." A million people saying that, every day. Why aren't they? To oppose: to turn all those warnings into a genuine political opposition, that doesn't just culturally "resist" the bad guys — but actively works to remove them from power.
Why don't the Dems impeach? Well, partly, because there's not enough of a sense of urgency or gravity. But there's not enough of a sense of urgency or gravity precisely because Americans aren't listening to persecuted minorities like Jews who are beginning to warn them they are on the path of fascism now. And Americans aren't listening in large part because their media — like their society — still operates according to racist and supremacist norms, that even the "good Americans", much like the good Germans, unwittingly behave according to.
Jews are doing their job as citizens of democracy, as social actors, as members of society. The rest of us, though, are not. We are failing badly at the task before us, which is to destroy the fascist forces rising in our society, smash them to bits, once and for all, so that they never rise again. Not with violence — just with decency, humanity, courage, and truth. That is what this fight needs most. Is it time that we began to learn the lesson?
Umair
August 2019
WRITTEN BY
vampire.
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