[Salon] Netanyahu and Ben-Gvir Complain About the 'Deep State.' It Turns Out They're Running It - Israel News - Haaretz.com

[Todd Pierce <todd.e.pierce@icloud.com>]

"On Fascism" 

I believe I am the only person on this list who actually served in a fascist legal system, appearing in its "Court," the Military tribunals at Guantanamo. As a Defense Attorney I hasten to add. As part of that representation, I already knew from reading astute observers of it beforehand that it operated on the same legal theory of the German People's Courts, under the fascist legal theory articulated by Carl Schmitt. With the fascist Schmitt much in favor by the New Right/National Conservatives today, and the Traditional Conservatives Buckley, Burnham, and Kendall from even before WW II (Buckley's fascist pilgrimage to Italy with his "America First" father and family in 1939, Burnham as Orwell writes below). 

On Burnham, we have no less an authority than Orwell himself identifying Burnham as a fascist, or as Burnham called the variety he favored and promoted as Conservatism, "Managerialism," as Orwell wrote here: 

https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwell/essays-and-other-works/second-thoughts-on-james-burnham/

Orwell Quote:  "In both books, but especially the earlier one, there is a note of unmistakable relish over the cruelty and wickedness of the processes that are being discussed. Although he reiterates that he is merely setting forth the facts and not stating his own preferences, it is clear that Burnham is fascinated by the spectacle of power, and that his sympathies were with Germany so long as Germany appeared to be winning the war.

. . . 

"The slogans of democracy and national self-determination, he says, no longer have any mass appeal: ‘managerialism’, on the other hand, can rouse enthusiasm, produce intelligible war aims, establish fifth columns everywhere, and inspire its soldiers with a fanatical morale. The ‘fanaticism’ of the Germans, as against the ‘apathy’ or ‘indifference’ of the British, French, etc., is much emphasized, and Nazism is represented as a revolutionary force sweeping across Europe and spreading its philosophy ‘by contagion’. The Nazi fifth columns ‘cannot be wiped out’, and the democratic nations are quite incapable of projecting any settlement which the German or other European masses would prefer to the New Order. In any case, the democracies can only defeat Germany if they go ‘still further along the managerial road than Germany has yet gone’.

Establishing the fascist ideology "Managerialism," epitomized in the Military Industrial Complex the Conservative Movement propagated for by Buckley, Burnham, and Kendall as its main ideologists until they died, and did so much to create as its propagandists in waging a "Kulturkampf" against the American people to embed ultra-militarism in our collective consciousness (see attached Word file below), was a lifelong pursuit by these three "closet (barely) fascists. Now we see their efforts culminating in Trumpism, as the "Capstone" of the fascist foundation B, B, & K, and other Conservatives built,  as Traditional Conservatives boast of. With another panegyric for one of them, Burnham, now out soon, like the previous one out for Kendall a couple years ago. Someone seems to have an interested in "sanitizing" them to legitimize their fascist political theory, for whose benefit? 

Rather than kicking back in retirement after my Guantanamo exposure to fascism, I set out to research and learn more about fascism, leading me to a M.A. in Politics where Hannah Arendt had taught, (with a capital-T) The New School. I attended the final seminar taught by a one-time colleague of hers, and wrote my final paper for him on "The Origins of Totalitarianism." That went with all my undergraduate studies of totalitarianism and totalitarian regimes, which helped me immediately recognize the U.S. Military Commissions as a totalitarian system. With that fascist system "one more brick in the wall," in building what Trump is now bringing to its final form, as it's Capstone, as had so vigorously been called for by Willmoore Kendall as "Majoritarian Democracy," with this a good explanation of that: 

http://rousseaustudies.free.fr/ReeditionTalmon.htm

BLUF: "The essential difference between the two schools of democratic thought as they have evolved is not, as is often alleged, in the affirmation of the value of liberty by one, and its denial by the other. It is in their different attitudes to politics. The liberal approach assumes politics to be a matter of trial and error, and regards political systems as pragmatic contrivances of human ingenuity and spontaneity. It also recognizes a variety of levels of personal and collective endeavour, which are altogether outside the sphere of politics. The totalitarian democratic school, on the other hand, is based upon the assumption of a sole and exclusive truth in politics. It may be called political Messianism in the sense that it postulates a preordained, harmonious and perfect scheme of things, to which men are irresistibly driven, and at which they are bound to arrive. It recognizes ultimately only one plane of existence, the political. It widens the scope of politics to embrace the whole of human existence. It treats all human thought and action as having social significance, and therefore as falling within the orbit of political action. Its political ideas are not a set of pragmatic precepts or a body of devices applicable to a special branch of human endeavour. They are an integral part of an all-embracing and coherent philosophy. Politics is defined as the art of applying this philosophy to the organization of society, and the final purpose of politics is only achieved when this philosophy reigns supreme over all fields of life."

Traditional Conservative Willmoore Kendall as a Rousseauist (take it it up with Claes Ryn, who acknowledged that, though not criticizing it in celebrating Kendall as a Conservative), can be seen Kendall's own Totalitarian Democracy ideology that he called Majoritarian Democracy: https://theimaginativeconservative.org/2016/05/willmoore-kendall-john-locke.html

Quote: "After close textual analysis of this classic, Kendall challenged the conventional interpretation of Locke. Rather than a thinker wedded to notions of transcendent abstract natural rights and discrete individualism, Kendall found an exponent of absolute majoritarianism, who contended that the individual had only those rights which society, through the political majority, wished to bestow upon him. The nature and form of those rights will depend upon social needs as defined by society. Thus, individual rights are functional and changeable, not abstract and absolute.

. . .

"In sum, Kendall’s Locke turned out to be the majority-rule democrat, and the majority had unlimited political power."

That defines Kendall's political theory to a T, as can be seen in this article about Kendall and Vietnam war resisters below: 

https://theimaginativeconservative.org/2016/05/willmoore-kendall-john-locke.html

Here is Kendall applauding Rousseau's political theory, and Leo Strauss's: 

Attachment: Kendall- Intro-The Government of Poland.pdf
Description: Adobe PDF document

BLUF:  "But this can be 'accomplished' only by making the Poles into a tightly closed society with respect to the influence of other European regimes; and, above all, it can only be accomplished if the Poles are made to become so dependent upon one another, that they come to feel they cannot exist apart from their unique politidtl life. In this way the Polish citizen can be imbued with a sense of piety towards his native land and be made to feel a heathy repugnance for the cosmopolitan habits of the de­generate modern European. The Rousseau of the Poland seems simply to identify patriotism with virtue; consequently, he feels that to raise the souls of Polish citizens to dignity of ancient virtue it is sufficient merely to diminish personal indi­viduality by inculcating in the Poles an all-consuming devotion to the political order. Furthermore, it is Rousseau's contention that freedom is intimately connected with the kind of virtue he is describing in the Poland; and thus, somehow, true liberty is to be achieved only through the form of total government which he is proposing."

All of Willmoore Kendall's political theory goes to that same goal of "total government," especially the suppression of free speech. And with all the promotion of these Traditional Conservative fascist political theorists on this email list, not a peep was heard in objection to using this email list as a fascist propaganda platform. But for anyone with time on their hands who want to understand better the Joint Fascism of Israel and the US, and the "Perception Management" tools used to instill it in our consciousness, here is a beginning: 

Attachment: Guantanamo at 10.pdf
Description: Adobe PDF document

Attachment: I THE LEGAL HISTORY OF THE DUAL STATE.pdf
Description: Adobe PDF document

Attachment: I The Prerogative State .pdf
Description: Adobe PDF document

Attachment: Pages from The Cognitive Campaign- Strategic and Intelligence Perspectives.docx
Description: application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.wordprocessingml.document

Attachment: Machiavelli and Fascism.pdf
Description: Adobe PDF document

Attachment: An Ethnography of Nazi Law- The Intellectual Foundations of Ernst Fraenkel’s Theory of Dictatorship.pdf
Description: Adobe PDF document

         

This is not a hospitable email list for anyone who does a deeper political analysis than the infantile two-party bifurcation we love so well as Americans, but instead, analyzes the "political theory" manifested in all political movements. Especially when it's revealing of fascist thought in our own favored ideology. 

I have said here for years that Trump was not "fighting the Deep State, and the MIC "Blob," but merely installing his own people in it, with loyalty due only to him as The Leader (Der Fuhrer or Il Duce in the original languages of Fascism), and definitely not to the Constitution. Now we have the "Venture Capital Military Data Industrial Complex" of Musk, Thiel, Ramaswamy, Luckey, Koch, Sacks, et al.,  and fanatical ideologues running the State under the Doctrine of “Everything for the Fascist Oligarchs, nothing forbidden to the Fascist Oligarchs, nothing against the Fascist Oligarchs.”

With that under the banner of, take your pick, Libertarianism, Traditional Conservatism, or National Conservatism, with all three combined as Trumpism, as a combination of Fascist Conservatism (of B, B, & K, and Yoram Hazony) and Libertarianism of Koch. 

And now we're going to be sold even more the fascism of James Burnham, as we have been with so much of Willmoore Kendall. And all but me I think will "eat it with a spoon," or at least acquiesce by silence to it. 

Tom Pauken

@TomPauken

Terrific. I am glad that Burnham is getting greater attention. I read his book, "The Suicide of the West when I was a young conservative and was very impressed.

https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2024-12-03/ty-article/.premium/netanyahu-and-ben-gvir-complain-about-the-deep-state-it-turns-out-theyre-running-it/00000193-8d69-d3dc-a5bb-8d7bb8c20000

Netanyahu and Ben-Gvir Complain About the 'Deep State.' It Turns Out They're Running It - Israel News - Haaretz.com

Gidi WeitzDec 3, 2024

Benjamin Netanyahu and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir often complain about the "deep state" – officials allegedly working covertly to thwart politicians they don't like, against the will of the people. The criminal affairs uncovered in recent weeks show that this is projection.

It turns out that the two strongest politicians in the country – one on trial and the second a serial offender – have themselves established secret cells whose members undermine the law and the public interest for their masters' political and personal interests.

Police official Avishai Mualem at the Jerusalem District Court on Monday.Credit: Noam Revkin-Fenton

The Eli Feldstein affair shows that the prime minister has confidants who are passing on the military's most highly classified documents for him. The goal is to sabotage the battle to rescue the hostages from the hell of the Hamas tunnels.

The affair plaguing prison service chief Kobi Yaakobi and a senior police official in the West Bank, Avishai Mualem, is still shrouded in secrecy, but it's another stage in the hostile takeover of the police by the national security minister. Ben-Gvir is turning the force into a political militia of his Otzma Yehudit party. (And in its free time, it's acting in the service of the Netanyahus.)

• Senior police, prison officials close to Israel's Ben-Gvir suspected of ethics violations
• Netanyahu is certain there's no one left to oppose his plans. Only the public can stop him
• Israel's High Court must find the courage to order Netanyahu to fire Ben-Gvir

Yaakobi and Mualem have stood out in their enthusiasm for implementing the minister's agenda, one of whose main planks is to turn a blind eye to Jewish terror and to be lenient to anyone undergoing legal proceedings.

The speed with which the police have fallen hasn't surprised anyone on the inside who saw how the rot was spreading. After all, it hasn't been too long since several senior officials resigned from the force after using their uniforms and their ranks to force themselves on policewomen.

Israel Prison Service chief Kobi Yaakobi at a committee meeting in the Knesset last week.Credit: Olivier Fitoussi

Senior officers have been motivated for years not by a sense of mission but by blatant careerism, a phenomenon that has reached new heights under the leadership of Ben-Gvir and his chief of staff, Hanamel Dorfman. The condition for promotion is loyalty to the minister, even at the price of crossing red lines.

Anyone who saw a failing regional commander, Danny Levy, become police commissioner by embarrassing flattery of the boss and violence against demonstrators got the message and behaved accordingly.

The Justice Ministry unit that investigates police misconduct has also fallen captive. The affair involving attorney Ronel Fisher nearly a decade ago made clear that even a senior official in the police's Lahav 433 anti-corruption unit is for sale, and several crime organizations kept officials on their payroll who were supposed to investigate them. Today the unit is headed by Boaz Balat, another Ben-Gvir appointment.

People who for years have been battling government corruption say that the situation has never been so bad. Some officials "don't want to go near those areas," one source told Haaretz. "They apparently know where their bread is buttered."

The affair of Yaakobi and Mualem is being investigated by the unit that investigates police misconduct, and the Feldstein investigation is being led by the Shin Bet security service.

Ben-Gvir reacted to the investigations against his associates the way Netanyahu reacted when his people were investigated – by attacking the attorney general and threatening to oust her. If they really intend to act, they better do it quickly. Because even during this dark hour, their chances of getting Baharav-Miara out of the way look slim.

It's hard to believe that the Supreme Court will allow the suspects' patrons – who could become suspects themselves once again – to dismiss the attorney general. And if the justices fear for the fate of Israeli democracy and see their role as a tool to rescue the country from the abyss, they have a historic opportunity to do the ethical thing. They can grant the petitions placed before them and force Netanyahu to oust Ben-Gvir.