I took a liberty with the Subject line here but it goes to the point that we have a political movement and now an incoming administration adhering to that ideology, National Conservatism, with their various media platforms promoting the Movement and its politicians, to include Trump, Vance, Ramaswamy, DeSantis, et al., or, the "New Right" as Koch-funded Quincy Institute and The American Conservative magazine refers to them as, which doesn't provide "tacit consent" to Israeli genocide, but "explicit consent," as can be heard at the links below. "Finish the Job," as Trump and Vance put it, with at least acquiescence to that by silence of their supporters. As can be said as well to the fascist movement that National Conservatism fits the definition of. I don't blame the NatCons chief ideologue Yoram Hazony for bringing fascism to America, it was gestating in the U.S. ideologically since Bill Buckley, James Burnham, Frank Meyer, and their principal political theorist Willmoore Kendall, began propagating it under the guise of "Conservatism" (Thought Control Conservatives as they were correctly called, or "Fascists") with their political warfare platform National Review magazine. With that variety of "Conservatism" now propagated as "Traditional Conservatism" by that ideology's current media platform, TAC, incessantly promoting the "Founders."
BLUF: "But Paxton won't leave us alone. Citing the German people's silence in the face of Kristallnacht, he wrote that if we can manage to understand the failure of the legal system, civil and religious authorities and the civic opposition to stop Hitler in November 1938, then we'll begin to understand the broad circle of tacit consent, both individual and institutional, within which a militant minority was able to sufficiently free itself from all restraint to allow itself to commit genocide in a cultured, sophisticated country."
While walking in Avignon today, I encountered this, as evidence that not everyone is complicit in genocide. But this viewpoint is totally absent in National Conservatism whose chief ideologues, Yoram Hazony and TAC magazine lend all out support to the Israeli fascist Settler Coalition they're allied with, to be blunt, and honest, with this list's own acquiescence by silence to the NatCons seemingly "tacit consent" as well, to what the NatCons stand in solidarity with, sorry to say, and "None Dare Call Them Fascists!"
What's happening to the unfortunate people in the Gaza Strip is truly woeful.
It's genuinely heartbreaking – young children dying of cold, wounded people with amputated limbs because of a shortage in drugs or medical specialists, mothers chasing food trucks and being thrown to the ground, elderly people whose tents have been torn or blown away, overflowing sewage, cancer patients dying because they can't leave for Egyptian hospitals.
And Gaza's hospitals – have you seen what has become of the hospitals there? It's tragic.
But what do we have to do with all that? We're just "ordinary people," the "uninvolved." Yes, we're interested, of course we are.
We read the articles in Haaretz about the UN reports detailing how many people have been killed and wounded in Gaza. We know how many aid trucks have entered and how many haven't. A few of us even make the effort to watch broadcasts by foreign networks like Sky News and CNN that show how much destruction and suffering there is in Gaza.
But our horizons are broad, and our curiosity is never satisfied. Have you seen what's happened in Mayotte? The thousands of people killed by that terrible cyclone and the scale of the destruction?
Or the terrible humanitarian disaster in Sudan? We're even up to date on the horrible situation in Burkina Faso. Yes, indeed, some five million people there need humanitarian aid.
True, Gaza is our responsibility, and it's our military that is perpetrating pogroms there. People say it is even committing war crimes. And it's true that our government is the one giving it the orders on how to wreak havoc.
An Israeli strike in a residential area in the Tuffah neighbourhood, east of Gaza City, on Thursday.Credit: Omar Al-Qattaa/AFP
But what can we, the ordinary people, do? And why are people threatening that the disaster in Gaza will haunt us for generations? Where do they get the nerve to warn us that we are losing our values, our morality? That there will be a historical reckoning? No, they can't make us "collateral damage" of the destruction of Gaza.
A well-known scholar of fascism, Robert Paxton, wrote in his book "The Anatomy of Fascism" that fascist movements can never arise without the help of ordinary people, even good people.
Fascism could not amass power without the traditional elites turning a blind eye or even actively consenting – national leaders, party leaders and senior government officials, as well as judges, police officers, military officers and businessmen.
But to fully understand how fascist regimes work, he continued, it's necessary to descend to the level of ordinary people and examine the banal choices they make in their everyday lives.
It's inconceivable that those words could be directed at us. After all, nobody is entitled to accuse us, "the good ones" – the liberals, the ones with values, the educated, the enlightened, the peace seekers, the ones who believe in a two-state solution, the self-proclaimed leftists – of liking this government or of agreeing with its evil ways.
We loathe ministers Itamar Ben-Gvir, Bezalel Smotrich, Shlomo Karhi and, especially, Yariv Levin. We aren't too excited about Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, either. And just look at how much fury we've spewed at his despicable wife.
But that's how things are in a democracy. And even if, under its auspices, war crimes and genocide are being committed, we must follow the rules. "We will do and obey," as the biblical verse says. Otherwise, to quote another biblical verse, "Whither shall we go?"
And what do they want from us, anyway? That we go out into the streets to demand that the military stop killing terrorists? After all, we haven't even taken to the streets for the sake of freeing the hostages; we've made do with wearing a yellow ribbon. And besides, it's rainy and cold out.
Israelis protest against the government in Tel Aviv, Israel on Saturday.Credit: Kai Pfaffenbach/Reuters
But Paxton won't leave us alone. Citing the German people's silence in the face of Kristallnacht, he wrote that if we can manage to understand the failure of the legal system, civil and religious authorities and the civic opposition to stop Hitler in November 1938, then we'll begin to understand the broad circle of tacit consent, both individual and institutional, within which a militant minority was able to sufficiently free itself from all restraint to allow itself to commit genocide in a cultured, sophisticated country.
But obviously, there's no comparison. In Israel, of course, there is no militant minority that has shaken off all restraints to commit genocide.
