As the authoritarian liberal political class has dedicated itself to neo-liberalsim, warmongering, and genocide any other policies have become irrelevant.
Paweł Mościcki is a professor at the Institute of Literary Research of the Polish Academy of Sciences, the author of numerous books and a blog: pawelmoscicki.net
The “lesser of two evils” has long been the dominant currency in contemporary political discourse. According to this unofficial (although stronger than many official) doctrine, within the framework of the best possible system (read: liberal democracy) political action should be limited to preventing greater evil by opting for a lesser one. It is better to slide into the abyss slowly than to find yourself at the bottom right away the argument goes in every election cycle. This is the perspective that the liberal political imagination offers us since its origins as Jean-Claude Michea explains in his book The Empire of the Lesser Evil.
It is no revelation that the dynamic triggered by the lesser of two evils agenda quickly becomes a slippery slope if it is not a tool to limit political alternatives altogether. Its main effect is that what is a lesser evil today was not even on the horizon of radical evil yesterday. Before we knew it, the “leftists” had become true native speakers of the neoconservative discourse in international politics, surpassing their former enemies or yesterday’s tactical allies in this moralistic hypocrisy. And today the radical evil against which we must again build a common fortress – devoid of any particular political idea other than the preservation of the system itself – is openly fascist, and the entire liberal mainstream will be the first to offer them cooperation.
In this mad spiral of political decay, we have now reached the stage where – as was the case during the last US election – we are looking for an alliance with the “lesser of two genocides”. This was the rhetoric of the Democratic Party, or rather of some of its supporters, who decided to reward Kamala Harris with the presidency for the Biden administration’s active complicity in the systematic destruction of Gaza. The argument, of course, was that Donald Trump would be even worse. What do you call a political system that leads to such debates?
In my opinion, the discussion about the “lesser of two genocides” in Gaza proves the structural impotence of the liberal order. Donald Trump recently announced and just now supported this vision with astonishing AI generated film footage that he intends to improve the condition of the Palestinians from Gaza by carrying out ethnic cleansing and to build the Riviera of the Middle East in the area they vacate, a luxury seaside resort offering new investment opportunities from tourism to the mining industry. He also invited Benjamin Netanyahu for a visit of several days and expressed his full support for his cabinet. For the record, it is worth mentioning that he had previously insisted on a ceasefire and the exchange of prisoners with Hamas. However, looking at the composition of the new administration it is hard not to get the impression that the temporary break in the killing of Palestinians will not last long.
This brings us to an interesting paradox of the current situation. Regardless of Trump’s truly dark perspectives on Palestine, for the time being he has said scandalous things, while his predecessors have actually done them, falsely claiming that they are striving for peace. However, it was Trump’s statements that had much wider global repercussions and were the topic of the news cycle for several days. The funding, support and protection of the genocide of the people of Gaza by the Biden administration has never been met with such unequivocal and widespread outrage in the mainstream. In my opinion, this shows two things. Firstly, the liberal public in the West has almost entirely become partisan and will distort even its own judgments as soon as someone from the opposition makes a similar statement. Even if the criticism is justified – because it is – its main purpose is to whitewash the predecessors, who at the moment have incomparably more blood on their hands.
Secondly, the deeper problem that this glaring disproportion in reactions reveals is the increasing detachment from reality in our information spaces. The ethos they promote is that words are more important than actions, and ethical issues are also decided according to this hierarchy. This leads to a dramatic imbalance, which we also observe when a single statement causes more outrage than years of real physical repression or mass murder. Since today all representatives of the “free world” are watching over the genocide in Gaza, it is no surprise that liberalism will reveal its next repressive aspect: it is the exposure of a crime, not its commission, that will be punished most severely.
But maybe it is possible to look at it from a different perspective and say: even though the Democrats allow the destruction of Gaza (or rather, they destroy it together with Israel), they still maintain a symbolic remnant of the Palestinians’ dignity by pretending to try to ease their suffering. This way, the Palestinian issue is not completely buried yet. However, there are two problems with this argument. First of all, the Democrats also torpedoed all UN resolutions on the rights of Palestinians or the recognition of crimes committed by the IDF, and actively repressed those who stood up for these rights. The fact that Trump can and probably will do so just as decisively does not change the essence of the matter. Secondly, Trump’s team is also taking care of this “symbolic remnant” in its own way. After all, Elise Stefanik, the new US ambassador to the United Nations, mentioned that “Palestinians deserve so much more… than Hamas”. When presenting his Middle East Riviera plan, the new president also emphasized the need to rebuild Gaza by the current suffering of the Palestinians. He did sit next to the perpetrator of this suffering, but that’s another story.
Besides, in the symbolic sphere – as in the practical one – both parties are primarily concerned with the total primacy of Israel and Zionist ideology. There is one more argument: how could those who could not or did not want to oppose the “lesser” evil (Biden) effectively and sincerely oppose the “greater” evil (Trump)? How can one claim that the movement against phase two is building up, while rewarding the politicians responsible for the first phase of the destruction of Gaza with a seat in the cabinet? After all, the two phases follow on from each other logically, as they are a function of the same Israeli policy towards the territory, which it considers to be simply its own with increasing arrogance.
Trump may be practicing the politics of the “purer evil” here, as opposed to the earlier evil of the Democrats, which could be called “mixed” or “diluted”. This is not a value judgment, but rather an indication of a difference in style. There can be no doubt that his administration intends to give all of Palestine to Israel. Elise Stefanik openly admitted during her Senate hearings that Israel has a biblical right to all of what Zionist extremists call “Judea and Samaria”. Trump has long been upfront about what he intends to do, while his predecessors have vowed that they are not doing what they are actually doing. This difference goes back to Trump’s previous term and is one of the reasons for the establishment’s dislike of him. For example, he could shamelessly announce at a press conference that US were in Syria “for the oil”, while the Democrats and Republicans were still playing the democracy and human rights card. And tried to hide even the fact that US troops were occupying the territory of a foreign country. The problem with him was not that he lied, but that he sometimes told the truth. And he did more or less the same thing as his predecessors.
Trump also seems to have a better understanding of the focus of the system he is operating in, as demonstrated by the clip presenting his vision of a “solution to the Palestinian question”. Whereas for over a year we watched Gaza being almost completely destroyed by the Israeli war machine, we are now presented with a picture of idyllic genocide in which the Palestinians, finally driven out of their land, return (perhaps as phantoms) to the new Dubai, where there is nothing left but shopping malls and resorts, with dollars falling from the sky and the city dotted with golden statues of Big Donald. This image is the ultimate combination of utopia and monstrosity, wrapped up in the aesthetics of a tourist advertising spot. There is no crime that cannot be sold as a business opportunity today. There is no evil that will not soon become a lucrative offer of a new experience, a quick buck or a luxurious vacation. Compared to this Biden was relatively old-fashioned in this respect, emphasizing mainly the ideological dimension of the US’s compulsory solidarity with Israel.
With the advent of Donald Trump’s rule, things seem to be getting simpler. We know what will happen and how. His own statements on the fate of the Palestinians – reinforced by the achievements of almost his entire entourage – leave no illusions. Therefore, the worst thing one can do now is to miss the chance to stand equally simply and clearly against this evil. Without looking for its weaker form, a light version, which will soon prove to be almost indistinguishable from today’s full version. Maybe it’s better to have a clear enemy than false friends? And thus confront evil instead of taking its side in the illusion that it might be a lesser one?
Let’s imagine what would happen if, with each new cycle of this infernal machine, we did not choose the lesser of two evils, but some kind of consistent alternative? Maybe it would not be the dominant one today, but at least – “at least” indeed – it would be a real one