The “Criticizing Israel Is Antisemitic” Narrative Reinforces Itself: Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix

The UN court ruling that Israel is an illegal occupying force will be used to argue that the whole entire world is against Jews and used to justify more abuses and atrocities. That’s the beauty of the “criticism of Israel is antisemitism” narrative: it reinforces itself. The more abusive and murderous Israel is the more criticism it gets, and that criticism is framed as antisemitism and used to justify more Israeli abuses and murderousness with the claim that it’s being done to defend Jews from a hostile world that’s out to get them.

This will happen over and over again until the lesson is learned. There is nothing — literally nothing — that Israel could do which could be criticized in a way that won’t be framed as discriminatory against the Jewish faith by supporters of the Zionist state. As long as the “criticism of Israel is antisemitism” narrative continues to have traction, it will be weaponized in this self-reinforcing feedback loop to justify more and more atrocities and abusiveness.

❖

The US presidential election drawing nearer means Democrats finally get to stop pretending to be sad and concerned about Gaza and go back to never thinking about US atrocities overseas. I bet it feels like releasing a long-held fart after your crush finally leaves the room.

❖

FYI if you’re a Trump supporter who started reading me for my criticisms of the Biden administration you are going to hate my guts after your guy gets in.

❖

It’s not okay to be a grown adult in the year 2024 and still believe that Trump is an opponent of the establishment. He spent four years advancing longstanding agendas of the US intelligence cartel, the US military-industrial complex, and the worst war sluts in Washington. The man is pure swamp.

One annoying effect of the assassination attempt has been to cement Trump’s deification in the eyes of his cultists and permanently frame him as an enemy of the deep state, despite his having spent his entire term advancing longstanding CIA/neocon agendas right in front of them. Initiating the pouring of weapons into Ukraine, shredding nuclear treaties and ramping up cold war escalations against Russia, arresting Assange, killing the Iran deal and nearly starting a war there, vetoing attempts to save Yemen from US-backed genocide, openly trying to stage a coup in Venezuela while deliberately starving the people who live there, bombing and sanctioning Syria, escalating against China, supporting all kinds of Israeli murderousness and criminality — these were all longtime goals of the nastiest hawks in Washington and the secretive government agencies in Virginia. But Trump supporters live in some kind of parallel reality where none of that happened and he’s helping Americans take back their country from the deep state.

There do appear to be empire managers who dislike Trump, but only because they view him as a poor steward of the empire for being very unsubtle about the things it does, like saying “we’re taking the oil” in Syria or having social media flame wars with Pyongyang. Really he could not have provided more publicly visible evidence that he’s fully aligned with the network of government agencies and plutocrats known collectively as the deep state over the four years of his presidency, but the power of narrative is so strong that that’s all completely invisible now.

❖

Trumpism is an essential component of US imperial narrative management at this point in history, because without it it would be way too obvious to way too many people that Washington is run by two parties that aren’t meaningfully different in terms of advancing agendas that people with real power actually care about. Trumpism, along with its mirror in the Bernie/AOC progressive Democrats, tricks Americans into thinking the electoral process still works and they really do have some degree of control over their country, so real revolutionary measures are not necessary. Sure there’s an “establishment” faction of your preferred party, but look! There’s also an exciting populist faction you can get behind!

And the whole thing’s pure bullshit. Trump will spend his next term advancing the longstanding agendas of the worst warmongering imperialists in Washington just like he did throughout his first term, and just as Biden has done throughout his. The actual mechanics of the empire have been deemed too important to be left to the will of the electorate, so measures have been put in place to ensure that the opposition is controlled — and so is the opposition to the controlled opposition. This is true in both so-called “populist” factions in both of the imperial parties.

Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley):

https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/the-criticizing-israel-is-antisemitic