You could get rid of both Biden and Trump, whoever replaced them would be beholden to the same imperial corporate interests and be just as vile with their policies.
You could do Putin or Zelenskyy in, and another capitalist oligarch would just take their places.
If Netanyahu disappeared tomorrow, Israel has plenty of genocidal politicians ready to fill his boots.
The real world isn’t a Marvel movie, there is no single “ultimate bad guy” to rally against. The entire systems of these places need to be overcome.
Good post, I get worried hearing libs, or Israeli people, complain about Netenyahu; it’s a distraction from the root issue. Like Derek Chauvin being convicted, it’s good that he had some consequences but it legitimizes the system that enables the murder. Netenyahu gets ousted, new elections in Israel, and libs will say “look at that, he was bad and they kicked him out, Israel is a bastion of freedom and democracy!”
All of Israeli society has been kinda gearing up to scapegoat Netanyahu the instant they decide that they’ve killed enough Palestinians and finished building their double border wall.
Yes, that is why Biden going out of his way for Netanyahu is so insane.
Biden could send Netanyahu to the ICC, offload all the bad decisions on him. Then replace Netanyahu with whoever is next in line and continue the genocide without pausing for even a second.
I think perhaps one of the unspoken goals here is that Israel be beyond reproach; he doesn’t necessarily care about Netanyahu, but instead cares that Israel be absolutely beyond the criticisms that are traditionally only levied against non-Western countries.
Also if the Israeli government was condemned wholly or in general for genocide, it would put them in the public consciousness in the same area as all the countries we’re taught to hate and to shrug when violent war comes to their shores.
He can still point to Bibi for now and have that straw man. Even though Bibi wants a republican, it’s so foolish however it’s sliced.
good post !
I have noticed various media outlets for months now scapegoating ol’ Bibi like the entire colonialist zionist project isn’t the problem
Bibi emerged fully formed and King of Israel in 1948 in the minds of the zionist apologists
Only because he’s unpopular (to an extent) in Israel; I’m doubtful they’d do the same if he was extremely popular.
He’s unpopular on polls and yet him and Likud constantly win elections.
Also don’t forget that he’s not unpopular for good reasons. He’s unpopular because he’s getting blame for Oct 7, not making Israelis feel 100% safe since then, and not being genocidal enough in Gaza.
This is a consistent pattern in Israel’s political history.
Golda Meir, the then-Prime Minister of Israel and a Ukrainian-American-British Palestinian so-called “socialist” (don’t laugh), coerced the US under Nixon into interceding (!!) during the Yom Kippur War under the threat of nuclear force. Despite being an absolutely vile chauvinist who was the most staunch supporter of ethnic cleansing, she was insufficiently bloodthirsty and belligerent for the Israeli voting public, which was a key factor in ending her political career.
Israel is irredeemable. Always has been.
The “cult of personality” is encouraged by design. Putting all focus and blame on individuals shields the system from being scrutinized.
There is nothing wrong with denouncing American plutocrats like Bezos and Gates for greed, but we cannot stop there: we must understand that the system of exploitation is not held together by any individual’s vices. As Lenin put it, “The capitalists divide the world, not out of any particular malice, but because the degree of concentration which has been reached forces them to adopt this method in order to obtain profits.” [10] If one of them had a major change of heart and stopped pursuing ruthless accumulation, they would quickly be ousted by stockholders for endangering their investment. In the unlikely event that their stockholders were cooperative, a competitor would swoop in and relieve them of their commanding market share. This is not apologia for Bezos, but we need to understand that there is a talent to being a capitalist exploiter, or else we will underestimate our enemy. The market selects for profitability, and it selects well — it just doesn’t select for environmental responsibility or decency or who can bring the most benefits to the greatest number. From Marx, to Lenin, to Deng, we can observe a baseline level of respect for the enemy: “Management is also a technique.” [11]
On my view, the core Marxist insight is the following: Feudal lords were the masters of Feudalism. Capitalists, however, aren’t the masters of capitalism. They are merely the high priests of capitalism. The master of capitalism is Capital itself.
Careful, whenever a lib witnesses the gestalt it breaks their brain and sends them careening into gibbering madness, like in an HP Lovecraft story.
Now your dreams will never again be so peaceful. You will see capital in your nights, like a nightmare, that presses you and threatens to crush you. With terrified eyes you will see it get fatter, like a monster with one hundred proboscises that feverishly search the pores of your body to suck your blood. And finally you will learn to assume its boundless and gigantic proportions, its appearance dark and terrible, with eyes and mouth of fire, morphing its suckers into enormous hopeful trumpets, within which you’ll see thousands of human beings disappear: men, women, children. Down your face will trickle the sweat of death, because your time, and that of your wife and your children will soon arrive. And your final moan will be drowned out by the happy sneering of the monster, glad with your state, so much richer, so much more inhumane.
—Carlo Cafiero, Summary of Marx’s Capital (1879)
Sometimes they come out having shed one or more of imperial core liberalism’s many layers.
The one caveat is that Netanyahu needs genocide mode to roll on because if it ends he faces criminal punishments for fraud and corruption. Of course, the fact that genocide mode keeps the Israeli leadership and populace at large happy shows that his bloodlust isn’t an anomaly.
I’m seeing liberals pivot to this and it’s so transparent
no satanyahu must be the fall guy for liberal hegemony. liberal hegemony must save everyone from the bad guy they brought to power in the first place. arsonist by moonlight, firefighter by sunlight.
Liberals try to pretend that there’s a substantial Israeli “resistance” that isn’t pro-genocide and Bibi’s just an unpopular Trump-like figure.
They need to pretend this to validate the state of Israel itself as a fascist apartheid ethnostate committing genocide is entirely damning and they need to cling to Zionist versions of a Clean Wehrmacht.
I don’t think this is entirely fair, it depends on your definition of “substantial”.
Israel like anywhere is a country with people with a range of opinions. A large percentage dislike Bibi, and there certainly will be a number of Israeli people who are anti-genocide, you can see their parliament has a wide range of parties in it. Doesn’t justify any of Isntrael’s actions.
“Substantial” has clearly not been enough to amount to any perceivable resistance to an occuring crime against humanity. Israel is a very small, very new settler colony; it’s residents who are not Palestinian have far less of an excuse to be there and simply “checked out” than those in other settler colonies.
Scapegoating Bibi is also stupid because it doesn’t explain the unwavering loyalty the West has expressed towards his government.
Let’s not forget, Avengers: Endgame ends with Iron Man committing magic genocide on all of Thanos’ dudes
So it’s not like they have an actual problem with it
They’re individual agents who are responsible but they’re just fulfilling roles.
You could get rid of both Biden and Trump, whoever replaced them would be beholden to the same imperial corporate interests and be just as vile with their policies.
i think this falls off a little in that biden is especially and personally zionist. we’re not going to have a pro-palestinian president over here but we could’ve had one who didn’t illegally send weapons to israel as Biden did. We have previously had presidents who told them to ease off the genocide, including Ronald Reagan lol.
trump
