The recent suppression of an EU report on anti-Semitism in Europe, this Weekly Standard article on the European Social Forum, these two posts on Winds of Change about "idiotarianism" (uno, dos), as well as the Belmont Club's post on The Decline and Fall (of the left), point to a phenomenon that may profoundly impact the War on Terrorism. Some people might be inclined to regard this phenomenon, and the rising popularity of anti-Semitic gurus like David Icke or Jeff Rense, as primarily one affecting the mentally imbalanced, but that attitude is too passive.
The problem is it's quite possible for people who would never exhibit psychotic tendancies as individuals, to become part of a group psychosis. They need not walk in the door nuts, just susceptible.
Post and Robins speculate that the particular formula that Hitler came up with fit the German psyche like a key in a lock. Although ethnocentric, Germans weren't particularly anti-Semitic prior to the rise of the Nazis. Not like the French, anyway. And the Protocols wasn't a German forgery, after all. What the Germans were, was a marginalized and shamed population as a result of their defeat in WWI, their demotion in the hierarchy of national powers, and the collapse of their economy during the Depression.
Now consider the frustrations of increasingly marginalized people on the left in Europe and the US (marginalized by some of their own "religion-like" belief patterns, as Michael Crichton argues), especially after the demise of the USSR "flagship." It's not difficult to see how the affinity with the Islamists and Palestinians developed. They have many of the same grievances.
But it's time to step back a bit, and get a little distance. The Palestinian problem is not amenable to easy or quick answers, no matter what you think needs to be done. Which suggests an almost certain rise in anti-Semitism tied to this "cause" over time. At some point it's destined to become quite irrational, and whatever distinctions you believe exist between "Zionists" and "Jews" will simply disappear in a predictable desire to simplify all the complexities and conundrums.
Like a binary poison, there seem to be two ingredients necessary for widespread group psychoses: 1. an intractable problem; and 2. a "status gap" that runs along the old ethnic or factional lines, especially a gap that violates the expectations of the lower-status group, that then becomes susceptible.
I think we're in for quite a ride here, and Iraq is almost certainly a turning point. It would sure be great if the press paid a little more attention to the successes, than to the trial of a high status ideosyncratic child molester, whose guilt or innocence won't matter a whit to history.
Posted by Demosophist at December 19, 2003 02:15 PM | TrackBack