Since eminent media figures who only a few years ago fought state-imposed ad hoc restrictions on freedom of speech and civil liberties openly supported jihadist movements after Oct 7, 2023, I have become, to put it mildly, somewhat critical of the anti-lockdown/anti-Covid movement of the early 2020s. Their First Amendment/pro-free speech advocacy and their simultaneous pro-Hamas position is something I find hard to reconcile.
Does Hamas, whose atrocities, including rape, people like Glenn Greenwald, Max Blumenthal, Kim Iversen, Aaron Maté, or Krystal Ball, and others—the “Greenwald Racket”— invert, play down, and deny, provide the “freedom of speech” the Racket allegedly holds up, to their fellow citizens? No. Hamas kills, tortures, and breaks the limbs of those who dare say something they don’t like, in the absence of, by the way, any democratic rule of law worth speaking of in Gaza and even in the West Bank.
The antisemitic framework of the Greenwald Racket’s particular hatred for Israel seems to stand in stark contrast to their criticism of state encroachments into personal freedom: for after all, there is no country in the Middle East where its citizens have as many personal freedoms and rights as in Israel. This particularly pertains to the Greenwald Racket’s pet theme, the right to free speech. Heavy criticism of the government in such Israeli organs as Ha’aretz is common—an analogous news outlet would be unthinkable in Syria, Egypt or Iran. In Israel, opposition parties and civil movements are vibrant and influential. This also applies to the visibility of progressive movements such as the Queer and LGBTQ communities, whatever one thinks of them in detail. And it goes without saying that, as Israel is the only liberal democracy in the Middle East, the same rights are enjoyed by all its citizens, including minorities, of which ethnic Arabs, with approximately 2 million citizens, are the biggest fraction. That the few Jews that have remained in Islamist countries (the last Jew, Zablon Simantov, left Afghanistan in 2021, after the Taliban re-installment) should have equal rights and citizenship is unconceivable.
One may be tempted to say that antisemitism is simply this—not an opinion, which may be well or poorly informed, but an affect, an emotional and mental disposition, and therefore inaccessible to rational argument. Therefore, one could have a freedom-and-rights position when it comes to just about anything (with a caveat, as I will show later), but revoke it the moment it cannot be weaponized against the Joos—when you simply must side with an evil authoritarian regime to show the Zionists their place.
The Greenwald Racket revokes its free speech position the moment it cannot be weaponized against the Joos—when you simply must side with an evil authoritarian regime to show the Zionists their place.
Reason, then, is systematically shut out from the minds of those who confuse a theoretical position for a particular desire: namely, to “unalive” Israel, the world’s only Jewish state, and to help in the propaganda war for its destruction. But still, this may fall short of explaining the contradiction between the critique of state authoritarianism during Covid and the Greenwald Racket’s cozying up to Islamic authoritarianism. For it should be clear that their rabid “critique of Israel” that constantly falls silent when Islamist infringements on free speech rights, or worse, occur, serves Hamas’s and their funding states’ strategic goals. It was also quite absurd to watch the Greenwald Racket’s clear support for Iran during the “12-day War”, a state that isn’t exactly known for its championship of free speech. The Iranian Mullah regime practices torture and executions daily, which now seems totally up the alley of the “pro-free speech” crowd, just because Iran happens to hate Israel as irrationally as they do.
The idea has occurred to many that the Greenwald Racket are all too happy to dehumanize Jews, because many of them are self-hating ones themselves, and while there can be no doubt about that in some cases, of course not everyone belonging to that Racket is. Take for example erstwhile Covid regime critics in the US and Europe, such as Berlin-based US “political satirist” CJ Hopkins, or a German cancelled academic who rose to prominence in her many media and talk show appearances as a critic of Covid policies. They are not Jewish. What unites the Greenwald Racket, rather, is their left-wing, allegedly “anti-imperialist” hatred of Western civilization, values and culture—this is the caveat, for only in the West does the Greenwald Racket put curtailments on freedom openly in the stocks.
What unites the Greenwald Racket is their left-wing, allegedly “anti-imperialist” hatred of Western civilization—for only in the West does the Greenwald Racket put curtailments on freedom openly in the stocks.
The anti-Western resentment of the Greenwald Racket in general has come to the fore especially in the Russophilia of many of its leading figures, and would explain the pipeline from anti-Covidism (the Global—but ultimately Western—Elites!) to Russophilia to Israelophobia, that is: good old Soviet-style anti-Zionism. Soviet-style anti-Zionism has antisemitic traits—the singling out of Israel as particularly evil—but goes both beyond it as a historical ideology that is not limited to, but always takes its vantage point from the Jewish state, consciously or unconsciously.
What historical consciousness?
To explain, it may be useful to consider various terms in which history is negotiated (or isn’t), even if only to bring into relief the contradictions of these newly self-discovered fans of a particular kind of authoritarianism.
For an all-too-pervasive trait of these “anti-authoritarians” is, first, that they are shockingly clueless about Israeli history. In private conversation, the cancelled academic told me that Israel was the only obstacle to peace, because it had historically always rejected the two-state solution. She was genuinely surprised when she was informed that it was the Palestinian leadership that rejected the two-state solution several times. This kind of projection—blaming Israel for something the Palestinians did —is not uncommon, but ultimately the consequence of the inverted history left-wing “dissidents” have been fed about the conflict for years on end. It is a real shock for them to hear someone throw cold water into the warm bath of anti-Israel resentment in which they have soaked their moral conscience for decades.
Others, equally clueless, reveal an astonishingly idiosyncratic relation to modern history when Jews are concerned. CJ Hopkins calls himself a “child of the postcolonial/postmodernist left”, which explains his counterfactual and historically deaf/blind characterization of Israel as this: “It is wiping out, or otherwise removing, the indigenous population of the territory it has conquered. It has been doing this for 75 years”. CJ’s chewing of the historical revisionist cud of the left’s inverted narrative is rather at war with the notion of historical reality.
This is also revealed in the juridical case that—unlike his books—made him famous: the “satirical” depiction of a swastika embedded in a hygienic mask on the cover of one of his books. The depiction of the swastika in public is a federal crime in Germany, when done with the intent to “glorify” the Nazi regime. For what it’s worth: Hopkins, like everyone, has the right to free speech, even for saying outrageous and stupid things. This is guaranteed by the German Constitution. This, however, does not absolve him from criticism.
First of all, as should well be understood, the “glorification” of a Nazi symbol was not Hopkins’s intent. Hopkins, instead, wanted to draw attention to the fact that “like the swastika, the mask is a symbol of totalitarian conformity”.
As though historical Nazism was all but exhausted in “totalitarian conformity”. After all, one could have used a hammer and sickle for the same purpose, and much more accurately. But it had to be the swastika, of course. By using the symbol on a hygienic mask to draw parallels between two totalitarianisms whose differences one is not to think about too hard, Hopkins in fact obscured the NSDAP’s central ideology, the dimension of anti-Semitic terror, the murder of Jews because they are Jews. This— the eradication of Jewish life—is what the swastika stands for. Not some generic idea of “totalitarianism” that would apply to Hitler as well as Pinochet, Ceaucescu, Idi Amin, Pol Pot, or Emperor Hirohito.
The swastika stands for the eradication of Jewish life. Not some generic idea of “totalitarianism” that would apply to Hitler as well as Pinochet, Ceaucescu, Idi Amin, Pol Pot, or Emperor Hirohito.
My critique is not that Nazi allusions have no place in satire. To the contrary. But the point of Nazi-comparisons in satire is precisely the exaggerated, self-ironical mocking of all-too ubiquitous Nazi-comparisons— “…and then that Karen cut in line at Starbucks, that fucking Nazi”. Hopkins’s satire, however, dramatically lacks self-irony and an awareness of the idiocy of Nazi comparisons. It therefore lacks satirical self-distance— Hopkins takes himself too seriously, is too moralizing to be funny—which leaves one puzzled: while making people wear a mask against their will was awful, it wasn’t the Shoah. And yet, here was a guy saying: look, the mask regime is practically Hitler. “One totalitarianism is as good as any other!”
Speaking of Nazi mask wearing: Hopkins has struggled to come to terms with students in N95 masks blocking university entrances to other students —a “totalitarian” gesture that would have made his blood boil during Covid. The difference is that, today, they wear both a hygienic mask and a keffiyeh, and it is not their “vaccination status” that bans other students from school, but their “Zionism”.
CJ does not seem to mind the masking itself at all. In fact: “Wrap a fucking keffiyeh around your face. Whatever. JUST LOSE THE FUCKING TOTALITARIAN FACEWEAR”. Reflecting, perhaps, about what one totalitarianism has to do with the other, and why it is not a coincidence that the same students who used to sport N95ers now also wear keffiyehs would be too much to ask. Here’s someone who thinks it’s edgy to associate the swastika with the Covid mask, but when the Hamas flag is in reality worn alongside the mask, the cognitive apparatus suddenly shuts down. I think it’s safe to say we won’t hear any satire about this from CJ’s corner of the internet.
The Absolution of the Technocrats
What is remarkable as well is the complete historical amnesia of the Greenwald Racket: CNN, the BBC, the New York Times, the Guardian, and many others, formerly characterized as “propaganda tools” of the much-hated technocratic “global elites” (WEF, Bill Gates, the Democratic Party) in the minds of the Holocaust-relativizing and jihadist “free speech warriors” have now become completely trustworthy sources of information. Once decried as the tools of social distancing, vaccination, lockdown, and mandatory whatever propaganda, they are now reproduced uncritically in the blood libels of “genocide”, the Hamas-approved “more than 50 000 killed in Gaza” (BBC) and the blood libel of “UN says 14,000 babies could die in the next 48 hours under Israeli aid blockage” (The Guardian) (now debunked as another UN-enabled Gaza ministry of health propaganda lie). Greenwald et al, big analysts of ideological media capture and censorship of the “mainstream media” during the Biden years, conveniently overlook that there is not a single instance of official information coming out of Gaza that is not approved by Hamas, with rampant censorship. No, the information reproduced by MSM suddenly must be true! Particularly perfidious is the continuous BBCs reporting about civilians being shot by the IDF while queueing for food, a news item in which the words “according to Hamas sources” are barely noticed.
It takes a few lonely military experts or equally lonely Palestinian anti-Hamas activists like Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib to debunk these reports and put them in context (the US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation that distributes food to Gazans is seen as a threat to Hamas rule in the area). But at this point, all bigger media news outlets have already jumped on the “indiscriminate killing by the IDF” or the “IDF blocks humanitarian aid”line. All of this while the UN, in tandem with Hamas, is actively curbing the efforts of the GHF to distribute food to Gazans. (For a detailed breakdown of the food distribution situation, critical of all actors, see here).
Consequently, not only does mainstream media suddenly find grace with the “dissidents”, but also “globalist”, “supranational” institutions such as the UN and its many subdivisions. The WHO was rightfully mocked and unveiled as the “vaccination regime”’s spokespeople, but António Guterres, head of the same organization the WHO belongs to, who belittled the victims of Oct 7, is suddenly a harbinger of truth and moral decency, as is the UN’s apparatus of technocrats, such as “special envoy” Francesca Albanese and UNRWA’S Phillip Lazzarini.
The Greenwald Racket may be comfortable with appeasing terrorists and helping them realize their strategic aims, but, alas, many Palestinians are not. The aforementioned Alkhatib, but also writers/activists John Aziz, or Samer Sinijlawi, work towards ending Hamas rule and a peaceful co-existence with Israel—the only pragmatic long-term solution to the current catastrophe. But they live under threat. At home in the US, Alkhatib needs to carry firearms and always wears a bulletproof vest for protection—“because of the many threats I receive”, he says. And these threats do not come from Jews or Israelis, but the people who feel emboldened by the Greenwald Racket, their lies, their ramped-up Jew hatred atop their total disinterestedness in the wellbeing of Palestinians. Accordingly, no-one at the Greenwald Racket has ever reached out to any of the activists trying to establish peace.
But if the Greenwald Racket has decided to ghost moderate Palestinians who have a serious interest in peace, co-existence, and co-operation, what is the former’s aim, what is at stake for them? Here it seems that the hypocrisy of the so-called “free speech dissidents” comes full circle. For it is not only the usual left-wing anti-Zionist hatred of Israel that has dug its claws into the Greenwalds’ world view, but also a blatant indifference to the concrete lives of Palestinian Arabs. The Greenwald Racket, instead, channels a neo-colonial version of the 19th-century imperialist project, with the “noble savage” (the “noble” Arab/Muslim) as guiding principle. They build their careers on the fetishization of “brown people”, hallucinated as the antidote to the same “decadent West” that has enabled their careers in the first place, while giving zero fucks about Palestinians. Hence the punctilious and uncompromising pursuit of every authoritarian tendency in the West, while similar or even far more brutal tendencies in the “East” are met with leniency and understanding, begins to make sense. It is, after all, a very Orientalist, and hence, very Western, approach—and Greenwald and his Racket are deeply entrenched in the West’s own tradition.
The Greenwald Racket channels a neo-colonial version of the 19th-century imperialist project, with the “noble savage” (the “noble” Arab/Muslim) as guiding principle. A very Western trait.
For, when all is said and done, the biggest haters of “America” and the West are those who benefit from its liberties, while lacking the intellectual—even human— decency to put those liberties to use for anything other than self-sabotage. It is the nihilist’s world view, perhaps the foremost characteristic of today’s Left, caught up in the Dialectic of Enlightenment like no one’s business—but without the self-reflection, without the distance necessary to make sense of their own rage and relentlessness.
But maybe the kind of criticism I level at those sad leftist nihilists is misguided. One should, perhaps, write a satire about them—and be sure to illustrate it with a hammer and sickle.
