Charlie StrossJul 27, 2023
Stuff nobody had on their 21st century Bingo card: Germany being seen as a place of safety for Israeli refugees fleeing a fascist government
Show threadDNAvinci
@cstross
Who could have foreseen a purpose-built theocratic ethnostate becoming totalitarian?!
Jul 27, 2023 at 12:05pmWeb
Show threadCharlie StrossJul 27, 2023
@dnavinci Irony is, zionism was a secularizing modern project when it got started in the late 19th century. (It's best seen in context as the second-to-last gasp of a particular strain of European ethnic nationalism … the last, or at least latest, being Putin's imperialist invasion of Ukraine.) What's happening in Israel now wasn't baked in from the beginning.
Show threadMathiasJul 27, 2023
@cstross @dnavinci Yes and no. They made error when writing their rule to assume that the type of people founding the state would always remain the majority and the fringes would remain the fringes.
Show threadCharlie StrossJul 27, 2023
@matthegap @dnavinci Now tell me (with a straight face) that's not happened anywhere else?
Show threadDNAvinciJul 28, 2023

@cstross
I think the intent and the design diverge.

You're absolutely correct about the intent, but race and religion were already known to be a bad basis for the formation of a nation in the mid 1900s

Show threadCharlie StrossJul 28, 2023
@dnavinci Yes. But Theodore Hertzel came up with the idea of Zionism as a political program back in 1896. (I called it a European colonialist program for a reason.) Israel was built on the basis of a 19th century program and absorbed white supremacist attitudes by osmosis from the environment it was incubated in.