5LL #352: Smears, Social Darwinism, Chuck Schumer, Boers, Orientalism
“Do You Want to Throw Israelis Into the Sea?”
Mohammed El-Kurd, The Nation
A guide to fielding even the most ridiculous anti-Palestinian smears.
Trump’s Darwinian America
Erik Baker, Harper’s Magazine
What we’re witnessing is not an aberration but the latest eruption of a supposedly discredited ideology that was never truly extinguished.
Chuck Schumer in America—A Warning
Dan Berger, Spectre
The senator thinks that he has written a book to introduce readers to the complexities of Jewish life, absent Jewish thought or practice. In reality, it is a disturbing apologia for the ways Israel, with his support, has written the enactment of colonization and genocide into the Jewish story.
Gimme Boer
Charlie Dulik, The Baffler
Predominantly Dutch-descended white South Africans known as Boers or Afrikaners have long provided a screen onto which white Americans have projected fantasies about their own persecution, seeing themselves as parallel nations of rugged frontiersmen who battled the British, built a republic, and faced off with unruly natives.
Isfahan Tableaux
Ajay Singh Chaudhary, Late Light
Nothing is eternal; not 17th century Isfahan with its wonders, magic, and romance nor 21st century American hegemony with its drones, sanctions, and extracted wealth.