Israel’s Perfectly Natural Ties To Anti-Semitic Right-Wing Governments

How this is but one example of the spread of authoritarian nationalism, the modern version of monarchism

Netanyahu listening to Trump’s plan for the Palestinian ‘problem’ (Haaretz)

“Reading, Writing, ‘Rithmetic, and don’t let the Holocaust happen again!” Yes, that description of modern American education is hyperbolic, but the point is clear: all of us — including nearly all the so-called deniers — know the Holocaust happened, and we don’t want to see it again.

So why would the Israeli government align itself with far-right governments that tolerate or even encourage anti-Semitism? Benjamin Netanyahu is no longer prime minister, but during his long tenure he strengthened relations with the Visegrad States — Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary — whose societies have grown increasingly nationalistic and xenophobic, two traits that always seem to go hand-in-hand.

It turns out that unlike magnets, political like attracts like, of which the rapprochement between China and Russia is only the latest example. Perhaps the best-known (and most ill-fated) of authoritarian relationships was that between Hitler and Stalin, and we all know how that ended. More recently, we all watched red-faced as Trump fawned over every authoritarian leader he met, while at the same time insulting and rejecting those leaders who earnestly stood for diplomacy and democracy. But what is it about the authoritarian mindset that convinces dictators (and dictator-wannabes) to trust other dictators even when the rest of us see the train wreck coming from miles away?

Psychologist Robert Altmeyer, author of Authoritarian Nightmare, defines authoritarianism as “the desire to submit to some authority, aggression that is directed against whomever the authority says should be targeted and a desire to have everybody follow the norms and social conventions that the authority says should be followed.”

Meaning, of course, that if only on a primal level, authoritarians understand each other’s motivation, and see liberal concepts like tolerance, equality, and altruism as so much stuff and nonsense.