The Two Most Obscene Ideas in the World
If somebody tells you that Jews are “a religion, not a people,” and so are not entitled to solidarity, they are perpetuating a lie.
If somebody tells you that Jews are “indigenous” to a specific place, entitling them to control it by force, they are perpetuating a different lie.
There are two ideas that are tied, for me, as most obscene in the world:
That culture is a species of idea.
That the modern machinery of nations has any access whatsoever to holiness.
What makes them obscene is the same: They normalize violent dispossession of people and instrumentalize other people in that project.
They are the motives for hot and cold culture wars, which are proxy wars waged by powers that are indifferent to the consequences.
It is hard to verbalize the angst of being part of a people in whose culture the second idea runs rampant, constantly inflaming an entire world who holds the first idea against us.
