12 Oct Mea Culpa
“Despite a focus on cycles, TLR did not foresee the return of antisemitism.” – The Lonely Realist
The very first TLR in February 2019 asked “Are we Experiencing a 1937 Redux?” Yes, we were are. The 2010s began another era of accelerating grievance fueled by the same sort of kindling that set the world on fire in the 1930s – rising income inequality, technological ennui, a media revolution, and deepening geopolitical rivalries. The parallel to the 1930s has been a recurring TLR theme, one that TLR elaborated on in its March 2019 commentary by analyzing how 21st Century governments were reversing internationalism, embracing isolationism, abandoning capitalism, and rejecting democracy, replacing them with deglobalization, jingoism, central economic planning, and absolutism, socialism and fascism…, all of which had proved disastrous in the 1930s. It is illuminating, for example, to recognize that the Smoot-Hawley Tariff mistakes of the 1930s have been repeated in the form of Trump-Biden protectionism, and how the anti-China, -Russia, -Iran sanctions resemble the sanctions of the 1930s. The consequence of America’s 1930s Neutrality Acts, which placed an embargo on scrap-metal shipments to Japan – which at the time was sourcing 74% of its scrap-iron and 93% of its copper from the U.S. – and closed the Panama Canal to Japanese shipping, was Pearl Harbor. In the 21st Century, Trump-Biden sanctions have led China, Russia, Iran and North Korea to create an axis (the “Axis of the Sanctioned”) that today is in the process of overthrowing the global pact established and enforced by America through Pax Americana…, a warning of the consequences of sanctioning that TLR first voiced in June 2019 in highlighting the meaning of “The enemy of my enemy is my friend.” TLR has repeatedly warned that America, “plagued by partisanship and disorganized decision-making and wedded to a goal of ‘peace for our time’ (the goal expressed by Neville Chamberlain in his 1938 speech that handed Czechoslovakia to Nazi Germany), have led China, Iran, Russia and North Korea to take increasingly more brazen actions with the confidence that doing so will have little or no military consequences, but instead will incentivize America to further retreat from the international scene.” History indeed repeats. As Walter Russel Mead noted, “In the 1930s, the U.S. thought Japan’s attempt to conquer China was both immoral and bad for American interests, but a mix of naive pacifism and blind isolationism blocked any serious response. Instead, Washington settled on a diplomatic stance of nonresistance to Japanese aggression mixed with nonrecognition of Japanese conquests and claims. The policy … persuaded a critical mass of Japanese leaders that America was irredeemably decadent. They gradually came to believe that a nation so foolishly led would respond to the destruction of its Pacific fleet with diplomats rather than aircraft carriers.”
It is axiomatic that “those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it”…, and that is precisely what has been happening. American appeasement has been evident for more than 16 years, recognizably with respect to aggressions by Iran in Gaza, Lebanon, Syria and Yemen, more obviously with respect to Russia’s 2008 invasion of Georgia, its 2014 occupation of Crimea, its brazen interference in America’s Western elections, and its 2022 invasion of Ukraine, notably by America’s failure to check North Korea’s nuclear and missile ambitions and Venezuela’s absorption as a Russian satrapy, in its exit from Iraq and its ignominious withdrawal from Afghanistan, and most recently by its failures to adequately back its allies in Ukraine, Europe and Israel. It was precisely this sort of “naive pacifism and blind isolationism” that ignited WWII. Everyone wants to live in peace. However, in recent years, in the name of “ending America’s forever wars,” America’s Presidents have proven themselves incapable of confronting America’s enemies or coming to the defense of its friends. The sad fact is that we are living in a world that increasingly mirrors the 1930s where, as Bret Stephens has observed, “cunning and aggressive dictatorships have united against debilitated, inward-looking, risk-averse democracies. Today’s dictatorships [the Axis of the Sanctioned] know how to smell weakness.”
An even sadder fact is that today’s antisemites also know how to capitalize on debilitated, inward-looking, partisan polities. Formerly secretive white supremacists now publicly chant “Jews will not replace us” and are joined by antisemites masquerading as opponents of colonialism who chant “From the River to the Sea,” each finding support at the political extremes…, just as occurred in the 1930s. Today’s American influencers, the Tucker Carlsons, Kanye Wests and progressive university professors, emulate the pro-Nazi voices of storied antisemites like Charles Lindbergh who accused Jews of acting “for reasons which are not American,” infamously stating that “the greatest danger to this country lies in [the Jews’] large ownership and influence in our motion pictures, our press, our radio and our government.” America (as well as the rest of the world) indeed is reliving the 1930s. Hence, TLR’s mea culpa: While repeatedly emphasizing the economic, political, geopolitical, technological and grievance parallels between the 21st Century and the 1930s, TLR neglected to highlight the antisemitism rising both at home and abroad. The proofs were apparent, from the chants of Holocaust-deniers in Charlottesville, Va., to synagogue massacres in Pittsburgh, Pa., and Poway, Cal., from Nazi apologist Darryl Cooper’s revisionist defense of Adolf Hitler (parroting Pat Buchanan’s 2008 book Churchill, Hitler, and The Unnecessary War), all of which culminated in the October 7th butchering of Israeli Jews that finally awakened the world to 21st Century’s antisemitic realities. The amazing thing about recurring antisemitism is that Jews have been accused of whatever contradictory grievances are then in fashion. Whereas in the 1930s antisemitism found its roots in Europe, today it derives its nourishment from Iran. Although the “Great Satan” is America, Israel’s Jews are Iran’s ”Little Satan,” and the priority set by Iran’s leaders is to first destroy the Little Satan by wiping away the Middle East’s Jewish population “from the river to the sea…,” and then, together with its Axis partners, to destroy America.
No one wants war, but America’s enemies already are waging war against America and its allies…, or hadn’t you noticed? October 7, 2023 was a wake-up call. Iran’s recent rain of 180 missiles on Israel was an overt act of war, and not only against Israel. The best efforts of Iran’s Hamas, Hezbollah and Houthi proxies failed to burn Israel to the ground or fully drive America out of the Middle East, so Iran made explicit what previously had been obvious implicit. Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine affirmed its empire expansion intentions that previously had been telegraphed by its occupation of Georgia in 2008 and Crimea in 2014. China has promised to wage war on Taiwan and has made no effort to hide its preparations (as evidenced most recently by its actions against The Philippines). The Israeli, Russian, Ukrainian, Chinese and North Korean economies are in full wartime manufacturing mode, unlike America, Japan and Western Europe. The Axis is hammering American interests worldwide, so it’s not only an antisemitic war that is upon us, it’s a war for global dominance and, in the end, survival.
Mark Twain warned that history doesn’t necessarily repeat itself, “but it often rhymes.” Today’s world is more than merely rhyming – the parallels with the 1930s are stunning. TLR‘s hope is that the world’s debilitated, inward-looking, risk-averse American government will discontinue its reliance on appeasement – of Iran, Russia, China, antisemitic extremists, etc. – and once again ensure global peace through strength.
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Prior TLR commentaries can be found here.
Finally (from a good friend)
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