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As Israel gears up for its fourth general election in two years, it has become increasingly clear that Israeli politics is in the process of disintegration. It's largely due to an ever more fragmented party system based on identity politics, says Shir Hever, author of the book, The Privatization of Israeli Security.

As Israel gears up for its fourth general election in two years, it has become increasingly clear that Israeli politics is in the process of disintegration. It's largely due to an ever more fragmented party system based on identity politics, says Shir Hever, author of the book, The Privatization of Israeli Security.

Transcript

Greg Wilpert

Welcome to theAnalysis.news podcast. I'm your guest host, Greg Wilpert.

Israel is currently gearing up for its fourth general election in two years. Last December, the fragile governing coalition between Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud Party and Benny Gantz's Blue and White party collapsed after only seven months in office, and new elections were called for March 23rd of this year. The perhaps overriding issue this time around is, of course, the coronavirus pandemic. To discuss the current political situation in Israel, I'm joined by Shir Hever from Heidelberg, Germany.

Shir is the author of the book The Privatization of Israeli Security, which was published by Pluto Press in 2017. Also, he is on the board of the German organization Jewish Voice for a Just Peace in the Middle East.

Thanks for being here again, Shir.

Shir Hever

Thanks for having me. Greg.

Greg Wilpert

So Israel's not only making headlines at the moment for the upcoming and unprecedented fourth general election in just two years, but also for holding two contradictory records related to the pandemic.

I mean, first, it is going through one of the worst spikes in new COVID cases, and second, it is also the country that has vaccinated a larger proportion of its population than any other country so far, with 21 percent of over 16 year-olds having already received two COVID vaccination shots.

So Shir, talk to us about what's going on here in this regard, and why such a high vaccination rate and why the spike in new cases?

Shir Hever

Well, first of all, just to be a little bit more accurate, Israel is not really number one in the world in terms of vaccination per capita, because it's only number one if you count only Israeli citizens. But if you count the entire population under Israeli control, which is subject to the Israeli laws and under the responsibility of the Israeli Ministry of Health, then in fact, Israel is number two in the world and number one would be the United Arab Emirates.

And this is very important because the reason that Israel's vaccination has been so fast, has a lot to do with the occupation of Palestinians, and with the colonial mentality and society of the Israeli society.

And what Netanyahu understood is that he has to convince the Israelis to get vaccinated faster than any other country, in order to be able to show that there is a reduction in the amount of cases and the amount of deaths prior to the election, so that he can claim victory over the corona pandemic.

In order to do so, he played a trick on the Israeli public, because if you look at other countries, especially the European Union, also in the United States, there are two limiting factors when it comes to vaccinations. One limiting factor is how many vaccines are available, and their quality. And the other limiting factor is whether people trust the vaccine and are willing to get vaccinated.

So my personal opinion, I'm not a doctor, but my personal opinion is that people should get vaccinated of course. I just wanted to say this, so it's clear that I'm not condoning anti-vaxxers. But what we see in Israel is a kind of manipulation of the public,

As Israel gears up for its fourth general election in two years, it has become increasingly clear that Israeli politics is in the process of disintegration. It's largely due to an ever more fragmented party system based on identity politics, says Shir Hever, author of the book, The Privatization of Israeli Security.

Reagan was the master of racist "dog whistles", plausible deniability that allowed Reagan to protect himself. It has allowed the Republican Party for the last four decades to deny who Ronald Reagan was and turn him into a hero. Matt Tyrnauer, director of "The Reagans" on Showtime, joins Paul Jay on theAnalysis.news

Reagan was the master of racist "dog whistles", plausible deniability that allowed Reagan to protect himself. It has allowed the Republican Party for the last four decades to deny who Ronald Reagan was and turn him into a hero. Matt Tyrnauer, director of "The Reagans" on Showtime, joins Paul Jay on theAnalysis.news

Transcript

Paul Jay

Hi, welcome to theAnalysis News podcast. I'm Paul Jay. Please don't forget there's a donate button at the top of the webpage.

 

There's a segment in the Showtime series, The Reagans, about dog-whistling – Reagan's pandering to racism without using overtly racist words. Again, it's impossible not to see the model for Trump in all this.

Excerpt from The Reagans

"Let us pledge to each other with this great lady looking on that we can and so help us God, we will make America great again."

 

Reagan's reputation as a dog whistler has not had a sufficiently negative impact on his legacy. Dog-whistling is all about plausible deniability that allowed Reagan to protect himself, and that has allowed the Republican Party for the last four decades to deny that that's who Ronald Reagan was and turn him into a hero. To insist that he really did care about the average American working family. But when people stand back, they see that, in fact, Reagan was a divisive figure, someone willing to do what he knew was wrong to divide Americans as a way to win power. Reagan's genius as a politician was that he wrapped his racism in a facade of fatherly love.

Paul Jay

Now joining us is the director and writer of The Reagans Matt Tyrnauer, who's also the filmmaker of Valentino: The Last Emperor, which was shortlisted for an Academy Award for best documentary feature, and Where's my Roy Cohn another must-see if you want to understand the political forces that gave us Trump. Thanks for joining us, Matt.

Matt Tyrnauer

Thank you.

Paul Jay

So talk about the evolution of Reagan. We talked about from FDR-ish, liberal-ish head of a union, to a pro-Goldwater politician who then becomes Goldwater-ish politician himself, but also this arc to adopting as a tactic, this dog-whistle racism. So how does that develop and tell us the story?

Matt Tyrnauer

Well, Reagan was on-trend because after the Second World War leading into the Johnson and civil rights era, the use of overt racist language really was not going to be permissible in the public arena. So clever politicians figured out that you could use coded language and have the same effect. And this eventually became labeled as dog-whistle racism. So Goldwater, I think, practiced it. But I think Reagan really elevated it to an art form and was the master of the form.

Excerpt from The Reagans

The question of whether my father was racist is a troubling one for me. There was a concerted effort to undermine the civil rights movement. A new language developed to trigger unacceptable social hatreds.

 

"Our city streets are jungle paths."

 

Reagan can turn around and say, me, I didn't say anything about race.

Matt Tyrnauer

A lot of this he wrote himself, he was very good at coming up with little bumper sticker phrases that stuck in your mind. So some of his classics were "welfare queen" which he based on a real character named Linda Taylor, there was recently a book,

No Honeymoon for Biden is telling progressives you have to learn the lessons of history. Previous Democratic administrations have not delivered on promises made, and there should be maximum pressure put on Biden right away, says Jeff Cohen of RootsAction.org on theAnalysis.news with Paul Jay.

No Honeymoon for Biden is telling progressives you have to learn the lessons of history. Previous Democratic administrations have not delivered on promises made, and there should be maximum pressure put on Biden right away, says Jeff Cohen of RootsAction.org on theAnalysis.news with Paul Jay.

Transcript

Paul Jay

Hi, I'm Paul Jay, and welcome to theAnalysis.news and please don't forget the donate button at the top of the webpage.

 

The online activist organization Roots Action is dedicated, they say, to galvanizing people who are committed to economic fairness, equal rights for all civil liberties, environmental protection, and defunding endless wars. They've grown to hundreds of thousands of members who sign petitions and advocate for progressive change. Their latest campaign is "No Honeymoon for President Biden". Here's a video they recently launched.

Excerpt from Roots Action video.

Various speakers: There must be no honeymoon for Joe Biden. There must be no honeymoon for Joe Biden. Joe Biden, there's no honeymoon. No honeymoon. There must be no honeymoon for Joe Biden because starting on day one, you and I and everybody else have got to mobilize and organize and put maximum pressure on the Biden administration. We should have learned a lesson from the Obama-Biden years believing that they were going to be under a lot of pressure. So we should back off. It was the worst possible thing that we could have ever done.

 

Now joining us is the co-founder of Roots Action, Jeff Cohen. He's a media critic, a columnist, a documentary filmmaker, retired journalism professor, and he founded the media watch group FAIR in 1986. For years he was a regular pundit on CNN, FOX, MSNBC, and he's also the author of the book Cable News Confidential: My Misadventures in Corporate Media. Thanks for joining us, Jeff.

Jeff Cohen

Nice to be with you.

Paul Jay

So Jeff, talk about why this slogan about No Honeymoon for President Biden, and then what does it mean?

Jeff Cohen

Well, what we have done is looked at modern Democratic Party history. And you had Bill Clinton got into office in 1992. He wins the election. The Democrats have the Senate and the House. Instead of delivering for working-class people, middle-class people, and the poor what we get from Clinton is vacillation, hesitation, corporatism, NAFTA – the North American Free Trade Agreement – which warmed the hearts of corporations and disoriented environmentalists and labor activists. Jump forward to President Obama.

 

He wins what in modern terms was something of a landslide in November 2008. He's got a Democratic Senate, a Democratic House. There's hesitation. There's vacillation. There's a bailout of Wall Street, but not a bailout of Main Street through a foreclosure freeze that would have saved middle-class and working-class people's homes. And, of course, the foreclosure year of 2009 disproportionately hit Latino and Black households. So again, both times, the Democrats, two years after taking the White House, the Senate, and the House, lose the Senate and the House, the Republicans come storming back because of the vacillation, the hesitation, the corporatism of first President Clinton, and then President Obama.

 

So No Honeymoon for Biden is telling progressives you have to learn the lessons of history. We worked our asses off to defeat Trump. RootsAction.

No Honeymoon for Biden is telling progressives you have to learn the lessons of history. Previous Democratic administrations have not delivered on promises made, and there should be maximum pressure put on Biden right away, says Jeff Cohen of RootsAction.org on theAnalysis.news with Paul Jay.

Henry Giroux and Paul Jay discuss the events of Jan 6th, the destruction of public education and degeneration of mass culture, on theAnalysis.news

Henry Giroux and Paul Jay discuss the events of Jan 6th, the destruction of public education and degeneration of mass culture, on theAnalysis.news

Transcript

Paul Jay

Hi, I'm Paul Jay. Welcome to the theAnalysis.news, and please don't forget there's a donate button at the top of the webpage.

In a recent post on Twitter, Henry Giroux wrote, "The mainstream press appears obsessed with QAnon or should I say, the spectacle of its most ludicrous followers, such as Marjorie Taylor Green. Little, if nothing, is said about this movement being historically contextualized as part of a larger drift towards white supremacy, state violence, and fascist politics, all of which is supported by the Republican Party and its large social base. Nothing is said about the rise of extremism in the U.S. as part of the full-fledged assault against democracy.  Nothing is said about the failure of capitalism to deliver on its promises and how that failure opened the door for tyrants like Trump to appear on the scene, promising to resolve the problems of groups marginalized and the age of precarity while making their conditions worse. Nobody talks about QAnon as part of the crisis of education and democratic culture, not to mention the hollowing out of civil society."

That was Henry Giroux. I think the question of the formation of the identity of millions of Americans who can believe climate science is fake, a mask mandate during covid is a sinister plot, and so on, is a reflection of the massive failure of the public education system, especially in rural America.  My seven-year old kids went to schools in Brooklyn where they were taught a history that included an understanding of racial and economic inequality.  Half their class were black or Latino, and while there was still a big dose of Americanism, I doubt their education resembles in many ways what kids are learning in schools in much of rural America.  Kids in much of the U.S. are born into a culture of white supremacy, nationalism, religious fundamentalism, a poisonous brew that fills the void of alienation and despair that millions of Americans feel. It's a breeding ground for fascistization and political support for people like Trump.

Of course, the pro-Wall Street and big business economics of Obama, Clinton, and Democrats at state and local levels help reinforce the world view that the elites in the cities are out to screw workers in the countryside. The writing off of large sections of the population as deplorables or as just backward by liberal elites will continue to till the soil for the Trumps of this country.  What should progressives demand from the Biden administration to address the cultural divide in America? Now joining us to discuss this is Henry Giroux, who holds the McMaster University Chair for Scholarship in the public interest in the English and Cultural Studies Department and the Paulo Freire distinguished scholar in critical pedagogy. His most recent books include American Nightmare Facing the Challenge of Fascism.  Thanks very much for joining us, Henry.

Henry Giroux

Thanks for having me, Paul.

Paul Jay

So, Henry, you've written a lot about this process of fascistization, but you've also written a lot and studied the educational system both in the U.S. and Canada. So how do you tie these two issues together?

Henry Giroux

Well, I think that when you talk about fascism, you have to talk about education, because it seems to me that fascism is an ideology, is a set of social relations, is a set of values as a vision of the future is learned. It's a learned phenomenon.