James Baldwin said it in 1965 and it has not aged a single day:
The reason Americans cannot face their history is that the history indicts their identity.
And you cannot ask someone to accept the evidence that destroys who they think they are.
White Americans, he said, need the Black American to remain inferior, because their own superiority is the only thing that makes sense of a country built on those terms.
The same structure applies outward.
Americans need the rest of the world to remain in need of American guidance, American intervention, American rescue.
Because without that story, what exactly was all the violence for?
The empire doesn't just extract resources.
It extracts meaning.
And the people who built their inner lives on that meaning will fight as hard to keep it as any general ever fought to keep territory.
Harder, maybe.
You can negotiate territory.
You cannot negotiate with someone's need to believe they are one of the good ones.
For the pastor who gave the Easter prayer at the White House and alleged that the Islamic Republic of Iran wants to kill all Jews, please take a look. I’m sure he has no idea that there are Iranian Jews.
Israel is unleashing violence toward Iranian Jews who reject Zionism in favor of their ancient traditions in their own countries and would rather not identify with a genocidal state.
Do people not remember the bombings of synagogues credibly thought to be by Zionists in the early 1950’s in Baghdad? These practices have a history.
Anti-Zionism is not Antisemitism.
Anti-Zionism is not Antisemitism.
Anti-Zionism is not Antisemitism.
Anti-Zionism is not Antisemitism.
Anti-Zionism is not Antisemitism.
Anti-Zionism is not Antisemitism.
Anti-Zionism is not Antisemitism.
Anti-Zionism is not Antisemitism.
Anti-Zionism is not Antisemitism.