Jared Kushner, Trump's son-in-law and special envoy to the Middle East, said this over the weekend:
Gaza has not worked for a very, very long time. It was basically built by NGOs and terrorists, and it's been a dystopian place for a long time.
As author Michael Rosen noted on Twitter:
This is hardly any different from 19th century British Lords and generals discussing what to do about Sudan, India, or Africa. Every word is predicated on the assumption that it's a westerner's right to talk like this.
I agree. That is what is happening, and that is the attitude on display.
How come we reached this point?
Has four decades of neoliberalism so degraded our humanity that Kushner and those blocking refugees from landing at Portsmouth share the same thuggish approach to human well-being?
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In a word, yes. Maybe the problem is that across the world many of us have been stuck in the mindset that the extreme right must be resisted by focusing on prevention measures, public mobilization, and denying legitimacy. But the reality is that they are really already in power, so different measures are now required, for example institutional leverage wherever moderate voices are still strong, constitutional mechanisms like coalitions of moderate parties, and dismantling state control by various means.
Spoken like a typical real-estate developer is all I can say. Kushner is just carpet bagger – making hay out of chaos. Real estate zionism is what this is.
This is what hardship does for people. Tim Snyder wrote about the effects of hardship in his book ‘The Road to Unfreedom’ (2018). Hardship produces a brutalised people – and a strange form of shared experience or community where endless suffering/enduring is perversely, a source of pride. Democracy, caring etc., is for wimps apparently.
This is why I found Clara Mattei’s book ‘The Capital Order’ about austerity so engrossing and relevant. Austerity creates the conditions to disrupt the common purpose of people in pursuit of something better and enables them to be lured into the darker alleys of their brains.
Thanks
Kushner has an air of contempt for the Palestinians. He disregards their humanity. Because of that he can, in his eyes and those of his supporters, justify the Israeli racist punitive policies. If he did acknowledge their humanity, he could not justify Israel’s actions.
The same mind set is found with the black clad protestors.
Agreed
I think it’s the logical outcome of “white supremacy” doctrine.
We (like to think we) run the world (and haven’t we done well!?) because of our innate (god-given or genetics-given) superiority.
So we are the map-makers, the border-definers, the rulers of the universe.
Then history catches up with us.
And it has not held us properly to account as yet.