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Mozart's father's advice to him, which he followed.
I am really sorry to see my Countrymen trouble themselves about Politics. If Men were Wise, the Most arbitrary Princes could not hurt them. If they are not wise, the Freest Government is compell'd to be a Tyranny. Princes appear to me to be Fools. Houses of Commons & Houses of Lords appear to me to be fools; they seem to me to be something Else besides Human life.
William Blake
The French writer Michel Houellebecq needs security guards while a follower is attempting to organise crowdfunded protection for Jordan Peterson. As a Canadian colleague quipped to me: “Swift would now be gunned down by militant Yahoos . . . the targets now assassinate their satirists.”
John Wilson Foster reviewing The Madness of Crowds: Gender, Race and Identity, by Douglas Murray
Zionism has to be understood as a product of its era i.e. as a settler-colonial project, typical of European global thinking in the late 19th and early 20th century. What is distinctive about it, is that the Israelis are the last group of (mainly) Europeans to engage in the wholesale arrogation of non-European land, justified in their mission by theology, claims to civilizational superiority and nationalism. Of course, land grabs go on, all over the world, all the time. But, in the present day, the Israeli project is uniquely coherent and uniquely unapologetic as an instance of ‘classic’ settler-colonial ideology
Adam Tooze. This is the line of Mark Marzower and many others. I think British colonialism did a lot of good. I am not opposed to colonialism at all, but is Israel a benign paternalistic colony like Rhodesia?
The return of an exiled community to re-found its ancient kingdom is fundamentally different from Englishmen settling the "New World". Those who saw themselves as Germans or Englishmen or Frenchmen were precisely the ones who opposed the project. The Zionists did not name their settlements New York or New Orleans. They used the original biblical names. They did not establish English as the national language. They restored their ancient tongue and changed their names accordingly. They did not conquer with muskets but by purchasing territory from the Arab owners. They did not regard the Arabs they encountered as indigenous, but as recent interlopers, who, many of them hoped, would be happy enough to live somewhere else in the vast expanse of Arabia. (In this, they were completely wrong, of course.) Far from being "the last group of (mainly) Europeans to engage in the wholesale arrogation of non-European land", they are a different category entirely. Failing to understand this can only leave one mystified by Israel's subsequent history.
Josh Wine. The strong point in what he says is that Jews until 1948 purchased the land from Arabs rather than conquering it. That changed during the 1948 war. Another point in favour of Israel is that the Arab states expelled their Jews in 1948 who came to Israel, to balance the Arabs expelled by the Zionists.
John Wilson Foster reviewing The Madness of Crowds: Gender, Race and Identity, by Douglas Murray
Zionism has to be understood as a product of its era i.e. as a settler-colonial project, typical of European global thinking in the late 19th and early 20th century. What is distinctive about it, is that the Israelis are the last group of (mainly) Europeans to engage in the wholesale arrogation of non-European land, justified in their mission by theology, claims to civilizational superiority and nationalism. Of course, land grabs go on, all over the world, all the time. But, in the present day, the Israeli project is uniquely coherent and uniquely unapologetic as an instance of ‘classic’ settler-colonial ideology
Adam Tooze. This is the line of Mark Marzower and many others. I think British colonialism did a lot of good. I am not opposed to colonialism at all, but is Israel a benign paternalistic colony like Rhodesia?
The return of an exiled community to re-found its ancient kingdom is fundamentally different from Englishmen settling the "New World". Those who saw themselves as Germans or Englishmen or Frenchmen were precisely the ones who opposed the project. The Zionists did not name their settlements New York or New Orleans. They used the original biblical names. They did not establish English as the national language. They restored their ancient tongue and changed their names accordingly. They did not conquer with muskets but by purchasing territory from the Arab owners. They did not regard the Arabs they encountered as indigenous, but as recent interlopers, who, many of them hoped, would be happy enough to live somewhere else in the vast expanse of Arabia. (In this, they were completely wrong, of course.) Far from being "the last group of (mainly) Europeans to engage in the wholesale arrogation of non-European land", they are a different category entirely. Failing to understand this can only leave one mystified by Israel's subsequent history.
Josh Wine. The strong point in what he says is that Jews until 1948 purchased the land from Arabs rather than conquering it. That changed during the 1948 war. Another point in favour of Israel is that the Arab states expelled their Jews in 1948 who came to Israel, to balance the Arabs expelled by the Zionists.
https://x.com/CharlotteEmmaUK/status/1742493562439114955?s=20
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