https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/if-they-dont-believe-theyre-enemies
Caitlin Johnstone
Jan 10, 2025
Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix

Trump and Obama were seen happily chatting and laughing together at the funeral for Jimmy Carter. If these guys don’t buy into the story that they are on opposite sides of a ferocious battle of existential importance between two wildly different ideologies, then why should you?

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I saw Alex Jones proclaiming on Twitter that “Elon Musk just took down the New World order!”

One of the dumbest psyops in history is this idiotic faux populist faction being marketed to rightists which claims that a brave revolutionary movement is being led against the establishment by a plucky band of billionaires, defense contractors, Zionists, and DC swamp monsters.

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Trump says he’s “the best friend that Israel ever had.” Anyone who still believes this asshole presents a threat to the establishment is a drooling moron who deserves to have their feelings hurt.

MAGA support for Israel invalidates damn near everything MAGA supposedly stands for. They shriek about antisemitism while denouncing woke identity politics and the weaponization of racism allegations, they want to shovel money into Israel while mocking Biden for funding Ukraine, they shout “America first” while prioritizing the interests of a foreign government on the other side of the planet, they claim to despise the mainstream media while swallowing every MSM propaganda lie about Gaza right down their throats with zero gag reflex, and they claim to want to end the wars while backing a country that cannot exist without nonstop war.

These contradictions are possible because these people do not have any real values and don’t actually stand for anything; they’re just mindless, bootlicking sheep who think whatever the right wing pundits tell them to think.

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Western critics of Israel tend to fall into two categories: those who believe the western empire supports Israel because the western empire is evil, and those who believe the west is naturally good but has become corrupted by Israel. I find the latter group ridiculous and baby-brained.

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Joe Biden, on his deathbed: I… I hope we can send just one more arms shipment to Israel before my term ends.

Jill Biden: You’re not the president anymore, Joe. You haven’t been president for two years.

Joe Biden: Can… can you at least bring me a Palestinian baby to kick?

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An 81 year-old House representative named Virginia Foxx fell down the stairs at congress the other day and required treatment for minor injuries.

The US Capitol Building is a giant nursing home that happens to help oversee the operation of an empire. The whole place smells like denture cream and urine. Picture a bigger version of the assisted living facility your grandma died in, but with a bunch of lobbyists and Israeli flags.

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First end the active genocide, then talk to me about your concerns regarding a rise in antisemitism. This isn’t one of those “we can walk and chew gum at the same time” things. No, obviously we cannot, because accusations and narratives about “antisemitism” are used to deflect criticism of the genocide. Even if everything Israel defenders are saying about rising antisemitism was true (and it most assuredly isn’t), genocide is an infinitely more urgent concern than hurt feelings and graffiti. Resolve that first, then we can talk about your far less urgent concerns.

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I saw a video clip the other day of an Israeli settler from New York responding to questions about the slaughter of children in Gaza by saying “Who gives a shit?” because those children “grow up to be Arabs”.
https://x.com/lauraw97_/status/1874868511081935278

You see a lot of this kind of genocidal rhetoric from Israel supporters. The argument is basically that because the Palestinians will never accept the existence of the Jewish state, then the Jews don’t have to accept the existence of the Palestinian people.

You can immediately see the flaw in this logic when it’s written out like this, though. A wildly unequal dynamic is being falsely framed as equal: Israel supporters want an end to the Palestinians as a people, while Palestinians just want an end to the tyrannical apartheid state which murders their children and has taken everything from them. Palestinians don’t seek the extermination of the Jewish people, but Israel’s supporters absolutely seek the extermination of the Palestinian people — or at least their perpetual subordination.

By falsely conflating a particular apartheid ethnostate continuing to exist in its present iteration with the existence of Jews as a people, Israel’s supporters can then claim “We have to kill them because they want to kill us,” because “us” here means the state of Israel. This dishonestly frames this as an “it’s us or them”, kill-or-be-killed situation, which is much more morally defensible than the truth, because everyone can sympathize with the act of killing in self-defense when you will be killed if you don’t kill your would-be killer first.

But of course that isn’t the reality of what is happening with Palestine. This isn’t two groups mutually opposed to one another’s existence, this is an apartheid settler colony backed by the most powerful empire in history getting dropped on top of a pre-existing civilization, with the people who had been living there being told that they must either submit to losing their rights, their property and their dignity, or face extermination.

These things are not equal. Clearly. Israel’s supporters just need to make them look equal to obfuscate the wildly unjust reality of what we are seeing today.