The Occidental Tourist: A Tale of Two Fetish-Pairs

As I have witnessed the recent degeneration of discourse about 'the Middle East' among some of my erstwhile comrades on the putative 'left,' as well as among those from whom I have never expected much better on the putative right, I have been struck by how now even old tendencies appear in a new light. The new Zionophobia and its correlate, 'Palestinianism,' I think, highlights a sense in which we in the Occident are prone to fetishizing not only 'the exotic Other,' but also ourselves and, increasingly, 'other "Others"' in the process. 

Fetishization, in other words, now seems to me to occur in PAIRINGS, not singularities - almost as if it were a correlate of Buber's renowned 'I/Thou' and 'I/It' 'PRIMARY Words' in I & Thou. 

Here are the two most salient cases that press themselves on me - and, I reckon, others - right now, which doubtless owe partly to 'the algorithm' and partly to massive funding by 'interested parties.' One is classical antisemitism, which as I say now appears retroactively in a newly enhanced light. The other is classical antisemitism's latest retroviral manifestation, which I will call 'Twinned Zionophobia/Palestinianism.'

1. Classical Antisemitism

   
   

It has often been noted by cultural anthropologists in the past that the Jew as ancient go-to scapegoat becomes the receptacle of all characteristics that occasion 'guilt'-awareness or self-loathing by the scapegoaters. 

In more modern, Hegelian terms, the Jew is the convenient ubiquitous 'Other' onto who to project one's most hated self in order to behold, confront, and 'expiate' that self in 'alienated,' 'reified,' 'objectified,' 'fetishized' form. Or in yet MORE modern, Freudian terms, no doubt the Oedipal relation that early Christianity, as supplier of the underlying Hegelian schema or chassis, as I often call it, bears to Judaism ALSO plays a role in the longstanding choice of the Jew as lucky winner of the scapegoat sweepstakes. The 'father' religion as that which the Freudian  'primal horde,' Christendom and its subsequent hollowed-out secular form, must murder.

Corresponding to this traditional negative fetishization of the Jew, of course, has been a positive fetishization of 'the Jew's' putative 'victim.' Notoriously, the victim-fantasies were of 'pure,' 'unsullied,' 'lily-white' women and of children - the latter as blood-suppliers for matzoahs in mysterious rituals that can only mean Satanism in an uncomprehending Christensom, and the former as objects of bestial lust, per a trope that was especially familiar in the American South of my childhood. 

It is striking how readily these two victim types, per the old antisemitism, map on to 'the Virgin Mary' and 'the Christ Child' of pre-secularized 'Christendom.' Mary, she of the 'Immaculate [that is, sexless] Conception,' is the 'our wimmin' whom the dirty lustful 'Other' aims to sully for sullying's sake. The Christ Child, in turn, whose blood the 'Christ-Killers' already took on 'the Cross' (wait, wasn't that the Romans), meanwhile continues to 'die for our - that is, "tge Jews''' - sins.' The above-mentioned Hegelian exteriorization, and the above-mentioned Oedipal relation between early Christianity and its 'Father Religion,' seem to be as richly evident in Christendom's 'victim'-fetish as in its 'victimizer'-fetish.

Indeed, just as the NEGATIVE fetish portrayed the Jew as everything that the gentile FEARED that s/he was, so did the POSITIVE one portray the 'Victim' as everything that the gentile WISHED that s/he was, or NEEDED TO BELIEVE that s/he was. But, perhaps because the negative image was so lurid, and perhaps also because we tend to think more of negativity than of positivity when we think of fetishization - stereotyping is thought to be 'baaaaaaaddddd,' after all - the fact that we tend to make totems of putative 'victims' as much as we do of putative 'victimizers' seems to have escaped popular recognition. 

 That proves instructive, I think, as we proceed to the 'new and improved' face of retroviral Jew-hate, duly 'globalized' and partly 'Islamized' for a 'new global' and 'post-Christian' era - or cohort, at any rate ...

2. Zionophobia/'Palestinianism'

   
   

It's also been noted, more recently now although still not enough, that 'Zios' or Israel now largely play the totemic role of the Jew - often, though not always, and never for long, replacing the Jew him or herself in the ritual slaughter. For now we're more modern and just, now we're too civilized to scapegoat 'the Jew' or to murder like Oedipus some 'father religion,' even if we're still no better than any Freudian 'primal horde.' 

So we project all that we loathe in ourselves, as 'Westerners' and COVERT guilt-bearing putative POST-Christians now rather than as PROFESSING Christians in our new form of self-loathing as Occidental practitioners of Oikophobia - as engagers in what I'll call, with a 'sorry not sorry' to the mountebank Edward Said, 'Occidentalism' - onto Israel and Israelis and Israel-defenders (the new '[n-word] lover') now rather than onto 'the Jews.' 

One can 'criticize Israel' (read, 'deny Jews the right to self-determination and effectively call for a completion of the original Shoah now in the Jewish homeland itself') without being antisemitic,' after all, so 'let's go with THAT.'

But in so doing we of course now project NEW, 'WESTERN' rather than 'CHRISTIAN' sins onto 'the Jews,' newly coded as 'Zionists.' So we call them 'white,' 'settlers,' 'colonists,' etc., notwithstanding that any serious engagement with Israeli demographics, regional history, and Jewish genetics AND history INSTANTLY shows just how ... not merely wring, but FATUOUS ... these Western ascriptions of Western guilt to 'the West's' own most ancient victims of (Roman, then Christian) imperialism and racial hatred are.

As I say, this character of Zionophobia as classical Jew-hatreds latest manifestation at least has been noted, even if it is still insufficiently well understood. What seems not yet to have been noted at all, it seems to me, is  the OTHER SIDE of this relation, the OTHER member of what I am here calling The Fetish-Pair, which accordingly ALSO is 'otherized' now in a Hegelian psychodrama, which ALSO is 'reified,' 'objectified,' 'alienated in order to provide a mirror of fantasized 'Western' INNOCENCE. The NEW 'Virgin Mary' and 'Christ Child,' as it were ... 

I mean the ARABS now who once lived alongside the JEWS of former British Mandate Palestine (that strange geographical space literally concocted by the European imagination of Sykes-Picot in 1929), who now serve as the receptacle of all perceived 'trauma,' all invented 'victimhood' by the scapegoaters - themselves overwhelmingly members of a cohort in 'the West' known for their 'coddledness,' their need of 'campus safe spaces' and cry-rooms, and a pervasive asshole sense of privilege that they call entitlement.

These necessary 'VICTIM' posits seem to function now as a sort of ineluctable CORRELATE of the 'VICTIMIZER' posits - the Jewish or 'Zionist' scapegoats. They are the placeholder/stand-in for all childish self-ascribed Western 'victimhood' just as the actual victims of their actual religio-egoist terrorism - the Jews - are the placeholder/stand-in for all Blood-Libelously ascribed 'victimizer' status.  

And, wouldn't you know it, just as this happens, the current fetishizers increasing say things like 'Jesus was a Palestinian,' 'Jesus was a Muslim,' and like inanities and insanities, even as images of scarved 'mothers' and putative 'famine'-struck infants circulate over social media as latterday counterparts of those Medieval paintings of 'the Virgin and Child.' Virtually LITERAL 'infantilization' - not to mention identity-theft.

The status of the new Zionophobia/Palestinianism as successor fetish pair to the original Christ-Killer/Christ fetish pair could hardly be more 'in your face.'

So 'Israel versus Palestine' now functions as the new token for the type 'victimizer versus victim,' which is in turn the new exteriorization (the projection, the alienation, the reification, the fetishization) of the contemporary self-loving self-loathing Occidental 'neurotic's' own internal tension: the 'me-as-vicious-victimizer versus me-as-virtuous-victim' tension that now seems to torture so many 'Westerners,' that functions right now as THE mental illness of the narcissistic Oikophobic 'Westerner' par excellence.

The tragedy here, of course, is that in addition to perpetuating the most ancient of lethal mass-murderous bigotries, this strange new psychosis now fetishizes and thereby victimizers an additional group too. For 'the Palestinians' now become sacrificial victims as well. As the carriers of all 'Western' self-flatteries correlate to the Jews as carriers of all Western self-loathings,' they're no more seen for who they are than are the Jews or the 'Zios.' And hence almost no one has any idea how to be of any actual help - nor do they care. 

For it is not ABOUT 'the Palestinians,' any more than it has ever been about 'the [actual] Jews. It's about, dare we pun it, the platform-based, purely virtual 'Occidental Tourist.'