Before the Rope Appears

Preface: I hope the sarcasm of my subtitle does more than earn a chuckle. Its purpose is neither clickbait nor sensationalism. The opposite, in fact. I hope it stresses the severe nature of what is occurring all around us. I’ve always fancied myself as possessing a calm demeanor at times when apocalypticism is the spirit of the moment. These days, not so much.

If this is your first time reading my Substack, or you’ve been following Inverted World since its genesis, I’m compelled to stress the danger Jews are currently facing and the antizionism that has become pervasive since the massacres of October 7.

To my fellow non-Jews: please check in on your Jewish friends, they are holding weight we have the luxury of avoiding. Let’s use that exception to make this movement as ashamed and embarrassed as the presence of swastikas. To Jews: stay safe and know that you are not seeing the world incorrectly. Your intuitions are unfortunately accurate. You are not wrong, or guilty. Am Yisrael Chai.

On the night of April 4, 1918, a group of miners arrived at Robert Prager’s door. Prager, a German immigrant who applied for citizenship and attempted to join the Navy, followed them reluctantly. “All right, brothers,” he said, “I’ll go, if you don’t hurt me.”

America was feverish with anti-German sentiment. The German language disappeared from schools, German music from concerts, some families Anglicized their names, and sauerkraut was renamed “liberty cabbage.”

The miners dragged Prager through town and forced him to kiss the American flag. Before two-hundred townsfolk and no trial, he was hanged to death.

Americans didn’t stay fixed on the Kaiser, the German army, or German policy. Their hate widened. What began as hostility towards a state expanded until Germanness was to blame.

That widening matters.

Good-faith criticism moves in the opposite manner. The more seriously one examines a problem, the more precise its focus becomes: this government, or that minister, a military order, a law, decision, or a specific outcome. Prejudice enlarges instead. A policy becomes a government; that government becomes a state; that state becomes a people; and those people become an identity to attack.

In the overwhelming majority of what is now called criticism of Israel, this has been occurring.

Antizionism has so drastically permeated the atmosphere that good faith can no longer be assumed. Demonization of Israel is the dominant expression, and our presumptions should change to reflect that fact.

We keep speaking as though there is a large category called “criticism of Israel,” some portion of which occasionally goes too far. The proportions are almost exactly reversed. What we are mostly witnessing is antizionism expressed through criticism of Israel, with the occasional legitimate take.