• Earlier: And Nothing Changes …
• Christopher Nagle: Shylock in the 21st century, who says … The subject of the enduring unpopularity of Jews since ancient times maybe these days a risky exercise, but it is nonetheless an extremely rewarding seam of exploration. Nobody, despite their best efforts, can truly remain neutral about this extraordinary and fraught little tribe, despite a welter of hypocrisy, cant and denial, that pretends we are all extremely cool on this very dangerous subject. All the prejudices about Jews, regardless of where they are coming from, are likely to be juicy, subterranean and barely explored beyond the boundaries of safety and ideological self-consciousness. The roots of this conundrum are absolutely fascinating, both personally and intellectually. And when you get to the point in the narrative when you feel you have got a bit too close to the tiger’s cage for comfort, that is when you just have to read on……
• Leonard Colquhoun, in Comments: ‘Fascist / fascism’ became an “equally awful cliche” and just as “unusable” after, say, the 1980s. To adapt a well-known saying, ‘We’re (or maybe ‘You’re’) all fascists now’. Mostly, it now deserves no more than an ‘If you say so’ put-down, especially when used by people who seem to have no clue about what the real fascists did. Let’s add ‘outrage/d’ and ‘devastated’ to the list – a story in today’s Mercury reported how some people were “outraged” by a Commonwealth Games swimming uniform having a Tasmania-less diagram of Australia, FFS!! “Outraged”? – We’re all fucking ‘outraged’ now!! All the fucking time. At fucking anything.
