Stoking the flames of paranoia

JULIE SZEGO

THE email that recently lobbed into my inbox, headed “Guess who I am — spooky”, certainly fulfilled its promise; sinister for sure, its juvenile character notwithstanding. “I bet you will be surprised,” the anonymous author sniggers, before sketching a biography of sorts that kicks off with: “I was born in one country, raised in another. My father was born in another country …”

With barely suppressed venom, it piles fact upon invective to sketch a portrait of someone who lived among the downtrodden, was gifted with a golden tongue, “pretended” he had a plan for the economy, became the most powerful man in the world and then “the world learnt the truth”. The email concludes, “I am Adolf Hitler. Who were you thinking of? Scary isn’t it?”

Positively chilling, yes! Given the absence of minor details such as mass murder from the aforementioned CV, I was sucker enough to think — as of course I was meant to think — of President Barack Obama.

The email came from a supremely intelligent friend in the US, who later apologised for unthinkingly contributing to the circulation of such “bilge”. My friend, a Middle-East expert of conservative bent, also correctly described it as a “tantalising piece of the zeitgeist”.

The latest series of only-in-America freak shows has the usual nutters, including radio host Rush Limbaugh, pushing the Obama-as-Hitler and/or the anti-Christ message as fury mounts over the President’s apparently evil agenda of providing Americans with basic health cover. So loud is the shrieking that it forced one distinguished professor of Jewish studies to pen a piece on a respected website entitled: “Health care reforms are the antithesis of Nazi practice”.

You might assume Jews would shun such poisonous antics, but no, some right-wing Zionists have also grabbed their pitchforks, albeit for different reasons. Israeli-American activist Orly Taitz, de facto leader of the “Birther” movement — which alleges Obama was in fact born in Kenya and is therefore ineligible to serve as president — claims the Federal Emergency Management Agency is building internment camps for “anti-Obama dissidents”. She refers to her detractors as “Obama’s brownshirts”.

Taitz has been getting a fair share of media exposure in Israel lately, including an interview in the prestigious Ha’aretz newspaper. She says Obama’s foreign policies pose “a clear and present danger to Israel”. In this respect, she has something in common with my friend, the forwarder of the Hitler email, who thinks Obama is “very bad news and potentially disastrous”.

Disastrous, dangerous, very bad — both rational and irrational commentators tend to employ the same alarmist, semi-apocalyptic language in criticising Obama’s Middle East approach.
Now I understand the reservations in some quarters, including sections of the Israeli Left, to the policy shift in the White House and reasoned debate is always good. (I too take issue, for instance, with several aspects of Obama’s Cairo speech, while acknowledging it also broke new ground in confronting the Arab world with some tough truths.)

But the catastrophising discourse is mystifying. It’s especially so when you consider the record of Obama’s predecessor. Not his words — because his “Masada will not fall again” platitudes went down a treat — but his deeds, or in the case of Israel, his lack thereof. Under President George W Bush’s watch, the peace process faltered, the hardliners became emboldened in Gaza, Lebanon and Iran, and the time-bomb threatening Israel’s very existence — the Palestinians in the territories who, if the status quo prevails, will eventually force Israel to choose between being a Jewish state or a democratic one — ticked ever louder.

If anything warranted dark prophecies, it was the previous administration’s ineptitude.

Still, while the unbalanced rhetoric might be baffling, it’s hardly surprising. A few weeks back, a story surfaced in Ha’aretz, to be later picked up by The New York Times, that Binyamin Netanyahu referred to Administration officials David Axelrod and Rahm Emanuel (he of Revisionist Zionist stock who took up arms in defence of Israel during the first Gulf War) as “self-hating” Jews. The reports were strenuously denied, but hey, now they’re out there and Netanyahu, a wily politician and accomplished dog-whistler, will doubtless find a use for them.

It is dangerous when mainstream leaders and commentators stoke the flames of paranoia — merging friend and foe, forsaking logic and indeed civility — in furtherance of their political cause.

Julie Szego is a writer with The Age. Her column appears monthly.