Just over a week ago, on August 17, the Los Angeles Review of Books (LARB) published a review of Deconstructing Zionism: a Critique of Political Metaphysics, a collection of essays edited by Gianni Vattimo and Michael Marder. Vattimo is the Italian philosopher who, during the current Israel-Hamas conflict, has made clear once again his sympathy […]
Anatomy of an Anti-Semite
. Ross Vachon (of Malibu, CA, he informs) has reappeared. A month and a half after I pinned him wriggling to the specimen board in ‘Anti-Semitism, the Ur-Hatred,” he has apparently taken time to emerge from his burrow and discover what I observed of him. He had originally written me privately, in response to “The […]
How We Lived on It (42) – Anti-Semitism, the Ur-Hatred
I’ve been thinking since I wrote “The Uncanny John Mearsheimer,” in which I by the way proposed Jewish anti-Semitism and black-for-white passing as Ur forms of the uncanny, that anti-Semitism is one of the Ur forms of hatred – the group form. Hatred of the other, expressed as demonization, is a primal emotion. In the […]
Apologies: Authentic and Inauthentic
When I first posted about Rick Sanchez at the start of the week, I considered closing with some thoughts about the alternative ways Sanchez could handle the inevitable public statement and apology. I chose not to, but knew anyway that the most likely choice would be the carefully worded, inauthentic utterance of someone coping with […]