Newsletter Special: The Yoram Hazony Show Takes Us to the Heart of Trump-Orban Darkness
David Shasha
Where Will it End? The Yoram Hazony Show Takes Us to the Heart of Trump-Orban Darkness
It seems like Yoram Hazony is preternaturally connected to the SHU.
From the moment I published my article “The Nightmare of Diaspora” in SHU 24 way back in 2002, I have presented Hazony as a constant antagonist to the Sephardic heritage of Jewish Humanism.
I eventually collected that article and a number of Hazony’s pieces into a special newsletter that clocked in at over 90 pages!
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1mIGjVlWpqgYgp24AabfaDqm-8jngdKbn7ZqN99Jpnpo/edit
I have also written on his reactionary view of Isaiah Berlin and the Counter-Enlightenment, which again shows us his deeply illiberal neo-Fascist tendencies; especially when it comes to the figure of Giambattista Vico, a critical source of cultural pluralism for both Jose Faur and Edward Said:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1aU5eUG3_dui2ugm1oANVkWLh1-TgH4dtlqCruef7pCo/edit
In recent years, Hazony has moved from the standard Neo-Con Tikvah Fund radicalism, to Trumpist Alt-Right Christian Fascism.
He is one of the leaders in what is called National Conservatism, which can be seen in their e-mail newsletter:
https://nationalconservatism.org/natcontalk/natcontalk-94-january-6-2022/
We will recall David Brooks’ recent rantings on their unhinged conference:
And Rod Dreher’s Trumpist response:
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/david-brooks-among-the-national-conservatives/
Both articles were included in SHU 1033.
In 2018, Hazony published his proudly Trumpist book The Virtue of Nationalism, which showed us how his Tikvah attacks on Liberal Zionism had morphed into something even more dangerous and diabolical:
https://www.amazon.com/Virtue-Nationalism-Yoram-Hazony/dp/1541645375
And the Trumpscum Fascists took notice:
https://www.vox.com/21355993/trump-israel-yoram-hazony-nationalism-tikvah
The Zack Beauchamp article is included in this special newsletter.
And in 2019, he received ISI’s Conservative Book of the Year award for his loyal Trumpist flourishes:
https://isi.org/events/conservative-book-year-dinner/
It was then that I wrote an article that reviewed his past craziness and how it is connected to the Trump phenomenon, as filtered in the book:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1DxHkOp4KpryDXxhnRSzmWg3McaUV0CcsWPvAmV7uJpo/edit
As you can see from the NatCon e-mail newsletter, Hazony is knee-deep in Orban, Rod Dreher, and Tucker Carlson Fascism. I do not think that the prefix “neo” suffices anymore. It is far beyond that now.
Hazony has also tied himself to Dru Johnson, who is also a proponent of “Biblical Philosophy” in a Religio-Fascist manner:
https://www.amazon.com/Biblical-Philosophy-Hebraic-Approach-Testaments/dp/110893269X
I presented Johnson’s radical theocratic beliefs in SHU 1019:
https://groups.google.com/g/davidshasha/c/RDXEuaJK8ec/m/uTj9VcmtAgAJ
Johnson found himself in some (Jewish) hot water, when one of his website writers decided to go full-blown Supersessionist, and he and fellow Neo-Con theocrat Ari Lamm had to do the clean-up.
I presented the whole SHANDA in SHU 1030:
https://groups.google.com/g/davidshasha/c/N1DVmc65kXw/m/u8eDmidiCgAJ
The latest NatCon e-mail included one of the most fascinating, thorough, and perfectly horrifying pieces on Hazony as a Trump avatar that I have read:
https://www.mdpi.com/2077-1444/12/12/1091
The article, “Saving Nation, Faith, and Family: Yoram Hazony’s National Conservativism and its Theo-Political Mission,” written by a Christian Fascist of the Orban variety who teaches at the University of Innsbruck, is a densely argued theological manifesto for the New Convivencia that brings together the worst sort of Christians and the worst sort of Jews, in a blood pact rooted in the European Ubermensch and the glories of Religious Authoritarianism.
Be on careful lookout for the ways in which the article deals with the issue of Christian superiority over Judaism, and the tricky issue of Nazi Carl Schmitt and his obvious, though unnamed, influence on Hazony.
I would also add to the discussion the decrepit figure of another Nazi, Martin Heidegger, whose atavistic Volkisch philosophy took inspiration from the inaugural Hitler moment:
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2000/04/heid-a03.html
As we continue to delve into the vile writings of Hazony and his allies, it would once again be worthwhile to recall Heidegger’s words praising Nazism from his infamous Rector’s Address of 1933:
In fact, the address was a call to arms for the student body and the faculty to serve the new Nazi regime. It celebrates the Nazi ascendancy as “the march our people has begun into its future history.” Heidegger identifies the German nation with the Nazi state in prose that speaks of “the historical mission of the German Volk, a Volk that knows itself in its state.” There is even a reference to the fascist ideology of zoological determinism when Heidegger invokes “the power to preserve, in the deepest way, the strengths [of the Volk] which are rooted in soil and blood.”
The correlation between 1933 Hitler Germany and 2017 Trump Charlottesville should now be apparent to us:
https://www.cnn.com/2017/08/12/us/charlottesville-unite-the-right-rally/index.html
Even when I first read Hazony in 2000 it was clear to me that he was going to be a big problem.
But for the life of me, I had no idea – as with the election of Trump – just how bad it was going to get.
As we commemorate the 1/6 Insurrection and the ongoing attempts to install Cyrus Trump dictator-for-life through disinformation and violence, it is just as important to dig deep into the more intellectually-oriented Religious Fascism of people like Hazony and his pal Rod Dreher, as it is to follow the daily newspaper.
Michaela Quast-Neulinger’s lengthy and somewhat difficult article brings us the New Illiberalism in a way that marks Liberal figures from Kant to FDR as enemies of the Religious Fascism that is being extolled.
Amazingly, the article vigorously defends Apartheid South Africa and Serbian Fascism, as it defends the religious monolingualism of Zionism and the current Orban regime in a way that is very much in keeping with the views of Tucker Carlson and the Charlottesville mob. It approvingly cites Hazony’s attacks on Martin Buber and Hans Kohn as Jewish enemies of the Nationalist Idea, as Zionism is firmly situated in the New Fascist context.
Although it was impossible to envision exactly where Hazony would lead us 20 years ago, this article makes it quite clear where that place is today, and it is truly a dark one.
Along the way, the article highlights the critical contributions of First Things’ R.R. Reno and Rabbi Meir Soloveichik to the construction of the New Fascism.
It is all necessary, if upsetting, reading which will allow us to see just how far the White Jewish Supremacy has come from the cosmopolitan liberalism of Sephardic Humanism and its relation to the American dream of a Republican Democracy of all its citizens, living in Freedom, Peace, and Equality.
As we saw on the day of the Capitol Insurrection, and through the violent actions of the Trumpists ever since, it is this dream that is being threatened by the likes of Yoram Hazony and the Brownshirt-loving National Conservatives.
David Shasha
Where Will it End? The Yoram Hazony Show Takes Us to the Heart of Trump-Orban Darkness
By: David Shasha
Saving Nation, Faith, and Family: Yoram Hazony’s National Conservativism and its Theo-Political Mission
By: Michaela Quast-Neulinger
Yoram Hazony, Donald Trump, and the Links Between the American and Israeli Right
By: Zack Beauchamp