Zionism as textbook barbarism

Left descriptions of Zionism as "fascism" miss some important distinctions.

If you only have time for one article today, please set this one aside and read Jeremy England’s Live by the Law or Die on the Cross. It is easily one of the most radically reactionary essays that I have ever read. Usually when I come across something like this, it’s on the Free Republic message boards or on a blog called OathRebels with ads for gold in every other paragraph. That it appears in Tablet — one of the most important Zionist publications in the world — says everything about where their politics have led.

Particularly in the last year it has become popular on the US left to decry Israel as a “fascist” state and Zionism as a “fascist” ideology. I think this is a credible argument, and certainly more credible than similar claims about the decidedly capitalist Republican party. What I would like to argue here, however, is that Cross, while an odious essay, is not correctly described as fascist. It is something just as dangerous but much, much older: barbarism.