permissiveness: the cause of terrorism

Doug Henwood dhenwood at panix.com
Mon Dec 17 13:19:58 PST 2001


Max Sawicky wrote:


>On the shows I've heard, you can also detect
>euphemisms "New Yorkers" or "anti-christian bigots" that have
>an anti-semitic (broadly speaking) undertone.

It's there for sure, but "New York" also represents red, queer, foreign, heterogeneity, mixing, cosmopolitanism, urbanity, density - all those things that make paranoid nativists anxious. "The Jew" also represents a lot of those things, and since there are a lot of Jews in New York, it's hard to separate all the pieces out. Not to beat an undead horse, but there's a lot in American populism that shares the antipathy to Sodom on the Hudson. If only NYC after Rudy lived up to the fantasy!

Doug



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list