2023-04-30 16:22:02
Ver emotions that can undermine democracies: fear, disgust, resentment and (somewhat surprisingly in this quartet) love. In her new book “Undemocratic Emotions”, the renowned French-Israeli sociologist Eva Illouz describes how feelings and moods are used to make politics – in this case “undemocratic” politics. But what if these policies are the result of democratic and free elections?
Right from the start, the author, who teaches at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, makes it clear what concept of (representative) democracy she has. She sees in it a system of separation of powers and institutional protection of minorities – something that is not limited to the rule of a temporary majority. Illouz rightly states that fragile liberal democracies are rarely destroyed by a dramatic coup, but rather slowly wither away. For example, through parliamentary restrictions on press freedom and judicial autonomy, through “constituency reforms” that only benefit the strongest party, and the like. Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has confidently described such a system as “illiberal democracy,” a goal that the ruling Polish PiS party is also working towards, as are quite a few Trumpist US Republicans.
But why should contemporary Israel be paradigmatic for such developments? Doesn’t Illouz serve here the populist argumentation pattern of a hateful anti-Zionism acting worldwide, which equates Israel with the Netanyahu government and this as guiding spirit of all neo-right figures from Trump to Bolsonaro? Isn’t it rather the case that the alert Benjamin Netanyahu is taking inspiration from the illiberals abroad to bring the traditionally democratic and heterogeneous Israel into line?
Eva Illouz – and this is what accounts for the argumentative weakness of her sometimes overly schematic book, but at the same time speaks for the honesty and fairness of the author – gives enough reasons that the “example Israel” exactly not exemplify: “Given the considerable amount of external conflict and internal tension this fledgling democracy has endured, its institutions have proved amazingly and extraordinarily stable for an amazingly long time (although they may now collapse under attack from the populist and messianic right). Especially when compared to countries like Poland, Hungary, the United States or Brazil, which have no enemies on their borders (and the first two of which are actually relatively homogeneous), one can only be impressed by the fact that Israel does not differ turned into a mighty military dictatorship.”
Left Liberal Zionism
The book “Undemocratic Emotions” was completed at the end of 2022. Since then, the supposedly left-wing democratic President Lula da Silva has ruled in Brazil instead of the right-wing extremist Jair Bolsonaro. In Israel, on the other hand, Prime Minister Netanyahu, who has been surrounded by allegations of corruption, has in the meantime actually pulled bare and laid the ax on the rule of law with the help of his extremist coalition partners.
Eva Illouz’s book is therefore to be read as a warning that has long since proved its reality. Written from a position of left-liberal Zionism – and thus in a conceivably sympathetic and upright understanding of society and politics – the reading sometimes makes you a little perplexed. So if it were really the case that left-wing democrats (who in Israel were never arrogant pacifists or arrogant do-gooders anyway) have no choice but to face the current dangers analyze?
The analysis of democracy-destroying emotions is quite plausible. Netanyahu’s justified concern about an Iranian nuclear bomb turns it into a policy of fear that declares domestic political opponents and Israeli Arabs enemies and now doesn’t even stop at the judges of the Supreme Court. Fear has long since turned into celebrated disgust. This diffuses into all areas of society – the malicious failures against them, for example gay community the prime minister has rejected, but it is no coincidence that they come from the ranks of the parties that are part of his governing coalition.
In contrast to foreign “Israel critics”, Eva Illouz knows exactly what she is writing about and does not degrade her analysis, which is worth considering, in any line to the denunciatory amalgamation. This also applies to the issue of the West Bank occupation. “Racism was not the reason for the occupation, it is a consequence of it. Abuse needs justification, and disgust provides it. The more everyday and entrenched rule becomes in Israeli society, the more reliant it is on justification. In fact, there is hardly a more compelling justification for domination than abhorrence.”
But this is exactly where one would have wished for more depth and questions that really hurt from a sociologist who had previously written such profound books on the intricate complexities of human nature. When does (legitimate) disgust at a violent, irrational atavism, which undoubtedly dominates parts of Palestinian culture, now turn into a crude racism, which in allen Arabs sees the hostile other? And what is the connection between a well-meaning, liberal paternalism, which irritatingly prays real conflicts to health, and an alleged “liberation strike” that, with illiberal rhetoric and (in)acts, now threatens to destroy the foundations of everything that one supposedly wants to defend?
Resentment as a problem
The third of the undemocratic emotions described by Illouz is resentment. Here the thought arises that too much political correctness may have been at play here. The shift to the right of half of Israeli society (but in fact “only” half) is explained in an understandable way. According to Illouz, it is a result of the voting behavior of the Mizrachim, that is, the descendants of the Jews who once immigrated or fled to Israel not from Western and Eastern Europe, but from the Arab countries. Indeed, these had been treated with considerable contempt by the Ashkenazi establishment for decades; The first major electoral success of the Likud in 1977 then set in motion a development in which the centrist Labor Party of the former state founders, which had set the tone up to that point, was weakened further and further – up to the present day, when the once so strong Avoda as a splinter party is not even is more a shadow of itself. One can and must regret that, just as it is appropriate to point out that the Likud, which is now led by Benjamin Netanyahu, is also dominated by politicians of Ashkenazi origin and therefore such an origin is not everything explained.
But what if there had been understandable reasons for the educated generation of the secular state founders and their guardians of tradition to integrate their “oriental” compatriots, who came from regions of despotism, in a rather harsh way at first into a constitutional state based on the European model? And wasn’t it later that the wonderfully social-democratic ideal of equal opportunities? and of social advancement had become stale and then of all things Netanyahu’s successful economic policy, which can hardly be summed up with the catchphrase of “neoliberalism”, triggered a hitherto unknown boost in prosperity among millions of Israelis?
Anyone who dares such tricky questions – and at the same time points out that the hundreds of thousands who hope to preserve the rule of law in Israel today are demonstrating primarily in the country’s large cities – is entering a minefield in which, among other allegations, those of culturalism or even racism. But just as love, as the fourth of the questionable emotions, can always and everywhere be misused as idiocy for one’s own mythically praised nation, so can – on another level – the high virtue of respect be travested into intellectual despondency.
It almost seems that only on the last pages of this book, which despite everything is eminently stimulating, does the author leave the rather defensive behind and dare a reflective strategy for the future. “It is Jewish universalism that must be revived through an alliance between liberalism and a dynamic Jewish religion. This is undoubtedly the true and only spirit of Zionism. Whether he succeeds remains a tragically open question.”
Eva Illouz: Undemocratic Emotions. The example of Israel. Translated from English by Michael Adrian. Suhrkamp, 259 pages, 18 euros
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