Fascism is a worldview that worships
revolutionism, so it is not surprising that Justice Minister Ayelet
Shaked openly calls herself revolutionary. Speaking at the end of
August, Shaked announced a “moral and political revolution” aimed at strengthening national principles at the expense of universal individual rights.
“Zionism,”
Shaked said, “should not continue and will not continue to bow down to
the system of individual rights interpreted in a universal way.” She
called for grounding individual rights within a nationalist context in
which national tasks, identity and history take preference over
universal individual rights.
Shaked
is leading a national revolution against what she terms the “rights
revolution” of the 1990s, as a result of which, she argued, “we stopped
seeing ourselves as a community.”
In
his book “The Myth of the Nation and the Vision of Revolution,”
historian Jacob Talmon notes that Benito Mussolini wrote his “Doctrine
of Fascism” in 1932 “as the ripe fruit of Fascist self-knowledge.”
Mussolini’s fascism, like that of Shaked, was the “revolutionary
negation” of individualism and liberalism. “The nation was the primary
datum ... all-determining,” Talmon wrote.
In
the spirit of Mussolini, Shaked seeks to place nationality above the
individual and above liberalism, which grants the individual universal
rights without reference to national identity. Or as Talmon wrote in
regard to Mussolini: The nation “was a superior, super-personal reality
... a moral law, a tradition, a mission binding together generations
past, present and future, and all the individuals.”
To
Mussolini, the nation is “moral law” and “tradition.” It is in this
spirit that Shaked aspires to a moral revolution that will turn the
Zionist-Jewish nation into a sort of moral law that will bind its
members into a “community” and give national tasks preference over
universal individual rights.
Her
goal is a national identity in which the individual is a partner to a
Zionist mission that gives the individual the sense of belonging to a
“community.” According to Talmon, Mussolini said about such a mission
that “the individual was supposed to make himself into an instrument.
... His life was duty, dedication, service, sacrifice. This view of
nationhood and of the individual in relation to it was an ethical
conception which covered the whole of reality.”
And
it is in light of this perspective that Shaked declares decisively that
Zionism “will not continue to bow down to the system of individual
rights interpreted in a universal way.”
The
individual must serve the nation and be willing to sacrifice himself
for it. The nation, and not the individual, is “the primary datum ...
all-determining.” The nation shall not bow to the rights of the
individual. The individual is an instrument by which the nation shall
realize its mission. The rights of the nation come before the rights of
the individual.
Shaked
should not be called a fascist metaphorically, as hyperbole or a
provocation. The justice minister, who champions a moral revolution
based on giving national missions preference over universal individual
rights, is literally a fascist.
Her
goal is not equality between citizens, regardless of race, religion or
history, but rather, as Talmon wrote of Mussolini, the purpose is to
raise up the nation that is now thirsty for a place in the sun. Shaked’s
statements are the ripe fruit of her own fascist self-knowledge.
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