Netanyahu’s Victory Harbinger of More Liberal Defeat in the West?

AP’s Daniel Estrin was surely correct when he wrote that “Israeli liberals woke up after national elections with a demoralizing feeling: Most of the country, in a deep and possibly irreversible way, does not think like they do.”

      In the US, mainstream parties have finally “reached across the aisle,” it seems, forging a liberal alliance that controls government, education, and the media.  We can’t forget that it’s been almost a century now since the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917.  Marxists back then hoped that the suitably managed lower classes would pry those in power out of their positions of privilege. 

      But something went wrong with this liberal strategy in Israel, according to Estrin, as hate and “rage rippled through liberal Israel this [past] week. Social media was full of embittered Israelis accusing Netanyahu’s supporters of racism, and some vowed to stop donating charity to the underprivileged whom they perceived as being automatic supporters of the right.” 

      Populism can apparently win elections, as Netanyahu has demonstrated.   Fears run deeper than fixes that government managers promise.  After all, is everyone happy about how the “do not call” safeguarding of freedom and privacy at home is being handled?  Will people just continue to be mesmerized by contrived promises of more welfare–and economic versions of “a chicken in every pot”?  Giving more money and tax breaks to the rich has been the unchallenged rallying cry of both Democrats and Republicans for too long, hasn’t it?

      Europeans are even more aware of gut-level issues that liberal governments won’t even acknowledge, much less address.  The hitherto sleeping French and German populations are witnessing an awakening of political interest in retaking their heritage.

      The day before the Charlie Hebdo shootings in Paris on January 7, I wrote about how the political right in France is achieving populist victories at the polls:  “Some Europeans know exactly what this is all about.  They are the political right, now surging in elections across the continent.  French Member of Parliament Marion Le Pen (photo) is from the National Front (FN) party, founded by her grandfather Jean-Marie Le Pen, and now chaired by her aunt Marine Le Pen.  The family’s message is that massive Islamic immigration is bent on stealing Europe’s birthright identity.”

      Significant numbers of both Israelis and Europeans seem threatened by Muslims both within and surrounding their countries.  Netanyahu has cast his lot with religious orthodoxy, though Europeans have decided that liberalizing the church is the key, banishing orthodoxy and rooted traditions.

      It is indeed an irony that ISIS and Judaism and Christianity share a common fundamentalist orthodoxy in faiths that go back centuries.  The enemy of all three is the secular juggernaut much in evidence in media today.  Is Netanyahu’s victory a harbinger of more liberal defeat in West—or the last push back of religious fundamentalism?