UD‘s kind of the same. You know – you’re watching a film and the end credits come on and you’re looking for Jewish last names… Merrick Garland gets nominated for Attorney General and you race to Wikipedia to see whether, despite the unpromising name, he’s one of us (yes)… So UD was of course intrigued (though, since she follows the subject of Orthodox Jews, not surprised) that busloads of Orthodox Jews came to Fuckface’s pre-insurrection rally, and of those more than a few stormed and ransacked the Capitol building.

If you follow the subject of right-wing Orthodox Jews, you know that en masse they LOVE Fuckface. They vote for him in droves. In fact they are his most consistent and enthusiastic voting bloc. 80%, 85% of them vote for him every time.

They love him because he’s just like them: They are a cult. He leads a cult. He hates and despises science and therefore has no trouble with their refusal to vaccinate their children, and of course with their refusal to educate their children. He loves a con, and therefore has no trouble with many of their communities’ decades of welfare fraud. A significant minority of them love to riot and they do it at the drop of a hat – and Fuckface too adores violence. Fuckface loves authoritarianism, so their worship of grand rabbis sits very well with him – benighted old guys should tell you what to do (most importantly, they should tell you to vote for Fuckface), and you should (and do) unquestioningly obey them. Ff is a white supremacist, and they are too – white ultra-Orthodox supremacists. They are a rogue mob unto themselves – in Israel and in the United States – and in Ff they have correctly identified a president who doesn’t give a fuck what they do. Cheers them on. On the very simplest level, many of the men among the ultra-Orthodox are obnoxious (consider their routine vile behavior on planes, buses, and city streets in regard to women) and obnoxiousness is just … constitutive of Ff.

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A number of people seem surprised by the coincidence, inside the desecrated Capitol building, of Israeli flags and Camp Auschwitz sweatshirts. Of fervently pious Jews, and neo-Nazis. How the hell can both…??? But that’s because they’re not thinking. Let us think about how this can be, about how American fascists who HATE HATE HATE Jews, and Orthodox American Jews, gathered together at the Capitol building on Wednesday to try to destroy American democracy.

First point: This is not the comic/pathetic thing Andrew Higgins describes having seen in post-communist violent demonstrations – demonstrations that remind him of the sick circus we saw on Wednesday. Higgins describes a confusion of lost-cause flags:

In Donetsk, these included not just the Red Flag of the defunct Soviet Union and the black-yellow-white tricolor of the long-gone Tsarist empire, but at times also the emblem of an even more distant, failed venture, the Confederate States of America.

Same seemingly irresolvable contradiction, right? Everyone gathered in solidarity to riot, some fervently hoping to bring back Stalin, others worshipful in regard to the people Stalin slaughtered, and yet others – what the hell – hoisting the Confederate flag. Amusing, ain’t it? Call it the Undifferentiated Resentment Carnivalesque.

Wednesday’s attempted coup was more organized, under the banner you better fucking look at me and let me do what I want.

Details? The ultra-Orthodox Jewish side of this is the easy one to figure. The people on those Trump rally buses represent a small incredibly tightly-knit cult which positively cultivates ignorance of any world outside itself. Abstractions like “the Israeli state” or “the American government” come to life for them primarily as impediments – via universal education mandates and the like – to their self-enclosed way of life. They are things against which you riot because you want to do what you want. Note, for instance, the wonderfully cooperative attitude toward state covid mandates we continue to witness among the ultra-Orthodox. Their appalling behavior is not really in defense of anything spiritual – they just want to do what they want.

If you ask them what about those Nazi flags waving around you at the Capitol? They will respond: What Nazi flags? And if they’re under a certain age they will respond: What’s a Nazi?

As for the neo-Nazis: They might not like Jews, but they love them some Israel. “[T]here’s a real affinity here … Far-right nationalists often see Israel, particularly its current far-right government, as an ally. When far-right extremists like [Richard] Spencer look at Israel, they claim to see more than a hint of their own vision for society.” Obviously the American fascist view of Israel is wacky; nonetheless, it inspires and animates white nationalists at the highest levels.

Most broadly, you saw ultra-Orthodox Jews and neo-Nazis at the Capitol because violent anti-democratic extremists/cultists recognize one another; they recognize that much more unites than divides them.