The Enemy is Authoritarianism

Looking deeper at the Israel-Hamas war and what we're all actually fighting for.

There is a sickness invading the world. One that has been around for generations, one that has been holding us as a species back from the progress we need to make the world safe. It is a sickness that invades its host, convinces it that it is in fact a cure, and then proceeds to kill everything around it, including the host itself.

This sickness is not Hamas. It is not Israel’s government. It is not even terror or war.

These are the symptoms. They are the later stages of a terminal illness.

The problem is that we keep trying to treat the symptoms and, in so doing, we often exacerbate the illness itself. And until we get to the root of it, the wars we are seeing will worsen. There will be more horrific massacres. And worse.

The sickness is authoritarianism. I do not just mean authoritarianism as a government structure, although it manifests this way very often. I mean authoritarianism as a belief system. A worldview.

When I left my Hasidic community and moved out of my neighborhood in Brooklyn, I became obsessed with cults and extremism. I learned as much as I could, spending time studying how people could do some of the stuff I had seen: defense of sexual abuse by prominent leaders, the way people would give up on passions like writing poetry in favor of piety, and the way even the most religiously committed whistleblowers and critics of the issues in the community were treated as traitors. These issues were not minor: they result in mobs coming to people’s homes, death threats, people losing jobs and being run out of communities, and more.

Most of the coverage of my community and others like it felt very limited: they focused on Hasidic communities as if they were unique and different, likely exacerbated because of the way the outside world sees them as so strange. I wanted to know what was going on on a deeper level, and why so many good people I knew were so willing to give up their autonomy.

Again and again, I came back to the same answer: the issues in the community were rooted in authoritarianism, an ideology that insisted on the the idea that humans do not have inherent worth outside of their subservience to a larger system, leader, and/or goal.

Usually, this is why we associate authoritarianism with politics: we imagine a strongman like Donald Trump taking over a country and convincing people to join him in a crusade to give him total control over the government.

But the same is true in many Hasidic communities, where leaders known as rebbes are considered to have such special access to prophetic truth that their members literally cannot make decisions for themselves that contradict the edicts of the rebbe.

It also applies to things like parenting, where parents “set rigid rules with no explanation, and expect their children to obey them without question or face severe punishment. Children follow these rules because they know there are consequences if they don’t.”

These various usages are not just analogous to each other: they share a direction connection and are often an indicator for one another.

They all share the same root: the belief that the individual’s soul doesn’t matter. And the idea that a goal and/or leader and/or system is all that gives them value. 

The implications of this belief system are far vaster than most of us can imagine.

For example, this doesn’t just apply to the people within the group. If you believe that you have no inherent value without authoritarianism, then by definition you believe that this is doubly true for outsiders. 

Thus, any who disagree with you are the enemy. Any who criticize you are not just dangerous, they are an existential danger. They must either be converted, made subservient, or destroyed. Disagreement, in other words, is itself an unforgivable evil.

But it goes even deeper than that. Since disagreement and critiques of an authoritarian society are often based in facts, then facts themselves are seen as a danger. Facts are secondary, at best, to maintaining authoritarian control, and so any fact that is in contradiction to the societal narrative must be rewritten. 

Thus, while dissent must be quelled, even those who present facts, from scientists to journalists to abuse victims, must be silenced and/or punished.

Since truth is impossible to fully extinguish, and since there will always be people who are willing to fight for autonomy, it is often an essential strategy to create or magnify the existence of an enemy. The argument goes, “Yes, you have problems. We, the powerful who control your life, are on your side. And we have the answer for the root of any and all your problems: this group. They are your enemy. Focus all your energies there.”

This enemy must ideally be an existential threat, a group that doesn’t just threaten your society but is a threat to all reality. This is because authoritarian leaders demand control over reality itself, and so must keep the stakes constantly on the level of existence itself.

This also then justifies any and all behaviors of these leaders and the system they represent. If the enemy is so utterly dangerous that literally all concerns must be put aside to fight them, then all behaviors they exhibit are justifiable. Whether it be corruption of leadership, abusive systemic issues, or the horrors of hurting innocent people of the other side, anything and everything is justified in a state of constant crisis and panic with an enemy that represents the worst of all humanity.

As I learned this societal structure, I started to see multiple truths at once.

First, it became quickly apparent to me that as horrible as much of what I experienced in my community was, I was in many ways quite lucky. Authoritarianism is a spectrum and a process: it is not static. Thus, the painful realities I saw in my community and others like mine paled in comparison to things like a cult killing themselves en masse or the way Trumpian extremism was threatening to destroy our government.

This is not to diminish the experiences I and others have had. Quite the opposite: the point is that while they are different in scope and severity, they are all rooted in the belief system of authoritarianism. And as we see, authoritarianism doesn’t just lead to the suffering of its members, it is a sickness that spreads beyond its borders. There must always be an enemy to destroy or oppress. There must always be a new crisis. Leaders can and do become more corrupt over time. And the core problem, the destruction of internal autonomy, gets worse and worse. 

If authoritarianism fails, it takes its members and others down with it. If it succeeds, it spreads and destroys the freedom of all sucked in by it and leaves devastation behind each “success” it has achieved.

This was a big reason I became obsessed with antisemitism over the last few years since leaving my community. It started as concern for Jews, but it quickly expanded into a growing realization that it is actually just perhaps the most effective narrative to reinforce authoritarianism.

This is why many radicalization watchdogs and studies argue that antisemitism is part of “almost all extremist ideologies and narratives.” The reason being that antisemitism provides the existential threat and constant crisis, along with explanation of all existing problems, that authoritarian leaders and societies crave.

Regardless of the mechanism of belief, however, it is the authoritarian impulse and belief system that is even more dangerous than antisemitism. Even antisemitism is a symptom, a method to justify authoritarianism, not authoritarianism itself.

Which brings me to what’s happening in Israel and Gaza.

Too many people have tried to cast this as a fight between good and evil. It is unfortunately, sadly, horrifically, understandable. Like many people, I am still breaking down randomly and crying over my people’s tragedy, one that has affected just about every Jew in the world.

I am also sickened by the people who justified the act, people who seem to have lost all humanity in their fanatical demand for a justice they don’t understand.

I am also against the war: I don’t believe the reaction we are seeing will do anything to protect Israel in the big picture, and I look on in horror as so many people I love justify absolute horrors in hopes of a solution that doesn’t exist.

But to me, horrific as these all are, I am convinced that we are having the wrong conversations. Is what Hamas did and wants to do evil? Yes. Is Israel’s retaliation horrific in its own way? Yes.

But these evils are occurring because we as have decided to fight the wrong evils.

Hamas is authoritarian. Yes, it is an authoritarianism that was borne out of the occupation, but that doesn’t change anything: authoritarianism is a sickness that can affect an oppressed society just as much as a rich, powerful one. 

This is why so many people on the left (not as many as people think, by the way) have failed in their moral task to condemn an obvious atrocity. Many are fighting one enemy while ignoring the deeper sickness. I see many of these people as closet authoritarians, hoping for one authoritarian movement to overtake the other. And there are plenty of others, like many progressive revolutionaries in the past, who wrongly think that a democratic revolution can ally with authoritarians and theocrats to achieve a free society.

But while I see many on the left allying with authoritarians, there are also the liberals who have backed Israel’s government in this war: a government run by an authoritarian prime minister who is backed by even more extreme authoritarians under him. These men are using this war to justify starving an entire population, reprisals in the West Bank, and are arming a militia.

Only two weeks ago, we heard that the fight for democracy in Israel was a fight for its soul. Now, we are hearing that it is an afterthought for after the war. While understandable, it is also a perfect example of the way the soul of a struggle can be lost in these moments.

The problem that has developed is that when people demand we take a side in this war is that there is, in fact, only one side fighting: authoritarianism, nationalism, and theocracy. The destruction we are witnessing is the inevitable result of a world where authoritarianism reigns.

Because in an authoritarian world, there is a need for constant crises. War is inherent in authoritarianism. 

This is why the Israel-Palestine struggle is so difficult for so many people: It pits two authoritarians against each other. You can debate how much or how little Israel is authoritarian, but it still exists on the spectrum, and being on that spectrum makes them susceptible to the same problems, especially during moments of crises.

This is not a theoretical pie-in-the-sky, idealistic argument: it has real world implications that affect us all.

Example: The antisemitic and Islamophobic far right is using this moment to claim allyship with both Jews and Muslims, alternatively pretending to be either pro-Israel or pro-Palestinian in order to create more tension in America and ultimately oppress us both. Nick Fuentes, a neo-Nazi, has openly discussed his goals in using the Palestinian cause to gain influence. 4chan users have expressed intent to do this as well. Disinformation and misinformation have spread, allowing those with noxious intent to exacerbate this problem.

A Palestinian child was murdered by a MAGA supporter in Illinois. A synagogue was burned down in Tunisia by Jihadist supporters.

You can and should say these are caused by Islamophobia and antisemitism. But these are words that only help us understand the source of hate that sparked the attacks, not the underlying belief system of those who have embraced this hate.

These are the violent end results of those who buy into authoritarianism. All of them are on the far right, but in their own contexts.

The same is true of leaders like Louis Farrakhan, who are often erroneously labeled left wing because they happen to not be white Christians. All of this muddies the waters on where hate comes from and why it is so persistent among so many.

What we are witnessing, and what we will witness much more as time passes and the far right of various governments grow in power, is the self-destructive power of authoritarianism. Just as people like Nick Fuentes are willing to pretend to support Palestinians in the service of gaining strength, authoritarian societies and leaders will make temporary alliances to gain power, with the ultimate goal of destruction for all others.

Thus, Trump suddenly turning on Netanyahu. Any alliance is temporary, any loyalty never real. Because authoritarianism is maximalist: either you buy in, you’re subservient, or you’re dead. This is exactly why so many Jewish progressives like myself have warned about the dangerous alliance many prominent Jews have made with the right due to their supposed love of Israel and the Jewish people.

Ultimately, the battle here is against authoritarianism. And it is for freedom and autonomy: personal and societal. A Gaza freed from the blockade but controlled by authoritarians isn’t free. An Israel that’s safe for Israelis but authoritarian isn’t free (nor is it safe: it was Israel’s authoritarian turn that made it vulnerable to the attack in the south).

This is not a theory. It is not a game. The authoritarian worldview is infecting every corner of the world. From governments to religious communities to MLMs to our very homes, it is everywhere. It is breaking down a world that has only gotten more free due to the rise of liberalism and progressivism. It is drugging people into fighting for solutions that don’t exist. And the only way to truly push back is to create a free society, within ourselves, and to ally with those in other societies who are doing the same.