You Mean You Can Just… *Not* Be A Genocidal Antisemite?

by Cenk Uygur, Host and Co-Founder, The Young Turks

Los Angeles, January 18 – Whoa, whoa, hold up, hold up, brain, are you… are you serious? Like, really serious? Because that sounds… that sounds, uh… what exactly do you mean, “you can just not be a genocidal antisemite?”

I mean, spell it out for me. What does such a way of looking at the world even look like? How do you get through your day without a convenient theory that blame all ills on the Jews, thus absolving oneself of any real responsibility or moral agency, and therefore of any guilt for how bad things are? You just ignore it, or what? Or do you… breathe, Cenk… take responsibility, take charge of your choices? Who even does that?

It sounds like madness.

Look, humor me here. This is a profoundly revolutionary notion, you realize that. So let’s take it slow. Start at the beginning.

You can just not be a genocidal antisemite.

The words, I understand. It’s pretty simple English. But it’s like that Noam Chomsky line about all the grammatical elements working together, just not producing something coherent: colorless green ideas sleep furiously. Not being a genocidal antisemite – that is one colorless green idea, I’ll give you that.

Okay, fine. Let’s try this. Picture the UAE. They wake up, sign some papers with Israel, start trading tech, building joint ventures, flying direct to Tel Aviv. And… nothing happens. No collapse. No divine punishment. The economy keeps climbing, the malls stay packed, the influencers keep posing. How does that even work? Don’t they feel the hole where the daily outrage should be? Don’t the leaders wake up sweating, thinking, “Wait, who’s the villain now? Who’s supposed to explain the traffic on Sheikh Zayed Road?”

Then Morocco does it too. Normalized ties, reopened offices, joint military stuff, agricultural tech swaps. The king is still the king. Couscous sales unchanged. No riots demanding the return of the sacred blame ritual. How? How do you switch from “death to the entity” as national pastime to “let’s collaborate on water tech” without the whole society unraveling? My circuits are frying here.

There’s supposed to be a crash. I keep waiting for the crash. For the moment the youth turn restless and the regime scrambles back to the old scapegoat because, come on, you need it. You need the external boogeyman to hold everything together. But it… doesn’t happen? They just govern? Fix roads? Attract investment? Move forward? Without the cheat code?

Are you suggesting that you can wake up, cancel the villain subscription, and the world keeps spinning?

I… I think I have to lie down.

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