Sarah Palin and Zev Jabotinsky, The Odd Soulmates

American Thinker ^ | March 11, 2012 | Ted Belman

[2ndDivisionVet]

Stop laughing and bear with me a moment.

For those not familiar, Zev Jabotinsky (1880 to 1940) was recognized as the greatest orator of his era who led the fight for Jewish national liberation.

We often read that either you love Palin or you hate her. Similarly, Shmuel Katz, in The Lone Wolf, his biography of Jabotinsky, said of him "he was both the best beloved and the most maligned Jewish leader of his time". Palin who is constantly being maligned, can relate.

The common denominator for both of them is that they both took on the permanent political class, the establishment or the intellectual elite, however you refer to them. They took the battle of ideas to them in defiance of conventional wisdom or political correctness. In many ways they were both "lone wolves." In Palin's case, perhaps a mama grizzly.

In both cases, this political class stood for progressivism, universalism and collectivism. In opposition, they both stood for individualism, exceptionalism and nationalism.

Palin is a fierce defender of individual ingenuity and free market capitalism. Jabotinsky once gave a speech called "Individualism and Collectivism". The similarities in their positions are striking.

Sarah Palin keeps reminding Americans of their roots in Judea-Christian values, in the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. Nationalism or pride of country, for her, are a good thing.

Jabotinsky, in his late teens lived in Italy and became very interested in the great Italian leader Garibaldi who had unified Italy fifty years earlier using his popularity and his skill at rousing the common people to do so. He exemplified nationalism and liberalism....

[EveningStar]

Ze'ev Jabotinsky, born Vladimir Yevgenyevich Zhabotinsky

[greene66]

Interesting analogy. I still find a lot of merit in the Orwellian example of Palin as Goldstein in “1984,” though... the statist ruling-class ginning up the culture/populace into daily “two-minute hate” sessions, to channel anger away from their own tyranny.

And it’s obvious what a threat to the order that Palin was perceived to be. Tens of thousands of ‘unwashed’ mid-Americans showing up at her appearances... people in ‘flyover country’ waiting in lines for hours in freezing-temps to get books signed, etc. That scared the hell out of the ruling elites. Anything or anyone seen as ‘waking up’ the folks out in the hinterlands to the whole corrupt PPC system had to be targeted for abject personal destruction.

[x]

Jabotinsky, in his late teens lived in Italy and became very interested in the great Italian leader Garibaldi who had unified Italy fifty years earlier using his popularity and his skill at rousing the common people to do so.

Very interested in Mussolini, too.

[2ndDivisionVet]

A lot of people were favorably impressed by Mussolini and Hitler, here and elsewhere, before they started World War II, including former Prime Minister David Lloyd George:

David Lloyd George's impression after a meeting with Hitler on 4 September 1936
http://www.zupdom.com/icons-multimedia/ClientsArea/HoH/LIBARC/ARCHIVE/Chapters/Stabiliz/Foreign/LloydGeo.html