Settler Sociopathy and the Fairy “Godmother” of your Nightmares

Guns, Sociopathy and Promised Lands

The Attempt to Frame a Response as an Attack

Louis Theroux’s documentary “The Settlers” ignited commentary from both traditional media outlets who scrambled to “Israel’s” defence – an increasingly onerous task – and social media sources.

Many people I know expressed visceral disgust at Daniella Weiss and probably everybody I know – and you know – wouldn’t want to be down a dark alley with her at night, even whilst they refuse to overtly condemn any representatives of the genocidal state, for fear of seeming behind on their “enlightened” European civilized values.

I probably have little to add of traditional commentary – we saw for ourselves how Weiss, after delivering her usual genocidal rhetoric with regards to the Palestinians, indigenous owners of the land, pushed Theroux so hard and suddenly that he stumbled several steps backwards while she grinned sadistically and challenged him to “push me back”, her accompanying words prompting even the usually mild-mannered Theroux to use the world “sociopathic” to describe her world view.

The manipulation was clear, and within her attempt to demonstrate to the viewers that a mere snippet does not allow you to make an informed decision about “who started it”, she inadvertently ended up demonstrating what we all know, in stark visual form – not only does the occupier always start it, but the subsequent frame in the shot of her projected and desired playing out, were Theroux to have pushed her back, would have been the phase that represents October 7^th. The fighting back phase.

Furthermore, if he had pushed her back, and been done for assault, he would have met the fate of any Palestinian who dares fight back.

The Face of Sociopathy and the Fairy “Godmother” of your Nightmares

However, it wasn’t just the attempt at manipulation, there was far more going on here, with distinctly darker undercurrents. The shot of her face has exploded (online at least), the way in which her expression encapsulates a sinister glee at her own audacity and how she knows that, whatever the response, she will get away with it.

Almost unconsciously we all fixated on that hauntingly evil image of her face, the sneaky grin that expressed a rare flash of “humour” in a woman who seems otherwise incapable of humour or nuance; the subtleties are lost on her, and hence she is unable to see any hint of irony in Theroux, or the ways in which she is being allowed to show exactly what she is.

This is a woman who can seemingly only smile when she is enacting a power play in which she has the upper hand, all whilst she knowingly attempts to representationally subvert the actual dynamic that she knows to be operating between Zionists and Palestinians.

If there was one advantage that Theroux had in his whole interaction with the settlers, it was this: individuals whose entire psyche has become a vicious laser focus on obtaining all that they can at the expense of another people, by whatever violent means necessary; and whose humanity has been utterly reduced in the service of this objective – lack any real depth or understanding of the things that define humanity.

Hence, Weiss with her inflexibility, truly reptilian lack of any warmth or depth of emotion, any humour or subtlety, any psychological nuance – was ready to reveal herself totally, because any irony would go completely over her head. Her facial expression as she expounded on her ideological “vision” of replacing Gaza with settlements was nothing short of chilling. Hitler had nothing on her.

But - she is the “fairy godmother” of the fanatical settlers, a nightmare vision for any regular person, and yet their maternal figure, with appropriately Mafia-like connotations; a godmother, but also their fairy godmother – the figure that will grant their bloody, murderous wishes and actualize their narcissistic genocidal fantasy vision that elevates them as a chosen people of mythical religious status.

The Settlers, Religious Fanaticism and the Narcissistic Grandiose Vision

The settler Ari Abramowitz – I am sure you will all remember him, with his unblinking pale green eyes, hard and uncompromising stare, talking of his rights to the biblical promised land, rights that went far beyond any apparently petty consideration of legality or silly things like human ethics – showed a level of delusion that was nothing short of extremely dangerous.

His hardcore stance was echoed by other settlers being interviewed, some giggling as if unconvinced themselves, as they repeated those lines about their rights to the promised land in their American accents (one of the women reminded me of the girl in a BBC recreation of Milgram’s famous electric shock experiment in which she casually went all the way to the maximum voltage, just because she was told to).

The gun toting, humourless Ari on his grim mission of claiming his biblical birth right all the way from yee hawTexas refused to even use the word Palestinian – because in his delusional perspective the pieces have to match his warped inner reality, in the same way that psychotics with their primitive world view only see what they fervently want to see.

The paucity of imagination, humour, subtlety – and no, delusion doesn’t count as imagination – and lack of any emotional range in Ari, Daniella, the balaclava clad “IDF” and indeed all of the positively rabid settlers, is disturbing in what it says about a people, and is indicative of a society that is closed, paranoid and defensive. In other words, lacking everything that makes us truly human.

Ari’s statement that he is the “tip of the spearhead safeguarding western values…” is right on the money, because he is indeed, with his yee haw, gun toting, ignorant, entitled colonizers mindset that refuses to even acknowledge the indigenous people – 100% the tip of the spearhead guarding Western values (of pretend liberal democracy and freedom). Ari represents the pinnacle of “Western Civilization” that has evolved off the backs of violent colonial enterprises.

His chilling self-assurance and wholly irony free attitude in describing Palestinians as being part of a “death cult” was the epitome of psychotic, paranoid narcissistic projection.

Even the little elderly man whom we would hope to be the archetypal “wise old man” of a cultural group (like the beautiful wise old Palestinian farmers with their humble sweetness), instead revealed himself to be a cult leader, hostile to outside journalists and obsessionally “preaching” in his dry and cracked voice for the erasure of Palestinians, as if every last ounce of his energy had to be used to preach hate and murder.

Israeli Society

The truth is, that we have by now seen it all. We don’t need any rationalizations or justifications, because they come from a dark and twisted place of delusional certainty that has no place in a truly civilized world, a world where we celebrate all that binds us together in common humanity – joy, empathy, love, striving for betterment – all these things are missing from Israeli society.

For make no mistake – The Settlers was not a portrait of an ultra-nationalist “fringe” group but a snapshot, a microcosm – of a deeply dysfunctional society whose entitlement and impunity has reached truly staggering levels. A world where people are closed, paranoid, hyper-vigilant, always defensive and constantly pre-empting attack. A true death cult.