NEITHER BEER NOR BRATWURST.

Imagine, dear reader, a human interest story from ninety years ago documenting the human side of the Volksbund.  Maybe it could incorporate the rhetoric of empathy and inclusion.

World War I traumatized Germans on both sides of the Atlantic – though in different ways. In Wisconsin and across the United States, war with Germany led to a wave of anti-German hysteria. Self-proclaimed “superpatriots” attacked ethnic Germans (whom they assumed disloyal unless proven otherwise) and denigrated their culture. Sauerkraut became “liberty cabbage” and hamburgers “liberty sandwiches.” Some Germans were forced to kiss the American flag to prove their loyalty, and a few were even physically accosted. In neighboring Illinois, a German immigrant was wrapped in a flag, forced to sing the “Star Spangled Banner,” then hanged. In such a hostile atmosphere, many German-Americans abandoned their ethnic ties. Milwaukee’s Deutscher Klub renamed itself the Wisconsin Club, and hundreds of ethnic Germans Americanized their names. The German Athens had become a shadow of its former self, and those who remained a part of the German cultural scene were left battered, bruised, and defensive.

A human interest story describing a quiet evening dealing a few hands of Schafkopf and enjoying some real beer, or perhaps a livelier story involving group singing or dancing to oom-pah music might put a human face on people who are, after all, neighbors, possibly co-workers, sometimes voters.

No, strike that.  Let's deploy the full culture-studies methodology in the fall of 1938 to "contextualize" North Americans who aren't troubled by the looting of businesses and the sacking of temples; who might perceive their overseas cousins as beset by internal disorder and external punishment.

I'm only being slightly outrageous to make a point.  We're talking about the fall of 2023 onward.  Let's pay a visit to Habibi City.

The issue is called Habibi City, and the cover story is by Zaina Arafat. Partway through, she stops to define the term on which the whole package rests. Belonging to the SWANA community (Southwest Asia and North Africa), she writes, meant holding a set of common beliefs: Palestinian human rights, Gaza as a genocide, social justice over capital, caring as nonnegotiable.

Before we get to the package, we visit the neighborhood.

In her now-viral cover story for New York magazine, journalist Zaina Arafat—who was born and raised in the suburbs of Washington, D.C., but identifies as SWANA, an acronym that previously stood for the Solid Waste Association of North America but now apparently means Southwest Asian and North African, and represents anyone who is vaguely Middle Eastern and dislikes capitalism, America, and the Jews—kicks things into high gear by celebrating the fact that New York is now “Habibi City,” a full-on SWANA enclave.

What does the average day look like in Habibi City? Arafat is all too happy to tell you: There’s a workshop for kids at a Lebanese bookstore dedicated to Middle Eastern culture, then a fundraiser for Gaza at a “women-run Syrian supper club.” Which, Arafat concluded, made her feel “like in the blād,” which means “back home, overseas.”

It's unlikely there's going to be much beer or pork sausage at that supper club, and the card games are going to be different, but the article is not about the lighter side of Habibi life, it's about contextualizing the politics.

Imagine you are a magazine editor. A writer comes to you and suggests a piece revolving around a new term, SWANA, popularized by academics to protest against alleged American imperialism, colonialism, and white supremacy. The term, the writer explains, stands for South West Asia and North Africa, a very vast swath of the world that includes hundreds of millions of people and myriad cultures, nationalities, and belief systems.

Fret not, says the writer: These hundreds of millions of human beings stand as one, all sharing a singular and solid identity rooted pretty much exclusively in the belief that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.

Would you allow such dross? Or would you argue that coming up with a ludicrous term like SWANA and then explaining it as “a decolonial framework and a way of moving through the world” may be arousing for those privileged enough, like Arafat, to idle away their days on Columbia University’s campus but of no real value to anyone seeking to make sense of the real world?

History rhyming?

It's likely more than a few of those Milwaukee Germans of a hundred years ago would understand. Yes, during the 1930s, the German-American Bund was active in Milwaukee, and yet, the descendants of the Acht-und-vierzigers who fled the counter-revolution were also present in Milwaukee, and in their reservations about the Kaiser and the Nazis we anticipate current first-generation Americans' reservations about the Islamofascists.

According to Liel Leibovitz in The (Not Detroit) Free Press, similar work is now necessary in New York City.

Arafat gave us all the best glimpse yet into what this power is being used to achieve. Anyone content with magazines laundering logic and language to fit the prevalent ideology and with politicos using their office to advance the interests of one tribe over the other is welcome to retreat to their favorite women-run Syrian supper club. Everyone else should fight like hell to make sure New York never becomes Habibi City.

Do you fear, dear reader, that my fall 1938 parallels are overblown? Let John Podhoretz make the comparison explicit.

The lead piece, by Zaina Arafat, describes how she and her fellow Habibis reacted in 2023 to the worst slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust.

“In the months after Oct. 7,” she writes, New York’s Habibis were “increasingly spilling into view, desperate to be close” to “people who looked like you and spoke like you . . .  living under the threat of annihilation. So we protested, we boycotted, we wrote op-eds.”

Um . . . who was living under the threat of annihilation again?

The Habibi actions began on Oct. 8, with campus celebrations of Hamas and denunciations of Israel — and then erupted all over New York, with the ritualistic shredding of posters mourning the 240 hostages taken into Gaza by terrorists.

What's under way in New York is not likely to turn out well.  "New York magazine may choose to turn a blind eye, but such grim statistics indicate that what began ironically as Fun City and is now Habibi City may soon turn into Pogrom City."

That package of policy offerings I alluded to?  Coming soon, perhaps, to an election near you.

American Priorities has channeled millions of dollars, primarily from donors with Arab, Muslim, and/or Middle Eastern backgrounds, to a string of winning candidates in high-profile races.

Most of the entity-supported candidates are running on various democratic-socialist policies, such as single-payer health care, abolishing ICE, and slashing the military. But one area in which all candidates are aligned, consistent with the PAC’s mission, is in their antagonism towards Israel.

With several such candidates considered locks for the U.S. House in deep blue districts and potentially Michigan’s Senate seat in November, the independent expenditure vehicle is at the forefront of an increasingly politically influential and growing Muslim-American community – one that has ascended as the Israeli-Palestinian Arab conflict has become a central U.S. political issue following Hamas’ massacre of 1,200 Israelis on October 7, 2023.

In some ways, this is a very American story: As new groups of immigrants establish themselves in America, they eventually seek room for their voice in politics and culture. The key issues that have mobilized Muslim-Americans and the positions held by associated organizations, however, are seen by some as radical. Polls show such voters are significantly more hostile towards Israel and Jews, and tolerant toward groups and ideas the U.S. government has linked to terrorism than the general public – views reflected by the insurgent crop of leftist candidates they are increasingly backing.

There's a lot more at that article, providing possible nuance.  Worst-case scenario, though?  Contemplate Mediterranean Islamic nationalism bundled with Third Worldist socialism.  Beer and Bratwurst?  Haram.