The Golem They Want
There is a current that runs from Steve Bannon to Jordan Peterson to Charlie Kirk. It is not a chain of logic, but an affective vector — a channel of longing for clarity, hierarchy, and impermeable borders. Their rhetoric brims with a desire to restore “masculine realism,” where liberal hesitation is cast out in favor of sharp lines, hard truths, and sovereign action.
In this imaginary, Israel becomes their ideal. Or rather—not Israel as a people, or a memory, or a wound—but Israel as a model of siege and survival: militarized identity, unapologetic force, unbroken determination. For Kirk, it is the virtue of a border that bites. For Peterson, it is the archetype of the boundary-keeping patriarch. For Bannon, it is proof that the West can still defend itself — if it learns to act like Israel.
And they are not alone. Ben Shapiro and Dennis Prager, prominent Jewish conservatives in America, reinforce this image from within. They do not challenge the siege logic — they translate it into digestible values: tradition, order, resilience. In doing so, they make the Israeli model of power palatable to American evangelicals, Catholic nationalists, and the growing ranks of those who see compassion as weakness. President Donald Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance may not articulate this vision in theological terms — but they execute it politically. It is not a question of doctrine. It is a matter of style: power without trembling.
This attachment is not to Jewish memory. It is to an image of Israel stripped of its trembling. They do not love Jews. They love the idea of a Jew who has ceased to hesitate. A Jew who no longer weeps, but strikes. They want Israel not as Midrash—but as Golem.
What deepens the paradox is not their projection — but the fact that some Jewish communities, both in Israel and the diaspora, are starting to reflect that projection back. Their words circulate in WhatsApp groups. Their lectures find Hebrew subtitles. Their tone is copied: Peterson as ethical commentator of Exodus, Kirk as new Maccabee, Bannon as the Gentile shofar of civilizational return. The triangulation is complete: the West looks to Israel for backbone; some in Israel look back for validation.
It is in this toxic reciprocity that the real danger lies. In an age of ideological overstimulation, the figure who simply stops apologizing becomes irresistible. The strongman no longer needs to explain. He needs only to endure. And that is the figure they believe Israel has perfected.
The recent assassination of Charlie Kirk only accelerates this trajectory. He was fatally shot during an outdoor event in Utah on September 10, 2025. He died not merely as a political commentator, but as a symbol of “empathy-free strength.” The more blood, the stronger the myth. His image will spread. His name will be recited. And some will forget Abraham’s question: “Will You not spare even ten?”
Meanwhile, those who question this machinery are pushed aside as fringe, radical, unstable. Figures like Vanessa Beeley — who sharply critiques Israeli military policy, often to the point of deep controversy — are dismissed not because they are always wrong, but because they disrupt the grammar of consensus. Beeley is no saint. But the very fact that she becomes unutterable in mainstream Jewish or American discourse is itself a sign: no deviation from the Golem-image is tolerated.
And that is how aesthetic power functions. It does not convince. It outshines. It saturates. It becomes the default image when all others are too exhausted to compete. This is not love. It is identification through awe.
But this form of identification — of reverence for force as such, of idolizing survival over discernment — has a name. Not as an insult, but as a diagnosis. It describes the moment when a society, in the name of its own defense, begins to worship images of hardness, aestheticize violence, and convert fear into a style. That name is fascism.
This is not the fascism of uniforms and salutes. It is a quieter species: one that blooms inside admiration, that speaks the language of “civilizational clarity,” that makes war on ambiguity. A fascism not imposed from without, but invited from within.
Not a seizure, but a seduction.
To speak of Israel today requires more than knowledge. It requires immunity to enchantment. One must learn to see past the glow of efficiency, the shimmer of discipline, the thrill of iron. The problem is not that Israel defends itself. The problem is that it is being made into a mirror — for people who would happily destroy everything Jewish, so long as the Jew looked like a soldier when doing it.
Yochanan Schimmelpfennig
Independent Researcher / Possest Institute
Postscript: Listen to them if you must. But be aware: they are not reading Torah. They are reading it like a weapons manual — highlighting every command, skipping every question mark.
