In a time of global turmoil, it is tempting to localize the tensions. But it is also perilous.

We are seeing this precept illustrated with reaction to the Israel-Hamas War, now approaching its second month in what will be a long, drawn-out military operation — and one that the world will be lucky to keep contained in the West Bank and Israel itself.

Extremism of word and deed is dominating both sides of that conflict, as illustrated keenly last during the Republican Party of Duval County’s pro-Israel rally last week.

There was no physical violence. Sheriff T.K. Waters, who was attending the rally, probably could see his bicycle cops herd a couple of dozen pro-Palestinian counterdemonstrators to the middle of James Weldon Johnson Park. While their relegation was good for optics and possibly ironic for long-time observers of the situation in Israel, it didn’t blunt the sound of chants like “From the River to the Sea, Palestine must be free,” which sounds to some ears like a call to genocide and others like the epitome of social justice.

What was Colin Powell’s saying? “One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.” That hoary axiom, lost to time like boxes of photographs molding in the attic, has an unwelcome and renewed relevance as tensions simmer to a fateful boil. 

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U.S. Rep. Aaron Bean, the Republican whose district is currently under review in federal court for having disenfranchised Black Jacksonville residents with a map that ensured no Black Democrats could get elected in North Florida, had some memorable words at the rally about fighting “evil” while he denounced the protesters. 

The former genial auctioneer of the Florida Senate embraced the rhetoric of conflict, and the othering that comes along with it. He suggested at one point that the pro-Palestinian voices reflected the failure of the state’s higher education system, which, in yet another ironic touch, has been reshaped in the image of Gov. DeSantis and his “anti-woke” crusade in recent years. As if the protesters are just punching bags anyway.

Others had their say, denouncing evil in the abstract, conflating the Hamas group with the Palestinian people, and conflating support for Israel with a casual diffidence toward this particular enemy. As is so often the case when America picks a side in a war, the enemies are depicted as depraved and subhuman. We’ll never see their faces so we won’t know if they’re human.

But what of the enemies closer to home? What of the neo-Nazis who have loomed of late on overpasses here and in major intersections throughout the state? What of their vile messages, taunts projected on buildings that ended up being a precursor to actual violence, such as that seen at a Dollar General this summer from a kid who drew his power from drawing a swastika on his rifle?

Our leaders had a long time to stand up against the white supremacists in our midst. They acted late and they acted deferential to those avatars of hate, and lives have been lost and people have been terrorized.

I asked the politicians assembled to support Israel about that. Crickets, except for Rep. John Rutherford, who said he’d tweeted against the racists at some point, but that it didn’t get reported.

The reality is this: the neo-Nazis aren’t going away. As is always the case, they will return in some slightly different form at a moment of their choosing.

And the corollary reality is that the neo-Nazi problem here and throughout the state is as bad as it’s been for decades. State Rep. Randy Fine broke the Republican silence on that this summer, facing his own confrontation with them, and soon thereafter breaking with Gov. DeSantis, endorsing Donald Trump for President, and giving himself a very difficult path forward in Tallahassee.

Our politics nationally have become lurid and unserious, full of cheap gags and catch phrases, and locally we are caught in the same slipstream. History is repeating: We are in a recursive loop to a post-9/11 “you are with us or with the terrorists” philosophy. 

Yet we are a weakened, fractured people, and large groups of us disagree about who is the terrorist and who is the martyr. And some of us would rather look across the ocean than stare in the mirror, sober and without self-justification, than see the darkness in our own reflections. If we could see that, we may have dialogue instead of demagoguery. Can you imagine? 

Lead photo: Police push back protesters at the Duval GOP’s pro-Israel rally in James Weldon Johnson Park on Oct. 30 | Dan Scanlan