There is little doubt that Benito Mussolini’s Venetian-born Jewish lover Margherita Sarfatti had a profound influence on the dictator’s career, but can she truly be called the “godmother of fascism,” as her biographer Brian R. Sullivan claims? Or did her contribution consist mainly of “smooth[ing] off the rough edges of Mussolini’s persona at the start of his political ascent to power,” as Michael McDonald argues? To McDonald, the question pivots not only on the correct interpretation of Sarfatti’s persona but also on the nature of fascism itself:

Sarfatti was less of an intellectual than a cultural impresario and spin doctor. Even if she had been an intellectual who had played a crucial role in conceptualizing fascism—which she wasn’t—it still would be wrong of Brian Sullivan to overstate her importance, as he does. I say this because I happen to agree with Robert Paxton that “fascism was an affair of the gut more than of the brain, and a study of the roots of fascism that treats only the thinkers and the writers misses the most powerful influences of all.” A study that treats only a “thinker” such as Sarfatti misses even more. To quote Paxton again, “fascism is more plausibly linked to a set of ‘mobilizing passions’ that shape fascist action than to a consistent and fully articulated philosophy.” As one fascist militant declared in 1920: “The fist is the synthesis of our theory.”

Two extraordinary events demonstrate something important about Israel’s most fervent adversaries. One was a speech given at something called The People’s Forum (funded generously by Goldman Sachs), which stated, “When the state of Israel is finally destroyed and erased from history, that will be the single most important blow we can give to destroying capitalism and imperialism.”

The suggestion that this tiny state is the linchpin of a global, centuries-old phenomenon like capitalism goes well beyond anything resembling rational criticism. Even if Israel were guilty of genocide, apartheid, and oppression—which of course it is not—it would not follow that its destruction would help end capitalism or imperialism.

The other was an anti-Israel protest that took place in front of New York City’s Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, deemed “complicit” in Israel’s evils. At organizers’ urging, participants shouted their slogans at kids in the cancer ward, who were watching from the windows. Given Hamas’s indifference toward the lives of Gazan children, such callousness toward non-Palestinian children from Hamas’s Western allies shouldn’t be surprising. The protest—like the abovementioned speech—deliberately conveyed the message that Israel is the ultimate evil and its destruction the ultimate good, cancer patients be damned.

The fact that Israel’s adversaries are almost comically perverse does not mean that they can be dismissed. If its allies fail to understand the obsessive and irrational hatred that it faces, they cannot effectively help it defend itself.