The political leader as online brother

Abstract

Abstract ‘Lacking for most of Jewish history a national homeland’, wrote Rabbi Jill Jacobs, ‘Jews have instead focused on creating holy space within their own personal dwellings’. Indeed, the home is the place where much of Jewish life takes place, which explains the electoral success in recent years of Israel’s ‘Jewish Home’ party, presenting itself as guardian of the home and the homeland, both of which are endowed with holiness. In this article, I follow the process in which the party leader, media-savvy Naftali Bennett, has used his Facebook posts to turn his followers into a brotherhood and himself into the beloved brother. I argue that the transformation of the leader into an online brother, made possible by new digital media, poses a danger to Israeli politics. The deliberative democratic process in which people are related but also separated enough to maintain their individual persona turns into an illusionary brotherly bond that may lead to tyranny of the kind associated by Hannah Arendt with the pre-political household.