Western romanticization and exoticization of Eastern cultures, applied both to Orthodox Christian converts and enthusiastically embraced regarding Middle Eastern aesthetics.
"The Middle East should be the land of uncharted pyramids and crypts, scruple-less purveyors of graverobbed goods, travel by camel over swathes of sand-swept desert, harams of thick Arabic nubiles. Mosques should be mysterious, hookah should not remind you of a strip mall lounge. Oil industry? Geopol"
"In Israel's early days there was at least among its top brass an understanding of why the conflict between Israel and its Arab neighbors exists. But overtime that understanding has been overwritten by an orientalist caricature that bares no relation to how Arabs actually think. Israel's approach to "
"Almost entirely driven by aesthetics (DAE icons look so cool?) and Orientalism about the supposedness BASEDness of Eastern Europe. Its like the right-wing version of white person Buddhism"