Before World War I, Vienna:

Much of the revolutionary work in fin de siècle Vienna was reactionary in nature, and consequently just as symptomatic of the underlying problem it was meant to redress. The negation of old values without a clear positive agenda led to anxiety and alienation, depression, and despair. Suicide became something of an epidemic, and was even lauded in certain cases - perhaps most famously in the case of writer Otto Weininger. Kraus quipped that Vienna had become a “proving ground for world destruction.” His observation proved eerily prophetic. As many intellectuals and artists were wallowing in the decadence that followed the rejection of past traditions, a frustrated Viennese painter named Adolf Hitler was absorbing the reactionary politics of anti-Semitism from Karl Lueger, mayor of Vienna. When Hitler returned to Vienna in 1938 to take over Austria, the majority of Viennese not only acquiesced but celebrated his venomous and irrational scapegoating with repugnant enthusiasm.

Today, before, well, whatever, Tel Aviv:

Many of the country’s most successful entrepreneurs are using Israel’s status as a fortressed state, surrounded by furious enemies, as a kind of twenty-four-hour-a-day showroom-a living example of how to enjoy relative safety amid constant war. And the reason Israel is now enjoying supergrowth is that those companies are busily exporting that model to the world.

Discussions of Israel’s military trade usually focus on the flow of weapons into the country-US-made Caterpillar bulldozers used to destroy homes in the West Bank and British companies supplying parts for F-16s. Overlooked is Israel’s huge and expanding export business. Israel now sends $1.2 billion in “defense” products to the United States-up dramatically from $270 million in 1999. In 2006 Israel exported $3.4 billion in defense products-well over a billion more than it received in US military aid. That makes Israel the fourth-largest arms dealer in the world, overtaking Britain.

Much of this growth has been in the so-called “homeland security” sector. Before 9/11 homeland security barely existed as an industry. By the end of this year, Israeli exports in the sector will reach $1.2 billion-an increase of 20 percent. The key products and services are high-tech fences, unmanned drones, biometric IDs, video and audio surveillance gear, air passenger profiling and prisoner interrogation systems - precisely the tools and technologies Israel has used to lock-in the occupied territories.

And that is why the chaos in Gaza and the rest of the region doesn’t threaten the bottom line in Tel Aviv, and may actually boost it. Israel has learned to turn endless war into a brand asset, pitching its uprooting, occupation and containment of the Palestinian people as a half-century head start in the “global war on terror.”

That's a horrible picture, KB. And the PNAC crowd, and e.g. Lieberman (I-Likud) totally buy into it (and have been bought by it.) Eesh.

No authoritarians were tortured in the writing of this post.