Also, since I mentioned it but haven't talked about it, let's examine "with sentiments like those you wouldn't last 5 seconds on Cardassia" through the Garak as mixed race reading we get from A Stitch In Time- and, because Julian's there, and I can't really talk about this interaction without it, reading Julian through a Jewish lens. (CCing: @nebulouscoffee as they asked the inital question)

Background contextualization once more: in the play The Nexus, there is an interaction which frankly, reveals itself as deeply cruel and mean-spirited. And, heads up, I will be discussing antisemitism and my criticism of the Federation.

BASHIR: When you were truly free. We so often only ruminate on the sad memories. When, if ever, have you felt like Elim Garak? GARAK (warms as he remembers): I used to perch on the edge of a dirt cart, drinking cool Ribexa, watching my “father” - Tolan - gently knead the soil around newly transplanted orchid bulbs. He used to talk to his patients, softly reassuring them that they weren’t lost or in danger. He was completely oblivious of me - but it didn’t matter. I lived through him, Doctor, and I lived through those orchids, imagining that I myself was being carefully tucked into my own bed. When all the talk was of war and mayhem, I would wait till all was quiet in the house and go sit beside the planted bulbs, digging my toes into the moist earth, looking up at the stars… BASHIR: Like your regnar. GARAK: Mmm? BASHIR: Transforming yourself, becoming at one with your environment. Isn’t that what happened to you in your early training at Bamarren? When you leaned to be somewhere without being noticed. GARAK: I was sent to Bamarren to learn how to kill...cleanly, dispassionately. To be part of a team that kills without question. But that tiny creature was my lifeline. Literally, my line to life. Through Mila, this regnar, I could still remember what it was like to be alive for life’s sake. BASHIR: L’chaim! To life! An old earthen sect called Jews used to say l’chaim to salute each other in celebration. No one says it anymore. GARAK: No, I’m sure they don’t. The Federation don’t approve, do they, Doctor? Sectarianism is divisive, is it not? How ironic. How Cardassian! Everyone surrenders their individual culture for the greater good of the whole. BASHIR: It evolved out of our choice, Garak. We have freedom of choice, and choice has kept us free. GARAK: Of course you call it choice. Coercion would have been too Borgian, certainly not the Federation style. Assimilation by consent is much better. Keep the grass green on my side of the fence and simply wait for everyone to come on over. Sometimes, Doctor, choice is the last thing we need. Ask any child to make a choice, and he or she will invariably make a regrettable one. We’re all such children. BASHIR: Considering your support for democratic principles on Cardassia, I’m rather surprised to hear you say this. GARAK: You wouldn’t be, my friend, if you saw how some people are using these democratic principles. But perhaps they’re simply following the Federation example. Perhaps Federation democracy is the most subtle, the most devious tyranny yet conceived.

This is a very long section, but I feel the whole of it is relevant. Let's break down the major takeaways I have:

Garak is at a point in his life where he very openly is criticizing Cardassia's policy of cultural assimilation and supremacy. He could not do this before without facing extreme legal and social reprocussions, and even though he's still doing this to Julian- someone who wouldn't care- the kind of person he is during the show would not do this.

The Nexus is presenting the Federation as a logical conclusion of a specific permutation of anti-theism popular with certain "progressives", and in my opinion the Federation has expressed characteristics of European Secularism (see: Bajorans being made to remove their earrings while serving in Starfleet while others in Starfleet are allowed to wear other items of cultural significance).

Julian is putting forth the company line on that front, which is suprising given he and Jadzia are the more respectful members of the senior staff towards Bajoran religion.

This whole scene must be contextualized in that gardening/connection to "soft, green" things and Tolan, are connected to Garak’s sense of Hebitian identity, and that Garak is criticizing Cardassia and the Federation from the perspective of someone coming to terms with his Hebitian identity, and that that is an oppressed identity.

On my first reading, I'll be blunt: I completely despised this line from Julian and was willing to pretend I never read it. It does, on some level, make sense for him without adding any extra dimension of cultural context beyond what we're explicitly told, but it is a very nasty belief to espouse. However, upon receiving the trivia that the actor who plays Julian's father is Jewish, I found myself turning it over in my head again, and a question that I think is very relevant to Julian: what does it mean to assimilate and how does it fuck with you? Regardless of what you believe, what is it safe to do (Orthodoxy vs Orthopraxy)? Both are also, relevant to talking about Garak and what it means to be Hebitian.

and let's return to the scene in the show that we're examining.

GARAK: It all comes down to a question of loyalty. My dear Doctor, Yiri had to choose between protecting his brother and protecting the state. He chose the state, as would I, every time. BASHIR: I suppose that's one way of looking at it. But then again, before you can be loyal to another, you must be loyal to yourself. GARAK: And who can we thank for those misguided words of wisdom? Sarek of Vulcan? BASHIR: Actually, it was Bashir of Earth. GARAK: With sentiments like those, you wouldn't last for five seconds on Cardassia. BASHIR: Would you? GARAK: Fishing again, Doctor?

The script adds a direction before Garaks last line here: "Garak is a little taken aback. Bashir's question cuts right to the heart of the cat-and-mouse game that the two of them have been playing for months."

Obviously with the biracial reading from ASIT the joke is: no, Garak wouldn't. He didn't. Once he stepped too far out of the line, that was betrayal, and you can draw a straight line from his betrayal to his exile (though we never actually get an explanation for why he was exiled, and are left to draw our own conclusions). And the precise reason he didn't last is arguably BECAUSE he was crossing the line of self loyalty, bringing him out of step with loyalty to the state. He didn't chose the state. You can even directly point to him contemplating turning in the Oralian Way meeting in ASIT and not doing it as a parallel to the situation the two are discussing. He had the choice to protect the group or the state, and through inaction, ultimately chose the group.

And the joke with the Jewish reading brought on by the Nexus: Julian isn't loyal to himself, and his disloyalty makes him more loyal to the Federation. Julian is of course, a walking disloyalty, he's an Augment. And because this is a reading based on very little information, we can't say why he's disloyal to himself. Are his parents assimilationists? It wouldn't be suprising: he talks with a much more posh, distinctly British accent than them both (Amsha doesn't have a British accent, to my ear, and Richard's sounds more working class), which potentially indicates they put effort into him not talking like them. Was assimilation a choice to avoid already being seen as odd and disloyal in an attempt to avoid examination of background and discovery of his Augmentation? How does the Federation talk about Jews, educate about them, how is Jewish history viewed?

No one says it anymore- but you, Julian Bashir, just said it. Where did you learn it? Did your grandmother still say it? Did you read it in class? Did you seek out reading it yourself? Was it in a play, a movie, a novel? Did you ever say it before now? Did you say it to your father?

Were you told the lie that the second exodus of SSWANA Jews during the mid 20th century was gleefully undertaken? Were told to be relieved, as Garak implies, that yet another vector of sectarianism was gone? Were you told to be relieved people could not be made to suffer through that avenue anymore? Were you told to think of it as a mercy killing? You were certainly told it was a choice, freely made.

We end up with a scene where a man who chose loyalty to himself and was punished (would have always risked punishment because the requirement of loyalty is against something he was born as) denies he ever made such a choice, and a man who is not loyal to himself calling self loyalty a pre-requisite for loyalty to a state he inherently cannot be loyal to, while questioning the first man what called his state loyalty into question. Men in intersecting lines.

Here, have some Jezri Murder-Porn, as a treat <3 I'm not sure if any of this counts as Joran/Julian but it's about the closest I've got thus far so I'm gonna mention it here in any case.

Title: Paved With Good Intentions (AO3) Fandom: Deep Space Nine Rating: Explicit Pairing: Julian Bashir/Ezri Dax, Ezri Dax & Joran Dax Wordcount: 1817 Additional Tags: Section 31 (Star Trek), Murder, Murder Kink, fully paid-up member of the joran dax fanclub here, Sex, Guns, Dark, Post-Canon, oh everyone no, canon-typical ugly clothing, Het, staring into the abyss and the abyss stares back and etc, Trills (Star Trek), maybe a smidge of joran/julian idk Summary: Ezri aims the gun and then without fear of hesitation she lets Joran pull the trigger.

I hate the tag limit me and my friends all say fuck the tag limit. Anyway I wanted to add RE my feelings in the augmentation story line that I found it questionable to partially remove the humanity of the first Arab/South Asian (both are implied with Julian) characters in Trek. Like, I enjoy reading/writing about characters that feel distanced from humanity by racism, ableism, etc, but that has to be handled carefully because the reason why a person feels that way is because it's what a bigoted society makes them believe about themselves. And suffice to say if you read my tags on that post, I don't think Julian was handled all that well as a disabled (formerly?)/ND character, and I have... thoughts on how they wrote him as a PoC.

Trek loves coding and allegorying aliens as poc, which isn't the worst thing, but does reinforce the idea that to be human is to be white, especially as it's references to Earth culture are, by and large, white. And that makes choices to make non-white human characters not so human circumspect for me (they end up implying something similar with Sisko too!) with a writing team that is mostly white and mostly abled.

I do think Siddig's acting choices make reading Julian through the lens of someone coercively removed from the category of human still fulfilling, but it's fucked up how many writing choices made about Julian imo primarily ended up palatable or sensible through Siddig's skill as an actor.

The other thing I relate to Julian about is a strong sense of morality and duty. I'm hypoempathetic, and like, obviously that means I can't base my decisions based on empathy for others (compassion, yes, "feel what I feel", no) so I favor trying to have a consistent approach to people. This means that I often find myself despising a person but still helping them if they're sick or injured because they're a person, even if I'd like to be cruel to them and wouldn't feel especially bad if I was cruel to them. I don't think Julian is himself hypoempathetic- I think he might be the opposite, but still is put in the position of having to take an internally consistent approach to people because he's a doctor. You see this with the fact that he even treats Dukat according to standard, though he snaps at him while he does it. It's kind of silly to me if there's a character getting close to the idea that Julian doesn't understand duty; he understands it incredibly well, so while I get why a character would think that, i dont think it's an accurate assessment.

Hmmmm.

I'm thinking about how Julian displays intelligence through discussion and knowledge about art and how he's unsuccessful using that as a bridge in relationships with anyone but Garak in the show and how that aided their attempts to alter Julian's character with the augment storyline

Like, it's obvious given that he frequently discusses Cardassian literature with Garak and how he tries to discuss Bajoran music with Kira that he uses understanding the art of a person's culture as a way of trying to understand and form connections with them- but seemingly it only works on Garak, because the show chooses to show him use it on basically three characters (Garak, Kira, kind of Miles) and two of those characters don't get much out of art.

But there are other characters that would be receptive to that discussion- the Siskos and Jadzia come to mind. But the show never bothers to establish that connection so when it takes away the one character with that connection, it effectively unmoors a part of Julian as a person. Which leads to "hey Julian do math in your brain since you're basically a computer now".