The Press, Universities and NGOs are the triad that represent any issue in society through a prism of acceptable cause, and while social activists are correct in asserting that society is hierarchical, in a democracy it is possible to advance through merit and to modify the hierarchy. The purpose of intersectionality is to weaken the old elites sufficiently to supplant them with a new elite, one with its own prejudiced agenda. As Corinne Blackmer has put it nicely: “Intersectionality morphed into the oppression Olympics.” To accomplish this sleight of hand, they must first control the narrative. Martin Luther King warned against “sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity”, but we are a lazy species and this laziness manifests in a willingness to accept what is presented to us in simple terms, and which in turn feeds our egos, resonating with our familiar and therefore comforting, prejudices. It makes us susceptible to charlatans and scoundrels who will lie to us and incite us against those that may threaten their control over us. It is also why Fascism is a protean beast. It jumps from Right to Left and then is embraced by both sides of the political spectrum. Fascism supplies what society feels comfortable with, in order to find material, emotional and spiritual solace.
A good example of the denialism required to feed a defective narrative was provided in a Charles Krauthammer article about local American Muslim terrorists and the newspeak that prevented those terrorists ever being described as such. Such silence has been the norm in the UK since the 2007 London bombings. The government collaborated with civil society in going to great lengths to distance Muslims from any culpability for the mass murder events carried out by four British Muslims.
In the US example, at no point did the media describe an individual as a terrorist because that would be labelling them with a moniker that expressed adherence to “a powerful ideology rooted in a radical interpretation of Islam, in whose name they propagandize, proselytize, terrorize and kill.” Krauthammer continued with the dictum that the first rule of war is to know your enemy. It is not all Muslims; it is however a significant sub-set of the Global Islamic Ummah (nation). Between 40% and 90% of all Muslims have self-identified as fundamentalist, according to international surveys completed since the start of the 21st Century. In the pre-Modern world this would not be much of a problem but in a world of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons a theological belief system that refuses to hold back from justifying any act of terror in its quest for domination represents a terrifying statistical possibility.
Krauthammer pointed to the Pentagon report on the Fort Hood shooter. It ran to 86 pages and at no point referred to the terrorist as an Islamist (he self-identified as a “Soldier of Islam.”) Major Hasan shouted “Allahu Akbar “when he murdered twelve people at his base. Another terrorist, Faisal Shahzad first quit his job, then went off to Pakistan for jihadi training. He stopped paying his mortgage which, unsurprisingly, led to the banks foreclosing on his house. He went on to attempt to bomb Times Square – The press blamed the foreclosure of his home as the reason for his radicalisation. So, he went to train to be a Jihadi because he was just ‘the boy next door’ and meant no harm to us? Of greater relevance and concern is the way the Press appeased Islamism. From the Press we learnt that it was not Muslim theology; it was the bank’s fault (and bewilderingly, ours too). It is an obsequious justification that placates a terroristic ideology and promotes asymmetrical, unequal rights and obligations within society.
In the context of Western attitudes towards Jewish self-expression, there is no similar “get-out” clause. Jews are blamed for the latest scandal or for acts of self-defence conducted by the (Jewish) State of Israel. It is a comfortable meme. Daniel Kahneman called this ‘cognitive ease’. We have an emotional bias towards the lessons of our childhood, and we seek consistency in both attitudes and perceptions even when they result in the uncritical acceptance of a false narrative. To quote him “A self-reinforcing pattern of cognitive, emotional and physical responses that is both diverse and integrated (called associative coherence)”
Another example of bias: The Fourth Geneva Convention deals with the protection of civilians in time of war. The Fourth Geneva Convention on the Rules of War was adopted in 1949. Switzerland, the Depository of the Fourth Geneva Convention, profited more than any other nation from the hell that was the Second World War. Switzerland laundered Nazi Germany’s illicit funds throughout the war. Germany could not have funded its war effort and hence, its war crimes without Swiss complicity.
It has been estimated that Swiss money-laundering lengthened the Second World War by at least one year. Millions of people were killed in that one year. Why the diatribe against the Swiss nation? Because under the Fourth Geneva Convention Switzerland must agree to call a special meeting of the High Contracting Parties (representatives of states who have signed or ratified the treaty) in order for a debate and complaint to be raised against any nation.
It has met only three times since enactment of the Convention. That is three times in seventy-two years. On each of those three occasions it was convened to condemn Israel. There have been hundreds of wars since WW2 ended and over 85,000,000 deaths attributed to those wars. The total number of deaths on all sides in the Israel-Palestine conflict represents less than 1:1,000 of the total casualties inflicted in that same time period.
Why does the United Nations exist when it is politically impotent to prevent human conflict? It may be the principal reinforcing agent of confirmational bias against Jewish equal rights because the UN informs and instructs much of what passes for progressive (dis)information campaigns. While there may have been up to 500,000 Syrian deaths (of which half may have been nonmilitary, civilian deaths) caused by the Syrian Civil War, Switzerland has never considered invoking the Fourth Geneva Convention to condemn Assad and his regime. The Pakistani regime murdered up to 1,250,000 civilians in Bangladesh in 1971 and the only noise heard from the UN (not Switzerland) was when Israel called out Pakistan for its genocidal campaign. (This was the first formal mention of the word “Genocide” in any resolution placed before the UN against any member nation).
There have been so many horrific, deliberate mass-murder conflicts ignored by the UN because Israel is, a most convenient tool about which the UN can focus its attention. Historian Daniel Pipes (I acknowledge that he is an iconoclast and as such, controversial) succinctly observed the following:
“Despite the relative non-lethality of the Arab-Israel conflict, its renown, notoriety, complexity, and diplomatic centrality will probably give it continued out-sized importance in the global imagination. and Israel’s reputation will continue to pay the price.” (Article dated October 8, 2007) This has had a negative spill-over effect on Jewish identity because most of us can only tolerate simple narratives.
The Enlightenment (from about 1687 until the French Revolution in 1789 - 1815) espoused liberty and religious tolerance, standing in opposition to absolute monarchy and religious domination. It did not lead to universal suffrage or to tolerance in society. It created an era of chaos and institutional violence which lasted for almost one and a half centuries after the Enlightenment had come to a blood-soaked end. States continued to view their citizens as disposable commodities. If the pre-Modern era viewed society as a collective, the Enlightenments biggest failure was to replace that collective responsibility for society with the individual and central to our idea of modern society is the deification of the individual. Freedom is not the absence of restraint. That absence of restraint is Chaos. And chaos is not creative, it is destructive. The narcissism of a life without restraint demands from the individual within any group, unqualified adherence to the groups ideal of what constitutes a normative construct. ‘Freedom’ as followed by a clique of such likeminded believers is a destructive ideology, it must erase everyone’s else’s freedom.
Humanity has rarely shown a liking for nuance, we are all about ‘big’ ideas because they are simple. From the second half of the 20th Century and Into the 21st Century there is another kind of tyranny besides the tyranny of deified ‘individual freedoms’ and that is one that picks its causes based on progressive ideas. Values that are selective and apply only to an intersectional, restricted, and formally sanctioned victim hierarchy soon adopts an irrational political discourse that filters the truth. If we have come to view progress as the new God, then all that came before it is anachronistic and irrelevant. Our museums commemorate the past and display the highlights of civilisation. Most institutions of government maintain the workings of society. In our post-modern progress orientated world, both are redundant are unless they can be proven to further the cause.
Zionism is the latest Bête Noire. It is far easier to acquiesce to an ignorant, prejudiced view of an ideology that few understand and even fewer have studied than to tackle far more important issues that are closer to home (such as poverty, worker’s rights, the global economy, and the wild west of the internet). Mass TV and the world wide web represent the most sustained anti-intellectual forces in history because of their ubiquity, their ‘no consequences’ incitement, their freedom to lie and their toxic global influence.
The balance between fundamentalism and secularism has been upset because while most people are tolerant; hypocrisy and prejudice can easily be sheathed in a mask of ‘decency’. Prejudice is more outspoken and has greater reach. In its simplicity of message, it is easily understood and as easily imprinted. Mass culture has replaced mid and high culture and the result is that no longer, do we educate towards a plurality of understanding. Instead of a mosaic of ideas and opinions we are offered a single narrative that demands compliance and actively discourages diversity. In a world obsessed by conspicuous consumption the trivialisation of society is the cheapest option, at all levels of society.
The Romans, at the start of the Common Era, succeeded in amassing an empire of enormous size. It succeeded, for a time, because it commodified everything. If everything has a value, then nothing has any value aside from that which can be exploited. The progressives of today view progress, like fashion, as an absolute. Like previous radicals they have simply adopted a theology of replacement as their answer to every issue.
Superficiality and prejudice display an insatiable appetite. “If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civil making, it expects what never was and never will be” so Thomas Jefferson said (in 1816). The mix of intolerance, passion and subservience to a ‘new’ authority can only ever lead to discord, deterioration, and warfare, whether civil or international. Jews have too often been the target of such processes. In a world that too often targets Jews the one difference with the past is that acceptance of the option to walk away from Judaism is widespread and now represents the majority.
This negative option will be an ever-expanding trend unless we can demonstrate simple reasons to stay committed.