A few thoughts: There is no truth, only the narrative. The only civilians are those people fighting for the right cause. Therefore, any cause that is not sanctioned (‘right’) must be ‘wrong.’ Does that sound like something Jeremy Corbyn, the controversial antisemitic leader of the Labour opposition party in Britain would say?
We are being circled by vultures for whom the only morality is victory. It is at this point in history that we have truly arrived at a celebration of fascism. Fascism is on the ascendant and as it again sniffs power it becomes more obvious that Democracy is in danger everywhere. And where are the defenders of democracy; our intellectual gate-keepers? Our universities do not teach truth, but a version of the truth as perceived by the partisans of the new Fascism. Intimidation and Violence are the traditional weapons of choice for the arbiters of the new morality and the inquisitors of the latest fashionable political theology. I use the word ‘theology’ because like the neophytes of every fundamentalist belief system the true believer has no room for dissent; memes are the unquestioning currency of transmission and the primacy of rallying the troops in a fight against an evil ‘other’ is central to creating a united, ideologically motivated cadre to rule over the weak and uncommitted populace.
Jeremy Corbyn is the acceptable face of fascism, far more so than Donald Trump could ever manage. When people say that the chance of JC being elected Prime Minister of Britain is slim, I would remind them that HAMAS is a proto-Nazi religious conspiracy, that the people embraced HAMAS with enthusiasm; the Left and Liberal thinkers everywhere celebrated the victory of HAMAS because, they said, it was democracy in action. Ditto for Mohamed Morsi, the Muslim Brotherhood’s chosen leader and Egypt's first democratically elected president – it took Morsi six months to bankrupt Egypt. Hitler also, was voted into power. Not only is the celebration of casting a vote in a dictatorship disingenuous; any thinking person must be uncomfortable with the suggestion that Corbyn’s election can be managed, or of benefit to Society.
So, lots of rhetoric. Now I am going to put some flesh on those bones.
First statement – “there is no truth, only narrative”. In the world we live in today the person who shouts loudest and with the threat of violence is the one to whom we listen. Once the tactics in use have discouraged others from participating in public discourse, free-speech is dead. The US Bill of Rights correctly placed as its first Amendment to the Constitution “Freedom of religion, speech, and the press; rights of assembly and petition.” Freedom of speech was never intended to be limitless because when it becomes a threat to others it violates more than just one constitutional right. And this point has been enunciated by the US Supreme Court.
As a society, we have lost the restraint that must be the first realisable impulse of a civilised person. Restraint is what makes us truly free. But fascism creates a safe place for only one direction in thought, the ‘correct’ line is the party line. Expressing the lie as truth is free-speech, but it is also unrestrained and once it is expressed, it has currency because it has been expressed. And if we are comfortable with what we have heard then it takes on a life of legitimate expression even if it contains not an iota of truth to it. We are today, living in a world that values the brain fart far above circumspection and considered thought. Instead of first thinking, we ‘just say it’ – without regard for offence caused or consequences. It is the propagandists dream tool because it enunciates the bigot’s thoughts and there is no necessity for veracity or truth. Daniel Kahneman explains it thus: “a self-reinforcing pattern of cognitive, emotional and physical responses that is both diverse and integrated (called associative coherence) this associative coherence creates a context for future developments and all it takes is the association of words in a group to an image or a page in a book. Again, you have psychologically been brain-washed into associating the conjunction of words as representative of reality.” And he also wrote: “the experience of familiarity has a simple but powerful quality of ‘pastness’ that seems to indicate that it is a direct reflection of past experience.” (Thinking, Fast and Slow. 2011)
Put more simply; if you are bombarded with images or groups of words with which you can both identify and, crucially, feel comfortable with, then it is irrelevant whether those words or images are false or created just for you; completely false propaganda of a negative orientation or frankly, racist or religiously biased incitement – the only two criteria for acceptance are familiarity and comfort.
By example, Baroness Tongue, the British parliamentarian and antisemite (there have been so many in British national politics) speaking under parliamentary privilege took a noble act of Israeli humanitarianism and turned it into something malevolent. There was no proof to what she stated, I will not repeat her disgusting accusation, but the point was that in creating the lie then calling for an international team to investigate it, she created both the conspiracy and a new truth out of that lie. We may contest its attribution, but sadly, it is correct to say that “A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to put its pants on”.
The Daily Mail revealed that in a speech in London in 2013 at a conference convened by the Palestinian Return Centre (and attended by radical Islamists), Corbyn spoke about the importance of history. He said Zionists had "two problems"—firstly, that they do not study history and, secondly, they do not understand English irony. Well, personally, I have been studying history since I was six years old. I have lived here in Britain for 32 years. I know a lot of left wing Jews, many of them are life-long radical left wingers and nearly all of them are: 1) Zionists, 2) British to the end of their days and 3) passionate about history, all of history – not just the ‘White Man’s’ stuff.
In sycophantically bowing before a Muslim Arab who believes that Jews have no rights other than the rights a Muslim and an Arab magnanimously awards to them for being ‘good Jews’ JC was 1) questioning the loyalty to Britain of British Jews and British Christian Zionists and 2) questioning the Britishness of all Jews who are not Jewish Uncle Toms and of all thinking Christian Zionists. From his own history it is patently clear that JC unreservedly accords rights to Muslims who blow up buses, behead British soldiers and stab to death the infidel on our British streets. He is apparently comfortable associating with those who are in favour of attacking the Houses of Parliament and torturing Jewish athletes before murdering them. But loyal citizens who do not cleave to his radical fascist interpretation of Britishness (or history) are traitors. How ironic is that?
Jeremy Corbyn, Baroness Tongue and many others of their ilk embrace anti-Zionism precisely because it is the wrong kind of self-determination. Far from representing the expression of a colonialist past, present or future and unlike pan-Arabism or Islamism, Zionism is both anti-Colonialist and anti-Imperialist. The massive influx of Muslims into Europe and other Western countries has created a potentially huge fascist electorate. I say ‘fascist’ because without a history of democratic engagement and emboldened by their appalling history, the potential Muslim vote is enormous. To a fascist, they are the dream constituency.
My answer to Jeremy Corbyn, the benighted Baroness and others, is a quote from Primo Levi: "to confuse murderers with their victims is a moral disease, or an aesthetic affectation or a sinister sign of complicity; above all it is a precious service rendered (intentionally or not), to the negators of truth."
To return to the first premise (that there is no truth, only the narrative), it is a brutal historical reality, albeit, a simplification of the methodology employed by fascism to control society. Before Hitler and Stalin, the aristocracy, universities and religious hierarchies controlled which ideas were acceptable and on the other side, which ideas would either end your career or your life. Universities have rarely, if ever, been citadels of free thought. Socrates was executed for expressing thoughts that were not congruent with the philosophy and deity worship of the period. Galileo was tried by the office of the Inquisition and spent the rest of his life under house arrest (a period of over a decade) for expressing the thought that the earth was not at the centre of our solar system. George Orwell in writing ‘1984’ was observing what already existed, the degree to which we are all susceptible to being lead without asking any questions and thus, how easy it is to cause people to prostrate themselves before the latest fashion icon or in JC’s case, the demagogue. The sad truth is that it takes energy and it is draining to be constantly trying to do what is right. We prefer to be told what to do and how to think far more than we like to admit. Independence of thought and action is a constant drain on our mental and physical energies.
At the end of World War Two and as a direct result of the carnage suffered primarily by civilians, a new idea was permitted to take root. Human Beings were no longer the property of the State to be manipulated for the benefit of the ruling classes. They had rights that were at least the equal of their obligations. It was a radical departure from the treatment of civilians for most of human history.
But it was only accepted by the political right wing which understood existentially, as Marxist theorist Rosa Luxemburg explained: “Freedom is how free your opponent is.” The irony is that the radical left idolized Rosa Luxemburg the woman without internalising what Rosa Luxemburg the political philosopher said. The Left not only rejected but also undermined the concept of humanity requiring protection from the state and they did this from the very start of the so-called new era.
The radical left viewed as it does to this day the conflict between different peoples as a Manichean event pitting good against bad and not, two versions of the truth or even, a conflict of complex origins and dependencies. So, if one side represents a righteous cause then all that they do is justified even when their actions cause the mass slaughter of civilians. Casualties are merely a consequence of any legitimate struggle and there is no such thing as collateral damage. In this conflict the only civilians are the ones on the side of the ‘righteous’. The enemy combatant is anyone on the wrong side of history or the wrong side of the war. This can be a war of ideas, a religious war, or even a war of failed conquest. On the side of ‘wrong’, by existing, the civilian supports the state that is existentially flawed. Therefore logically, they are not civilians but enemy combatants to be killed, down to the new born baby. It is the classic justification for genocide and it was reinvented by the Left as a strategic propaganda weapon. The kind of person that follows this line of thinking rejects post-World War Two Western concepts of morality. It explains the Jeremy Corbyn’s of this world who claim all the time to be talking to those who want to make peace when the reality is the opposite, they never talk to more than one side in the conflict.
During the 6-Day War which was fought between Israel and the Arab world, Israel seized Egyptian and Jordanian operational documents with clear orders to annihilate the (Jewish) civil population. https://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4968426,00.html King Hussein argued he was unaware of the content of the documents. The 1967 order for the Genocide of the Jews of Israel have been conveniently omitted from the Left’s narrative of so-called Arab victim-hood as has the inconvenient truth that Palestine was not created by the Arab occupying powers (supported by France and Britain) in the period they ruled over Judea, Samaria and Gaza. How is it possible that prior to the Arab world’s swingeing defeat in 1967, the progressive forces of Western society failed to demand an independent Palestine in areas conquered and occupied by Egypt, Jordan and Syria? It is because, for the fascist the narrative is all important and facts, where inconvenient, are disposable. Even genocide can be explained away or preferably, ignored. This is the real danger that is posed by a fundamentally corrupt, failed, left wing political morality.
I leave you with one final quote, my riposte to the leader of British Fascism, Jeremy Corbyn is from a former leading Black Panther, Eldridge Cleaver. He said in 1976: “To condemn the Jewish survival doctrine of Zionism as racism is a travesty upon the truth…Jews have not only suffered particularly from racist persecution, they have done more than any other people in history to expose and condemn racism.”
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