Sunday, December 31, 2006
Gilad Atzmon - The Spectacle of the Noose
Indeed we live in a global village, in a sealed monolithic ghetto in which medieval pornographic images of barbarism travel around the world at the speed of light for our consumption. Looped images of executed Saddam have been looping for a day or so on every news network. We are supposed to be cheered by the victory of ‘justice’ nevertheless we all know that whatever has been performed in front of our eyes is nothing but banal retribution. We are well aware that it has nothing to do with Justice. Not only was the trial a farce, if there are persons who should be locked behind bars, they should be the perpetrators of the war. We are now learning as well that we had better admit that we had been deluded and misled by the notion of liberal democracy; a modern Western political precept that originally portrayed itself as a great promise. We have been clearly dragged into some very dark era that will be remembered as a global manifestation, a unique form of evil far beyond banality.While Saddam is on the verge of becoming a martyr, his executors, Bush and Blair, have already secured their place in the premiere league of war criminals. It resembles very much the case of the Inquisition, it is once again the executer who is there to be stained in the eyes of future generations. Blair and Bush, the men who lied to their people, the men who started an illegal war, the men who are, according to the Geneva Conventions, liable for a genocide in Iraq on a grandiose scale, have eventually decided to bin the notion of justice as well. Considering their other crimes, taking into account: 650,000 dead Iraqis, the total support of Israeli destruction in Lebanon, assisting the Zionist crimes in Palestine, killing justice is indeed just another minor sin.
But Bush and Blair are not alone. Like the medieval crowd who assembled in town centres to stare at the angel of death, like the Jerusalemite who gathered along Via Dolorosa to spit on Jesus on his final march, we all gather together around our TV screens. We were sitting to watch how ‘liberated Iraq’ performs Anglo-American ‘justice’. Seemingly, when it comes to the issue of the human condition, two thousand years are no doubt a very short time. Humans are still rather enthusiastic about the consumption of bloody images of vengeance.
The question that is left open is, how did it happen to us? Not that long ago we all foolishly wanted to believe that humanity may have learned its lesson and was transformed into something else, that evil belongs to our past. How did we let these messengers of retribution take over?
Recently I have come across the words of Leo Strauss, the ideological founder of the Neoconservative school of thought. The intellectual mentor for those who claim to know what America’s new century should look like:
I was myself… a political Zionist in my youth, and was a member of a Zionist organisation. In this capacity, I occasionally met Jabotinsky, the leader of the revisionists. “He asked me what are you doing?” I said “Well, we read the Bible, we study Jewish history, Zionist theory, and, of course, we keep abreast of developments, and so on” He (Jabotinsky) replied “and Rifle practise?” and I had to say “No.” (Leo Strauss)
It didn’t take Strauss long to grow out of his relatively non-violent beliefs. It was the reading of Carl Schmitt, the post WWI right wing German political scientist who made Strauss into an overt opponent of liberal cosmopolitan ideology. For Schmitt, “the political meant, above all, that peoples are pitted against one another in a condition of war or readiness for a war [1]“ Very much like Jabotinsky, Schmitt and Hitler, for Strauss the essence of political life comes into play within a conflict rather than within a liberal pacifist environment in which ‘art’ and ‘entertainment’ are flourishing.
While the academic debate of whether Jabotinsky’s ideology took ground in Israeli politics is still raging, it is rather apparent that Zionist right wing ultra militant philosophy that is not different from German romantic, anti-enlightenment confrontational worldview, has deeply taken root, not to say invaded, the current American administration and its surrounding lobbies.
While Strauss was merely an academic, though a proponent of some hardcore hawkish Zionist ideologies, his followers happen to be those who design American foreign policy. It is slightly embarrassing to admit that: ‘cultural clash’, the emerging hatred towards Islam and the Anglo-American current phase of expansionism are all ideologically rooted in German right wing nationalist ideology that was carried to America by the overt militant Zionist Leo Strauss.
Indeed, we live in a global village, in a sealed monolithic ghetto in which medieval pornographic images of barbarism travel around the world at the speed of light. The only way out of this vicious loop of zeal is to de-Zionise our universe, to disengage from global Zionism and we better do just that with no delay.
[1] Reading Leo Strauss, Steven B Smith, Chicago Pg, 61
Labels: Atzmon
