The Martial Arts of Discourse
Usually, newspaper polemic is akin to épée fencing: one
tries to keep the opponent at arm's length, avoid his
thrusts and draw his blood. The thoughtful and friendly
query of Haakon Kolmanskog deserves a quite different
attitude and a most sincere reply. Haakon poses a
question: We can't be indifferent if friends of the
Palestinians are branded anti-Semites. Who will benefit
in allowing the Zionists to have a free go playing the
anti-Semite card against anyone who criticise them? The
sad answer is that we have no means of stopping their
playing it. For years, the friends of Palestine tried to
evade the label by saying:
Israel behaves horribly, but it has nothing to do with
the fact that it is defining itself as 'the Jewish
state'. It has nothing to do with Jews elsewhere, and
therefore criticism of Israel is not related to
anti-Semitism.
But this easy answer was rejected by the Masters of
Discourse. Friends of Palestine were forced into daily
confessions of their love of Jews, as the suspected
heretics of Middle Ages had been of their orthodoxy.
Their protestations are without avail, for our opponents
can effectively decide what is and what is not
anti-Semitism. They can decide because they hold
commanding heights in discourse: by virtue of media
ownership, economic power and international connections
integrated into one armoured fist.
And they use this power by stretching the definition of
anti-Semitism as they find fit. Anti-Zionism is
anti-Semitism, according to Professor Ruth Wisse of
Harvard University and to a plethora of other
Judeo-American pundits. Anti-Americanism is a new,
virulent form of anti-Semitism, wrote David Quinn in The
Sunday Times. "Anti-Globalisation is anti-Semitism",
"the Green policies of Environmentalism' is
anti-Semitism now" are frequent headlines in Israeli
newspapers. "Christianity is anti-Semitism" is the
recent title of Goldhagen's book. In 1990's Russia,
anti-market forces were described as "anti-Semites".
Recently, Christine Mohn in the Nationen described
Russian Communists as "anti-Semites".
In no way can you, Haakon, nor your friends in this
uniquely free newspaper, define "anti-Semitism".
Likewise, you cannot define "Communism". Definitions of
these terms are forced on us by the Masters of
Discourse. We can work only with them, the existing and
prevailing definitions, though we might regret their
existence sometimes and offer our own understanding of
the phenomena they classify. Alternatively, we can
invent our own definitions, as did the Trotskyites: they
called Communism "Stalinism". But that was a sectarian
escape.
What we can and should do is analyse the definitions
forced upon us. If all the above is, indeed,
anti-Semitism as decreed by the Masters of Discourse,
what is this legendary "Semitism"? Surely it has nothing
to do with the Semitic race? It is, by their definition,
a fusion of Zionism, Americanism, Globalisation,
Neo-Liberalism, anti-Communism, destruction of Nature
and reduction of the Church. As the Masters of Discourse
declared this "Semitism", and their definition is the
only one that matters, I can freely acknowledge my (and
hopefully your) "anti-Semitism".
Accepting their definition is tactically much better
than fighting it. In Oriental martial arts one lets the
brute strength of the adversary work against him. That
is exactly what I try to do in my essays that you
printed. The adversary is strong: let it be his undoing.
II
Let us deal now with the second question of Haakon. How
should we view the anti-Semitism of Hamsun the Nazi? he
asks. The answer is that we should place Hamsun in his
historical context.
All participants in WWII were homicidal racists, in
modern terms. While the German Nazis killed a lot of
Slavs, Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals and the mentally
deranged, the democratic US deported thousands of
American citizens of Japanese [and German ] descent or
locked them up for years in concentration camps; the
Soviets deported ethnic Germans, Chechens and Crimean
Tatars [and Balts ] and destroyed their centuries-old
villages and homes. Britain invented concentration camps
in the Boer War when Hamsun was a child, and deported
the ethnic Germans from British Palestine. The British
Bomber Harris probably killed as many innocent civilians
as any German war criminal.
The great Knut Hamsun, whose beautiful books we cherish,
was a man of his times. He was a contemporary of the
Russian Jewish writer and publicist, Iliya Ehrenburg,
whose brilliant early novel, Julio Jurenito, was rightly
acclaimed by Lenin. Ehrenburg was a worldly communist
and humanist, a great friend of Picasso and Matisse, of
Aragon and Castro. He also pioneered the anti-Zionist
genre with his sarcastic novel, Lazik Roitschwantz.
However, during WWII, Ehrenburg wrote in the Pravda:
"Kill the German! Kill this
sausage-and-sauerkraut-eating vermin! Exterminate his
seed!"
Horrified, Joseph Stalin personally responded to this
call to genocide by disavowing Ehrenburg in the Pravda:
"We are not fighting the German people", he wrote, "but
the Nazi regime." He was true to his words, and in 1945
derailed the Henry Morgenthau plan to cripple Germany
and starve millions of Germans to death.
Was the anti-Semitism of Hamsun the Nazi ethically worse
than the anti-Germanism of Iliya Ehrenburg the Jew? Yes:
if you think that Jewish life is much more precious than
the life of a non-Jew, in which case you find yourself
in the nauseating company of Eli Landau and Ivett
Lieberman, two Israeli MPs who called for the
extermination of a thousand Palestinians for each
murdered Jew, and of Madeleine Albright, who thought the
killing of half-a-million Iraqi children for the
protection of Israel "worth it". No: if you share my
belief in the equality of Man. That is why you have no
reason to reject your great national treasure, Knut
Hamsun; just view him in the context of his time.
While the time of Hamsun and Ehrenburg is over, Elie
Wiesel is still very much with us. In his book, Legends
of Our Time, this Jewish writer wrote: "Every Jew,
somewhere in his being, should set apart a zone of hate
-- healthy, virile hate -- for what the German
personifies and for what persists in the German." Not
"the Nazi", but "the German". For this sermon of hate he
received the 1986 Nobel Peace Prize from the Norwegian
Academy, in company with the Cambodia-destroyer Henry
Kissinger and the Cana-murderer, Shimon Peres. Armed
with this recognition of the Norwegians, Elie Wiesel
called (at Christmas Eve!): War [with Iraq] is the only
option"[1]. If you need to feel guilt, feel guilt for
this Nobel Peace Prize.
This vast difference in the feelings of Norwegians
towards their national genius Hamsun and towards Elie
Wiesel the schmaltzy hate-monger leads us to a
conclusion: in prevailing post-WWII mainstream
discourse, the taboo on criticism of Jews has caused
strong bias and undermined the humanist idea of the
Equality of Man. Pre-war anti-Semitism has been
superseded by another extreme, philo-Semitism, a belief
that Jews can do no wrong and should never be referred
to except in the most complimentary terms. This equally
racist attitude has created severe misbalance in
politics and discourse. It has to be corrected in order
to save our planet and mankind from the triumphant
"Semitism" of their definition.
III
The third question of Haakon was: Israel's president
Moshe Katsav recently visited Germany. He was last
Monday confronted by German neo-Nazis carrying
Palestinian flags and banners saying "Hands off
Palestine - No German armaments to Israel." It was a
disaster! If the neo-Nazis hadn't thought of it
themselves, I guess Ariel Sharon would have phoned them
to give them the idea. I'm wondering if Israel Shamir
shares my concerns and if he agrees with me that at all
means we have to avoid a situation where Nazis march in
support of Palestine? Or if it means nothing since
"Anti-Semitism" has become an empty and meaningless
phrase and only a weapon in the hands of Israeli
Zionists? Is this a question of no importance?
In the Gospel, the Disciples of Christ acclaimed him as
"the King who comes in the name of the Lord". The
Pharisees demanded: Rabbi, rebuke your disciples! But
Jesus replied: If they keep silent the stones will cry
out[2].
This prophecy was fulfilled in Germany. The German Left
betrayed its duty to demonstrate against the supplying
of the apartheid state with nuclear-bearing submarines,
the most fearsome weapons of mass destruction of our
age, for it to target the peaceful cities of man. The
German Left accepted the thoroughly racist concept of
"Jewish property" and transferred billions of dollars to
Sharon and his American Jewish partners[3]. "Fear of the
Jews"[4] befell them, and caused them to forget their
ideals. The Left is the salt of the earth by virtue of
upholding the values of equality, mercy, humanity. But
if the salt has lost its taste, it is to be thrown out
and walked on by the people[5]. The Left kept silent,
therefore the stones cried out. Whoever demonstrated
against the monstrous decision to arm Israel is surely
blessed.
Haakon describes these people as 'neo-Nazis'. I greatly
doubt this definition. German law is very strict, and
the real Nazis are in jail or in exile. The neo-Nazis of
our day usually support Israel: representatives of
Israeli parties were welcome guests at their gathering
in Holland. They even marched together in Amsterdam
under Israeli banners and with anti-Muslim slogans.
The Masters of Discourse can call whomever they wish
"neo-Nazi". Nasser was "Hitler", Arafat was "Hitler",
Saddam Hussein is "Hitler". In Russia, they gave this
name to everybody who objected to privatisation,
americanisation, globalisation. As the majority of these
people were actually communists, the Masters of
Discourse coined the term "Red-Brown". They called the
veterans of the Battle of Stalingrad "Nazis". They wrote
that for them there is no real difference between the
Communists and the Nazis. The Russian people responded
to it by forming a new Left-and-Right alliance against
these globalising, predatory forces.
They followed the great example of Mao Zedong, who
allied with the Right Nationalists of the Kuomintang
when the very existence of China was endangered.
Recently, the exiled Russian tycoon Boris Berezovsky,
billionaire and a media-lord and man of impeccable
Jewish origin who embraced Christ, publicly joined this
alliance in an earth-shaking interview with Zavtra, the
leading newspaper of the Left-and-Right. He was warmly
welcomed by the jailed leader of National Bolshevik
Party, writer Edward Limonov, who is often described as
an "anti-Semite and neo-Nazi". Ze lo kol kah pashut, as
we say in Hebrew: life is not as simple as comics and
the Masters of Discourse present it.
WWII is long over. Present-day Communists are not
"Stalinists", present-day Traditionalists are not
"Nazis", present-day "Semitists" are not the Democrats
of yesteryear. If we forever look back to the fields of
Stalingrad and to the ravaged Finnmark, we are liable to
overlook the new dangers mankind faces. The dreadful
fate of Palestine calls us, the men of thought, to
develop new paradigms for the new situation.
[1] <http://www.observer.co.uk/iraq/story/0,12239,864318,00.html>
[2] Luke 19:39-40.
[3] see my essay Bankers and Robbers. [Trad.
fr. dans Conseils de révision de décembre 2001.]
[4] John 19:38 and elsewhere.
[5] Matthew, 5:13.
