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.
|
