ON RACISM AND ANTI-TRIBALISM
1. It is easy to confound anti-tribalism with
racism and to treat them as synonymous - indeed, not to perceive a distinction
between the two because one has no idea of what anti-tribalism implies. But one can be anti-tribal, e.g.
anti-Semitic, without being racist, which is to
discriminate against others on the basis of racial origin irrespective of to
what evolutionary integrity the person discriminated against may profess. A transcendental ideologue in, say, Nazi
Germany may have been logically justified in discriminating against people who
clung to tribal identification, e.g. Jews and Gypsies, because such pre-atomic
identifications are arguably incompatible with a post-atomic integrity. But he wouldn't have been logically justified
in discriminating against, say, blacks who regarded themselves less in tribal
than in national terms - as citizens of a particular country. He might have been justified in expelling all
alien nationals from his ideologically radical state, but he couldn't have
sanctioned their imprisonment or liquidation on grounds that they were black,
since such a policy would be racist, and racism is strictly incompatible with
ideological transcendentalism!
2. Racism pertains to atomic states that have a
minority of colonists in positions of power over an indigenous majority whom
they are anxious to discriminate against in their own political, social, and
economic interests. Its most blatant
manifestation takes the form of apartheid.
But racism doesn't have to involve colour differences. People of, say, Irish nationality may be
discriminated against by British imperialists, as happened in Southern Ireland
during the greater part of British rule there, and thus suffer the humiliating
consequences of racism. A limited degree
of racism may also accrue to the converse situation of minority rule, as when
an imperialist country opens its doors to immigrants from the colonies, or
former colonies, and rules over them from a majority standpoint. Such immigrants may technically live in an
anti-racist or equalitarian society, but, in practice, some degree of racism is
almost certain to prevail, since an atomic society cannot treat everyone as
equals, having ruling-class interests to protect. When a predatory people can no longer profit
from racism in the colonies ... they will tighten their belts, so to speak, and
resign themselves to drawing what profits they can from it in their own
country, compliments of the immigrants.
3. My own position as an advocate of
Transcendentalism leads me to deny racism but to affirm, at least in theory,
anti-tribalism, whether applying to Jews, Gypsies, Celts, or anything
else. Thus I would regard myself as a
theoretical anti-tribalist, since it would be
illogical to uphold ideological transcendentalism and remain complacent about tribalists at the same time! Of course, this theoretical anti-tribalism
has no bearing, through anti-Semitism, on my attitude to
4. The smartest Jews, it seems to me, were the
early Zionists, who must have sensed, with the approaching termination of the
Christian civilization, that the moral climate in Europe was no longer
congenial to Jews, and that a new age was dawning in which transcendental
values would prevail, an age in which the Jews would find salvation in
Palestine if they were smart or brave enough to return there, but possible
damnation in Europe if they were stupid or timid enough to remain in the
Diaspora. Those early Zionists were as
intelligent, in my opinion, as the early anti-Semites - people like Wagner and Leuger who were also reading the changing times, if from a
contrary point of view. Evolution was
tending away from tolerance of the mundane tribal root, inherent to atomic
civilization, towards a transcendentalism in which only ideological values
would apply. Needless to say, some
European countries were more qualified to divine this change than others, being
better suited, by historical circumstances, to further and act upon it. Germany was one such country, and it was from
there that a fully-fledged anti-Semitism eventually
arose, following the rise to power of the Nazis - upholders of an ideological
radicalism in opposition to traditional atomic values.
5. Approximately six million Jews perished in
the Nazi holocaust, some of them illogically, because long-standing convertees to Christianity, but most of them effectively as
tribalists who hadn't had the good fortune or sense
or courage or whatever to immigrate to Palestine and work for a national
identity. Undoubtedly their sacrifice
precipitated the transformation, in 1947, of Palestine into the State of
Israel, though the British, who held a mandate on the territory, must bear some
responsibility for obstructing the entry of Jews into Palestine (ostensibly in
consideration of Arab feelings) during the Nazi era, and thus for indirectly
contributing to the Final Solution as adopted by the Nazis as a last resort,
other solutions having failed or been proven inadequate for the vast numbers
involved. Nevertheless, had it not been
for the holocaust, Jews might even now be deprived of a literal homeland and be
dependent on Arab, i.e. Palestinian, hospitality for their future
salvation! Indeed, as Jews in
6. Clearly, the destruction of the State of
Israel for the sake of a return to the Arab status quo would be deeply
illogical, because contrary to the historical justification for such a state,
which is to enable Jews to escape their traditional tribal identification in
and through Israeli nationality. Having
earned the right to an Israeli State through the six million sacrifices the
Jews were obliged to make on the altar of Nazi persecution, it would be
monstrously unjust for such a state ever to be taken away from them in the
future, particularly in a world which may require that a sanctuary be found for
Jews in Israel, assuming that Israel was willing to take-in such late-comers
and had enough room, territorially speaking, to house them all - something
which is not guaranteed at present!
Certainly the State of
7. It isn't surprising that, of all European
nations, it is from Russia that most of the Jews emigrating to Israel come
these days [early 1980s], and not simply because there are more Jews there than
anywhere else but, more significantly, because, under Soviet Communism, Russia
has tended to make life harder for tribalists than
would a Western atomic state, in spite of the fact that the ideology it professed
to - and in some degree still upholds - is materialistic rather than
pseudo-spiritual, and therefore more disposed it to an indirect opposition to
Jews than to a directly anti-Semitic opposition - in other words, one availing
itself, contrary to Nazism, of some Marxist pretext for finding fault with
certain categories of Jew, Zionists and religious fundamentalists not
excepted! Yet this served to cloak a
basic antagonism towards Jews in general that bordered on anti-Semitism but
which, for ideological reasons, could never be proclaimed as such. Paradoxically, however, the
