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 Israel, which is unequivocally affirmative.  An Israeli is not tribal but national, and to my mind a Jew becomes an Israeli the moment he sets foot in Israel.  The more Jews Israel can absorb, the fewer tribalists there will be in the Diaspora and the less excuse for anti-Semitism from ideological idealists.  Such anti-Semitism could not, however, apply to European or to American nationals of Jewish descent, i.e. to 'Jews' who had converted to Christianity, but only to those who continued, on religious grounds, to regard themselves first and foremost as Jews (Judaic), yet had no intention of returning to Israel, either because they were too deeply into capitalism (a moral failing) or too stupid to recognize the moral obligation upon Jews to do so, or for some other associated reason.

 

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 Palestine, they would be deprived of a national identification anyway, the very thing they require in order to escape the curse of the Diaspora, with its anachronistic tribal allegiance.  The creation of the State of Israel made a national identification possible, and thereby established the basis for subsequent religious salvation ... in Transcendentalism.

 

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 Israel is very small, considering the number of Jews in the world, and it won't get any larger if obliged to make swingeing compromises with the Arabs to the detriment of its national security!  Whatever the fate of diaspora Jews in the future, I can't help thinking that the really good Jews, the cream of their people, were the ones who migrated to Palestine in the early days of Zionism and bore the brunt of Arab opposition to their Zionist ideals.  They and their offspring have made what is now Israel a state worthy of lasting respect!

 

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 Soviet Union was inclined, despite its ideological opposition towards nationalism, to uphold the right of Jews to a homeland, and therefore it tended to allow Jews to migrate to Israel if they really wanted.  Naturally, it didn't encourage Jews to emigrate, since too many people leaving for some other country would have reflected poorly upon the Soviet system, and, besides, not all Jews who left Russia went to Israel.  Some went to America or to Western Europe which, from the Soviet standpoint, was worse again, like losing people to the enemy camp.  But although emigration controls were usually pretty tight, many Jews now in Israel came from the Soviet Union, and doubtless this owes something, though not everything, to the fact that life in an ideologically transcendental state is far from being a bed of roses for tribalists.