Israel Takes the Whole Cake
by Gwydion M. Williams
Creating Israel in the late 1940s was an historic tragedy, but understandable.
Israel ratting on the Oslo Agreement in the 1990s was simply tragic. And likely in the long run to prove fatal to the Zionist dream.
After 1945, both sides in the Cold War had a determination to avoid the foolish errors that had led to fascism and the massacre of various populations. Not just Jews, though certainly European Jews lost a far greater percentage of their pre-war population than anyone else. In numbers, but from very much larger populations, it was Ethnic Russians first and then non-Jewish Germans. All dying because Hitler was a greedy fool who did not stop when his gambling had brought him a big win with the crisis over Czechoslovakia.
A defence of general welfare and a commitment to full employment led most Europeans to decide that Hitler’s variant of Fascism had been evil. And allied variants of Fascism were tainted and generally faded. Meantime concern about Jews faded at a time when it seemed that elites were doing quite a good job for everyone, so any Secret Conspiracies that might exist were nothing to worry about.
Making sure everyone gets a fair share of the cake is wise even from a selfish viewpoint, if you are looking long-term and thinking about the welfare of the next generation. This is just what the silly Libertarians miss.
Modern Hard-Right movements like Farage in Britain and Trump in the USA are nothing like fascism. Farage is as hostile to general welfare as the Tories have been since Thatcher. Trump undermines Globalisation, but looks after a rich Overclass and has secured further tax cuts for them.
Fascism did look after the welfare of its own working class, apart from a foolish willingness to get them slaughtered with vain dreams of conquest by Hitler and Mussolini. Franco, not really a fascist, had the sense to spare Spain a further war. Likewise Ataturk kept his nation sensibly neutral. Both bought into the Mixed Economy project when it was clearly flourishing.
Israel and its supporters were drawn into a Global-Anglo project that began with Thatcher and Reagan in the 1980s. A process that plundered the world for the sake of a club of English-speaking countries led by the USA. A process that included many who were not Ethnic-English or even close to it. Lots of pro-Anglo elements in Europe, including many Catholic Irish. Vast numbers of hard-line Arab Muslims in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf. And considerable numbers of Jews, including most of the Jewish population of Israel. Including their more hard-line supporters in the wider Zionist movement.
Those opposed to the SubAmericanisation project often make the ignorant error of thinking it’s driven by Zionists. The answer is to cure their ignorance, rather than rant about Anti-Semitism as if it were something vastly worse than other prejudices.
It is best not to treat people as stupid, even when they are. It is wise to give them clear and specific reasons why they should believe the set of ideas that are currently fashionable. Unjust and unwise to expect deference and obedience from a population that has been taught to expect otherwise.
There are a lot of Jews involved in Globalisation, but also many opposed. And those involved have many diverse opinions.
George Soros at the time of the Soviet collapse wanted a Marshall Plan for Russia. He wanted to spend the trillions making Russia comfortable in its transition to capitalism. And this is just what an intelligent World Zionist Conspiracy would have done, had it existed. But of course it did not happen. Specifically Jewish influence was small, and much of it was split between most of the possible variants of Centre-Right politics. And the elite chose to spend maybe six trillion on senseless wars in the Middle East.[1]
The global Anglo elite stupidly lost Russia, when it was theirs for the taking. They let Russia’s economy fall apart. They let its people suffer and floated crackpot privatisation schemes that led to state property passing into the hands of criminals. And were utterly astonished when this led to a massive rejection of Western values by 95% of Russians. A revival of the Russian Communists as the main opposition party.
Being bad at self-criticism, they and most left-liberals see it as an inexplicable outbreak of evil led by Putin. Cunning conspirators, they are not. Or not beyond some fairly small-scale manipulations that probably make them feel brilliant.
Belief in a Zionist World Conspiracy cropped up in 19th century France, evolving from the work of an eccentric Scotsman called John Robison.[2] He believed the French Revolution was caused by a conspiracy of Freemasons. There were indeed large numbers of Freemasons who were genuinely involved. But the chaos of the early Republic shows that Freemasons had no disciplined Leninist-style organisation that could have either organised a revolution or taken command of the resultant disorder. They were splayed across the political spectrum, and many were guillotined as the political crisis worked itself out.
Robison was not concerned with Jews – he’d have been aware that Scots within England were doing much better at the time than Jews were. He’d have been aware that it was informal networks and hard work rather than any conspiracy. But in France, the imaginary Masonic conspiracy became Jewish-and-Masonic, sometimes with the addition of a small long-extinct secret society called the Illuminati.
These crazy ideas moved from fringe politics to serious power in Tsarist Russia, where it was the actual belief of many of the elite, including the last two Tsars. It was easily transmitted to a population bewildered by the capitalism that the Tsars were also promoting. Easily believed in lands that had at one time been part of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth.
The Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth was much less benevolent than most Anglos suppose. If they have even heard of it, or know that it was not just Poland.
Most West Europeans think of Poland just as a victim. Not as a former oppressor victimised once fallen. Or as a victim who went back to oppression when given the chance: this always baffles left-liberals, even though it is remarkably common.
The Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth was something quite unlike any modern state, though it had a lot in common with the Roman Republic.
Polish attempts to capture Russia from 1598 to 1613 are remembered there as the ‘Time of Troubles’. They coloured Russian attitudes long after Tsarist Russia joined in the Partition of Poland in the late 18th century. I’d noticed the lack of sympathy for Russian-ruled Poles in Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov. That’s how my mind works, noticing the things that mainstream Anglos presumably ignore because it is not supposed to be there. I saw that it was there, and needed to be understood. I asked on a high-end question-and-answer site called Quora, and it seems most Russians take the same view even today.
The current success of Poland’s right-wing ‘Law and Justice’ party makes me think that the Russians have a point. It and its allies emerged as stronger in the most recent test, the 2019 Euro election.[3] I do not find this baffling in the way the left-liberals do.
The Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth included Polish landlords oppressing peasants outside of ethnic-Polish areas. And Jews were useful as middle-men helping landlords oppress those peasants. (And I do say men, because all ethnic groups confined most women to male-dominated households.)
The elite of Tsarist Russia might have understood that it was Russia’s muddled and inconsistent introduction of Western-style capitalism and industrialism that was the problem. But that would have needed more intelligence than most of them were capable of. Blaming a sinister Jewish conspiracy was much less of a strain for limited minds.
As I’ve explained in detail elsewhere,[4] the Protocols owe their strength to being plagiarized from Maurice Joly’s satire on Napoleon the Third.
Joly’s Dialogue in Hell between Machiavelli and Montesquieu is a vastly more intelligent criticism of liberalism as practical politics than anything the Far Right could ever manage. Joly was a liberal deeply offended by the corrupt and functional liberalism of the Second Empire.
France’s squalid reality made Joly depressed enough to kill himself, maybe because he realised he had no answer. His work was largely ignored. But someone – probably a Russian secret policeman operating in France – reworked it to make out that corrupt and functional liberalism was actually part of a sinister Jewish conspiracy.[5]
Someone could do an excellent fact-based drama based on Joly and the abuse of his work. It should include Henry Ford the car-maker sharing the same ignorant enthusiasm and publicising them. You’d have thought Jews had a strong interest in something of the sort. But those on the left are normally caught up in a different vision. Those signed up with Global-Anglo interests are locked into its values: they prefer that Anti-semitism be denounced rather than explained and possibly cured.
Likewise criticisms of Israel are denounced rather than understood.
One big difference between the Israel-Palestine conflict and other ethnic divisions is that virtually the entire Jewish population came from elsewhere within living memory. This continued with Russian Jews – some suspected of not being actual Jews – being funnelled into Israel rather than allowed into the USA, where most of them wanted to go. That’s what Mark Cowing misunderstands in his detailed account of the original creation of Israel, and the often-foolish Arab reactions to it.[6]
Israel can be seen as the last wave of European colonisation of lands ruled by European empires. Which swamped the original populations in some countries, but was defeated in Kenya and then Rhodesia. Has been forced to yield to majority rule in South Africa.
Another big difference is that Islam, like Christianity, sees the Hebrew histories of the Old Testament as part of its own heritage. They might have accepted a genuine sharing between a Jewish state and a Palestinian state. They cannot possibly consent to the bulk of what was once British-defined Palestine becoming a Jewish state with powerless Muslim enclaves.
The world contains more than a billion Muslims. Anglo authority has unintentionally made them much more devout and intolerant Muslims than they once were.
Versions of Islam can be as diverse as Christians like Torquemada, Pope Francis, Martin Luther, Martin Luther King, the late Reverend Ian Paisley, Billy Graham and the Archbishop of Canterbury. But Western politicians, with a false understanding of the likely results of their own actions, put enormous efforts into knocking over secular Islamic regimes like Saddam’s Iraq and Gaddafi’s Libya.
Being fools, and fed fancy false theories by other fools who became best-sellers by flattering the rich, they thought their own politics were ‘normal’. Expected ‘normality’ to happen spontaneously in post-Soviet Russia. Expected it in Iraq, Libya etc. after they had smashed the politics that those people had produced for themselves.
Tolerance is not a natural human condition. And nor is intolerance. Most people are ‘conditionally nice’ – happy to be generous if their own lives match their expectations.
A few people are noble enough to be good in the face of the most awful misfortunes. And at the other extreme, some will be selfish or hate-filled no matter how good things are for them. But successful politics looks to the Middle Muddled Majority and tries to keep it content.
Hyping expectations beyond what most people can possibly get is one common form of foolishness. It makes for good advertising, and horrible humans.
The current dominant politics of the West demands tolerance for currently fashionable values, without giving people any good reason for it. Without giving them assurance that their own interests will be looked after. And with growing inequality, austerity and crisis, they can see that they are not being looked after.
The reactions are often foolish and self-harming. But they come from a genuine and justified revolt against being mistreated. Against their own values being sneered at.
All of which is bad news for Israel. Russia and China are increasingly lining up as a single block opposed to an increasingly disorderly Anglo elite. Both are looking for allies in the Islamic world. And on the Anglo side, the need for these and other elements unfriendly to Jews could very easily outweigh the small global Jewish population, despite their current large influence in SubAmericanisation.
If you think I fantasise, please note that I have made some good forecasts before now, in the face of the ‘informed’ consensus.
In 1987, I said that the Brixton Riot was a ‘reformist riot’.[7] A protest by people who wanted a better spot in the existing system, not the break-up of Britain. I anticipated that Afro-Caribbean Britons would fit in, much as they have.
In 1989, I said that since Chinese Communism was likely to survive the crisis of the Tiananmen Square crackdown. [8] I reasoned that since they had both the army and the peasantry, they had the same sort of stability that most of Continental Europe had after the wave of revolutions in 1848. And this without anticipating how Russia would be mistreated after the Soviet collapse.
In 2000, when I was still a humble employee in a run-of-the-mill IT Department for a Building Society, I said that the notion of the Internet as fatal to authoritarian government was nonsense.[9] I know of no one else who said that at the time, though many have said it since.
From the initial Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, I said that overthrowing Saddam was foolish.[10] Repeated it when the main invasion began.[11]
More recently, I was one of the first to emphasise that economic inequality is not 99% against 1%, but 1% gaining at the expense of 90%, with a comfortable 9% neither gaining or losing much.
For future reference, I have said that President Xi has been raised up by the Communist Party leadership in expectation of the crisis they now face. That he could easily be replaced if those leaders lost faith, in a way that was not possible with Mao.[12] Though it would be amazingly weak and foolish to do so in face of the current stand-off with the USA.
In the case of Israel, I’d much sooner my gloomy expectations should prove false. But I very much fear that I will once again be very close to the truth.
Copyright © Gwydion M. Williams
[1] https://www.newsweek.com/us-spent-six-trillion-wars-killed-half-million-1215588
[2] https://gwydionwilliams.com/40-britain/the-original-conspiracy-theory/
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_European_Parliament_election_in_Poland
[4] https://gwydionwilliams.com/048-anti-semitism-and-zionism/hitler-the-13th-chancellor/
[5] Norman Cohn’s book Warrant for Genocide explains how it might have happened.
[6] Labour Affairs, May issue. Expected to be on-line from May 2020.
[7] https://gwydionwilliams.com/40-britain/the-brixton-riots-of-1987/
[8] Printed in Labour and Trade Union Review, which is now Labour Affairs. Not currently on-line.
[9] https://gwydionwilliams.com/46-globalisation/the-web-is-always-insecure/
[10] Pamphlets, not currently on-line.
[11] https://gwydionwilliams.com/46-globalisation/reflections-on-the-start-of-the-iraq-war/. This was part of a general assessment by the Ernest Bevin Society.
[12] https://gwydionwilliams.com/99-problems-magazine/post-liberalism/ – print only till late 2019.
Long Revolution 