51 Comments

1. chuck:

Roger,

Never underestimate the power of propaganda. I think you can thank the BBC and its news coverage for much of this, amplified by such papers as the Guardian, Independent, and Mirror. The same is happening on the continent. Journalists acting as moral gatekeepers and promoting the “right” views, their views. There is much to dislike about the MSM, but in my mind their propaganda work is the most reprehensible thing they do.

Jan 4, 2005 - 6:09 pm 2. Foobarista:

My own feeling is that at the end of the day, Israel’s (and America’s) problem with the bien-pissants of the world is that, instead of “dying in a civilized way”, it stands up and fights, and risks the inevitable soiling of the soul and pollution of the intellect that comes with fighting to survive. After all, isn’t it more beautiful to die but be “right” by staying “peace-loving” to the end? Too many don’t understand that often the choice isn’t between war and peace, but war and slavery at best or simply death.

Guardianistas, once upon a time, liked Israel, but the place is now filled with argumentative intellectuals of the sort that should agree firmly with Eurolectuals, but who for some reason won’t concede to the “morally superior” position of good ol’ Eddie Said’s brethren…

Jan 4, 2005 - 6:20 pm 3. PeterUK:

Roger,

Regarding the poll,on examining it I get the impression that very few of those polled had been to any of these countries.How can India,for example,come joint fourth as least beautiful,don’t they know it is a sub-continent of immense variety,as for Australia,I think their view are formed by the Australian soap “Neighbours”. I have found that all one can ever say about a country is “Which bit?”

Jan 4, 2005 - 6:29 pm 4. PeterUK:

Roger,

The attitude of “middle England” has to be viewed with its relationship with Tony Blair outside the WoT.

Middle England has borne the brunt of the measures that Blair’s government has enacted.

This sector has seen stealth tax hikes, pension schemes robbed,educational standards devalued,institutions destroyed,vast amounts of treasure poured to no avail into the deteriorating National Health System.

A third world transport system,the armed forces dragged into more wars(excluding Iraq) whilst budgets are cut,more draconian laws such as the Civil Contingencies Act and ID cards.

An immigration system that has lost control of its borders.Islamic gangsters insulting us on our own soil,who cannot be deported.

a criminal justice system that favours the offender over the victim.

We have a Prime Minister who wishes to abolish us as a nation and graft us on to the EU with all the corruption and petty regulation that involves.A prime Minister who’s concern seems to be for any nation but ours,There is also the indignation that Blair lied about Iraq and that somehow he has pulled another Princes Diana’s funeral,allowing him to strut the world stage,so yes you can say that we are somewhat pissed.

Middle England is fleeing these shores as never before,those with transferable skills or money are going,but in essence,they are not leaving England,England has left them.

Jan 4, 2005 - 7:13 pm 5. Skookumchuk:

Hell, Peter, come on over. The Northwest is as drizzly and cold as Blighty. You’ll fit right in.

Jan 4, 2005 - 7:36 pm 6. Coisty:

Roger – “they will say that this is not anti-Semitism, but merely dislike for Israel’s policies, but that is ludicrous given the recent spread of anti-Semitism seemingly everywhere but the United States.”

I respectfully disagree. Yes, among Muslims and a small minority of indigenous Europeans it is anti-Semitism, but with most Israel-haters it is anti-Westernism (I know it’s not a catchy word). Israel is too Western for the leftists of the West and thus one of the few successful states outside of the geographical West must be singled out for condemnation.

Israelis are now filling in for the Afrikaners – who btw are being slowly slaughtered in the new South Africa not that you’re likely to have heard about from the MSM. Although Apartheid was a horrible system South Africa’s government was no worse to its people than most African states were (and still are) with hundreds of thousands of blacks from neighbouring states moving to South Africa every year, even after the Botha government issued the draconian state of emergency in the early 80s. Many African states also had ‘minority’ governments representing one or two ethnic groups and screwing all the others but these elite groups were all black so it didn’t matter to Western leftists. In South Africa the rulers were white and more successful than the post-colonial African states so beloved by European intellectuals. Israel is successful and it’s Western therefore there is nothing Israel can do to be liked by the Western left other than surrendering and then gaining some post-slaughter sympathy. Remember how much of the world sympathised with Americans right after 9/11 when you were victims, but as soon as you started fighting back much of the sympathy disappeared seemingly overnight. Israel is in a similar position.

Jan 4, 2005 - 8:11 pm 7. John Moore ( Useful Fools ):

It looks like just one more sign that the world of ideas is collapsing into sewage.

Too many people, in two many countries, have their minds filled with all sorts of poison, and when that happens, anti-Semitism and anti-Americanism always rise to the top.

I don’t find this poll surprising (although one wonders at the methodology – any clues there?). What is shocking is the general state of the ideasphere, with “intellectuals” producing and consuming the most odious rot.

A lot of this is due to the collapse of the level of religious-related value systems that kept a number of societies more civil, and the failure to replace it with anything worthwhile.

Be glad you are in the US. We are not immune to this nonsense, but we are tempermentally suspicious and resistant to it.

It is sad to see Britain melt down, but the signs are obvious and have been for some time. The sewers where Theodore Dalyrimple writes from have risen to fill too much of the country. In the same sense, the rest of the “civilized” world is once again entering a period of madness.

Pessimism is justified.

Jan 4, 2005 - 8:20 pm 8. truepeers:

“Yes, among Muslims and a small minority of indigenous Europeans it is anti-Semitism, but with most Israel-haters it is anti-Westernism (I know it’s not a catchy word). Israel is too Western for the leftists of the West and thus one of the few successful states outside of the geographical West must be singled out for condemnation.”

Coisty, I have to respectfully disagree with you. Sure it’s anti-westernism (or “occidentalism”) but why should Israel be the focus for this – just because it is successful and “outside of the geographical West”? Aside from the fact that Israel is actually in the heartland of the west (at least in the place where the most profound part of our cultural tradition first emerged), I think you are being naive.

Israel serves as the scapegoat for the global economy, symbolized by the failure of a large part of the Muslim, especially Arab, world to successfully integrate into this economy. Israel becomes the focus, first of all, because it is a convenient target for the world’s Muslim leaders to distract attention from their failures (hence the delusion that when we, the Muslims, push the Jews into the sea, reclaim our land, then the monkey will be off our back, etc. etc.) Take away the oil and gas and the ME has nothing. East of Afghanistan, the Muslim world is only doing marginally better, but Israel is still there the scapegoat.

What we need ot explain is why is Israel the scapegoat for those resentful of the global economy? How can we explain this without discussing antisemitism?

There is a long tradition in the west for blaming the Jews for all the resentments and phobias people have had in relation to the competitive demands of the marketplace, (not to mention the idea that building the Christian kingdom required the conversion of all peoples and this meant most of all the Jews because they, after all, were the inventors of monotheism and so one could not be confident in one’s Christian revelation if only the gentiles converted.) The Jews were always the symbolic sticking point and all the traditional western antisemitic propaganda has, over the last 40 years, been imported into the ME.

These western traditions are today being grafted onto a Muslim form of anti-market phobia, and what’s new, onto a view of nations and nationalism as the problem, not only for building Euroutopia, but for all in the world for whom the superpower nation and the established world of nation states is thought to be threatening.

The Jews (Israel) as the first nation, protected by the US, the historical apex of nationalism, is the target of resentment whose symbolic force is not separable from consideration of the fact that the Jews are the inventors or discoverers of both monotheism and nationalism. At least, I put it to you that you cannot really explain why Israel serves as today’s scapegoat if you don’t grapple intellectually with the symbolic legacy of the Jewish discovery of both monotheism and nationalism. ONe risks missing this completely by talking up “occidentalism”.

Jan 4, 2005 - 8:49 pm 9. chuck:

Well,

Israel is not a complete innocent in all this. Back when Begun allowed (encouraged?) settlements in the west bank, I felt he was committing Israel to a future in which the settlements would have to be defended. I don’t think this was an accident, I think he well knew what he was doing and that he was determined that Israel should achieve her destiny, whether she wished to or no. So even now the settlements are a bone of contention in Israel and withdrawal behind the wall is fraught with argument. Indeed, even choosing a border becomes a controversial subject.

If Israel could have continued as the victim, then things would have gone better; as it was, the settlements opened her to criticism and Arafat exploited it brilliantly.

Jan 4, 2005 - 9:04 pm 10. thibaud:

The poll cited is complete horseshit. Note this interesting finding:

More Britons ranked America as the least safe country than those who thought the same of Israel, Egypt or South Africa

Let’s see: Egypt is a totalitarian third world nightmare state. Not even tourists are safe there.

Israel is at war.

South Africa– funny how the basket-case post-apartheid mess of a nation escapes MSM coverage these days– is probably the most dangerous peacetime state on the planet: ca. 20% of the female population has been raped, and carjackings are a daily occurrence in Johannesburg. Half the workforce is unemployed and a large percentage of them are involved in the violent crime spree that is the hallmark of post-apartheid SA.

Anyone who thinks the US is more dangerous than these nations is either bullshitting or completely detached from reality. So much for online opinion polls.

Jan 4, 2005 - 9:04 pm 11. chuck:

Anyone who thinks the US is more dangerous than these nations is either bullshitting or completely detached from reality.

I buy the detached from reality part, but I think you are quite right to question this poll. It would be foolish to jump to large, world shaking conclusions based on a poll whose methodology is unknown, probably suspect, and in which the questions don’t look particularly illuminating. Even so, I think that it can serve as the starting point of an interesting discussion.

Jan 4, 2005 - 9:10 pm 12. Roger:

I agree that this… and almost all… polls are bogus – or nearly. But I suspect it holds a kernel of truth. Or I fear it does. And that is why I used it to start this discussion.

Jan 4, 2005 - 9:13 pm 13. truepeers:

“Middle England is fleeing these shores as never before,those with transferable skills or money are going,but in essence,they are not leaving England, England has left them.”

Peter, your lament reminds me of Blake; do they still sting “Jerusalem” at football matches?

I will not cease from mental fight,

Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand

Till we have built Jerusalem

In England’s green and pleasant land

What needs to be considered is that the greatness of England stemmed, in good part, from the fact that the English were one of the first peoples to model themselves on the Israel of the Old Testament – the English language, like so many, became literary when the BIble was translated. You will find the Jewish model and its reworking throughout the breadth of British (not simply English) cultural history, notwithstanding the addition of the New Testament idea of Christendom.

The problem of the present moment is in large part the problem of the leftist, can’t we all just get along, fear of nations and nationalism (ironically a problem which Jewish scholars have been leaders in elucidating). And it is not accidental that Israel becomes the symbolic focus for this fear. It is the first nation, and is protected by the most successful nation in many respects, including in respect to its integration of immigrants. Antisemitism is not simply the result, as John Moore suggests, of the decline of people’s understanding of their western religious tradition.

The English, of course, have their own traditions of antisemitism, but what is on the rise today is something else, not the old genteel snobbery of market men, but the anti-globalization, antinationalism, utopianism of the Islamic-international left. We may be pessimistic, John Moore, but we are damned if we don’t start more fiercely fighting the battle of ideas.

Jan 4, 2005 - 9:17 pm 14. truepeers:

Correction: that should be “snobbery *towards* market men”

Jan 4, 2005 - 9:21 pm 15. chuck:

truepeers:

the English language, like so many, became literary when the BIble was translated

Shakespeare and Marlowe failed as literary figures? Chaucer was from some primitive barbarian past? Oh, come now. I don’t agree with your interpretation of English history, either. I don’t think the Magna Carta was much influenced by the Hebrew tradition, no, I think it flowed from the interests and power of the triumphant dukes and their own traditions.

And please, what biblical figure corresponds to Robin Hood?

Jan 4, 2005 - 9:26 pm 16. Morgan:

I think Coisty makes an interesting point – there are some aspects of this anti-Israelism that don’t fit neatly with the anti-Semitism explanation – the close tie with anti-Americanism, for one, the generally socialist political leanings of those who are most strongly anti-Israel for another. On the other hand, I don’t think anti-Westernism captures it either.

My sense is that this is all a projection of Soviet-era (you can insert the most appropriate branch of Communist thinking here) propaganda. Yes, anti-Semitism is a part of that, but it’s all tied up in a view that denies the right of certain countries to defend themselves. America is always the capitalist-imperialist aggressor. Israel is always the Zionist aggressor.

At one time it was actively pro-Soviet; anti-Israelism and anti-Americanism were just useful appendages to the overall construct. As the ability of the Soviets to control the message crumbled, it became pro-nothing except the underlying social structure that had been advocated, but the anti- portion of the message carried on unabated.

If you allow an appeal to vague provocations, it’s easy enough to fit just about any event into the construct that Israel and/or America is the aggressor. Hence we get theories about the CIA or the Mossad being behind 9/11, or it being the natural outcome of America’s support of Israel, or of America’s supposedly shabby treatment of Arab Muslims. And Arafat had to reject peace, because how can you trust a habitual aggressor?

Blinders off, the big “L” left’s push for socialized this and nationalized that, for equality of outcomes and the de-fanging of the West to protect the world, the notion that capitalism and free markets are bad; all of that is part and parcel of the same warmed over propaganda that says that Israel and America are the world’s biggest criminals.

Jan 4, 2005 - 9:29 pm 17. John Moore ( Useful Fools ):

truepeers,

Of cocurse you are right that the antisemitism is not merely the result of the cultural rot of Britain. It is, however, a natural outcome of that rot – i.e. the rot increases it. Certainly leftism has followed the inevitable path to anti-Israelism which too often becomes anti-Semitism (I maintain there can be a difference, but one shouldn’t pay much attention to the difference).

And yes, we must fiercly fight the battle of ideas (which is one reason I worked actively to defeat John Kerry last year). Blogs are one place to do so.

I have been online, fighting the ideas since 1980 or 1981 (Compuserve). The ideas continue and get worse.

That’s the pessimism.

We have no guarantee that our struggle will be successful. Mankind has produced many tragic catastrophes of its own making.

One way of looking at Britain is to recognize that the effects of a welfare state are to destroy the values of the recipients, and this happens more in a pluralistic society than a monoculture. There seems to be a Gresham’s law of social morality.

At the same time, those higher up the food chain do okay – they have their comfortable lives, their long vacations, and their travel. And they spend their time creating and idolizing just the bad ideas that are rotting their societies from the bottom up. They also, in their subscription to silly but fun ideas, misdiagnopse all the problems, prescribing cures that make it even worse – for example, the banning of self defense in Britain.

It has been observed that bad ideas and behaviors tend to hurt those at the bottom of the heap the most. Snorting cocaine among the wealthy, while injuring many, turned into crack culture in the inner city, with devastating effect – just one little example. Sexual freedom and no fault divorce (along with welfare rules) turns into a justification for reproduction with no families at all at the bottom of the society.

While off the subject of anti-Semitism, I view anti-Semitism as just one of the first and most predictable of the symptoms./

Jan 4, 2005 - 9:35 pm 18. truepeers:

CHuck,

The Wyclif Bible dates from the late 14thC., contemporary with Chaucer; and English Bibles, along with the BOok of COmmon Prayer, were widespread by the early 16thC.

But I grant that my formulation was a bit hurried: one has to consider that English nationalism predates the 14thC, and so we would have to distinguish it as an idea – that obviously comes from the Bible in whatever language – from the birth of the literary tradition. Robin Hood strikes me, not that I have ever studied him, as a rather CHristian figure. But I was not suggesting that English nationalism was modelled only on the Old Testament. Anyway, to say that nationalism is modelled on Israel is not to say that all documents and events in a national history have to be located in the Hebrew tradition; your inference, re. MC, assumes too much.

Jan 4, 2005 - 9:45 pm 19. thibaud:

Sorry, Roger, didn’t mean to come off as snarky.

Another possible interpretation is that the opinions in the poll are indeed detached from reality but also reflective of widely held British views of reality. I don’t know know what’s the truth here; I simply know that the MSM, particularly in Britain– even the Torygraph portion of the MSM– are especially susceptible to the euro-fashionable nonsense that Israel is The Source of All Trouble In the World Today and that the US Is An Exceptionally Violent and Unsafe Nation.

I’ve no doubt that most Guardian readers and other pseudo-intellectuals believe these things. However, the other myths are hard to sustain for anyone with common sense and some basic experience of the world beyond the English Channel. I still find it difficult to believe that most Britons, for example, think that a traveler to the US is at grave risk of being shot unless he happens to be trawling for drugs in the .00001% of this country’s neighborhoods where more than half of our homicides occur.

Perhaps I’m wrong, but I suspect the MSM and their diehard fans in Britain are no less hysterical and unrepresentative of normal, commonsense opinion than their counterparts in the US. At least I hope I’m right.

Jan 4, 2005 - 9:49 pm 20. Coisty:

truepeers – “Coisty, I have to respectfully disagree with you. Sure it’s anti-westernism (or “occidentalism”) but why should Israel be the focus for this”

Because Israel is a Western enclave outside of the West (the Middle East is not what we mean by the West) that is doing better than all its non-Western neighbours. Demonstrations of what appears to be the superiority of the Western way of life are high on the list of things the Left hates. Because it is outside the West, Europe especially, it’s also an easy target for moral exhibitionism from fashionable ‘anti-racist’ Westerners. They see no real consequences in condemning Israel and these status seekers score plenty of brownie points for standing up for ‘oppressed’s non-white. Israel also seems more willing to fight for its survival than most effete Western multicultural societies thus making the country even more annoying to West-hating leftists.

truepeers – “Israel serves as the scapegoat for the global economy, symbolized by the failure of a large part of the Muslim, especially Arab, world to successfully integrate into this economy”

Jews, especially Ashkenazi Jews, tend to be more successful than most other minorities and sort of fall into Amy Chua’s whole Market Dominant Minority theory. Their success is painful for those who are not, such as virtually the entire Islamic world.

But when it comes to European and, increasingly, American ‘progressives’ Israelis are seen as Westerners and not the Jewish Other, so their country is symbolic of the West not of anything else. Given that this symbol of the West is involved in a struggle with non-Westerners it is hardly surprising that these self-described progressives who despise Western society would take the side of the Palestinians. Israel used to be popular, even in much of Europe – the Netherlands in particular, not only because of the Holocaust and the whole underdog thing. It was popular because its people seemed more like us than the Arabs did. Unfortunately in a self-loathing West that image is no longer to Israel’s advantage.

Jan 4, 2005 - 9:54 pm 21. thibaud:

truepeer,

do they still sting “Jerusalem” at football matches?

I will not cease from mental fight,

Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand

Till we have built Jerusalem

In England’s green and pleasant land

They probably do, so long as it’s muslim Jerusalem that’s implied.

Anyway, it fits in with Charles’s wish to be Defender of Faith.

Jan 4, 2005 - 9:54 pm 22. chuck:

Does it strike anyone else that these anti-American attitudes originated right here, in the good old USA? The idea that we are particularly violent and exploitive, for instance. I don’t have a wide enough experience and knowlege to state that this is definitely the case, but somehow the European attitudes remind me of the 70’s here. Maybe the transfer went the other way. I don’t know. Anyone have thoughts on this?

Jan 4, 2005 - 9:59 pm 23. truepeers:

Sorry, in a rush to print, I am showing my ignorance or worn memory. The Book of Common Prayer dates from c.1550 and was probably not immediately widespread.

Jan 4, 2005 - 10:01 pm 24. Coisty:

Sorry for the mess I made of the second last sentence of my first paragraph. It should have read: “They see no real consequences in condemning Israel and these status seekers score plenty of brownie points for standing up for ‘oppressed’ non-whites.” It’s late here in the eastern time zone.

Jan 4, 2005 - 10:08 pm 25. chuck:

On the other hand, the following can show up on Radio-4 so all is not lost.

Did anyone see the Dead Ringers parody a while ago?

It was very funny. It showed film of Michael Moore looking happy and laughing, while playing very sombre, dramatic music, and the commentary says “How can he look so happy when there are people dying?”

From a comment by Simon at Harry’s place.

Jan 4, 2005 - 10:10 pm 26. Kevin P:

Roger:

Britain’s greatness was built on the notion of exceptionalism and nationalism. Britain is dying because it has adopted a one world anti-nationalistic utopian dream that will make it just a minor partner in a Franco-German dominated beaurocratic nightmare. The thought that such a diverse culture melding of the whole of Europe into a single functioning entity is a pipedream that will eventually collapse. They are voluntarily joining the landmass of europe and handing over their birthright. The dream of Napolean, Hitler, and every French King of conquering that Sceptered Isle by invasion is being accomplished without a fight by a bunch of desk jockeys in Brussels, what a pity.

Jan 4, 2005 - 10:17 pm 27. truepeers:

“But when it comes to European and, increasingly, American ‘progressives’ Israelis are seen as Westerners and not the Jewish Other, so their country is symbolic of the West not of anything else.”

Coisty, I agree with you except for this point that Israel is only symbolic of the west to western “progressives”. No, Israel symbolizes the nation that wants to remain defined by an ethnoreligious identity (not forgetting its acceptance of an Arab minority), and that, as you note, fights to protect itself instead of taking the “progressive” road towards some kind of rootless, multicultural society. And in wishing to remain Jewish, Israel reminds us of the origins of that which all we “progressives” (sorry I know that just reading this word makes one want to puke) are against in the history of nations and nationalism. Israel used to be cool when nations were still cool. Now, for the new Europeans, they’re not. The fact that Jews have been kicked out of the Arab world is, of course, just ignored by the multiculturalists. The fact that Palestine is a nation struggling to be born allows the “progressives” (sorry) to retain some nostalgia for the old national mythos, justified in this case because the Palestinians can’t join us as equals in the multicultural festival until they get through the colonial stage of their history.

Jan 4, 2005 - 10:22 pm 28. chuck:

I think the origin of the animosity toward Israel is fairly simple: the Palestinians are presented as the underdogs. If Israel had never occupied the west bank or built settlements, this would not have happened. Remember the first intifada, boys with rocks against men with guns? There you go, the image itself tells every idealist who is in the right and is a potent call for justice. So this story developed and all the other encrustations grew upon this initial seed. Now it is nearly impossible to reverse.

Jan 4, 2005 - 10:36 pm 29. chuck:

Let me add that I think that the current situation can be largely laid at Kissinger’s feet. The 1973 October war was never finished, rather, Kissinger stepped in towards the end, stopped the advance of Sharon’s columns, and arranged what amounted to an unstable cease fire. The war has remained unsettled ever since. Likewise, the terms of withdrawal were not set out and enforced from the very beginning and somehow the US got suckered into paying tribute to Israel and Egypt so they would not fight each other. We were not that involved in the area prior to that time. I think this whole situation is a consequence of Kissinger’s single biggest blunder.

Jan 4, 2005 - 10:52 pm 30. truepeers:

Chuck,

Sure the Palestinians are the underdogs. Not even the biggest (or littlest) Zionist in town is going to disagree with that. But how many violent ethnic or national disputes are there in the world? Many. And how much global media coverage do they get compared to Israel-Palestine? Umm, a wild guess, but maybe about 1/500th. So the origin of the anti-Israel animosity cannot be simply ascribed to the Israelis’ rather restrained domination of the Palestinians (who can count their blessings they’re not fighting, say, in Congo, China, or Jordan). Our western-global fascination with Israel-Palestine must be explained by all that Israel and the west symbolize to all those who hate them.

On your point about homegrown anti-Americanism, you’re on to something there. I think some of it is homegrown, though some of it is as old as America itself – Eurosnobbery has, of course, a great lineage.

Jan 4, 2005 - 11:14 pm 31. Buddy Larsen:

Maybe it’s deeper than religion, politics, racism, or xenophobia. Maybe it’s fear and envy. Envy in that humans crave the heroic, and that Israel’s David to the world’s Goliath is the very stuff made violently taboo by the postmodern dialectic. The paradox of anti-semitism/Israelophobia is that it so closely mimics–inversely–Europe’s fighting retreat from her own atavistic history. If Europe’s heroic age is in her ‘Olden’ culture, then what does it mean to repudiate it in trade for a promise of a physical security of which Israel dare not even dream? It means resentment toward those whose history requires no bending. The clue is in the ‘blood-libel’, such a clear coping mechanism for Europeans trying to transfer, project, sublimate their perpetual slaughter of Europeans.

Yet,after all Europe’s labors at perfecting & securing itself, by statistics, observation and intuition, ’secure & permanent’ Europe rots, while ‘dangerous & temporary’ Israel prospers. Ergo, Israel in a way is sort of Europe’s discounting machine; by virtue of being excluded from it (and by being Islam’s ‘annihilate me first’ target, besides), she ‘prices’ the ‘deal’ Europe has made with history & history-in-the-making. Other nations might wail and gnash their teeth at this isolation. But Israel hardly blinks. Does this heroism come from living ‘before history’, sword-in-hand, back in myth, in the ancient permanent wartime? If so, then would that mean that the so-called ‘end-of-history’ would be better-characterized as a ‘breach-of-history’, and that it’s precisely because she’s so ahistorically smug and safe inside her cocoon of formulaic transactional regulation, that Europe is so prone to depressive social pathology, pervasive cultural exhaustion, and generalized bored continental ennui?

Could it be that, as, the more one fears insomnia the less likely one is to sleep, that the more elaborate, complex and wantonly perfect a nihilist conceit may be, the less likely it will explain those who, no matter what befalls them, will always refuse to accept a history that tells them God is dead?

Jan 5, 2005 - 5:48 am 32. Buddy Larsen:

Forgot to include this link. It’s just lite google, but interesting in terms of seeing nations in human life-span, or generational, terms.

Jan 5, 2005 - 5:56 am 33. Jamie Irons:

I have really enjoyed this discusssion.

There are elements scattered throughout these comments that go at least part of the way toward explaining anti-Semitism, but I have to confess, as a former Presbyterian who has become a Jew, and as a complete “philo-Semite,” I still find the phenomenon of anti-Semitism deeply mysterious, and deeeply troubling.

I agree with those who diagnose it as a symptom of the rotting of societies, though. It is, as we physicians say, “pathognomonic” of a rotting, or already rotten, polity.

Jamie Irons

Jan 5, 2005 - 7:35 am 34. Snippet:

It is of course utterly absurd for the British to feel this way. The only explanation is that they have been intimidated by Islamic terrorism into demonizing a country that means them no harm.

I’d love to see how the Brits would answer this question:

“Who is more likely to blow up an English subway – A Saudi or an Israeli?”

Terrorism works.

Jan 5, 2005 - 7:37 am 35. Percy Dovetonsils:

Does it strike anyone else that these anti-American attitudes originated right here, in the good old USA?

I’m not sure if they truly originated here, at least in the current format – the U.S. counterculture is responsible for much of that, but France and Germany had their own versions of anti-capitalist, anti-American 60s radicals/”intellectuals” as well. However, I think it’s safe to argue that we’ve always been looked upon as parochial bumpkins, from the early days of the Republic onwards.

I do know that the U.S. is arguably one of the leading exporters of current anti-American audio/visual propaganda: Look at the deeply ironic success of Michael Moore overseas.

Jan 5, 2005 - 8:03 am 36. Terrye:

I think the whole issue of anti Americanism has more to do with left/right than American and nonAmerican. The baby boomers are everywhere. Don’t they call them the generation of ‘68 in Europe?

I think coisty is on to something here, but I also think that the obsession Europeans seem to have with Jews has added this [self] hatred of all things western. And let us not forget craven fear of the Jihadi. If the Europeans thought Jewish terrorists would be getting on buses in Brussels and blowing people up they might shut up about Israel.

I once asked a young man from Britain what the hell business it was of his or his countrymen’s where the Jews lived once they drove them from Europe and he was speechless, it had never occured to him to wonder.

Jan 5, 2005 - 11:47 am 37. Buddy Larsen:

There was a young man from Great Britain,

who annoyed Terrye the Kitten.

To her “what, when and why?”

He said “O me O my!”

And afterwards stuck to his knittin’.

Jan 5, 2005 - 12:37 pm 38. Terrye:

Buddy:

A poet nonetheless.

I must say I have been called a lot worse than a kitten.

You sweetie.

Jan 5, 2005 - 1:06 pm 39. PeterUK:

I’d recommend avoiding British males that knit,they probably wear sandals with socks, have unfortunate beards and unspeakable ideas.

Jan 5, 2005 - 1:16 pm 40. truepeers:

Israel, ìEuropeís discounting machine.î Hah, thereís a lot of truth in that Buddy. Also, the US is a discounting machine on the other side of the market. So, while the less imaginative antisemites will still be looking for the cabal of hidden market manipulators, the new age ìantisemitesî will kick it up into some kind of debate about national regulatory mechanisms vis a vis the global market and postnational politics.

But you have got me thinking about the `end of historyí. Somehow, I think maybe we have to see this in terms of the two different western traditions for understanding history. When you study history at a western university, you are usually taught that historical writing begins with the Greeks, Herodotus and Thucydides. In comparison, the Jewish contribution to historical writing ñ i.e. the Bible as a narrative of Israelís emergence and its experience of lived history and divine revelation ñ is, in my experience, ignored in deference to secular orthodoxies.

The Greeks became a historical people because they were able to separate their ìartî from the religious or ritual context. This means they moved beyond a ìprehistoricalî society in which, while there was a continual innovation in story telling, ìartî, etc., there was yet no way to separate the scene on which the story or myth was happening from the scene on which people were still seen to be living, and on which they expected the sacred figures told about in the myth or art to return, episodically, and any time soon.

But when the Greeks are able to separate and glorify a world of art, apart from the rest of their society, then art becomes a way to figure the “historicity” or historical consciousness of their society. A dialectical relationship between lived experience and its representation in art, story, etc. is revealed and people become conscious of living in history. Thus, Greek history writing, instead of focusing, like myths, on explanations of how oneís society first came into being, begins to focus on recent events, like wars, that are seen as generating the world in which one now lives. Great men and their feats take the stage in place of the gods.

The Jews separate the esthetic and the religious, not of course by championing art (at least not until the modern era), but by removing esthetic figurations of the divine from the religious context. The figureless God who makes his compact with Moses is to be understood through the real world trials and tribulations of the Jewish people, as first recorded in the Bible narrative. So, consider for a moment, people always waiting to see what history will reveal to them about their compact with God, people preparing themselves morally to live in this compact, with people who are anticipating, or leading in, historical changes through their esthetic experiments and their questioning of their national societies that this experimentation entails.

The postmodern world entails ìthe end of historyî because, among various reasons, pomo has come to question the centrality of the esthetic figure ñ especially the privileged high culture figure – in leading us towards any promised land. A world that allows no national myth, artwork, or religious figures to take precedence on the public stage ñ e.g. no nativity scenes for ìChristmasî decorations at city hall ñ is a world questioning not only its religious traditions, but also the high cultural legacy inherited from the Greeks.

But is postmodernism equally a restraint on Judeo-Christian and Greek traditions? Maybe not. In refusing to privilege any figure of the sacred at the center of the community, postmodernism seems rather Jewish, even as the Judeo-Christian tradition is officially ìdeprivilegedî just like everything that is not the sign of the heretofore excluded victim peoples. But it is perhaps more the Christian side of the J-C tradition that is questioned, reflecting how western nations have modelled themselves not simply on Israel but on the New Testament idea of building the kingdom of God, which for many has been a worldly, hence dangerous, project. Similarly, the Greek esthetic tradition is questioned because it became integral to the national high cultures that came into disrepute after their often utopian violence in the twentieth century.

This leaves us with some paradoxes to unfold. Western leftist pomo, as exemplified by a rather Jewish figure like Jacques Derrida, is nonetheless a time of growing antagonism towards Israel. On the one hand, it is as if once the historical dialectic the west has inherited from the Greeks has scared us to death, and we run from it as well as from some ideas of building an earthly Christendom, we are only left with a kind of Jewish waiting within a history that is not like the old Greco history but is nonetheless a history that hasnít completely ended yet. When we are shocked by the return of great historical events (at least they seem great to some of us) like 9-11 or Madrid, some of us are ready to step back into history with our rather Jewish conceptions, our ongoing conversation with God (or secular, national, or Christian equivalents) and the morality he commands. But others, while being ìJewishî in an abstract, pomo way, are not yet comfortable in returning to embrace any historical process, other than a vague, post-national Euroutopianism, and they are resentful of nations like Israel and the US that seem to be doing otherwise. Is this because the western, leftist, postmodern, Israelophobic Derrida-type ìJewsî remain too Greek? Sorry for the long-winded response, but the `end of historyí fascinates while remaining a paradox.

Jan 5, 2005 - 1:57 pm 41. truepeers:

Correction: the third sentence in the fifth paragraph of my last post should read “So, *compare* for a moment, people always waiting to see what history will reveal to them about their compact with God, people preparing themselves morally to live in this compact, with people who are anticipating, or leading in, historical changes through their esthetic experiments and their questioning of their national societies that this experimentation entails.

Sorry, I hope the whole thing is not incoherent.

Jan 5, 2005 - 2:05 pm 42. truepeers:

Hmm, I hope I haven’t put a damper on this fascinating thread. I wonder if people think that Melanie Phillips is right about all this:

“Terrorism is designed to achieve

maximum publicity and to manipulate public revulsion so that pressure is put on the

leaders of the democracies to surrender. It cannot be said too often that what drives al

Qaeda is not the exercise of disproportionate force by the west but the perception of its

weakness and incapacity or unwillingness to fight in its own defence. But even al Qaeda

must surely have been taken aback by the craven willingness of the British media to fall

into line by abusing and persecuting their own leaders at a time of war. These terrorists

know that the more barbaric their acts, the more hysteria and pressure the British media

will direct at Blair and Bush. So al Qaeda has every incentive to ratchet up the atrocities.

Thatís why the hostage Kenneth Bigley was videoed sobbing for his life in a cage; and the

media duly do what the terrorists want and put it on their front pages and news bulletins,

and the pressure on Blair to split from America becomes more and more intolerable.

“The appalling result of all this is that, if a terrorist outrage in London were to claim the

lives of hundreds or thousands of people, the reaction of many Britons might not be a

revival of the spirit of the Blitz and an iron determination to defeat fascism and tyranny. It

might be instead to turn on Tony Blair and blame him directly for bringing about the

slaughter. And that, of course, is precisely what makes such a terrible outcome more

likely. There can be little doubt that al Qaeda, such a shrewd judge of western decadence

and the differences in moral fibre between the countries of the west, will have noted the

fact that in Britain, the worse the terrorist outrage that is committed, the more the public

will turn on Tony Blair. Every single defeatist, distorted or dishonest article about Iraq,

Israel and the war on terror makes another barbaric atrocity more likely.”

Jan 5, 2005 - 6:29 pm 43. Buddy Larsen:

Truepeers, nah, we should all be so incoherent. The paradox in topic is certainly incoherent, though. Your post is fascinating; too mull-worthy to comment quickly. This is excellent, for hearing the harmonic hum where the Old Testament and Hellenism touch. Like your post it explores the ‘waiting spirit’, and its existential threat to worldliness. The sacrificial incompleteness of creation as the terror of the unknown. Strangers and mystery and darkness.

The PoMo ideal in contrast is fluorescent, bright, completed, fashionable, theatrically cathartic on secularism, faithfully self-referential, and with no transcending ‘other’ to anticipate, spiritually cold, affectless, passive and flat. The British shopkeeper who was never anti-semitic before 911 has now been on steady MSM PoMo antiwar feed for a few straight years now. Effects accumulate, if not cognitively then as exhaustion of the will to contend: “GWoT perpetual, western mavericks must assimilate”. Dhimmitude is no worse than “Dictatorship of the Proletariat”(the incoherence is invisible in the brightness of the beauty). “Come and look at the future. See? It is so calm. So restful.” Somehow PoMo seems to be getting redder all the time. Is it just me?

Jan 5, 2005 - 8:23 pm 44. Yehudit:

Truepeers, you might also enjoy reading this essay, which speaks to the same issues.

Jan 5, 2005 - 9:58 pm 45. truepeers:

Buddy and Yehudit,

Thanks for the links. Buddy, I’m not completely sure what you mean by postmodernism getting redder. Do you mean more bloody dangerous? Anyway, if you feel need to move forward and get in touch with the more spiritually sound esthetic that is coming along after postmodernism, I would highly recommend some essays by Raoul Eshelmann dealing with what he calls “performatism”. You can find them in the free online journal, Anthropoetics, at http://www.anthropoetics.ucla.edu (I promise I will learn to do HTML links soon.) I especially like his essay on recent Berlin architecture because it is full of photos and you can really see what he is getting at.

Jan 5, 2005 - 11:48 pm 46. Buddy Larsen:

Both of those links (truepeers & Yehudit’s) are truly excellent. Philosophiles beware the truepeers link; it links to dozens of those “Heck, I can’t pass THIS up!” essays. I sent both links to my UT Anthro/Russian Language-senior daughter, who actually responded this morning, having become interested in the subject thru some Ukrainians here in Austin for the university and careers with Dell. Performatism, eh? I’ll read into it, looking forward to it. Just the name alone indicates a position that a person can recognize–and achieve value to the whole via–good actions, regardless of, despite, and in lieu of spending any more time cleaning up, that huge jumbled mess inside their own minds!

Jan 6, 2005 - 10:37 am 47. truepeers:

Being very interested in the spread of these ideas I am fascinated by your comment, Buddy. Eshelman is a Slavicist, so I can imagine Ukrainians being interested in him, but are you saying that he is being read by techies?

Jan 6, 2005 - 12:12 pm 48. Buddy Larsen:

That’s my impression, truepeers. My daughter, 21 now, for some mysterious reason (possibly the mystery of 911 to a girl grown up sort of religion-detached on a farm in central Texas) a couple years ago began a 2nd-major in Russian Language. She has a young Jewish Ukrainian friend whose parents immigrated to Chicago a decade ago, arrived “with nothing” but managing to get their son degreed in computer engineering, from where Dell employed him and under whose aegis he’s pursuing a Master’s @ UT/Austin. Rural American kids such as mine–by the millions–can and do live lifetimes never knowing the slightest thing about that old world hidden inside the Old World. That it has even much mattered beyond a few history book paragraphs.

It’s now dawning on her that her own culture is, or was until very recently(think GWoT), exceptional in the extreme degree to which it has been ‘free from history’; that outside our consciousness there is this exotic universe, moored to the origin of humanity, that has now come so vividly back into the future. I think it makes her–and frankly her dad too–feel a little white-bread, a little thinly-drawn on the human template.

Paradox again, who’s the immigrant? Most of us Texas scandanavians can trace back only as far as a great grampaw who jumped ship in Houston to get in on the new rice-farming biz. So we have this alien awe regarding these vasty historical place/times, with their deeply-felt religion-as-nature constancy trailing back into the past (and thereby creating significance, which surely can’t hurt the needful adding of depth to a ‘present’ flattening under the irony of collectivist solipsism; AKA PoMo-ism, UN-ism, anti-Semite/Israel/America/Jesusland-ism, etcetera on down to the belly of the beast, the jihad-international UnGod).

21 yr olds will wrestle with these things, and if dad listens, he’ll be wrestling again too. I think the only thing I’ve learned that might be of value to her–or to any of the kids–is that studying history from the heart is to engulf oneself in echo, to be flabbergasted by the volume of the unrevealed, and the cold realization that mankind’s enemy now is the same old enemy from the beginning. But everything has a corollary, and whatever has brought humankind through the past will take us also through the future. Unless we quit doing our part. Our part, whatever it is, may as well be to not understand where we are, as it may be TO understand where we are. Who knows? So, anyway, SORRY about this ramble-off-into-nowhere post, must be the amphetamines, smoke ‘em if ya got ‘em!

Jan 6, 2005 - 3:42 pm 49. truepeers:

Buddy,

It sounds to me like your daughter has a pretty wise dad. But studying history when you’re young is always a bit of a problem. You can’t really get what it is all about until you’ve lived a while and received some knocks.

My belief however is that all studies of the human that are not purely physiological or neurological, should be historical studies. But even historians would find such an idea difficult to follow. We so much rely on abstract all-purpose metaphysics, detached from any specific context, to tie the ideas in our heads together. But as you suggest, to depend on this kind of ahistorical thinking is to move away from any revelation of what it is all about. The revelation must always be tied to our experience of a specific event or moment.

What is constant in human beings is their biological nature, and, the minimal or original basis of the problem that was there at the start when they had to stop being animals and start becoming human. But every historical situation is a somewhat new problem and it has to find a new solution to reproduce the spontaneous effect of the original solution.

I share your faith we will always be able to do this. And I don’t think we are completley in the dark about what this entails. Every generation gets, implicitly or explicitly, a bit wiser about our humanity, I think. At least, they are able to work more freedoms into their social systems, which in turn makes more complex problems, which requires of them both more reason and spirituality (it is a big mistake of many to pit rationality against spirituality; you can’t grow one without the other).

While I have no experience with raising kids, I’m sure it must be damn hard knowing what to teach them. Oftentimes thinking like everyone else is the safest course to take. Encouraging them to develop their own minds is a dangerous proposition. But if that is the direction they are taking, I suppose you just have to make sure they are motivated more by love than resentment in their quest to understand what it is all about.

Good luck.

Jan 6, 2005 - 8:54 pm 50. Buddy Larsen:

Eshelman is stupifyingly good. What a find. Who will like him? The list will get long, but for now, from just the angle of movies, if you love Coen Bros movies–and espesh if you view some of them more than once, you ought to take a look-see.

Jan 7, 2005 - 2:23 am 51. truepeers:

You might be interested to note that Adam Katz discusses blogging as an instance of performatism; he even references Belmont Club.

http://www.anthropoetics.ucla.edu/ap1002/amalek.htm

Jan 7, 2005 - 1:18 pm

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