In Defense of Jews (or Not?)
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A correspondent had forwarded to the author a post from the message board of the APFN (AMERICAN PATRIOT FRIENDS NETWORK) with the title Is Bush a Jew ??? / Are Jews the REAL NAZI's ???, seemingly subscribing to it somewhat or at least feeling unsure about it or he would not have asked "Do you believe?". This triggered the writing of this essay as a response.


C.B.

I believe that it is not our job to attack persons or faiths, to suspect or accuse motives and special interests but to attack authoritarianism and totalitarianism in all their forms.

That the fate of all people in one large country and also in some other countries does now largely depend upon a handful of top decision-makers is not the exclusive responsibility of these decision-makers but of those who installed such centralization of decision-making and a powerless condition for themselves or who tolerate it, and not even examine and criticize it.

It does not matter what religion or ideology these decision-makers subscribe to or what their ethnic origin is, Jewish, Arab, Chinese, German, English, French, Russian, etc.
(These terms are also conglomerates for numerous diverse tribes and loyalties, given the outward appearance of unity by old to ancient empire building attempts.)
Instead, their ideas and principles and authoritarian institutions are to be criticized. They certainly leave themselves open to such "attacks".

Their powers and institutions ought to become reduced to that of volunteers doing merely their things to and for themselves, with not a single dissenting but peaceful victim remaining as a result of their actions.

Among themselves they may use or abuse their ideas, articles of faith or other dogmas as much as they like. I do not care about that.
But if they would keep their hands on ABC mass murder devices or are preparing to acquire them, then THAT would require some rightful counteractions.
Such counteractions, too, cannot be entrusted to "decision-makers" who send their troops overseas with 40-year old trucks, which, sometimes, do not make it even out of their depots, after they arrived, and which are not supplied with sufficient spare parts. Nor are they armored or accompanied by sufficient armour when sent on dangerous routes, almost on suicide missions. (As happened to American troops in Iraq.)
Such counteractions ought to be sufficiently explored and then realized. We certainly cannot safely entrust them to any "Big Brother".

When military interventions are engaged in, overseas, then they are not to be initiated and commanded by territorial governments, even for the best of motives and reasons, but only by officers elected by volunteers.
And these volunteers must have, as opposed to governments in most of their past and present wars, have quite rightful war, peace and liberation aims and must be under a self-chosen rather than imposed military discipline.
They must fight for nothing but individual rights and liberties, their own as well as those of anyone else, in ways that are fully in accordance with respect for these rights.

They must not try to impose any uniform system upon any country and all its people but, instead, must aim at freedom for the diverse groups in all countries to make their own choices for their own lives - in these countries and elsewhere.

Every other war, peace and "national liberation" aim is merely a recipe for new dictatorships, wars, civil wars and terrorist attempts.

While democracies and constitutional monarchies are much less warlike than dictatorships or absolute monarchs, they are, as history has shown all too often, still too warlike and misled and engage in huge slaughters rather than genuine liberation actions, whether the slaughter is done by bombs, artillery, rockets, infantry attacks or blockades.

With the regard to ABC mass murder "weapons" no one can say:
MY mass murder weapons are good or will only ever be used for good purposes. Only YOUR mass murder weapons are bad and will only be used for bad purposes.
As mass murder weapons or preparations for mass murder they are indefensible, even if they haven't been used for decades.

The State of Israel has often been attacked, even by some pious and orthodox Jews, as having nothing to do with genuine Judaism and for concentrating, just like the Nazis did, on aspects of blood, land and faith, even while most of the statist Jews there are just the usual democrats, republicans, liberals and social democrats and various peaceful reformers.

Other people in the world were not sufficiently opening their frontiers and arms to them when they were prosecuted elsewhere. Thus, it is humanly understandable that, after many centuries of prosecutions, many of them saw in a territory of their own a solution for their troubles.
But one should also realize that most of the Jews of the World did not see it as their religious or nationalistic obligation to retreat there.
They preferred to stay wherever they were treated reasonably well.

What one can blame Jewish people for, and also Arabs, is that they know and appreciate all too little of their a-territorial community tradition and have not seriously examined it and developed it further, quite consistently, instead of adopting territorial nationalism as an ideology.
With Jewish people having been so long and so widely dispersed all over the world, their intellectual omission lies in not having examined this cosmopolitan condition sufficiently, as a possible quite rightful condition - not only for themselves but for all other groups.

But by now the same accusation could be raised also e.g. against Germans, Frenchmen, Englishmen, Spaniards, Italians, Norwegians, Swedes, Dutchmen, Chinese, Muslims and many others, of whom many millions live away, some already for generations, from their mother countries.

Some of the Jews, who preferred to stay in the Diaspora, may have supported Israel because they thought of its existence as an insurance for themselves, just in case antisemitism would grow to dangerous proportions in the countries they prefer to live in.

Some of the Jews even explored and advocated, somewhat, the a-territorial alternative, e.g. the "Territorialists" of Czarist and post WW I Russia, who advocated community autonomy within the Territory of Russia rather than emigration to some other countries. Alas, they did so at a time when territorial nationalism was still all too strong and they so were outnumbered by those Jews wanting their traditional "homeland" from 2000 years before. Thus this movement is almost forgotten by now, although it represents some of the best of the Jewish traditions.

Let us rather concentrate on opposing the territorial "leadership" and organization and system principle everywhere and on achieving exterritorial or a-territorial autonomy for all individuals and groups who would like to secede from any of the supposedly great leaders, "unified nations" or States, whether they were "honestly elected", at most by a genuine majority, or not.

I for one favour exterritorial autonomy for all kinds of self-defined Jews, not only in Israel and Palestine but all over the world.

Likewise, I favour exterritorial autonomy for all kinds of self-defined Arabs and Muslims, not only in Israel and Palestine etc., but all over the world.
Likewise, this kind of community autonomy for the thousands of "Christian" churches and sects - and for all other groups of faithful.
Also for all the atheistic, deistic, humanistic, rationalistic and agnostic groups.
Likewise for the advocates of any other political, economic or social ideology or system.
I also favour quite free and voluntary societies, even world-wide ones, for all those without a particular racial, religious or ideological bias.

It makes no sense to me at all to accuse any particular group, which tries to exploit the chances given to it by territorialism. They all do so. That is part of the territorial system, a system based upon domination rather than consent. At most it gets the approval of the majority but even that is usually a delusion, apart from moving election district boundaries and cheating in counting the votes.

Assume that a territorial election has been quite honest and that all subsequent votes do also remain honest.
(As honest as they can be. To speak of consent when the outvoted become dominated is dishonest!)
Assume that 2/3rd of the people are entitled to vote, that 2/3rd of these participate in the election, that the elected combine 2/3rd of the cast votes upon themselves and that then they make their decisions in parliament always with a 2/3 majority.
You know that this assumption assumes already mighty higher "mandate" figures than are usually reached.
This supposed majority rule consists then of 2/3 x 2/3 x 2/3 x 2/3 = 16/81, or , rounded down, of 1/5th or 20 %.

Then add the influence of parties, committees, party discipline and the "leadership principle", also how those in power use their power and revenue to promote their own case, and "majority rule" becomes, still more obviously, replaced by minority despotism - even in democratic countries.
Moreover, as Hayek pointed out in "The Road to Serfdom" and Prof. Pitirim Sorokin in at least one of his books, the worst tend to get to the top.

Only a-territorially or exterritorially can we finally achieve a lasting peace in the world, sufficiently based upon justice and freedom and opening up all kinds of opportunities for progress, without disturbing the conservative status quo for volunteers or the choices that reactionaries want to make for themselves. (Freedom of action would be the best way to refute their systems and to render them harmless.)

The world will not be improved by stressing any of the over 1000 conspiracy theories or by inventing a new one.

Most Australians once loved their constitutional monarchs because she or he interfered so little. Compared with that kind of loyalty, there is now all too much hatred in almost half the population in Australia against whichever of the two major parties or/and party leaders, rules for the time being. To call such a country or state or nation "united" is absurd.

To fight for this kind of arrangement is almost an absurdity, except when it comes to resist an openly totalitarian and terrorist regime.
And even then the fight should not be conducted by a territorialist government or coalition and never for territorialist aims.

Let the Liberals have their liberal government and the Labour people have their kind of government, all only for volunteers, and let all those who are dissatisfied with either of these two, have their own free societies of whatever kind.

Then the remaining political strife in Australia would become as limited and quiet as is its religious strife.
Under that individual and minority group choice at least half a dozen different voluntary societies would result in e.g. Iraq.

Then the powers of the remaining political rulers over volunteers would become so limited that, as e.g. in Switzerland already, few would know the name of their Prime Minister. Naturally, the religiously faithful would know their "Pope" and the nationalists their "great leader". But neither "great man" nor "hero" could any longer mislead as many people or for as long as the territorially established and maintained leaders do.

The "Nationalsozialisten/National Socialists" were called "Nazis" in the same way as the term for "Sozialisten/Socialists" was shortened to "Sozis".