# entry

guid: https://mearsheimer.substack.com/p/trump-and-hegseth-shock-on-ukraine
title: Trump &amp; Hegseth Shock on Ukraine
author: ;John J. Mearsheimer
link: https://mearsheimer.substack.com/p/trump-and-hegseth-shock-on-ukraine
hash: Ԧ�5��EQa4�D:�S
content:
<p>On 12 February 2025, I was interviewed on the PBS NewsHour about the remarkable comments President Trump and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth made earlier in the day about US policy toward Ukraine and Europe more generally. It is clear that the Trump administration is bent on radically altering US policy on Ukraine and fundamentally changing US relations with Europe. </p><p>Here is a link for the set-up piece followed by my interview.</p><p><a href="https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/hegseth-tells-nato-ukraine-membership-unlikely-as-trump-says-putin-will-discuss-ending-war">https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/hegseth-tells-nato-ukraine-membership-unlikely-as-trump-says-putin-will-discuss-ending-war</a></p><div data-attrs='{"videoId":"sgc-JRj-nqk","startTime":null,"endTime":null}' data-component-name="Youtube2ToDOM" data-sanitized-id="youtube2-sgc-JRj-nqk" data-sanitized-class="youtube-wrap"><div data-sanitized-class="youtube-inner"><iframe src="https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/sgc-JRj-nqk?rel=0&amp;autoplay=0&amp;showinfo=0&amp;enablejsapi=0" frameborder="0" loading="lazy" gesture="media" allow="accelerometer; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowautoplay="true" allowfullscreen="true" width="728" height="409" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin"></iframe></div></div>

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guid: https://mearsheimer.substack.com/p/the-israel-lobbys-awesome-power
title: The Israel Lobby's Awesome Power
author: ;John J. Mearsheimer
link: https://mearsheimer.substack.com/p/the-israel-lobbys-awesome-power
hash: �K�mm�����@�J
content:
<p>On 13 February 2025, I talked to the Judge on “Judging Freedom” about the incredible influence that the Israel lobby wields in shaping US Middle East policy in ways that suit Israel’s interests, not America’s. We also talked about President Trump’s morally reprehensible plan to cause another Nakba and turn Gaza into the Riviera of the Middle East. And of course we talked about the radical moves the Trump administration is making to settle the Ukraine war and reduce the US footprint in Europe.</p><div data-attrs='{"videoId":"g8G9I1ZdEGU","startTime":null,"endTime":null}' data-component-name="Youtube2ToDOM" data-sanitized-id="youtube2-g8G9I1ZdEGU" data-sanitized-class="youtube-wrap"><div data-sanitized-class="youtube-inner"><iframe src="https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/g8G9I1ZdEGU?rel=0&amp;autoplay=0&amp;showinfo=0&amp;enablejsapi=0" frameborder="0" loading="lazy" gesture="media" allow="accelerometer; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowautoplay="true" allowfullscreen="true" width="728" height="409" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin"></iframe></div></div>

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guid: https://mearsheimer.substack.com/p/the-tectonic-plates-are-moving-in
title: The Tectonic Plates Are Moving in Europe
author: ;John J. Mearsheimer
link: https://mearsheimer.substack.com/p/the-tectonic-plates-are-moving-in
hash: H�|e�"hA�fx3(W��
content:
<p>On 14 February 2025, I was on “The Duran” with Glenn Diesen and Alexander Mercouris. We discussed the Trump administration’s hostile dealings with Ukraine and Europe, which are directly related to the administration’s efforts to work with Russia to end the Ukraine war. Momentous events in the world of international politics are taking place before our eyes. </p><div data-attrs='{"videoId":"m5-L5pyXLZQ","startTime":null,"endTime":null}' data-component-name="Youtube2ToDOM" data-sanitized-id="youtube2-m5-L5pyXLZQ" data-sanitized-class="youtube-wrap"><div data-sanitized-class="youtube-inner"><iframe src="https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/m5-L5pyXLZQ?rel=0&amp;autoplay=0&amp;showinfo=0&amp;enablejsapi=0" frameborder="0" loading="lazy" gesture="media" allow="accelerometer; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowautoplay="true" allowfullscreen="true" width="728" height="409" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin"></iframe></div></div>

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guid: https://mearsheimer.substack.com/p/germany-and-genocide
title: Germany and Genocide
author: ;John J. Mearsheimer
link: https://mearsheimer.substack.com/p/germany-and-genocide
hash: ���a�����,�Ur?��
content:
<p>German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said in response to Vice President Vance’s Munich speech on February 14 and his meeting with the head of the AfD that same day:</p><p>“A commitment to ‘never again’ is not reconcilable with support for the AfD.”</p><p>But, apparently that commitment is reconcilable with German support of the Israeli genocide in Gaza, to include going to great lengths to suppress protests of that genocide inside Germany.</p><p>And what does this say about Germany’s commitment to free speech?</p>

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guid: https://mearsheimer.substack.com/p/talking-ukraine-on-the-deep-dive-259
title: Talking Ukraine on "The Deep Dive"
author: ;John J. Mearsheimer
link: https://mearsheimer.substack.com/p/talking-ukraine-on-the-deep-dive-259
hash: ��n ͦ�#�0�-
content:
<p>On 12 February 2025, I was on “The Deep Dive” talking with Lt. Col. (ret.) Danny Davis about Ukraine. Of course, this was the day Trump announced that he had spoken with Putin and Secretary Of Defense Hegseth gave his historic speech in Brussels. Danny and I, however, were not aware of what was coming that day when we were talking.</p><div data-attrs='{"videoId":"q7jhtoM-rcw","startTime":null,"endTime":null}' data-component-name="Youtube2ToDOM" data-sanitized-id="youtube2-q7jhtoM-rcw" data-sanitized-class="youtube-wrap"><div data-sanitized-class="youtube-inner"><iframe src="https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/q7jhtoM-rcw?rel=0&amp;autoplay=0&amp;showinfo=0&amp;enablejsapi=0" frameborder="0" loading="lazy" gesture="media" allow="accelerometer; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowautoplay="true" allowfullscreen="true" width="728" height="409" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin"></iframe></div></div>

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guid: https://mearsheimer.substack.com/p/talking-about-a-ukraine-deal-on-cnn
title: Talking about a Ukraine Deal on CNN
author: ;John J. Mearsheimer
link: https://mearsheimer.substack.com/p/talking-about-a-ukraine-deal-on-cnn
hash: ����'�-�i5o�
content:
<p>On 19 February 2025, I was on CNN International talking  about the fundamental differences between Europe and the United States regarding how best to end the Ukraine war, and also talking about the likely Ukrainian response to the deal between Russia and the US that now appears to be emerging. </p><p><a href="https://video.snapstream.net/Play/aTFPXuWkeNiiRG4aihZMKP?accessToken=cnyhersn3kpab">https://https://video.snapstream.net/Play/aTFPXuWkeNiiRG4aihZMKP?accessToken=cnyhersn3kpab/Play/aTFPXuWkeNiiRG4aihZMKP?accessToken=cnyhersn3kpab</a></p><div data-sanitized-class="captioned-image-container"><figure><a target="_blank" href="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F14e7335c-5ade-4a76-bf52-9a20af74268a_640x360.jpeg" data-component-name="Image2ToDOM" data-sanitized-class="image-link image2 is-viewable-img"><div data-sanitized-class="image2-inset"><picture><source type="image/webp"><img src="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F14e7335c-5ade-4a76-bf52-9a20af74268a_640x360.jpeg" width="640" height="360" data-attrs='{"src":"https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/14e7335c-5ade-4a76-bf52-9a20af74268a_640x360.jpeg","srcNoWatermark":null,"fullscreen":null,"imageSize":null,"height":360,"width":640,"resizeWidth":null,"bytes":45199,"alt":null,"title":null,"type":"image/jpeg","href":null,"belowTheFold":false,"topImage":true,"internalRedirect":"https://mearsheimer.substack.com/i/157520350?img=https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F14e7335c-5ade-4a76-bf52-9a20af74268a_640x360.jpeg","isProcessing":false}' alt="" fetchpriority="high" data-sanitized-class="sizing-normal"></picture><div data-sanitized-class="image-link-expand"><div data-sanitized-class="pencraft pc-display-flex pc-gap-8 pc-reset"><div data-sanitized-class="pencraft pc-reset icon-container restack-image"><path d="M3 12a9 9 0 0 1 9-9 9.75 9.75 0 0 1 6.74 2.74L21 8"></path><path d="M21 3v5h-5"></path><path d="M21 12a9 9 0 0 1-9 9 9.75 9.75 0 0 1-6.74-2.74L3 16"></path><path d="M8 16H3v5"></path></div><div data-sanitized-class="pencraft pc-reset icon-container view-image"><polyline points="15 3 21 3 21 9"></polyline><polyline points="9 21 3 21 3 15"></polyline><line x1="21" x2="14" y1="3" y2="10"></line><line x1="3" x2="10" y1="21" y2="14"></line></div></div></div></div></a></figure></div><p></p><p></p>

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guid: https://mearsheimer.substack.com/p/turning-the-tide-in-ukraine-but-not
title: Turning the Tide in Ukraine, but Not in the Middle East
author: ;John J. Mearsheimer
link: https://mearsheimer.substack.com/p/turning-the-tide-in-ukraine-but-not
hash: ���w���1q�?�A[��
content:
<p>On 20 February 2025, I talked with Judge Napolitano on “Judging Freedom” about the remarkable changes taking place in US policy toward Europe, Russia, and Ukraine, as well as the lack of change in US policy toward Israel. </p><div data-attrs='{"videoId":"e4_6ax8RYrw","startTime":null,"endTime":null}' data-component-name="Youtube2ToDOM" data-sanitized-id="youtube2-e4_6ax8RYrw" data-sanitized-class="youtube-wrap"><div data-sanitized-class="youtube-inner"><iframe src="https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/e4_6ax8RYrw?rel=0&amp;autoplay=0&amp;showinfo=0&amp;enablejsapi=0" frameborder="0" loading="lazy" gesture="media" allow="accelerometer; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowautoplay="true" allowfullscreen="true" width="728" height="409" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin"></iframe></div></div><p> </p>

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guid: https://mearsheimer.substack.com/p/talking-ukraine-with-former-ukrainian
title: Talking Ukraine with Former Ukrainian Journalist of the Year: Diana Panchenko
author: ;John J. Mearsheimer
link: https://mearsheimer.substack.com/p/talking-ukraine-with-former-ukrainian
hash: xY��J�&��|���d
content:
<p>On 24 February 2025, I was on Diana Panchenko’s podcast with Glenn Diesen and Pavel Shchelin. We discussed the origins of the Ukraine war, what is happening now, and where it is headed. The translation of the show’s title is “War &amp; Peace: Reloaded.”</p><p>Below is the English version:</p><p><a href="https://disk.yandex.ru/i/diX8X0WiQhjqlA">https://disk.yandex.ru/i/diX8X0WiQhjqlA</a></p><div data-sanitized-class="captioned-image-container"><figure><a target="_blank" href="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fcb0bc821-08e7-4931-ab2e-81be6e60269a_1920x1080.jpeg" data-component-name="Image2ToDOM" data-sanitized-class="image-link image2 is-viewable-img"><div data-sanitized-class="image2-inset"><picture><source type="image/webp"><img src="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fcb0bc821-08e7-4931-ab2e-81be6e60269a_1920x1080.jpeg" width="1456" height="819" data-attrs='{"src":"https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/cb0bc821-08e7-4931-ab2e-81be6e60269a_1920x1080.jpeg","srcNoWatermark":null,"fullscreen":null,"imageSize":null,"height":819,"width":1456,"resizeWidth":null,"bytes":null,"alt":"7.jpg","title":null,"type":null,"href":null,"belowTheFold":false,"topImage":true,"internalRedirect":null,"isProcessing":false}' alt="7.jpg" title="7.jpg" fetchpriority="high" data-sanitized-class="sizing-normal"></picture><div data-sanitized-class="image-link-expand"><div data-sanitized-class="pencraft pc-display-flex pc-gap-8 pc-reset"><div data-sanitized-class="pencraft pc-reset icon-container restack-image"><path d="M3 12a9 9 0 0 1 9-9 9.75 9.75 0 0 1 6.74 2.74L21 8"></path><path d="M21 3v5h-5"></path><path d="M21 12a9 9 0 0 1-9 9 9.75 9.75 0 0 1-6.74-2.74L3 16"></path><path d="M8 16H3v5"></path></div><div data-sanitized-class="pencraft pc-reset icon-container view-image"><polyline points="15 3 21 3 21 9"></polyline><polyline points="9 21 3 21 3 15"></polyline><line x1="21" x2="14" y1="3" y2="10"></line><line x1="3" x2="10" y1="21" y2="14"></line></div></div></div></div></a></figure></div>

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guid: https://mearsheimer.substack.com/p/trump-understands-what-needs-to-be
title: Trump Understands What Needs to Be Done to End the Ukraine War
author: ;John J. Mearsheimer
link: https://mearsheimer.substack.com/p/trump-understands-what-needs-to-be
hash: � 7:���v����
content:
<p>On 27 February 2025, I was on Judge Napolitano’s show — “Judging Freedom” — where he and I concentrated on examining what Trump is doing with regard to settling the Ukraine War.</p><div data-attrs='{"videoId":"EkE5h6PB3pQ","startTime":null,"endTime":null}' data-component-name="Youtube2ToDOM" data-sanitized-id="youtube2-EkE5h6PB3pQ" data-sanitized-class="youtube-wrap"><div data-sanitized-class="youtube-inner"><iframe src="https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/EkE5h6PB3pQ?rel=0&amp;autoplay=0&amp;showinfo=0&amp;enablejsapi=0" frameborder="0" loading="lazy" gesture="media" allow="accelerometer; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowautoplay="true" allowfullscreen="true" width="728" height="409" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin"></iframe></div></div>

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guid: https://mearsheimer.substack.com/p/the-shootout-at-the-white-house
title: The Shootout at The White House
author: ;John J. Mearsheimer
link: https://mearsheimer.substack.com/p/the-shootout-at-the-white-house
hash: x ^���u�yl�l�P
content:
<p>On 28 February 2025, I went on the “Deep Dive” with LTC (ret.) Danny Davis almost immediately after the war of words took place at the White House between Ukrainian President Zelensky and President Trump + Vice President Vance. Danny and I offered our reflections on what happened and what would be the likely consequences. </p><div data-attrs='{"videoId":"44_6wejNGu4","startTime":null,"endTime":null}' data-component-name="Youtube2ToDOM" data-sanitized-id="youtube2-44_6wejNGu4" data-sanitized-class="youtube-wrap"><div data-sanitized-class="youtube-inner"><iframe src="https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/44_6wejNGu4?rel=0&amp;autoplay=0&amp;showinfo=0&amp;enablejsapi=0" frameborder="0" loading="lazy" gesture="media" allow="accelerometer; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowautoplay="true" allowfullscreen="true" width="728" height="409" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin"></iframe></div></div>

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guid: https://normanfinkelstein.substack.com/p/finkelstein-interviews-cornel-west
title: Finkelstein Interviews Cornel West
author: ;Norman Finkelstein
link: https://normanfinkelstein.substack.com/p/finkelstein-interviews-cornel-west
hash: W� ڃ�`�O���ģ
content:
<p>Please visit the link to view the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qdLyAnmHsXE">VIDEO HERE</a></p><div data-sanitized-class="captioned-image-container"><figure><a target="_blank" href="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F412ef45d-dc02-44f7-a4da-a9911fe3a1c5_550x309.jpeg" data-component-name="Image2ToDOM" data-sanitized-class="image-link image2 is-viewable-img"><div data-sanitized-class="image2-inset"><picture><source type="image/webp"><img src="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F412ef45d-dc02-44f7-a4da-a9911fe3a1c5_550x309.jpeg" width="550" height="309" data-attrs='{"src":"https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/412ef45d-dc02-44f7-a4da-a9911fe3a1c5_550x309.jpeg","srcNoWatermark":null,"fullscreen":null,"imageSize":null,"height":309,"width":550,"resizeWidth":null,"bytes":30298,"alt":null,"title":null,"type":"image/jpeg","href":null,"belowTheFold":false,"topImage":true,"internalRedirect":null,"isProcessing":false}' alt="" fetchpriority="high" data-sanitized-class="sizing-normal"></picture><div data-sanitized-class="image-link-expand"><div data-sanitized-class="pencraft pc-display-flex pc-gap-8 pc-reset"><div data-sanitized-class="pencraft pc-reset icon-container restack-image"><path d="M3 12a9 9 0 0 1 9-9 9.75 9.75 0 0 1 6.74 2.74L21 8"></path><path d="M21 3v5h-5"></path><path d="M21 12a9 9 0 0 1-9 9 9.75 9.75 0 0 1-6.74-2.74L3 16"></path><path d="M8 16H3v5"></path></div><div data-sanitized-class="pencraft pc-reset icon-container view-image"><polyline points="15 3 21 3 21 9"></polyline><polyline points="9 21 3 21 3 15"></polyline><line x1="21" x2="14" y1="3" y2="10"></line><line x1="3" x2="10" y1="21" y2="14"></line></div></div></div></div></a></figure></div><p></p>

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guid: https://normanfinkelstein.substack.com/p/deborah-maccoby-tutors-bar-mitzvah
title: Deborah Maccoby Tutors Bar Mitzvah Boy Benny Shapiro on Jewish History
author: ;Norman Finkelstein
link: https://normanfinkelstein.substack.com/p/deborah-maccoby-tutors-bar-mitzvah
hash: �N��0UJ�;;�� �
content:
<p>THE BEN SHAPIRO VERSION OF ANCIENT JEWISH HISTORY: 3: THE HASMONEAN DYNASTY</p><p>In support of his claim that “Israel is historically Jewish territory”, Ben Shapiro states: “The Hasmonean Dynasty was founded in 166 BC”.</p><p>It is puzzling that Mr Shapiro chooses this date, because 167/166 BCE is the date of the beginning of the Maccabean Revolt of Judaea against the Syrian Greek Empire, also known as the Seleucid Empire – a rebellion that provides the historical background to the Jewish festival of Chanukah (which started this year on the evening of Thursday, December 7). The Maccabean Revolt, led by Judas Maccabeus and his band of brothers, began in 167/166 BCE and lasted, through various phases, till 142 BCE, when Judaea gained its independence.</p><p>The Maccabees became war-leaders in 167/166 BCE; but it is generally agreed that the Hasmonean Dynasty (named after an ancestor called Hasmon) was founded in 141 BCE by Judas’s brother, Simon (Judas himself was killed in battle in 161 BCE). To quote the <em>Jewish Encyclopedia</em>:</p><blockquote><p>The high-priestly and princely dignity of the Hasmoneans was founded by a resolution, adopted in Sept., 141 B. C., at a large assembly “of the priests and the people and of the elders of the land, to the effect that Simon should be their leader and high priest forever, until there should arise a faithful prophet” (I Macc. xiv. 41). Recognition of the new dynasty by the Romans was accorded by the Senate about 139 B. C. when the delegation of Simon was in Rome. Therefore, from a historic point of view, one can speak of a Hasmonean dynasty only as beginning with Simon.¹</p></blockquote><p>So Mr Shapiro has once again got the date wrong. But I believe this is more than a simple error of fact. Mr Shapiro has deliberately mixed up the Maccabean Revolt with the Hasmonean Dynasty, to try to make out that the two are more or less the same thing. Of course, they are (literally) related; but the two are diametrically opposed. </p><p> HISTORICAL BACKGROUND TO THE MACCABEAN REVOLT</p><p>To bring out the difference between the Maccabean Revolt and the Hasmonean Dynasty, we need first some very brief historical background.</p><p>In the early sixth century BCE, the Southern Kingdom of Judah was conquered and destroyed as a kingdom by the Babylonians, and part of the population of Judah was deported to Babylon. But during the sixth century BCE, the Babylonian Empire was defeated and taken over by the Persian Empire; and at the end of the sixth century BCE, Cyrus the Great, the King of Persia, allowed the Jews to return to Palestine. </p><p>Many Jews stayed in Babylon, where they had established a prosperous community with a flourishing culture – Babylon was the New York of its day. But a contingent of Jewish families went back. They settled in a very small area around Jerusalem known as Judaea; and here they rebuilt the Temple, which the Babylonians had destroyed. The Jews concentrated on their rich internal religious development – strongly influenced by the experience of having been in Babylon – and avoided participation in the political events of the time.  Since the vast majority of the Kings of Israel and Judah had “done evil in the sight of the Lord”² (to which evil the Jews attributed the destructions of Israel and Judah), the Judaeans decided to do without Kings. Judaea was a republican theocracy governed by Priests and Scribes.</p><p>In the second century BCE, Palestine came under the rule of the Seleucid Empire. (Alexander the Great of Macedonia had, in his turn, defeated the Persian Empire; after his death in 323 BCE, his vast Macedonian-Greek Empire was split up; and Palestine came first under the mild and tolerant rule of the Ptolemies of Egypt, but later under the much harsher rule of the Seleucids.) One of the Seleucid rulers, the mad Emperor Antiochus Epiphanes, who identified himself with Zeus, was determined to convert the Jews to the Greek religion by force. Antiochus marched on Jerusalem with his army, desecrated the Temple, set up a shrine within it to Zeus (i.e., himself), on whose altar pigs were sacrificed, and issued decrees forcing the Jews to abandon Judaism. The outraged people rose in rebellion, led by Judas Maccabeus and his band of brothers.</p><p>THE HASMONEAN DYNASTY</p><p>In 104 BCE, Simon’s grandson, Aristobulus I, “put a diadem on his head”³ (in the words of the first century CE Jewish historian Josephus) and declared himself King of Judaea. But, just as the Kings of Israel and Judah had been challenged by the Prophets, so the Kings of Judaea were now challenged by the successors to the Prophets, the Rabbis, who had been slowly emerging as a group⁴ and had become the real authority among the people. As the Hasmoneans turned into a royal family, the Priests tended to side with the aristocracy and royal family, while the Rabbis had become the leaders of the people.⁵</p><p>The Rabbis had supported the Maccabean Revolt and the High Priesthood and Governorship of Simon, but they were bitterly opposed to the assumption of royalty by the Hasmoneans. It is forbidden in Jewish Law to combine the High Priesthood with the Monarchy.⁶ And in any case, the Rabbis didn’t like Kings. Relations between the Rabbis and people, on the one side, and the Hasmonean Dynasty, on the other, deteriorated, during the reign of Alexander Jannaeus, the brother and successor of Aristobulus I, to the point of civil war, during which many Jews went to fight for the Seleucid Empire. To quote the historian Simon Schama:</p><blockquote><p> The indignation turned lethal, opening a murderous six-year Jewish civil war (not always sufficiently registered in popular histories of the Maccabean period), in which thousands of disaffected Jews joined the army of the Seleucid Demetrius (so recently the enemy), in the hopes of overthrowing the iniquitous Hasmoneans. Fifty thousand were slaughtered in the bloody conflict, the climax of which was the rout of Jannaeus by Demetrius and his Jewish auxiliaries. But his [i.e. Jannaeus’s] throne and state were saved by the usual sudden need of the Greek ruler to retreat abruptly back north and east, allowing Jannaeus to return to Judaea and inflict a horrifying retribution on the disloyal. His revenge culminated in a mass crucifixion of eight hundred of the Jews he judged most guilty in front of the king-priest while he was feasting “with his concubines”, looking on as the wives and children had their throats slit before their crucified husbands and fathers.⁷</p></blockquote><p>This is the Hasmonean Dynasty that Mr Shapiro cites in support of his claim that “Israel is historically Jewish land”. It is true – and this is precisely why Mr Shapiro brings in the Hasmonean Dynasty – that the Hasmonean Kings greatly expanded the territory of Judaea. They never conquered the whole land, but took many neighbouring territories, including Iturea and Idumea, the inhabitants of which areas the Hasmoneans forced to convert to Judaism (including forced circumcisions for men).⁸ So, ironically, the Hasmonean Dynasty turned into the same kind of tyrannical regime against which Judas Maccabeus had fought. Still more ironically, from the Idumeans, who had been forcibly converted and circumcised, came the nemesis of the Hasmonean Dynasty: the Herodian Dynasty. The Romans conquered and occupied Jerusalem in 67 BCE and installed, as client-kings, the Herodian Dynasty – who were originally Idumeans -- in place of the Hasmoneans. Herod the Great had most of the Hasmoneans put to death (including his wife, the beautiful Hasmonean princess Mariamne, whom he suspected of unfaithfulness). The Hasmonean Dynasty had lasted just 75 years. </p><p>THE RABBIS AND CHANUKAH</p><p>Such was the animosity that the Rabbis felt against the Hasmonean Dynasty that they left out the two Books of Maccabees from the Hebrew Bible (these two books were preserved in the Apocrypha, which was compiled by Christians). In the liturgy for Chanukah composed by the Rabbis in the first centuries CE, the festival celebrates, not the victories achieved by the Maccabees, but a miracle that the Rabbis claimed took place during the re-dedication of the Temple.</p><p>According to this story (which is not mentioned in the two Books of Maccabees), the Seleucids had polluted all the flasks of holy olive oil that were used to light the Menorah, the seven-branched candlestick in the Temple – all except one small flask. It took eight days to prepare more holy olive oil; but, according to the legend, that small flask lasted eight days. In celebration of the miracle, the festival lasts eight days; and each family lights eight candles (preferably olive oil cups rather than wax candles) in a candlestick called a menorah; one candle the first night, two on the second, and so on.</p><p>In addition, the Rabbis downplayed the festival of Chanukah as much as they could without abolishing it; it could not be abolished because  a) the historical memory of the Maccabean Revolt was still strong in the early centuries CE; b) Chanukah is based (like Christmas) on an ancient pagan winter solstice festival of lights, celebrating the birth of the new Sun; this answers to a basic human need. But Chanukah is essentially a very minor festival; in contrast to most other Jewish festivals, work is permitted on all the eight days (except the Sabbath). Chanukah has only become prominent as a Jewish alternative to Christmas. </p><p>To bring the rabbis’ anti-militaristic message home, the <em>haftorah</em> -- reading from the Prophets – in the synagogue service on the Sabbath during Chanukah is a passage from the sixth century BCE Prophet Zechariah (who prophesied at about the time the Jews returned from Babylon) about a vision in which an angel tells him: “Not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit, saith the Lord of Hosts” [“Hosts” here means “hosts of angels”] (4: 6). </p><p>CONCLUSION </p><p>Mr Shapiro has once again got the date wrong. But, in my view, he did so deliberately, in order to associate the Hasmonean Dynasty with the heroism of the Maccabean Revolt. It is historically true that the Hasmonean Dynasty greatly expanded its territory; but, by bringing in the Hasmoneans to support his claim that “Israel” (by which he appears to mean the whole land even though – as pointed out in Part 1, the whole land has never been called Israel) “is historically Jewish territory”, Mr Shapiro implicitly condoned violent conquest and forced conversions and circumcisions. He also implicitly endorsed the  corrupt and cruel Hasmonean Dynasty, which the Rabbis and the people hated and regarded as un-Jewish. The Maccabean Revolt was a genuine struggle of a people for political, cultural and religious freedom. The irony that Israel is destroying the political, cultural and religious identity of the Palestinians – indeed, going even further now by practising ethnic cleansing and genocide -- while celebrating Chanukah is obvious. The Hasmonean Dynasty betrayed not only the Maccabean Revolt, but the vision of a just society, without kings, nationalism, and militarism, that had inspired the Jews who returned from Babylon. “Not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit” – a prophetic warning ignored both by the Hasmonean Dynasty and the modern State of Israel.</p><p></p><ol><li><p><a href="https://substack.com/redirect/a46587e5-c251-407d-b1dd-399207b26ea1?j=eyJ1IjoiMXU1MW02In0.t7iqfBfozlUw_CTosck4r7vsbr8Fj0vo8OMlJso7zDA">https://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/7319-hasmoneans</a></p></li><li><p>e. g. 1 Kings, 15: 26.</p></li><li><p>Flavius Josephus, <em>Antiquities of the Jews</em>, XIII.11.1.</p></li><li><p>See R. Travers Herford, <em>The Pharisees</em> (1924: Boston, 1962), pp. 28-46.</p></li><li><p>See Josephus, <em>op. cit.,</em> XIII.10.2: Josephus writes that the Rabbis (known as Pharisees) “have the multitude on their side”, whereas their theological opponents, the Sadducees, who were mostly Priests, “are able to persuade none but the rich”. The Sadducees regarded the first five books of the Bible (known as the Torah) as closed and finished, but the Pharisees interpreted them according to an unwritten tradition known as the Oral Tradition: “The Pharisees have delivered to the people a great many observations by succession from their fathers which are not written in the Laws of Moses; and for that reason it is that the Sadducees reject them , and say that we are to esteem those observances to be obligatory which are in the written word, but not to observe what are derived from the tradition of our forefathers. And concerning these things it is that great disputes and differences have arisen among them, while the Sadducees are able to persuade none but the rich, and have not the populace obsequious to them, but the Pharisees have the multitude on their side”.</p></li><li><p>According to Genesis 49: 10, a King can only come from the tribe of Judah. According to Numbers 3: 6-9, a High Priest can only come from the tribe of Levi.</p></li><li><p>Simon Schama, <em>op. cit.,</em> pp. 126-127. See also Josephus, <em>op. cit.,</em> XIII.14.2.</p></li><li><p><em>Ibid.</em>, XIII.9.1 and 11.3.</p></li></ol><p></p>

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guid: https://normanfinkelstein.substack.com/p/sam-harris-savant-idiot
title: SAM HARRIS: SAVANT IDIOT
author: ;Norman Finkelstein
link: https://normanfinkelstein.substack.com/p/sam-harris-savant-idiot
hash: R�w 2*�1F�G٣�
content:
<p>Media performer Sam Harris recently appeared on Piers Morgan’s program. Affecting a flat effect—cool, rational—he used this platform to weigh in on irrational, fanatical Muslims. A clip was first shown of a Muslim (he is identified as the offspring of a Hamas leader) who expostulates that all Muslims are evil. This apparently deranged (or highly remunerated) fellow is a throwback to the days when Peter Lorre, eyes screwed up, was a stand-in for the wily, sinister Other. Mr. Harris seizes on this Archetypal Muslim as proof positive that “It should be obvious to everyone that we have a vast number of people in the Muslim community worldwide ... who are powerfully deranged.” His evidence for this sweepingly “obvious” fact? Except for the hapless (or, if he’s generously compensated, very happy) Muslim exhibited on the program, and the fact that Mr. Harris is introduced as “one of the world’s great thinkers” (he’s Jewish, so the praise is redundant), the only proof adduced by Mr. Harris is that the Muslim world produces a prodigious number of suicide bombers—not least, children whose parents have been “rigging them to explode.” He cites no numbers or statistics. Indeed, he cites nothing. There is, of course, by now a vast scholarly corpus on suicide bombers—their origins, motivations, the support they garner. But Mr. Harris doesn’t engage it. Instead: here’s a clip of an apparently deranged Muslim saying Muslims are deranged; Mr. Harris is a genius (he’s Jewish, isn’t he?); ergo it’s “obvious” that he’s right.</p><p>To be sure, it’s clearly possible that a large swath of a population can be unhinged; at any rate, temporarily. Witness Germany and Japan from the peak to denouement of World War 2. Or, to consider an example closer at hand: Israel. The Jewish state has launched a war of annihilation against the people of Gaza. The number of genocidal statements uttered by prominent Israelis at every level of the state and civil society since October 7 can by now fill a hefty chunk of cyberspace. But Mr. Harris is not in the least perturbed. Why is that?</p><p>First, as a pop secular prophet, indiscriminate mass killing only outrages Mr. Harris’s moral sensibility if it springs from religion. But the protagonists on all sides in the unprecedented bloodlettings of WW1 and WW2—and for that matter the Vietnam War, presided over by “the best and the brightest”—were secular or in thrall to secular ideologies. Was that really better? Indeed, it’s gone over Mr. Harris’s bigoted skull that the most lethal ideologies in the modern epoch have sprung not from religious but secular fanaticism. Hitler, Stalin, Kissinger: they can rightly be accused of many things but pathological religiosity is not one of them. In any event, the animating ideology in Israel is a heady brew of terrestrial calculation and super-terrestrial frenzy. Just a “tiny minority of Jews in Israel,” Harris caveats, “are motivated by their religious fanaticism.” Even were that so (which is most doubtful), it’s hard to figure why maniacal laicism isn’t also odious. Prime Minister Netanyahu has repeatedly gestured to the Old Testament as he avows that Israel is waging a war against “Amalek”—i.e., every man, woman, and child in Gaza—“a war between the children of light and the children of darkness.” Does it really matter whether the register of this genocidal invocation is secular or theocratic?</p><p>Short of wiping out the entire population in one fell swoop—not easy with the social media at high alert—Israel’s repeatedly stated next-best objective has been to make Gaza uninhabitable. “Whoever returns here, if they return here after, will find scorched earth,” a senior Israeli official in Gaza projected. “No houses, no agriculture, no nothing. They have no future.” Israel implemented a total blockade of Gaza barring entry of any food, water, fuel or electricity; in other words, it’s relying not on prayers exhorting the Almighty’s wrath but on a resolutely secular recipe for genocide that passes Mr. Harris’s taste-test. Unsurprisingly, mass starvation and the spread of lethal diseases have ensued. Israel simultaneously unleashed a biblically indiscriminate (but also targeted) campaign of death and destruction that, by every metric—intensity of bombing and payload size; pace and level of devastation; total civilian casualties as well as women and children versus men killed—puts the hecatomb Israel has inflicted on Gaza in a category all its own in the 21st century; and, by some measures, it occupies a unique category going as far back as World War 2 (if compared, e.g., to the Allied terror bombing of German cities). “Gaza is one of the most intense civilian punishment campaigns in history,” a U.S. military historian observes.</p><p>The U.N. relief chief describes the humanitarian situation in Gaza as the “worst ever” in his long career, while the European Union foreign affairs chief calls the situation “catastrophic, apocalyptic.” Israel has killed at least 20,000 Gazans, seventy percent of them women and children. The proportion of men, women and children killed roughly approximates the distribution of men, women, and children in Gaza’s total population—which shouldn’t surprise if the massive bombing and artillery fire is largely indiscriminate. On average, Israel has killed 160 children per day in Gaza; the next highest number among conflict zones in the world is seven (in Syria), while as many children have already been killed in Gaza as in all conflict zones for the three years 2020, 2021, 2022 combined. In order to make Gaza uninhabitable, Israel has reduced to rubble Gaza’s civilian infrastructure. The Financial Times reports that Israel has already achieved half its objective: “Israel’s incursion has left northern Gaza virtually uninhabitable.” Its methodical targeting of Gaza’s hospitals has breached, in the annals of modern warfare, a negative threshold of barbarism.</p><p>Notwithstanding this ghastly record, nearly 60 percent of Israeli Jews believed a month into the assault that Israel had deployed too little force in Gaza, while less than two percent believed that Israel used too much force. Israel has a citizen army. Its combatants executing singly and en masse this genocide are broadly representative of Israeli Jewish society. In other words, overwhelmingly, Israeli Jews are either by their actions or vicariously war criminals. But there’s more. Consider the Jewish diaspora. As the genocide proceeds apace, fully 81 percent of American Jews oppose and just 12 percent support a ceasefire. (I would be remiss if I didn’t pay tribute to the deeply inspiring Jewish youth who have stood in the forefront of the resistance to Israel’s genocide.) Based on these salient data points, it would appear “obvious that a vast number of people in the Jewish community worldwide ... are powerfully deranged.” Mr. Harris kvells that “There are 15 million Jews on Earth, most of them are impressively secular.” It happens that they are also in the grip of an impressively genocidal rage. “Most of them,” he reassures, “believe very little that would motivate them to die for their religious identity.” But they manifestly do believe enough to kill with abandon the people of Gaza on account of their religious (or is it secular—for the love of Yahweh, what difference does it make?!) identity.</p><p>It has been purported in extenuation of ordinary Germans that the Nazis installed a totalitarian state that repressed all dissent and concealed the genocide in the fog of war. Of course, ordinary Germans who wanted to know did know that if not exactly a genocide then still something monstrous was unfolding on the Eastern front. But later on, Germans could still cling to the alibi—in varying degrees disingenuous—that they didn’t know (or fell victim to ubiquitous Nazi propaganda about a “Judeo-Bolshevik conspiracy”), and wouldn’t have approved if they did know (or couldn’t but obey coercive orders). Israeli (as well as diasporan) Jews don’t have these excuses. Israel was no doubt traumatized by October 7. But the facts remain that they democratically elected the government and overwhelmingly support the government’s prosecution of a genocide; that they have ready access to information about the genocide in a free and open media both inside and via the Web outside Israel. The genocide in Gaza is unfolding in real time in broad daylight before the eyes of Israeli (and diasporan) Jews and 60 percent literally can’t get enough of it.</p><p>But, lo!, we mustn’t miss the forest from the trees. Not the Jews, counsels our cool, rational Jewish genius (redundancy duly noted) but, on the contrary, it’s the Muslims who “it is obvious ... are powerfully deranged.”</p><p>*</p><p>Second, if there are “so many casualties” in Gaza, Mr. Harris explains—parroting with consummate insipidness every other apologist—that’s because Israel</p><blockquote><p>is fighting a terrorist organization ... that is using its own population as human shields. It has strategically embedded itself among civilians.... It put its headquarters under a hospital. It prevents civilians from leaving to safer areas.... This is the issue: we are dealing with a suicidal death cult.</p></blockquote><p>But stepping outside this secular jihadi’s tent, isn’t it—dare I say—obvious that, if Israel has inflicted unprecedented death and destruction on Gaza, that’s because that’s its objective? It is not “fighting a terrorist organization,” it is fighting the people—the existence—of Gaza. The media reflexively declare that this is an “Israel-Hamas War.” But that is already swallowing the Big Lie of Israeli propaganda. Israel is not targeting “terrorists” supposedly hiding behind “human shields.” On the contrary, it’s targeting the “human shields” themselves.</p><p>Of course, Israel wants to liquidate Hamas, but it rightly apprehends that another, more deadly Hamas will emerge in its place. If Hamas were eliminated, it would still be a Pyrrhic victory. Gaza itself must be destroyed. Indeed, that speck of land has always been a thorn at Israel’s side as Gazans stubbornly resisted Israeli repression. Israel eventually alit on the objective of subjugating Gaza by reducing it—in the words of Amira Hass—to a “giant concentration camp.” In large part it succeeded. Head of Israel’s National Security Council Giora Eiland in 2004 himself pronounced Gaza a “huge concentration camp.” But when Hamas won democratic elections in 2006 and consolidated its hold over Gaza, Israel confronted a new dilemma. Hamas was feeling its way towards a comprehensive settlement with Israel on the consensus basis of international law and U.N. resolutions. In other words, Hamas was engaging in another of those dastardly “peace offensives” that have always filled Israeli leaders with holy terror. They will only accept a victor’s peace; not one among equals under the law. So Israel imposed a suffocating economic blockade on Gaza and periodically “mowed the lawn” in order to rupture the spine of any resistance to its rule.</p><p>But on October 7, the reality lit up that Israel’s strategy had failed. The people of Gaza refused to languish and die in a concentration camp. The slaves had gone into revolt. And like our own homegrown Nat Turner revolt, they (in part) struck out indiscriminately at their oppressors. It created a crisis for Israeli society but also—to recycle the old cliché—presented an opportunity. To once and for all rid Israel of the Gaza thorn. To free itself not just of this generation of “terrorists” but as well the more than one million children in Gaza representing the next “terrorist” generation. Israel initially set its sights on dumping Gaza’s inhabitants in the Sinai desert but Egypt nixed the ethnically cleansing. Israel next proceeded to repurpose Gaza concentration camp as a death camp. (The Nazis turned to genocide when the advent of world war preempted the deportation of Jews.) It did scrape against the limits imposed by the formally genocide-intolerant international community. But that factor, critical as it was, bore on the genocide’s efficiency quotient (Israel couldn’t outright nuke Gaza), not on the genocidal intent. And Israel could always count on useful idiots abroad to disguise and defend its genocide by endlessly reciting the incantation: “Israel is fighting a terrorist organization ... that is using its own population as human shields.”</p><p>If Human Rights Watch reports that Israel is systematically targeting hospitals without military justification, that’s because Israel is “fighting a terrorist organization ... using its own population as human shields.” (Memo to Mr. Harris: a detailed investigation by the Washington Post has debunked the agitprop that Hamas “put its headquarters” under al-Shifa hospital.) If the U.N. reports that the number of its staff killed by Israel in Gaza is unprecedented in the organization’s history, that’s because Israel is “fighting a terrorist organization ... using its own population as human shields.” If the Committee to Protect Journalists reports that Israel not only killed more journalists in Gaza during the first 10 weeks than have ever been killed in a single country over an entire year, but that it has also targeted the families of journalists, that’s because Israel is “fighting a terrorist organization ... using its own population as human shields.” If Israel has killed more healthcare workers in Gaza than the total number killed across all conflict zones every year in recent memory, that’s because it is “fighting a terrorist organization ... using its own population as human shields.” If Israel murders in broad daylight bare-chested civilians hoisting a white flag, that’s because it is “fighting a terrorist organization ... using its own population as human shields.” If Israeli snipers assassinate Christian women seeking refuge in a church, that’s because Israel is “fighting a terrorist organization ... using its own population as human shields.” If CNN reports that “Israeli soldiers raiding a hospital ... desecrated the bodies of dead patients with bulldozers, let a military dog maul a man in a wheelchair, and shot multiple doctors even after vetting them for terror links,” that’s because Israel is “fighting a terrorist organization ... using its own population as human shields.” If Human Rights Watch reports that Israel is “using starvation of civilians as a method of warfare,” that’s because it is fighting “a terrorist organization ... using its own population as human shields.” If the New York Times reports that Israel dropped 2,000-pound bombs on areas that Israel itself designated safe havens, that’s because it is “fighting a terrorist organization ... using its own population as human shields.” (Memo to Mr. Harris: There are no “safer areas” in Gaza.) And on and on. However incongruous, however absurd, however ludicrous, however preposterous—however utterly divorced from and irrelevant to unfolding reality the recitation of this mantra has become, it still doesn’t faze these crazed cult members as they keep repeating it day in and day out. Om. Hari Krishna. Hara Kiri....</p><p>But Mr. Harris doesn’t just extenuate the genocide. He implicitly endows it with a positive content. Every Muslim—including every Muslim child—he enlightens listeners, is an actual or potential suicide bomber imperiling Western civilization. Isn’t it only a flea’s hop to infer that Israel is doing the (secular) Lord’s work in Gaza as it wages a civilizational war against “deranged” Muslim culture and even if one million children—pardon me: children who have been “rigged to explode”—might die? Mr. Harris somehow construes that it takes enormous moral courage to expose this Muslim peril on Piers Morgan’s program. Indeed, it takes as much courage as the German professor in the midst of the Nazi holocaust who sounded the alarm that “parasitic” Jewish culture was imperiling Aryan civilization.</p><p>Mr Harris proclaims that “This is the issue: we are dealing with a suicidal death cult.” I’m afraid, however, that the real issue is this: We are dealing with a Ziontology murder cult; and Mr. Harris is one of its gurus.</p><p></p>

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guid: https://normanfinkelstein.substack.com/p/mouin-rabbani-netanyahu-and-senior
title: Mouin Rabbani: Netanyahu and Senior Israeli Officials Advocate 'Voluntary' Ethnic Cleansing of Gaza
author: ;Norman Finkelstein
link: https://normanfinkelstein.substack.com/p/mouin-rabbani-netanyahu-and-senior
hash: ��\zx��䏪o�
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<p>Senior Israeli leaders, including Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, are again publicly advocating the ethnic cleansing of the Gaza Strip. Their proposals are being presented as voluntary emigration schemes, in which Israel is merely playing the role of Good Samaritan, selflessly mediating with foreign governments to find new homes for destitute and desperate Palestinians. But it is ethnic cleansing all the same.</p><p>Alarm bells should have started ringing in early November when US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and other Western politicians began insisting there could be “no forcible displacement of Palestinians from Gaza”. Rather than rejecting any mass removal of Palestinians, Blinken and colleagues objected only to optically challenging expulsions at gunpoint. The option of “voluntary” displacement by leaving residents of the Gaza Strip with no choice but departure was pointedly left open. </p><p>Ethnic cleansing, or “transfer” as it is known in Israeli parlance, has a long pedigree that goes back to the late-nineteenth-century beginnings of the Zionist movement. While the early Zionists adopted the slogan, “A Land Without a People for a People Without a Land”, the evidence demonstrates that, from the very outset, their leaders knew better. More to the point, they clearly understood that the Palestinians formed the main obstacle to the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine. This is for the simple reason that to them a “Jewish state” denotes one in which its Jewish population acquires and maintains unchallenged demographic, territorial, and political supremacy. </p><p>Enter “transfer”. As early as 1895 Theodor Herzl, the founder of the contemporary Zionist movement, identified the necessity of removing the inhabitants of Palestine in the following terms: <strong>“We shall try to spirit the penniless population across the border by procuring employment for it in the transit countries, while denying it any employment in our own country ... expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried out discreetly and circumspectly.” David Ben-Gurion (</strong>née Grün), Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Jewish Agency for Palestine, and later Israel’s first prime minister, was more blunt. In a 1937 letter to his son, he wrote: “We must expel the Arabs and take their place”. </p><p>Writing in his diary in 1940 Yosef Weitz, a senior Jewish National Fund official who chaired the influential Transfer Committee before and during the Nakba (“Catastrophe”), and became known as the Architect of Transfer, put it thus: “The only solution is a Land of Israel devoid of Arabs. There is no room here for compromise. They must all be moved. Not one village, not one tribe can remain. Only through this transfer of the Arabs living in the Land of Israel will redemption come”. His diaries are littered with similar sentiments. </p><p>The point of the above is not to demonstrate that individual Zionist leaders held such views, but that the senior leadership of the Zionist movement consistently considered the ethnic cleansing of Palestine an objective and priority. Initiatives such as the Transfer Committee, and Plan Dalet, initially formulated in 1944 and described by the pre-eminent Palestinian historian Walid Khalidi as the “Master Plan for the Conquest of Palestine”, additionally demonstrate that the Zionist movement actively planned for it. The 1948 Nakba, during which more than four-fifths of Palestinians residing in territory that came under Israeli rule were ethnically cleansed, should therefore be seen as the fulfilment of a longstanding ambition and implementation of a key policy. A product of design, not of war. Historical Christmas footnote: the Palestinian town of Nazareth was spared a similar fate only because the commander of Israeli forces that seized the city, a Canadian Jew named Ben Dunkelman, disobeyed orders to expel the population. He was relieved of his command the following day.</p><p>That the Nakba was a product of design is further substantiated by the Transfer Committee’s terms of reference. These comprised not only proposals for the expulsion of the Palestinians but, just as importantly, active measures to prevent their return; destroy their homes and villages; expropriate their property; and resettle these territories with Jewish immigrants. Weitz, together with fellow Committee members Eliahu Sassoon and Ezra Danin, on 5 June 1948 presented a three-page blueprint, entitled “Scheme for the Solution of the Arab Problem in the State of Israel”, to Prime Minister Ben-Gurion to achieve these goals. According to leading Israeli historian Benny Morris, “there is no doubt Ben-Gurion agreed to Weitz’s scheme”, which included “what amounted to an enormous project of destruction” that saw more then 450 Palestinian villages razed to the ground.</p><p>The understandable focus on the expulsions of 1948 often overlooks the fact that ethnic cleansing remains incomplete unless its victims are barred from returning to their homes by a combination of armed force and legislation, and thereafter replaced by others. It is Israel’s determination to make Palestinian dispossession permanent that distinguishes Palestinian refugees from many other war refugees. </p><p>After 1948 Israel put out a whole series of fabrications to shift responsibility for the transformation of the Palestinians into dispossessed and stateless refugees onto the Arab states and the refugees themselves. These included claims that the refugees voluntarily left (they were either expelled or fled in justified terror); that Arab radio broadcasts ordered the Palestinians to flee (in fact they were encouraged to stay put); that Israel conducted a population exchange with Arab states (there was nothing of the sort); and the bizarre argument that because they’re Arabs, Palestinians had numerous other states while Jews have only Israel (by the same logic Sikhs would be entitled to seize British Columbia and deport its population to either the rest of Canada or the United States). More importantly, even if uniformly substantiated none of these pretexts entitles Israel to prohibit the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes at the conclusion of hostilities. It is, furthermore, a right that was consecrated in United Nations General Assembly 194 of 11 December 1948, which has been re-affirmed repeatedly since.</p><p>In 1967 Israel seized the remaining 22 per cent of Mandatory Palestine – the West Bank (including East Jerusalem) and the Gaza Strip. Depopulation in these territories operated differently than in 1948. Most importantly Israel, in addition to prohibiting the return of Palestinians who fled hostilities during the 1967 June War, and encouraging others to leave (by for example providing a daily bus service from Gaza City to the Allenby Bridge connecting the West Bank to Jordan), during the summer of 1967 conducted a census. Any resident who was not present during the census was ineligible for an Israeli identity document and automatically lost their right of residency. </p><p>As a result the population of these territories declined by more than twenty per cent overnight. Many of those thus displaced were already refugees from 1948. Aqbat Jabr Refugee Camp near Jericho for example, until 1967 the West Bank’s largest, became a virtual ghost town after almost all its inhabitants became refugees once again in Jordan. So many Palestinians from the Gaza Strip ended up in Jordan that a new refugee camp, Gaza Camp, was established on the outskirts of Jerash. The occupied Palestinian territories would not recover their 1967 population levels until the early 1980s.</p><p>Within the West Bank there were also cases of mass expulsion. These included the town of Qalqilya, which was additionally slated for demolition but to which its residents were later permitted to return. Those of ‘Imwas (the Biblical Emmaus), Bayt Nuba, and Yalu in Jerusalem’s Latrun salient were less fortunate. They were summarily expelled (many today live in Ramallah’s Qaddura Refugee Camp), their villages demolished and annexed to Israel, and replaced by Canada Park, so named because the project was completed with donations from the Canadian Jewish community. Within Jerusalem’s Old City the historic Mughrabi Quarter, abutting the Haram al-Sharif, was summarily razed to make way for a plaza astride the Wailing Wall. With many residents given only minutes to evacuate their homes, several were killed when the bulldozers went to work. According to Eitan Ben-Moshe, an engineer who oversaw the atrocity, “We threw out the wreckage of houses together with the Arab corpses”.</p><p>In subsequent years Israel employed all kinds of administrative shenanigans to further reduce the Palestinian population of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Until the 1993 Oslo Accords, for example, an exit permit from Israel’s military government was required to leave the occupied territories. It was valid for only three years, and thereafter renewable annually for a maximum of three additional years, for a fee, at an Israeli consulate. If a Palestinian lost an exit permit, or failed to renew an exit permit prior to its expiration for any reason (including bureaucratic foot-dragging), or couldn’t pay the renewal fee, or failed to return to Palestine prior to its expiration, that Palestinian automatically lost residency rights. Separately, Israel over the years deported numerous activists and community leaders, primarily to Jordan and Lebanon. During the late 1960s and 1970s it also exiled Gaza Palestinians accused of resisting the occupation, along with their families, to prison camps in the occupied Sinai Peninsula. Among those who spent time there was the iconic Palestinian leader Haidar Abdel-Shafi.</p><p>A particularly notable case of administrative deportations occurred in 1992, after Israeli special forces botched an operation to rescue an Israeli soldier who had been seized by Hamas to exchange him for their imprisoned leader, Shaikh Ahmad Yasin. Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin ordered the summary deportation of approximately 400 Palestinians, many of them prisoners affiliated with Hamas and Islamic Jihad (PIJ), none accused of involvement in the incident that led to Rabin’s frenzied rage. </p><p>In contrast to previous deportations, which were considered permanent, these were for one- and two-year terms. In its rush to carry out the deportations under cover of night, Israel expelled a number of Palestinians who were not on its list, and left behind others who were. Needless to say the mass expulsion was, as always in such matters, approved by Israel’s High Court of Justice after minor modifications. It ruled, among other things, that this was not a collective deportation but rather a collection of individual deportations. Perhaps more significantly the deportees were stuck in an inhospitable no-man’s land, Marj al-Zuhur, because Lebanon refused to facilitate the deportations by receiving them. During their involuntary residence in Marj al-Zuhur, assistance came primarily from Hizballah, and it was during this period that relations between Hamas, PIJ, and Hizballah were solidified.</p><p>With the focus in recent years on the intensified campaigns of ethnic cleansing in the West Bank, it is often forgotten that for decades the primary target for depopulation was the Gaza Strip, and particularly its refugee population which accounts for approximately three-quarters of the territory’s residents. Even before it occupied Gaza in 1967, Israel regularly promoted initiatives to achieve the “thinning” of its refugee population, with destinations as far afield as Libya and Iraq. Not without reason, Israel’s leaders felt uncomfortable with the presence of so many ethnically-cleansed Palestinians within walking distance of their former homes. After 1967 it encouraged Palestinian emigration from the Gaza Strip to not only foreign countries but also the West Bank. </p><p>In 1969 Israel even devised a scheme to send 60,000 Palestinians from the Gaza Strip to Paraguay with offers of lucrative employment. The plan was negotiated between Paraguay’s military dictator Alfredo Stroessner and Mossad, the Israeli foreign intelligence agency. It was of course purely coincidental that shortly thereafter Mossad discovered it no longer had the resources to hunt Nazi fugitives in Paraguay, which had been their destinations of choice. The scheme was discontinued when several of its victims, upon realising the promise of a new life of comfort was all a sham, shot up the Israeli embassy in Asuncion, killing one of its staff. </p><p>In the decades since, “transfer”, often presented as the encouragement of voluntary emigration either by providing material incentives or making the conditions of life impossible, has become increasingly mainstreamed in Israeli political life. In 2019, for example, a “senior government official”, quoted in the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz, expressed a willingness to help Palestinians emigrate from the Gaza Strip. </p><p>Mass expulsion has been gaining its share of adherents as well, and it is a position that is today represented within Israel’s coalition government. As has the idea that “transfer" should include Palestinian citizens of Israel. Avigdor Lieberman for example, several years ago Israel’s Minister of Defense, is an advocate of not only emptying the West Bank and Gaza Strip of Palestinians, but of getting rid of Palestinian citizens of Israel as well. As one might expect from a minister in charge of the Israeli military, he is also an advocate of “beheading” disloyal Palestinian citizens of Israel with “an axe”.</p><p>Against this background Israel saw the attacks of 7 October as not only a threat but also as an opportunity. Fortified with unconditional US and European support, Israeli political and military leaders immediately began promoting the transfer of Gaza’s Palestinian population to the Sinai desert. The proposal was enthusiastically embraced by the United States, and by Secretary of State Antony Blinken in particular. As ever hopelessly out of his depth when it comes to the Middle East, he appears to have genuinely believed he could recruit or pressure Washington’s Arab client regimes to make Israel’s wish a reality. Given Egyptian strongman Abdel-Fatah Sisi’s economic troubles, the fallout of the Menendez scandal, and looming Egyptian presidential elections, it was suggested to him by the Washington echo chamber that it would take only an IMF loan, debt relief, and a promise to file away Menendez to bring Cairo on board. As so often when it comes to the Middle East Blinken, armed only with Israel’s latest wish list, didn’t have a clue his indecent proposal would be categorically rejected, first and foremost by Egypt.  </p><p>The fallback position is opposition to “forcible displacement” at the point of a gun, while anything else is fair game. This includes reducing the Gaza Strip to rubble in what may well be the most intensive bombing campaign in history; a genocidal assault on an entire society that has killed civilians at an unprecedentedly rapid pace; the deliberate destruction of an entire civilian infrastructure, including the targeted obliteration of its health and education sectors; the highest proportion of households in hunger crisis ever recorded globally and the real prospect of pre-meditated famine; severance of the water and electricity supply leading to acute thirst, widespread consumption of non-potable water, and termination of sewage treatment; and promotion of a sharp rise in infectious disease. One Israeli soldier has already died of a fungal infection resulting from the collapse in sanitation he helped bring about in the Gaza Strip. How many Palestinians have been consumed by similar illness we do not know, but it is reasonable to assume that children and the elderly are hit particularly hard.</p><p>In other words, if desperate Palestinians seek to flee this seventh circle of hell to save their skins, that’s considered voluntary emigration, their choice. If they cannot remain in the Gaza Strip because Israel has made it unfit for human habitation with US weapons, that is a voluntary choice that will be respected. And the US and Israel are only here to help, like Mother Theresa determined to assist every last one of them whether they like it or not. Danny Danon, a member of parliament who was previously Israel’s envoy to the United Nations (the guy who sounds like Elmer Fudd), recently held up the mass displacement of Syrians to multiple shores during the past decade as an example to be emulated. “Even if each country receives ten thousand, twenty thousand Gazans, this is significant”. Asked about Danon’s proposal at a Likud meeting on Christmas Day, Netanyahu responded, “We are working on it. Our problem is [finding] the countries that are willing to absorb [them].” As an editorial in the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz put it on 27 December: “Israeli lawmakers keep pushing for transfer under the guise of humanitarian aid”.</p><p>Not to be outdone by the politicians, the Jerusalem Post ran an opinion piece entitled “Why Moving to the Sinai Peninsula is The Solution for Gaza’s Palestinians”. “Sinai”, its author Joel Roskin enthused, “comprises one of the most suitable places on Earth to provide the people of Gaza with hope and a peaceful future”. Not individual Gazans, but “the people of Gaza”. Notably, such proposals consistently take it as a given that those departing will never return. One waits with baited breath for the European Union is expected to respond to these calls for mass expulsion with further investigations of Palestinian textbooks.</p><p>While ethnic cleansing has been intrinsic to Zionist/Israeli ideology and practice from the very outset, it also has a flip side: the 1948 expulsion of the Palestinians expanded what had been a conflict between the Zionist movement and the Palestinians into a regional, Arab-Israeli one. The second Nakba Israel is currently inflicting on the Gaza Strip similarly appears well on its way to instigating the renewal of hostilities across the Middle East. </p><p>As importantly, the 1948 Nakba did not defeat the Palestinians, who initiated their struggle from the camps of exile, those in the Gaza Strip most prominently among them. It would take a Blinken level of foolishness to assume the expulsion of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip would produce a different outcome.</p><div><hr></div><p><em>A Statement by Norman Finkelstein: I am determined not to monetize my social media. However, I am dependent on a three-person technical crew. Your contributions to support their vital work will be greatly appreciated. All proceeds will go to the technical crew.</em></p><p></p>

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<p>PRAMILA PATTEN’S RAPE FANTASIES</p><p>A Critical Analysis of the UN Report on Sexual Violence during the 7 October Attack</p><div data-component-name="PreformattedTextBlockToDOM" data-sanitized-class="preformatted-block"><label contenteditable="false" data-sanitized-class="hide-text">Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published</label><pre data-sanitized-class="text">                                                                        <strong> I.
                                                               </strong></pre></div><div data-component-name="PreformattedTextBlockToDOM" data-sanitized-class="preformatted-block"><label contenteditable="false" data-sanitized-class="hide-text">Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published</label><pre data-sanitized-class="text"><strong>                                                               The Mission</strong></pre></div><p>1.      The United Nations has published numerous reports on the Israel-Palestine conflict.  In general, stringent standards of evidence and law have been applied. (See for example the voluminous reports on, respectively, Israel’s <a href="https://www.ohchr.org/en/hr-bodies/hrc/special-sessions/session9/fact-finding-mission">2008-9 assault</a> on Gaza, and Israel’s 2018 repression of the <a href="https://www.ohchr.org/en/hr-bodies/hrc/co-iopt/report2018-opt">Great March of Return in Gaza</a>.)  But, succumbing to U.S.-Israeli pressure, the UN has on occasion also whitewashed Israel.  (See for example the report commissioned by the Secretary-General regarding Israel’s 2010 <a href="https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/720841?ln=en">assault on a humanitarian convoy</a> headed for Gaza, and the report on Israel’s <a href="https://www.inew.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/A_HRC_CRP_4.pdf">2014 assault on Gaza</a>.)</p><p>2.      A new report, commissioned by the Secretary-General, has just been released (“Mission Report: Official visit of the Office of the SRSG-SVC to Israel and the Occupied West Bank, 29 January-14 February 2024”).  The primary author of the report is Pramila Patten, the “UN Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Sexual Violence in Conflict.”  The subject-matter of this report is sexual violence committed by Gaza-based Palestinians on 7 October 2023.  Especially in light of the incendiary subject-matter, it is a skimpy document running to a mere 17 pages.  The UN report on violence during the 2018 Great March of Return clocked in at a hefty 250 pages.</p><p>3.      The Patten mission’s mandate perplexes.  Its initial press release (24 January 2024) states that its purpose was to “gather, analyze and verify relevant information regarding allegations of” sexual violence.  But it also emphatically states that, although it included a small team of technical experts, the “mission is neither intended nor mandated to be investigative in nature.”  If, on the one hand, the mission was mandated to “gather, analyze and verify” evidence of sexual violence, and refers in the report to its “findings” and to having “verified” alleged instances of sexual violence; yet, on the other hand, the mission emphatically declares that it wasn’t “investigative in nature”—then what exactly was it?  The press release further states that the mission “aims to give voice to survivors, witnesses, recently released hostages” of sexual violence.  But if it wasn’t an investigative body, it’s cause for wonder how it would even know whose “voice” to give voice to.  Isn’t this putting the cart before the horse?</p><p>4.      The report renders discrete judgments that even a bona fide investigative body normally wouldn’t be competent to make.  It teases out legal delineations—“reasonable grounds to believe” versus “clear and convincing information” (also: “a finding of fact”)—rarely found in reports issued by the UN (or human rights groups).  The standard practice is to identify possible (“reasonable grounds to believe”) breaches of international humanitarian and human rights law and then call for a formal investigation.  But the Patten mission, although confessedly something less than an investigative body, makes judgments that go well beyond those of a typical investigative body to the point of near-certainty (“a finding of fact”) befitting the final verdict in a court of law.  What’s yet more odd, the Patten mission renders these fine determinations even as it acknowledges severe constraints imposed by limited evidence and time. </p><p>5.      If it wasn’t a bona fide investigative body; if sufficient evidence was hard to come by; if it was pressed for time to complete its mission—if all this is true, then it’s unclear why the Patten mission reached <em>any</em> conclusions, be they tentative or certain.  Why this rush to judgment?  And if this non-investigative body also wasn’t in a position to “give voice” to the victims of sexual violence before said victimhood was at least tentatively established by an official investigative body, it’s hard to make out what was the point of this mission.  It’s not as if Israel hasn’t already made on its own, and via overwhelmingly sympathetic media abroad, its very best evidentiary case a thousand times over. </p><p>6.      In this regard it can’t but be wondered why Israel extended the “invitation” to Pramila Patten in the first place and why the Patten mission “benefited from the full cooperation of the Government of Israel.”  This was unprecedented, a first.  In the past as well as in the instant case, Israel has consistently and categorically refused to cooperate with formal UN investigations.  If the evidence Israel has assembled is so robust—the Patten mission concluded that hostages were almost certainly raped—what did it have to fear from an official UN investigation carried out by competent and experienced personnel?  The stock reply is: the UN is biased against Israel.  But the Patten mission was itself mandated by the UN.  If Israel invited Patten’s UN mission, but has firmly barred entry to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and the International Commission of Inquiry, surely there must be a reason.  Alas, Patten never explores—let alone answers—this tantalizing question.</p><div data-component-name="PreformattedTextBlockToDOM" data-sanitized-class="preformatted-block"><label contenteditable="false" data-sanitized-class="hide-text">Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published</label><pre data-sanitized-class="text">                                                                      <strong>   II.
                                                             </strong></pre></div><div data-component-name="PreformattedTextBlockToDOM" data-sanitized-class="preformatted-block"><label contenteditable="false" data-sanitized-class="hide-text">Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published</label><pre data-sanitized-class="text"><strong>                                                               The Evidence</strong></pre></div><p>7.      The Patten mission visited Israel for a little over two weeks.  It met with various national ministries, intelligence agencies, and senior government officials; visited “with the support of the Israeli authorities” the sites of the attacks on 7 October; viewed photographic and video evidence overwhelmingly curated by the Israeli government or available in open sources; interviewed survivors of 7 October, released hostages, and first-responders.  In other words, on one side it was an Israeli full-court press, and on the opposite side, it was the sort of tour “Friends of the Soviet Union” used to go on in Stalin’s day and “Friends of the People’s Republic of China” in Mao’s day.  If any dissent, even a peep, from the official “narrative” was uttered by the mission’s Israeli interlocutors, if the mission stumbled on some irreconcilable finding that incensed its Israeli interlocutors—the report makes no mention of it.  Put otherwise, if the mission didn’t question let alone undermine the current Israeli “narrative,” then it’s small wonder that they got on swimmingly.</p><p>8.      The report states that “the national authorities faced numerous challenges in the collection of evidence and pursuit of their investigations.” Consequently, Israel is said to have possessed and could only make available “very limited forensic” evidence, while “a high number of bodies with destructive burn damage ... made the identification of potential crimes of sexual violence impossible.”  In addition, the mission met with only “a small number of survivors and/or witnesses ... who provided information on instances of sexual violence.”  The “very limited” to “small”  to “impossible” evidence did not, however, deter the non-investigative mission from drawing fine legal discriminations, not to mention a near-definitive “finding of fact.”</p><p>9.      The report further states that “While the mission team was able to meet with some released hostages as well as with some survivors and witnesses of the attacks<em>, it did not meet with any survivor-victim of sexual violence from 7 October despite concerted efforts encouraging them to come forward </em>(emphasis added).  Doesn’t it give pause that, more than three months after the attack, none of the alleged victims of—according to the Israeli government and the <em>New York Times</em>—rampant, systematic sexual violence on 7 October stepped forward to testify before the mission?  Not one.  The report endeavors to paper over this glaring lacuna by pointing up “the lack of trust by survivors” in the United Nations.  But in the instant case, it was the Israeli government itself that orchestrated this UN mission’s visit.  It’s hard to fathom that in a country celebrated for its tribal closing of ranks in the face of external danger, and—not incidentally—in a culture known for its libertine sexual frankness, not a single victim of not just rape but sexual violence of any type was willing, and couldn’t be coaxed, to testify before a Government-blessed mission at such an existential moment in the nation’s history. </p><div data-component-name="PreformattedTextBlockToDOM" data-sanitized-class="preformatted-block"><label contenteditable="false" data-sanitized-class="hide-text">Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published</label><pre data-sanitized-class="text">                                                                              <strong>III.   </strong></pre></div><div data-component-name="PreformattedTextBlockToDOM" data-sanitized-class="preformatted-block"><label contenteditable="false" data-sanitized-class="hide-text">Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published</label><pre data-sanitized-class="text"><strong>
                                                                    The Findings                                                                       </strong>                                                                                                                  </pre></div><p>10.   The Patten mission that was <em>not</em> “investigative in nature” nonetheless concludes that “there are reasonable grounds to believe” that sexual violence, “including rape and gang rape,” occurred.  It bases its findings on these pieces of evidence:</p><blockquote><p>·       “[F]ully naked or partially naked bodies from the waist down were recovered—mostly women—with hands tied and shot multiple times, often in the head.... Although circumstantial, such a pattern of undressing and restraining of victims may be indicative of some forms of sexual violence.”  It may be indicative; it also may not be.  The mission itself concedes—albeit buried at the<em> tail end of the report</em>—that “in the medicolegal assessment of available photos and videos, no tangible indications of rape could be identified,” <em>and</em> “no digital evidence specifically depicting acts of sexual violence was found in open sources,” <em>and</em> “no discernible pattern of genital mutilation could be established.”  It takes time for the magnitude of this admission to sink in.  Consider further this detail: “The mission team ... reviewed over 5,000 photos, around 50 hours and several audio files of footage of the attacks, provided partly by various state agencies and through an independent online review of various open sources, to identify potential instances and indications of conflict-related sexual violence. The content encompassed the actual attacks and their immediate aftermath, captured through militants’ bodycams and dashcams, individual cellphones, CCTV, and traffic surveillance cameras.”  <em>Fully 5,000 photos and 50 hours of footage, from every conceivable angle and by every conceivable electronic device—yet the mission was unable to isolate a single direct image of sexual violence, even as no less than gang rapes were allegedly occurring in open space</em>.  If the report was properly packaged and publicized, the title would read: “October 7: No Direct Material Evidence of Rape.”</p><p>·       “Based on the examination of available information, including credible statements by eyewitnesses, there are reasonable grounds to believe that multiple incidents of rape, including gang rape, occurred in and around the Nova [music] festival site.  Credible information was obtained regarding multiple incidents whereby victims were subjected to rape and then killed.”  (The report also makes fleeting mention without passing judgment on alleged acts of necrophilia.) The report does not specify how many of these credible eyewitnesses it interviewed.  And crucially, it does not quantify even roughly how many instances of sexual violence are alleged to have occurred: “multiple” can denote “more than once” or “manifold” (<em>Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary</em>, Fifth Edition).  Surely it makes a difference whether the Patten mission is attesting to 2, 20, 200, or 2,000 instances of “rape and/or gang rape.”  Why then the sloppy—indeed, professionally irresponsible—vagueness? </p><p>·       “There are reasonable grounds to believe that sexual violence occurred on and around Road 232.  Credible information based on corroborating witness accounts describes an incident involving the rape of two women.” </p><p>·       “There are reasonable grounds to believe that sexual violence occurred in kibbutz Re’im, including rape. This included the rape of a woman outside of a bomb shelter at the entrance of kibbutz Re’im, which was corroborated by witness testimonies and digital material.” </p></blockquote><p>In sum, the non-investigative investigative Patten mission, basing itself on an unspecified number of “credible” witnesses, found “reasonable grounds” to conclude or “verified” that “multiple”—which, for all one knows, might mean <em>two</em>—instances of rape occurred at the music festival and another three instances of rape occurred on a road and in a kibbutz.  Two plus three equals five.  Appalling, no doubt, but also a far cry from allegations by Israel and its media stenographers that Hamas carried out “systematic” and “widespread” rape as a “weapon” of war.</p><p>11.   The report goes on to state that “[a]t least two of the allegations of sexual violence [at kibbutz Be’eri] previously reported were determined by the mission team to be unfounded, due to either new superseding information or inconsistency in the information gathered.”  It further notes alleged instances of sexual violence at other locales “which could not be verified.”  The report does not state whether Israel publicly withdrew the allegations of sexual violence that it itself now privately concedes to have been false.  Surely that piece of information would be of crucial importance in assessing other allegations propagated by Israel that “could not be verified.”  In fact, the Israeli government has <em>not</em> publicly retracted all its “unfounded” allegations.  It is also cause for wonder why the mission benignly characterizes the false claims of sexual violence as innocent mistakes by Israel and doesn’t entertain the possibility of calculated disinformation that was subsequently exposed.  Was the “beheaded babies” horror tale also an accounting error?</p><p>12.   The report states that, “[b]ased on the first-hand accounts of released hostages, the mission team received clear and convincing information that sexual violence, including rape, sexualized torture, and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment occurred against some women and children during their time in captivity and has reasonable grounds to believe that this violence may be ongoing.”  Of all the findings of this non-investigative investigative body, this is surely the most explosive.  The stakes couldn’t be higher: it provides a plausible pretext for Israel to urgently proceed on its offensive even as Gazan children starve—<em>Israeli women and children held in captivity are still being raped and sexually tortured!</em>  Yet, the report dispatches this charge unequivocally validated by the mission in all of <em>one</em> <em>sentence</em>.  Whereas “clear and convincing information” crosses the highest threshold, the mission doesn’t disclose the evidentiary basis for its conclusive finding.  The report states that it is “[b]ased on the first-hand accounts of released hostages,” but this wording obscures whether or not the mission actually met with them, and it is left to the imagination why these “first-hand accounts” standing on their own would, or could, be dispositive<strong>.  </strong>If hostage rape victims held in captivity for months did in fact meet with the mission, then it baffles why not a single one of the 7 October rape victims who weren’t held hostage stepped forward.  The report ascertains that “some” of the hostages were raped; but what prevented the mission from specifying exactly how many?  It purports “reasonable grounds to believe” that the rape and sexual torture are ongoing; but how can it possibly know this?  If Israel possessed <em>any</em> evidence that the hostages still in captivity were being raped, surely it would have broadcast it far and wide. The non-investigative Patten mission would appear to be not only investigative but, to boot, clairvoyant.  It gets curiouser and curiouser.  Hamas has indignantly denied the rape charge, while this charge has played a salient role in demonizing Hamas.  If while in captivity the released hostages had been personally raped or could bear personal witness to Hamas’s sexual savagery, then why didn’t Hamas simply kill them instead of setting them free: who would know?  The mission states that it adhered to a “survivor/victim-centered” approach.  It would appear that this approach required total suspension of the critical faculty.</p><p>13.   The Patten mission states that it was “unable to establish the prevalence” of sexual violence “during and after the 7 October attacks,” and that a “comprehensive assessment ... would require a fully-fledged investigation by competent bodies with adequate time and capacity.”  But truth be told: if it wasn’t a “competent” investigative body, then it was “unable to establish” <em>anything</em>.  Further, its vague quantification, as well as its repeated references to “circumstantial” evidence that “may be indicative” and to allegations that “couldn’t be verified,” certainly gave credence to the official Israeli “narrative” that the sexual violence was widespread.</p><div data-component-name="PreformattedTextBlockToDOM" data-sanitized-class="preformatted-block"><label contenteditable="false" data-sanitized-class="hide-text">Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published</label><pre data-sanitized-class="text">                                                                           <strong>IV.
                                                                 </strong>                                      </pre></div><div data-component-name="PreformattedTextBlockToDOM" data-sanitized-class="preformatted-block"><label contenteditable="false" data-sanitized-class="hide-text">Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published</label><pre data-sanitized-class="text">                                                       <strong>         Final Observations      </strong>                                                                                                                                                   </pre></div><p>14.   The report concedes that “the information gathered by the mission team was in a large part sourced from Israeli national institutions,” while the report’s findings carry bare minimum weight as the “mission is neither intended nor mandated to be investigative in nature.”  The only discernible purposes of Patten’s tawdry mission reduce to, first, acting as yet another purveyor, vehicle, conduit, and conveyance of the “evidence” Israel has been propagating since 7 October, and, second, lending the UN’s authoritative imprimatur to this “evidence.”  The analysis presented here began with the puzzle, What exactly is the Patten mission?  That question can now be tentatively answered.  It is neither an investigative nor a quasi- investigative body.  On the contrary, it is a stage production directed by the UN bureaucracy to appease Israel and its powerful backer in Washington.  How and why Ms. Patten came to play the starring role in this theatrical extravaganza are of secondary importance.</p><p>15.   The Patten mission “benefitted from the full cooperation of the Government of Israel.”  Yet, it couldn’t locate a <em>single</em> victim of sexual violence or a <em>single</em> piece of direct evidence, be it forensic or digital, of sexual violence on 7 October.  It therefore beggars belief that rampant sexual violence occurred on that day.  The allegation that Hamas systematically utilized rape as a weapon of war can be safely deposited in the same dumpster as the debunked allegation that Hamas built a mammoth command-and-control center beneath al-Shifa hospital. </p><p>16.   The report describes “three cumulative waves of attacks” from Gaza on 7 October: first, “Hamas commandos”; then, sundry “paramilitary organizations ... that joined the ongoing operation”; and finally, unaffiliated, random “armed and unarmed individuals.”  The report further states that “it did not gather information and/or draw conclusions on attribution of alleged violations to specific armed groups.”  The available evidence is entirely consistent with the postulate that, if rapes did occur on 7 October—and most likely they did—these were isolated incidents perpetrated in the main by Gaza riff-raff and hooligans who entered Israel in the third wave.  It is this writer’s considered opinion—admittedly speculative in nature but nonetheless grounded in the known details of the 7 October attack, its modus operandi, and the predispositions of its perpetrators—that this is the most plausible scenario. </p><p>[The quoted passages in this article are culled from both the Executive Summary and the body of the Patten mission report.]</p>


guid: https://normanfinkelstein.substack.com/p/moron-specialis
title: MORON SPECIALIS
author: ;Norman Finkelstein
link: https://normanfinkelstein.substack.com/p/moron-specialis
hash: Xj(� s���B���
content:
<div data-sanitized-class="captioned-image-container"><figure><a target="_blank" href="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fe8633a75-0277-4555-a854-651be69d8fea_620x332.png" data-component-name="Image2ToDOM" data-sanitized-class="image-link image2 is-viewable-img"><div data-sanitized-class="image2-inset"><picture><source type="image/webp"><img src="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fe8633a75-0277-4555-a854-651be69d8fea_620x332.png" width="620" height="332" data-attrs='{"src":"https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/e8633a75-0277-4555-a854-651be69d8fea_620x332.png","srcNoWatermark":null,"fullscreen":null,"imageSize":null,"height":332,"width":620,"resizeWidth":null,"bytes":301480,"alt":null,"title":null,"type":"image/png","href":null,"belowTheFold":false,"topImage":true,"internalRedirect":null,"isProcessing":false}' alt="" fetchpriority="high" data-sanitized-class="sizing-normal"></picture><div data-sanitized-class="image-link-expand"><div data-sanitized-class="pencraft pc-display-flex pc-gap-8 pc-reset"><div data-sanitized-class="pencraft pc-reset icon-container restack-image"><path d="M3 12a9 9 0 0 1 9-9 9.75 9.75 0 0 1 6.74 2.74L21 8"></path><path d="M21 3v5h-5"></path><path d="M21 12a9 9 0 0 1-9 9 9.75 9.75 0 0 1-6.74-2.74L3 16"></path><path d="M8 16H3v5"></path></div><div data-sanitized-class="pencraft pc-reset icon-container view-image"><polyline points="15 3 21 3 21 9"></polyline><polyline points="9 21 3 21 3 15"></polyline><line x1="21" x2="14" y1="3" y2="10"></line><line x1="3" x2="10" y1="21" y2="14"></line></div></div></div></div></a></figure></div><p>I have been challenged on one—and only one—point in the Lex Fridman debate.  Here is the relevant excerpt from the official transcript.  I have filled in the legal term that I used and placed it in upper case:</p><div data-component-name="PreformattedTextBlockToDOM" data-sanitized-class="preformatted-block"><label contenteditable="false" data-sanitized-class="hide-text">Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published</label><pre data-sanitized-class="text"><strong>          STEVEN BONNELL</strong><a href="https://emea01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fyoutube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3D1X_KdkoGxSs%26t%3D11878&amp;data=05%7C02%7C%7C062b7419721b4b5ff47608dc4963fa08%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C638465940946144935%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C0%7C%7C%7C&amp;sdata=lZc0VN%2B6E8Orp6sHn7mCPKPiMNfl8%2Fr6YmHW0PndpfU%3D&amp;reserved=0">(03:17:58)</a> I don’t know if you used the phrase dolus specialis, that the intentional part of genocide-</pre></div><div data-component-name="PreformattedTextBlockToDOM" data-sanitized-class="preformatted-block"><label contenteditable="false" data-sanitized-class="hide-text">Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published</label><pre data-sanitized-class="text"><strong>          MOUIN RABBANI </strong><a href="https://emea01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fyoutube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3D1X_KdkoGxSs%26t%3D11878&amp;data=05%7C02%7C%7C062b7419721b4b5ff47608dc4963fa08%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C638465940946156242%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C0%7C%7C%7C&amp;sdata=6PPWK2oTiiNQWX8h%2FdpiyyqMMALoJP9Z4znZ85QRo4Y%3D&amp;reserved=0">(03:17:58)</a> I don’t know that term.</pre></div><div data-component-name="PreformattedTextBlockToDOM" data-sanitized-class="preformatted-block"><label contenteditable="false" data-sanitized-class="hide-text">Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published</label><pre data-sanitized-class="text"><strong>          STEVEN BONNELL </strong><a href="https://emea01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fyoutube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3D1X_KdkoGxSs%26t%3D11915&amp;data=05%7C02%7C%7C062b7419721b4b5ff47608dc4963fa08%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C638465940946163582%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C0%7C%7C%7C&amp;sdata=5F25tNZ8wn2CKsI1ZllKWKl152rkQF3gZoULcy90Sgo%3D&amp;reserved=0">(03:18:35)</a> I think it’s called dolus specialis, it’s the most important part of genocide, which is proving it is a highly special intent to commit genocide. It’s possible that Israel could-</pre></div><div data-component-name="PreformattedTextBlockToDOM" data-sanitized-class="preformatted-block"><label contenteditable="false" data-sanitized-class="hide-text">Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published</label><pre data-sanitized-class="text"><strong>         NORMAN FINKELSTEIN </strong><a href="https://emea01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fyoutube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3D1X_KdkoGxSs%26t%3D11923&amp;data=05%7C02%7C%7C062b7419721b4b5ff47608dc4963fa08%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C638465940946170576%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C0%7C%7C%7C&amp;sdata=6QOp0ksw02nu%2FLRw5WN2SPOAyp6EAO5Wu8I69uinGog%3D&amp;reserved=0">(03:18:43)</a> That’s MENS REA 03:18:43].</pre></div><div data-component-name="PreformattedTextBlockToDOM" data-sanitized-class="preformatted-block"><label contenteditable="false" data-sanitized-class="hide-text">Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published</label><pre data-sanitized-class="text"><strong>           STEVEN BONNELL </strong><a href="https://emea01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fyoutube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3D1X_KdkoGxSs%26t%3D11926&amp;data=05%7C02%7C%7C062b7419721b4b5ff47608dc4963fa08%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C638465940946177509%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C0%7C%7C%7C&amp;sdata=ENP3UBPBY03yIv7LYg2d33xY%2B1dZsEr94%2BajVtJlxKk%3D&amp;reserved=0">(03:18:46)</a> Yes, I understand the state of mind, but for genocide, it’s called dolus specialis. It’s a highly special intent. Did you read the case?</pre></div><div data-component-name="PreformattedTextBlockToDOM" data-sanitized-class="preformatted-block"><label contenteditable="false" data-sanitized-class="hide-text">Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published</label><pre data-sanitized-class="text"><strong>          NORMAN FINKELSTEIN </strong><a href="https://emea01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fyoutube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3D1X_KdkoGxSs%26t%3D11927&amp;data=05%7C02%7C%7C062b7419721b4b5ff47608dc4963fa08%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C638465940946184449%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C0%7C%7C%7C&amp;sdata=zAJJequsrtalrfWTJcH9gxSYGuhXFWczOMF8fk8d3aM%3D&amp;reserved=0">(03:18:47)</a> Yeah.</pre></div><div data-component-name="PreformattedTextBlockToDOM" data-sanitized-class="preformatted-block"><label contenteditable="false" data-sanitized-class="hide-text">Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published</label><pre data-sanitized-class="text"><strong>         STEVEN BONNELL </strong><a href="https://emea01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fyoutube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3D1X_KdkoGxSs%26t%3D11934&amp;data=05%7C02%7C%7C062b7419721b4b5ff47608dc4963fa08%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C638465940946191553%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C0%7C%7C%7C&amp;sdata=%2FBGXhqdrCcPpoQyjyGPM1V%2FAMEtBShbzpRXPiQ4%2BxiE%3D&amp;reserved=0">(03:18:54)</a> It is a highly special intent [inaudible 03:18:56]-</pre></div><p>MENS REA (criminal intent, from the Latin for “guilty mind”) denotes the legal principle at stake while DOLUS SPECIALIS (criminal intent to commit genocide) denotes one application of it.  Here is an example of this usage from the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda:</p><blockquote><p><strong> </strong>“In considering whether a perpetrator had the requisite mens rea, regard must be had to his mode of participation in the given crime. Under the Bisesero Indictment, Elizaphan Ntakirutimana was convicted of aiding and abetting genocide while Gérard Ntakirutimana was convicted of committing genocide.  The requisite mens rea for aiding and abetting genocide is the accomplice’s knowledge of the genocidal intent of the principal perpetrators. From the evidence, the Trial Chamber found that the attackers in Bisesero had the specific genocidal intent. Furthermore, in the view of the Appëals Chamber, it is clear that Elizaphan Ntakirutimana knew of this intent. The Trial Chamber found that Elizaphan Ntakirutimana was present during several attacks on refugees in Bisesero, including situations where the armed attackers sang: ‘Exterminate t .... Let them; look for them everywhere; kill them; and ... exterminate them’, while chasing and killing Tutsis. It is from this, as well as from Iris transporting the armed attackers and directing them toward fleeing Tutsi refugees that the Trial Chamber found that Elizaphan Ntaldrutimana had the requisite intent to commit genocide, convicting him of aiding and abetting genocide. In the view of the Appeals Chamber, it is not necessary to consider whether the Trial Chamber correctly concluded that Elizaphan Ntakirutimana had the specific intent to commit genocide, given that it convicted him not of committing that crime, but rather of aiding and abetting genocide, a mode of criminal participation which does not require the specific intent. The Appeals Chamber finds that Elizaphan Ntakirutimana knew of the genocidal intent of the attackers whom he aided and abetted in the perpetration of genocide in Bisesero and, therefore, that he possessed the requisite mens rea for that crime.” (<a href="https://emea01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fucr.irmct.org%2FLegalRef%2FCMSDocStore%2FPublic%2FEnglish%2FJudgement%2FNotIndexable%2FICTR-96-17%2FMSC12461R0000545560.PDF&amp;data=05%7C02%7C%7C062b7419721b4b5ff47608dc4963fa08%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C638465940946198546%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C0%7C%7C%7C&amp;sdata=cFzQ%2FXHIrht7tTJkiJ9tDRIkGtkE%2F%2Fs42fzfmK8TTDY%3D&amp;reserved=0">https://ucr.irmct.org/LegalRef/CMSDocStore/Public/English/Judgement/NotIndexable/ICTR-96-17/MSC12461R0000545560.PDF</a>)</p></blockquote><p></p><p>Did these distinguished judges err by referring to mens rea and not dolus specialis?  I was stating the obvious that the critical point of contention in a genocide case is proving criminal INTENT (“That’s mens rea”), and of course everyone in the room understood that the threshold under the Genocide Convention is proving criminal INTENT to commit genocide.  Speaking of fantastic morons, I wonder how Mr. Vermicelli is doing.</p><div data-attrs='{"url":"https://normanfinkelstein.substack.com/subscribe?","text":"Subscribe","language":"en"}' data-component-name="SubscribeWidgetToDOM" data-sanitized-class="subscription-widget-wrap-editor"><div data-sanitized-class="subscription-widget show-subscribe"><div data-sanitized-class="preamble"><p data-sanitized-class="cta-caption">Thanks for reading Norman Finkelstein! 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guid: https://normanfinkelstein.substack.com/p/lex-fridman-asks-does-israel-target
title: LEX FRIDMAN ASKS: DOES ISRAEL TARGET CIVILIANS?
author: ;Norman Finkelstein
link: https://normanfinkelstein.substack.com/p/lex-fridman-asks-does-israel-target
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<p>In the course of a recent debate, moderator Lex Fridman posed the question, “Do you think there is a policy, top down from the IDF to target civilians?” (from the official transcript). Both Mouin Rabbani and I answered in the affirmative. Someone seated next to Professor Morris indignantly retorted that the notion of “a whole apparatus that tries to murder” was a “ridiculous argument.” To settle this matter, leaving not a smidgen of doubt, I recalled Gaza’s Great March of Return that began in March 2018. A distinguished independent international Commission of inquiry afterwards investigated these protests and produced a voluminous report running to fully 250 single-spaced pages (from which I will be quoting). The report states that at its inception the protests “could be characterized as a genuine popular festive event, with tens of thousands of people ... gathering around traditional activities, concerts, barbecues, cultural activities and sports games.” When Israel perpetrated a large scale massacre six weeks later on May 14, “anger over [the] killings and injuries drove groups of youths to engage in more violent actions.”</p><p>How did Israel respond to the overwhelmingly peaceful protesters as they gathered on March 30 and for weeks thereafter engaged in nonviolent demonstrations? It assembled along the perimeter of Gaza, according to Israeli officials, “specially trained snipers, in order to ensure accurate and measured use” of live ammunition. The IDF subsequently stated that “nothing was carried out uncontrolled; everything was accurate and measured, and we know where every bullet landed,” while then-Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman stated that “Israeli soldiers did what was necessary. I think all our soldiers deserve a medal.” The Commission of inquiry found that “demonstrators who were hundreds of meters away from the Israeli forces and visibly engaged in civilian activities were intentionally shot. Journalists and health workers who were clearly marked as such were shot, as were children, women, and persons with disabilities;” it also found “reasonable grounds to believe that the Israeli security forces killed and maimed Palestinian demonstrators who did not pose an imminent threat of death or serious injury to others when they were shot.” A large portion of the report documents in detail “emblematic” killings and injuries inflicted by Israel’s precision snipers. Herewith a tiny sample of these typical incidents as described by the Commission:</p><blockquote><p>Mohammad Obeid, a 24-year-old footballer for the Al Salah Sports Club…, took out his telephone and began recording a “selfie” video. An Israeli Security Forces sniper shot him in the right side of his right leg as he filmed himself approximately 150 meters from the separation fence. The bullet passed through his right leg and hit his left leg just above the knee, shattering the base of his femur.… He was standing alone. The area was quiet and calm, there was no shooting from the Israeli side, no tear gas, no stone throwing from the Palestinian side, no one had set fire to tires.… Mohammad was speaking calmly and filming himself when the ISF sniper shot him.</p></blockquote><p></p><blockquote><p>Yousef Kronz was a 19-year-old student journalist when he attended the demonstration.…He wore a blue “PRESS” vest and carried his photography equipment, including a camera and a tripod. He sat cross-legged on top of a sand dune to take photographs of the demonstrators, at least 800 meters from the separation fence. After approximately 40 minutes…, as he stood up, the ISF shot him with two bullets in immediate succession which hit him in the right knee and the left knee.… Yousef’s right leg was later amputated.</p></blockquote><p></p><blockquote><p>Abed Hawajri was a 41-year-old man…. The ISF shot him in the abdomen.… Abed was standing near the back of a crowd when shot, with nothing in his hands…, approximately 150 meters from the fence. He was taken to the hospital and died the same day.</p></blockquote><p></p><blockquote><p>A 16-year-old boy climbed onto high ground … approximately 300 meters from the separation fence. He was distributing sandwiches to demonstrators. The ISF then shot him in the face with a single bullet, which entered his nose and exited his skull. As a result of his injuries, he had a fractured jaw, is deaf in one ear and is unable to taste or smell.</p></blockquote><p></p><blockquote><p>Naji Abu Hojayeer was a 25-year-old mechanic…. An ISF soldier … shot him in the abdomen…. He died the same day.… Naji was standing 300 meters from the separation fence when he was shot. He was wrapped in a Palestinian flag, surrounded by hundreds of people.</p></blockquote><p></p><blockquote><p>Mohammad Ajouri, a 17-year-old … member of the Palestinian Athletics Organization…handed out onions and water to protestors to relieve symptoms of teargas inhalation. When he was approximately 300 meters away from the fence, ISF soldiers shot Mohammad in the back of his right leg. Doctors had to amputate his leg as a result.</p></blockquote><p></p><blockquote><p>Jihad Abu Jamous was a 30-year-old man…. ISF soldiers shot him in the head with live ammunition when he was approximately 250 to 300 meters from the fence. He died immediately.</p></blockquote><p></p><blockquote><p>Alaa Dali is a 21-year-old cyclist for the Palestinian Cycling Team. He had earned a slot to participate in the Asian Games in the summer of 2018.… An ISF sniper shot him in his right leg … as he stood alone watching the demonstration approximately 300 meters from the separation fence … while wearing his cycling gear and holding his bicycle. The nearest demonstrator was approximately 15 meters in front of him.… Doctors amputated Alaa’s leg above the knee in order to save his life.</p></blockquote><p></p><blockquote><p>Ali Khafajah was a university student…. ISF soldiers shot him in the head with live ammunition…. Ali was talking on his phone while standing in a crowd about 150 meters from the separation fence when he was shot.… He died at the hospital.</p></blockquote><p></p><blockquote><p>The ISF shot 14-year-old Mohammad Ayoub … in the head…. Mohammad was at least 200 meters from the separation fence when the ISF shot him.</p></blockquote><p></p><blockquote><p>The ISF shot 14-year-old Haytham Jamal in the abdomen. He was killed with a single shot as he stood in a crowd watching the ISF fire tear gas at another group of demonstrators.</p></blockquote><p></p><blockquote><p>Majdi Al Satari was an 11-year-old child…. He was shot in the head by live ammunition by an ISF sharpshooter while attending the protest…. Majdi died of severe brain lacerations ….Majdi was shot while standing … about 100 meters away from the security fence.</p></blockquote><p></p><blockquote><p>ISF soldiers shot 16-year-old Ahmad Abu Tyoor in the thigh as he danced a traditional Palestinian dance alone with his hands in the air, around 10-15 meters from the separation fence. The bullet severed his femoral artery and he died of his wounds the following day.</p></blockquote><p></p><blockquote><p>The ISF shot 11-year-old Nasser Mosabeh in the back of the head…. Nasser had been helping his two volunteer paramedic sisters treating injured people…. When the victim was shot, he was under a tree, 250 meters from the fence…. The bullet entered the right side of his head behind his ear and parts of his skull and brain were found close to his body.</p></blockquote><p></p><blockquote><p>Musa Abu Hassainen was a 35-year-old Civil Defense paramedic. ISF soldiers killed him with a shot to the chest … while he was wearing a high-visibility Civil Defense vest.… He was approximately 250-300 meters from the fence when ISF soldiers shot him.</p></blockquote><p></p><blockquote><p>Abed Abdullah Al Qotati was a 22-year-old volunteer paramedic…. ISF soldiers shot him in the chest in Rafah … as he was tending to an injured demonstrator near the separation fence. Abdullah was wearing a white paramedic jacket and carrying a red first-aid kit when the ISF soldiers shot him.… He died of bleeding and lacerations to his thoracic organs.</p></blockquote><p></p><blockquote><p>Tarek Loubani is a Canadian-Palestinian physician.… The ISF shot him as he stood among a group of paramedics wearing his hospital uniform. He was shot with one bullet that passed through both legs. Visibility was clear. There were no demonstrators near the group of medics and there was no shooting from the ISF either immediately before or after he was shot.</p></blockquote><p></p><blockquote><p>The ISF shot a 24-year-old freelance photojournalist … in the abdomen with live ammunition. He was standing with his back to the separation fence, around 300 meters away. When he was shot he was taking a break from photographing along with two other photojournalists from international news agencies. He was wearing a blue vest marked “PRESS” and the bullet entered his mid-section just below the vest.</p></blockquote><p></p><blockquote><p>The ISF shot 30-year-old journalist Yasser Murtaja with live ammunition in the lower abdomen as he covered the demonstration site…. Yasser was wearing a dark blue bulletproof vest clearly marked with the word “PRESS,” and a blue helmet.… He was standing approximately 300 meters from the separation fence, behind a large group of demonstrators. Visibility was good, and there were no other shots fired in the vicinity at the time. The gunshot hit him in the abdomen…, and [he] died of his injuries the following morning.</p></blockquote><p></p><blockquote><p>The ISF killed Ahmed Abu Hussein, a 24-year-old journalist…. Publicly available video footage of Ahmed’s shooting ... clearly shows him standing still taking photographs of demonstrators…. At the moment he was shot, Abu Hussein was approximately 250-300 meters from the fence. He was clearly marked as a journalist, wearing a blue helmet and a blue vest marked “PRESS.”</p></blockquote><p></p><blockquote><p>Fadi Abu Salmi was a 29-year-old double amputee…. The ISF shot him in the chest…. He died immediately. The ISF shot him … as he sat in his wheelchair under a tree approximately 250-300 meters from the separation fence with two friends.</p></blockquote><p></p><blockquote><p>Ahmad Abu Aqel was 24 years old…. He walked with crutches…. He sat down alone on a small sand hill … approximately 150 meters from the separation fence … with his back towards the fence. The ISF shot him in the back of the head…. He died the same day.</p></blockquote><p>***</p><p>The wonder is that in the here and now it can still be doubted that Israel targets civilians: Haven’t the UN, senior public officials, humanitarian organizations, and human rights groups explicitly and unequivocally denounced Israel for using starvation “as a weapon of war. Israel is provoking famine” (EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell)?</p><div data-attrs='{"url":"https://normanfinkelstein.substack.com/subscribe?","text":"Subscribe","language":"en"}' data-component-name="SubscribeWidgetToDOM" data-sanitized-class="subscription-widget-wrap-editor"><div data-sanitized-class="subscription-widget show-subscribe"><div data-sanitized-class="preamble"><p data-sanitized-class="cta-caption">Thanks for reading Norman Finkelstein! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.</p></div><div data-sanitized-class="fake-input-wrapper"><div data-sanitized-class="fake-input"></div><div data-sanitized-class="fake-button"></div></div></div></div>


guid: https://normanfinkelstein.substack.com/p/two-or-three-quotes-that-you-use
title: “TWO OR THREE QUOTES THAT YOU USE TO PUSH PEOPLE AROUND”
author: ;Norman Finkelstein
link: https://normanfinkelstein.substack.com/p/two-or-three-quotes-that-you-use
hash: �mi�l48��m���?
content:
<p>In a recent debate, someone seated next to Professor Benny Morris lectured me on the impossibility that Israel systematically breaches the laws of war. It was stated that Israel only approved and launched precision attacks directed at legitimate military targets:</p><p>“I think that it’s important that when we talk about military strikes or we talk about things especially involving bombings or drone attacks, these are things that are signed off by multiple different layers of command, by multiple people involved in an operation, including intelligence gathering, including weaponeering, and they also have typically lawyers involved.” (from the official transcript)</p><p>It was further stated that the whole of my contrary evidence comprises “two or three quotes that you use to push people around.”</p><p>In 2014 Israel launched Operation Protective Edge against Gaza. Peter Maurer, president of the International Committee of the Red Cross, observed after touring the ravaged Strip, “I’ve never seen such massive destruction ever before.” According to the vagrant seated next to Professor Morris, “I think Protective Edge was 2014, but I’m just saying that the coordination in the military is pretty tight.” Was this destruction then the result of “pretty tight” precision attacks directed at military targets? An unimpeachable source definitively answers this question. Eyewitness accounts by Israeli combatants were compiled in a large dossier by Breaking the Silence, an Israeli non-governmental organization comprising former Israeli soldiers (“This is How We Fought in Gaza,” 2014). None of the hundreds of testimonies collected by this organization over more than a decade has ever been proven false, and all of them were approved for publication by the IDF censor. The leadership of Breaking the Silence is not conventionally leftist—it does not support the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, opposes criminal prosecution of Israeli officers, and prudently fudges its own findings—while most of the soldier-witnesses themselves do not even appear contrite. Here’s a tiny sample of the “pretty tight” precision attacks directed exclusively at military targets:</p><p>“Shooting to kill. This is combat in an urban area, we’re in a war zone. The saying was: ‘There’s no such thing there as a person who is uninvolved.’ In that situation, anyone there is involved.”</p><p>*</p><p>“People who look at you from the window of a house that is in your designated area—they, to put it mildly, won’t look anymore.”</p><p>*</p><p>“The inclination is to avoid taking risks—rather to destroy everything we come across.”</p><p>*</p><p>“The assumption being that the moment we went into Gaza, anyone who dared poke his head out was a terrorist. . . , you are allowed to open fire.”</p><p>*</p><p>“The idea was, if you spot something—shoot. . . . Whether it posed a threat or not wasn’t a question, and that makes sense to me. If you shoot someone in Gaza it’s cool, no big deal. . . . They made it clear that there were no uninvolved civilians.”</p><p>*</p><p>“When we left after the operation, it was just a barren stretch of desert. . . . We spoke about it a lot amongst ourselves, the guys from the company, how crazy the amount of damage we did there was. I quote: ‘Listen man, it’s crazy what went on in there,’ ‘Listen man, we really messed them up,’ ‘Fuck, check it out, there’s nothing at all left . . . , it’s nothing but desert now, that’s crazy.’”</p><p>*</p><p>“I remember that the level of destruction looked insane to me.”</p><p>*</p><p>“The formal rules of engagement—I don’t know if for all soldiers—were, ‘Anything still there is as good as dead. Anything you see moving in the neighborhoods you’re in is not supposed to be there. The Palestinian civilians know they are not supposed to be there. Therefore whoever you see there, you kill.’ The commander [gave the order] ‘Anything you see in the neighborhoods you’re in, anything within a reasonable distance, say between zero and 200 meters—is dead on the spot. No authorization needed.’ . . . The working assumption states—and I want to stress that this is a quote of sorts: that anyone located in an IDF area, in areas the IDF took over—is not [considered] a civilian. That is the working assumption. We entered Gaza with that in mind, with an insane amount of firepower.”</p><p>*</p><p>“The instruction was: ‘Anyone you identify in the area—you shoot.’”</p><p>*</p><p>“It all looked like a science fiction movie . . . serious levels of destruction everywhere. . . . Everything was really in ruins. And non-stop fire all the time.”</p><p>*</p><p>“The instructions are to shoot right away. Whoever you spot—be they armed or unarmed, no matter what. The instructions are very clear. Any person you run into, that you see with your eyes—shoot to kill. It’s an explicit instruction.”</p><p>*</p><p>“I remember it, all the tanks were standing in a row, and I personally asked my commander: ‘Where are we firing at?’ He told me: ‘Pick wherever you feel like it.’”</p><p>*</p><p>“Before the entrance on foot to Gaza, a crazy amount of artillery was fired at the entire area. . . . Before a tank makes any movement it fires, every time. Those guys were trigger happy, totally crazy. Those were their orders, I’m certain of it, there’s no chance anybody would just go around shooting like that.”</p><p>*</p><p>“The explosions’ effects cause major amounts of damage, but that doesn’t interest anyone. ‘Use it, use it, explosives can’t be taken back,’ the platoon commander says, ‘I don’t want to leave explosives on me.’”</p><p>*</p><p>“I don’t really remember what was discussed in terms of formal instructions before we entered, and after we entered nobody really cared about the formal instructions anyway. That’s what we knew. Every tank commander knew, and even the simple soldiers knew,</p><p>that if something turns out to be not OK, they can say they saw something suspicious. They’ve got backup. They won’t ever be tried.”</p><p>*</p><p>“Our view was of the center of the Strip. Let’s say it was a real fireworks display. From a distance it looked pretty cool. . . . If you looked through a night vision scope you saw crazy wreckage, it was a real trip.”</p><p>*</p><p>“You’re shooting at anything that moves—and also at what isn’t moving, crazy amounts. . . . It also becomes a bit like a computer game, totally cool and real.”</p><p>*</p><p>“There were no rules of engagement. If you see anyone in that area, that person is a terrorist.”</p><p>*</p><p>“They went in just to destroy stuff. Just to purposely destroy stuff.”</p><p>*</p><p>“The rules of engagement were very, very lax. I wouldn’t say that they shot anything that moved—but they didn’t request authorization to fire either. There was no such thing as requesting authorization. Just fire.”</p><p>*</p><p>“That’s how it was, really—every tank just firing whatever it wanted to. And during the offensive, no one shot at us—not before it, not during it, and not after it. I remember that when we started withdrawing with the tanks, I looked toward the neighborhood, and I could simply see an entire neighborhood up in flames, like in the movies. Columns of smoke everywhere, the neighborhood in pieces, houses on the ground, and like, people were living there, but nobody had fired at us yet. We were firing purposelessly.”</p><p>*</p><p>“It was total destruction in there—the photos on line are child’s play compared to what we saw there in reality. . . . I never saw anything like it.”</p><p>*</p><p>“We were firing purposelessly all day long. Hamas was nowhere to be seen. . . . And the rules of engagement were pretty easy-going—I was shocked when I first heard them.”</p><p>*</p><p>“Everything is a suspicious spot. This is Gaza, you’re firing at everything.”</p><p>*</p><p>“They explained what you do if you see a civilian. They explained that that’s the way it is in combat. It was shoot to kill immediately if you see stuff. . . . Really, they did say, ‘If you see someone—shoot him.’”</p><p>*</p><p>“If it looks like a man, shoot. It was simple: You’re in a motherfucking combat zone. A few hours before you went in the whole area was bombed, if there’s anyone there who doesn’t clearly look innocent, you apparently need to shoot that person.”</p><p>*</p><p>“The unfathomable number of dead on one of the sides, the unimaginable level of destruction, the way militant cells and people were regarded as targets and not as living beings—that’s something that troubles me.”</p><p>*</p><p>“It’s destruction on a whole other level. . . . We just couldn’t believe it.”</p><p>*</p><p>“The briefing on rules of engagement was [to open first at], ‘Anything you think you should [open fire at]. . . . Anyone you spot that you can be positive is not the IDF.’ The only emphasis regarding rules of engagement was to make sure you weren’t firing at IDF forces, but other than that, ‘Any person you see.’ From the very start they told us, ‘Shoot to kill.’”</p><p>*</p><p>“The air force carries out an insane amount of strikes in Gaza during an operation like ‘Protective Edge.’”</p><p>*</p><p>“Shells are being fired all the time. Even if we aren’t actually going to enter: shells, shells, shells. A suspicious structure, an open area, a field, a place where a tunnel shaft could be—fire, fire, fire.”</p><p>***</p><p>If “these are things that are signed off by multiple different layers of command, by multiple people involved in an operation, including intelligence gathering, including weaponeering, and they also have typically lawyers involved,” if “the coordination in the military is pretty tight”—then, doesn’t that, on the contrary, PROVE that Israel has premeditatedly, systematically and egregiously breached the laws of war?</p><p>***</p><p>The collection fittingly concludes with this testimony:</p><p>“You leave Gaza and the most obvious question is, ‘Did you kill anybody?’ What can you do—even if you’ll meet the most left-wing girl in the world, eventually she’ll start thinking, ‘Did you ever kill somebody, or not.’ And what can you do about it, most people in our society consider that to be a badge of honor. So everybody wants to come out of there with that feeling of satisfaction.”</p><div data-attrs='{"url":"https://normanfinkelstein.substack.com/subscribe?","text":"Subscribe","language":"en"}' data-component-name="SubscribeWidgetToDOM" data-sanitized-class="subscription-widget-wrap-editor"><div data-sanitized-class="subscription-widget show-subscribe"><div data-sanitized-class="preamble"><p data-sanitized-class="cta-caption">Thanks for reading Norman Finkelstein! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.</p></div><div data-sanitized-class="fake-input-wrapper"><div data-sanitized-class="fake-input"></div><div data-sanitized-class="fake-button"></div></div></div></div>


guid: https://normanfinkelstein.substack.com/p/you-can-run-but-you-cant-hide-boxer
title: “YOU CAN RUN BUT YOU CAN’T HIDE” (boxer Joe Louis)
author: ;Norman Finkelstein
link: https://normanfinkelstein.substack.com/p/you-can-run-but-you-cant-hide-boxer
hash: E����L}~�����
content:
<p>In a recent <a href="https://lexfridman.com/israel-palestine-debate-transcript/">debate</a> moderated by Lex Fridman, I challenged Professor Benny Morris to answer my detailed book chapter on his scholarship (“History by Subtraction,” in my book Knowing Too Much). The point at issue was simple and straightforward: Morris has repudiated his original historical conclusions without demonstrating why his old evidence was wrong or even acknowledging his dramatic reversal. For example, Morris originally stated that “the fear of territorial displacement and dispossession was to be the chief motor of Arab antagonism to Zionism” and, further, that this Arab fear was rationally based: “transfer was inevitable and inbuilt into Zionism—because it sought to transform a land which was ‘Arab’ into a ‘Jewish’ state and a Jewish state could not have arisen without a major displacement of Arab population.” In other words, if Palestinian Arabs opposed Zionism, it was because the Zionists intended to expel them. Morris adduced a wealth of primary sources to sustain this contention. But he has now done a volte-face. He purports that transfer “had not been part of the original Zionist ideology,” and it was only later adopted by the Zionist movement in reaction to “expulsionist or terroristic violence by the Arabs.” Expulsion has inexplicably metamorphosed from an “inevitable and inbuilt” tenet of Zionism into a reaction “triggered” by expulsionist Arab threats and assaults. The root cause of the conflict was no longer the rational Arab fear of Zionist expulsion but, on the contrary, an irrational Arab hatred of Jews. Morris thus displaced the moral onus of the conflict from Zionist expulsion to Arab expulsion. It’s hard to conceive a more drastic revision. A historian is of course within his right to reconsider his prior conclusions. But Morris doesn’t provide a shred of evidence that his original conclusions were wrong; he doesn’t even acknowledge that he has diametrically reversed himself. Indeed, his current rightwing opinions amount to a negation of his very own scholarship. In the debate Morris clearly stated that he would accept my challenge (2:37:13). Alas, he recently informed me that he wouldn’t be responding. I cannot say I was altogether surprised. Discretion, after all, is the better part of valor. Herewith my reply to Professor Morris’s abrupt change of heart:</p><p><strong>“I am in receipt of your curt reply: ‘I'm afraid the tone of the chapter precludes a serious dialogue.’ You can obviously exercise the option of establishing at the outset that you find the tone of my critique objectionable, even outrageous, yet still proceed to answer the substantive points at issue. The great sociologist Raul Hilberg—he was, incidentally, a rightwing Republican and fastidious in his professional comportment—had this to say during my abortive tenure bid: ‘leaving aside the question of style—and here, I agree that it’s not my style either—the substance of the matter is most important here, particularly because Finkelstein, when he published this book [The Holocaust Industry], was alone. It takes an enormous amount of academic courage to speak the truth when no one else is out there to support him.’ I would further submit that you yourself are not exactly renowned as a paragon of academic civility. In response to my close parsing of your book on the Palestinian refugee question, here’s how you described me and my scholarship in an academic journal: ‘forever a purveyor of Jewish malice,’ ‘palpable nonsense,’ ‘dishonesty of a high order,’ ‘dishonest and reprehensible point,’ ‘trickery,’ ‘twisted, distorted, and hoodwinked,’ ‘spurious, twisted scholarship,’ etc. (Oddly, you concluded by deploring my lack of ‘civilized academic argumentation.’) I have nonetheless, and unhesitatingly, acknowledged the indispensability of your scholarship. I did not exploit your adjectival frenzy as a pretext to evade engaging your work. Quite the contrary. I plunged into your oeuvre, read and reread it, before proceeding to critique it. I should hope that you will reconsider your decision. Millions of viewers of the Lex Fridman debate heard you commit yourself to answering me, and many—not least myself—look forward with great curiosity to your learned response. It would be most regrettable if your failure to stand by your word is construed as an act of intellectual cowardice—to wit, you couldn’t coherently answer my substantive claim that you have reversed your original scholarly findings without adducing any new evidence.”</strong></p>


guid: https://normanfinkelstein.substack.com/p/starve-or-leave
title: STARVE OR LEAVE
author: ;Norman Finkelstein
link: https://normanfinkelstein.substack.com/p/starve-or-leave
hash: SfYA"��<�'��)�-
content:
<p>Let’s cut to the chase: of course Israel deliberately targeted the WCK relief convoy. Not only do all the material facts point to this conclusion. There also aren’t any grounds to doubt it; the heavy burden of proof falls on Israel to demonstrate that it was not a premeditated strike. On October 8, 2023, Israel announced a total blockade of Gaza: no food, fuel, water, or electricity would be allowed in. The rationale behind this order was laid out by former Israeli National Security Council head Giora Eiland: “Israel should not allow any economic assistance. The people should be told that they have two choices: to stay and to starve, or to leave.” For the next two weeks, Israel blocked the entry of any aid into Gaza. Flagrant mass murder not being a good look, President Biden counseled Prime Minister Netanyahu to lighten up a bit. Israel tweaked its murder plan so as to pass muster with its enablers in Washington. But it did not alter the essence of its game-plan. Human Rights Watch documented in December that Israel was “using starvation of civilians as a method of warfare.” Normally reticent senior international and humanitarian officials have in recent weeks openly charged that “Starvation is used as a weapon of war. Israel is provoking famine." (Josop Borrell, EU foreign policy chief) If—as everyone seems to agree—Israel’s declared objective is to starve Gaza’s civilian population, then: HOW COULD IT NOT PLUG THE HOLES IN ITS MURDER PLAN BY TARGETING INTERNATIONAL RELIEF ORGANIZATIONS? And in fact it’s mission accomplished: international aid operations in Gaza have largely ceased “as a result of recent attacks on humanitarian workers by the IDF.” (“Letter to the White House and National Security Council,” April 4, 2024) But it might be wondered: Wasn’t it foolhardy for Israel to risk international opprobrium? Not at all. Israel has targeted by various metrics an historically unprecedented number of hospitals, medics, journalists, and aid workers; it has killed an unprecedented number of women and children. It is ever testing the limits of the permissible. So far, it’s successfully crossed every downward threshold into barbarism with impunity. It’s impossible to predict in advance which story will be picked up by the fickle international media and which story will just get passing notice. The latest atrocity could just as easily have been subsumed in a paragraph on the inside pages under the title “Aid workers killed in Gaza.” The only error Israel might have—it’s too soon to tell—committed was anticipating that it would get another free pass. Indeed, Israel’s news bureau in the US, the New York Times, is already spinning the story to exonerate Israel: “botched operation ... mistakes and misjudgments ... accidental killing.” (“Back-to-Back Israeli Strikes Show Tragic Gaps in Choosing Targets,” April 4, 2024) It’s also being said that it’s not senior Israeli officials but on the contrary IDF field commanders and soldiers who are out of control, or that Israel’s resort to AI is behind the hecatomb in Gaza. That’s all bullshit. During its periodic “mowing-the-lawn” hi-tech murder sprees in Gaza (Operation Cast Lead, Operation Protective Edge), Israel has always used DISCRIMINATELY INDISCRIMINATE firepower to terrorize Gaza’s civilian population into submission. The nub of the problem is neither disciplinary nor technical. It’s Israel’s murder plan: to make Gaza unlivable and to force its people to decide—starve or leave.</p><div data-attrs='{"url":"https://normanfinkelstein.substack.com/subscribe?","text":"Subscribe","language":"en"}' data-component-name="SubscribeWidgetToDOM" data-sanitized-class="subscription-widget-wrap-editor"><div data-sanitized-class="subscription-widget show-subscribe"><div data-sanitized-class="preamble"><p data-sanitized-class="cta-caption">Thanks for reading Norman Finkelstein! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.</p></div><div data-sanitized-class="fake-input-wrapper"><div data-sanitized-class="fake-input"></div><div data-sanitized-class="fake-button"></div></div></div></div>


guid: https://normanfinkelstein.substack.com/p/israels-moral-dilemma-april-5-2024
title: ISRAEL’S MORAL DILEMMA (April 5, 2024)
author: ;Norman Finkelstein
link: https://normanfinkelstein.substack.com/p/israels-moral-dilemma-april-5-2024
hash: �B�=��QQ��W�<
content:
<p>This morning the New York Times reported the findings of the IDF “investigation” into the WCK killings: “grave mistake ... errors in decision-making.” It’s a mystery why the Times ran this redundant story. It had already determined what happened yesterday BEFORE the “investigation”: “mistakes and misjudgments.” How did the Times know this ahead of the “investigation”? The IDF told it so before the “investigation.” The Times reporters covering today’s story are named Aaron Boxerman and Adam Ragson. Both of them previously worked in Jerusalem for the Israeli propaganda rag sheet, Times of Israel. Theirs must have been a most smooth transition from Israel’s Jerusalem disinformation bureau to Israel’s New York disinformation bureau. Still, wouldn’t a cost-cutting expert recommend that the Times just reprint IDF press releases without the intermediary of “reporters”?</p><p>The IDF fired on the second and third cars in the WCK caravan after survivors of the first targeted assassination sought refuge in them. Targeting the survivors of an initial attack is IDF standard operating procedure; one of the tricks of the (satanic) trade. Here are a couple of typical examples from Operation Protective Edge (2014):</p><div data-attrs='{"url":"https://normanfinkelstein.substack.com/subscribe?","text":"Subscribe","language":"en"}' data-component-name="SubscribeWidgetToDOM" data-sanitized-class="subscription-widget-wrap-editor"><div data-sanitized-class="subscription-widget show-subscribe"><div data-sanitized-class="preamble"><p data-sanitized-class="cta-caption">Thanks for reading Norman Finkelstein! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.</p></div><div data-sanitized-class="fake-input-wrapper"><div data-sanitized-class="fake-input"></div><div data-sanitized-class="fake-button"></div></div></div></div><p>A MULTIPLE DRONE-MISSILE ATTACK wounded nine civilians, including three children, in the vicinity of a mosque. Another drone missile targeted an ambulance just as it headed back to the hospital loaded with several of the wounded, incinerating eight people, including the three children, two medics, and a volunteer. Yet another drone-missile attack targeted a second ambulance that arrived belatedly on the scene. A witness recalled, “What we saw was really horrible. The ambulance looked like a tree branch that was completely charred. The bodies had no parts—no legs, no hands—they were severely burned.” (Amnesty International, “Black Friday”)</p><p>*</p><p>THE ROOF OF A HOME WAS HIT by high-explosive mortar shells that killed eight family members, including seven children aged between three and nine, who were playing there, and their grandfather aged seventy. Israel purported that the attack was in response to an “anti-tank missile” and a “burst of mortar” fired from the neighborhood that injured one soldier. The IDF then fired “another round of shells” ten minutes later “just as three ambulances and the paramedics arrived at the scene,” which also hit “many of the people who had gathered around the [family] house to try and help survivors.” A UN investigation headed by a New York State judge quoted a journalist eyewitness who was “stunned” by the “apparent targeting of ambulances and journalists who had rushed to provide assistance to the injured and cover the incident.” It further noted that eyewitness accounts “are corroborated by two video recordings,” one of which showed a “dying cameraman continuing to film, and the ambulances being hit by a rocket.” As a result of the second round of shelling, 23 persons were killed and 178 others injured. (“Report of the Detailed Findings of the Independent Committee of Inquiry”)</p><p>*</p><p>The Times reports that, on account of the “errors” in the WCK massacre, two officers would be dismissed from their positions and three others would suffer a “reprimand.”</p><p>Although naive observers were appalled at such leniency, this was by Israeli standards actually a harsh punishment. During Operation Cast Lead (2008-9), Israel killed 1,400 Gazans, up to 80 percent of whom were civilians and 350 children. Human Rights organizations documented massive war crimes committed by the IDF. How did Israel punish the perpetrators? A handful of soldiers suffered disciplinary sanctions such as an officer who was “severely reprimanded,” while the harshest sentence meted out was a seven-and-a-half-month prison term to a soldier who had stolen a credit card. During their attack on a humanitarian convoy of vessels headed towards Gaza (2010), Israeli commandos killed 10 unarmed passengers aboard the flagship Mavi Marmara. The punishment? A corporal was sentenced to five months in prison for stealing a laptop computer, two camera lenses, and a compass. During Operation Protective Edge, Israel killed 2,200 Gazans, of whom 70 percent were civilians and 550 children. “I can say without hesitation,” Gaza specialist Sara Roy of Harvard University observed, “that I have never seen the kind of human, physical, and psychological destruction that I see there today.” The punishment? Three Israeli soldiers were indicted for stealing $600 from a Palestinian home.</p><p>Truth be told, Israel confronts an excruciating dilemma. It is a war crime to deliberately target or indiscriminately attack a civilian or civilian object. The World Bank’s “Gaza Strip Interim Damage Assessment” (March 2024) reports that since October 7 Israel has, among other things, damaged or destroyed 290,820 housing units (of which 76% were totally destroyed), and as a result “more than 1.08 million people will not be able to return to their homes.” It has killed more than 31,000 Gazans (of whom 70% are women and children) and wounded 75,000 others. The objective of the Israeli assault has been to, once and for all, solve the Gaza “problem.” It has carried out a deliberately indiscriminate assault targeting Gaza’s entire civilian population and infrastructure. If this or that killed Gazan proves to be a militant or this or that destroyed housing unit stands above a tunnel, it amounts to little more than the margin of error in the totality of this onslaught. Here, then, is Israel’s moral dilemma: were it to prosecute every war criminal in its ranks, there wouldn’t be anyone left to finish the job in Gaza.</p><div data-attrs='{"url":"https://normanfinkelstein.substack.com/subscribe?","text":"Subscribe","language":"en"}' data-component-name="SubscribeWidgetToDOM" data-sanitized-class="subscription-widget-wrap-editor"><div data-sanitized-class="subscription-widget show-subscribe"><div data-sanitized-class="preamble"><p data-sanitized-class="cta-caption">Thanks for reading Norman Finkelstein! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.</p></div><div data-sanitized-class="fake-input-wrapper"><div data-sanitized-class="fake-input"></div><div data-sanitized-class="fake-button"></div></div></div></div>


guid: https://normanfinkelstein.substack.com/p/the-insipid-flatness-of-our-present
author: ;Norman Finkelstein
link: https://normanfinkelstein.substack.com/p/the-insipid-flatness-of-our-present
hash: � q�{���A�f��<Z
title:
“THE INSIPID FLATNESS OF OUR PRESENT BOURGEOISIE IS TO BE MEASURED BY THE ALTITUDE OF ITS ‘GREAT INTELLECTS’” (Karl Marx, CAPITAL)

content:
<p>The last time billionaire Bill Ackman was heard from, he perpetrated the most brazen assault on academic freedom in our country’s history. He engineered a coup that toppled Harvard president Claudine Gay by publicly threatening to withhold megabucks in alumni contributions if the Board of Trustees did not dismiss her. What was Gay’s crime? She was insufficiently repressive of student outrage at Israel’s genocide in Gaza. It is not, however, as if Ackman is a Zionist. Social critic Irving Howe once quipped that, if you have enough money to purchase a one-way ticket to Israel but don’t, then you’re not a Zionist. So no, Ackman is not a lover of Zion. Rather, he’s a typical Jewish supremacist. The notion that a Jew—or, in the case at hand, the Jewish State—can be anything less than the paragon of virtue amounts to a blood libel. When Ackman’s coup plans began to falter, he went after Gay for plagiarism. But, alas, Yahweh proved to be a mischievous God. It was miraculously revealed that Ackman’s wife had herself plagiarized in her doctoral dissertation. The difference was that Gay lifted passages from scholarly publications, whereas Ackman’s wife plagiarized Wikipedia. In a world replete with ironic coincidences that almost make one a believer, it appears that Ackman’s wife was channeling Mr. VermiNcelli, or vice versa.</p><p>In any event, Ackman is back. Now that the Gaza genocide that he facilitated is getting a bad rap, Ackman’s decided to cover his pig’s feet with the philanthropist’s white gloves. He’s touting enlightened “high-level thoughts on a potential solution to Gaza.” Except as an articulation of his infinite self-regard, it’s hard to make out what exactly makes his insipid banalities “high-level.” The essence of his supposed genius comes down to two steps. (1) Rebuild Gaza as a “model city” with “modern infrastructure.” Open any book on the so-called peace process and you’ll come across the same tired cliché of turning Gaza into the Singapore of the Middle East. “Imagine if Hamas had just a 2 percent interest in building Gaza,” peace process macher Dennis Ross pontificated a few months ago, “they could have turned Gaza into Singapore." (2) The hitch in this plan is, of course, political: Gazans want to control their own fate, while Ackman wants them to be “governed by a consortium of Gulf states.” To square this circle, Ackman proposes a “high level” solution: defeat Hamas. How original. In his words, “Civilians in Rafah are moved to a refugee camp safe zone built in the Negev desert adjoining Gaza,” so that “the IDF destroys Hamas.” Setting aside that this scenario is as fantastical as his Emerald City over the rainbow, it also prompts this heretical thought: If Hamas must be destroyed because it killed 1,200 Israelis including 36 children on October 7, shouldn’t the population of Israel also be moved to a refugee safe zone built in the Negev desert so that Hamas can destroy Israel’s genocidal government and army that have murdered to date 32,000 Gazans including 13,000 children?</p><p>Ackman requests constructive criticism. Here’s mine: Stop making a fool of yourself by defending your wife’s plagiarism and marketing your drivel as “high-level thoughts.”</p><div data-attrs='{"url":"https://normanfinkelstein.substack.com/subscribe?","text":"Subscribe","language":"en"}' data-component-name="SubscribeWidgetToDOM" data-sanitized-class="subscription-widget-wrap-editor"><div data-sanitized-class="subscription-widget show-subscribe"><div data-sanitized-class="preamble"><p data-sanitized-class="cta-caption">Thanks for reading Norman Finkelstein! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.</p></div><div data-sanitized-class="fake-input-wrapper"><div data-sanitized-class="fake-input"></div><div data-sanitized-class="fake-button"></div></div></div></div>


guid: https://normanfinkelstein.substack.com/p/when-its-okay-to-nuke-a-country
title: WHEN IT’S OKAY TO NUKE A COUNTRY
author: ;Norman Finkelstein
link: https://normanfinkelstein.substack.com/p/when-its-okay-to-nuke-a-country
hash: P!ȉT����H$hI�
content:
<p>Historian Benny Morris supports Prime Minister Netanyahu’s resolve to attack Rafah (“Israel’s Security Depends on Rafah,” NY Times, 11 April 2024). Normally home to 280,000 Gazans, Rafah now also contains 1.2 million internal refugees swept into the city during Israel’s massive ethnic cleansing the past six months. It’s probably the most densely populated spot on God’s earth. In a disingenuous wordplay, Morris designates these 1.5 million Gazans a “human shield.” This locution denotes the involuntary conscription by an armed force of civilians to protect itself. But Hamas didn’t conscript these forsaken souls as shields; it was Israel that drove them there while now purporting that it must kill them to get at Hamas. Morris’s article is couched in this propagandistic idiom. He still refers to the casualty figures as based on the “Hamas-controlled Gaza Health Ministry” even as independent professional studies have confirmed these figures, and they are almost certainly an underestimate. He states that the current 33,000 figure “includes the more than 12,000 Hamas fighters the Israeli military claims to have killed these past six months.” In fact, the casualty figures Israel alleged in its previous “operations”—dutifully repeated by Morris in his books—wildly differed from the findings of human rights groups, while Israel has bandied about a mass of wildly discrepant figures of militants killed during the past six months. The IDF hasn’t even a clue how many Hamas combatants have been killed: it’s almost certain that most militants have fallen victim anonymously alongside civilians in the course of Israel’s deliberately indiscriminate terror assault on Gazan society; there have only been a handful of “battles” where Hamas corpses can ultimately be counted while, judging by previous Israeli operations—in which its “crazy” and “insane” firepower overwhelmed Hamas fighters and thus they rarely made it to actual combat—there cannot have been many Hamas battlefield corpses in the latest round to add up; the IDF doesn’t usually enter the Hamas tunnels it discovers but just explodes the shafts; Israel routinely classifies any dead adult male it stumbles upon during its “operations” as a Hamas “terrorist.” Meanwhile, Israel’s prime minister recently avowed that the IDF has killed only one civilian for every Hamas militant it killed. Does Morris believe this?</p><p>Morris justified an Israeli assault on the grounds that Rafah is the last stronghold of Hamas in Gaza; that an “expansive Hamas tunnel system” lies beneath Rafah; and that the “Hamas battalions” numbering “thousands of its fighters” ensconced in these tunnels must be “obliterated.” How does he know all this? Yes, Israel alleges that Hamas has built 450 miles of tunnels beneath Gaza. But that figure exceeds in length the famed sprawling, ramified New York City subway system (430 miles of tunnels), and, if true, every 1,200 hundred feet along minuscule Gaza’s 5-mile-long width, there is yet another 25-mile-long tunnel stretching its full length. Is that credible? It’s also anyone’s guess whether “Hamas battalions” are hiding in Rafah. Just a few months ago Israel alleged that Hamas’s command-and-control center lurked beneath al-Shifa hospital. Then it alleged that Hamas’s leaders had fled to Khan Younis. And on and on. Even as each claim proved to be false, they did nonetheless serve as a useful pretext to pulverize the infrastructure of another parcel of land as Israel proceeded to make Gaza uninhabitable. It seems that—with an assist from Morris—that fate now awaits Rafah.</p><div data-attrs='{"url":"https://normanfinkelstein.substack.com/subscribe?","text":"Subscribe","language":"en"}' data-component-name="SubscribeWidgetToDOM" data-sanitized-class="subscription-widget-wrap-editor"><div data-sanitized-class="subscription-widget show-subscribe"><div data-sanitized-class="preamble"><p data-sanitized-class="cta-caption">Thanks for reading Norman Finkelstein! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.</p></div><div data-sanitized-class="fake-input-wrapper"><div data-sanitized-class="fake-input"></div><div data-sanitized-class="fake-button"></div></div></div></div><p>Morris’s admonition that Hamas must suffer total defeat places him squarely within the consensus of Israeli politics. But the Israeli political spectrum is off the spectrum. There’s no center let alone left in Israeli politics: there’s only a right, a far right, and an ultra right. On the US political spectrum Morris’s opinion is echoed in a new publication by the neocon Jewish Institute for National Security of America: Hamas must be “effectively destroyed”; Israel must inflict a “visible and overwhelming defeat of Hamas.” (JINSA, “The Day After: A Plan for Gaza,” March 2024) The lead authors of this report are John Hannah, Elliott Abrams, and Lewis Libby. This trio was last heard from when they played crucial roles in the George W. Bush administration’s decision to unseat Saddam. So if you’re curious where Morris is coming from, think of the—crazed—mindset that brought us Iraq.</p><p>Morris anticipates that if the attack on Rafah goes ahead, “the additional civilian casualties and the attendant further disruption of humanitarian aid ... will ratchet up condemnation of Israel’s conduct by its Western allies, led by the United States.” Notice his one and only concern is that the assault won’t go over well in the West. A just-released report by the respected International Crisis Group observes that Israel’s “stated goals of destroying Hamas and toppling the government” cannot be reconciled with “saving what remains of Gaza and preventing mass death from starvation and disease.” It’s one or the other. The report concludes that “The goal of toppling Hamas cannot justify abetting a famine that could claim tens of thousands of lives.” (“Stopping Famine in Gaza,” April 2024) But the moral dilemma of pursuing an assault that could result in a hecatomb doesn’t even register for Morris. His moral calculus only reckons the diplomatic fallout. Here again, he is an Everyman Israeli.</p><p>Professor Morris was once a serious historian. Like everyone else, he had his biases, but his books were replete with rich archival findings. But, per the generality of Israelis, he has in recent decades become so consumed by hatred and contempt of Palestinians, so given to bile-filled <a href="https://www.haaretz.com/2004-01-08/ty-article/survival-of-the-fittest/0000017f-e874-dc7e-adff-f8fdc87a0000">rants</a>, that not a word he says can any longer be trusted. (I publicly challenged Morris during a debate to answer my stringent parsing of his recent scholarly output. Morris agreed—but then abruptly, albeit predictably, backed out after reading my analysis.) He has exploited his deserved past reputation to disseminate Israeli state propaganda. Like the JINSA neocons, he has been repeatedly exhorting the US to join Israel in an attack on Iran. What’s more, he has even rattled the threat that, if Israel has to go it alone, it will have no recourse except to nuke Iran:</p><p>“Realistic leaders in Washington and Jerusalem cannot allow Teheran to have the Bomb. And, in the coming months or year, must do what is necessary to halt and destroy the Iranian nuclear project. And if this involves a protracted, conventional air assault on the Iranian nuclear facilities—then so be it. The Iranians will have brought that assault on their own heads. And, if conventional weapons cannot do the job—and if Israel is forced to go the course alone, it is doubtful that its conventional capabilities will be sufficient to destroy the Iranian nuclear project. Then non-conventional weaponry will have to be used to stymie the project. And many innocent Iranians will die. But the Iranians will have brought this upon themselves by bringing to power and leaving in power a leadership that will have forced Israelis to do what was necessary in order to survive.” (“A Second Holocaust?: The threat to Israel” (2 May 2008; <a href="http://www.mideastfreedomforum.org/de/node/66">www.mideastfreedomforum.org/de/node/66</a>)</p><p>It’s a most intriguing proposition. If the Iranian people elected their current government, then, if they are wiped out in a nuclear attack, “they will have brought this upon themselves.” Doesn’t it then follow that, if the Israeli people elected their current genocidal government—indeed, according to polls, overwhelmingly support the genocide—then “they will have brought this upon themselves” if ...?</p><div data-attrs='{"url":"https://normanfinkelstein.substack.com/subscribe?","text":"Subscribe","language":"en"}' data-component-name="SubscribeWidgetToDOM" data-sanitized-class="subscription-widget-wrap-editor"><div data-sanitized-class="subscription-widget show-subscribe"><div data-sanitized-class="preamble"><p data-sanitized-class="cta-caption">Thanks for reading Norman Finkelstein! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.</p></div><div data-sanitized-class="fake-input-wrapper"><div data-sanitized-class="fake-input"></div><div data-sanitized-class="fake-button"></div></div></div></div>


guid: https://normanfinkelstein.substack.com/p/samson-and-cassandra
title: SAMSON AND CASSANDRA
author: ;Norman Finkelstein
link: https://normanfinkelstein.substack.com/p/samson-and-cassandra
hash: 7��k��^��3�&���7
content:
<p>My Mother once told me the story of an emaciated woman in the Warsaw Ghetto who would wail from her window sill that all the Jews in the ghetto would be killed. She came to be called Cassandra, after the prophetess of doom in Greek mythology. Everyone just assumed that she was mad. My Mother speculated in retrospect that somehow she had become privy to the truth: Jews weren’t being “relocated” in the East; they were being transported to their deaths.</p><p>I have hesitated thus far to sound the alarm. But at the risk of being thought mad, it must, as an act of political responsibility, be said out loud: Israel is hurling toward the precipice and dragging the rest of the world with it.</p><p>A rational analysis of the current predicament must begin with this bedrock fact: Israel is a crazy state. Not a “bad actor.” Not a “rogue” regime. A crazy state. The full range of Israeli elite opinion, itself reflective of Israeli society at large (which overwhelmingly supports the genocidal war in Gaza; only a handful of Israelis have refused to serve), spans a mere flea’s hop:</p><p>AT ONE POLE stand “crackpot realists,” of whom sociologist C. Wright Mills wrote in the American context: “they have come to believe that there ... is no other solution but war, even when they sense that war can be a solution to nothing ... they still believe that ‘winning’ means something, although they never tell us what.” (1) Professor Benny Morris is cut squarely from this mold. He is urbane, educated, secular—and a crackpot. He once even “proved” that Israeli Jews couldn’t coexist with barbarian Palestinians by inter alia mustering stats on how many more road accidents Palestinians got into! (2) Morris exhorts the US to join in an attack on Iran and then rattles the threat that if Washington doesn’t rise to the occasion, Israel will go it alone by nuking Iran. He must be cognizant as he breezily proffers such counsel that an attack would not only incinerate tens of millions of Iranians—he reckons they have it coming—but also trigger a terminal retaliation. Hezbollah alone is alleged to possess 150,000 missiles. It’s a circuitous auto-da-fé. That prospect, however, doesn’t appear to faze Morris one bit.</p><p>AT THE OTHER POLE stand full-blown crazies—or those just one step short of this threshold. “The greatest danger facing Israel right now,” Noam Chomsky presciently observed already four decades ago, “is the ‘collective version’ of Samson’s revenge against the Philistines—‘Let me perish with the Philistines’—as he brought down the Temple in ruins.” The Samson clones ensconced in Jerusalem have either already gone mad—“we shall kill and bury the Gentiles around us while we ourselves shall die with them”—or pretend to “go crazy” so as to terrify enemies and allies alike into submission. Feigned lunacy, be it noted, easily transmutes into the real thing as the imaginary phantoms one repeatedly conjures seep into the psyche’s inner chambers. The upshot is that this madness, real or contrived, “renders rational calculations ... questionable” as Israel “may behave in the manner of what have sometimes been called ‘crazy states.’” (3) A report in yesterday’s paper fleshes out in real time this Israeli propensity to unhinged outbursts: when one senior Israeli official counseled caution, if only in the immediate term, after Iran’s symbolic retaliation, a far-right cabinet minister demanded on the contrary that Israel go “crazy.” (4)</p><p>*</p><p>The April 14 speech at the Security Council emergency session by Israel’s representative, Gilad Erdan, brought home just how lunatic Israel has become. Presenting a master class in—if nothing else—proximate projection, Erdan was seemingly persuaded to the bone of his being that “the Islamic regime of today is ... no different than Adolf Hitler’s Third Reich.... Just like the Nazi regime, the Ayatollah regime sows death and destruction everywhere.... For years, the world has watched the rise of this Shite Islamist Reich, yet just like during the rise of Nazism, the world has been silent”; that “Iran’s hegemonic ambitions of global domination must be stopped before it drives the world to a point of no return, to a regional war that can escalate to a world war”; that Iran was “barreling towards nuclear capabilities ... its breakout time to produce an arsenal of nuclear weapons is now weeks, mere weeks.” If the world didn’t rein in Iran, then Israel had no recourse except to bear this crushing burden on its own of stopping Hitler’s Third Reich: “We are being fired upon from all fronts, from every border. We are surrounded by Iran’s terror proxies.... All of the terror groups attacking Israel are tentacles of the same Shiite octopus, the Iranian octopus. So, I ask you, and be honest with yourselves, what would you do? What would you do if you were in Israel’s shoes? How would you react if your existence was threatened every single day? Israel cannot settle for inaction. We will defend our future.” Holding up his iPad to display an image of Israel allegedly intercepting an Iranian drone over al-Aqsa mosque, Erdan even claimed for Israel the mantle of the true guardian of Islam’s holy sites—“look at this video that shows how Israel intercepts Iranian drones above the Temple Mount and al-Aqsa mosque”—against the defilers of them in Teheran. The tonal register of his rhetorical delivery was as if a defiant accusation, Who dares doubt me?! “In every speech and in countless letters,” Erdan further recalled, “I rang the warning bell regarding Iran.” He got right that the bell must be sounded; but he got wrong from whence the madness emanates. Medice, cura te ipsum. If Erdan represents even half of the Israeli state and society—the fraction is arguably much higher—a catastrophe looms. True, Israeli leaders have in the past uttered certifiable lunacies. It is sufficient to recall Prime Minister Netanyahu holding up a Loony Tunes-like cartoon of the Iranian bomb at the UN and his pronouncement that it was not Hitler but the Palestinian Mufti of Jerusalem who masterminded the Final Solution. Indeed, already as far back as the 1978 Camp David negotiations, President Carter mused about Israel’s head of state, “It’s becoming clearer that the rationality of [Menachem] Begin is in doubt.” (5) All the same, a civilizational leap backwards separates the Israel that once was from what it has become. Israel’s UN representative at the time of the 1967 (“Six-Day”) war, Abba Eban, could serially prevaricate—albeit with consummate eloquence, as befitted the triple-first graduate of Cambridge—without batting an eyelash. But still, it was possible to rationally parse his propositions (as I once endeavored) to prove them wrong. (6) It is no more possible to parse Erdan’s speech than a psychopath’s rant.</p><p>*</p><p>It might be urged upon Iran to tread lightly so as not to agitate the lunatic in the room. But alas, that is not, in my opinion, a viable option. The documentary record demonstrates that, once Israel has fixed a country in its crosshairs, nothing short of abject submission will bring it to desist. If the “enemy” power resists initial provocation, Israel will keep escalating with another and another provocation until it proves politically untenable for the targeted entity to passively absorb further blows. That’s what happened when Israel targeted Egypt’s Gamel Abdel Nasser in the early 1950s. (7) (It was feared by Israeli Prime Minister Ben-Gurion that the “radical nationalist” Egyptian president might one day preside over a modern state able to check Israel’s regional ambitions.) That’s what happened when Israel targeted the Palestine Liberation Organization in Lebanon in the early 1980s. (8) (It was feared by Israeli Prime Minister Begin that the PLO’s “peace offensive”—the Palestinians supported but Israelis opposed a two-state settlement—would bring international pressure on Israel to withdraw from the West Bank.) That’s what happened in 2002 during the second intifada when Israel carried out targeted assassinations of Palestinian leaders. (9) (It was feared by Prime Minister Sharon that the Palestinians would stop armed attacks in exchange for a negotiated ceasefire.) That’s what happened in 2008 when Israel broke a ceasefire with Hamas in order to launch Operation Cast Lead. (10) (It was feared by Israeli Prime Minister Olmert that Hamas would gain international legitimacy as it moderated its political program.) The lamentable truth is that, short of national suicide, Iran cannot exercise the option of inaction: Israel will almost certainly keep ratcheting up the provocations until Teheran has no choice but to respond. It wouldn’t surprise were Israel to assassinate Ayatollah Khamenei then (wink, wink) deny it.</p><p>*</p><p>The Israeli government has ever been on the alert to exploit opportunities in order to implement its preconceived plans. In 1989, during the Tiananmen Square massacre, Benjamin Netanyahu urged his government to exploit this media distraction by carrying out a mass expulsion of Palestinians in the West Bank. On November 4, 2008, when the United States elected its first Black president, Prime Minister Olmert exploited this media distraction by breaking the ceasefire with Hamas. On July 17, 2014, when a Malaysian airliner flying over Ukraine was downed, Prime Minister Netanyahu exploited this media distraction by launching the murderous ground invasion of Gaza in Operation Protective Edge. The pretexts of October 7 and now Iran’s “retaliation” present the lunatics in Jerusalem with an unprecedented opportunity to rid Israel of the triple challenge to its regional domination: by destroying Gaza, Hezbollah, and Iran; the “fog” of such an explosion would also enable Israel’s ethnic cleansing of the West Bank. If it is hoped that a sane cabal among the Israeli leadership will crystallize to stop this headlong lurch over the precipice, then it must be said that the odds are against it. Hitler’s biographer, Ian Kershaw, observed that, if it took so long for coup plans to hatch against the Fuhrer, it was because of “a deep sense of obedience to authority and service to the state,” the belief that it was “not merely wrong, but despicable and treacherous to undermine one’s own country in war,” and “even as the military disasters mounted and ultimate catastrophe beckoned, the fanatical backing for Hitler had by no means evaporated and continued, if as a minority taste, to show remarkable resilience and strength.”(11) It’s hard not to notice cognate factors at play in elite Israeli circles. On the last point, whereas Netanyahu’s critics have been writing his political obituary for years, he too keeps bouncing back notwithstanding his missteps. Why? Because Israelis see their reflection in him. Indeed, Netanyahu IS Israel: an obnoxious, narcissistic Jewish supremacist for whom only Jews reckon in God’s grand design. It must, finally, be acknowledged that not all Israeli fears are unfounded—the wish is by now widespread that Israel vanish from the map while its capacity has diminished to terrorize its neighbors into submission. But, for the most part, it is a corner that Israel has boxed itself into. Before October 7 Hamas had gestured toward a two-state settlement while Iran consistently voted with the UN General Assembly majority in support of the two-state consensus. Israel rebuffed it.</p><p>Will Prime Minister Netanyahu resist the irresistible temptation to cut the Gordian regional knot or, like Samson, will he bring down the Temple—the rest of us—with him? Cassandra would probably say: All bets are off!</p><p></p><p>References</p><p>1. Mills, Causes of World War III.</p><p>2. Morris, One State, Two States.</p><p>3. Chomsky, Fateful Triangle. Investigative journalist Seymour Hersh later elaborated on Chomsky’s insights in The Samson Option.</p><p>4. New York Times, April 15, 2024.</p><p>5. Carter, White House Diary.</p><p>6. Finkelstein, Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict.</p><p>7. Benny Morris, Border Wars.</p><p>8. Robert Fisk, Pity the Nation.</p><p>9. Norman Finkelstein, Beyond Chutzpah.</p><p>10. Norman Finkelstein, Gaza.</p><p>11. Kershaw, Hitler, 1936-1945: Nemesi</p><div data-attrs='{"url":"https://normanfinkelstein.substack.com/subscribe?","text":"Subscribe","language":"en"}' data-component-name="SubscribeWidgetToDOM" data-sanitized-class="subscription-widget-wrap-editor"><div data-sanitized-class="subscription-widget show-subscribe"><div data-sanitized-class="preamble"><p data-sanitized-class="cta-caption">Thanks for reading Norman Finkelstein! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.</p></div><div data-sanitized-class="fake-input-wrapper"><div data-sanitized-class="fake-input"></div><div data-sanitized-class="fake-button"></div></div></div></div>


guid: https://normanfinkelstein.substack.com/p/benny-morris-they-had-it-coming
title: Benny Morris: They Had It Coming
author: ;Norman Finkelstein
link: https://normanfinkelstein.substack.com/p/benny-morris-they-had-it-coming
hash: � l-K���2���"��
content:
<p>In a new article, Israeli historian-turned-state-propagandist Benny Morris chastises the hypocrisy of Recep Tayyip Erdogan: the Turkish president deplores Israel’s “genocide” in Gaza yet denies the atrocities that Muslim Turks committed against Greeks, Armenians, Assyrians, and Kurds circa the early 20th century. (He also takes note of Erdogan’s current “cultural repression” of Turkish Kurds and the bloody war he has been waging against Kurdish armed forces in neighboring countries.) (“<a href="https://quillette.com/2024/04/22/erdogan-the-hypocrite-turkey-israel-armenian-genocide/%E2%80%A6">Erdogan’s Hypocrisy,” 22 April 2024</a>) No doubt, such rank hypocrisy deserves condemnation. It is no less true, however, that a public personality’s denial of a past genocide pales in moral culpability beside denial in the face of an ongoing genocide, when openly expressing outrage at an infamy in progress can literally be a matter of life and death for the victims. Consider this case in point. Mouin Rabbani and I recently participated in a <a href="https://lexfridman.com/israel-palestine-debate-transcript/#chapter6_hope_for_the_future">debate </a>during which Professor Morris cavalierly denied the imminence of mass famine in Gaza and Israel’s hand in engineering it. Here’s the official transcript: Benny Morris—There’s no genocide. Norman Finkelstein— … half of whom are children… Yeah, according to the most current UN reports, as of today- Benny Morris—There’s no genocide. Norman Finkelstein—… one quarter of the population of Gaza- Benny Morris—Is starving. Norman Finkelstein— That means 500,000 children- Benny Morris—Are starving, Norman Finkelstein— … are on the verge of famine. Benny Morris—They keep saying on the verge of. Steven Bonnell: On the verge of. Didn’t you quote that they said it was unlivable? Benny Morris—I have not seen one Palestinian die of starvation in these last four months. Not one. Mouin Rabbani—There have been documented cases. Benny Morris—They are always on the verge. They’re on the verge. Mouin Rabbani—have been documented cases. Benny Morris—I haven’t seen any. Steven Bonnell—Yesterday Al Jazeera said six, and the day before that they said two, so those are the two. Benny Morris—That number probably dies in Israel of starvation also. Mouin Rabbani—I don’t think there’s famine in Israel. Norman Finkelstein—You’re so laid back, so blasé. Benny Morris—There isn’t. There isn’t in the Gaza Strip either. It’s something which is produced for the Western- Norman Finkelstein—“I haven’t seen any starving children yet.” Mouin Rabbani— There are infants dying due to a engineered lack of access to food and nutrition. Benny Morris—I don’t think it’s engineered, I think that if the Hamas stopped shooting perhaps, or- Norman Finkelstein—Unfortunately, most- Mouin Rabbani—As I said, engineered. Norman Finkelstein—I think Human Rights Watch called it using starvation as a weapon. That’s called engineering. Today, B’Tselem (Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories) issued a report, “Manufacturing Famine: Israel is Committing the War Crime of Starvation in the Gaza Strip,” that confirms what has already been widely documented. It finds that “for months, Israel has been committing the crime of starvation under international law in the Gaza Strip.” It further finds that, under the terms of the Rome Statute, Israel is culpable of the “war crime” of “starvation,” as it has intentionally (mens rea) engineered a famine (actus reus) in Gaza: “[F]or many months, Israel has prevented the required scope of humanitarian relief, including food and medicines, from entering the Gaza Strip and particularly northern Gaza. The destruction that Israel sowed during the fighting has all but obliterated the ability to locally grow food or source it for production. Given these circumstances, the population’s diet relies almost entirely on outside aid, which is controlled by Israel. ... Israel is failing to meet its obligations ... by not allowing sufficient aid to enter the Gaza Strip and by failing to guarantee the safe arrival of the aid to its destination, even in areas it says are under its control.” “Israel’s intent to use starvation in order to gain a military advantage is reflected in statements made by senior politicians and military commanders, that denying residents food and water is part of Israel’s methods of warfare in the Gaza Strip. For example, Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant, a member of the war cabinet, which is the highest forum directing Israel’s policy in its war in Gaza, explicitly stated that denying food and water is part of the fighting: ‘We are imposing a full siege on Gaza City. There is no electricity, no food, no water, no fuel. Everything is closed. We are fighting beasts and we are acting accordingly.’ Minister of National Security Itamar Ben Gvir tied efforts to release the Israeli hostages to preventing humanitarian aid from entering Gaza: ‘As long as Hamas refuses to release the hostages it is holding, the only thing that should enter Gaza is hundreds of tons of Air Force explosives, and not a gram of humanitarian relief.’ Foreign Minister Yisrael Katz said: ‘For years, we’ve given Gaza electricity, water and fuel. Instead of thanking us, they sent thousands of beasts to butcher, rape and kidnap babies, women and elderly people. That is why we decided to stop the supply of water, electricity and fuel, and now their local power plant has collapsed and there’s no electricity in Gaza. We will continue to tighten the siege until the threat that Hamas poses to Israel and to the world is removed. The past will not be the future.’” It should finally be noted that decriers of the South African genocide application to the International Court of Justice have alleged that the case mounted by South Africa was defective as it didn’t prove criminal intent to commit genocide. For example, it’s purported that Prime Minister Netanyahu’s allusions to “Amalek” were distorted. Thus Morris: “The prime minister didn’t say genocide.” Here, however, is B’Tselem’s gloss: “‘The current war against the Hamas murderers is another chapter in the story of our national resilience through the generations. Remember what Amalek did to you.’ That is what Binyamin Netanyahu wrote in a message to Israeli soldiers on 3 November 2023, in a dog whistle that anyone who has gone through Israel’s education system will recognize as meaning a response to an attack in a way that would obliterate any memory of that nation, women and children included. When the fight against Hamas is compared to the war against Amalek, the conclusion is clear: The order is to wipe out Gaza.” In other words, “the conclusion is clear” that Netanyahu’s Amalek allusion evidences criminal intent to commit genocide. But according to Morris, even if Netanyahu did target Gaza’s civilian population for annihilation, that wouldn’t quite constitute genocide as these noncombatants aren’t innocent: “Gaza’s civilian population ... is largely sympathetic to Hamas’s actions and goals, which include the destruction of Israel. In going after the Hamas units, the IDF inevitably killed many non-combatants. They died in a war initiated by Hamas.” That is, standing not just before but also behind Hamas, Gazan civilians have it coming if they’re wiped out. Doesn’t only a flea’s hop separate Morris’s palliation of Israeli genocide from a full-blown apologia for it? If Erdogan is a genocide denier, then Morris is his doppelganger. </p><p></p><p></p>


guid: https://normanfinkelstein.substack.com/p/conspiracies-do-happen
title: CONSPIRACIES DO HAPPEN
author: ;Norman Finkelstein
link: https://normanfinkelstein.substack.com/p/conspiracies-do-happen
hash: y>�b���gz\��
content:
<p>The British Guardian reported today that Israeli secret services were blackmailing former ICC Chief Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda. Already four years ago I wrote a full book documenting Bensouda’s disgraceful record of whitewashing Israel.</p><div data-sanitized-class="captioned-image-container"><figure><a target="_blank" href="https://orbooks.com/catalog/i-accuse/" data-component-name="Image2ToDOM" data-sanitized-class="image-link image2"><div data-sanitized-class="image2-inset"><picture><source type="image/webp"><img src="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F400736dc-2070-4a29-aa4a-bf133e212cf1_500x617.jpeg" width="322" height="397.348" data-attrs='{"src":"https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/400736dc-2070-4a29-aa4a-bf133e212cf1_500x617.jpeg","srcNoWatermark":null,"fullscreen":null,"imageSize":null,"height":617,"width":500,"resizeWidth":322,"bytes":41953,"alt":null,"title":null,"type":"image/jpeg","href":"https://orbooks.com/catalog/i-accuse/","belowTheFold":false,"topImage":true,"internalRedirect":null,"isProcessing":false}' alt="" fetchpriority="high" data-sanitized-class="sizing-normal"></picture><div></div></div></a></figure></div><p>It was perfectly obvious at the time that extra-legal pressures were being exerted on Bensouda. Indeed, I stated in the very last sentence of my book that Israel was bringing “to bear every squalid and sordid instrument in its arsenal” against the ICC. It was also obvious that extra-legal pressures were exerted on Richard Goldstone to recant his milestone report on Israeli crimes in Gaza, even as “Goldstone’s secret will perhaps never be revealed” (from my book Gaza: An Inquest into Its Martyrdom). It is also my considered opinion that ICC Judge Peter Kovacs was subject to extra-legal pressures or enticements and current ICJ Vice-President Julia Sebutinde has been subject to extra-legal pressures or enticements by Israel. At the very least, Israel has assisted their whitewashing endeavors. (The flagrant, shameful and shameless lie that former ICJ president Joan Donaghue uttered on BBC last month—she purported that the ICJ did not find that Israel was “plausibly” committing genocide in Gaza--was morally debased but almost certainly traced back to careerism and opportunism, not Israeli dirty tricks.) One of the redemptive aspects of the current horrible moment is that a lot of the dirt is finally coming out. It was, for example, always assumed, but couldn’t be proven, that a class of Jewish supremacist billionaires acting at Israel’s behest were exerting financial pressures on academia. The machinations of the Ackmans, Krafts, Sternlichts et al. have now been exposed. If the Harvard Corporation wouldn’t let the 13 anti-genocide students attend graduation, was it not because “he who pays the piper calls the tune”?</p>

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guid: https://normanfinkelstein.substack.com/p/gaza-an-inquest-into-its-martyrdom
title: Gaza-An Inquest into its Martyrdom
author: ;Norman Finkelstein
link: https://normanfinkelstein.substack.com/p/gaza-an-inquest-into-its-martyrdom
hash: �Y�b�e?�HF�s<�
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<p>Gaza: An Inquest into its Martyrdom is now also an audiobook available across several platforms and eventually audible.<br><br>Credit for narration goes to @voicemta, an independent producer who wanted to make the source material more accessible and support the author's work.<br><br>Link to Gaza: An Inquest into its Martyrdom is now also an audiobook available across several platforms and eventually audible.<br><br>Credit for narration goes to @voicemta, an independent producer who wanted to make the source material more accessible and support the author's work.<br><br></p><div data-component-name="VideoPlaceholder" data-attrs='{"mediaUploadId":"3d3a95ed-7da5-45c2-935c-422465749a3a","duration":null}' data-sanitized-class="native-video-embed"></div><p><br></p><p><br></p>


guid: https://normanfinkelstein.substack.com/p/shbair-and-bigg-whores-of-genocide
title: SHBAIR AND BIGG: WHORES OF GENOCIDE
author: ;Norman Finkelstein
link: https://normanfinkelstein.substack.com/p/shbair-and-bigg-whores-of-genocide
hash: �'���f�� } 5kW
content:
<p>Israel is ever attuned to the US news cycle. It has predictably escalated its genocide in Gaza as the Kamala Harris candidacy replaced Gaza as the top news story. The past few weeks have been particularly gruesome: another day, another massacre of innocents. The New York Times plays its assigned role. Desperate to appease its reader base of billionaire Jewish supremacists on the Upper East Side in Manhattan, the Times keeps churning out the Israeli propaganda. Here’s one of its wretched headlines today (10 September 2024):</p><p><strong>“Unwilling to Be Militants’ Human Shields, Some Gazans Turn Gunmen Away From Shelters”</strong></p><p>Midway into this harrowing article on Hamas perfidy, the reader who gets this far comes across this line: “It was not possible to confirm whether armed or unarmed militants stay in the school shelters.” In other words, the whole thing is fabricated out of whole cloth. The authors of this article are identified as Bilal Shbair and Matthew Mpoke Bigg. Let there be no mistake: these two “persons of color” are complicit in genocide.</p>


guid: https://normanfinkelstein.substack.com/p/cowardly-lions
title: Cowardly Lions
author: ;Norman Finkelstein
link: https://normanfinkelstein.substack.com/p/cowardly-lions
hash: ^@����o�h� ���Ò
content:
<p>I was invited to participate in a debate at the Oxford Union on November 28, 2024 that included Israeli professor Benny Morris. I was subsequently informed by the Union that, after agreeing to attend, Professor Morris stipulated that he would only participate in the debate if former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert was also invited. The Union then approached Mr. Olmert but, according to the Union, Olmert “firmly declined to participate if you [i.e., Norman Finkelstein] were part of the debate. Despite multiple discussions, his position remained unchanged, which subsequently led to Benny Morris withdrawing as well.” It does give pause just how pusillanimous Israel’s chief historian and former Prime Minister are—and how powerful is the weapon of Truth. The Opposition to the motion no longer included a qualified scholar (the Union replaced Morris with a certifiable psychopath) so I withdrew from the debate. I suppose things could have turned out worse: Morris and Olmert might have booby-trapped my pager.</p><p>P.S. Morris is now complaining that the decision to cancel a lecture by him in Germany on account of his deranged anti-Palestinian statements was “sheer cowardice.” I wonder how he would describe his decision not to publicly debate me at Oxford unless Olmert was there to protect him?</p>


guid: https://words.mattiasdesmet.org/p/the-opening-ceremony-of-the-olympic
title: The opening ceremony of the Olympic Games - A tribute to William Blake.
author: ;Mattias Desmet
link: https://words.mattiasdesmet.org/p/the-opening-ceremony-of-the-olympic
hash: ����g�i� 0�k�
content:
<p>My pen refuses to rest this summer. This time, it is the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games that I find difficult to let pass without making some remarks.</p><p>This morning, I saw clips from the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games. The imagery was, let's say, mind-boggling. It presented, among other things, a grotesque parody of Da Vinci's Last Supper. In the place of Christ sat a stout woman with half-exposed breasts; the apostles were replaced by a motley crew of transgenders and other figures from the cabinet of sexual curiosities. Among this group, there was also a young girl – a sign of childlike innocence and purity.</p><div data-attrs='{"url":"https://words.mattiasdesmet.org/subscribe?","text":"Subscribe","language":"en"}' data-component-name="SubscribeWidgetToDOM" data-sanitized-class="subscription-widget-wrap-editor"><div data-sanitized-class="subscription-widget show-subscribe"><div data-sanitized-class="preamble"><p data-sanitized-class="cta-caption">Mattias Desmet is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.</p></div><div data-sanitized-class="fake-input-wrapper"><div data-sanitized-class="fake-input"></div><div data-sanitized-class="fake-button"></div></div></div></div><p>There was some debate about the interpretation of the hotly discussed scene. Was it indeed a parody of The Last Supper? The artistic director explained that the spectacle represented Dionysus at a pagan feast. That Dionysus was represented – no doubt about that. But that the formal presentation of the group evoked direct associations with Da Vinci's composition, an artistic director’s explanation doesn't change much about that. And the fact that the Paris 2024 producers contradicted the artistic director explicitly and confirmed that the scene was inspired by the last supper, also doesn’t add to the credibility of the director’s claims (see <a href="https://www.thewrap.com/paris-olympics-producers-last-supper-inspired-opening-ceremony/">Link</a>). </p><p>The parody of The Last Supper was certainly not the only striking element in the ceremony. Among other things, a cloaked rider on a white horse was brought forward, which was interpreted by quite a few critical observers as the fourth rider of the apocalypse – Death on a pale horse. Here, too, it was difficult to be certain. Was it truly an apocalyptic figure? Or did the winged horse rather represent Pegasus, a symbol of strength and courage?</p><p>One can debate the interpretation of the symbolic language used, but the style of the ceremony had a deeply macabre and decadent undertone that cannot be denied. The ceremony was brimming with heavy symbolism, the connection of which to the Olympic Games – a sporting event – was hard to see. The question was difficult to suppress: what message is that heavy symbolism pregnant with?</p><p>A large part of the population found the ceremony impressive – the pinnacle of spectacle, a celebration of freedom, triumph of humanism, inclusivity, and 'equity.' At least, that's what mainstream reporting suggests. They see it as a good thing: no more prejudices against people with a sexuality that doesn't follow the norm. And that mockery of Christianity – can't Christians handle it perhaps? Are they becoming as sensitive as Muslims? Is there no longer any place for Charlie Hebdo in our culture for them either? Anyone who criticizes the woke culture is easily labeled as a new kind of extremist who falls back on ultra-conservative values in difficult cultural times.</p><p>It shows cultural maturity when there is openness and room for peculiarities regarding sexuality, a space where a person can realize themselves as a singular sexual being. But the woke spectacle we saw at the opening ceremony has little to do with that. In its intrusive display and anchorless drifting into increasingly grotesque forms of sexuality, it does not show the merging of sexual drive with love and tenderness that is the hallmark of human and cultural maturity; in its fanaticism, it is no longer a liberator, but a tyrant, a militant and extremist ideology that leads sexuality not to its pinnacle but to its complete decline.</p><p>It thrives on the illusion of a malleable human, the person who does not submit to God or commandment, who creates and realizes themselves, who tries to erase the task of being a man or a woman that our body imposes on us with surgery and hormone treatments from the text of their life.</p><p>The opening ceremony also had nothing to do with cultural maturity that can relativize itself on all levels – including religiously. The opening ceremony of the Olympic Games is not a discourse presented in a satirical newspaper like Charlie Hebdo. An opening ceremony is a ritual, in this case, the ritual of the largest and most significant event of our globalist new world order. And even more: such a ceremony shows what a society <em>identifies</em> <em>with</em>, such a ceremony represents the <em>essence </em>of the societal model that organises it. What is problematic, in other words, is not that a society is tolerant towards exotic and in some cases perverse types of sexuality and morality; what is problematic is that this kind of morality represents is essence. That is why the displayed bad taste is not something to simply turn a blind eye to and shrug off; it is indeed something significant.</p><p>What we saw was nothing less than a ritualized mockery of the sacred and the ethical, something that, from an ethical-religious perspective, is a ritual of evil. Our culture is tending toward an end. Let us briefly return to a beginning.</p><p>***</p><p>A good two hundred years ago, humanity wiped the religious worldview that had turned into hypocrisy and dogma off the societal table. The Enlightenment had arrived – the ideology of Reason took the helm. Humanity began to navigate by the compass of rationality. They would observe the world and things with their own eyes and precisely determine and mathematically describe the relationships between them. And based on this rational description, they would control and manipulate nature; humans would ultimately perform the miracles they had long fruitlessly expected from God. Think of Harari’s Homo Deus: humans themselves will become God. I have written about this elsewhere (see this <a href="https://words.mattiasdesmet.org/publish/posts/detail/146344788?referrer=%2Fpublish%2Fhome%3Futm_source%3Dmenu">link</a>).</p><p>The Enlightenment tradition marked the historical moment when humanity changed compass and direction. The religious worldview proposed ethical principles: humans must first and foremost, with every step they take in the earthly realm, ask whether they are walking towards Good or Evil. Some took the ethical principles more seriously than others; for some, the ethical discourse became purely a tool of hypocrisy and perversion. But the story on which the culture was based, in any case, placed the ethical level first.</p><p>The Enlightenment tradition swept the whole idea of ethics as a guiding principle off the table. From now on, humanity would follow reason. No more religious illusions. From now on, humanity would go by what they observe with their eyes and understand with their minds. And there it immediately fell prey to … an illusion. Our supposedly objectively observing eyes are directed by forces that lie entirely outside the field of rationality. For example: whether one sees in nature a system where the strong eliminate weaker life forms via survival of the fittest and promote the stronger, or a system where the stronger care for the weaker in the most loving and sensitive way, is determined by factors that have nothing to do with rationality.</p><p>The 19th-century imperialist saw survival of the fittest everywhere. And he was remarkably blind to the flood of examples showing that nature is at least governed by many other principles. The imperialist saw nature that way because he, from his narcissism and egocentrism, liked to see nature that way. What the imperialist really claimed through his theory of survival of the fittest was that the imperialist, who was at that moment the strongest due to certain historical circumstances, not only had the right to ruthlessly oppress and subject the weaker in his colonies but that he, while doing so, was also the best and most noble that nature had ever produced.</p><p>Let narcissism give way to Love for a moment, let the Soul take the helm from the Ego. You see another Nature arise. You see, for example, a nature where strong trees support weaker trees by providing them with nutrients through their root systems; you see a nature where an elephant mother mourns her dead young for months; you see the strong human who recognizes himself in the weak and gently places a hand on their shoulder.</p><p>And even if you believe that the strong should triumph over the weak, it is far from certain that this actually happens in ‘nature.’ Nietzsche glorified the striving for power, but he was one of the few who was skeptical from the start about the so-called survival of the fittest: the strongest and most noble people usually lose out in nature, he believed. The weak often band together and are usually able to bring down the strong, who walk through life overconfidently alone. For Nietzsche, the 19th-century imperialist was far from considered the crown of evolutionary creation; he was rather a distasteful creature of an Apollo who no longer recognized Dionysus as his equal.</p><p>To return to the core of the matter: the Enlightenment belief placed rationality at the center and considered the whole range of Good and Evil as completely irrelevant and even non-existent. It faded into the background; people no longer paid attention to it. And in the background, something typical happened. Evil took the helm. Doing Good requires a certain level of alertness and effort from humans; one must devote some attention and energy to it; one must always overcome some resistance to do Good. If that alertness and investment of strength and energy to do Good are not there, then the ship of life silently turns and sails towards dark waters.</p><p>You can also see in a very direct way that the rise of the rationalist worldview dealt a death blow to Goodness. Rationalism taught us that the highest goal of the human being was the struggle to survive (as previously mentioned). And that immediately implied that doing Good was foolish and backward. Doing Good weakens oneself and strengthens the Other. Or so it seems at first. The rationalist human could only draw the conclusion from his ideology somewhere and conclude: you should not be good, you should be smart, cunning, and ruthless.</p><p>In this way, a kind of destructive drive crept into the Enlightenment culture from the beginning. Rationalism not only tried to understand but also to control, manipulate, subjugate, and destroy. That death or destructive drive is very clearly verifiable. The triumphantly proclaimed reign of Reason was accompanied by the pollution of nature with microplastics and toxic chemicals, with industrial fishing methods and forestry and agricultural practices that ruthlessly exploit nature, with the deadliest wars in history, and with the industrial destruction of populations and races that did not fit into rationalist ideologies. William Blake devoted his entire oeuvre to this in the earliest stage of rationalization and mechanization of the world, during the French Revolution, the historical event that represents the moment when the rationalist worldview seized control. He saw it as a manifestation and unleashing of the forces of Evil and testified to this view in his entire oeuvre.</p><p>The entire UN ideology with its Sustainable Development Goals claims to halt the destructive drive, but it is essentially a continuation of the rationalist ideology, which, through its ecomodernist program, aims for the ultimate subjugation of nature (think of projects to influence the climate) and with its woke humanism tries to install a radically dehumanizing transhumanist technocracy.</p><p>Remarkably, the idealization of Reason also cost Truth its head. The duty to speak honestly was thrown overboard within the rationalist worldview. The reasoning was quickly made. Speaking the Truth is always risky; those who speak the Truth weaken themselves; they have fewer chances in the struggle to survive; only a fool speaks the Truth.</p><p>Humans have always been deceptive and lying beings who often confuse Appearance with Reality, but the rise of the Enlightenment tradition was accompanied by the reign of a new kind of lie, a lie that is theoretically founded (based on scientific theories about mass psychology), ideologically justified, and industrially produced: propaganda. The contemporary (globalist) order stands and imposes itself through propaganda – the art of manipulating the human being; the practice of depriving the human being of spiritual freedom.</p><p>Under the pseudo-rational surface of our Enlightenment culture, therefore, a destructive, deceitful, and dehumanizing force steadily grew. It grew in the unseen, but like any spiritual Greatness, it wants to manifest itself and be publicly recognized. Our culture has reached a point where that force increasingly shows its face openly. Witness the grotesque theater of the most recent Eurovision Song Contest and the dark symbolism of the Olympic opening ceremony.</p><p>Our culture is approaching its apotheosis, the moment when the masks are taken off and the forces that determine it reveal themselves. The moment also when humans see their true condition. The rationalist human is not about to become God. They are also not about to conquer their absolute freedom, sexually and otherwise. On the contrary, they are on the verge of being completely enslaved. And the Olympic opening ceremony shows us more clearly than ever who their Master will be</p><div data-sanitized-class="captioned-image-container"><figure><a target="_blank" href="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fbdcb08c7-0f06-4304-a1a2-0887e53923e9_1032x670.png" data-component-name="Image2ToDOM" data-sanitized-class="image-link image2 is-viewable-img"><div data-sanitized-class="image2-inset"><picture><source type="image/webp"><img src="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fbdcb08c7-0f06-4304-a1a2-0887e53923e9_1032x670.png" width="1032" height="670" data-attrs='{"src":"https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/bdcb08c7-0f06-4304-a1a2-0887e53923e9_1032x670.png","srcNoWatermark":null,"fullscreen":null,"imageSize":null,"height":670,"width":1032,"resizeWidth":null,"bytes":687089,"alt":null,"title":null,"type":"image/png","href":null,"belowTheFold":true,"topImage":false,"internalRedirect":null,"isProcessing":false}' alt="" loading="lazy" data-sanitized-class="sizing-normal"></picture><div data-sanitized-class="image-link-expand"><div data-sanitized-class="pencraft pc-display-flex pc-gap-8 pc-reset"><div data-sanitized-class="pencraft pc-reset icon-container restack-image"><path d="M3 12a9 9 0 0 1 9-9 9.75 9.75 0 0 1 6.74 2.74L21 8"></path><path d="M21 3v5h-5"></path><path d="M21 12a9 9 0 0 1-9 9 9.75 9.75 0 0 1-6.74-2.74L3 16"></path><path d="M8 16H3v5"></path></div><div data-sanitized-class="pencraft pc-reset icon-container view-image"><polyline points="15 3 21 3 21 9"></polyline><polyline points="9 21 3 21 3 15"></polyline><line x1="21" x2="14" y1="3" y2="10"></line><line x1="3" x2="10" y1="21" y2="14"></line></div></div></div></div></a></figure></div><p>.</p><p></p><p></p><div data-attrs='{"url":"https://words.mattiasdesmet.org/subscribe?","text":"Subscribe","language":"en"}' data-component-name="SubscribeWidgetToDOM" data-sanitized-class="subscription-widget-wrap-editor"><div data-sanitized-class="subscription-widget show-subscribe"><div data-sanitized-class="preamble"><p data-sanitized-class="cta-caption">Mattias Desmet is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.</p></div><div data-sanitized-class="fake-input-wrapper"><div data-sanitized-class="fake-input"></div><div data-sanitized-class="fake-button"></div></div></div></div>

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guid: https://words.mattiasdesmet.org/p/yes-the-olympic-ceremony-was-about
author: ;Mattias Desmet
link: https://words.mattiasdesmet.org/p/yes-the-olympic-ceremony-was-about
hash: �z(Y?�;���T.r��
title:
Yes, the Olympic ceremony parodied The Last Supper. And it would be nice if the media admitted that.

content:
<p>I briefly return to <a href="https://substack.com/home/post/p-147098240">my last essay on the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games</a>, particularly to the parody of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Supper_(Leonardo)">Da Vinci’s Last Supper</a>. As you know, quite a few people found that parody blasphemous and perverse, an open manifestation of the decadence of globalist institutions. I revisit it here to draw attention to the mainstream reaction to the uproar. I find that reaction particularly interesting and typical.</p><div data-sanitized-class="captioned-image-container"><figure><a target="_blank" href="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F758f096d-0485-4ee9-b5fb-0feaba327d06_528x270.png" data-component-name="Image2ToDOM" data-sanitized-class="image-link image2 is-viewable-img"><div data-sanitized-class="image2-inset"><picture><source type="image/webp"><img src="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F758f096d-0485-4ee9-b5fb-0feaba327d06_528x270.png" width="528" height="270" data-attrs='{"src":"https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/758f096d-0485-4ee9-b5fb-0feaba327d06_528x270.png","srcNoWatermark":null,"fullscreen":null,"imageSize":null,"height":270,"width":528,"resizeWidth":null,"bytes":317949,"alt":null,"title":null,"type":"image/png","href":null,"belowTheFold":false,"topImage":true,"internalRedirect":null,"isProcessing":false}' alt="" fetchpriority="high" data-sanitized-class="sizing-normal"></picture><div data-sanitized-class="image-link-expand"><div data-sanitized-class="pencraft pc-display-flex pc-gap-8 pc-reset"><div data-sanitized-class="pencraft pc-reset icon-container restack-image"><path d="M3 12a9 9 0 0 1 9-9 9.75 9.75 0 0 1 6.74 2.74L21 8"></path><path d="M21 3v5h-5"></path><path d="M21 12a9 9 0 0 1-9 9 9.75 9.75 0 0 1-6.74-2.74L3 16"></path><path d="M8 16H3v5"></path></div><div data-sanitized-class="pencraft pc-reset icon-container view-image"><polyline points="15 3 21 3 21 9"></polyline><polyline points="9 21 3 21 3 15"></polyline><line x1="21" x2="14" y1="3" y2="10"></line><line x1="3" x2="10" y1="21" y2="14"></line></div></div></div></div></a></figure></div><p></p><div data-attrs='{"url":"https://words.mattiasdesmet.org/subscribe?","text":"Subscribe","language":"en"}' data-component-name="SubscribeWidgetToDOM" data-sanitized-class="subscription-widget-wrap-editor"><div data-sanitized-class="subscription-widget show-subscribe"><div data-sanitized-class="preamble"><p data-sanitized-class="cta-caption">Mattias Desmet is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.</p></div><div data-sanitized-class="fake-input-wrapper"><div data-sanitized-class="fake-input"></div><div data-sanitized-class="fake-button"></div></div></div></div><p>Here’s how it went: the mainstream media believed they could instantly dismiss the outrage over the alleged blasphemy. They made a quick call to the artistic director of the ceremony, who immediately revealed The Truth: the theater in question during the opening ceremony had nothing to do with The Last Supper. It represented a pagan Feast of the Gods. They were done. The fake news spreaders on X and other conspiracy theory sites were debunked once again.</p><p>The army of fact-checkers, digital first responders, and other zealous supporters of the globalist ideology sprang into action. They posted references to the artistic director’s words under claims about The Last Supper and even added Bellini’s painting, <a href="https://www.nga.gov/collection/art-object-page.1138.html">The Feast of the Gods</a>, here and there. This way, everyone could see with their own eyes which painting it was actually about. The only slightly odd thing – which surely the great Ambassadors of Truth of globalism also noticed – was that Bellini’s painting didn’t really resemble the grotesque theater staged in Paris. But who cares, the artistic director had spoken, oracle of Truth, no more reason to doubt: the entire outrage was based on delusion and illusion.</p><div data-sanitized-class="captioned-image-container"><figure><a target="_blank" href="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F2d7e78fd-dd31-4107-b8c0-393071c86bdb_644x424.png" data-component-name="Image2ToDOM" data-sanitized-class="image-link image2 is-viewable-img"><div data-sanitized-class="image2-inset"><picture><source type="image/webp"><img src="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F2d7e78fd-dd31-4107-b8c0-393071c86bdb_644x424.png" width="644" height="424" data-attrs='{"src":"https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/2d7e78fd-dd31-4107-b8c0-393071c86bdb_644x424.png","srcNoWatermark":null,"fullscreen":null,"imageSize":null,"height":424,"width":644,"resizeWidth":null,"bytes":659280,"alt":null,"title":null,"type":"image/png","href":null,"belowTheFold":false,"topImage":false,"internalRedirect":null,"isProcessing":false}' alt="" data-sanitized-class="sizing-normal"></picture><div data-sanitized-class="image-link-expand"><div data-sanitized-class="pencraft pc-display-flex pc-gap-8 pc-reset"><div data-sanitized-class="pencraft pc-reset icon-container restack-image"><path d="M3 12a9 9 0 0 1 9-9 9.75 9.75 0 0 1 6.74 2.74L21 8"></path><path d="M21 3v5h-5"></path><path d="M21 12a9 9 0 0 1-9 9 9.75 9.75 0 0 1-6.74-2.74L3 16"></path><path d="M8 16H3v5"></path></div><div data-sanitized-class="pencraft pc-reset icon-container view-image"><polyline points="15 3 21 3 21 9"></polyline><polyline points="9 21 3 21 3 15"></polyline><line x1="21" x2="14" y1="3" y2="10"></line><line x1="3" x2="10" y1="21" y2="14"></line></div></div></div></div></a></figure></div><p></p><p>Firstly: the painting alluded to was not Bellini’s The Feast of the Gods, but rather <a href="https://www.hindustantimes.com/world-news/us-news/historian-debunks-paris-olympics-act-not-last-supper-but-greek-gods-celebrating-olympics-see-similarities-101722240785363.html">The Feast of the Olympian Gods by Jan van Bijlert</a>. That painting does align in composition with the staging at the Paris ceremony. One might say: what’s the fuss, does it matter which painting it was? It wasn’t about The Last Supper, so the theater isn’t mocking Christianity.</p><div data-sanitized-class="captioned-image-container"><figure><a target="_blank" href="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F7f01bf11-ca6b-477f-9c0d-88cbd8c1401b_562x440.png" data-component-name="Image2ToDOM" data-sanitized-class="image-link image2 is-viewable-img"><div data-sanitized-class="image2-inset"><picture><source type="image/webp"><img src="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F7f01bf11-ca6b-477f-9c0d-88cbd8c1401b_562x440.png" width="562" height="440" data-attrs='{"src":"https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/7f01bf11-ca6b-477f-9c0d-88cbd8c1401b_562x440.png","srcNoWatermark":null,"fullscreen":null,"imageSize":null,"height":440,"width":562,"resizeWidth":null,"bytes":456246,"alt":null,"title":null,"type":"image/png","href":null,"belowTheFold":true,"topImage":false,"internalRedirect":null,"isProcessing":false}' alt="" loading="lazy" data-sanitized-class="sizing-normal"></picture><div data-sanitized-class="image-link-expand"><div data-sanitized-class="pencraft pc-display-flex pc-gap-8 pc-reset"><div data-sanitized-class="pencraft pc-reset icon-container restack-image"><path d="M3 12a9 9 0 0 1 9-9 9.75 9.75 0 0 1 6.74 2.74L21 8"></path><path d="M21 3v5h-5"></path><path d="M21 12a9 9 0 0 1-9 9 9.75 9.75 0 0 1-6.74-2.74L3 16"></path><path d="M8 16H3v5"></path></div><div data-sanitized-class="pencraft pc-reset icon-container view-image"><polyline points="15 3 21 3 21 9"></polyline><polyline points="9 21 3 21 3 15"></polyline><line x1="21" x2="14" y1="3" y2="10"></line><line x1="3" x2="10" y1="21" y2="14"></line></div></div></div></div></a></figure></div><p></p><p>Of course, it matters. Simply because: Jan van Bijlert painted his <a href="https://www.hindustantimes.com/world-news/us-news/historian-debunks-paris-olympics-act-not-last-supper-but-greek-gods-celebrating-olympics-see-similarities-101722240785363.html">Feast of the Olympian Gods</a> around 1635, about a hundred and fifty years after Da Vinci painted The Last Supper. And Van Bijlert’s painting is <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Festin_des_Dieux">clearly a pagan variant of Da Vinci’s painting</a>. In other words: whether the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games directly mocked Da Vinci’s Last Supper or did so through a parodic imitation of Van Bijlert’s painting, it doesn’t matter, what happened at the opening ceremony was indeed mocking The Last Supper, and thus ethical and religious principles, particularly Christianity. Period.</p><p>The most remarkable thing, above all, is that the fact-checkers and woke enthusiasts indeed did not see that it was about the Last Supper. They even mocked those who did see it, claiming they were lost in illusions and delusions. The more someone is gripped by totalitarian thinking, the more he accuses those who think differently of madness. In itself, it remains one of the most remarkable effects of the phenomenon of mass formation: the enormous narrowing of perspective accompanied by a radical blindness to anything that does not align with one's own fanatical beliefs (and the aggressive attack of it). </p><p>It is not that the representatives of the dominant narrative are the only ones who fall prey to this. Fanatical conspiracy thinking essentially suffers from a similar problem. Those who break free from the grip of the dominant narrative, in a sense, wander unprotected in the world of the Real and often seek refuge in another illusion, or at the very least, another narrative that irresponsibly reduces reality to a simplistic story.</p><p>And I repeat: it’s not about whether there should be no sexual freedom in society or whether it should be forbidden to mock religious tenets, beliefs, or views. Every person has the right to a space where they can work through the peculiarities of their sexuality on their own authority and responsibility, if they so wish. And although I personally find mocking something that another person holds sacred tasteless, I do not think it should be forbidden.</p><p>What it is about, however, is that globalist institutions use symbolism, as seen at the opening ceremony of the Olympics and the Eurovision Song Contest, to situate <em>their essence</em> in mockery and perversion. That is precisely the function of a ceremony of a major social event: it represents what the essence of a society is, it represents the principles that support the social system. And that is certainly a good reason to protest and refuse to participate in the globalist ideology. More so: those who fail to protest, neglect an ethical duty.</p><p>Back to the mainstream reaction and the legion of globalist foot soldiers. They missed the mark completely. We can conclude that from the above argument. And we can add the reaction of the producers of the opening ceremony. They confirmed in an official statement, contradicting the artistic director’s claims, that the particular part of the ceremony indeed parodied The Last Supper. I would say: we can come to a conclusion on this matter. When it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it is probably a duck.</p><p>For now, the mainstream remains silent. That’s notable: their inability to admit mistakes. That is, in itself, human, but it is quite pronounced among representatives of the dominant narrative (an inability typical of totalitarian systems). The corona crisis stands out in this regard. Every crucial aspect of the dominant narrative has now proven to be wrong: the origin of the virus, the mortality of the virus, the effectiveness of the measures, the effectiveness of the vaccines, the (supposedly non-existent) side effects of the vaccines, and so on, name it and the dominant narrative got it radically wrong.</p><p>No one can really doubt that anymore. But how many fact-checkers and mainstream journalists have you heard admitting that they have radically suppressed the Truth in the name of Truth? How many have you heard apologize for degrading people to second-class citizens based on pseudoscience and fake news? We can only conclude: those who crown themselves as Ambassadors of Truth and profile themselves lavishly as fighters against fake news and disinformation suppress the truth with a stream of fake news and disinformation.</p><p>The lack of interest in facts in totalitarian systems is extraordinarily fascinating from a psychological perspective. In Germany, a whistleblower from the Koch Institute revealed the extent of the government and experts’ deception. The revelations left little to the imagination: the entire German corona policy was based on cynical disregard for facts and science and was one big coup to give a technocratic turn to society. And there is hardly any reason to assume that the policy in other countries was fundamentally different from Germany’s.</p><p>In Germany, this was briefly big news in the mainstream media. That, in itself, is a good thing. But outside of Germany, there was hardly any reporting. Let this sink in: the narrative behind the most significant societal crisis of modernity proves to be as leaky as a bucket, and it hardly sparks interest in the media that drove society economically, psychologically, physically, and ethically to ruin with this story. Indeed: ‘Not love, not hate, but the passion for ignorance is the most fundamental passion of man.’</p><p>Finally: I hear people indignantly shouting here and there that they should try to stage such a parody about the prophet Mohammed at the Olympic Games. Why is it always the Christians who have to endure mockery? It is true in itself: the brave woke adherents, the heroes of the masses, will think twice before directing their extraordinary heroism at Islam. And yet I must say: let this not be an opportunity to sow division between religions and worldviews, between Jews, Christians, Muslims, Humanists, or Agnostics, or Atheists who try to stay connected with principles of humanity.</p><p>What it really is about is that there is an ideology that mocks ethical awareness and profiles itself as a representative of an anti-ethical force. It is against that which we have a duty to speak out. Everything else means slowly becoming the monster one fights.</p><div data-attrs='{"url":"https://words.mattiasdesmet.org/subscribe?","text":"Subscribe","language":"en"}' data-component-name="SubscribeWidgetToDOM" data-sanitized-class="subscription-widget-wrap-editor"><div data-sanitized-class="subscription-widget show-subscribe"><div data-sanitized-class="preamble"><p data-sanitized-class="cta-caption">Mattias Desmet is a reader-supported publication. 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guid: https://words.mattiasdesmet.org/p/masculinity-and-femininity-at-the
title: Masculinity and femininity at the Olympics.
author: ;Mattias Desmet
link: https://words.mattiasdesmet.org/p/masculinity-and-femininity-at-the
hash: �j"ܖ��]� ��WW
content:
<p>I've been following the debate about the boxing match between Algerian Imane Khelif and Italian Angela Carini with some interest over the past few days. That match stirred up quite a bit of controversy. Carini gave up after taking a few punches, only 46 seconds in. Emotions ran high for both Carini and part of the public, leading to outraged protests: the match was a disgrace. Imane Khelif is not a woman but a man. And with shameless brutality, he broke Carini's nose and her Olympic tribute to her late father.</p><p>Is Imane Khelif a man? There's quite a bit of confusion about that. The initial outrage seemed to assume that Khelif was transgender, born a man but forced into the semblance of femininity through surgery. Many saw the boxing match as a further escalation of woke madness, where a man can casually identify as a woman and unleash his petty sadism in women's competitions to gather prize money.</p><div data-attrs='{"url":"https://words.mattiasdesmet.org/subscribe?","text":"Subscribe","language":"en"}' data-component-name="SubscribeWidgetToDOM" data-sanitized-class="subscription-widget-wrap-editor"><div data-sanitized-class="subscription-widget show-subscribe"><div data-sanitized-class="preamble"><p data-sanitized-class="cta-caption">Mattias Desmet is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.</p></div><div data-sanitized-class="fake-input-wrapper"><div data-sanitized-class="fake-input"></div><div data-sanitized-class="fake-button"></div></div></div></div><p>Prominent voices like J.K. Rowling and Elon Musk sided with the outrage, and the dispute quickly took on the form of a global culture war. Initially, I also felt a sense of outrage. I sided with J.K. Rowling and made a post on X (formerly Twitter) making that clear. But an hour later, reason led me to some caution, and I deleted my post.</p><p>Rowling undoubtedly deserves a statue—and more than that—for her tireless, sincere speaking out, day after day and time after time, on points where others remain silent while our culture marches absurdly and destructively onward. But perhaps the outrage here has spoken too soon and has overlooked the complexity of the matter. Maybe it has also become somewhat insensitive to a person who was already placed in an extraordinarily difficult situation by nature.</p><p>***</p><p>Imane is not a ‘transgender’; she is one of the few people whose body does not easily fit into the sexual categories of nature. And the discussion about her sexual characteristics presents an interesting social spectacle. Biologists from various ideological backgrounds are fiercely debating on social media, using the greatest technical expertise. The one expert proves that Imane is a woman and the other, equally convinced, that Imane is a man. Nowhere do you see better than here that rational expertise ultimately always serves irrational forces.</p><p>Some believe that chromosomes determine your gender, others hormones, yet others hormone receptors; some rely on external sexual characteristics; here and there, a biologist believes the answer must be found in psychology and that only what someone feels determines their gender.</p><p>Personally, I find the most convincing biological criterion for determining gender to be whether one has ovaries or testicles (whether external or internal). But even that criterion is far from absolute: can one say that someone with internal testicles but the external characteristics of a woman is a man? For example, would a heterosexual woman spontaneously become sexually aroused by seeing this body?</p><p>In that sense, the outrage is somewhat justified: it makes no sense to let a woman be beaten up by someone who clearly does not fit into the female category in some respects. But confidently saying that Imane belongs in the male category and should demonstrate her courage there might also be a step too far.</p><p>In essence, one can only conclude: Imane belongs to the very small group of people whom nature, in a moment of hesitation and doubt, did not decisively place in the category of women or men. Imane demonstrates that the symbolic sometimes falls short in determining gender compared to the real - we cannot really put her in the symbolic category of men or women. The wisest answer regarding Imane's gender might be: we don't know.</p><p>The fact that the International Boxing Association decided to give Carini the winner's prize money (while she lost) reveals precisely this: they don't know either. But they dare not admit it. They <em><strong>must</strong></em> know. Precisely that is the hardest thing for our rationalistic culture, to accept that we ultimately have no rational answer to the big questions of our existence.</p><p>The words of Keats (1817) come to mind here: <em>"At once it struck me what quality went to form a Man of Achievement ... when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason."</em></p><p>***</p><p>Should we then let Imane and only Imane decide for herself whether she is as a man or a woman?  And does that extend to everyone? Look at the complex machinery of genes, hormones, receptors, internal and external sexual characteristics – don't we always find a mix of the feminine and the masculine to some extent? In other words, are the woke proponents right? Is binary thinking about man and woman outdated?</p><p>The man-woman distinction is the most fundamental polarity of human existence, and it is not because an extremely small group of people cannot be clearly categorized within that distinction that the distinction itself should be discarded. Discarding binary thinking because it fails in an extremely small number of cases is an evasion of the greatest task in human existence: becoming the gender that your body imposes on you.</p><p>Nietzsche's imperative "Become who you are" also applies here: "Become the man or woman you are." And it is indeed the body that represents being; it is our body that gives the command. What those words of Nietzsche (he actually borrowed them from ancient Greek culture but breathed new life into them) beautifully evoke is that humans are beings for whom Being is a task.</p><p>To become who we are, we must leave behind the order of appearances; we must transcend our ego and our narcissism to <em><strong>be</strong></em>. I will explore this in my next book: I cannot fully address it here. I just add this here: the woke ambition to let everyone ‘choose’ their own gender, merely on the basis of their preferences, is essentially an egocentric attempt to escape the task of being.</p><p>The entire effort to get rid of "heteronormativity" is a failure: the norm in terms of human sexuality is indeed a relationship between a man and a woman. Without that norm, a society ends up in a Babel-like confusion. We are slowly experiencing that.</p><p>But this note is fundamental to ensure we do not end up in an ultraconservative (and ultra hypocritical) society: that norm should not be oppressively imposed. It is a compass needle that guides the ship of society, but the hand that steers the ship should not handle the steering wheel in a relentless and tense way. The ability to deviate from the norm is a hallmark of cultural maturity (as I discussed in a previous article and will not elaborate on here). Precisely because the ship has a compass on board, it can afford to go on excursions and explorations to the left and right of the course indicated by the compass.</p><p>And "the norm" cannot be used to stigmatize. Far from it. What deviates from the norm can be (much) better than what conforms to it. For example, Michelangelo and Da Vinci, both likely homosexual, can hardly be considered beings who were less than "the average person."</p><p>***</p><p>Back to the Olympic Games. What do we actually do with Imane and similar cases? First, we must accept that we are fundamentally uncertain. And that is precisely difficult in our current culture. We take sports very seriously – dead seriously. Any sense of relativity and light-heartedness has disappeared from the sports culture. And that in itself is a problem. In a society where the Soul prevails over the Ego, where Love prevails over Narcissism, sport is a form of play and entertainment.</p><p>For instance: in a group of men who love each other and who are united by friendship, a soccer game is an occasion for lightness and laughter. If one wins, they are happy because they have won, and if the other wins, they are just as happy for the Other. All rivalry is just a tinkling laugh in a warm ocean of Love.</p><p>But in a society where the Ego prevails, sport becomes pure competition and rivalry. More and more rules have to be invented to contain the underlying aggression and feed the narcissism. Someone must ultimately be able to beat their chest and claim that a flawless weighing and measuring of abilities has designated them as the winner of winners.</p><p>This obsession with rules is not unique to sports; the entire bureaucratization of our society is a manifestation of it. More and more rules to contain the growing aggression and disconnection in interpersonal relationships. And this obsession with rules is always accompanied by a corresponding urge to break the rules.</p><p>In this way, society becomes a high-pressure vessel that must continuously thicken its walls to withstand the increasing pressure within. The Soul eventually withers away behind pseudo-rationalistic prison walls that muffle its soft cries before they can reach the ears of the Other.</p><p>The dominance of the Ego over the Soul is ultimately a consequence of our blind faith in what our eyes show us as "objective." That faith causes us to literally lose ourselves in superficiality, that means, in the visible surface of things. This could itself be the subject of an essay: what the eyes show us is, in a certain sense, always a negative of true Being.</p><p>Consider the observation of colors: the colors we see are those light frequencies that are not absorbed by the object we are observing; they are the ones the object repels and does not want to absorb. The colors our eyes see are those that the object is not. Or take the identification of ourselves with our mirror image, the basis of the Ego. The image we see in the mirror is a left-right inversion of our real image.</p><p>In this way, the objectivist quest for the Real ends in radical appearance and the inversion of every truth. Precisely that is the main characteristic of this objectivist and rationalist culture: it claims to speak the Truth but represents the lie. The phenomenon of "propaganda"—the systematic lie—is not coincidentally the essence of our culture. In a society where appearance, deceit, and manipulation are cultivated without restraint, speaking the Truth inevitably becomes forbidden and sanctioned as a crime.</p><p>***</p><p>And we encounter yet another issue in contemporary sports culture. The entire effort to promote women's competitions and make them as attractive as men's competitions is reaching its limits. It ends in contradiction. In quite a few sports, it turns out that as a woman, you become more successful the less woman and more man you are.</p><p>In this way, we end up in the rather peculiar situation that  two people (Imane Khelif and Taiwan’s Lin Yu-Ting) will be in the women’s boxing finals who not only look like men but also have the main genetic characteristics of a man (the XY chromosome). The step towards a conservative stance is quickly taken: the only way to be successful as a woman in top sports is to stop being a woman. Consequently: certain sports are not for women. So, stop promoting women's competitions in those sports.</p><p>In itself, there is a certain logic in that, but we need a much more fundamental reflection to overcome the confusion about human sexuality as a culture. The physical difference between men and women corresponds to a psychological difference.</p><p>Both physically and psychologically, being a woman involves the absence of something, a gaping void, and being a man involves having something that fits into that void. Physically, this requires little explanation; psychologically, it means that the archetypal female position is that of having the courage to express her vulnerability and lack of Knowledge through words to the Other. And the male position consists of hearing the woman's lack in her words with all tenderness and integrity and giving a response that temporarily fills that void. </p><p>That doesn’t mean, of course, that a man hasn’t just as much ‘lack’ as a woman; he too is characterised by lack of being and knowledge. And that’s why the physical sexes must always rotate around these two psychological positions. But the woman will still have an archetypal preference for the first position (expressing her lack) and the man for the second (giving words that make the Lack cease for a moment). More about this in later articles and in my next book.</p><p>In this way, the male-female polarity is necessary for the birth of Truth. The phenomenon of Truth fully realizes itself precisely at this point: someone articulates something in all vulnerability that the Ego normally keeps hidden and unspoken; someone else listens sensitively and with integrity, without judging and condemning from their Ego and narcissism. The appearance of Truth thus represents the moment when the love between the male and the female is realized and the moment when the Soul transcends the Ego.</p><div data-sanitized-class="captioned-image-container"><figure><a target="_blank" href="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F93ca188b-db2b-4f5f-9011-bd9e3f70ca07_1878x1248.png" data-component-name="Image2ToDOM" data-sanitized-class="image-link image2 is-viewable-img"><div data-sanitized-class="image2-inset"><picture><source type="image/webp"><img src="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F93ca188b-db2b-4f5f-9011-bd9e3f70ca07_1878x1248.png" width="1456" height="968" data-attrs='{"src":"https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/93ca188b-db2b-4f5f-9011-bd9e3f70ca07_1878x1248.png","srcNoWatermark":null,"fullscreen":null,"imageSize":null,"height":968,"width":1456,"resizeWidth":null,"bytes":2303722,"alt":null,"title":null,"type":"image/png","href":null,"belowTheFold":true,"topImage":false,"internalRedirect":null,"isProcessing":false}' alt="" loading="lazy" data-sanitized-class="sizing-normal"></picture><div data-sanitized-class="image-link-expand"><div data-sanitized-class="pencraft pc-display-flex pc-gap-8 pc-reset"><div data-sanitized-class="pencraft pc-reset icon-container restack-image"><path d="M3 12a9 9 0 0 1 9-9 9.75 9.75 0 0 1 6.74 2.74L21 8"></path><path d="M21 3v5h-5"></path><path d="M21 12a9 9 0 0 1-9 9 9.75 9.75 0 0 1-6.74-2.74L3 16"></path><path d="M8 16H3v5"></path></div><div data-sanitized-class="pencraft pc-reset icon-container view-image"><polyline points="15 3 21 3 21 9"></polyline><polyline points="9 21 3 21 3 15"></polyline><line x1="21" x2="14" y1="3" y2="10"></line><line x1="3" x2="10" y1="21" y2="14"></line></div></div></div></div></a></figure></div><p></p><div data-attrs='{"url":"https://words.mattiasdesmet.org/subscribe?","text":"Subscribe","language":"en"}' data-component-name="SubscribeWidgetToDOM" data-sanitized-class="subscription-widget-wrap-editor"><div data-sanitized-class="subscription-widget show-subscribe"><div data-sanitized-class="preamble"><p data-sanitized-class="cta-caption">Mattias Desmet is a reader-supported publication. 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guid: https://words.mattiasdesmet.org/p/the-riots-in-great-britain-a-dream
title: The riots in Great Britain - A dream of tomorrow.
author: ;Mattias Desmet
link: https://words.mattiasdesmet.org/p/the-riots-in-great-britain-a-dream
hash: ��|1�:['8���t�
content:
<p>Dear friends, followers, and critics from the very beginning,</p><p>This morning, on my first day back at work, my hands trembled as I lifted the screen of my computer. I saw queues of thousands of emails waiting. And I saw so many 'musts' coming at me that my 'wants' were banished to the most northern of all penal camps.</p><div data-attrs='{"url":"https://words.mattiasdesmet.org/subscribe?","text":"Subscribe","language":"en"}' data-component-name="SubscribeWidgetToDOM" data-sanitized-class="subscription-widget-wrap-editor"><div data-sanitized-class="subscription-widget show-subscribe"><div data-sanitized-class="preamble"><p data-sanitized-class="cta-caption">Mattias Desmet is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.</p></div><div data-sanitized-class="fake-input-wrapper"><div data-sanitized-class="fake-input"></div><div data-sanitized-class="fake-button"></div></div></div></div><p>And I thought: I have to write something today. I have to write something about the riots in Great Britain; I have to write something for the Muslims <em>and</em> the ‘fascists’; to express my quiet longing that we might all laugh, eat, and drink together one evening.</p><p>I want to write something for the mischievous and intelligent eyes of Ahmet, who came to fix my lawnmower this weekend and only wanted to drink coffee after the machine was running again. And I want to write something for Amar, the assistant who, as caring as always, reminded me this morning to have my exam questions ready on time.</p><p>And I want to write something for the boys who are worried about the future of the West, who fear that Great Britain and Europe of the past will disappear due to mass migration, and who look on with powerless, sad eyes, wondering why their love for Christian culture is being labeled as ‘fascism’.</p><p>And I want to write something for 'the authorities' who are now crying out in all the newspapers that 'disinformation' is at the root of the riots and who are putting their words into action: prison sentences for women and children and for anyone inciting violence and hate.</p><p>Dear authorities, do you never wonder: what is your own role in the hate and violence? You fight ‘disinformation’ tooth and nail, but so far I haven’t heard you whisper a word about the 4000 pages of emails and other documents that were made public by a whistleblower in Germany, reducing the whole corona story to what it was: a bricolage of lies and cowardice, a coup by techno-totalitarianism, brimming with cynical contempt for humanity. Do you really think that a Thought Police and an Orwellian jailing Elon Musk will remove hatred from society?</p><p>To the media and politicians, I would say: set a good example for the public. Talk about those revelations in Germany every evening for a week and show that while you may have fed a dangerous illusion, you have the courage and sincerity to admit it. And finally, demand that our own Minister of Health allows his corona emails to be examined. The situation in Germany suggests why he refuses to do so, and it is your responsibility to hold him accountable.</p><p>This is the problem underlying outbursts of hate and violence in Europe, the Middle East, and Bangladesh: the government fails to fulfill its role as the body that should defuse the petty human sentiments that always exist between population groups. Neither Muslims, nor 'fascists', nor Christians, nor Jews trust 'the government'. And sadly, I must say: you don't give them much reason to. The unfortunate thing is that the frustration is often taken out on each other. They would do better to stand side by side and look at the government, saying: we can build a better government together, a government for all of us, in all our differences.</p><p>This morning, on my first day back at work after the holiday, I opened my eyes and thought: what kind of work would you really want to do? I saw a world before my dreaming open eyes: I actually want to grow pumpkins and zucchinis and sheep. And I want to saw firewood with my Japanese pull saws and prune willows and watch how little sheep mouths nimbly and skillfully strip willow leaves from twigs. And in the evening, I want to eat, drink, and sing around a big campfire with friends and neighbors at a long table.</p><p>But then I read about the riots and thought: I’ll just write this little piece. For Ahmet and Amar and all the fascists. But one day, after the holidays, I want to get up and say: I’m going to grow pumpkins and zucchinis and sheep, and saw wood, and eat and drink around campfires with people who all love each other. And then I only want to write about that.</p><p>Mattias</p><div data-sanitized-class="captioned-image-container"><figure><a target="_blank" href="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F65564ee7-9ac5-4315-9a8b-be31215eb438_1438x1024.png" data-component-name="Image2ToDOM" data-sanitized-class="image-link image2 is-viewable-img"><div data-sanitized-class="image2-inset"><picture><source type="image/webp"><img src="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F65564ee7-9ac5-4315-9a8b-be31215eb438_1438x1024.png" width="1438" height="1024" data-attrs='{"src":"https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/65564ee7-9ac5-4315-9a8b-be31215eb438_1438x1024.png","srcNoWatermark":null,"fullscreen":null,"imageSize":null,"height":1024,"width":1438,"resizeWidth":null,"bytes":2982417,"alt":null,"title":null,"type":"image/png","href":null,"belowTheFold":true,"topImage":false,"internalRedirect":null,"isProcessing":false}' alt="" loading="lazy" data-sanitized-class="sizing-normal"></picture><div data-sanitized-class="image-link-expand"><div data-sanitized-class="pencraft pc-display-flex pc-gap-8 pc-reset"><div data-sanitized-class="pencraft pc-reset icon-container restack-image"><path d="M3 12a9 9 0 0 1 9-9 9.75 9.75 0 0 1 6.74 2.74L21 8"></path><path d="M21 3v5h-5"></path><path d="M21 12a9 9 0 0 1-9 9 9.75 9.75 0 0 1-6.74-2.74L3 16"></path><path d="M8 16H3v5"></path></div><div data-sanitized-class="pencraft pc-reset icon-container view-image"><polyline points="15 3 21 3 21 9"></polyline><polyline points="9 21 3 21 3 15"></polyline><line x1="21" x2="14" y1="3" y2="10"></line><line x1="3" x2="10" y1="21" y2="14"></line></div></div></div></div></a></figure></div><p></p><div data-attrs='{"url":"https://words.mattiasdesmet.org/subscribe?","text":"Subscribe","language":"en"}' data-component-name="SubscribeWidgetToDOM" data-sanitized-class="subscription-widget-wrap-editor"><div data-sanitized-class="subscription-widget show-subscribe"><div data-sanitized-class="preamble"><p data-sanitized-class="cta-caption">Mattias Desmet is a reader-supported publication. 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attributes:
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guid: https://words.mattiasdesmet.org/p/propaganda-and-false-flag-operations
title: Propaganda and false flag operations - Zelensky is truly capable of anything.
author: ;Mattias Desmet
link: https://words.mattiasdesmet.org/p/propaganda-and-false-flag-operations
hash: uD�9$!��I��b���
content:
<p>Dear friends,</p><p>A so-called 'false flag' operation is coming to light at a record pace. The media initially wanted us to believe that 'the Russians' blew up the Nord Stream pipeline. Anyone with any ability to critically distance themselves raised an eyebrow. The Russians blow up that pipeline to prevent themselves from transporting their own gas to Europe?</p><div data-attrs='{"url":"https://words.mattiasdesmet.org/subscribe?","text":"Subscribe","language":"en"}' data-component-name="SubscribeWidgetToDOM" data-sanitized-class="subscription-widget-wrap-editor"><div data-sanitized-class="subscription-widget show-subscribe"><div data-sanitized-class="preamble"><p data-sanitized-class="cta-caption">Mattias Desmet is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.</p></div><div data-sanitized-class="fake-input-wrapper"><div data-sanitized-class="fake-input"></div><div data-sanitized-class="fake-button"></div></div></div></div><p>Besides the many other strange creases and twists in the story, the next question immediately arose: why don’t the Russians simply turn off their gas tap instead of blowing up a pipeline at the bottom of the sea?</p><p>And the same goes for a whole range of other elements in the Ukraine story. For instance: you don’t have to be a genius to also raise an eyebrow at the story about the blown-up dam over the Dnipro River.</p><p>It is not because a line of thought is completely absurd that people will not blindly follow it. Propagandists know this all too well. All you need is a horde of unprincipled journalists, an army of thoughtless fact-checkers, and a lonely, mentally exhausted population.</p><p>As Steve Aernouts wrote on my Facebook page: <em>‘When top journalist and former Pulitzer Prize winner Seymour Hersh argued a few months after the incident, through a CIA insider, that Russia was not to blame, the man was dismissed as some kind of idiot by all the media.’</em> Regardless of how solid both the logic and the relationship to the facts of Hersh’s story were, society chose to go along with the completely absurd story spread through the mainstream media.</p><p>To quote Hannah Arendt: <em>“The ideal subject for a totalitarian regime is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but someone for whom the distinction between fact and fiction and the distinction between true and false no longer exists.”</em></p><p>Propaganda works, stunningly well. And we can only conclude: the media apparatus, once conceived as the societal organ that must continually give birth to the Truth in society, has largely been absorbed by the propaganda apparatus.</p><p>***</p><p>A few days ago, the media story about the Nord Stream pipeline began to slowly unravel. First, it appeared in the media that ‘a Ukrainian’ had blown up the pipeline, then the pointing finger identified a Ukrainian diving school, and now it is added that <a href="https://www.demorgen.be/oorlog-in-oekraine/live-oekraine-zelensky-wist-van-sabotage-nord-stream-en-keurde-die-goed-nieuwe-evacuaties-in-russische-grensregio-wegens-oekraiense-inval~b38bed0a/">Zelensky himself approved the operation</a>.</p><p>So, try to imagine it clearly: To turn European public opinion against Putin, Zelensky had a team of divers blow up the Nord Stream pipeline. The great monster Putin would thus be responsible for a winter without gas in Europe. One thing is clear: Zelensky is truly capable of anything.</p><p>We can ask ourselves: is there a reason why Zelensky is being thrown under the bus here and now? But besides that—and I may be naïve—I still see it as a good sign that the media are still capable of breaking their own story. So I say sincerely: thank you to the media.</p><p>And do the same with the COVID story and all other forms of fake news that have been spread in recent years. Let the truth break through. As Nietzsche said, in the light of every great person, thousands of secrets of history crawl out from under their stone (Historia abscondita). To all journalists: try to be such a ‘truly great person.’ ‘Become who you are.’ Feel the pride you deserve when you remain true to the ethics of true journalism. Ensure that we can once again truly respect journalism. Stop allowing yourselves to be used, stop reducing yourselves to a propaganda tool. You can be so much more than that.</p><p>***</p><p>A century and a half ago, some began to realize: the possibilities of propaganda are virtually unlimited. Among other things, it sends thousands of young people into the trenches to fight against other young people who have done them absolutely no harm. To understand the history of the last 150 years, one must primarily study the practice of propaganda.</p><p>The way the mass media are centrally controlled according to the principles of Walter Lippmann, the way information flows are directed on the internet, the way tens of thousands of so-called <a href="https://substack.com/@mattiasdesmet/p-130477388">‘digital first responders’</a>constantly ridicule, criminalize, and pathologize every dissident voice—the better you understand the phenomenon of ‘propaganda,’ the more you realize: the world is truly ruled by lies.</p><p>To everyone whose heart aches when they think of all those Russian and Ukrainian people dying on the battlefield, I ask: please watch Tucker Carlson’s interview with the American top diplomat Jeffrey Sachs (see this <a href="https://x.com/TuckerCarlson/status/1795500379578253729?fbclid=IwY2xjawEq_GFleHRuA2FlbQIxMAABHaFShqc1PbN-CRCc55m5A5M8ISkjuTGgAg6_TAlCl4MuZK0yNBA-pI9FoA_aem_ACN9O1nq9kF8hJ1DwCBV1w">link</a>). These are the kinds of interviews we need: calm, nuanced, and with immense knowledge of the facts.</p><p>Listen to that interview, and you’ll quickly stop thinking in black and white. Putin is no saint, we know that. But I fear that in this case, we must say: the most sinister role in the story is certainly not being played by Putin.</p><p>Make some effort to explore some of the historical context of this 'unprovoked war.' You will see that there is no question of 'unprovoked' at all. And when you begin to see that, stand up and say: not in my name.</p><p>Mattias</p><div data-sanitized-class="captioned-image-container"><figure><a target="_blank" href="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fe57db4dd-559d-484e-8440-90a6f157f0c5_2188x1240.png" data-component-name="Image2ToDOM" data-sanitized-class="image-link image2 is-viewable-img"><div data-sanitized-class="image2-inset"><picture><source type="image/webp"><img src="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fe57db4dd-559d-484e-8440-90a6f157f0c5_2188x1240.png" width="1456" height="825" data-attrs='{"src":"https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/e57db4dd-559d-484e-8440-90a6f157f0c5_2188x1240.png","srcNoWatermark":null,"fullscreen":null,"imageSize":null,"height":825,"width":1456,"resizeWidth":null,"bytes":2750039,"alt":null,"title":null,"type":"image/png","href":null,"belowTheFold":true,"topImage":false,"internalRedirect":null,"isProcessing":false}' alt="" loading="lazy" data-sanitized-class="sizing-normal"></picture><div data-sanitized-class="image-link-expand"><div data-sanitized-class="pencraft pc-display-flex pc-gap-8 pc-reset"><div data-sanitized-class="pencraft pc-reset icon-container restack-image"><path d="M3 12a9 9 0 0 1 9-9 9.75 9.75 0 0 1 6.74 2.74L21 8"></path><path d="M21 3v5h-5"></path><path d="M21 12a9 9 0 0 1-9 9 9.75 9.75 0 0 1-6.74-2.74L3 16"></path><path d="M8 16H3v5"></path></div><div data-sanitized-class="pencraft pc-reset icon-container view-image"><polyline points="15 3 21 3 21 9"></polyline><polyline points="9 21 3 21 3 15"></polyline><line x1="21" x2="14" y1="3" y2="10"></line><line x1="3" x2="10" y1="21" y2="14"></line></div></div></div></div></a></figure></div><p></p><div data-attrs='{"url":"https://words.mattiasdesmet.org/subscribe?","text":"Subscribe","language":"en"}' data-component-name="SubscribeWidgetToDOM" data-sanitized-class="subscription-widget-wrap-editor"><div data-sanitized-class="subscription-widget show-subscribe"><div data-sanitized-class="preamble"><p data-sanitized-class="cta-caption">Mattias Desmet is a reader-supported publication. 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attributes:
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guid: https://words.mattiasdesmet.org/p/the-democratic-party-coup-against
title: The democratic party coup against Biden.
author: ;Mattias Desmet
link: https://words.mattiasdesmet.org/p/the-democratic-party-coup-against
hash: �� �u��0�B����kz
content:
<p>Dear friends,</p><p>Things are getting quite interesting in the mainstream media. Here and there, something real is seeping through the omnipresent facade.</p><div data-attrs='{"url":"https://words.mattiasdesmet.org/subscribe?","text":"Subscribe","language":"en"}' data-component-name="SubscribeWidgetToDOM" data-sanitized-class="subscription-widget-wrap-editor"><div data-sanitized-class="subscription-widget show-subscribe"><div data-sanitized-class="preamble"><p data-sanitized-class="cta-caption">Mattias Desmet is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.</p></div><div data-sanitized-class="fake-input-wrapper"><div data-sanitized-class="fake-input"></div><div data-sanitized-class="fake-button"></div></div></div></div><p>I read in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/17/opinion/election-dnc-convention.html">The New York Times</a> that Biden was removed from the presidential race through a genuine "coup" or overthrow. It's just an isolated article amidst the vast sea of media content that upholds the illusion of the day, but it's still being picked up here and there in the mainstream media.</p><p>The content of the original article goes like this: Biden fell victim to an actual conspiracy by Obama, Pelosi, Schumer, and Jeffries. On alternative media, this conclusion was reached much earlier: the way Biden was removed from the race bears all the characteristics of a coup. This conclusion was drawn from a series of factors, including the fact that neither Biden himself nor people from his entourage publicly communicated about the withdrawal from the race, except through a letter signed by Biden "as if with a gun to his head."</p><p>Is it a problem that a number of influential Democratic figures forced Biden behind the scenes to withdraw? Yes, because Biden was indeed democratically elected as the presidential candidate by millions of Democratic Party members. Kamala Harris was not democratically nominated at all.</p><p>The choice of Harris is, to put it mildly, remarkable. She initially had little to no grassroots support within the Democratic voter base; her knowledge of crucial aspects of the state system and key societal issues (such as the pressing phenomenon of inflation) seems almost nonexistent; and nature certainly did not endow her with rhetorical prowess.</p><p>Either the Democrats had an incredible poverty of available candidates, or they believe so blindly in the propaganda machine that is being mobilized that they dare to go to the elections with just anyone. A combination of these two factors seems most plausible to me.</p><p>Certain aspects of how the propaganda machine is used to influence elections have already been extensively documented. The development of Google and many other popular internet applications was originally funded by the U.S. State Department due to their potentially extraordinary usefulness as propaganda tools. And that turned out to be a good bet.</p><p>Propaganda is not primarily the art of lying; it is the art of psychological manipulation. It is primarily the art of directing attention. Propaganda ensures that you notice certain aspects of reality and not others. And what is more suited to that than a search engine? Google is nowadays the Great Other that answers all your questions.</p><p>And that answer is far from "objective" or "neutral." Google more frequently directs you to "desired" narratives than to undesirable ones. And sometimes the disbalance is quite outspoken. To give just one example: In the days following the attack on Trump, it was signaled frequently that the search term "assassination attempt" in America yielded little to no results referring to the assassination attempt on Trump. Instead, one would get content referring to all sorts of assassination attempts.</p><p>This suggests that those who believe the whole attack on Trump was a "deep state"-orchestrated publicity campaign for Trump are wrong. The attack on Trump was indeed extremely good publicity for Trump, but the establishment did everything to minimize that publicity.</p><p>While the manipulation of search strategies about the assassination attempt on Trump are still somehow speculative, the same is not true when talking about the 2020 elections. I've mentioned it before: this <a href="https://x.com/TuckerCarlson/status/1758529993280205039">interview with Mike Benz</a> introduces you to the most expert way in this matter. This much is clear: propaganda works stunningly well. It seems that the enormous propaganda machinery might even be able to achieve the impossible: making a candidate without grassroots support, without rhetorical talent, and without significant intellectual abilities the president of the USA.</p><p>The Democratic Party in America is rapidly discarding any democratic character and is transforming more and more into a fully developed totalitarian structure. Under Biden's rule, it became more or less normal to prosecute and imprison political opponents and dissident journalists (according to some sources, <a href="https://x.com/TuckerCarlson/status/1770571020983824433">this involved hundreds of dissidents</a>); he actively and explicitly helped create social support for the assassination attempt on Trump; he incited violence against the people of the MAGA movement in a barely concealed way; and in true totalitarian style, he kept the numerous (and perhaps justified) legal allegations against him and his family members out of the media.</p><p>The coup against Biden confronts Biden himself with a core characteristic of totalitarian systems. As Hannah Arendt already said: a totalitarian system always ultimately becomes a monster that devours its own children. Biden now knows this: he became a victim of the beast he himself abundantly fed.</p><p>That rising beast is, of course, not merely an American affair. It is a global phenomenon. The social dynamics set in motion by the riots in Great Britain illustrate this abundantly, for example. What is happening in Great Britain is socially so important that I will dedicate a separate article to it, but I will already touch on it here.</p><p>The totalitarian censorship there entered the next stage. People who articulated a dissident opinion on social media are now being imprisoned almost arbitrarily. In some cases, the posts indeed incite violence to some extent; but in other cases, it's hard to detect anything in the post that could be legally sanctionable. And ultimately, this is exactly what the legislator announces: <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/08/09/tech-giants-forced-ban-fake-news-labour/">the post doesn't have to be illegal to be forced to censor it.</a></p><p>In this way, the totalitarian system achieves something typical: it cancels every law (see, for example, Solzhenitsyn’s "there is no law") and replaces it with a system of ad hoc rules that whirls around and ultimately descends into radical absurdity. In that sense, totalitarian systems are variants and outgrowths of the bureaucratization of society:</p><p><em>"In a fully developed bureaucracy there is nobody left with whom one can argue, to whom one can present grievances, on whom the pressures of power can be exerted. Bureaucracy is the form of government in which everybody is deprived of political freedom, of the power to act; for the rule by Nobody is not no-rule, and where all are equally powerless, we have a tyranny without a tyrant." </em>(Hannah Arendt, On Violence).</p><p>Ultimately, in such a bureaucratic-totalitarian system, every psychological anchor that the law normally provides is lost. In place of the law is a completely irrational and inconsistent rule system. In this way, our rationalist culture culminates in exactly the opposite of what it sought to achieve.</p><p>The absurd, suffocating networks of rules first turn against those who do not want to go along with the system. But those who do engage with the system also fall prey to it, narrowly escaping, if at all, the machine they themselves built.</p><p>In a totalitarian system, no one is safe; everything and everyone can fall under the rules that are rewritten daily on the walls of Animal Farm by the pigs in charge. This gives us a glimpse of what the coming years will mainly bring: unimaginable chaos and psychological dislocation. And the only anchor will be precisely what our rationalist Enlightenment society pushed to the background: loyalty to ethical principles even if it means losing whatever you possess in the world of appearances.</p><div data-sanitized-class="captioned-image-container"><figure><a target="_blank" href="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fe04dbc8e-4149-42ae-a8b3-4b919fa33006_926x682.png" data-component-name="Image2ToDOM" data-sanitized-class="image-link image2 is-viewable-img"><div data-sanitized-class="image2-inset"><picture><source type="image/webp"><img src="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fe04dbc8e-4149-42ae-a8b3-4b919fa33006_926x682.png" width="926" height="682" data-attrs='{"src":"https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/e04dbc8e-4149-42ae-a8b3-4b919fa33006_926x682.png","srcNoWatermark":null,"fullscreen":null,"imageSize":null,"height":682,"width":926,"resizeWidth":null,"bytes":923467,"alt":null,"title":null,"type":"image/png","href":null,"belowTheFold":true,"topImage":false,"internalRedirect":null,"isProcessing":false}' alt="" loading="lazy" data-sanitized-class="sizing-normal"></picture><div data-sanitized-class="image-link-expand"><div data-sanitized-class="pencraft pc-display-flex pc-gap-8 pc-reset"><div data-sanitized-class="pencraft pc-reset icon-container restack-image"><path d="M3 12a9 9 0 0 1 9-9 9.75 9.75 0 0 1 6.74 2.74L21 8"></path><path d="M21 3v5h-5"></path><path d="M21 12a9 9 0 0 1-9 9 9.75 9.75 0 0 1-6.74-2.74L3 16"></path><path d="M8 16H3v5"></path></div><div data-sanitized-class="pencraft pc-reset icon-container view-image"><polyline points="15 3 21 3 21 9"></polyline><polyline points="9 21 3 21 3 15"></polyline><line x1="21" x2="14" y1="3" y2="10"></line><line x1="3" x2="10" y1="21" y2="14"></line></div></div></div></div></a></figure></div><p></p><div data-attrs='{"url":"https://words.mattiasdesmet.org/subscribe?","text":"Subscribe","language":"en"}' data-component-name="SubscribeWidgetToDOM" data-sanitized-class="subscription-widget-wrap-editor"><div data-sanitized-class="subscription-widget show-subscribe"><div data-sanitized-class="preamble"><p data-sanitized-class="cta-caption">Mattias Desmet is a reader-supported publication. 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guid: https://words.mattiasdesmet.org/p/trump-kennedy-and-the-true-nature
title: Trump, Kennedy and the question what Democracy actually is.
author: ;Mattias Desmet
link: https://words.mattiasdesmet.org/p/trump-kennedy-and-the-true-nature
hash: �"��τ��nu}�h
content:
<p>Dear friends, </p><p>I am busy writing my next book - and I like it. In a few days I will publish a long article on the moral judmentent and ethical awareness of Artificial Intelligence in times of elections. But I want to react concisely to something else first. Some people, based on my article where I wrote that Big Tech is choosing sides with Kamala Harris, assumed that I myself write for the Republicans. As far as I know myself, that’s nonsense. I write against totalitarianism and for a world where humans can live a truly human life.</p><p>If my criticism is now directed at the Democratic Party, it is because I believe they currently pose the greatest threat in terms of totalitarianism by seamlessly conforming to the technocratic ideology of globalist institutions. As Kennedy said last week when he announced his support for Trump: the Democratic Party used to be against censorship and propaganda, against the ruthlessly commercially driven and deadly over-medicalization of the population; against a monstrous food industry that drives obesity and diabetes to staggering proportions; against the stranglehold of big capital that reduces the ordinary person to the most pressing form of slavery in history. Now, they have become exponents of Big Tech, Big Pharma, a deadly food industry, and Big Finance, and they practice censorship on a scale that Stalin could have only dreamed of (full Kennedy speech <a href="https://www.malone.news/p/rfk-jr-full-speech-also-as-text">here</a> with transcription thanks to Robert Malone).</p><div data-attrs='{"url":"https://words.mattiasdesmet.org/subscribe?","text":"Subscribe","language":"en"}' data-component-name="SubscribeWidgetToDOM" data-sanitized-class="subscription-widget-wrap-editor"><div data-sanitized-class="subscription-widget show-subscribe"><div data-sanitized-class="preamble"><p data-sanitized-class="cta-caption">Mattias Desmet is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.</p></div><div data-sanitized-class="fake-input-wrapper"><div data-sanitized-class="fake-input"></div><div data-sanitized-class="fake-button"></div></div></div></div><p>In other words, while the term ‘demo-cratic’ suggests that the Democratic Party represents the interests of the people, the very opposite is likely: the Democratic Party represents industries that have the most detrimental impact on the people. The decline of the Democratic Party follows a general mechanism: the institutionalization of a virtue usually deteriorates into the vice that is precisely opposed to the original virtue. According to that psychological mechanism—which I won’t elaborate on here—the police become a threat to the safety of the people (see, for example, the police response during COVID protests and what happens in ‘police states’), the church a threat to morality (perversion and child abuse thrived within institutionalized religion), medicine detrimental to health (a huge percentage of diseases are ‘iatrogenic’) and the university becomes the main producer of misinformation (see replication crisis).</p><p>But the most important problem of the Democratie Party is this: they rely more and more excessively on propaganda to keep in power. The only thing that still holds the Democratic Party together is the immense Big Tech propaganda machine, in which the media are also deeply involved. I will elaborate on that thoroughly in my next article. The discourse of the Democratic Party has become an empty shell  where the sea whispers a melancholy dirge for the great Democrats of the past. </p><p>It’s important to emphasize something here that may not be obvious to some: Trump is a human being. A human being is always at a crossroads—he can turn towards the light at any point on his path or plunge into darkness. This is going to be the decisive question: Will he follow a truly democratic policy, that is, a policy of the majority with respect for the fundamental rights of minorities? Tocqueville rightly pointed out: democracy is not merely the rule of the majority. In a totalitarian system, the (propagandized mass) majority also rules. But it pays no attention to the fundamental rights of minorities.</p><p>To speak of true democracy, the majority must therefore respect the fundamental rights of minorities—freedom of expression, self-determination, etc. This is exactly what happened during the COVID crisis: the unvaccinated had hardly any rights left. Trump, with his ‘Operation Warp Speed,’ was to some extent complicit in this; with Kennedy by his side, he has a chance to rectify this. I hope he seizes it.</p><p>This is the question: in which direction will the human being Trump evolve under the influence of the enormous psychological forces acting on him? Will he become more human and seize the opportunity he may get to create a more humane America with a few Democrats like R. F. Kennedy and Tulsi Gabbard? Or will he slide into resentment and become more and more the monster he should be fighting?</p><p>Trump and Kennedy are finding common ground now, something they never expected. But whether this also means they will continue to find common ground if they actually have to work together is another question. I believe there are quite a few issues where Trump and Kennedy hold radically different positions. The biggest challenge will not be winning the election; the biggest challenge will be to govern in a truly humane way in times of desolation and dehumanization of the social fabric.</p><p>I’ve said it many times: the core problem of the crises in our society is our rationalistic view of humanity, which absolutizes rational knowledge and prioritizes it over ethical awareness. Essentially, it comes down to this: to the extent that the Republicans operate within the dominant (rationalistic) worldview, they will just as easily continue to create the conditions for totalitarianism. They will ultimately either become totalitarian themselves, perhaps in a different way than the Democrats, but still totalitarian; or they will lay the groundwork for the unstoppable rise of another totalitarian party.</p><p>The real work, therefore, is to investigate how we can move beyond the rationalistic and mechanistic worldview. It is that worldview that creates a fundamental disconnection between humans and their fellow humans, between humans and nature, between humans and their bodies, and thus forms the breeding ground for totalitarianism. Whether you are a Republican or a Democrat, the key is to transcend that worldview and contribute to the metaphysical revolution needed to leave behind the ailments of our Enlightenment culture. A Democrat who contributes to that does more than a Republican who does not. And vice versa.</p><p>But in any case: we are on the threshold of a political shift unlike anything we have seen in recent decades. For the first time in recent history, a political movement is emerging that—whether you support it or not—has the determination to stand firmly against much of the established Big Corporations and Big State. If necessary, to the death.</p><p>The effects are already visible: Zuckerberg made unprecedented revelations about undemocratic influence by the Biden administration (during the COVID crisis and during the 2020 elections). In other words: he is about throwing the Biden administration under the bus. He might feel the storm coming: if Trump gets another chance, an investigation will be launched into the censorship and manipulation he was involved in. And the panic over the upcoming Trump-Kennedy duo is accelerating less pleasant aspects of the great totalitarianizing process our society is undergoing: the system is transitioning from the phase of indoctrination and propaganda to the phase of terror (see, among other things, the arrest of Pavel Durov).</p><p>One thing is certain: the coming months won’t be boring in the USA. And not in the rest of the world either.</p><p>Mattias</p><div data-sanitized-class="captioned-image-container"><figure><a target="_blank" href="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F8249c497-344c-474b-8d93-3d0474e0e18c_1176x784.png" data-component-name="Image2ToDOM" data-sanitized-class="image-link image2 is-viewable-img"><div data-sanitized-class="image2-inset"><picture><source type="image/webp"><img src="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F8249c497-344c-474b-8d93-3d0474e0e18c_1176x784.png" width="1176" height="784" data-attrs='{"src":"https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/8249c497-344c-474b-8d93-3d0474e0e18c_1176x784.png","srcNoWatermark":null,"fullscreen":null,"imageSize":null,"height":784,"width":1176,"resizeWidth":null,"bytes":1729147,"alt":null,"title":null,"type":"image/png","href":null,"belowTheFold":true,"topImage":false,"internalRedirect":null,"isProcessing":false}' alt="" loading="lazy" data-sanitized-class="sizing-normal"></picture><div data-sanitized-class="image-link-expand"><div data-sanitized-class="pencraft pc-display-flex pc-gap-8 pc-reset"><div data-sanitized-class="pencraft pc-reset icon-container restack-image"><path d="M3 12a9 9 0 0 1 9-9 9.75 9.75 0 0 1 6.74 2.74L21 8"></path><path d="M21 3v5h-5"></path><path d="M21 12a9 9 0 0 1-9 9 9.75 9.75 0 0 1-6.74-2.74L3 16"></path><path d="M8 16H3v5"></path></div><div data-sanitized-class="pencraft pc-reset icon-container view-image"><polyline points="15 3 21 3 21 9"></polyline><polyline points="9 21 3 21 3 15"></polyline><line x1="21" x2="14" y1="3" y2="10"></line><line x1="3" x2="10" y1="21" y2="14"></line></div></div></div></div></a></figure></div><p></p><div data-attrs='{"url":"https://words.mattiasdesmet.org/subscribe?","text":"Subscribe","language":"en"}' data-component-name="SubscribeWidgetToDOM" data-sanitized-class="subscription-widget-wrap-editor"><div data-sanitized-class="subscription-widget show-subscribe"><div data-sanitized-class="preamble"><p data-sanitized-class="cta-caption">Mattias Desmet is a reader-supported publication. 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guid: https://words.mattiasdesmet.org/p/a-birds-voice-for-which-the-sun-rises
title: A bird's voice for which the sun rises.
author: ;Mattias Desmet
link: https://words.mattiasdesmet.org/p/a-birds-voice-for-which-the-sun-rises
hash: t�ΞD*)*�oW
content:
<p>Dear friends,<br>This morning I opened my eyes early, and while I lay in bed waiting for my body to get me moving, I had an experience so moving in its simplicity and every-day-ness that I cannot resist sharing it with you.</p><p>Between darkness and light, my awakening thoughts spun together quickly, like a solidifying candy floss. But just before they pulled me completely from the fullness of the dream world into the barrenness and illusion of waking life, something happened: I heard outside, somewhere in the trees and bushes near the open window, a cautious and hesitant 'psiiee-wiet'.</p><div data-attrs='{"url":"https://words.mattiasdesmet.org/subscribe?","text":"Subscribe","language":"en"}' data-component-name="SubscribeWidgetToDOM" data-sanitized-class="subscription-widget-wrap-editor"><div data-sanitized-class="subscription-widget show-subscribe"><div data-sanitized-class="preamble"><p data-sanitized-class="cta-caption">Mattias Desmet is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.</p></div><div data-sanitized-class="fake-input-wrapper"><div data-sanitized-class="fake-input"></div><div data-sanitized-class="fake-button"></div></div></div></div><p>That sound, utterly banal in a musical and melodic sense, had something singular about it. As certain as a rock standing with its feet in the earth, I could say this morning: this sound was a beginning. This little bird—a small bird, as I imagined it—was the first to sing today. After a few moments, it was followed, in rapid succession and surprisingly fast increasing in multitude and volume, by other bird voices. It was as if the first bird had broken a dam behind which a mounting urge to make sound had accumulated, now overflowing into the shared space. I knew for sure: there was a beginning to this abundance, and today, I was privileged to witness that beginning.</p><p>My being was briefly absorbed by that feathered phenomenon. This little creature, just like Rosa Parks, performed an act this morning. The question suddenly struck me, both pertinent and justified: what was that little bird thinking and feeling when it, in all its vulnerability, decided to be the first to make its sound this morning? Had it been waiting impatiently for another bird to break the silence? Did it think, "Why isn’t anyone starting? Someone has to do it—I'll do it"?</p><p>And why did all the birds immediately join in as soon as that one bird broke the silence? Do birds, too, have a kind of fear of speaking? Do they, too, live somewhere in fear of expressing their truth?</p><p>Suddenly, it seemed truly miraculous to me, so moving that it brought tears to my eyes. That fragile sound, full of strength in its hesitation and fragility: every morning there is a bird that has the courage to break the shell of the nocturnal silence with its little beak and open space for other voices as well.</p><p>It is through and for that bird that the sun continues its upward journey today, and it is through that small voice that the music of life sounds today.</p><p>Every day there are a thousand days, every day there is a thousandfold beginning. How beautiful it is to be a beginning at least once every day, to be that voice that breaks the silence, that voice that tames hollow echoes and hesitation; how beautiful it is to be that voice at least once each day through which and for which the sun spreads its light and life resounds in harmony.</p><p>With that, I will begin my day—and I dedicate it to that little bird.<br>Mattias</p><div data-sanitized-class="captioned-image-container"><figure><a target="_blank" href="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F0ef345f8-1cc7-4c52-b30e-03780326e5ef_1324x994.png" data-component-name="Image2ToDOM" data-sanitized-class="image-link image2 is-viewable-img"><div data-sanitized-class="image2-inset"><picture><source type="image/webp"><img src="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F0ef345f8-1cc7-4c52-b30e-03780326e5ef_1324x994.png" width="1324" height="994" data-attrs='{"src":"https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/0ef345f8-1cc7-4c52-b30e-03780326e5ef_1324x994.png","srcNoWatermark":null,"fullscreen":null,"imageSize":null,"height":994,"width":1324,"resizeWidth":null,"bytes":2353277,"alt":null,"title":null,"type":"image/png","href":null,"belowTheFold":true,"topImage":false,"internalRedirect":null,"isProcessing":false}' alt="" loading="lazy" data-sanitized-class="sizing-normal"></picture><div data-sanitized-class="image-link-expand"><div data-sanitized-class="pencraft pc-display-flex pc-gap-8 pc-reset"><div data-sanitized-class="pencraft pc-reset icon-container restack-image"><path d="M3 12a9 9 0 0 1 9-9 9.75 9.75 0 0 1 6.74 2.74L21 8"></path><path d="M21 3v5h-5"></path><path d="M21 12a9 9 0 0 1-9 9 9.75 9.75 0 0 1-6.74-2.74L3 16"></path><path d="M8 16H3v5"></path></div><div data-sanitized-class="pencraft pc-reset icon-container view-image"><polyline points="15 3 21 3 21 9"></polyline><polyline points="9 21 3 21 3 15"></polyline><line x1="21" x2="14" y1="3" y2="10"></line><line x1="3" x2="10" y1="21" y2="14"></line></div></div></div></div></a></figure></div><p></p><p></p><div data-attrs='{"url":"https://words.mattiasdesmet.org/subscribe?","text":"Subscribe","language":"en"}' data-component-name="SubscribeWidgetToDOM" data-sanitized-class="subscription-widget-wrap-editor"><div data-sanitized-class="subscription-widget show-subscribe"><div data-sanitized-class="preamble"><p data-sanitized-class="cta-caption">Mattias Desmet is a reader-supported publication. 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guid: https://words.mattiasdesmet.org/p/why-some-are-steering-towards-a-third
title: The historical background of the war in Ukraine.
author: ;Mattias Desmet
link: https://words.mattiasdesmet.org/p/why-some-are-steering-towards-a-third
hash: ��� �xO�Y2�&�
content:
<p>Dear friends, it's 8 AM and I’m sitting in my car, parked in a small lot on a beautiful castle estate in Zutphen, a Dutch village near the German border. The castle and its surrounding park exude the atmosphere of the pre-French Revolution era, when nobility and clergy ruled the world at their leisure. I watch as the sun breathes life into the morning mist before me, filling it with a glow of hope and desire.</p><p>I left Belgium this morning at half-past five to come here for a workshop on courageous speaking. I arrived an hour early, and in this idle time, a few words have drifted my way that I want to share with you. It’s been a while since I’ve shared anything, and that has everything to do with the nature of my current life.</p><div data-attrs='{"url":"https://words.mattiasdesmet.org/subscribe?","text":"Subscribe","language":"en"}' data-component-name="SubscribeWidgetToDOM" data-sanitized-class="subscription-widget-wrap-editor"><div data-sanitized-class="subscription-widget show-subscribe"><div data-sanitized-class="preamble"><p data-sanitized-class="cta-caption">Mattias Desmet is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.</p></div><div data-sanitized-class="fake-input-wrapper"><div data-sanitized-class="fake-input"></div><div data-sanitized-class="fake-button"></div></div></div></div><p>I’m diligently writing my book on the psychology of propaganda and Truth, while also traveling the world. My psychological reflections on totalitarianism took me last month to Canada, Portugal, and the Netherlands, and next month they will take me to places like Greece, Great Britain, the US, and Denmark. I surrender to the flow of life.</p><p>I know I publish somewhat irregularly here, but I allow myself that freedom. I don’t do my readers any favors by writing out of obligation rather than the urge to create. I don’t write at the command of calendar or clock; I write according to the tides and seasons of the source of words—sometimes weekly, sometimes monthly, and sometimes even less when the winter has fully settled in the land of words.</p><p>***</p><p>Alright, now to the point: I want to share a few thoughts that are clearly emerging in the early morning air. Why are some people nowadays trying so hard to provoke a third world war? The dark figure of a global nuclear conflict is indeed knocking on our door. The conflict in the Middle East is intensifying, and the conflict in Ukraine threatens to escalate into a third world war. It is mainly about the latter that I want to say something today. The stories about that conflict vary quite a bit.</p><p>The story in the media sounds roughly as follows: in the icy Russia, disorganized and divided after the Soviet Union lost the Cold War, a cold dictator, a new Hitler, seized power over the last twenty years. His name is Putin. He first became director of the FSB, the successor of the KGB, the ruthless and horrific secret service of the Soviet Union. That says enough about the type of person we are dealing with.</p><p>After that, he crept in a sly and ruthless manner onto the Russian presidential throne. Even that did not satisfy his hunger for power. He wanted to expand his Russian empire without limit and become a sort of new Tsar. In 2014, he slyly conquered Crimea by manipulating the population through propaganda and using a – likely falsified – referendum as a pretext to annex Crimea. In 2022, he took his next step: the military conquest of democratic Ukraine.</p><p>But fortunately, there is the noble NATO, which under the leadership of the USA courageously opposes this cold criminal. They are trying to allow Ukraine to join their alliance, just like the other helpless Eastern European countries that have already joined earlier, in order to protect it against the Russian threat. That is one story.</p><p>***</p><p>There is also another story, also just a story, but a story that deserves to be heard in these ominous times. It also begins with the end of the Soviet Union in 1989 and goes as follows:</p><p>The Soviet Union didn’t really lose the Cold War. A complex interplay of internal and external factors led the Soviets to grow tired of their own totalitarian society and made them decide to dissolve the Warsaw Pact and dismantle the Soviet Union. In a sincere moment of political naivety, top Soviets like Gorbachev, Yeltsin, and the young Putin believed that the West would welcome them with open arms; Russia would become their playmate in the great democratic playground of the Free Western Market. They quickly realized that the terms 'democratic'  and ‘free’ are highly relative in the West.</p><p>What they encountered was a velvet totalitarianism that in some respects was as totalitarian as the Soviet Union they had just dismantled. NATO, supposedly established to counterbalance the Soviet Union, refused to disband when the Soviet Union dissolved. Even more: contrary to all implicit and explicit agreements made with Gorbachev, Yeltsin, and Putin, NATO steadily moved its borders eastward, towards Moscow.</p><p>The whole idea of NATO's eastward expansion was devised by an American power bloc with one big goal: to create a unipolar world dominated in which one superpower, the United States, controls and contains the global geopolitical situation. The main geostrategist was <a href="https://www.voltairenet.org/article30038.html?fbclid=IwY2xjawGFuI9leHRuA2FlbQIxMAABHV4_nQWu9-C1TM2bYUt5p7Um6X8uwF_fvDhVn60568JipuNLKt-GXNN89g_aem_6MF6RbKnQ1myel0F4Sjgfg">Zbigniew Brzezinski</a>, a brilliant American professor born in Poland, whose visceral aversion to Bolshevism, ingrained in his blood, brought everything related to Russia to life. That is, of course, human, just as it is human and understandable that the inhabitants of Eastern European countries transform their deeply ingrained fear of Stalin and the Soviets today into a desire to belong to NATO.</p><p>Brzezinski was an advisor to several American presidents and chaired various committees set up to execute the NATO plan. From the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989, he outlined his strategy in various articles and interviews: Russia must never again become a world power, and to prevent that, we must isolate the country from the Black Sea by expanding NATO to the east. In doing so, he adopted a Russian strategy that European powers had already followed in the nineteenth century.</p><p>When the Ottoman (Turkish) Empire began to lose strength in the nineteenth century, Russia prepared to fill the resulting vacuum and expand its sphere of influence through the Black Sea to the Mediterranean. This threatened the economic and territorial interests of the then-superpower Great Britain. In the worst case, the British could even see their access to their colonies in the Middle East and India blocked by the Russians.</p><p>It was within this tension that the Crimean War started in 1853, a conflict between Russia on the one hand and a European alliance of the British Empire, the Ottoman Empire, the Second French Empire, and the Kingdom of Sardinia on the other. This war is historically significant in many ways, among other things because it was the first industrialized and heavily propagandized war.</p><p>The <a href="https://historiek.net/krimoorlog-oorzaken-tijdlijn-gevolgen/135265/">industrialization of the war</a> (use of advanced firearms, supply of war materials via railroads, use of naval mines, etc.) resulted in enormous numbers of casualties, with estimates ranging from 400,000 to over 750,000 deaths in just three years. What determined the course of the war was no longer the military-tactical intelligence of the leading officers or the size and loyalty of the troops, but rather who had the most sophisticated war industry and technology, and, last but not least, who had the most effective propaganda apparatus.</p><p>It is that last point that interests us most, the importance of propaganda. After the French Revolution and the replacement of the ancien régime by the modern democracy, propaganda became an obvious instrument of power. The old elite, before the French Revolution, did not really need to manipulate public opinion that much. Public opinion didn’t matter all that much. They had to massage and manipulate the population here and there, but ultimately, the elite could impose its policy without much justification. If the elite wanted to go to war, they would simply inform the people, and they had to accept it. God had willed it so: some were born to command, and others to obey.</p><p>In the new, materialistic worldview, there was no God to be found, and leaders could no longer rely on his authority to send people to war. The only option leaders had to get the population excited about war was large-scale manipulation of public opinion through propaganda.</p><p>The nineteenth-century Crimean War was the first war in which modern propaganda was of decisive importance. Emerging technology for the first time gave leaders the material means to directly and massively manipulate the population. The <a href="https://historiek.net/krimoorlog-oorzaken-tijdlijn-gevolgen/135265/">invention of the telegraph and the camera, along with the rise of mass media</a> (primarily the widespread distribution of newspapers), allowed European powers to bring vivid and convincing war stories, illustrated with photos, to the home front within just five days. The Allies perfectly understood that such forms of war communication were crucial to creating public support for the war.</p><p>The real reasons for the European countries to go to war against Russia were primarily economic in nature. But those reasons alone would not suffice to overcome the population’s fear of the horrors of war, nor would they make people willing to pay the huge sums of taxes needed for the war. Therefore, the European powers decided to portray Russia as a military threat that urgently needed to be stopped. The lie is often more efficient than the truth in making a population eager for war.</p><p>The propagandists carefully spread fabricated, ominous information about the Russian enemy among the population. The Russian soldiers were portrayed as outright savages and barbarians, and Russia as a radically expansionist power. Historians agree that this was <a href="https://journals.openedition.org/cve/10385">a propagandistic and false representation of the facts</a> (see <a href="https://www.brandeis.edu/library/archives/essays/special-collections/crimean-war.html">here</a> and <a href="https://www.nam.ac.uk/explore/illustrated-press">here</a>). Once the war had started, the propagandists directed triumphant war stories, supplemented with photographs and neatly supervised by a military censorship apparatus: we are winning, the barbaric Russians are being defeated, humanity is triumphing, but not quite yet—keep paying war taxes for a while longer.</p><p>Russia, at that time, was inferior in terms of both industrialization and propaganda. They lost the Crimean War in 1856, and that also marked the fall of Russia as a European great power. Russia would only restore its position after the Russian Revolution and the rise of the totalitarian Soviet Union under Lenin and (especially) Stalin. That marked the point where Russia itself began to fully exploit the power advantages of industrialization, technology, and propaganda.</p><p>Now, back to the core strategy during the nineteenth-century Crimean War: the goal of the war was to deny Russia access to the Black Sea. Lord Palmerston, the then British Foreign Secretary, was the first to fully grasp the economic and strategic importance of the Black Sea for Russia and developed a military strategy around it: block Russia’s access to the Black Sea, and you block Russia’s only ice-free gateway to the Mediterranean and the rest of the world. In other words, if you can ensure that Russia no longer has access to the Black Sea, Russia will lose its economic and military power within a few decades.</p><p>The same motives are currently at play in the lead-up to the war in Ukraine. Reread the paragraphs above: the current narrative regarding the tensions between Russia and NATO is essentially a reflection of the story from the First Crimean War. We will outline a number of facts concerning the buildup to the current war in Ukraine.</p><p>A neoconservative power group in the U.S. reverted to Lord Palmerston’s strategy at the end of the twentieth century, attempting to permanently eliminate Russia as a great power: NATO would <a href="https://www.voltairenet.org/article30038.html?fbclid=IwY2xjawGFuI9leHRuA2FlbQIxMAABHV4_nQWu9-C1TM2bYUt5p7Um6X8uwF_fvDhVn60568JipuNLKt-GXNN89g_aem_6MF6RbKnQ1myel0F4Sjgfg">isolate Russia from the Black Sea</a>through a gradual expansion to the East. This strategy was developed by Brzezinski in 1989, immediately following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, notably in his book <em>The Grand Chessboard</em>.</p><p>Thanks to the archival documents released after the Freedom of Information Act was enacted in the U.S. in 2017, we also know that this strategy was adopted as <a href="https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/nato-russia-russia-programs/2021-11-24/nato-expansion-budapest-blow-1994">a strategic guideline by the Clinton administration in 1994</a>. It was essentially followed by all subsequent American presidents, including Trump, and their administrations. Whether Trump will keep his promise to break with this “tradition” if re-elected remains to be seen.</p><p>This strategic plan was gradually implemented from the 1990s onward. In 1999, Poland, the Czech Republic, and Hungary were added to NATO; in 2004, the Baltic states Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, as well as Slovenia, Slovakia, Bulgaria, and Romania were added; in 2009, Albania and Croatia; in 2017, Montenegro; and in 2020, North Macedonia. These countries were immediately provided with temporary or permanent NATO military bases. The issue is that NATO is not a lion without military teeth. Somewhere along the way, in 1999, NATO also bombed Belgrade to establish a NATO-supervised state of Kosovo and to set up Camp Bondsteel, the largest NATO base in Southern Europe.</p><p>The final step was the inclusion of Ukraine in NATO, something that Brzezinski viewed as the crowning achievement of the entire strategy to deliver the final blow to Russia as a great power. Initially, European leaders like Merkel and Sarkozy fiercely resisted because they realized that the annexation of Ukraine made the risk of nuclear war a reality. However, at the NATO summit in Bucharest in 2008, President Bush Jr. made it clear that there was no room for discussion: Ukraine would “have the chance” to join NATO. At that same summit, Putin also made something clear: this would be the step too far in NATO’s advance to the East.</p><p>The neoconservative faction in America, backed by the whole dismal CIA regime-change machine, was not deterred by the prospect of a war between powers each possessing around 6,000 nuclear warheads. They began their démarche with the so-called Maidan revolution in 2014, during which President Viktor Yanukovych was ousted from power. Essentially, there is little doubt that this was not so much a popular uprising but rather a NATO-directed overthrow of a previously neutral and democratically elected president (see, among others, this <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JS-3QssVPeg">interview</a> with American top diplomat Professor Jeffrey Sachs and the documentary <em><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IwZApPCFXIc">Ukraine on Fire </a></em>by Oliver Stone). Yanukovych fled to Russia after the Maidan revolution, not because he was a puppet of Putin, but because Russia was about the only place on earth where he could be somewhat safe. After his departure, his government was replaced by a pro-Europe and pro-NATO regime.</p><p>As described above, the motives for bringing Ukraine into NATO were perhaps primarily ideological and strategic in nature. However, they intertwined with enormous economic-commercial motives. This becomes clear when considering the fate of Ukraine’s extraordinary natural wealth. Ukrainian agricultural land is among the most fertile in the world, earning Ukraine the nickname "the breadbasket of Europe."</p><p>Moreover, enormous quantities of iron ore, coal, and rare and strategically important minerals such as uraninite (the base raw material for uranium), rutile, and ilmenite (the base raw materials for titanium), as well as lithium (crucial for battery production), are also found in Ukrainian soil. According to some estimates, about 5% of the world’s mineral reserves are located in Ukraine. Depending somewhat on market conditions, its value is estimated to be in the <a href="https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oekra%C3%AFne">tens of trillions of dollars</a> (some say about 19 trillion dollars) (!).</p><p>Immediately after the pro-NATO government came to power in 2014, lobbying began to lift the moratorium that stated foreigners could never buy more than two hectares of Ukrainian land. In an April 2021 report, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the monetary infrastructure of NATO, explicitly stated that lifting this moratorium was a necessary condition for providing funds to Ukraine. In June 2021, Ukraine capitulated and effectively lifted the moratorium. Subsequently, giant American companies like <a href="https://infobrics.org/post/36302">Monsanto, Cargill, and DuPont bought up approximately 17 million hectares</a>, or one-third of Ukraine’s agricultural land, in no time.</p><p>Behind these companies are the financial giants of the world: BlackRock, Vanguard, and Blackstone, asset managers of astronomical proportions. Following the rise in agricultural land prices from €2,500 to €10,000 that followed these massive purchases, these giants immediately multiplied their invested capital. That the land has now become too expensive for countless small Ukrainian farmers to earn a living from should not concern someone striving for world dominance.</p><p>In the same movement, the economic giants took another step. BlackRock, Vanguard, and Blackstone are heavily entrenched in the American military industry, and since NATO’s actions would almost inevitably lead to war, they could also prepare for a new round of monstrous profits (at the expense of the American people).</p><p>Moreover, BlackRock and Vanguard are also significant shareholders in American construction companies Bechtel and AECOM, which signed contracts at the onset of the war for the future reconstruction of Ukraine once it would have been nearly completely leveled by the war.</p><p>Adding to this is the fact that <a href="https://kyivindependent.com/reuters-blackrock-jpmorgan-chase/#:~:text=The%20Ukrainian%20government%20has%20joined,would%20amount%20to%20%24411%20billion.">BlackRock, McKinsey, and JPMorgan Chase</a> established a reconstruction bank for Ukraine together, leading to the staggering conclusion: the same companies that earn fortunes from buying up Ukrainian agricultural land and its natural resources also profit immensely from supplying the weapons to devastate Ukraine and will ultimately profit from rebuilding it.</p><p>The grinding gears of this money machine have meanwhile crushed more than a million young Ukrainian and Russian soldiers’ bodies; the thrum of the money press drowns out the moans of thousands of tortured bodies, the sobbing of thousands of raped women, the cries of a country bleeding from every pore of its fertile land. Trying to make money is undoubtedly human, but at the top, where it is ruthlessly elevated to the highest goal, it takes on diabolical forms.</p><p>After the Maidan power takeover in 2014 and the advancing NATO militarization of the entire Black Sea region, Putin anticipated the next step: after Ukraine, NATO would set its sights on Crimea. This meant that Russia would be cut off from its fleet in Sevastopol. Putin did not wait and annexed Crimea via a referendum, increasing Russia's military presence on the peninsula. As a side note, Putin used social media and the internet for this referendum, which would be the reason Google and social media would significantly ramp up censorship thereafter (see this <a href="https://open.spotify.com/episode/6isdfZPZ4ttLkDlRJXv60R">interview</a> with Mike Benz).</p><p>With the referendum, Putin scored a significant victory but also suffered an inevitable defeat in terms of image and propaganda. This step was portrayed in the free West as the definitive outbreak of an emerging dictator who was no longer satisfied with tyrannizing his own people but was now embarking on a foreign conquest. The evidence was now provided: Putin is the new Hitler who wants to conquer all of Europe. This image was further reinforced when Putin made the next counter-move on the great global chessboard: invading Ukraine.</p><p>Through this propaganda, a psychological support base was created among the European and American populations, impoverished by the corona and other crises, to gradually mobilize for a large-scale conflict with Russia, or in other words, for World War III. That global conflict is now also approaching on another front. In the Middle East, the same Brzezinski-esque geopolitical strategy is now preparing to bring another strategic line to an end, moving towards the endgame of striving for geopolitical hegemony. Everything is being readied there to level Iran.</p><p>Thanks to the work of Pulitzer Prize winner and investigative journalist <a href="https://seymourhersh.substack.com/p/a-military-solution-to-a-political">Seymour Hersh</a>, we know that the list of countries to be destroyed in the Middle East was already on paper in 2001 (and perhaps even earlier). The list began with Iraq, included Syria and Libya, and ended with Iran.</p><p>***</p><p>We ultimately ask ourselves: what drives NATO, and particularly the American power bloc that calls the shots, to steer towards a third world war? The causes of any war are complex and usually rooted in a blind destructive and self-destructive death drive. However, at a certain level, they are also simple. The USA still has military power, but economically, it is rapidly losing its position. The USA is part of the economic power bloc of the G7 countries (Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States); it’s economical counterpart are the BRICS countries, including its arch-enemy Russia (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa).</p><p>To illustrate the decline of the G7 and the rise of the BRICS countries economically: in 1950, the G7 countries accounted for about 70% of global market share, in 1990 this decreased to about 50%, and by 2020, it further dropped to 40%. It is expected to be around 30% by 2040. The BRICS countries are going in the opposite direction. Before 1990, their share was negligible; after 1990, it rose to about 15%, and in 2020 it was approximately 30%. It is expected that by 2030, the BRICS countries could surpass the G7’s share.</p><p>The aforementioned American power bloc knows that the loss of economic power inevitably leads to the loss of military power. The only way to maintain power is to use the remaining military superiority to crush the emerging economic power of the BRICS countries and thus restore economic dominance. In other words: to provoke a third world war. Even the total destruction of humanity and humaneness does not compel some to let the ring of power be taken from their hand.</p><p>To unleash this third world war, the war machinery, again, needs the consent of the populace and must manipulate public opinion. As again: what brings people to war is a highly complex dynamic, yet there are people involved, people who take the lead. This is happening abundantly in light of the war in Ukraine. Thera are people who are blowing up a pipeline or dam here and there, people who produce propaganda in all its diversity. People who are proposing a NATO Secretary-General (the Dutch Mark Rutte) who has already convincingly demonstrated that he is willing to fully escalate the conflict with Russia. The man in question employs a kind of war rhetoric that suggests he is not genuinely inclined to empathize with the hundreds of thousands of war victims that NATO’s strategy in Ukraine has already caused, nor with the billions of potential victims that it could still create. I hope he changes his mind. A human is always a human. It is an ethical duty to assume that he can still turn for the better.  </p><p>***</p><p>In a sense, all world powers are players on the same ‘Grand Chessboard’ of Brzezinski. The rules of this chess game are set by the symbolic structure within which our global society currently operates: the materialistic-rationalistic worldview. No one escapes the power of this symbolic framework, neither Russia nor America, Europe nor China. They all use propaganda, they all participate in the arms race, and they are all caught in the relentless logic of a market that is only free in appearance.</p><p>Ultimately, the enemy is not a Russian or an American or any other person. The enemy lies in an ideology, a way of thinking, in a certain metaphysical force or spirit. The real problem, the actual enemy, is situated in a worldview that reduces the entire world and existence to a material phenomenon, in which human beings are no more than biological machines, biochemical processes devoid of Spirit or Soul. In such a context, biological survival and the pursuit of absolute dominance without any ethical or moral limits easily become the ultimate goal. Within that worldview, this is also perfectly logical: in a purely material world, ethics and morality are nothing more than an illusion arising somewhere in the biochemical machinery of our brains. Why should we allow ourselves to be hindered in the great game of survival of the fittest? Anyone who views life through that lens is already an instrument of destructive drive.</p><p>As I type the last letters of this article, I see the sun sending its light through the morning mist, a golden gift at the start of a new day. The trees in the castle park exude a majestic power through the tenderness of their autumn leaves. Their meter-wide trunks fearlessly send their roots into the depths of the dark autumn ground; their branches lift their trembling twigs high above the mists into the sparkling morning light.</p><p>I am ready to give a workshop, a workshop in which I will practice the art of sincere speaking with the participants, an art that requires exploring the unfathomably dark depths of the human being, an art that elevates humanity to its highest heights, a strand of words that connects darkness with light, an art that is the opposite of the practice of propaganda. While the thudding of the propaganda drum sets the war machine in motion, I feel people everywhere becoming aware that only the Act of sincere speaking offers a way out of the hopelessness of humanity that has lost itself in appearance and manipulation.</p><p>Do not remain silent, stay true to the ethical duty to speak as a human in times when society blindly follows a discourse that leads to ruin. Speak calmly, speak steadily, try not to convince too much, but rather to testify; speak from your belly rather than your head. I hope this article can be a small spark, a small contribution to the rise of a group of people united by the act of sincere speaking, a group where the opinion itself does not take precedence but the right of every person to express their opinion; a group that does not get lost in the narcissism of a collective ideal image and enemy image but cherishes the love for the uniqueness and singularity of each individual; this is the group that can provide a counterweight to the death drive of the propagandized masses.</p><p>Mattias</p><div data-sanitized-class="captioned-image-container"><figure><a target="_blank" href="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F93bcc1b7-caa9-4426-8fef-3b7f04524e57_1190x800.png" data-component-name="Image2ToDOM" data-sanitized-class="image-link image2 is-viewable-img"><div data-sanitized-class="image2-inset"><picture><source type="image/webp"><img src="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F93bcc1b7-caa9-4426-8fef-3b7f04524e57_1190x800.png" width="1190" height="800" data-attrs='{"src":"https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/93bcc1b7-caa9-4426-8fef-3b7f04524e57_1190x800.png","srcNoWatermark":null,"fullscreen":null,"imageSize":null,"height":800,"width":1190,"resizeWidth":null,"bytes":1399688,"alt":null,"title":null,"type":"image/png","href":null,"belowTheFold":true,"topImage":false,"internalRedirect":null,"isProcessing":false}' alt="" loading="lazy" data-sanitized-class="sizing-normal"></picture><div data-sanitized-class="image-link-expand"><div data-sanitized-class="pencraft pc-display-flex pc-gap-8 pc-reset"><div data-sanitized-class="pencraft pc-reset icon-container restack-image"><path d="M3 12a9 9 0 0 1 9-9 9.75 9.75 0 0 1 6.74 2.74L21 8"></path><path d="M21 3v5h-5"></path><path d="M21 12a9 9 0 0 1-9 9 9.75 9.75 0 0 1-6.74-2.74L3 16"></path><path d="M8 16H3v5"></path></div><div data-sanitized-class="pencraft pc-reset icon-container view-image"><polyline points="15 3 21 3 21 9"></polyline><polyline points="9 21 3 21 3 15"></polyline><line x1="21" x2="14" y1="3" y2="10"></line><line x1="3" x2="10" y1="21" y2="14"></line></div></div></div></div></a></figure></div><p></p><div data-attrs='{"url":"https://words.mattiasdesmet.org/subscribe?","text":"Subscribe","language":"en"}' data-component-name="SubscribeWidgetToDOM" data-sanitized-class="subscription-widget-wrap-editor"><div data-sanitized-class="subscription-widget show-subscribe"><div data-sanitized-class="preamble"><p data-sanitized-class="cta-caption">Mattias Desmet is a reader-supported publication. 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guid: https://words.mattiasdesmet.org/p/some-notes-on-tyranny-against-the
title: Some notes on tyranny against the backdrop of U.S. Election Day.
author: ;Mattias Desmet
link: https://words.mattiasdesmet.org/p/some-notes-on-tyranny-against-the
hash: 'T>� �E� ; >�z�
content:
<p>Yesterday, I left for the USA, invited by Mr. Jeffrey Tucker to speak at the annual conference of his Brownstone Institute. Subject: tyranny. Mr. Tucker left it very open-ended, only giving me that one word, “tyranny,” as my guide—nothing more, nothing less. I was free to do with it as I pleased.</p><p>So yesterday, I boarded my United Airlines flight in Brussels. Scheduled departure time: five minutes to twelve. And I mean that literally—11:55 p.m. Of course, this is also a symbolic time, coming so close to the election of the century in America. You could say, with a bit of playfulness in interpreting the symbolism of life, that it is five minutes to twelve when it comes to avoiding tyranny in America. And depending on where we stand as we watch this spectacle of life, it is either Trump or Harris who is eyeing the throne of tyranny.</p><div data-attrs='{"url":"https://words.mattiasdesmet.org/subscribe?","text":"Subscribe","language":"en"}' data-component-name="SubscribeWidgetToDOM" data-sanitized-class="subscription-widget-wrap-editor"><div data-sanitized-class="subscription-widget show-subscribe"><div data-sanitized-class="preamble"><p data-sanitized-class="cta-caption">Mattias Desmet is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.</p></div><div data-sanitized-class="fake-input-wrapper"><div data-sanitized-class="fake-input"></div><div data-sanitized-class="fake-button"></div></div></div></div><p>After a series of airport security rituals, I made it onto the fully booked plane and settled comfortably into seat 48A, by the window, where I prefer to sit. The seat next to me was still free, and in seat 48C sat a Black man, with whom, after just a few breaths, I was already sharing a cheerful conversation and a good laugh.</p><p>Diagonally in front of me, in seat 47B if I’m counting correctly, there was another free seat. Now, you may wonder why I’m discussing the seating arrangement on this flight, but there is indeed a reason.</p><p>While everyone was settling in for the winged journey across the Atlantic, I noticed a father and son in Orthodox Jewish attire walking up and down the aisle multiple times. And then I heard a flight attendant next to me speaking to them a bit sternly, “Only if one of the other passengers is willing to switch seats, sir.”</p><p>I stared more intently at the screen of my open laptop. “Can’t they sit apart for a few hours? I prefer my window seat. Just pretend you don’t hear or see anything.” I shook myself out of my thoughts and looked directly into the face of the older man of the two. There was something in his eyes that struck me—perhaps a kind of desperation floating on warm waters of love and sorrow.</p><p>“I’ll switch,” I said. I gathered my things and maneuvered to the aisle and then to my new seat. As I passed by, the older man looked at me with soft eyes from behind his glasses and sidelocks. “Thank you, sir, thank you. My son is afraid of flying; he doesn’t dare sit alone. Thank you.” He leaned over to my new neighbors in row 47 and said, “You have a good neighbor.” I was touched, and I briefly put my hand on his shoulder (“I’m just as glad as you are”), and he placed his hand gently on my right side. I felt that the soul had extended a warm hand through a gap in the wall that separates cultures.</p><p>Afterward, the man handed me a bag of kosher chips and two kosher candies from behind and expressed his gratitude to me gently and intensely several more times. It stirred a soft procession of thoughts within my mind. I had performed my act of sincerity for the day. I had genuinely listened to the eyes and voice of a man and responded sincerely with a small gesture of humanity. How simple it is to be happy. And why don’t I walk through that door to the soul more often?</p><p>A few hours later, as suddenly as it had opened, the door closed again. In the gap between the seats through which the man had passed the chips, the candies, and his words, a pillow had now been stuffed. And I noticed that both the father and son avoided my gaze later in the flight, as well as when we lined up in the seemingly endless queue at the customs checkpoint in Dulles Airport in Washington.</p><p>I could only guess at the reason for this sudden distance. If I had to make a guess, I would say that they feared they had overwhelmed me with their expressions of gratitude and perhaps thought I didn’t want my kind gesture to lead to endless chatter and a lasting bond with ‘a jew’. Ultimately, the last word is not mine—interpretations are always just interpretations.</p><p>I continued my journey. On my connecting flight to Washington, I sat next to a lady who planned to vote for Trump because he would shake up the bureaucracy in Washington. A long time ago, she had once believed in Washington herself. And during the taxi ride from Pittsburgh Airport to the stately Omni William Penn Hotel downtown, the driver told me that he thought both Trump and Harris were “full of shit”. But he would vote for Trump because he would stop handing out money to non-Americans.</p><p>I took a seat at a small table in the restaurant at the Penn Hotel and ordered a roasted Amish chicken—one of the best I’ve ever tasted. Next to me sat an African-American couple, both in a rather blessed state after a few glasses of wine. As they got up, the woman approached me with a focused look: “Are you an actor?” “No.” “You are absolutely gorgeous.” It was the second time that day that an African-American person had made me laugh. In the elevator to my room, I looked intently into the mirror—the last thing we should abolish is alcohol.</p><p>Upon arrival, I shook Jeffrey Tucker’s hand, and he confirmed, “Yes, something on tyranny, up to you. If it were only a tyranny of ‘the elite,’ then you couldn’t explain why our colleagues and even our family excluded us during COVID.” Exactly.</p><p>***</p><p>There are various forms of tyranny in this world. There is the tyranny foreseen by Aldous Huxley, exercised by globalist oligarchs and their army of “mind-manipulators.” These oligarchs first amassed their wealth on a capitalist battlefield where ethical awareness is something best discarded if you aim for ultimate victory. then, they purchased Congress through lobbying and bribes; that Congress passed laws placing the oligarchs above the law; from this emerged a state structure that hides the most anti-democratic system in history under the banner of democracy; this state apparatus allows them to wage a devastating, plundering war abroad through regime-change machinery, subjecting the entire world. </p><p>Once that eternal war is over, their urge for domination will turn fully toward their own population. The ultimate goal of the oligarchs is a world population shackled and bound, groaning in the chains of a merciless surveillance state. For someone who has stolen everything from everyone, total control is the only way to still feel safe. That’s tyranny indeed, wrapped in mass-media paper with the word ‘democracy’ printed on every square millimeter.</p><p>But there are other forms of tyranny. Take the tyranny of bureaucracy, for instance. It’s loosely connected to the tyranny of the oligarchs but is not identical. Bureaucratic rule emerges even in the absence of oligarchs. Everywhere, people crave rules. In small and large businesses, in academic departments, in family settings—there must be clarity about what is allowed and what is not. We need to know where we can drive, bike, and walk; if an accident happens, it must be clear who violated the rules and thus is responsible for damages.</p><p>“In a fully developed bureaucracy there is nobody left with whom one can argue, to whom one can present grievances, on whom the pressures of power can be exerted. Bureaucracy is the form of government in which everybody is deprived of political freedom, of the power to act; for the rule by Nobody is not no-rule, and where all are equally powerless, we have a tyranny without a tyrant”, said Hannah Arendt (On violence). In such a system, the rules choke everyone, but there is no one to turn to. Everyone is merely a cog in the vast machinery of rules, and no one has control over the larger machine.</p><p>Why do people crave rules? The seemingly unstoppable rise of regulatory systems, which began at the start of the 19th century, is itself a consequence of a rationalistic worldview and the isolation it brought about. This new worldview directed its gaze outward, believing that Truth could be reached by observing facts with the eyes and then drawing rational conclusions. Thus, human attention focused on the visible surface of things; rationalism literally brought about a “surface-ification” of the experiential world.</p><p>This superficiality also manifested in terms of identity: people began to focus more on the image of themselves as seen with their own eyes—in the mirror, in photos, or on Instagram. A certain amount of psychic energy shifted from the inner world—ethical awareness—to the surface of the body. Concretely speaking, we now direct a major part of our attention to our outward appearance. In itself, this isn’t a problem; however, if the amount of psychological energy invested in the idealized outer image crosses a certain threshold and becomes the guiding force in psychological life, then the human being gets lost in the world of appearances.</p><p>In such a case, the outer ideal image isolates us from the world around us—primarily from other people—and hinders the spontaneous emergence of empathy. In this way, humanity builds the walls of the prison of the Ego higher, brick by brick, becoming ever more trapped within it. This explains the simultaneous rise of two interconnected phenomena in our culture over the past few centuries: narcissism and loneliness (or disconnectedness). </p><p>Understanding these two phenomena is key to grasping what is really happening in our culture. In a disconnected state, humans no longer trust each other, and thus they need rules to protect themselves from one another. Conversely, when people who live together love each other, they need some rules, but not too many.</p><p>This brings us to the final tyranny, the one most often forgotten, but also the most crucial: the tyranny of the Ego. The human being harbors a tyrant in their own bosom. The outer ideal people try to live up too, is imposed by society, by an Other; we do not choose it ourselves. Thus, we become slaves of the Other that indicates the ideal images. This Other we want to please, dictates how we must look, how we must live. And as we strive to embody that ideal imposed by the Other, we lose contact with ourselves; we lose contact with the soulful body, that resonating string instrument hidden behind the surface of the ideal image.</p><p>In the isolation of the Ego-prison, we lose the connection with the Other, the Soul connection, the bond between resonating bodies. We lose the awareness that we are ultimately one with the Other, an awareness that lay at the foundation of mystical experience of unity with each other. It is from this experience that awareness of ethical principles naturally flows: be kind to others, because ultimately, you <em>are</em> the Other. The divide between yourself and the other, to a certain extent, only exists in the world of appearances.</p><p>The end result of the Rise of the Ego is an atomized society where people no longer live <em>with</em> but <em>next to</em> and <em>against</em> each other, entangled in a merciless struggle to survive (or, conversely, stepping out of the exhausting rat race through suicide).</p><p>This tyranny of the Ego rages within every person. And behind the Ego lies the ultimate tyrant, a metaphysical destructive force. This force eventually devours even those who serve it, luring its servant with the promise of money and power, only to make them into pure slaves. It is at this level that the real enemy resides—not in an oligarch or a bureaucrat, but in this force that destroys human bonds, isolates people, and makes them susceptible to indoctrination and propaganda, causing them to gather into blind and murderous masses; this force that always convinces the human being that other human beings are the enemy; the same force that insists more rules are needed to channel the growing tensions between atomized people. There can be no outer tyranny without inner tyranny. </p><p>***</p><p>It is a historical moment in the U.S. The American elections play out on the surface of an underlying, brewing metaphysical process. A president has only limited impact on this process; some presidents influence it for the better, others for the worse. But in doing so, they are always subjected to a state system … and to a population. </p><p>Ultimately, every political solution depends on the extent to which a change for the better occurs in the population, the extent to which a new awareness can arise that transcends the rationalistic worldview and its inherent destructiveness. ‘If voting would matter, they wouldn’t let us do so’. No matter how true this is, the oligarchs that run this world became oligarchs because the people are in the grip of the same worldview and lack of ethical awareness that made them oligarchs.</p><p>And that, in turn, depends on the Act of Speech. A sincere word is a word that breaks through the Ego, the world of superficial appearances. Any social system without sincerity, without words that connect people from Soul to Soul, eventually becomes a tyranny. Ultimately, the only way to contribute to overcoming the tyranny outside ourselves is to tackle the tyranny within</p><div data-sanitized-class="captioned-image-container"><figure><a target="_blank" href="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F3b96c3cc-c26a-4199-8853-6cff29303700_752x520.png" data-component-name="Image2ToDOM" data-sanitized-class="image-link image2 is-viewable-img"><div data-sanitized-class="image2-inset"><picture><source type="image/webp"><img src="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F3b96c3cc-c26a-4199-8853-6cff29303700_752x520.png" width="752" height="520" data-attrs='{"src":"https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/3b96c3cc-c26a-4199-8853-6cff29303700_752x520.png","srcNoWatermark":null,"fullscreen":null,"imageSize":null,"height":520,"width":752,"resizeWidth":null,"bytes":577403,"alt":null,"title":null,"type":"image/png","href":null,"belowTheFold":true,"topImage":false,"internalRedirect":null,"isProcessing":false}' alt="" loading="lazy" data-sanitized-class="sizing-normal"></picture><div data-sanitized-class="image-link-expand"><div data-sanitized-class="pencraft pc-display-flex pc-gap-8 pc-reset"><div data-sanitized-class="pencraft pc-reset icon-container restack-image"><path d="M3 12a9 9 0 0 1 9-9 9.75 9.75 0 0 1 6.74 2.74L21 8"></path><path d="M21 3v5h-5"></path><path d="M21 12a9 9 0 0 1-9 9 9.75 9.75 0 0 1-6.74-2.74L3 16"></path><path d="M8 16H3v5"></path></div><div data-sanitized-class="pencraft pc-reset icon-container view-image"><polyline points="15 3 21 3 21 9"></polyline><polyline points="9 21 3 21 3 15"></polyline><line x1="21" x2="14" y1="3" y2="10"></line><line x1="3" x2="10" y1="21" y2="14"></line></div></div></div></div></a></figure></div><p>.</p><div data-attrs='{"url":"https://words.mattiasdesmet.org/subscribe?","text":"Subscribe","language":"en"}' data-component-name="SubscribeWidgetToDOM" data-sanitized-class="subscription-widget-wrap-editor"><div data-sanitized-class="subscription-widget show-subscribe"><div data-sanitized-class="preamble"><p data-sanitized-class="cta-caption">Mattias Desmet is a reader-supported publication. 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guid: https://words.mattiasdesmet.org/p/the-courage-for-truth-in-putins-russia
title: The courage for Truth in Putin's Russia.
author: ;Mattias Desmet
link: https://words.mattiasdesmet.org/p/the-courage-for-truth-in-putins-russia
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content:
<p>A few weeks ago, I published <a href="https://substack.com/home/post/p-150662702">an article</a> about NATO's role in the war in Ukraine. The situation there has since become even more delicate. Several NATO countries (the USA, France, and the UK) have authorized Ukraine to use long-range missiles supplied by them to strike targets deep within Russian territory. This has brought the world closer to a third world war than ever before.</p><p>While the war machine is being recklessly ramped up by some, we will remain calm and continue our work here. On this Substack, we explore (among other things) the tension between media narratives and reality. In America and the West, these media narratives – in particular those about wars – are often little more than propaganda. But what about in Russia? How about the use of propaganda in Russia?</p><div data-attrs='{"url":"https://words.mattiasdesmet.org/subscribe?","text":"Subscribe","language":"en"}' data-component-name="SubscribeWidgetToDOM" data-sanitized-class="subscription-widget-wrap-editor"><div data-sanitized-class="subscription-widget show-subscribe"><div data-sanitized-class="preamble"><p data-sanitized-class="cta-caption">Mattias Desmet is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.</p></div><div data-sanitized-class="fake-input-wrapper"><div data-sanitized-class="fake-input"></div><div data-sanitized-class="fake-button"></div></div></div></div><p><strong>Chechnya Before the Soviet Era</strong></p><p>Chechnya, a small, mountainous country in the northern Caucasus, situated between the Black and Caspian Seas, has traditionally been inhabited by tribes who called themselves the "Vainakh" ("Our People"). These tribes were organized into clans ("Teips"), sometimes consisting of a few hundred members, and were led by councils of elders who would meet every few weeks to discuss the welfare of their tribal communities. Through conversations, they reached agreements and made arrangements to organize their shared life.</p><p>Sometimes these discussions likely went better than at other times, but they were generally sufficient to bring a degree of harmony to communal living. This does not mean that life was idyllic in those days. The clans had a strong sense of family honor and a strict code of honor, with blood vengeance and retribution being integral parts of daily life.</p><p>This ancient culture came under severe pressure from Russia from the mid-16th century onward (starting around 1556). Under the rule of Tsar Ivan the Terrible and later Peter the Great (early 18th century), Russia set its sights on the Caucasus (including Chechnya). The motives at the time were primarily strategic: the region was crucial in the power struggle with the Persian Empire.</p><p>It was not until the Caucasian Wars, which began in 1817, that the Russian tsars succeeded in subjugating the Vainakh in Chechnya. Even after their subjugation, the tribes continued to resist domination with an extraordinarily tenacious will for self-determination. Russia's response to uprisings was anything but gentle. Entire Vainakh villages were occasionally wiped out. The Vainakh continued to resist through guerrilla tactics until 1856, when Imam Shamil, the foremost figurehead of their resistance, was captured by Russia. After that, they remained under the rule of the Tsar for a few decades.</p><p><strong>***Chechnya During the Soviet Union***</strong></p><p>When the Tsarist regime in Russia was overthrown by the Bolsheviks during the 1917 Russian Revolution, <a href="https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geschiedenis_van_Tsjetsjeni%C3%AB">the Chechens (understandably) sided with the revolutionaries</a>. Initially, this worked out well. Chechnya became independent and appeared to have aligned successfully with the new regime in Russia. However, this period of independence was short-lived. In 1924, after Stalin rose to power among the Bolsheviks, his Red Army re-annexed Chechnya. Several changes typical of communism were imposed, such as attempts to ban religion and collectivize agriculture.</p><p>The Vainakh’s desire for self-determination, however, remained unbroken. In 1941, when Stalin’s Soviet Union was heavily engaged in the fight against Nazi Germany, Chechnya seized its chance and declared independence once more. Some collaborated with Nazi Germany, primarily because Hitler promised that, once Stalin was defeated, agricultural collectivization would be reversed, the Vainakh would gain freedom of religion, and they could establish an educational system to teach their own language and culture.</p><p>History, however, had a different outcome for the Chechens. Once Stalin began to sense victory over Nazi Germany on the World War II front, he decided to bring order to Chechnya. In 1944, he accused the Chechens of collaborating with Hitler and lived up to his moniker, "Man of Steel." He <a href="https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geschiedenis_van_Tsjetsjeni%C3%AB">collectively deported the Vainakh to Central Asia</a>—a total of approximately 3.2 million people, without any distinction, even those who had fought against Nazi Germany in the Soviet army. More than a quarter of them perished in a short time under inhumane conditions in labor camps.</p><p>In 1957, four years after Stalin's death, Khrushchev allowed the surviving Chechens to gradually return to their homeland. However, their homes had largely been taken over by Russians, Ukrainians, and Ossetians in the meantime. Riots and pogroms erupted, claiming hundreds of lives. Only a decisive Soviet military intervention to harshly suppress the unrest managed to restore a semblance of peace in the land of the Vainakh.</p><p><strong>***Chechnya After the Soviet Union***</strong></p><p>After the Soviet Union dissolved in 1989, a power vacuum emerged, presenting an opportunity for former Chechen air force general Dzhokhar Dudayev. In 1991, he declared independence. A brief civil war ensued, during which thousands of Russian engineers and workers fled the country, causing <a href="https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tweede_Tsjetsjeense_Oorlog">the collapse of the industry</a>.</p><p>During the early Yeltsin years, Russia initially tried for several years to undermine Dudayev’s Chechen regime through covert military support—mainly by supplying military equipment to local opposition groups. When this failed, a large-scale military offensive was launched in 1994, with the Chechen capital Grozny bombed, followed by a massive ground invasion.</p><p>Despite overwhelming Russian military superiority, the Chechens held their ground. Ultimately, more than 100,000 people died in the conflict, with neither side achieving a decisive victory. Russian public opinion turned against continuing the war, and morale within the Russian army plummeted due to ongoing hostage situations and relentless guerrilla tactics by Chechen resistance fighters. Demoralized, Russia signed the Khasavyurt Accord on August 30, 1996, ending the war. Chechnya remained temporarily independent.</p><p>The subsequent period was marked by a devastated economy, deep social decline, and unrest. Islamic militias led by Wahhabist-extremist warlords engaged almost exclusively in violence, with kidnappings becoming their primary source of income. Between 1996 and 1999, <a href="https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tweede_Tsjetsjeense_Oorlog">about 1,300 kidnappings were reported, generating an estimated $200 million in ransom</a>. In 1998, the government declared a state of emergency.</p><p>Meanwhile, the Kremlin closely monitored the situation. There was no public support for renewed military intervention, so they initially sought other ways to regain control. Several assassination attempts were made on separatist president Aslan Maskhadov, likely by Russian intelligence agencies. All of them failed.</p><p>When Kremlin envoy <a href="https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tweede_Tsjetsjeense_Oorlog">Gennady Shpigun was murdered</a> in Chechnya in 1999, it became clear that diplomacy also offered no prospects, and the situation neared another boiling point.</p><p><strong>***Putin Steps onto the Stage***</strong></p><p>Meanwhile, the Putin era began to take shape in Moscow. Putin, who had risen from modest beginnings to director of the FSB (the successor to the infamous KGB) and advisor to the mayor of St. Petersburg, was appointed Prime Minister by Yeltsin in 1999. It is here that recent history begins.</p><p>Entire libraries have been written about how Putin came to power. Regardless of the sources you consult, the question always remains: what can be considered even somewhat reliable? Anyone even slightly familiar with the pro-Western and pro-American bias against Putin and the omnipresent NATO propaganda can’t help but feel frustration and annoyance when watching yet another documentary comparing Putin to Hitler or Stalin and blaming him for all military and other tensions between Russia and the West.</p><p>As with any geopolitical issue, the first and most important question is: What can we actually know? Below, I’ll limit myself to discussing a few historical facts that seem relatively reliable, though I remain aware of the subjectivity of even this information. I am always open to corrections from those who believe I am mistaken.</p><p>An <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HRnBoEcVW9Q">anecdote surrounding Yeltsin's appointment</a> of Putin as Prime Minister offers insight into how Putin wields power. In 1998, the Yeltsin administration contracted a Swiss company, Mabetex, to renovate the Kremlin. Information quickly leaked suggesting irregularities in how the contract was awarded. Persistent rumors claimed that hundreds of thousands of dollars had been transferred from Mabetex to accounts belonging to Yeltsin’s daughters. While these allegations were never definitively proven, there was little doubt about corruption involving the highest levels of the Kremlin.</p><p>Prosecutor General <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yury_Skuratov">Yuri Skuratov</a> took on the case. Skuratov was no stranger to high-profile investigations, having previously probed top KGB figures such as Alexander Mamut, Yuri Borodin, and a then-relatively unknown Vladimir Putin. The case garnered significant media attention, and it quickly became apparent that some top officials, including Yeltsin, were in trouble.</p><p>This was the moment for the FSB to act. The agency leaked a compromising video of Skuratov in a sauna with two young prostitutes. Then-FSB chief Vladimir Putin personally appeared on television to confirm the video’s authenticity. The smear campaign was highly effective. Skuratov’s credibility was so severely damaged that he was forced to resign, halting his investigation into Yeltsin.</p><p>To this day, there is debate over the video's authenticity. The man in the video resembles Skuratov, but the footage is unclear. Many experts believe the video was manipulated or entirely fabricated. Skuratov himself has always adamantly denied being the man in the video. Another prosecutor, Tamaev, was also forced to step down after his two half-brothers were accused of drug and illegal arms possession—charges that were later withdrawn. Skuratov later ran for president but was given little airtime on Russian television and dismissed as a non-viable candidate.</p><p>The Mabetex affair proved politically advantageous for Putin. On August 16, 1999, Yeltsin appointed him Prime Minister. Four months later, on December 31, 1999—literally on the eve of the new millennium—Yeltsin nominated Putin as his successor for the presidency. With a handshake and the words <em>“Take care of Russia,”</em> Yeltsin passed the torch.</p><p>It remains uncertain whether Yeltsin committed fraud in the Mabetex affair. What is undeniable, however, is that corruption was rampant during his tenure in Russia. This cannot be entirely blamed on Yeltsin, as signs of such practices were already visible in the final decade of the Soviet Union (circa the mid-1980s). The <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FIMACO">FIMACO scandal </a>perhaps illustrates this best: in the 1980’s, the KGB elites already purchased Russian state assets for a pittance, sold them to foreigners, and deposited the money into secret foreign accounts.</p><p>After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the fire sale of state assets accelerated, giving rise to the infamous Russian oligarchs. A major part of the Soviet state properties were snapped up for next to nothing by a handful of former Communist leaders, who often resold them to foreigners.</p><p>Putin sought to put an end to these practices, tackling the problem head-on. He started with Russia’s richest man, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, head of the oil company Yukos and a financier of several opposition parties. Khodorkovsky was charged with fraud and brought to court in an iron cage (a not uncommon practice in Russia). Found guilty, he served eight years in prison (2005–2013).</p><p>Putin’s actions were undoubtedly forceful. The question remains, however, whether they were consistent. The 2015 Panama Papers leak revealed that several of Putin’s close associates had stashed large sums in offshore accounts without facing any consequences. This suggests that Putin did not so much eliminate the oligarchs as reorganize the oligarchic landscape—removing politically hostile oligarchs while empowering others. Regardless of the method, it is certain that he stabilized the country and curtailed the sale of its wealth.</p><p><strong>***Chechnya During the Putin Era***</strong></p><p>Let us return to late 1999, when Boris Yeltsin nominated Vladimir Putin as his successor to the Russian presidency. Yeltsin put Putin forward as his preferred candidate, but to become president, Putin still needed to win over the electorate. This was no small feat. At the start of his tenure as prime minister in August 1999, Putin was relatively unknown to the general public, with some claiming he had a mere 2% voter support. What could a prime minister do in such a situation to boost his popularity? Winning a war, for example.</p><p>And so, we turn to Chechnya. When Putin became prime minister in 1999, Chechnya was in deep crisis. The Chechen government had declared a state of emergency in 1998, and the Russian government was eager to intervene militarily. The only issue: there was no public support for a new war in Chechenya. Under Putin, however, that would change, albeit in a rather peculiar way.</p><p>In late 1999, <a href="https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tweede_Tsjetsjeense_Oorlog">a series of apartment bombings</a> in Russia killed between 200 and 300 civilians. The Kremlin needed only a few hours to identify the culprits: Chechen terrorists. Others, however, were less convinced. Several eyewitnesses claimed to have seen military personnel planting explosives in the apartment buildings. The then-director of the FSB attempted to dispel doubts, explaining that military exercises had "coincidentally" been underway at those locations.</p><p>Russian dissidents Anna Politkovskaya (a journalist) and Alexander Litvinenko (a KGB officer) rejected this explanation and argued that the 1999 bombings were false flag operations orchestrated by Russian intelligence to manufacture public support for another war in Chechnya. While these claims were never conclusively proven, they remain compelling. False flag operations—whether executed by the U.S., Russia, or European nations—often "coincidentally" occur alongside military exercises that mirror the events of the attack.</p><p>Politkovskaya and Litvinenko made similar allegations about the so-called <a href="https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gijzeling_in_het_Doebrovkatheater_in_Moskou_in_oktober_2002">Moscow Theater Hostage Crisis</a>. On October 23, 2002, 40 Chechen fighters (terrorists?) took 850 civilians hostage in the Dubrovka Theater in Moscow. After two days of unsuccessful negotiations (in which Politkovskaya herself participated as a mediator), Russian special forces ("Spetsnaz") ended the siege in a brutal manner. They pumped an opioid-based sedative gas into the theater, rendering everyone—hostages and hostage-takers—unconscious. However, the dosage was too high, resulting in the deaths of 130 hostages.</p><p>The official narrative was met with widespread skepticism. Polls suggested that <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-20067384">74% of Russians did not believe the official account</a>. Several aspects of the story raised eyebrows. For example, all the hostage-takers were shot dead, even though many could have been subdued and interrogated—a standard approach in such operations. Questions also linger about how the attackers managed to smuggle explosives into a large Moscow theater and execute an operation of such scale without detection.</p><p>The analysis of these events is further complicated by American geopolitical meddling in Chechnya. As in many other regions—Guatemala, Chile, Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Syria, and so forth—the U.S. likely sought regime change in Russia, arming Chechen rebels and potentially aiding in the planning of terrorist attacks. In this sense, Putin was probably correct: the U.S. actively sought to destabilize Russia during this period.</p><p>Regardless of the truth, the 1999 bombings provided the Russian government with the perfect pretext to gain public support for renewed military action in Chechnya. Weeks later, Russia launched its campaign, and after a ten-year struggle (ending in 2009), the proud and resilient Vainakh people were forced—once again—to bow to Russian rule.</p><p>The narrative about Chechnya disseminated by Russian media since 1999 strongly resembles the "war on terror" rhetoric of the Bush administration in the U.S. In some ways, the Russian narrative even preceded the American one. The U.S. would follow Russia's lead a year later, after 9/11, launching its own "war on terror" in the Middle East—a campaign of imperialistic plunder that dwarfed Putin's Chechen campaign.</p><p><a href="https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Politkovskaja">Anna Politkovskaya</a>, mentioned earlier, took it upon herself to bear witness to the horrors of the Chechen war—committed by both Chechens and Russians—through interviews, articles, and books. She paid the ultimate price. Facing several death threats (including from the Chechen president Ramzan Kadyrov), she was imprisoned by the Russian army in Chechnya and subjected to a mock execution. Twice she was poisoned. Ultimately, only a bullet to the head silenced her.</p><p>To this day, the mastermind behind her murder remains unknown. Kadyrov, the president of Chechnya who had previously threatened her, is a prime suspect. However, many fingers point to Putin, not least because the murder took place on his birthday. The Kremlin arrested five men as alleged perpetrators, but whether this absolves them of suspicion remains a critical question.</p><p>Politkovskaya's case is not an isolated one. Four of her colleagues at <em>Novaya Gazeta</em>—one of Russia's few critical newspapers—were also murdered. In their honor, we name them here: Igor Domnikov (2000), Yuri Shchekochikhin (2003), Anastasia Baburova (2009), and Natalya Estemirova (2009). Also here, in each case, suspects were convicted in Russian courts, but whether justice was truly served is doubtful.</p><p>Some assassinations in Russia are scarcely debatable as being orchestrated by the Kremlin. The murder of opposition leader Boris Nemtsov, on a bridge near the Kremlin, was almost certainly ordered by high-ranking officials. For instance, all security cameras on the bridge were "coincidentally" switched off—a feat hardly achievable without Kremlin involvement. The killing took place the day before Nemtsov was set to lead a protest in Moscow and shortly before he planned to publish an article exposing Russia's involvement in the war in eastern Ukraine.</p><p>This incident draws parallels with the "suicide" of Jeffrey Epstein in his New York jail cell—except that Epstein, unlike Nemtsov, was not known for his pursuit of truth. In Epstein’s cell, "coincidentally" all security cameras failed, a fellow inmate was transferred to another cell the day prior, and guards were either asleep or conveniently absent. In both cases, a powerful story was concealed.</p><p>Turning now to Alexander Litvinenko. As an FSB officer specializing in combating organized crime, Litvinenko quickly uncovered the deep ties between the criminal underworld and Russia’s bureaucracy and power structures (a phenomenon Whitney Webb argues is equally prevalent in Europe and America). Litvinenko, said to be an idealist, struggled to reconcile with this reality.</p><p>He also encountered other troubling orders. In 1998, his superiors instructed him to assassinate oligarch and Kremlin critic Boris Berezovsky. Litvinenko refused and decided to go public. Together with a few colleagues, he planned a press conference to expose the system of political assassinations. Just before the conference, he was arrested and held in pretrial detention for a year on charges of abusing information obtained in his official capacity.</p><p>Upon his release on bail, Litvinenko learned from reliable sources that he would be killed before his trial. He fled to the United Kingdom, where he reportedly collaborated with British and Spanish intelligence—an act considered treason in Russia. On November 23, 2006, Litvinenko died in London after a 22-day battle with polonium-210 poisoning.</p><p>***</p><p>We have presented a few historical facts regarding the fate of those who attempt to speak the truth in Russia. How should we assess Russia's political system?</p><p>In some respects, Putin clearly demonstrates a certain reverence for the totalitarian Soviet era (for instance, by reinstating the Soviet anthem introduced under Stalin as Russia's national anthem). However, he himself is not a totalitarian leader, nor is contemporary Russia a totalitarian state. Putin’s policies, for example, lack the ideological fanaticism that is a defining characteristic of totalitarian systems.</p><p>Totalitarianism has not disappeared, but it will not reemerge from Russia, the United States, or any other nation. Instead, it is returning via globalist institutions. These institutions exhibit the foundational traits of totalitarianism: a fanatical utopian-ideological drive to create a new technocratic and rationalist society.</p><p>French anthropologist and historian Emmanuel Todd characterized the West as a liberal oligarchy and Russia as an authoritarian democracy:<br><em>"Of course, Russia has not become a liberal democracy. Personally, I would describe it as an authoritarian democracy, giving equal weight to both terms—democracy and authoritarian. Democracy, because, even though elections are somewhat manipulated, the polls—which no one disputes—show unwavering support for the regime in both wartime and peacetime. Authoritarian, because the regime clearly does not meet the essential criteria of a liberal democracy: respect for the rights of minorities. The authoritarian nature of the regime is evident, with all that entails, including restrictions on press freedom and the liberties of various groups in civil society."</em> (La défaie de l’Occident, p. 47)</p><p>The notion that Putin is solely responsible for the escalating tensions between Russia and NATO is questionable on many levels. A younger Putin was overtly pro-Western. He explored the possibility of Russia joining NATO with President Clinton and even aligned himself with elite Western organizations such as the World Economic Forum, where he trained as a Young Global Leader.</p><p>He soon realized, however, that NATO—particularly American neoconservatives—had other plans. Leaders like Bush and Blair initially appeared sympathetic, but deeper layers of the U.S. and British state systems quickly made it clear that there was no room for Russia within NATO. Under these circumstances, Putin turned inward, building a strong and conservative Russia regulated through the old structures of the KGB, the Soviet-era intelligence service.</p><p>The intelligence service may have adopted a different name, but it unquestionably still exists. It even forms the core of the current Russian state system. Contemporary Russia was, to a significant extent, constructed from within the FSB. In a sense, it is accurate to state: in the Soviet Union, the state built the secret service; after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the secret service built the state.</p><p>Important to note: also in other countries, the totalitarian systems of the first half of the 20th century (Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union) never truly disappeared. A significant portion of the Nazi apparatus was either transported to America (both South and North America, as seen in <a href="https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operatie_Paperclip">Operation Paperclip</a>), remained active within Germany, or was transferred to the Soviet Union (as in <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Osoaviakhim#:~:text=Operation%20Osoaviakhim%20was%20a%20secret,as%20well%20as%20around%204%2C000">Operation Osoaviakhim</a>). Similarly, in Japan, many fascist officials from World War II remained in power. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eB_B03nghsk">Nobusuku Kishi</a>, for instance, who served as Minister of Justice during WWII, became Japan’s prime minister after the war and founded the Liberal Democratic Party. It is fair to conclude that as long as humanity remains captivated by a rationalist-materialist worldview, the same types of individuals and the same state systems will continue to lead it.</p><p>When it comes to propaganda techniques, NATO countries employ methods comparable to those used in Russia. Political assassinations occur here as well, far more frequently than we might like to admit. Similarly, false flag operations, in which large numbers of casualties are inflicted on one’s own population to generate political support for wars, have been well-documented in Europe and the U.S. Sometimes these operations are publicly denied, while other times they are acknowledged years later. Operation Gladio is perhaps the best-known example of the latter. In the anxious struggle to survive and assert dominance inherent to the rationalist worldview, no one can afford to be constrained by ethical principles.</p><p>Perhaps nothing is more telling than the episode in Tucker Carlson’s interview with President Putin, where Carlson asks him, “Who blew up the Nord Stream pipeline?” Putin chuckles warmly and mischievously, replying, <em>“YOU did.”</em> There is no trace of indignation or resentment over the West’s underhanded attempt to pin the sabotage on him. The Russian chess master’s words and body language convey something along the lines of: <em>“No hard feelings; we are all playing the same game; we all use the same tricks.”</em></p><div data-sanitized-class="captioned-image-container"><figure><a target="_blank" href="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F9c5adefd-4a89-49b7-a8c1-885f351519d0_632x626.png" data-component-name="Image2ToDOM" data-sanitized-class="image-link image2 is-viewable-img"><div data-sanitized-class="image2-inset"><picture><source type="image/webp"><img src="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F9c5adefd-4a89-49b7-a8c1-885f351519d0_632x626.png" width="632" height="626" data-attrs='{"src":"https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/9c5adefd-4a89-49b7-a8c1-885f351519d0_632x626.png","srcNoWatermark":null,"fullscreen":null,"imageSize":null,"height":626,"width":632,"resizeWidth":null,"bytes":748719,"alt":null,"title":null,"type":"image/png","href":null,"belowTheFold":true,"topImage":false,"internalRedirect":null,"isProcessing":false}' alt="" loading="lazy" data-sanitized-class="sizing-normal"></picture><div data-sanitized-class="image-link-expand"><div data-sanitized-class="pencraft pc-display-flex pc-gap-8 pc-reset"><div data-sanitized-class="pencraft pc-reset icon-container restack-image"><path d="M3 12a9 9 0 0 1 9-9 9.75 9.75 0 0 1 6.74 2.74L21 8"></path><path d="M21 3v5h-5"></path><path d="M21 12a9 9 0 0 1-9 9 9.75 9.75 0 0 1-6.74-2.74L3 16"></path><path d="M8 16H3v5"></path></div><div data-sanitized-class="pencraft pc-reset icon-container view-image"><polyline points="15 3 21 3 21 9"></polyline><polyline points="9 21 3 21 3 15"></polyline><line x1="21" x2="14" y1="3" y2="10"></line><line x1="3" x2="10" y1="21" y2="14"></line></div></div></div></div></a></figure></div><p></p><div data-attrs='{"url":"https://words.mattiasdesmet.org/subscribe?","text":"Subscribe","language":"en"}' data-component-name="SubscribeWidgetToDOM" data-sanitized-class="subscription-widget-wrap-editor"><div data-sanitized-class="subscription-widget show-subscribe"><div data-sanitized-class="preamble"><p data-sanitized-class="cta-caption">Mattias Desmet is a reader-supported publication. 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guid: https://words.mattiasdesmet.org/p/2025-a-new-year
title: 2025 - a new year.
author: ;Mattias Desmet
link: https://words.mattiasdesmet.org/p/2025-a-new-year
hash: ��U��+�f- \{M'
content:
<p>Dear friends and followers,<br>I’ve been rather quiet here lately, and that has to do with a variety of things. Because I’ve been busy writing, because sometimes I just enjoy disappearing from social media for a while, and probably for a few other reasons too—too many for my own limited mind to comprehend. A human being is a mystery to itself. That’s what makes us human.</p><p>That being said, I want to wish everyone here a happy new year—a year in which we might come a bit closer to the mystery of our existence. It immediately brings me to the Act of Speaking. The more courage we can muster to speak from that which we usually hide behind outward appearances, the more we exist, the closer we come to ourselves. I wish you that courage this year.</p><div data-attrs='{"url":"https://words.mattiasdesmet.org/subscribe?","text":"Subscribe","language":"en"}' data-component-name="SubscribeWidgetToDOM" data-sanitized-class="subscription-widget-wrap-editor"><div data-sanitized-class="subscription-widget show-subscribe"><div data-sanitized-class="preamble"><p data-sanitized-class="cta-caption">Mattias Desmet is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.</p></div><div data-sanitized-class="fake-input-wrapper"><div data-sanitized-class="fake-input"></div><div data-sanitized-class="fake-button"></div></div></div></div><p>If there’s one thing I’m grateful for this past year, it’s that I’ve been able—especially during workshops—to practice the art of courageous speaking with so many people. It’s an art that is a mystery also to me, and one I try to rediscover each time. Thank you to everyone who took the time to listen to me this year, and to everyone who gave me some real words. Thank you also for all the comments posted here on this page - I read them and learn from them. Some of them are gems - I am truly grateful for this wonderful group of readers here. </p><p>That being said, I returned from Israel a few days ago. On my first night there, I was welcomed by a supersonic rocket that landed about a kilometer from my hotel. Strangely enough, I didn’t wake up from the blast itself but rather from the noise in the hotel hallway afterward.</p><p>In total, I had to head to the shelter about four times, but it didn’t ruin my stay at all. I gave a few lectures in Israel to audiences ranging across the political spectrum—from Israelis who support their government to those who oppose it. I spoke a lot and, more importantly, listened a lot.</p><p>I brought a few things home with me. Here’s one of them—a small gift for the new year: an Arabic coffee recipe. Buy artisanal (slow-roasted at low temperatures) coffee beans. Grind them. Add a teaspoon of the coffee powder to a cup and pour hot water over it (about 95°C or so). Wait a few minutes, and the coffee is ready. It couldn’t be simpler—no equipment needed.</p><p>Locally, they call it “mud coffee” because of the layer of coffee grounds at the bottom of the cup. Give it a try. You’ll notice that this coffee doesn’t weigh on your body. I had read about it before, and the owner of an Arabic coffee shop confirmed it: the coffee grounds reabsorb the caffeine.</p><p>If there’s something remarkable about humanity, it’s how often we make life unnecessarily complicated. I once tried making cider and traveled the entire country to learn from cider makers. Without exception, they recommended a thousand and one chemical additives and industrial yeasts. Finally, I took a leap of faith and let the apple juice ferment using the natural yeasts on the apple skins. It worked perfectly, just as it had for thousands of years before us, without adding a single gram of chemicals.</p><p>What stops us from recognizing simplicity as the solution? Why do we go to so much trouble and spend so much money to diminish what is already perfect? It’s no different with ourselves: the greatest challenge in life is simply to become who we Are.</p><p>Dear friends, the year to come might be the year of Team Trump. That’s the most profound political event since World War II, an event of which we don’t know exactly yet what meaning history will give to it. I will publish a longer article about that soon. Meanwhile, I wish you Arabic coffee and much sincere and true togetherness in the coming year!<br>Mattias</p><div data-sanitized-class="captioned-image-container"><figure><a target="_blank" href="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F3937c562-37e8-43dc-8dcb-7ab915ae7459_1482x1020.png" data-component-name="Image2ToDOM" data-sanitized-class="image-link image2 is-viewable-img"><div data-sanitized-class="image2-inset"><picture><source type="image/webp"><img src="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F3937c562-37e8-43dc-8dcb-7ab915ae7459_1482x1020.png" width="1456" height="1002" data-attrs='{"src":"https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/3937c562-37e8-43dc-8dcb-7ab915ae7459_1482x1020.png","srcNoWatermark":null,"fullscreen":null,"imageSize":null,"height":1002,"width":1456,"resizeWidth":null,"bytes":2597560,"alt":null,"title":null,"type":"image/png","href":null,"belowTheFold":true,"topImage":false,"internalRedirect":null,"isProcessing":false}' alt="" loading="lazy" data-sanitized-class="sizing-normal"></picture><div data-sanitized-class="image-link-expand"><div data-sanitized-class="pencraft pc-display-flex pc-gap-8 pc-reset"><div data-sanitized-class="pencraft pc-reset icon-container restack-image"><path d="M3 12a9 9 0 0 1 9-9 9.75 9.75 0 0 1 6.74 2.74L21 8"></path><path d="M21 3v5h-5"></path><path d="M21 12a9 9 0 0 1-9 9 9.75 9.75 0 0 1-6.74-2.74L3 16"></path><path d="M8 16H3v5"></path></div><div data-sanitized-class="pencraft pc-reset icon-container view-image"><polyline points="15 3 21 3 21 9"></polyline><polyline points="9 21 3 21 3 15"></polyline><line x1="21" x2="14" y1="3" y2="10"></line><line x1="3" x2="10" y1="21" y2="14"></line></div></div></div></div></a></figure></div><p></p><div data-attrs='{"url":"https://words.mattiasdesmet.org/subscribe?","text":"Subscribe","language":"en"}' data-component-name="SubscribeWidgetToDOM" data-sanitized-class="subscription-widget-wrap-editor"><div data-sanitized-class="subscription-widget show-subscribe"><div data-sanitized-class="preamble"><p data-sanitized-class="cta-caption">Mattias Desmet is a reader-supported publication. 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guid: https://words.mattiasdesmet.org/p/team-trump-the-real-behind-the-veil
title: Team Trump – The Real Behind the Veil of Appearances
author: ;Mattias Desmet
link: https://words.mattiasdesmet.org/p/team-trump-the-real-behind-the-veil
hash: ���'��J�x[ �)�
content:
<p>On January 20th, Donald Trump will be inaugurated as President of the United States. His (re)election is probably the most significant political event since World War II. What its ultimate significance will be, we do not yet know. <em>"Life is lived forward but understood backward"</em> (paraphrasing Søren Kierkegaard).</p><p>It is good to learn to endure this uncertainty. It is not a sign of greatness for a person to always be certain; it is a sign of humanity to remain serene in the presence of uncertainty. In a certain sense, it is even an ethical duty to embrace uncertainty. Trump is human, and like all humans, he is complex and dynamic in nature and, as such, intrinsically unpredictable—at least for the human mind. I am therefore somewhat skeptical of both those who are certain that Trump will save the world and those who are certain that he will destroy it.</p><div data-attrs='{"url":"https://words.mattiasdesmet.org/subscribe?","text":"Subscribe","language":"en"}' data-component-name="SubscribeWidgetToDOM" data-sanitized-class="subscription-widget-wrap-editor"><div data-sanitized-class="subscription-widget show-subscribe"><div data-sanitized-class="preamble"><p data-sanitized-class="cta-caption">Mattias Desmet is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.</p></div><div data-sanitized-class="fake-input-wrapper"><div data-sanitized-class="fake-input"></div><div data-sanitized-class="fake-button"></div></div></div></div><p>That said—Trump has won the election. And Kamala Harris has lost. Harris' loss has been interpreted in many ways: she made tactical errors, she lacked rhetorical skill, the "deep state" wanted to push forward someone easily manipulated but it backfired, or she underestimated Trump’s sophistication and intelligence, and so forth.</p><p>Here’s another possible explanation: Kamala Harris and the people behind her underestimated how much (a segment of) the population is tired of their hollow political rhetoric and hypocrisy. Clinton, Obama, Biden—a pretty façade masking the opposite of what it pretends to show. Bill Clinton’s painting dressed as a woman in Jeffrey Epstein's mansion, Barack Obama pinning the Medal of Freedom on Condoleezza Rice after she turned a blind eye to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of children in Iraq, Hillary Clinton's juvenile spite and schadenfreude when the life of Gaddafi also marked the end of an unprecedented period of prosperity in Libya, Joe Biden going after dissident journalists and emprisoning political opponents while portraying himself as a great defender of democracy—the painful parade of grotesque hypocrisies from the Democrats is long, far too long. Not that Republicans are without blame—they too have skeletons in their closets, and perhaps I’ll write about that another time. But this is about why the Democrats lost the election.</p><p>That many people are no longer impressed when these Democrats present themselves as the great representatives of virtue—who could be surprised? Al Gore went on a tour to warn the world about rising sea levels but bought a villa near the sea in the same year. And he didn’t give up his private jets or heated swimming pools out of concern for “the climate” either. Many people believe we should take better care of nature, but fewer and fewer believe that the globalist climate crusaders are the right people for the job.</p><p>Over the past two decades, the American Democrats have become the representatives of the globalist Agenda 2030 ideology, which hardly comes across as very moral. Their moralizing about inclusivity and gender neutrality mostly seems immoral; the “One Health Policy” of the WHO reads more like a radical threat to health <strong>and </strong>respect for the population’s right to self-determination. The economic policy (naturally tied to the climate and inclusivity agenda) was largely written by bankers like Goldman Sachs, who in 2008 perpetrated what is probably the largest heist in history.</p><p>Soon, these same oligarchs will push digital identity cards and Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs) to save the climate and democracy. “The New Globalist Morality” is a barely concealed performance designed to lead everyone into technocracy and the surveillance state—many people believe. And, true to Aldous Huxley’s predictions, the New Tyranny sails in under the flag of Ultimate Democracy. The Democrats have become radical anti-democrats. They were not defeated electorally because the population is tired of democracy; they were defeated because the population sees them as a threat to democracy. Trump offers them more hope for democracy—hope that they, as a people, will have some say when it comes to immigration, health, or economic policy. Whether that hope is justified, we will examine later.</p><p>For many, Trump is a relief—not exactly a refined speaker, but a bulldozer crashing through the wall of deception. Against the caricature created in the mainstream, he has actually shown himself to be made of the right stuff on several occasions. Take, for instance, the case of Illinois Democratic Governor Rod Blagojevich, who was imprisoned in 2009. The man was likely the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k3q7IpptOUo&amp;list=PLk1Sqn_f33KuWf3tW9BBe_4TP7x8l0m3T&amp;index=8&amp;t=123s">victim of political retaliation</a> in which Obama played a dubious (and highly undemocratic) role. Trump—as a Republican—was one of the few who steadfastly supported Blagojevich. In 2020, he ultimately granted him clemency.</p><p>You must credit Trump with something else as well: he shares dialogue with his geopolitical adversaries, including the ever-demonized Putin and Kim Jong-un. This points to a minimal form of ethical awareness that Biden lacked. It is widely known that while the world was hurtling toward World War III under Biden’s administration, Biden did not speak with Putin even once. If even the threat of nuclear war does not suffice to walk the path of words, what does?</p><p>It wasn’t until Biden completely exposed himself in the debate with Trump that even the ‘mainstream’ turned against him. Suddenly, you’d read that he had narcissistic tendencies. And that he was already showing signs of mental decline in 2020. Personally, I know quite a few people who saw that back in 2020. It wasn’t so much Kamala Harris who lost the 2024 election; it was the mainstream media. Personally, I’m not sure what I find worse: that the mass media turned a blind eye for four years to the highly problematic characteristics of Biden, or that they are now dropping their former protégé like a stone because they can no longer use him.</p><p>Totalitarian systems eventually devour their own children—Hannah Arendt taught us that. I suspect Biden is starting to realize this himself. Not that it stops him from continuing down the same path. He is now rushing to pardon a few hundred people, primarily his son and Anthony Fauci—both almost certainly guilty of criminal acts, one on a larger scale than the other.</p><p>The belief that Trump can truly bring about positive change for the first time in a long while is widespread and justified in some respects. The likelihood that he could end the war in Ukraine with a few conversations with Putin is real—so real, in fact, that some are scrambling to undercut him, urging Zelensky to end the war quickly before Trump can do it. If the war ends now, it’s Trump who will get the credit. Anyone who fails to appreciate that should urgently check the state of their heart.</p><p>There is indeed a chance that Team Trump will address some real societal problems. That’s also why they tried to assassinate Trump and why he still faces significant risks today. The Democrats, through their constant demonization of Trump, are also trying to build support for such an assassination. Can someone explain to me what’s democratic about a party that massively censors the media (see the Zuckerberg story), prosecutes dissident journalists, imprisons political opponents (see Biden’s record), and works tirelessly to create public support for assassinations of competing presidential candidates?</p><p>Trump is indeed not safe yet. Just like other members of his team, by the way. Robert Kennedy Junior will—if he gets past Congress, that is—take on Big Pharma and the food industry. This is unprecedented, without a doubt a revolution of historical proportions. There is indeed something fundamentally wrong with those industries. While the amounts invested in medical research and healthcare have spectacularly increased, public health has declined just as spectacularly every year. The work of Casey and Calley Means is recommended in this regard. The mentioned industries are undoubtedly a disgrace to humanity, most likely responsible for an unprecedented decline in public health over the past 50 years and for millions of victims. There are two culprits in this: Big Pharma itself and the population that keeps going along with their stories and continues to buy into the idea that the pains of the human condition can be solved with a pill.</p><p>It will be hot days for RFK. The biggest problem will likely be the academic-medical world, largely sponsored and brainwashed by Big Pharma and Big Food. There is a good chance they will produce one study after another, using highly sophisticated statistics to "prove" that RFK's policies are a disaster for public health. He will be responsible for the loss of numerous lives, you know! Turning the truth upside down is a characteristic of the New Lie that has taken control of our rationalist society.</p><p>Fortunately, Trump has nominated Professor Jay Bhattacharya as the future head of the NIH to assist Kennedy, a man with a warm heart and a sharp intellect, a rare combination of qualities. A man who also took responsibility during the coronavirus crisis and, with the Great Barrington Declaration, put his intellectual weight in the balance to protect the population from the destructiveness of (among others) Big Pharma. He paid the price of a mud-slinging campaign in the media. I’ve talked about it with him—he’s only become a more beautiful soul because of it. Whether Kennedy and Bhattacharya succeed or not, for my part, I am sure they will make a sincere and downright heroic attempt.</p><p>Team Trump is also going to take on one of the greatest scourges of Enlightenment culture: the burgeoning bureaucracy. Elon Musk—the most prominent member of Team Trump—should prepare for that (and who knows, maybe Mark Zuckerberg too, the world is going crazy these days). This too could become a revolution unlike any in modern history. And if anyone is capable of actually pushing this through, it is Musk. When he arrived at Twitter, he fired 80% of the staff and it ran better than before. I assume the numbers could be even more spectacular at the state apparatus level.</p><p>Musk is a special case. On one hand, he opposes the ideology of the malleable human, especially since his son is tired of being male and wants to become female, and he encountered a few people in his environment who—let’s put it mildly—didn’t feel too healthy after the COVID vaccine. As an energetic entrepreneur, he doesn't sit idly by. He declared war on transgenderism and woke ideology, and he bought Twitter to provide a haven for the stifling contemporary censorship.</p><p>On the other hand, he is a technophile and a prototypical example of someone who is sensitive to the arrogance of human intellect. With his SpaceX project, he aims to conquer Mars, with his Starlink project, he is laying the foundation for a radical digitalization of society, and with his Neuralink brain chip, he plans to ensure that people can communicate flawlessly with each other without words or language. In this sense, he is a pioneer of the malleable human idea, the practical implementer of Harari’s transhumanism, and the "internet-of-bodies" society.</p><p>Musk is indeed advocating for a far-reaching digitalization of society. For instance, he announces that soon almost all cars will be self-driving. No need to limit your alcohol consumption anymore, no more problems with Sunday drivers—Big Computer will deliver you to your destination perfectly via its digital signal, just like a package. Can you object to that?</p><p>Maybe, yes. Every further digitalization and automation of society may initially seem to make our lives easier. But it exacts a barely visible yet very real toll on a psychological level. Take digital conversations as an example: they connect us in terms of information exchange, but they also disconnect us in another way. When people talk to each other, they don’t just exchange information. Their embodied bodies also resonate with one another.</p><p>This is clearly observable on a physical level. When someone talks to another person, there is an inner imitation of muscle tensions, facial expressions, and brain activity. On a psychological level, this is accompanied by a spontaneous feeling of empathy and unity, and the person realizes their primal longing: fusion with the Other. It is this fusion with the Other that forms the basis of all ethical awareness. Replace real conversation with digital communication, and society will also lose the last remnants of ethical awareness (except for a small group of people).</p><p>The unrestrained pursuit of ‘convenience’ through digitalization and the technologization of humanity and society is ultimately incredibly naive and shortsighted. As soon as you view humans as embodied beings, you see that the digitalization of humanity and society is strangling the human Soul. Humans are becoming more and more passive, soulless cogs in a vast technological machine. This kind of progress optimism aligns with a mechanistic view of the human being: the human is a machine that can be technologically optimized.</p><p>Elon Musk is one of the leaders of this idea. With Neuralink, he takes it to its ultimate consequence: the human, the quintessential speaking being, will no longer have to speak. They will exchange information perfectly via a brain chip. As much as I appreciate Musk on certain levels, and as much as I understand that he is ‘searching for hyper-intelligent people’ to help him clean up bureaucracy, I would still like to ask him: how much will you consider the Soul in this world?</p><p>Even Joe Rogan—member of Team Trump and, in many ways, a man with the right heart—ultimately shows himself to be a believer in transhumanism. He explains in <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&amp;v=_UmIlHby5h8&amp;fbclid=IwY2xjawHooeZleHRuA2FlbQIxMAABHUZIR41alz_lhxD7JePlwMAASg-H4QKmuhZXbBS3DL6amTF9E3axInwprA_aem_cPYkyahvTvaehKHsZOidmQ">this podcast</a> that the Neuralink chip can create the paradisiacal experience that arises when you take certain psychedelics: the intense pleasure one experiences from viewing certain colors and forms, the experience of unity with other people and with the whole cosmos, the experience of intense love for everything that Is, and so on. The Neuralink chip will thus open the long-closed door to paradise. The machines want the code to Zion, they’re sick of the matrix—something like that.</p><p>Joe Rogan sees a brain chip as the way to eliminate lies and manipulation from the world. We will finally transcend our ‘violent monkey’ past. Natural evolution is too slow for that. With the chip, communication will be flawless in a universal language. Every form of lying and deception will be immediately detected and eliminated by A.I. Everyone will be able to see instantly, via the brain-chip interface, whether the other is driven by hate, anger, greed, or malice. I am not making this up: A.I. is considered no less than God, the God who will undo the reign of lies and sin.</p><p>Musk is a human being, and as such, he is a divided being, as we all are. In his case, the contrasts may be even sharper. He believes in freedom of speech and enterprise, but he also fanatically strives for technological control of the human condition. This tension extends to his loyalties: on one hand, he opposes globalist institutions and, by extension, the entire establishment and the ‘deep state’; but on the other hand, he owes much of his success as a tech entrepreneur to his connections with the ‘deep state’ and the military-industrial complex. You don’t just send 6,000 satellites in an orbit around mother earth.</p><p>Undoubtedly, Elon Musk will energetically and decisively tackle over-bureaucratization and rid the world of injustices arising from hypocrisy, sentimentality, and cronyism. But what will he do about the tech world and the military-industrial complex? And how does he actually see the future of humanity? Will all children in his worldview soon have some kind of license plate sign as their name?</p><p>The core issue is actually here: however much Team Trump may address some real problems, to the extent that they seek solutions within the same rationalistic worldview as their predecessors, they will ultimately reinforce the problems inherent in that worldview and may even make them (much) worse. As far as I can assess, the origin of the avalanche of crises, both individual and collective, of our time indeed lies in our rationalistic and mechanistic worldview.</p><p>If one considers the universe as a large machine and humans as small machines trapped within that great machine, one will ultimately always reach for more control as the solution. And for more technocracy. From the rationalistic-mechanistic worldview, the technocratic surveillance state is the ultimate societal model.</p><p>There is a non-negligible (but not absolute) chance that the Trump-Musk duo will ultimately opt for radical technocracy. Here’s a possible scenario: Trump and Musk will initially be a true breath of fresh air. They will decisively address real issues, make the state system more efficient, end the war in Ukraine, and so on. But what will they do once addressing these issues makes them extraordinarily popular?</p><p>After the Walmart shooting in 2019, where a gunman killed 23 people and injured 22, Trump sent a few messages to the world urging that profiling via social media should be urgently implemented. This would allow algorithms to predict when someone might resort to violence. With Elon Musk and Peter Thiel, Trump certainly has the right connections for this. My two-cents opinion: such ‘profiling’ is just a step further towards a digital surveillance state, which is not the solution to but rather the cause of the ever-growing aggression in society.</p><p>Will Trump be able to resist the temptation of seeking the solution to the problems of human living together through increasingly extensive control and surveillance? What will prevail in Musk: the non-conformist and free-thinker, or the technocratic control freak? The temptation to choose control and ultimately coercion will be great. Especially since the alternative solution asks the most difficult thing of humanity: to accept that humans ultimately do not have control and are, in a sense, always dependent on a grace that comes from outside themselves.</p><p>I am going to make a strong historical comparison, not to demonize Trump—those who do usually have more reason to demonize themselves—but to teach us through history. Mussolini and Hitler became extraordinarily popular and acquired a savior status by decisively tackling real societal issues. But they ultimately succumbed to the temptations of power and ideological fanaticism and created problems that were (much) worse than the ones they had solved. There were several parties equally responsible for this: those before them who had created the problems, themselves, and the part of the population that supported them.</p><p>I hope that Trump and Musk are aware of this danger and truly learn from history. A real solution to the current profound crisis of humanity does not lie in more surveillance and control; it lies in the steadfast and humanly compassionate application of the law and in reducing bureaucratic rules and surveillance. Such a solution requires, among other things, breaking free from a worldview other than the rationalistic-materialistic one within a sufficiently large group of people. Only under those conditions can a Leader with a capital 'L' truly achieve something.</p><p>I will add a reflection on Truth. Trump won the election because he is less hypocritical than Harris and the political culture that pushed her onto the stage. Does his direct and unpretentious way of speaking make Trump a truth-teller? In one respect, yes: Trump occasionally reveals something that others keep hidden behind a wall of appearances. Truth shatters illusions and the façade.</p><p>But for example, the ancient Greeks didn’t consider that enough to regard someone’s words as Truth – in Greek, Parrhesia. There must also be something like a unifying intention. The Parrhesiast speaks his words for the common good; he speaks from a concern for the well-being of everyone, including all minorities in the 'polis.' As the French philosopher Tocqueville rightly pointed out, a democracy is not just a form of government where the majority rules; it is a form of government where the majority rules <em>with respect</em> for the fundamental rights of minorities.</p><p>So here we encounter an important question: Will Trump use his popularity to grow into a decisive but also unifying leader, or will he continue to try to increase it by appealing to the lowest sentiments of his base and making minorities and the weak into scapegoats? And in the same vein: will Musk ultimately prioritize the free speaker in himself over the techno-control freak?</p><p>I could go on, but I’ll conclude. Quite a few people – myself included – had had enough of the false discourse of the Democrats. Behind their constant whining about democracy, they were feeding the most undemocratic of all forms of government: a globalist technocracy run by a group of oligarchs and their ‘experts.’ That is the Real hidden behind the curtain of the façade of the 'democratic' discourse.</p><p>But to the extent that Trump and Musk themselves are caught in the grip of the mechanistic and rationalistic worldview, their spectacular rise could turn into this: the open appearance of the Real behind the curtain of democratic appearance. It is this point that will be decisive in determining whether Team Trump places a negative or positive mark on the complex formula of his historical démarche.</p><div data-sanitized-class="captioned-image-container"><figure><a target="_blank" href="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F089b38b7-2699-43cc-bf4f-8f87dce98f26_912x910.png" data-component-name="Image2ToDOM" data-sanitized-class="image-link image2 is-viewable-img"><div data-sanitized-class="image2-inset"><picture><source type="image/webp"><img src="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F089b38b7-2699-43cc-bf4f-8f87dce98f26_912x910.png" width="912" height="910" data-attrs='{"src":"https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/089b38b7-2699-43cc-bf4f-8f87dce98f26_912x910.png","srcNoWatermark":null,"fullscreen":null,"imageSize":null,"height":910,"width":912,"resizeWidth":null,"bytes":1408256,"alt":null,"title":null,"type":"image/png","href":null,"belowTheFold":true,"topImage":false,"internalRedirect":null,"isProcessing":false}' alt="" loading="lazy" data-sanitized-class="sizing-normal"></picture><div data-sanitized-class="image-link-expand"><div data-sanitized-class="pencraft pc-display-flex pc-gap-8 pc-reset"><div data-sanitized-class="pencraft pc-reset icon-container restack-image"><path d="M3 12a9 9 0 0 1 9-9 9.75 9.75 0 0 1 6.74 2.74L21 8"></path><path d="M21 3v5h-5"></path><path d="M21 12a9 9 0 0 1-9 9 9.75 9.75 0 0 1-6.74-2.74L3 16"></path><path d="M8 16H3v5"></path></div><div data-sanitized-class="pencraft pc-reset icon-container view-image"><polyline points="15 3 21 3 21 9"></polyline><polyline points="9 21 3 21 3 15"></polyline><line x1="21" x2="14" y1="3" y2="10"></line><line x1="3" x2="10" y1="21" y2="14"></line></div></div></div></div></a></figure></div><p></p><div data-attrs='{"url":"https://words.mattiasdesmet.org/subscribe?","text":"Subscribe","language":"en"}' data-component-name="SubscribeWidgetToDOM" data-sanitized-class="subscription-widget-wrap-editor"><div data-sanitized-class="subscription-widget show-subscribe"><div data-sanitized-class="preamble"><p data-sanitized-class="cta-caption">Mattias Desmet is a reader-supported publication. 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guid: https://words.mattiasdesmet.org/p/zuckerberg-dumps-factcheckers
title: Zuckerberg dumps fact-checkers
author: ;Mattias Desmet
link: https://words.mattiasdesmet.org/p/zuckerberg-dumps-factcheckers
hash: �n��_=� ��â/�
content:
<p>Dear friends,<br>Mark Zuckerberg has announced that it’s the end of the Fact-Checking era on Meta. He categorizes factchecking under "out-of-control political censorship."</p><p>He hinted at this a few months ago already, when he admitted in a public letter that he regretted suppressing the spread of information about Hunter Biden’s laptop while “waiting” for fact-checkers.</p><div data-attrs='{"url":"https://words.mattiasdesmet.org/subscribe?","text":"Subscribe","language":"en"}' data-component-name="SubscribeWidgetToDOM" data-sanitized-class="subscription-widget-wrap-editor"><div data-sanitized-class="subscription-widget show-subscribe"><div data-sanitized-class="preamble"><p data-sanitized-class="cta-caption">Mattias Desmet is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.</p></div><div data-sanitized-class="fake-input-wrapper"><div data-sanitized-class="fake-input"></div><div data-sanitized-class="fake-button"></div></div></div></div><p>Now Zuckerberg openly states: these fact-checkers are politically biased and destroy more trust than they create. I’d say, what Zuckerberg is now communicating isn’t exactly breaking news for most of us. What we’d really like to hear from him is an explanation of why he seems to have only just realized this.</p><p>And abandoning fact-checking won’t necessarily mean censorship will stop. I recently heard Bill Gates mention in an interview on CNBC News: we are working on an AI platform that will screen the entire internet for hate speech and messages that incite violence. "And for messages encouraging people to skip vaccinations.", he then added. Clearly, Bill hasn’t learned much from the fiasco of the COVID-19 crisis.</p><p>On a positive note, I’d say: this is a great opportunity to ask ourselves again, how can we avoid becoming censors ourselves? How can we genuinely tolerate other opinions? How can we truly listen to someone who thinks fundamentally differently?</p><p>Genuine listening, like genuine speaking, requires you to set your ego aside for a moment. It means refraining from judging the speaker based on your own ideals and beliefs. It asks you to open the narcissistic shell of your Ego and give the voice of the Other a chance to truly enter and touch the strings of your Soul.</p><p>It’s in those conditions that censorship truly ceases to exist. I won’t attempt to provide a further answer here to the question of what genuine listening really entails. I’ll leave the question here as a question.</p><p>Mattias</p><div data-sanitized-class="captioned-image-container"><figure><a target="_blank" href="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fa70e2efb-cf7d-4e36-b8c4-5c168cc9eba4_2134x1044.png" data-component-name="Image2ToDOM" data-sanitized-class="image-link image2 is-viewable-img"><div data-sanitized-class="image2-inset"><picture><source type="image/webp"><img src="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fa70e2efb-cf7d-4e36-b8c4-5c168cc9eba4_2134x1044.png" width="1456" height="712" data-attrs='{"src":"https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/a70e2efb-cf7d-4e36-b8c4-5c168cc9eba4_2134x1044.png","srcNoWatermark":null,"fullscreen":null,"imageSize":null,"height":712,"width":1456,"resizeWidth":null,"bytes":1402474,"alt":null,"title":null,"type":"image/png","href":null,"belowTheFold":true,"topImage":false,"internalRedirect":null,"isProcessing":false}' alt="" loading="lazy" data-sanitized-class="sizing-normal"></picture><div data-sanitized-class="image-link-expand"><div data-sanitized-class="pencraft pc-display-flex pc-gap-8 pc-reset"><div data-sanitized-class="pencraft pc-reset icon-container restack-image"><path d="M3 12a9 9 0 0 1 9-9 9.75 9.75 0 0 1 6.74 2.74L21 8"></path><path d="M21 3v5h-5"></path><path d="M21 12a9 9 0 0 1-9 9 9.75 9.75 0 0 1-6.74-2.74L3 16"></path><path d="M8 16H3v5"></path></div><div data-sanitized-class="pencraft pc-reset icon-container view-image"><polyline points="15 3 21 3 21 9"></polyline><polyline points="9 21 3 21 3 15"></polyline><line x1="21" x2="14" y1="3" y2="10"></line><line x1="3" x2="10" y1="21" y2="14"></line></div></div></div></div></a></figure></div><div data-attrs='{"url":"https://words.mattiasdesmet.org/subscribe?","text":"Subscribe","language":"en"}' data-component-name="SubscribeWidgetToDOM" data-sanitized-class="subscription-widget-wrap-editor"><div data-sanitized-class="subscription-widget show-subscribe"><div data-sanitized-class="preamble"><p data-sanitized-class="cta-caption">Mattias Desmet is a reader-supported publication. 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guid: https://words.mattiasdesmet.org/p/zuckie-and-the-order-of-the-good
title: The confessions of Zuckerberg.
author: ;Mattias Desmet
link: https://words.mattiasdesmet.org/p/zuckie-and-the-order-of-the-good
hash: � �]_u�I��-,)
content:
<p>Dear friends, followers, and critics,</p><p>Ice, snow, and damp air briefly stiffen the joints of nature, but human blood keeps boiling, churning, and simmering in its far-too-narrow veins!<br>I’ve been reading sharp, snappy, and biting comments here and there (not here, mostly on Facebook) about my remarks on Zuckerberg’s ‘confessions.’ "What naivety – I truly believe Zuck has repented and joined the Order of the Good Heart." That’s more or less how it sounds.</p><div data-attrs='{"url":"https://words.mattiasdesmet.org/subscribe?","text":"Subscribe","language":"en"}' data-component-name="SubscribeWidgetToDOM" data-sanitized-class="subscription-widget-wrap-editor"><div data-sanitized-class="subscription-widget show-subscribe"><div data-sanitized-class="preamble"><p data-sanitized-class="cta-caption">Mattias Desmet is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.</p></div><div data-sanitized-class="fake-input-wrapper"><div data-sanitized-class="fake-input"></div><div data-sanitized-class="fake-button"></div></div></div></div><p>Let me list a few things that, with my certainly far-too-small understanding, I believe I have grasped about what happens under the heavens:</p><ul><li><p>Zuck is, of course, adjusting his sails to the wind now; I don’t see much reason to believe there’s genuine remorse. He’s likely trembling a bit before Team Trump, which is on its way. At the same time, he probably feels liberated from the pressure of the Biden administration. In other words, he’s smoothly adapting to changes on the surface of society.</p></li><li><p>Team Trump is indeed on its way, and that’s a complex matter. History has brought together a diverse group of people who are very different on a human level. For example, there’s a big difference between the techno-philic Elon Musk and the ever-reserved and ethically refined Jay Bhattacharya.</p></li><li><p>This group wasn’t brought together by some conspiracy. It’s the often unfathomable waves of the ocean of life itself that have swept them together like driftwood on the tides of modern times.</p></li><li><p>It’s quite likely that Team Trump will simply continue the trend towards technocracy and surveillance, possibly in a more radical manner than the ever-manipulative and covertly operating Team Biden. To the extent that Team Trump is under the sway of materialistic and rationalistic thinking, they will inevitably tend toward technocracy as well. In particular, Elon Musk could become a key player in this regard.</p></li><li><p>While Trump may occasionally share a coffee behind the scenes with the entourage of Biden and Obama, and while he has ties to the exact same major banking and economic players as Biden, that doesn’t mean Trump and Biden are staging a play carefully scripted in advance by geopolitical strategists. That doesn’t mean there’s some kind of script that says, 'Act One: Biden’s turn; Act Two: Trump’s turn. Go!'</p></li><li><p>There is planning and script, without a doubt. For example, read Brzezinski’s work to understand that Middle East policy and policies regarding former Eastern Bloc countries have been set for a good forty years. In this sense, a plan is indeed being executed step by step and intentionally. But the major organizing forces behind what happens on the world stage are not people but rather symbolic frameworks, ways of thinking, a particular worldview. To the extent that Biden and Trump share the same materialistic worldview, they are essentially executing the same plan—a plan orchestrated by the great metaphysical forces of existence and the symbolic frameworks in which those forces are expressed.<br>They are, therefore, the left and right wings of the same bird—indeed. But that bird is not a human bird; it’s a bird flying in far rarer and higher skies than those of human understanding.</p></li></ul><p>Dear friends, followers, and foes, I’m already looking forward to attending another one of those great unifying events where all the fiery freedom fighters and their even fiercer enemies gather to exchange some words!</p><p>In the meantime, in all my naivety, I remain at your service!<br>Mattias</p><div data-sanitized-class="captioned-image-container"><figure><a target="_blank" href="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fde1e077d-83aa-45f2-9e5c-7ce337f9665d_856x642.png" data-component-name="Image2ToDOM" data-sanitized-class="image-link image2 is-viewable-img"><div data-sanitized-class="image2-inset"><picture><source type="image/webp"><img src="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fde1e077d-83aa-45f2-9e5c-7ce337f9665d_856x642.png" width="856" height="642" data-attrs='{"src":"https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/de1e077d-83aa-45f2-9e5c-7ce337f9665d_856x642.png","srcNoWatermark":null,"fullscreen":null,"imageSize":null,"height":642,"width":856,"resizeWidth":null,"bytes":636863,"alt":null,"title":null,"type":"image/png","href":null,"belowTheFold":false,"topImage":true,"internalRedirect":null,"isProcessing":false}' alt="" fetchpriority="high" data-sanitized-class="sizing-normal"></picture><div data-sanitized-class="image-link-expand"><div data-sanitized-class="pencraft pc-display-flex pc-gap-8 pc-reset"><div data-sanitized-class="pencraft pc-reset icon-container restack-image"><path d="M3 12a9 9 0 0 1 9-9 9.75 9.75 0 0 1 6.74 2.74L21 8"></path><path d="M21 3v5h-5"></path><path d="M21 12a9 9 0 0 1-9 9 9.75 9.75 0 0 1-6.74-2.74L3 16"></path><path d="M8 16H3v5"></path></div><div data-sanitized-class="pencraft pc-reset icon-container view-image"><polyline points="15 3 21 3 21 9"></polyline><polyline points="9 21 3 21 3 15"></polyline><line x1="21" x2="14" y1="3" y2="10"></line><line x1="3" x2="10" y1="21" y2="14"></line></div></div></div></div></a></figure></div><div data-attrs='{"url":"https://words.mattiasdesmet.org/subscribe?","text":"Subscribe","language":"en"}' data-component-name="SubscribeWidgetToDOM" data-sanitized-class="subscription-widget-wrap-editor"><div data-sanitized-class="subscription-widget show-subscribe"><div data-sanitized-class="preamble"><p data-sanitized-class="cta-caption">Mattias Desmet is a reader-supported publication. 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