The Israel/Palestine issue is always an interesting one, and I've been dragging my feet doing a current events post about it. Guido Preparata believes that Israel was shoved into the Middle East by our international finance elites as a way to control the region via balance of powers; they did this same strategy previously in Europe for hundreds of years, but one can see a similar dynamic with Taiwan or South Korea vs. China, or Ukriane/the Soviet satellite states vs. Russia, or even the attempt at a nuclear armed Cuba (which Kennedy rightly thwarted).
Regarding Israel's ongoing ethnic cleansing approaching genocide of the Palestinians, I think the biggest question is whether (1) the egalitarian ratchet effect or (2) the Rothschild central banking consortium is ultimately in power; I don't know the answer to this. Basically, the egalitarian ratchet effect is a Western, Christian derived phenomenon where egalitarianism becomes more intense over time as the West's core societal value, discussed here: https://neofeudalreview.substack.com/p/the-egalitarian-ratchet-effect-why The Rothschild central bank system arose to piggyback off this when Jews were given the exclusive lending right in Europe in the Middle Ages, but there is also an argument that, by Abrahamics (Christians and Muslims) adopting Yahweh as their God, they were unable to fundamentally oppose the creation of this worldwide financial control grid, and this was baked into the cake right at the start.
So the fundamental question is: which is more powerful, ratcheting egalitarianism or Rothschild central bank domination? We will see hints of which is stronger with the Gaza result -- this is a big part of why the censorship apparatus (Rothschild) is becoming so much more overt (clampdown on egalitarianism). At the same time, the ethnic cleanse approaching genocide (1) removes the Holocaust shield, which has massively benefitted the Jewish people (and the central bankers) over the past fifty plus years, and (2) is massively unpopular, both in the United States and especially in Europe, where support for Jews is rapidly cratering. Part of me believes this, too, is orchestrated, as a way to ultimately draw back the Jewish diaspora into Israel if or when the Western financial system implodes as a way of fulfilling biblical prophecy (I don't believe this, but the upper level international financial elites very likely may).
Furthermore, the way you framed your post reiterates, to me, the core reason why the far left and the far right have trouble uniting despite similar critiques of the system: the left *fundamentally believe* in the system of ratcheting egalitarianism as their core value, while the far right do not. You see the Gazan population as the victim of a "vicious, racist, colonial-settler state which owes its existence to support from a vicious, racist colonial-settler mindset dominating the corridors of power in the US and EU". And this is so -- but that is the nature of the world, predator and prey, it's always been this way and always will be this way. Islam itself has done nothing but expand massively on a historical basis at the expense of Christianity, which in turn ate the Hellenic world: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pBaZYtrln54 And it's in the process of conquering Europe now. Armenia just lost 1/3 of it's territory to Azerbaijan and no one cares; the Christians in the Middle East have been purged, and the Christians in Africa are regularly massacred.
This is why I ultimately reject your frame: I don't care if Israel is a "vicious, racist, colonial-settler state" because the world should (to me) figure out their own issues. I believe in autarky -- the United States has all it needs to run itself as an entirely independent country indefinitely, but it's the world police post-World War 2 due to (the Federal Reserve owner's) rapacious and unlimited greed. I would love for it to withdraw from being the world's superpower and retreat into isolationism, no more foreign aid, let the world fend for itself. That would be the moral thing to do, and *that's* the position that would likely end Israel, but not as a primary effect or reason, and certainly not to promote the egalitarian ratchet effect or worldwide spreading Islam. Unfortunately the withdraw from this system would blow up the U.S. economy and make everyone far poorer, so I think it's very unlikely to happen....
Thanks for the clarification of possibilities in these absurd times.
I don't think withdrawal would make everyone poorer.
Most of our economy today is based on intellectual property/patents and military expenditures.
Military bases and their extravagant costs (figure at least twice the cost of what Eastern nations spend on similar weaponry and ships etc) are what keep us poor while funneling the profits to oligarchs and corporations.
Perhaps luxuries might be more expensive. But then, we don't buy appliances every year.
The biggest drain on most of US citizens is real estate, education, and healthcare. Those can also become affordable if we no longer enable rentier capitalism.
Hi Rob, the core wealth of the United States comes from the fact that it is the world’s reserve currency, so the world buys as much dollars as the U.S. can print (especially due to the petrodollar system, where a country must convert to dollars before being able to buy oil on the international market - Tree of Woe had a good series on how this system works). The dollar is the world’s reserve currency because it has the strongest military and 800 military bases worldwide, and if a country tries to get off the dollar system (Qaddafi, Saddam) they will be destroyed: https://quincyinst.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/US-Military-Bases-Abroad-2020-1024x711.jpeg
A withdrawal from worldwide military occupation would definitely result in the end of the U.S. dollar as world reserve currency, the U.S. government would no longer being able to print to infinity or export a great percent of its inflation worldwide, and it would result in massively increased borrowing costs and therefore collapse in value.
In other words, withdrawal would result in widespread devastation and mass poverty in the United States.
I wish this system didn’t develop as it is, but withdrawal from being Team America, World Police at this point would result in the heroin addict dying from withdrawal.
Hmm hold on, our currency is valued because of our ability to force them to an agreement?
It kinda puts the idea of contemporary economics on it's head.
We are a parasite nation. The smart ones in power elsewhere would not want to provoke the bully. I feel like a slow burn re-entry to reality, after decades of hyped up bullshit economics.
I’m not really too concerned with the first 3 paras of your reply dealing with ratcheting egalitarianism vs the central bank mafia. It’s largely uncontentious, although I don’t agree with the identitarian lens you sometimes wear. You make statements about the impact on Jews or the Jewish diaspora and this plays into the identitarian dialectic deliberately set-up by the ruling class to get the plebs to play the game out in a way that benefits the ruling moneyed class. The Israeli violence is supported in the West because huge swathes of the population, seeing it through an identitarian lens, believe that Palestinian violence is an existential threat to Jews. Jewish Israelis support the violence for the same reason. All of it is to grease the wealth transfer. And Jews in Israel, although far better off than Palestinians, have not benefitted because they’re batshit crazy, having been brought up in a state of fear for 77 years, and that state of fear allows Israeli billionaires to exploit working class Israeli Jews. But the whole thing that holds it nicely in place is identitarian politics.
Given that you subscribe to the view that “the nature of the world” is “predator and prey”, and “always will be this way”, it’s fair to assume that you believe it’s futile to advocate for, or act in a manner that promotes a different world? Such as one where people cooperate for mutual benefit, as opposed to exploitation.
That being the case, one’s only responsibility (in the interests of a ‘happy’ life, or at least in the interests of bare survival) is to either place yourself in the predator category, or to be as far out of the reach of the predator as possible. Which group do you see yourself in? (I’m not making any assumptions based on your writing.)
From one sentence to the very next, you jumped from agreeing with my assessment of the brutality of the colonial settler state and concluding that is the immutable nature of the world, into an assertion that “Islam itself has done nothing but expand massively on a historical basis at the expense of Christianity.” I have to say, that was quite a leap. I could make all sorts of assumptions about it, one assumption being that you view both the current events, and the sweep of history more generally, through the lens of identitarian struggles. I detect an unmistakable note of exasperation with a perceived massive expansion of Islam.
Do you think that a Palestinian genocide is therefore to be viewed as a minor setback for Islam in light of its threatening historical expansion? Is that why you “don’t care if Israel is a vicious, racist, colonial-settler state"?
Again, another strange leap from one sentence to the next was the jump from your not caring about Israel’s brutality to the expressed desire for a US autarky. Putting aside the fact that there’s nothing wrong in wanting the US to be self-sufficient and economically independent, how does your indifference to Israeli brutality logically lead into a desire for US autarky? I mean, you can’t reject a frame if its true. If it’s true that Israel is a “vicious, racist, colonial-settler state”, you can’t reject that truth on the grounds that you want the US to be autarkic. The truth of the former is not underpinned by your desire for the latter. So that was a bit weird.
Why are you so worried about “worldwide spreading Islam”? I wonder if your predator-prey worldview is feeding this anxiety. Are you worried that, up until now, the nominally ‘Christian’ but empirically savage West has been the global predator and, if the tables are reversed, you and yours will end up on the wrong end of the predator-prey relationship? But what if Islam does not turn into the predator you fear it will?
This is hard for you to accept because it will destroy your predator-prey, identitarian worldview: There are Muslims, Christians and Jews out there who don’t share your identitarian and survival-of the-fittest world view. They believe it’s possible for humans to get along, and that the lens through which you view the world has dominated affairs only because it has been promoted by and serves the interests of the ruling money powers. You don’t like those money powers, and yet you seem to subscribe totally to the world view they so desperately want you to. We get the world we dream of. If the majority of us dream of an identitarian, predator-prey nightmare, that’s the world we’ll get. If we could conceive of allying with Muslims, Christians and Jews who don’t share that view, I believe we would be doing our bit to advance a different possibility.
Hi Rusere, thank you for your response. I appreciate your calling attention to the danger of internalizing elite metaphysics. It’s a legitimate concern - the line between cold realism and tacit endorsement can be thin, and in a corrupted world, moral language is often co-opted or hollowed out. So I understand the need to reject the dialectic you're describing.
Your response draws on different levels of analysis, so my response too will hit upon different levels:
1. “How does your indifference to Israeli brutality logically lead into a desire for US autarky?” When one calls out injustices worldwide, it can be with one of a number of intents: first, it can be to de-legitimize the perceived oppressor; second, it can be used to clarify one’s own morality to apply to oneself and one’s own culture, or third, it can be used as a call for military intervention to stop the perceived injustice. It is the last point I am objecting to, because that line of thought is exactly what our elites love — the hijacking of morality as a cause for foreign intervention. Unless my loved ones are under direct physical threat, it’s fundamentally improper to use morality as a cause for worldwide intervention. The non-intervention strain within American politics was very popular prior to World War 2 with Lindberg’s America First Committee - such basic and fundamental understanding of morality and the purpose of war has been utterly warped in the post-war era as a way to justify worldwide military hegemony.
2. Whether or not one dreams of a world where people are judged individually based upon their level of spiritual development - which would be a nice thing - I think this perspective is naive based on a read of history and also based on the fundamental setup of this reality (which, as we’ve discussed, one must consume other living things simply in order to survive). Utopian idealistic visions are the #1 cause of mass murder - the song Imagine by Lennon is probably the most horrifying song I’ve ever heard. This world is fallen and will always be fallen and can never be perfected - it is nice to try to make things better, of course, but this goes back to our fundamental different frames of philosophical pessimism versus optimism. Group loyalties and identities continue to dominate politics and I see no reason for this to change; it is only white Christians who are forced to abandon their identities, while the identities of other groups - Jews, Muslims, blacks, women, LGBTQ, etc - remains completely in play.
3. “Do you think that a Palestinian genocide is therefore to be viewed as a minor setback for Islam in light of its threatening historical expansion?” Yes, based upon changing demographic and immigration rates in Europe - the TFR for Muslims in Europe is at least 1.0 greater than it is for white Christians, even ignoring massive continued immigration. Islam will be Europe’s religion within another fifty years, especially in France, England, Germany, but increasingly in Italy as well. I don’t think this point is really debatable based upon the data.
4. I agree with you that the upper elites use divide and conquer tactics on the basis of race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, so the public is too busy fighting amongst each other to focus on elite domination, and it’s very easy to fall into this trap.
5. With all this said, higher levels of spirituality involve the unity of opposites - the coincidentia oppositorum. I, personally, both recognize this reality as an orgy of violence, predator and prey, and how powerful group identity and loyalties are, and also how humanity is naturally drawn to setups akin to slave making ant colonies (reflecting the logic of our upper elites), while I strive to deepen my spiritual growth based upon my individuation process, and I try to assess others individually based upon their own development. So it can (and should) involve analysis on all of these levels at once.
1. I agree that interventionism is highly problematic. That’s the whole problem in Israel. The Anglo-American empire intervened to set it up, and it intervenes to arm it, and give it material and political support. A withdrawal of that interventionism would go a long way to solving the problem. We’re on the same page there. But what do you do when unfair intervention has already led to a massive power imbalance, with consequent massive abuse? Is all intervention, unless your loved ones are involved, off the table? And if intervention on the basis that loved ones are involved IS acceptable, you can bet someone is going to intervene in any given situation. What about BDS as a means of intervention? Incidentally the US was not a non-interventionist state before WW1 or even WW2. (E.g. US seizure of territories from Spain during the Spanish-American war of 1898. The strain of interventionism that existed prior to WW1 and 2 was purely down to the fact that the US had not yet tasted the fruits of being a successful interventionist.)
2. Here your argument amounts to begging the question – the world is dog-eat-dog because the world is dog-eat-dog. That’s not an answer to *why* the world is dog-eat-dog. I am saying the world is dog-eat-dog because that’s the narrative humanity has collectively bought into. There is much historical evidence for the world changing when underlying beliefs that underpin systems change. It’s perfectly rational to assume that if there was a change in dog-eat-dog mentality, the world would change. It’s not naïve. It’s backed by empirical evidence. Tonnes of it. As for the White Christian persecution complex, every group thinks it’s persecuted and to some extent nearly every group (with some obvious exceptions) can point to evidence for this. This is because, our overlords will persecute anyone who threatens their position. Persecution shifts with their shifting agenda. Students of all colours and religions who oppose the genocide are currently a persecuted group. Muslims in the West who oppose the genocide are a persecuted group. I have personally experienced persecution for political speech. Anyone who opposes The System in a serious way is persecuted and the persecution is not identitarian although the skill of the overlords is to make it look identitarian so it plays into divide and rule.
3. Deeply saddening answer. Gaza is a laboratory for the next genocide. The people who prepared the blueprint for it are the same people ruling over the entire Western world. It was the duty of everyone to oppose it, if only to prevent it happening to us. The ruling class doesn’t care what colour or religion its enemies are. Attachment to identity blinds people to this reality and the ruling class are howling with laughter over this.
Islam is *already* Europe’s religion for the simple reason that the West has NO religion and no spiritual anchor, whereas Muslims do. How else could everything we've seen this past 5 years happen unless the masses were spiritually dead? (I’m not Muslim btw). That’s the problem. And Muslims who were born in Europe are European whether you like it or not. In the same way, white people born in Africa who regard it as their home are Africans. A group in the West that feels persecuted has suddenly decided to invoke Christianity, but 90% of white people in Europe have never seen a Bible and couldn’t quote a single verse from it. *That’s* the problem, not Islam. It isn’t Christian to fear other religions. If you were truly Christian, you’d have no problem with Islam. Christianity requires you to look inside yourself, not point out bogeymen. Christianity is a badge now being worn by people who fear the other. There’s nothing Christian about them. Nothing at all.
4. You agree with the ruling class’s divide and rule tactics while sanctioning them by being indifferent to slaughter in Gaza on the grounds that it’s not your race/religion. If Gaza succeeds, it'll be coming to a town near you, with some adaptations but applying the same principle - get rid of the troublemakers. First a concentration camp is erected, then the people are disappeared.
5. Try working on your attachment to identity and seeing the humanity in everyone. Too corny and naive for you no doubt, but to me it’s just Spirituality 101.
Hi Rusere, thanks for the response. I think we’re hitting up against different core metaphysical assumptions, and there are diminishing returns to debate as a result. I also detect some increased frustration and defensiveness in your tone, which makes continued exchange less productive. So just a few final clarifications before moving on:
1. "But what do you do when unfair intervention has already led to a massive power imbalance, with consequent massive abuse?" Nothing, total withdrawal and let the chips fall where they may. Trying to correct for historic power imbalances via intervention is the same moral rationale for international intervention, just couched differently. "Is all intervention, unless your loved ones are involved, off the table?" Morally, yes. Practically, no: in a dog-eat-dog world the powerful will always try to extract resources from the powerless. This is another paradox worth contemplating over.
2. “Why is the world dog-eat-dog?” I didn’t say it should be, I said it *is*. You think belief constructs reality, while I think belief can modify it at the margins, but structure precedes ideology. I see repeated civilizational patterns across time and space - tribalism, conquest, hierarchy, demographic asymmetry, and group self-interest - emerging even when belief systems profess universal love. And as for the “white Christian persecution complex,” I don’t think anyone is owed protection; rather, I’m observing asymmetries of permission: who gets to speak in group terms and who doesn’t. The suppression itself suggests those categories still matter, perhaps more than ever.
3. "Islam is *already* Europe’s religion for the simple reason that the West has NO religion and no spiritual anchor, whereas Muslims do....And Muslims who were born in Europe are European whether you like it or not. In the same way, white people born in Africa who regard it as their home are Africans....It isn’t Christian to fear other religions. If you were truly Christian, you’d have no problem with Islam." This is probably our deepest point of contention; first, I agree with you that Europe is hollowed out spiritually and it's modes no longer animate Western belief (Islam, too, seems to be fading, as there have been recent studies showing rapid secularization in the Middle East). What I disagree with you on is that all people are basically the same on a biological basis. There are enormous differences in group biology which impact all sorts of areas - in time preference, aggression, religiosity, fertility, and more - and simply transplanting a massive number of people from one location to another does not change that base reality. The former PUA blogger Roissy famously coined the term, "Diversity + proximity = war". Regarding religious labels, it is not so much the label itself that matters as it is Schmitt's friend/enemy distinction - people use these labels as a way to divide themselves into "us vs. them" as a way to compete for scarce resources, and religion is one of the primary ways of implementing this distinction. Burying one's head in the sand about this and assuming blank slate theory is a route to disaster, I think.
If you want a deeper analysis of this trajectory, one that ties demographic collapse, civilizational exhaustion, and spiritual displacement together, I recommend this post by Spandrell: https://archive.ph/Giqzp I don’t agree with every point, but it captures something the idealists never see coming: structure wins, not sentiment.
4. You write: “You agree with the ruling class’s divide-and-rule tactics while sanctioning them by being indifferent to Gaza.”
Not quite. I think all peoples have a shared interest in breaking the central banking trap and reclaiming national autonomy. But unity doesn’t emerge through moral universalism, and intervention on moral grounds almost always becomes a tool for the same elites we’re both critiquing. That’s my objection. It’s not about race or religion, rather it’s about rejecting global intervention as a disguised form of control.
5. "Try working on your attachment to identity and seeing the humanity in everyone." I’ve never advocated dehumanization, but love without discernment is sentimentality. My interest is not in erasing difference but in metabolizing it through analysis, archetype, and individuation. Spirituality 101 might begin with “we’re all human.” But at some point, you move into shadow work, ancestral memory, blood, soil, myth, destiny, into patterns that don’t dissolve just because we disapprove of them. You seem uneasy with that, which is fine - but don’t confuse that unease for transcendence.
I respect that we’re working from incompatible premises, and I’m not trying to convince you otherwise. If anything, I’ve said too much already. But I appreciate the exchange and enjoy the interaction/debate, as it helps clarify certain things, I think. All the best.
“The entire world is hurtling in the same direction towards a dystopian bio-digital gulag, although different countries may be riding in different cultural vehicles. The railway tracks, roads and infrastructure carrying us to that destination are being designed and built by industries of the perennial unipolar monarch – global capital.”
“Contrary to the mainstream propaganda spewed out for 77 years, the issue is neither complicated nor intractable. Israel is a vicious, racist, colonial-settler state which owes its existence to support from a vicious, racist colonial-settler mindset dominating the corridors of power in the US and EU. In a sane and moral world it would be dismantled and replaced by an entity that upholds the human rights and dignity of all people within its borders.”
“It speaks volumes for the moral somnambulance of the West that it needed to have a genocide livestreamed to it to accept that Israel is an apartheid state far worse than that of the old South Africa.”
Hi Rusere,
Thanks for the post; this is a long response.
The Israel/Palestine issue is always an interesting one, and I've been dragging my feet doing a current events post about it. Guido Preparata believes that Israel was shoved into the Middle East by our international finance elites as a way to control the region via balance of powers; they did this same strategy previously in Europe for hundreds of years, but one can see a similar dynamic with Taiwan or South Korea vs. China, or Ukriane/the Soviet satellite states vs. Russia, or even the attempt at a nuclear armed Cuba (which Kennedy rightly thwarted).
Regarding Israel's ongoing ethnic cleansing approaching genocide of the Palestinians, I think the biggest question is whether (1) the egalitarian ratchet effect or (2) the Rothschild central banking consortium is ultimately in power; I don't know the answer to this. Basically, the egalitarian ratchet effect is a Western, Christian derived phenomenon where egalitarianism becomes more intense over time as the West's core societal value, discussed here: https://neofeudalreview.substack.com/p/the-egalitarian-ratchet-effect-why The Rothschild central bank system arose to piggyback off this when Jews were given the exclusive lending right in Europe in the Middle Ages, but there is also an argument that, by Abrahamics (Christians and Muslims) adopting Yahweh as their God, they were unable to fundamentally oppose the creation of this worldwide financial control grid, and this was baked into the cake right at the start.
So the fundamental question is: which is more powerful, ratcheting egalitarianism or Rothschild central bank domination? We will see hints of which is stronger with the Gaza result -- this is a big part of why the censorship apparatus (Rothschild) is becoming so much more overt (clampdown on egalitarianism). At the same time, the ethnic cleanse approaching genocide (1) removes the Holocaust shield, which has massively benefitted the Jewish people (and the central bankers) over the past fifty plus years, and (2) is massively unpopular, both in the United States and especially in Europe, where support for Jews is rapidly cratering. Part of me believes this, too, is orchestrated, as a way to ultimately draw back the Jewish diaspora into Israel if or when the Western financial system implodes as a way of fulfilling biblical prophecy (I don't believe this, but the upper level international financial elites very likely may).
Furthermore, the way you framed your post reiterates, to me, the core reason why the far left and the far right have trouble uniting despite similar critiques of the system: the left *fundamentally believe* in the system of ratcheting egalitarianism as their core value, while the far right do not. You see the Gazan population as the victim of a "vicious, racist, colonial-settler state which owes its existence to support from a vicious, racist colonial-settler mindset dominating the corridors of power in the US and EU". And this is so -- but that is the nature of the world, predator and prey, it's always been this way and always will be this way. Islam itself has done nothing but expand massively on a historical basis at the expense of Christianity, which in turn ate the Hellenic world: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pBaZYtrln54 And it's in the process of conquering Europe now. Armenia just lost 1/3 of it's territory to Azerbaijan and no one cares; the Christians in the Middle East have been purged, and the Christians in Africa are regularly massacred.
This is why I ultimately reject your frame: I don't care if Israel is a "vicious, racist, colonial-settler state" because the world should (to me) figure out their own issues. I believe in autarky -- the United States has all it needs to run itself as an entirely independent country indefinitely, but it's the world police post-World War 2 due to (the Federal Reserve owner's) rapacious and unlimited greed. I would love for it to withdraw from being the world's superpower and retreat into isolationism, no more foreign aid, let the world fend for itself. That would be the moral thing to do, and *that's* the position that would likely end Israel, but not as a primary effect or reason, and certainly not to promote the egalitarian ratchet effect or worldwide spreading Islam. Unfortunately the withdraw from this system would blow up the U.S. economy and make everyone far poorer, so I think it's very unlikely to happen....
Thanks for the clarification of possibilities in these absurd times.
I don't think withdrawal would make everyone poorer.
Most of our economy today is based on intellectual property/patents and military expenditures.
Military bases and their extravagant costs (figure at least twice the cost of what Eastern nations spend on similar weaponry and ships etc) are what keep us poor while funneling the profits to oligarchs and corporations.
Perhaps luxuries might be more expensive. But then, we don't buy appliances every year.
The biggest drain on most of US citizens is real estate, education, and healthcare. Those can also become affordable if we no longer enable rentier capitalism.
Hi Rob, the core wealth of the United States comes from the fact that it is the world’s reserve currency, so the world buys as much dollars as the U.S. can print (especially due to the petrodollar system, where a country must convert to dollars before being able to buy oil on the international market - Tree of Woe had a good series on how this system works). The dollar is the world’s reserve currency because it has the strongest military and 800 military bases worldwide, and if a country tries to get off the dollar system (Qaddafi, Saddam) they will be destroyed: https://quincyinst.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/US-Military-Bases-Abroad-2020-1024x711.jpeg
A withdrawal from worldwide military occupation would definitely result in the end of the U.S. dollar as world reserve currency, the U.S. government would no longer being able to print to infinity or export a great percent of its inflation worldwide, and it would result in massively increased borrowing costs and therefore collapse in value.
In other words, withdrawal would result in widespread devastation and mass poverty in the United States.
I wish this system didn’t develop as it is, but withdrawal from being Team America, World Police at this point would result in the heroin addict dying from withdrawal.
Hmm hold on, our currency is valued because of our ability to force them to an agreement?
It kinda puts the idea of contemporary economics on it's head.
We are a parasite nation. The smart ones in power elsewhere would not want to provoke the bully. I feel like a slow burn re-entry to reality, after decades of hyped up bullshit economics.
I’m not really too concerned with the first 3 paras of your reply dealing with ratcheting egalitarianism vs the central bank mafia. It’s largely uncontentious, although I don’t agree with the identitarian lens you sometimes wear. You make statements about the impact on Jews or the Jewish diaspora and this plays into the identitarian dialectic deliberately set-up by the ruling class to get the plebs to play the game out in a way that benefits the ruling moneyed class. The Israeli violence is supported in the West because huge swathes of the population, seeing it through an identitarian lens, believe that Palestinian violence is an existential threat to Jews. Jewish Israelis support the violence for the same reason. All of it is to grease the wealth transfer. And Jews in Israel, although far better off than Palestinians, have not benefitted because they’re batshit crazy, having been brought up in a state of fear for 77 years, and that state of fear allows Israeli billionaires to exploit working class Israeli Jews. But the whole thing that holds it nicely in place is identitarian politics.
Given that you subscribe to the view that “the nature of the world” is “predator and prey”, and “always will be this way”, it’s fair to assume that you believe it’s futile to advocate for, or act in a manner that promotes a different world? Such as one where people cooperate for mutual benefit, as opposed to exploitation.
That being the case, one’s only responsibility (in the interests of a ‘happy’ life, or at least in the interests of bare survival) is to either place yourself in the predator category, or to be as far out of the reach of the predator as possible. Which group do you see yourself in? (I’m not making any assumptions based on your writing.)
From one sentence to the very next, you jumped from agreeing with my assessment of the brutality of the colonial settler state and concluding that is the immutable nature of the world, into an assertion that “Islam itself has done nothing but expand massively on a historical basis at the expense of Christianity.” I have to say, that was quite a leap. I could make all sorts of assumptions about it, one assumption being that you view both the current events, and the sweep of history more generally, through the lens of identitarian struggles. I detect an unmistakable note of exasperation with a perceived massive expansion of Islam.
Do you think that a Palestinian genocide is therefore to be viewed as a minor setback for Islam in light of its threatening historical expansion? Is that why you “don’t care if Israel is a vicious, racist, colonial-settler state"?
Again, another strange leap from one sentence to the next was the jump from your not caring about Israel’s brutality to the expressed desire for a US autarky. Putting aside the fact that there’s nothing wrong in wanting the US to be self-sufficient and economically independent, how does your indifference to Israeli brutality logically lead into a desire for US autarky? I mean, you can’t reject a frame if its true. If it’s true that Israel is a “vicious, racist, colonial-settler state”, you can’t reject that truth on the grounds that you want the US to be autarkic. The truth of the former is not underpinned by your desire for the latter. So that was a bit weird.
Why are you so worried about “worldwide spreading Islam”? I wonder if your predator-prey worldview is feeding this anxiety. Are you worried that, up until now, the nominally ‘Christian’ but empirically savage West has been the global predator and, if the tables are reversed, you and yours will end up on the wrong end of the predator-prey relationship? But what if Islam does not turn into the predator you fear it will?
This is hard for you to accept because it will destroy your predator-prey, identitarian worldview: There are Muslims, Christians and Jews out there who don’t share your identitarian and survival-of the-fittest world view. They believe it’s possible for humans to get along, and that the lens through which you view the world has dominated affairs only because it has been promoted by and serves the interests of the ruling money powers. You don’t like those money powers, and yet you seem to subscribe totally to the world view they so desperately want you to. We get the world we dream of. If the majority of us dream of an identitarian, predator-prey nightmare, that’s the world we’ll get. If we could conceive of allying with Muslims, Christians and Jews who don’t share that view, I believe we would be doing our bit to advance a different possibility.
Hi Rusere, thank you for your response. I appreciate your calling attention to the danger of internalizing elite metaphysics. It’s a legitimate concern - the line between cold realism and tacit endorsement can be thin, and in a corrupted world, moral language is often co-opted or hollowed out. So I understand the need to reject the dialectic you're describing.
Your response draws on different levels of analysis, so my response too will hit upon different levels:
1. “How does your indifference to Israeli brutality logically lead into a desire for US autarky?” When one calls out injustices worldwide, it can be with one of a number of intents: first, it can be to de-legitimize the perceived oppressor; second, it can be used to clarify one’s own morality to apply to oneself and one’s own culture, or third, it can be used as a call for military intervention to stop the perceived injustice. It is the last point I am objecting to, because that line of thought is exactly what our elites love — the hijacking of morality as a cause for foreign intervention. Unless my loved ones are under direct physical threat, it’s fundamentally improper to use morality as a cause for worldwide intervention. The non-intervention strain within American politics was very popular prior to World War 2 with Lindberg’s America First Committee - such basic and fundamental understanding of morality and the purpose of war has been utterly warped in the post-war era as a way to justify worldwide military hegemony.
2. Whether or not one dreams of a world where people are judged individually based upon their level of spiritual development - which would be a nice thing - I think this perspective is naive based on a read of history and also based on the fundamental setup of this reality (which, as we’ve discussed, one must consume other living things simply in order to survive). Utopian idealistic visions are the #1 cause of mass murder - the song Imagine by Lennon is probably the most horrifying song I’ve ever heard. This world is fallen and will always be fallen and can never be perfected - it is nice to try to make things better, of course, but this goes back to our fundamental different frames of philosophical pessimism versus optimism. Group loyalties and identities continue to dominate politics and I see no reason for this to change; it is only white Christians who are forced to abandon their identities, while the identities of other groups - Jews, Muslims, blacks, women, LGBTQ, etc - remains completely in play.
3. “Do you think that a Palestinian genocide is therefore to be viewed as a minor setback for Islam in light of its threatening historical expansion?” Yes, based upon changing demographic and immigration rates in Europe - the TFR for Muslims in Europe is at least 1.0 greater than it is for white Christians, even ignoring massive continued immigration. Islam will be Europe’s religion within another fifty years, especially in France, England, Germany, but increasingly in Italy as well. I don’t think this point is really debatable based upon the data.
4. I agree with you that the upper elites use divide and conquer tactics on the basis of race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, so the public is too busy fighting amongst each other to focus on elite domination, and it’s very easy to fall into this trap.
5. With all this said, higher levels of spirituality involve the unity of opposites - the coincidentia oppositorum. I, personally, both recognize this reality as an orgy of violence, predator and prey, and how powerful group identity and loyalties are, and also how humanity is naturally drawn to setups akin to slave making ant colonies (reflecting the logic of our upper elites), while I strive to deepen my spiritual growth based upon my individuation process, and I try to assess others individually based upon their own development. So it can (and should) involve analysis on all of these levels at once.
I hope this response is helpful…
Hi Neo F
Addressing points using your numbering scheme:
1. I agree that interventionism is highly problematic. That’s the whole problem in Israel. The Anglo-American empire intervened to set it up, and it intervenes to arm it, and give it material and political support. A withdrawal of that interventionism would go a long way to solving the problem. We’re on the same page there. But what do you do when unfair intervention has already led to a massive power imbalance, with consequent massive abuse? Is all intervention, unless your loved ones are involved, off the table? And if intervention on the basis that loved ones are involved IS acceptable, you can bet someone is going to intervene in any given situation. What about BDS as a means of intervention? Incidentally the US was not a non-interventionist state before WW1 or even WW2. (E.g. US seizure of territories from Spain during the Spanish-American war of 1898. The strain of interventionism that existed prior to WW1 and 2 was purely down to the fact that the US had not yet tasted the fruits of being a successful interventionist.)
2. Here your argument amounts to begging the question – the world is dog-eat-dog because the world is dog-eat-dog. That’s not an answer to *why* the world is dog-eat-dog. I am saying the world is dog-eat-dog because that’s the narrative humanity has collectively bought into. There is much historical evidence for the world changing when underlying beliefs that underpin systems change. It’s perfectly rational to assume that if there was a change in dog-eat-dog mentality, the world would change. It’s not naïve. It’s backed by empirical evidence. Tonnes of it. As for the White Christian persecution complex, every group thinks it’s persecuted and to some extent nearly every group (with some obvious exceptions) can point to evidence for this. This is because, our overlords will persecute anyone who threatens their position. Persecution shifts with their shifting agenda. Students of all colours and religions who oppose the genocide are currently a persecuted group. Muslims in the West who oppose the genocide are a persecuted group. I have personally experienced persecution for political speech. Anyone who opposes The System in a serious way is persecuted and the persecution is not identitarian although the skill of the overlords is to make it look identitarian so it plays into divide and rule.
3. Deeply saddening answer. Gaza is a laboratory for the next genocide. The people who prepared the blueprint for it are the same people ruling over the entire Western world. It was the duty of everyone to oppose it, if only to prevent it happening to us. The ruling class doesn’t care what colour or religion its enemies are. Attachment to identity blinds people to this reality and the ruling class are howling with laughter over this.
Islam is *already* Europe’s religion for the simple reason that the West has NO religion and no spiritual anchor, whereas Muslims do. How else could everything we've seen this past 5 years happen unless the masses were spiritually dead? (I’m not Muslim btw). That’s the problem. And Muslims who were born in Europe are European whether you like it or not. In the same way, white people born in Africa who regard it as their home are Africans. A group in the West that feels persecuted has suddenly decided to invoke Christianity, but 90% of white people in Europe have never seen a Bible and couldn’t quote a single verse from it. *That’s* the problem, not Islam. It isn’t Christian to fear other religions. If you were truly Christian, you’d have no problem with Islam. Christianity requires you to look inside yourself, not point out bogeymen. Christianity is a badge now being worn by people who fear the other. There’s nothing Christian about them. Nothing at all.
4. You agree with the ruling class’s divide and rule tactics while sanctioning them by being indifferent to slaughter in Gaza on the grounds that it’s not your race/religion. If Gaza succeeds, it'll be coming to a town near you, with some adaptations but applying the same principle - get rid of the troublemakers. First a concentration camp is erected, then the people are disappeared.
5. Try working on your attachment to identity and seeing the humanity in everyone. Too corny and naive for you no doubt, but to me it’s just Spirituality 101.
Hi Rusere, thanks for the response. I think we’re hitting up against different core metaphysical assumptions, and there are diminishing returns to debate as a result. I also detect some increased frustration and defensiveness in your tone, which makes continued exchange less productive. So just a few final clarifications before moving on:
1. "But what do you do when unfair intervention has already led to a massive power imbalance, with consequent massive abuse?" Nothing, total withdrawal and let the chips fall where they may. Trying to correct for historic power imbalances via intervention is the same moral rationale for international intervention, just couched differently. "Is all intervention, unless your loved ones are involved, off the table?" Morally, yes. Practically, no: in a dog-eat-dog world the powerful will always try to extract resources from the powerless. This is another paradox worth contemplating over.
2. “Why is the world dog-eat-dog?” I didn’t say it should be, I said it *is*. You think belief constructs reality, while I think belief can modify it at the margins, but structure precedes ideology. I see repeated civilizational patterns across time and space - tribalism, conquest, hierarchy, demographic asymmetry, and group self-interest - emerging even when belief systems profess universal love. And as for the “white Christian persecution complex,” I don’t think anyone is owed protection; rather, I’m observing asymmetries of permission: who gets to speak in group terms and who doesn’t. The suppression itself suggests those categories still matter, perhaps more than ever.
3. "Islam is *already* Europe’s religion for the simple reason that the West has NO religion and no spiritual anchor, whereas Muslims do....And Muslims who were born in Europe are European whether you like it or not. In the same way, white people born in Africa who regard it as their home are Africans....It isn’t Christian to fear other religions. If you were truly Christian, you’d have no problem with Islam." This is probably our deepest point of contention; first, I agree with you that Europe is hollowed out spiritually and it's modes no longer animate Western belief (Islam, too, seems to be fading, as there have been recent studies showing rapid secularization in the Middle East). What I disagree with you on is that all people are basically the same on a biological basis. There are enormous differences in group biology which impact all sorts of areas - in time preference, aggression, religiosity, fertility, and more - and simply transplanting a massive number of people from one location to another does not change that base reality. The former PUA blogger Roissy famously coined the term, "Diversity + proximity = war". Regarding religious labels, it is not so much the label itself that matters as it is Schmitt's friend/enemy distinction - people use these labels as a way to divide themselves into "us vs. them" as a way to compete for scarce resources, and religion is one of the primary ways of implementing this distinction. Burying one's head in the sand about this and assuming blank slate theory is a route to disaster, I think.
If you want a deeper analysis of this trajectory, one that ties demographic collapse, civilizational exhaustion, and spiritual displacement together, I recommend this post by Spandrell: https://archive.ph/Giqzp I don’t agree with every point, but it captures something the idealists never see coming: structure wins, not sentiment.
4. You write: “You agree with the ruling class’s divide-and-rule tactics while sanctioning them by being indifferent to Gaza.”
Not quite. I think all peoples have a shared interest in breaking the central banking trap and reclaiming national autonomy. But unity doesn’t emerge through moral universalism, and intervention on moral grounds almost always becomes a tool for the same elites we’re both critiquing. That’s my objection. It’s not about race or religion, rather it’s about rejecting global intervention as a disguised form of control.
5. "Try working on your attachment to identity and seeing the humanity in everyone." I’ve never advocated dehumanization, but love without discernment is sentimentality. My interest is not in erasing difference but in metabolizing it through analysis, archetype, and individuation. Spirituality 101 might begin with “we’re all human.” But at some point, you move into shadow work, ancestral memory, blood, soil, myth, destiny, into patterns that don’t dissolve just because we disapprove of them. You seem uneasy with that, which is fine - but don’t confuse that unease for transcendence.
I respect that we’re working from incompatible premises, and I’m not trying to convince you otherwise. If anything, I’ve said too much already. But I appreciate the exchange and enjoy the interaction/debate, as it helps clarify certain things, I think. All the best.
Worth repeating:
“The entire world is hurtling in the same direction towards a dystopian bio-digital gulag, although different countries may be riding in different cultural vehicles. The railway tracks, roads and infrastructure carrying us to that destination are being designed and built by industries of the perennial unipolar monarch – global capital.”
“Contrary to the mainstream propaganda spewed out for 77 years, the issue is neither complicated nor intractable. Israel is a vicious, racist, colonial-settler state which owes its existence to support from a vicious, racist colonial-settler mindset dominating the corridors of power in the US and EU. In a sane and moral world it would be dismantled and replaced by an entity that upholds the human rights and dignity of all people within its borders.”
“It speaks volumes for the moral somnambulance of the West that it needed to have a genocide livestreamed to it to accept that Israel is an apartheid state far worse than that of the old South Africa.”