Julius Lester on Racism and Anti-Semitism

[Rootsie]

On one side you have the Zionists who accuse anybody saying boo about Israe's bad behavior of being anti-Semitic, and then you've got the Anti=Semites who see evil Jews behind every ill in the world. It is instructive maybe to remember that racism and anti-Semitism have common roots. That the Jews survived the destruction of Israel by the Romans in 60AD is somehow to be held against them. Are there evil Jews? Yes. Do they control the world? Hardly.Jews were not thr first or the last to come up with a 'chosen people' idea. Pointing to Jewish bankers and financiers with an 'aha'! is to ignore the far more numerous non-Jewish ones. I was struck in college by how many of my classmates were Jews, but I learned that that scholastic tradition is indeed ancient, and is part of what has held Jewish communities together all these centuries in foreign and hostile places. As I read through the anti-Semitic comments on the Rastafari Speks forum, I am saddened by watching intelligent people succumbing to bigotry, and more, I am sympathetic about the impulse we humans have to understand the world and its woes and how vulnerable we can become to easy explanations for all the complexities that confront us. Jews did not invent White Supremacy, and in fact throughout their history have fallen prey to it That some Jews have risen to prominence in corporate, financial, and political arenas is not surprising given their history as mainly urban dwellers in Europe who were denied the right to own land or practice trades. It’s ironic that they were forced into money-lending and then blamed for the evils of capitalism. As always, they are convenient scapegoats.I think predatory capitalism is pretty-much a Christian invention, when we get right down to it.  Why let all those white Catholics and Protestants off the hook?

Anyway. I thank Julius Lester for his humanity, his generosity, and his blackness and his Jewishness too. Each of us is mixed in that we carry in us the capacity to do great good and great evil. By consistently projecting evil on to one ‘them’ or another, we are failing the great introspection test. Didn’t somebody once say “Know Thyself”?


 Racism, Anti-Semitism and the Concept of Evil
Julius Lester, University of Massachusetts Amherst

I.
Racism is an exceedingly complex, tricky, and confusing phenomenon. This is so because racism is often indiscriminately extended and applied to nonbiological and nonracial groupings - nations, linguistic groups, ethnic or cultural groups. For example, Jews are not a race and anti-Semitism was not expressed in the language of racism until the 19th century, but the religious and political expressions of anti-Semitism that roll through Western Civilization like a mighty and polluted river are racist.

Racism is chameleon-like, and takes on the appearance of ethnocentrism, social discrimination, liberalism, conservatism, or Marxism. But this is because prejudice and discrimination look almost identical whether the object is a race or ethnic group.

Racism is also difficult to unmask because it can also wear the camouflage of ethnocentrism. Theoretically, ethnocentrism alleges inferiority, disabilities, and negative traits to an outgroup on the basis of culture. Racism ascribes negative definition on the basis of biology. In reality, however, the differences are not clear. This is why anti-Semitism can be cultural in one instance, religious in another, and racial in yet another. Further confusing matters is the fact that ethnocentrism is universal. Members of practically every culture regard their way of life as superior to that of their neighbors.

But regarding one's way of life as superior is not the same as crowning one's race as superior. Sometimes, however, it is difficult to perceive a difference in a group's attitude toward its way of life and its attitude toward itself.

Racism and ethnocentrism are not, then, mutually exclusive. But while racist societies are almost invariably ethnocentric, the reverse is not true. While nearly every group is proud of its cultural accomplishments and derogates those of their neighbors, the idea that a group is superior to another because of genetic makeup is not widespread. The startling historical fact is that, in its origins, racism is the creation of Western Civilization. Where racism exists outside the West, it is "mostly an outgrowth of the rationalizations of slavery and colonial expansion," according to Professor Louis van den Berge. "Far and away the most widespread, enduring, and virulent form of racism and the costliest in terms of human suffering has been that which developed in western Europe and its colonial extensions in Africa, Asia, Australia, and the Western Hemisphere." He concludes that "The Netherlands and Great Britain were responsible for the growth of the most racist colonial societies that the world has ever known -namely, South Africa, the United States, and Australia."

Racism is not then intrinsic to human nature. It is a product of history, the result of decisions made in the course of human events. Thus, racism is not an irrational phenomenon, nor does it proceed from the minds and souls of people acting irrationally. To consider racism irrational, to deem it a social aberration is to dismiss it. The failure or refusal to see that racism is rational is to evade taking responsibility for our civilization and the horrors it has wrought all too often.
It would be comforting to believe that the Holocaust, the most extreme expression of racism, had its sources in an irrationality with roots in the farthest reaches of insanity. We are allowed no such comfort. The executioners, the active and passive ones, were rational men and rational women acting rationally.

Something in us may want to reject this. We want to believe, may even need to believe that rational people do not conceive and execute a program of genocide. Higher education glorifies the use of reason, extolling it as the royal road to a greater tomorrow. Thus, we are almost compelled to believe that reasonable men and women would not participate in and sanction, actively and passively, the murder of one-third of the Jews in the world.

Higher education assumes that reason is intrinsically moral, that, by definition, it partakes of the good and shuns evil. It does not. Reason is only a tool of the intellect. As such, it is the servant of morality, not its avatar. "Nothing is so lest thinking make it so," wrote Shakespeare. We can think anything and rationalize any justification for it. That reasonable people murdered six million Jews should not surprise us because reason justified a morality with racism for a matrix. If one accepted the matrix, if one believed the Nazi premise about Jews, the extermination of the Jews was a theological and reasonable conclusion.

To understand any society or civilization, it is necessary to uncover the principles around which that society organizes itself. Anti-Semitism and racism are two of the organizing principles of Western civilization. Under Naziism, anti-Semitism and racism came together in a horrifying conflagration which demands that we take responsibility for this world in ways our predecessors on this planet did not.

What, then, is racism? It is "the theory or idea that there is a causal link between inherited physical traits and certain traits of personality, intellect, or culture and, combined with it, the notion that some races are inherently superior to others." Racism is a race's idealization of itself, not only in the society but in the very cosmos. Racism confers, then, religious identity in secular garb. George Mosse, in his Toward The Final Solution: A History of European Racism, describes racists as having a particular set of values, namely, "a certain concept of beauty [which is] white and classical....middle class virtues of work, of moderation and honor." It follows logically, then, that a racist society will designate the Other as inferior because it lacks beauty and middle-class virtues. "All evil was blamed upon the restless inferior races, who lacked appreciation of a settled order of things."

Racism establishes Order for the racial or national majority. It provides the majority
with a cohesive and beneficent collective identity, an identity based on the exaltation of the majority - its physical endowments, its civic virtues, its morality. In other words, racism gives the majority an image of the Good, the True and the Beautiful, and that image is itself. By default, then, Evil is projected onto those who were not created in the image of the Good.

Order is the greatest imperative of any society. Without Order a society falls into chaos. Of course, there are many components to Order -economic, political, social, etc., - but these rest on the foundation posts of a deeper order which is spiritual, i.e. not only is it necessary for the individual to be given a place of security in the society, but the society must serve as a microcosm and reflection of security in the universe itself. Thus, the atheism of communist countries, the anti-religious premise of Naziism, are statements of spiritual order which convert politics into religion.

When a group idealizes itself as the apotheosis of humanity, it automatically creates an Other, a Them. Richard Grunberger in The Twelve Year Reich: A Social History of Nazi Germany writes:
The white outline of the German's image of themselves - in terms of character no less than of colour - acquired definition only via the moral and physical darkness of its Jewish anti-type. Metaphysically as well as materially, the roots of the German heaven were deeply embedded in the Jewish hell....the majority of Germans accepted Jew-baiting...as an integral part of a system beneficial to themselves.

Racism and anti-Semitism benefit a group by satisfying, in George Mosse's words "a longing for coherence, for community and for an ideal in the face of a changing world....[Racism is] part of the drive to define man's place in nature and of the hope for an ordered, healthy and happy world....the racist outlook fuses man's outward appearance with his place in nature and the proper function of his soul."

Thus, racism must exist because it creates Order for Euro-American civilization. George Mosse writes: "Scientific accomplishment, a Puritan attitude toward life - the triumphant middle-class morality, Christian religion, the ideal of beauty as symbolic of a better and healthier world were all integral facets of racism....Such noble ideals as freedom, equality and tolerance would become reality only if the race were preserved and its enemies defeated....Racism defined utopia against its enemies." Many still consider a white and Christian Western Civilization to be that utopia.
II.
To unravel the origins of racism, we must go back to the year 1452 and the words of the Italian humanist, Gianozo Manetti: "For everything that surrounds us is our own work, the work of man: all dwellings, all castles, all cities, all the edifices throughout the whole world, which are so numerous and of such quality that they resemble the works of angels
rather than men. Ours are the paintings, the sculptures; ours are the trades, sciences and philosophical systems. Ours are all inventions and all kinds of languages and literary works, and when we think about their necessary employment, we are compelled so much the more to admiration and astonishment."

One hundred fifty years later Shakespeare expressed the same sentiments more succinctly and eloquently in Hamlet: "What a piece of work is a man! how noble in reason! how infinite in faculty! in form and moving how express and admirable! in action how like an angel! in apprehension how like a god! the beauty of the world! the paragon of animals!”
The celebratory words of Manetti and Shakespeare are the culmination of changes whose beginnings go back at least to the 12th century, to that time of which Henry Adams wrote, "Church and State, Soul and Body, God and Man, all are one." He exaggerated, but did not falsify because life in the Middle Ages had a cohesion which, in retrospect, gives the time a deceptive unitary quality. As Andrew MacCall observes in The Medieval Underground

...feudalism restored some semblance of stability to Christian Europe....the new feudal social structure came to be seen as the divinely-designed means of promoting an Ideal Order, in which the forces of evil at work in the universe would be vanquished, and harmonious relations between man and God assured, by the obedience of each and every member of the feudal hierarchy to the law.

The price of this Order was a conformity difficult for us to imagine. Everyone and everything had its place on the Golden Chain of Being. As long as everyone and everything remained in its proper place and performed its ordained function, Order, divine and human, existed. But when cooking pots and swords fell from shelves or hooks for no apparent reason, they were brought to trial for refusing to remain in their places. In 1474 in Basel, a chicken was sentenced to be burned alive for "having so forgotten its proper function" to lay an egg. At Laon, a pig which killed a child was tried, found guilty and hanged.

It was a time when man was merged with nature and could separate from it only to the degree that he invested it with sanctity. St. Bernard said that "Stones and trees will teach you a lesson you never heard from masters in the school." In his The Gothic Cathedral Otto von Stimson observes, "For medievel man, the physical world...has no reality except as a symbol," which is exemplified in the words of the 9th century Scholastic, Erigena: "We understand a piece of wood or a stone only when we perceive God in it." In other words, a rose is not a rose is not a rose.
Change begins in the 12th century when Peter Abelard, the first modern man as we might understand that, sought to reconcile reason and faith using Aristotelian logic. This indicated that the Golden Chain of Being as a metaphor for Order was declining. "It was futile," wrote Abelard, "to utter words which the intellect could not possibly follow...nothing [can] be believed unless it [can] be first understood." He claimed that "The first key to wisdom is assiduous and frequent questioning. For by doubting we come to inquiry, and by inquiry we arrive at the truth.”

St. Bernard of Clairvaux saw clearly that Abelard threatened the foundation of Order: “Abelard is trying to make void the merit of the Christian faith when he deems himself able by human reason to comprehend God altogether. He sees nothing as an enigma, nothing as in a glass darkly, but looks on everything face to face.”

To look on things "face to face" is to know that a rose is indeed a rose and not a surrogate for the Almighty. Abelard was using reason to separate man from nature and even, if need be, man from God so that man might see himself.

Abelard was not alone in this effort to look on "everything face to face." At the monastery of Saint-Denis, where Abelard was a monk for a period, statues of Jesus with the face of human being were being carved. This was the first time Jesus was depicted other than as an abstraction representing the Eternal. The art that decorated Saint-Denis glorified, in the words of Georges Duby, "not God's transcendence, but his incarnation." By humanizing the image of Jesus, it is as if man himself is being born, and this humanization is symbolized in 13th century Italy where Francis of Assisi erects the first creche.

There is a paradox here: By depicting Jesus with the face of a human being, by concretizing in human form the birth of Jesus, it appears that religious faith and piety are being affirmed. The means for doing so, however, actually bring man to the threshold of discovering and asserting the secular. To look on things face to face is to assert the secular over the sacred, is, eventually, to make the secular itself sacred.

A dramatic expression of this came at the beginning of the 15th century when a young French woman was ordered by the Church to repudiate the voices of angels she claimed to hear. She refused, saying that while she acknowledged the Pope's authority in matters of faith, her obedience to her voices was a matter only God could judge. This was heresy and Joan of Arc was executed.

What is secular in Joan of Arc is precisely what is secular in Abelard, namely, the assertion of the validity of looking on things face to face, the assertion that the individual is the ultimate judge of reality. In Abelard it is through reason; in Joan of Arc, it is through the insistence on the truth of individual experience. This insistence makes her a harbinger of Protestantism. It is a mere 25 years from the execution of Joan of Arc to the words of Gianozo Manetti where the assertion of man as existing for himself is fully-developed.

Secular man has been born and is astonished and enthralled with himself: "How beauteous mankind is!" rhapsodized Shakespeare. "O brave new world/That hath such people in't."
Who are the people populating this "brave new world?" They are not the monks, clerics and knights of the medieval world. These are explorers returning from exotic lands with commodities like sugar, introduced into England in 1456, with avocados, papayas, tomatoes, chocolate, vanilla, and turkeys, brought to Spain in 1527. These are artists and composers who are so audacious as to sign their names to their creations, to say to the world, "I created this." These are men like the 14th century Florentine banker who had his portrait painted for his tomb, men like Piero d'Medici who, in 1453, commissioned a portrait
of himself.

European man has recognized that he exists as a creating being, that he creates paintings, builds castles and cities, and thinks the thoughts of science and philosophy, that he can change and shape the world instead of being a passive and abstract occupant on the Golden Chain. To know that one can change something is to know that one possesses not only reason but, equally important, the energy to use and direct that reason - namely, the will. "It is better to will the good than to know the truth," wrote Petrarch, a father of the Renaissance.

To believe in the will is to believe that by one's own efforts and energies, one can take charge of himself and the world. Pico della Mirandola put it succinctly when writing about the child: "To him it is granted to have whatever he chooses, to be whatever he wills." He also wrote:

This is the culminating gift of god, this is the supreme and marvelous felicity of man...that he can be that which he wills to be. Animals..[and] angels are from the beginning...what they will be forever. But God the Father endowed man, from birth, with the seeds of every possibility and every life.

Such optimism is astounding, but why shouldn't Pico have been filled with exuberance? Three events of the 15th century ushered in a new world that could not help but make it appear that God had endowed man "with the seeds of every possibility and every life." Those events were: The invention of printing, the Protestant Reformation, and the European discovery of Africans and the Americas. Any one of these events would have transformed the West. That all three occurred in the same century is almost beyond belief. The medieval definitions of Order were inadequate to nurture secular man who was now born full grown, it seemed, from the head of Zeus.

The invention of printing was a democratizing force which broke the Church's control over the masses of people. When people could read for themselves, they could think for themselves. In 1450, there were less than 100,000 hand-written manuscripts in all Europe; in 1500 there were nine million printed books. Many of those books were Greek and Roman classics, the jewels of paganism, which represented a new kind of knowledge, a new way of thinking about and experiencing the world. With the rediscovery of secular learning, Christianity was no longer the vessel of absolute Truth. The invention of printing also led to translations of the Bible from Latin into the vernacular. The Church had most of Tyndale's translations of the New Testament burned. Martin Luther's translation of the New Testament into German created the German language by giving that language a legitimacy it could not have as long as Latin was the only written tongue. The same was true for the translation of the New Testament into French.
Medieval Order was further destroyed by the Reformation. Protestantism established the authority of the individual over the authority of priest, bishop and Pope. "The Christian man must examine and judge for himself," said Luther, echoing Abelard.

The third event, the explorations of Africa and the Americas, brought the discovery of a trade routes to India as well as African slaves to Europe. Suddenly, the world seems filled with opportunity, even for peasants, and a new economic mode, capitalism, comes into being. This is made official in 1517 when the Fourth Lateran Council overturns the Christian ban on usury. Money is needed to outfit ships and for trade. Using capital to make capital becomes the way of life.

It is important to mention one other invention that enabled European man to seize control of his world. In 1511, there is the first reference in print to a new and amazing thing: the watch. The watch gives man control over the flux of life. Life will no longer be lived in relation to the rising and setting of the sun and the cycle of the seasons. Time is created as a way of measuring life. Life itself can now be controlled. The watch is the symbolic representation of the will.
In the 15th and 16th centuries the world becomes secular. Never before and never since has man so experienced himself as if he were a god, as if there were no limits on what he could do and who he could be, and there was little doubt that all that man could do, all that man could be would be good.

Rabelais (1490-1533) wrote that "free men, well-born, well-educated, conversant in honest company, have by nature an...impulse which always pushes them to do the good and to withdraw from vice." Thus, freedom, prosperity and education are all that's necessary for men to do good and not evil. Something in us would like to believe still that was right, that education, art, music, literature humanize the world and because they do, the good must prevail.

That is not so and it was never so. Looking on things face to face does not mean becoming enraptured by an idealized reflection of one's self. In fact, looking on things face to face means you cannot see the shadow looming behind, and it is in the shadow of the Renaissance that we must stand if we are to see ourselves today.

This shadow side of the age of humanism can best be described through a 90-year chronology beginning in 1441, eleven years before Manetti wrote his paean to man:

[Rootsie]

1441 Africans brought to Portugal as slaves.
1442 Pope Eugenius gives Church sanction to African slavery.
1446 Women burned as witches in Heidelberg.
1448 Over 900 African slaves have been brought to Portugal.
1452 Leonardo da Vinci born.
1469 Erasmus born.
1475 Michelangelo born.
1483 Martin Luther born.
1485 Pope Innocent VIII issues a papal bull proclaiming that witches are to be burned.
1489 Malleus Maleficarum, a manual on witches is published.
1490 Rabelais born.
1492 Jews expelled from Spain and eventually from Western Europe. Racism, Anti-Semitism and the Concept of Evil – Julius Lester 112
1516 The first ghetto for Jews created in Venice.
1519 Cortez begins the destruction of the Aztec Empire.
1531 Pizarro begins destruction of Incan Empire.

In a 90 year period, Africans are enslaved, the burning of women as witches begins, Jews are expelled from Spain and segregated into ghettos and non-white cultures exterminated in this hemisphere. Why this unholy wedding of humanism with the degradation and murder of Africans, Jews, women, Incans and Aztecs?

The answer is in the word, man. European man has created a cohesive secular identity for himself: He is man and he is good.

What, then, did it mean to be man? The answer can be found by looking at what it meant not to be man, i.e. by looking at what European man condemned in women, Jews and Africans.

III.
H.R. Trevor-Roper writes, "There can be no doubt that the witch-craze grew, and grew terribly, after the Renaissance...we have to admit that, in one respect at least, the Dark Age was more civilized." That is so. In 643, King Rothar decreed that no foreign serving maid or female slave was to be killed as a witch, "for it is not possible, nor ought it to be at all believed by Christian minds that a woman can eat a living man up from within." Saints Boniface and Agobard denounced belief in witchcraft as sinful and ridiculous. Under Charlemagne it was a capital offense to execute anyone for witchcraft and Pope Gregory VII Hildebrand forbade inquisition to be made of anyone as to the cause of storms or plagues.

The unwillingness of the medieval Church to condemn women as witches did not go far enough, however, because the Church's attitude and teachings about the body and sex remained negative. The Augustinian view prevailed, namely that "the lust that excites the indecent parts of the body" could no longer be controlled by the mind, because lust assumed power "over the whole body" and if lust was gratified there was "an almost total extinction of mental alertness." The Church sanctioned sex for procreation only, but considered women to be extraneous to the process, because during intercourse, the male deposited a little person in the woman. The person stayed inside her for nine months but acquired nothing from her. St. Thomas taught that children should honor and love their fathers but not their mothers. 

By the time of the witch burnings the Church had espoused hatred of sexuality for more than a thousand years. Malleus Maleficarum - “The Hammer of Witches” - is a compendium of that hatred. Early in the manual they write: "The power of the devil lies in the privy parts of men." If a man locates the power of the devil in his "privy parts," such hatred of his sexuality must lead to either celibacy, castration, or hatred of those most likely to make him aware of that hated sexuality.

What else is woman but a foe to friendship, an unescapable punishment, a necessary evil, a natural temptation, a desirable calamity, a domestic danger, a delectable detriment, an evil of nature, painted with fair colors!

“...she is more carnal than a man, as is clear from her many carnal abominations....it is a natural vice in them not to be disciplined, but to follow their own impulses without any sense of what is due....a woman will not be governed but will follow her own impulse even to her own destruction....a woman is beautiful to look upon, contaminating to the touch, and deadly to keep. [Woman is] more bitter than death, because that is natural and destroys only the body; but the sin which arose from woman destroys the soul by depriving it of grace, and delivers the body up to the punishment for sin All witchcraft comes from carnal lust, which is in woman insatiable. “

These quotes are male autobiography and tell us that, for European men, sexual desire could eat a living man up from within, that sexuality was so powerful it could be experienced only as evil, that sexuality could not be controlled and could destroy a man, that sexuality was beautiful, contaminating and deadly and that sexuality was insatiable.
In other words, the sexual instinct was a force more powerful than reason. Most dangerous of all, it existed independent of reason and will and could overwhelm both. In 1554, an officer of the Inquisition said that in the preceding 150 years, 30,000 witches had been burned and if they had been allowed to live, they would have brought the world to destruction. Sexuality was the nuclear energy of the 16th century.

Women were also considered dangerous because they were healers. The Church said: "If a woman dare to cure without having studied she is a witch and must die." The important word is "studied." To control the world it is necessary to control knowledge and access to knowledge. Women knew how to heal from practical experience. If men were to control, practical experience could not be given legitimacy as knowledge. Knowledge was legitimate only if acquired through proper study and certification was given by a university, another invention of the Renaissance. Men called themselves doctors; women were denigrated as healers.

It is especially significant that in its condemnation of witches, the Church also condemned "good witches which do not hurt but good, which do not spoil and destroy, but save and deliver....It were a thousand times better for the land if all Witches, but especially the blessing Witch, might suffer death." What is being condemned, then, is not the effect of women's healing, but any power associated with women. The power to do good is to be man's alone.

Jews were not damned for sexuality but for something more chilling - being Jews. In the 15th century religious anti-Semitism was given a racial character for the first time. In 1414, the University College of San Bartolome in Salamanca, Spain banned anyone who was not of "pure blood." This was aimed at the conversos, indicating that conversion to Christianity was no longer enough to eradicate a Jew, indicating that nothing could eradicate Racism, Anti-Semitism and the Concept of Evil – Julius Lester 114
Jewishness. In 1449 Toledo banned anyone of Jewish descent from holding official office, because Jews were infected with male sangre, bad blood. Limpieza de sangre - purity of blood - became the standard. For the first time, being Jewish became a racial identity, and a negative one.

It is also in the 15th century that Europeans first encounter Africans. The earliest work on Africa was written in 1447 by an Italian, Antonio . In it he said that Africans “are in carnal acts like the beasts: the father has knowledge of his daughter, the son of his sister. They breed greatly, for a woman bears up to five at birth. Nor can it be doubted that they are eaters of human flesh.”

The equation made between the devil and women, and the devil and Jews was extended to include Africans. One English traveler equated the color of Africans with what he called their "condition" which was little other than Devils incarnate. “....the Devil...has infused prodigious Idolatry into their hearts, enough to rellish his pallat and aggrandize their tortures when he gets power to fry their souls, as the raging Sun has already scorct their cole-black carcasses.”

Such quotes could be multiplied but the import is evident. When man celebrated himself as Man, he distorted human reality. It is an inflated image of man we hear in the words of Gianozo Manetti, a childish one in those of Picodella Mirandola. When European man celebrated himself, he equated the totality of human reality with reason, creativity and will. By this inflation of a fragment of himself, there was no alternative but to degrade that which seemed to threaten reason, creativity and will. Through anti-Semitism, misogyny, and racism, European men found in others what they "found first but could not speak of in themselves," as Winthrop Jordan suggests in his White Over Black. He continues to say that European man "tended to set Negroes over against themselves, to stress what they conceived to be radically contrasting qualities of color, religion, and style of life, as well as animality and a peculiarly potent sexuality."

Racism became a cornerstone of modern Western civilization because by suppressing Africans, women and Jews, European man suppressed in himself the human attributes which most threatened that brave new world he was building, a world in which the economic mode changed from feudalism to capitalism. George Rawick observes that
Capitalism required a new ethic to justify new forms of behavior and to repress the older ones. While part of this new ethic was the growth of democratic forms and processes, the other main ingredient was the separation of one human activity - work - from all others. Work was taken from its context as an organic part of life and subordinated to other social processes, becoming an abstract commodity....This kind of work required new personalities: men and women who could tolerate few periods of rest and relaxation, who could adjust to working steadily and at high speed without rest, who could repress the desire to quit and relax. It required the repression of man's nonrational desires and his subordination to rationalized work and more work, accumulation and more accumulation.

This immense economic reorganization of Western society required an equally enormous change in human psychology. According to Michel Foucault, a definition of insanity came into being which linked insanity with irrationality, and sanity with rationality and self-control. Sanity became synonymous with the repression of the emotional and instinctual in the name of the rational.

Racism in its historical beginnings does not automatically and inevitably lead to the Holocaust. However, the seed was planted, because racism is the act of separating and devaluing other human beings as a lesser humanity, if not a less-than-humanity. In the West, racism is the exaltation of whiteness as the only humanity. Such an exaltation removes blacks and Jews from humanity. It is only a short step from that declaration to removing them from life.

IV.
Racism is evil. It is not a social problem that will gradually disappear through education and legislation. These alleviate the symptoms, but no more than that. The only cure is in understanding that evil is real.

In the words of Jeffrey Burton Russell,
“The essence of evil is abuse of a sentient being, a being that can feel pain. It is the pain that matters. Evil is grasped by the mind immediately and immediately felt by the emotions; it is sensed as hurt deliberately inflicted. The existence of evil requires no further proof: I am; therefore I suffer evil.”
 
The definition implies two things: One, that every human being suffers evil. Two, every human being inflicts evil. Thus, the essence of the human condition is in how we live with our evil.

Of necessity, then, evil has two faces - one is individual, the other is collective. That we as individuals will and do commit evil is unavoidable. Our efforts not to do evil, however, need the support of a collective, i.e. a society that not only recognizes evil but condemns it.

In contemporary America, we are in the agonizing process of seeking to learn how to create such a society. Despite the despair and frustration about the intransigence of racism, what is being attempted in this country has not been attempted in Western Civilization. We are trying to articulate a new definition of Order that will have as its premise the concept of a common and shared humanity. This is a dream that has been a part of the Western air only since the American Revolution. It is a dream which seeks to establish that the means by which humans will be measured will not be race, gender, or religion but merely the fact that we are human and our humanity makes us civic equals.

In her Gifford lectures, Hannah Arendt said:
“As citizens, we must prevent wrong-doing because the world in which we all live, wrong-doer, wrong-sufferer, and spectator, is at stake; the City has been wronged....We could almost define a crime as that transgression of the law that demands punishment regardless of the one who has been wronged....the law of the land permits no option because it is the community as a whole that has been violated. “

America is struggling to reach a consensus that racism violates the community as a whole. It cannot do so as long as blacks are still excluded from a sense of community.
Blacks have no doubts or questions about their humanity and thus are made to suffer evil, an evil that is still not obvious to the white majority. Racism is an act of evil but white people do not hear the moaning of the wounded or the death rattles of the dying.
The evil of slavery, the evil of the Holocaust are written large. So much so that many are in danger of thinking that these cataclysms are the only ways in which racist evil expresses itself. That is why it is both ironic and maddening that so many blacks equate anti-Semitism only with the Holocaust and thereby conclude that because they would never condone the extermination of Jews they are not and could not be anti-Semitic. Non-blacks are equally culpable when they equate racism solely with acts of violence.

Because our perception of evil is limited to the dramatic, we have lost the capacity to recognize it. Evil has become so prosaic in appearance, manner and style that it is now woven into the fabric of the normal like smog, acid rain and K-mart. Hannah Arendt maintained that the horror of evil in the Third Reich was that it had "lost the quality by which most people recognize it - the quality of temptation." The racist evil of contemporary America is as charismatic as an empty can of cat food.

 In her Gifford lectures, Hannah Arendt attempted again to describe the figure of Adolf Eichmann and what had so horrified her about him:
“I was struck by a manifest shallowness in the doer that made it impossible to trace the incontestable evil of his deeds to any deeper level of roots or motives. The deeds were monstrous, but the doer...was quite ordinary, commonplace, and neither demonic nor monstrous. There was no sign in him of firm ideological convictions or of specific evil motives, and the only noble characteristic one could detect in his past behavior as well as his behavior during the trial...was something entirely negative: it was not stupidity but thoughtlessness....It was this absence of thinking - which is so ordinary an experience in our everyday life, where we have hardly the time, let alone the inclination to stop and think - that awakened my interest. Is evildoing (the sins of omission, as well as the sins of commission) possible in default of not just "base motives"...but of any motives whatever, of any particular prompting of interest or volition? Is wickedness, however we may define it...not a necessary condition for evil- doing? “

What Arendt saw in Eichmann is true of American society. This is not a country of wicked white people imbued with a virulent racism based on some principle or other. What exists is far more distressing. Racism has become a psychological habit, a habit many wish to dislodge, but it is so ingrained that they do not know where to begin. It is imperative, however, that they look, for as Goethe wrote in Wilhem Meister, "every sin avenges itself on earth."

Where they must look is in themselves. Whites cannot feel the pain of blacks, Jews and women until they feel the pain they inflict on themselves by passively accepting a definition of Order that crowns whites as racially superior beings. I do not know why whites do not feel the evil they inflict on themselves because I see the evil of racism taking its revenge on a drug-addicted white society which did not care forty years ago when drugs appeared in black slums. If America had been able to feel then that black life is human, if America had been able to feel that racism is a silent evil inflicting pain as murderous to the human spirit as any weapon is to the body, it would have been alarmed and moved to alleviate the conditions that made drugs appear to be a viable alternative. If America had been able to conceive that black life is human life, thousands of white and black lives would not have been destroyed, literally and psychologically, since drugs entered white American society. I do not understand why white America cannot understand this simple principle: Everything white people do to black people, they will eventually do to each other.

The ultimate evil of racism is not in its effects, but in the inability of white people to recognize themselves in black people. This evil will continue until white people take responsibility for that which they wish was not within them, namely, evil.

Ultimately, we must accept that evil is, that it is not something out there but something in here. It cannot be expunged because our humanity lies as much in our capacity to evil as in our capacity to good. Evil is. Our humanity is found in the effort to live close to our evil, to make our capacity for evil an intimate, because, you see, if I keep my evil close to me, then I will not see it in you.

What this means for white people is staggering. It means relinquishing the definitions of Order by which they have lived. As long as whites cling to racism as the keystone of Order, they cannot know what it means to be human, despite all the books they write proclaiming that they do know. But whites cannot know what it means to live as human beings until they lose their superiority and accept my humanity. Only by accepting the humanity of Blacks, Jews and women, can humanity itself survive.

My humanity teaches me that to be human is to live with the tension of the opposition of good and evil. This means refusing to be seduced by the temptation of thinking we can resolve the tension by choosing what we perceive as the good. This can never be a resolution. To choose the good makes an orphan out of evil and leaves it to wander through the world, alone, unloved, abandoned and angry. It then assumes the form of a Them - Jews, blacks, women, Arabs, Chinese - and what is, in reality, an inner tension becomes projected into society where it must be enacted through social unrest and racial antagonisms on the national level, and through war on the international.
But, that is the logic of racism. The world tolerated the decimation of Africa by the
slave trade; the world tolerated the further decimation of Africa by colonization, when the Boers exterminated the Hottentot tribes, when the population of the Congo was reduced from 20 to 40 million people to 8 million; the world tolerated the destruction of one-third of the Jews in the world.

The logic of racism is such, however, that once its evil is unleashed, it will not care or even notice if one day the people being exterminated happen not to be black or Jewish. It will not notice if, indeed, the people happen to be white. Racism may appear to be opposition to black life or Jewish life. The reality is that racism stands in opposition to life itself. In the final analysis, racism is white self-hatred and the ultimate act of self-hatred is self-destruction.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Arendt, Hannah. The Life of the Mind Vol. 1 & 2 (1978).
Cohn, Norman. Europe’s Inner Demons (1975).
Duby, Georges. The Age of the Cathedrals: Art and Society, 980-1420 (1981).
Encyclopedia Britannica 15th edition Vol. 15 (1973).
Grunberger, Richard. The Twelve Year Reich (1971).
Jordan, Winthrop D. White Over Black: American Attitudes Toward the Negro: 1550-1812
(1968).
McCall, Andrew. The Medieval Underworld (1979).
Mosse, George. Nazi Culture: Intellectual, Cultural and Social Life in the Third Reich (1966).
------------------ Toward the Final Solution: A History of European Racism (1978).
Rawick, George. From Sundown to Sunup (1972).
Russell, Jeffery Burton. The Devil: Perceptions of Evil from Antiquity to Primitive Christianity (1977).
Stimson, Otto von. The Gothic Cathedral
Summers, Rev. Montague, trans. Malleus Maleficarum of Heinrich Kramer and Jaems Sprenger (1971).
Trevor-Roper, H.R. The European Witch-Craze of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries and Other Essays (1969).
Van Den Berghe, Pierre Louis. Race and Racism (1967).

[discipleofmaat]

*******In a 90 year period, Africans are enslaved, the burning of women as witches begins, Jews are expelled from Spain and segregated into ghettos and non-white cultures exterminated in this hemisphere. Why this unholy wedding of humanism with the degradation and murder of Africans, Jews, women, Incans and Aztecs?

The answer is in the word, man. European man has created a cohesive secular identity for himself: He is man and he is good. ********

Let us also not forget that in 1492, Columbus "discovered" a "New World" and the subsequent dogma of MANIFEST DESTINY

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manifest_destiny


So why did 'European man' all of a sudden go berserk like that?

Do you not find it peculiar that European man did not have such extensive issues before being massively converted to Semitic Xtianity?

Some coincidence, eh?

Of course the insinuations behind the 'anti-semitic' stigma would prevent us from analyzing the fact that semitic/abrahamic man (converted europeans from pagan/indigenous/panentheistic spirituality to the masculine-pedestaled, feminine-eliminated supreme deity religion) is the common denominator behind such activities and mindsets.

Ironically, that 90 year period conveniently coincides with the triumphant conquering of one semitic religion (xtianity) over another (islam) following the "Holy Crusades".

Once man has it within his head that he is following the Supreme Being's (God's) will, he is capable of doing anything and justifying it.  Let us sight that everything you listed was done under the banner of following divine will and not sadism or hatred.

One of the tricks of the 'anti-semitism' card is the downplaying of the fact that semitism applies to "the Big 3" non-pagan religions of xtianity, islam as well as judaism.  There is more common ground amongst the spiritual views and practices of afrikan and european (and worldwide) indigenous/pagan cultures than there are between the Semitic umbrella and ANY other cultures etc.  Semitic religion is the oddball in comparison to worldwide religion yet somehow it has become the norm...the standard...the chosen/rightful religion.  EACH of them claim 'exclusive righteousness' in their doctrine.

Semitic divide and conquer techniques keep us in the dark and so preoccupied with our physical appearance differences that we do not desire to identify those similarities.

The true perpetrator plays the victim card very well.

[Rootsie]

So you think we're dealing with some ancient conspiracy. I just don't see history working that way. What I see is a map that shows this little northwest corner (Europe) of this enormous landmass hanging out there in the north Atlantic subject to wave on wave of disastrous invasions from the east, defining itself in opposition to a varying 'them', whether its Atilla or the Jews or the Muslims or Black Africans--the xenophobia is the common denominator. We could say that 'the problem' is the semitic usurpers with their big Father God, and we can bemoan the waves on waves of invasions from the north and from the east that destroyed what came before, and we can condemn the Semitic ideologies and the weird ideas that still hold sway over so many, but to call this little tribe from Canaan that for some miraculous reason has managed to keep cohesion from that day to this, when so many others have virtually diasappeared with only place name that remember them, to call them the villains of the piece is just nuts. Sorry but that's how I see it. What good does it do to wish there were no montheistic religions and their institutions? Before they came along its not like neighboring groups were living in bliss and harmony. They mostly all had ideas of their own superiority to whatever was happening next door. Chosenness did not begin with the Jews or end with them either. I think we're dealing with the human condition here, and it is, as it has always been, for those who know better to do better. What else?

[discipleofmaat]

*****but to call this little tribe from Canaan that for some miraculous reason has managed to keep cohesion from that day to this, when so many others have virtually diasappeared with only place name that remember them, to call them the villains of the piece is just nuts.*****

What little tribe are you talking about?

I thought I made it clear that semitism (in my context) is not exclusive to jews???

And I never called ANYONE villains.

Do me a favor and cite where I said anything about this "little tribe from Canaan" (tribe of Judah, apparently) that you are obviously protectionizing.

And you want to inflame your stance by discrediting my premise with the good ol' "conspiracy theory" card?

NOTHING organized can occur without conspiracy. 

What, in your own words, do you think is wrong with "European man"?

What's the cause...what's the root, Rootsie?

[Rootsie]

Geez Disciple! I stated very clearly what I think the root is. I feel that reasoning with you is never quite possible, because you don't quite 'listen' and respond to what I am trying to say.

I think Seshata's post back on the board is good and his question is good--if Semites are 'the problem' what about the age-old worldwide condemnation of females that far predates the Semites? Even later Pharoahs tried to erase the history of Hapshetsut.

I will never argue that 'the big three' don't have some big problems with their ideology but I think Europe's xenophobia-from-birth accounts for the paranoia, the arrogance, the embrace of the 'chosen' thing--

You know very well the things you have written in the past so I don't need to remind you. I guess it's better that you're on to the big three now, but I still think you're wrong.

Look at the Romans and the Greeks before them:they were all about 'the natural order' that is slavery, war for profit, total suppression of women and every other ugly thing, and they revered Athena and Aphrodite and Isis, the Greek's main spiritual ha'aj was to Eleusis to re-enact the story of Demeter and Persephone. I read somewhere that the building of temples to goddesses was in itself an indication that the time of the Great Mother was already long past. These were not Semitic people.

I am reading Eduardo Galeano's latest in his long line of indispensable books: It's called Mirrors: Stories of Almost Everyone. I think it would please you very very much to read him because he has for many years vitally concerned himself with the same issues that concern you. With this latest one I have come to see what I treasure so dearly about him: he is a humanist in the best sense of that, and what he reads in the patterns of history is the re-occurring cycles of oppression and revolt, of great cruelty and astonishing beauty. We can argue 'the roots' but we agree on the contours of the problem.  I know you are one of the good guys, but that gives you responsibilities to get to work on positive projects. That has made me feel a lot better and I know it will do the same for you.

For most of my adult life I've been flitting along the border of the BIG CONSPIRACY side of things and it did not help me in my life and it made me arrogant and it made me bitter and it paralyzed me. I am 52 years-old and you are much younger, no? So take it from the old lady. Just as it was no use to me to look for the big reason for my personal suffering, it's no use to perseverate on WHY things is so f'd up. It's to be the good person I want to be, and do what I am able to do.

[discipleofmaat]

and this suffering is absolved by concluding that "boys will be boys"?


*******Look at the Romans and the Greeks before them:they were all about 'the natural order' that is slavery, war for profit, total suppression of women and every other ugly thing, and they revered Athena and Aphrodite and Isis, the Greek's main spiritual ha'aj was to Eleusis to re-enact the story of Demeter and Persephone. I read somewhere that the building of temples to goddesses was in itself an indication that the time of the Great Mother was already long past. These were not Semitic people.*******

Perhaps the problem is that you are associating my usage of Semitism with a certain tribe/group of people.

I am referring to an ideology which concurs with your premise of "bad/evil men".

I am also stating that the poison of the world began with this "bad man" syndrome coupled with the indoctrination that these evil actions are ORDAINED/SANCTIONED by none other than a sole detached Supreme Divine Male.  So the actions of these evil men are justified.

Just because some female deities were revered does not mean that ones did not possess a semitic mentality.  Semitism did not begin with people known as "semites" (descendants of Shem).  Those people should be called "Shemites" but semites, in my context, are those who accept a semi-truthful version of divine reality.  That semi-truth is the elevation of the masculine/linear essence in lieu of the HOLISTIC inclusion of the feminine essence...

Semitism is the egocentric ideology of anything or anyone being partial, incomplete, fractured or detached from everything else.

Man having "dominion" as sanctioned in the first chapter of semitic scripts comes to mind.  God being jealous and angry comes to mind.  And certain folks being favors to God also comes to mind.

So why is it so hard to realize that "european men" became a victim of his own deification of

-"I am special" (chosenism)
-"that is mine" (dominion)
-"I am mad, I want it,  and I'll take it from you" (jealous and angry)


As above, so below...monkey see, monkey do.

All European man has done is placed himself in the position of the chosen Hebrews and looked at every corner of the Earth as his Zion.

But don't you worry one bit there.  No one is talking about your "little tribe from Canaan".

It so happens that the Greeks and Romans you mentioned did not take over the entire globe neither.   That honor goes to Europeans who somehow (not by conspiracy of course) ascertained power by merging into one semitic xtian religion from the many tribal pagan followings.  "E pluribus unum".  (somehow building a united state out of many that currently happens to be immersed in the alleged defense of as the result of a terror attack for 'supporting' another established state called Israel...and attacked by none other than another semitic offshoot)



Could you perhaps enlighten me and tell me which particular European tribe's ideology produced these "evil European males"?  or are are YOU generalizing now?

Is it a Saxon thing?
an Anglo thing?
a Baltic thing?
an Aryan thing?
Norman?, Frank?, Scandinavian?, Celtic?. Slavic?, Germanic?

OR ALL FREAKING EUROPEAN MALES PERIOD?

This "persecution of Jews" is constantly brought up yet there is rarely mention of the persecution of moslems which continues presently in Georgia and just recently in Yugoslavia via so-called "ethnic cleansing".

Have you ever thought that maybe pagan "freedom fighters" who were mindful of the sweeping conversions to semitism (xtianity, judaism, islam) only had the strength to engage Jews and Moslems since Christianity was so widespread and powerful by being sanctioned/utilized by the power elite?

The semitic umbrella is simply a replication of the Kemetic  legend.

Judaism is Osiris
Xtianity is the revised/ascended Osiris, Horus
Islam is Set, the evil twin to Osiris

Combined, these 3 Sole-Macho-Male Exclusive Detached divinity social constructs have been the scourge of the Earth.  They are the basis of New World Order which of course you conveniently dismiss as "conspiratorial rubbish".

What I think you are missing in my response is that I am identifying "semitism" as a mentality.  It is a mentality of divinely justifying male supremacy.   In other words, Semitism in the context that I am using, came about before this tribe of Canaan.  But this tribe of Canaan however did master the extrapolation of the limited truths that semitism offers and, as you said, are still unified to this day.

That unification is not by happenstance.

There is a unification because there is an elite/chosenist/separatist doctrine.  And observers have studied this doctrine and simply adopted it into their endeavors. 

Humans have always revered collective forces that appeared greater than themselves.  In the indigenous worldview, these forces are everywhere and found within everything.  So there is no hierarchical distinction causing the neglect and de-emphasis of certain components.  But when these forces are galvanized upon a single representation with a male persona, it elevates the phenotype (men) along the same lines.

So you have man's will being attributed to God's will.
You have the separation of the feminine essence and inferiorization of it.
You also have the detachment of divinity from within and concentrated upon this external masculinized persona.

Thus the concept of "God".  And it is this concept of God that the Shemites  (who were once themselves 'pantheistic') adopted and wrote about that became the adversary to peace and nature throughout the globe ever since.

Monotheists (semites) vs. THE WORLD

My point is that "anti-semitism" is a protectionist code-word to discourage true analysis of the premise of the God concept, as indoctrinated upon the continent of Europe.  Also what is lost in the fuss over the connotation of the anti-semitic jargon is that Christianity and Islam are also semitic but are strategically/intentionally eliminated from inference.

The "anti-semitism" code word prevents us from observing the true interconnectivity, prevalence, influence and power of the entire collective family.

Divide and conquer via diffusing the appearance and threat of its behemoth.

[three_sixty]

I am replying to this because of a statement I made on the other board and the need to respond to the original post rather than the resultant reasoning.

_______

I will grant that the European experience of "anti-semitism" is unique it it's application and it does have a part in creating "European" identity. But - I would not let that be used to let "Semites" off the hook . I would not submit to the idea that, for example, that Jews are simply the victims of European history. That ignores the history of Jews and it also does not take into account the roles that Semites or Jews have traditionally played in the historical geo-political landscape.

What about other people's interactions with "Semites?"

Think the slave trade and imperialism that was brought by Islam into Africa. The Jews mercantilism and proto-capitalism existed long before the European overtook the endeavour. The Jews have always been the middle men - and that is why some excelled in this role and were employed by the church/state of Europe. It wasn't JUST about them being pigeon holed into the role - although that did have a large part to play. Jews and Muslims were trading in slaves - both white and black before 1492. The injunction of Deutermonomy that a  Jew may not lend to his brother at interest but may lend to an outsider at interest is a direct religious justification for usury and fits well with the role Jews have played in history. 

All this is not to blame Jews or Semites - but it does bring to light the interactions that different cultures played with one another. It is avoiding generalizations and allows the different players to maintain some accountability for what becomes the sum of history. I would not place historical culpability on one group or ideology - that would be generalization - I would rather explore how different cultures interacted and amalgamated.

[discipleofmaat]

give thankhs for the elaborated response.

I see that you have included moslems within the 'semitic' umbrella along with jews.  All we need to analyze is the christian impact and we have covered the 3 families of the semitic mafia.

*******I would not place historical culpability on one group or ideology - that would be generalization - I would rather explore how different cultures interacted and amalgamated.*******

But why spite 'generalizing' just for the sake of not generalizing?  What if the shoe fits?

Why could we not seek if in fact "THE" ideology of divine sanctioning via those chosen to implement the sanctioning (as shared by xtians, moslems and jews alike) is the foundation of ALL ills imparted by Europeans across the globe.

Otherwise, help me identify some other ideologies/sources that may be culpable.

What could be a stronger influence on human behavior other than the indoctrination of 'The Father' God-force which is singular, detached, angry, and punitive for those who do not comply...not to mention the demotion of 'The Mother'.  If a mother were included within the divinity structure on par with the father, humans would naturally place the same value upon feminine essences/qualities instead of demonizing and inferiorizing them as does ALL of the semitic/monotheistic triad.

-always

[Rootsie]

There’s two threads that run through this: first there’s the labeling by you Disciple of everything bad as ‘Semitic’ which is frankly just weird to me, and dangerous too for that matter. Just when was it that worship and embrace of  the feminine principle translated into equality and justice in the affairs of humans? Maybe 13 or 14 thousand years ago, maybe never. We don’t really know. In any of the ancient times we know about, worship of goddesses didn’t mean women ran anything or even had a voice.. Au contraire. I am intrigued by the idea that the patriarchy first arose as a violent response to a more female-centered societal structure, and the book Blood Relations that I reviewed is so cool in that regard. It invites us to envision a more humane world.

The Chinese and Japanese are not Semites. Those crazy Aztecs weren’t either. I could go on and on citing cultures that degraded women and made slaves of strangers  and exploited the powerless who have no relation to Semitic history, even in the extraordinarily broad way you choose to define it.

The other thread is European history. I don’t know how European history can be seen as a story of the rise of the Jews. As I’ve said before, I look at Jews playing the part they always did when they were viziers to sultans—they get the blame when a fall guy is needed. The immolation of whole cities full of Jews is a big feature of European history, and the stereotyping and demonization of Jews almost constant. Again, using the term “semitic’ for both Christians and Jews (and Muslims) muddies important distinctions. It might just be my own family history, but Christian Europe is a far more recent and poignant and deadly manifestation of nasty human tendencies toward fear of ‘the other’, exploitation of ‘the weak’, greed, and power lust. Are these primarily male problems? I don’t feel to even touch that one. To ask why the Europeans robbed and enslaved the globe, I think a map explains a lot, this tiny (paranoid) peninsula jutting out into the North Sea. We can debate whether their theology was principally to blame. I go back and forth about it, but I think it was probably a ‘perfect storm’ of factors. The Catholic Fathers in Europe largely invented the more appalling aspects of that theology anyway.

There are Jewish bankers, Jewish financiers, Jewish media moguls, and a bunch of messed-up Jews running Israel. The Jews have shown a certain brilliance for fitting right in, but Christians built the modern West and North, not the Jews. I don’t think I could be convinced otherwise. There have always been Jews, Christians, and Muslims who have stood for the good and noble parts of us. We’re so all mixed up, so many parts to us.

As a poor kid, I always feel like it’s the rich and powerful, whoever they are, that comprise the problem. That’s a generalization that stands up over the entire span of known history. The construction of whiteness is a devastating problem, poisoning every good thing that’s been created or done by Europeans for 500 years, and renders so so many things morally ambiguous. The version of anti-Semitism that reared up in the 19th century made Jews into a ‘race’ unworthy of life. Did Jews behind the scenes dream that up to cover up their crimes?  I cannot imagine,

I am as irritated as anybody by the ways the Israelis in particular exploit their history as a cudgel to silence criticism.  There are Jews who use accusations of anti-Semitism to conceal their complicity. I will never believe that at some unspecified date or dates somebody got together to mastermind modern history. They might have tried, I guess, but it definitely got away from them. I guess it might come down to our conflicting views of the world. I sympathize with seeking a framework from which to understand events, but I have come to question how helpful that is, let alone how accurate. I see the all-too-familiar patterns in human history. What really distinguishes this time from the ancient ones IMO is the capacities technology has given those whose tendencies run towards oppressing and dehumanizing others to go crazy with it to the point of wrecking the entire biosphere. On the other hand, this same technology has given us the ability for the first time in human history to regard ourselves all together and communicate together and work on behalf of one another.

[Rootsie]

This spring I went to Spain for the first time, which is where my family came from. I'm here to say that the Goddess is alive and well in the person of Mary in people's hearts and in countless astonishing treasures, for all the good it ever did the people of Spain, who have suffered so much.

[discipleofmaat]

Why do you keep associating my statements with "Jews"?  You talk about ME not reading someone's posts.  I made that point crystal clear I thought in my first response...and I also clarified it in my post on other boards, namely that good ol' anti-semitic breeding ground, Rastafari Speaks, according to you.

I asked you to specifically cite the anti-semitic statements you claim...no response.

This is getting ridiculous.



It is typical european and semite protectionism to use the "well look at them" card...we aren't the only "bad" people on Earth.  If the Japanese or Aztecs had taken over and tainted the entire planet then perhaps we would be looking into their ideologies/foundations...but they did not.

EUROPEANS DID and are still at it.


I asked you to tell me specifically which european tribe/clan these "evil european men" belonged to who you concluded were responsible for the folly.  And you criticize others for 'generalizing' yet leave a generalized statement like that on the table.

C'mon...you are satisfied with the 'big bad evil european man' conclusion?

My argument is that european man was corrupted by semitic ideology.
My argument is that semitic ideology is responsible for white/male supremacy.

First of all, semitic ideology amalgamated europe into a world order, in their case based upon the semitic branch of christianity.  Secondly, because semitism is associated with a universal/omnipresent/supreme God, it sanctions the same replicated behavior by men who buy into it here on Earth.  God created a planet for your disposal...with your authorized dominion.  So 'bad european man' simply acted upon his divine responsibilities in his mind.

Like father, like son.
Monkey see, monkey do.
As above, so below.

If this did not originate from a spiritual justification supported by holy-writs and divine directorates then hone me in the right direction.  Edify me.

What made Europe so powerful?
Was not Europe unified and regulated by the Papal superiority catholic wing of semitic religion?
Catholics do/did encompass the Old Testament into their canon don't they?

*******I'm here to say that the Goddess is alive and well in the person of Mary in people's hearts and in countless astonishing treasures, for all the good it ever did the people of Spain, who have suffered so much.*******

Please spare me this "the mother is revered in Spain" thing.  Mary was just some lady who followed divine orders and was utilized to give birth.  The "Blessed Virgin" did a good job and played an important role for God.  You are not going to tell me that Mary is on par with the Creator in Spain or anywhere else.

Are you so indoctrinated by male supremacy that you are accepting of subservient and contributory females...good ol' Betsy Ross?  good ol' Florence Nightingale?  good ol' Ruth?  good ol' Mary of Magdalene?   It reminds me of the legend of some good black man who helped Jesus carry his cross.  Ahh shucks, what a good guy.

And while you are at it, also edify me on this horrible holocaustic Spanish suffering.  I am eager to here of their enslavement and other atrocities...and for the simply reason of being Spanish.

[three_sixty]

There are a lot of important things being touched on in this reasoning. As Rootsie pointed out, European expansionism was a "perfect storm" - and there were many contributing factors. Here are some quotes from different reasonings that I have listed here that I think are important to keep in mind, in my opinion that is!

Rootsie:

"What I see is a map that shows this little northwest corner (Europe) of this enormous landmass hanging out there in the north Atlantic subject to wave on wave of disastrous invasions from the east, defining itself in opposition to a varying 'them',"

Discipleofmaat:

"semitic ideology amalgamated europe into a world order,"

Karibkween:

"Who said Semitism began in Canaan? What of Brahminism? Show me proof that Abraham came before Brahman
Who said Egypt was spared from semitism?"

http://www.askwhy.co.uk/judaism/0180PersiaJudaism.php:

"The general historical trend to the world state was not altered by the change of central power when the Persians became leaders after the Mesopotamians. The Persians had been students of the Assyrians in the several hundred years that they had taken to move into Iran, and they or their allies the Indo-European Scythians had been mercenaries of the Assyrians. The refined culture and science of the long established civilisations of Syria and Mesopotamia merged with the vigour and technical innovations of the warlike Aryan invaders from the north.note: sounds familiar to the European story - two cultures merging, remember 'in this sign you shall conquer" - me

Dix writes that Zoroastrianism, Mithraism and the solar monotheism of Akhenaten “appear” to have been born under Syriac influence. Perhaps they would “appear” thus to a Catholic monk, who believed the myths of Moses, but “appear” betrays nothing other than an opinion. When the myths of the Jewish scriptures are recognized as fiction then Judaism can no longer rival Zoroastrianism in antiquity and proper priorities can be established. A world state was the way of enforcing stability and was obviously welcomed by most people, but especially trading peoples and those making specialized products for trade. Besides the use of military and administrative means of control, such empires depended on the propagation of a universal religion. The Assyrian universal state that the Persians took over, with the brief interlude of Babylon, had a god called Ashur (Asshur, Assur) who was depicted as a man rising from a winged solar disc and shooting a bow or offering a ring, often thought to be a diadem or coronet but probably symbolising a bond (like a wedding ring) or covenant such as we find often in the Hebrew scriptures. The Persian god, Ahuramazda, was depicted in a similar way as a man rising head and shoulders above a solar disc also offering a ring, or sometimes apparently a blessing. . . . Richard Frye of Harvard (The Heritage of Persia) thought the Persian kings had a concept of “One World” and the “fusion of all people and cultures” in one “Oecumen” was their important legacy, inherited by Alexander, the Romans and the Arabs. In ancient times “culture” essentially was religion."

[discipleofmaat]

****Richard Frye of Harvard (The Heritage of Persia) thought the Persian kings had a concept of “One World” and the “fusion of all people and cultures” in one “Oecumen” was their important legacy, inherited by Alexander, the Romans and the Arabs. In ancient times “culture” essentially was religion."****

There is no argument to this.  However, you will not find an assembly of texts that have been forced upon the masses from the Persians or Greeks or Mithrans or Romans.

In other words, semitism is self-indicted by its own writs.

As we can see by today's human behavior, once we are detached from harmony with nature, we fall into chaos.  Religion re-tied/replaced this chaos/void with a notion of order which had a detrimental side-effect.  This was the acceptance of the hierarchical arrangements as dictated by holy-writs and edicts implemented by the controlling/ruling class (those mentioned 'evil european men').

This is the foundation of "whiteness".  There was no whiteness awareness per se before the conversion to christianity.  Christianity manifested a worldview amongst the Europeans of superiority by the will and grace of GOD ALMIGHTY.  Who dared argue that?  This divine superiority fueled the expansive endeavors of the Age of Discovery, Enlightenment, Renaissance, etc.

There was not even racism during Columbus's travels.  There was ANTI-PAGANISM.  It was upon the complete conversion of Europe to semitic xtianity that non-saved infidelism, demonization and inferiorization was attributed to those with pigmentation (non-whites) and women, thus the birth of whiteness/racism (white MALE supremacy) borne from xenophobia and ethnocentrism.  Before this, the Normans vs. the Vikings vs. the Nordics vs. the Anglos vs. the Germanics vs. the Slavics was business as usual.

Ironically, everyone had their own stinking, filthy unwashed "gentiles".  Anti-semitism is a result of xtians looking at jews as gentiles in their minds...the xtians look at arabs as gentiles...and ALL THREE look at Afrikans and others as gentiles.

ANTI-GENTILISM
ANTI-PAGANISM
XENOPHOBIA
ETHNOCENTRISM
CLASSISM
SEXISM
RACISM
RELIGIOUSISM

"...isms, schism and more divisions", right 360?

I even had the wisdomism/ageism card played when Rootsie continuously states how old she is (I will not repeat, lol).

We just get bought into all these notions and we lose focus of the Omnipresent truths that surround us, of course tainted by man-made identities.

We are supposed to be seeking truth, from my assumption of these blogs and forums.  This reasoning proves that indoctrinated identities, including religion, nationality, race, etc., are the obstacles that prevent our harmonic unity.

Instead of playing the "well what about others" card.  I think it would be productive and progressive to our development if we FIRST analyzed what we have been engrained with and accept as our identity.

I have more than analyzed and criticized what it means to be a MALE and my own privileges, contributions and complicity to the oppression.  All I ask is if others are willing to do the same.

Rootsie has been at the forefront of identifying her own complicity and contributions via whiteness.  And it is commendable.  In fact, I think very highly of her for doing so.  But whiteness is not the only categorization that needs analysis.

By the defense/protection mechanisms alone should we suspect something behind the veil.

As I have said before, you know where the treasure vault is by the number of guards protecting it.

THE BASIS/SOURCE OF ANTI-SEMITISM IS SEMITISM ITSELF.  Its the chicken come home to roost.

[three_sixty]

I think you may have missed the point of my posting. You said: "However, you will not find an assembly of texts that have been forced upon the masses from the Persians or Greeks or Mithrans or Romans. In other words, semitism is self-indicted by its own writs."

If you take all of the quotes I have assembled, instead of picking out ONE and talking about it, you may have a clearer picture of what I was trying to point out. Maybe I was wrong in assuming you would understand and need to give more explanation as to my thought process. So - here it goes:

A confluence of forces are what create what is. Karibkween was pointing out that the general ideology of what you are labelling "Semitism" in fact has a greater history that begins far before Judaism, Islam or Christianity came on the scene. My quote was meant to show the general thread of what was to become monotheism and how this impulse was one and the same of empire creation which united many people under the banner of one god(administration). If you read the source from which I picked my quote from, it makes the argument that Judaism is a forged religion, with much of its history written after the purported facts actually were said to occur. It is the creation of a history of a people in retrospect. It goes on to state that in fact - "Israel" may very well have been an outpost for Persian empire which already had the monotheistic/empire trajectory.

The Assyrian universal state that the Persians took over, with the brief interlude of Babylon, had a god called Ashur (Asshur, Assur) who was depicted as a man rising from a winged solar disc and shooting a bow or offering a ring, often thought to be a diadem or coronet but probably symbolising a bond (like a wedding ring) or covenant such as we find often in the Hebrew scriptures.

Brahma and Abraham - think of the Aryan invasions of India - think how there are a confluence of things coming together which are shaping cultures and ideologies.

"The general historical trend to the world state was not altered by the change of central power when the Persians became leaders after the Mesopotamians. The Persians had been students of the Assyrians in the several hundred years that they had taken to move into Iran, and they or their allies the Indo-European Scythians had been mercenaries of the Assyrians. The refined culture and science of the long established civilisations of Syria and Mesopotamia merged with the vigour and technical innovations of the warlike Aryan invaders from the north"

Judaism is but a small branch of these historical processes. The question is - how are Jews different from the historical processes and cultures involved which went into forming their ideology and identity? The monotheistic impulse did not start with them, the conversion of an empire through the usage of religion did not start with them. So where is "semitism" in all of this? How broad can we push that term, and, at what point, do we need to start using a different term that is more encompassing of these processes? Where does the "Semitic" differ from the "Aryan" - and how do we even seperate them when they both intertwined at some point to become a new culture?

 "The refined culture and science of the long established civilisations of Syria and Mesopotamia merged with the vigour and technical innovations of the warlike Aryan invaders from the north"

What about "Alexander the Great" - I would like to know how much he was influenced by the Aryan/Semitic impulse - what inspired him as an Empire builder?

Now remember - a large religion in the Roman Empire prior to the conversion to Christianity was Mithraism - a Persian import. Christianity seems to be a hybrid of Mithraism and Judaism - perhaps here we have another revision and synthesis of Aryan and Semitic ideology - and now (ah yes we need to take this into account) - in the Roman Empire context. It was the military in Rome that had the most adherents to Mithraism - Mithra was believed to have a sword in hand at birth.  Ah yes - "IN THIS SIGN YOU SHALL CONQUER!"

So - what happens now when all of this happens and COMBINES with what Rootsie observed?. . .

"To ask why the Europeans robbed and enslaved the globe, I think a map explains a lot, this tiny (paranoid) peninsula jutting out into the North Sea. . . " and "What I see is a map that shows this little northwest corner (Europe) of this enormous landmass hanging out there in the north Atlantic subject to wave on wave of disastrous invasions from the east, defining itself in opposition to a varying 'them'"

. . . you have the aspects of paranoia, chosenism, and militarism that are the combined effect of all these factors. To pick out ONE and say "a-ha this is it" - at least in the context of European expansionism would only serve to obfuscate the COMBINATION of factors that created European imperialism.

Gerald Massey:

"69.     The field of Babylonian Mythology is one vast battle-ground between the early Motherhood and the later Fatherhood—that is, the Mother in space, in the stellar and lunar characters opposed to the later and solar Fatherhood, which became more especially Semite; indeed, where the Akkadians wrote the "female and the male," the Semite translators prepensely reverse it, and render it by the "male and the female." This setting up of the supreme God as solely Male, to the exclusion of the female, has often been erroneously attributed to a supposed "Monotheistic Instinct" originating with the Semites! In Egypt the solar Fatherhood had been attained in the sovereignty of Atum-Ra, when the records begin; but this same battle went on all through her monumental history, more fiercely when the Heretics, the Motherites, the Blackheads, were now and again reinforced by allies from without."

source: http://gerald-massey.org.uk/Massey/dpr_05_hebrew_and_other.htm

He says that male monotheism came from Egypt originally. So would it be fair to also make an argument that Egypt is the source of the ideology that caused Europe's imperialism(this is if we are sticking to your premise that male monotheism was what was the most poignant factor).

Personally I would say no - because we are not taking into context all the factors that make situations unique. And I hope that we can acknowledge that this is always the case when dealing with history. I don't know if we can isolate so easily.