“Well, not only a loon, but a liar, too.
How else do you explain your belief that the Torah is a manual for genocide?”
Do I think the Torah is bad? No, on the contrary, I think it one of the towering achievements of the human spirit. I totally agree with Nietzsche, who said that in it one sees the “incomparable naiveté of the stout-hearted man.”
However, one cannot deny the formal similarity between the story of the Hebrew occupation of Canaan and communist doctrine. They are the same story: permission is given by higher authority (God, History) for one people (Hebrews, proletariat) to take property (Canaan, means of production) from another people (Canaanites, bourgeois).
Does this mean that the Torah is justification for genocide? Yes. Given that I have just said yes to the above question, does this now mean that I think the Torah is NOT a “towering achievement of the human spirit.” No, it doesn’t. It is both justification for genocide and towering achievement.
Welcome to the human condition.
How it is both, and how one comes out of the other, is the essence of what could be called civilization.
By my saying all of the above, am I indicting the Jews?
No. Certainly not. There might be an indictment in my words, but the creature in the dock, who is being charged, is not a Jew but a human being.
Human beings do certain things, among others, find highfalutin’ reasons to do low-down things. But the process goes in the other direction as well. Out of low-down things come high achievement. Once again, welcome to the human condition.
We human beings are condemned to be ethno-centric. It is just the way we world works. I have profound admiration for the Jews. They are pound for pound probably the most ethno-centric people on the planet. But I am not innocent. I know that their ethno-centrism can be dangerous. The way they re-worked the story of Genesis into “Marxism,” and used the re-worked story to capture state power and harm their ethnic enemies in Russia, is an example of their genius.
The objection that Marx was not a practicing Jew (and in fact was formally a Christian) is trivial. The relevant units are the ethnic units. You have an inter-breeding gene pool called “the Jews,” and they act in a way to further to their evolutionary advantage as a group. Once again, this is not to signal out the Jews for special condemnation. It is just to notice what one particular group of human beings happens to be doing.
I don’t think the Jews have acted worse or better than any other group --- like everybody else, they do what they think they have to do. My Anglo-Celtic ancestors didn’t end up in possession of some of the best land on the planet by being nice guys.
My basic stance is this: behind the highfalutin rhetoric, behind the political mumbo jumbo, behind the charges and counter-charges, one thing is going on: ethnic competition between groups. The problem I have with my people, the Anglo-Celtics and Northern Euro people in general, is not that they play the game of ethnic competition, but that lately they have been playing very poorly. Time for a new game plan. |
