Globalisation and Higher Tribalism

Globalisation and Higher Tribalism - Peter Myers, December 7, 2002; update January 15, 2006. My comments are shown {thus}. 

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You are at http://mailstar.net/tribes.html. 

(1) Introducing Higher Tribalism (2) Joel Kotkin on Higher Tribalism

(1) Introducing Higher Tribalism

Is Globalisation making us "one", or are we divided by tribal allegiances? 

Joel Kotkin's book Tribes is a study of five such tribes - Jews, British (which includes "white "Australians & Americans of English/Irish ancestry), Japanese, Chinese and Indians. Each has a homeland core, a diaspora spread around the world, and a cultural sense of uniqueness. More from Kotkin below. 

Amy Chua, a Filipino of Chinese "tribe", wrote a book called World On Fire, about "market-dominant minorities," groups like the Chinese in Southeast Asia, Jews in Russia, whites in Zimbabwe and Indians in East Africa and Fiji. 

Michelle Goldberg wrote in her review of it: 

'Market-dominant minorities control hugely disproportionate percentages of their countries' resources. Filipino Chinese comprise just 1 to 2 percent of the Philippines' population, but control all of the country's major supermarkets, fast-food restaurants and large department stores, and all but one of the nation's banks. A similar situation obtains in Indonesia. Jews make up a similarly tiny proportion of Russia's population, but of the seven "oligarchs" who control virtually all of the country's business, six are Jewish. Lebanese dominate the economies in Sierra Leone and Gambia, while Indians dominate the economy in Kenya, along with a smaller, indigenous minority tribe called the Kikuyu. Similar examples abound worldwide. ... 

'In Indonesia ... By 1998, Chua writes, Chinese made up 3 percent of the population but controlled 70 percent of the private economy.'

Yuri Slezkine's book The Jewish Century is also about higher tribalism. He wrote: '... The most common way to describe the role and the fate of Indonesia's Chinese is to call them "the Jews of Asia."' (p. 39); Slezkine himself, like Kotkin, is Jewish slezkine.html.

In the US, Benjamin Ginsberg, a Jewish Professor, wrote in his book The Fatal Embrace: "Today, though barely 2% of the nation's population is Jewish, close to half its billionaires are Jews. The chief executive officers of the three major television networks, and the four largest film studios are Jews, as are the owners of the nation's largest newspaper chain and most influential single newspaper, the New York Times. In the late 1960s, Jews already constituted 20% of the faculty of elite universities and 40% of the professors of elite law schools; today, these percentages doubtless are higher." (p.1) ginsberg.html.

When the Vikings invaded Europe, they brought Aryanism (European tribalism and militancy) back into pacifist Europe, and it was blended into Christianity. The Church, unable to resist them militarily, baptised them as Normans. The Norman aristocrats ruled as the First Estate, and the Church as the Second. Pressed by Islam, the Church launched the Crusades, led by the Normans, and the same combination conquered the New World. 

This was not the first expansion of Indo-European-speaking (Aryan) peoples. They had originated in the steppes of Eastern Europe and Central Asia - at that time they cannot be called "Europeans", so "Aryans" must do - and from there conquered India (destroying the Harappan civilization: rig-veda.html), parts of the Middle East (including participating in the Hyksos invasion of Egypt), and Western Europe. 

The chariot appears to have been invented by Aryans in Central Asia, and to have spread both West & East from there. The chariot was the tank of the day, and allowed blitzkrieg invasions. Those invaded had to acquire the technology, one way or the other. 

Old Kingdom Egypt had no chariots. The Hyksos had chariots, which would have helped them to defeat Egypt. Later pharoahs had them, and the Jewish god Yahweh is depicted, in the Bible, sitting on a Merkabah (Merkavah), which means "throne-chariot". 

The chariot reached China from Central Asia. Silk road archeological findings substantiate cultural exchange between East & West. 

The word "Aryan" is today preserved in the names of the countries "Iran" and "Ireland", i.e. "Eire" = "Aryan", showing the extent of the Aryan conquest. Marija Gimbutas, below, shows the reality of Aryan "nobility". 

When we consider the way that Pizarro, with his small band of conquistadores, conquered the Inca empire, with deception and brutality, we ask ourselves, do we support or reject such behaviour. I personally feel very uncomfortable about it. Yet here we are, inheritors of Australia due to similar behaviour of our own ancestors. 

This history of the two waves of Indo-European expansion is embarrassing, in our Internationalist age, and not well covered in history books, so I have included a number of readings from experts, plus links for follow-ups.

Further Reading: http://mailstar.net/tribes.html