Meer dan een eeuw geleden benadrukte de Britse filosoof Bertrand Russell tijdens een college over ‘Free Thought and Official Propaganda,’ dat in het Westen ‘het nut van intelligentie alleen theoretisch wordt erkend, niet praktisch; het wordt als ongewenst gezien dat gewone mensen zelf nadenken, omdat het gevoel bestaat dat mensen die zelf denken moeilijk zijn te managen en bestuurlijke problemen veroorzaken.’ Vandaar de absolute noodzaak van propaganda in een ‘democratie.’ Zo schreef de Franse socioloog Jacques Ellul in zijn boek Propaganda. The Formation of Men's Attitudes (1965) dat ‘The force of propaganda is a direct attack against man,’ aangezien ‘continuous propaganda exceeds the individual’s capacities for attention or adaptation and thus his capabilities of resistance. This trait of continuity explains why propaganda can indulge in sudden twists and turns. It is always surprising that the content of propaganda can be so inconsistent that it can approve today what it condemned yesterday,’ maar omdat ‘[s]uch breaks are too painful; faced with them, the individual, feeling that the change in line is not an attack on his real self, prefers to retain his habits.
Immediately thereafter he will hear the new truth reassessed a hundred times, he will find it explained and proved, and he does not have the strength to fight against it each day on the basis of yesterday’s truth. He does not even become fully involved in this battle. Propaganda continues its assault without an instant’s respite; his resistance is fragmentary and sporadic. He is caught up in professional tasks and personal preoccupations, and each time he emerges from them he hears and sees the new truth proclaimed. The steadiness of the propaganda prevails over his sporadic attention and makes him follow all the turns from the time he has begun to eat of this bread.
The strength of propaganda reveals, of course, one of the most dangerous flaws of democracy. But that has nothing to do with my own opinions. As I am in favor of democracy, I can only regret that propaganda renders the true exercise of it almost impossible. But I think it would be even worse to entertain any illusions about a co-existence of true democracy and propaganda. Nothing is worse in times of danger than to live in a dream world. To warn a political system of the menace hanging over it does not imply an attack against it, but is the greatest service one can render a system.
Ellul stelt met betrekking tot ‘Democracy’s Need of Propaganda’ dat:
On one fact there can be no debate: the need of democracy, in its present situation, to ‘make propaganda.’ We must understand, besides, that private propaganda, even more than governmental propaganda, is importantly linked to democracy. Historically, from the moment a democratic regime establishes itself, propaganda establishes itself alongside it under various forms. This is inevitable, as democracy depends on public opinion and competition between political parties. In order to come to power, parties make propaganda to gain voters.
Let us remember that the advent of the masses through the development of the democracies has provoked the use of propaganda, and that this is precisely one of the arguments of defense of the democratic State — that it appeals to the people, who are mobilized by propaganda; that it defends itself against private interests or anti-democratic parties. It is a remarkable fact worthy of attention that modern propaganda should have begun in the democratic States. During World War I we saw the combined use of the mass media for the first time; the application of publicity and advertising methods to political affairs, the search for the most effective psychological methods. But in those days German propaganda was mediocre: the French, English, and American democracies launched big propaganda. Similarly, the Leninist movement, undeniably democratic at the start, developed and perfected all propaganda methods. Contrary to some belief, the authoritarian regimes were not the first to resort to this type of action, though they eventually employed it beyond all limits. This statement should make us think about the relationship between democracy and propaganda.
For it is evident that a conflict exists between the principles of democracy — particularly its concept of the individual — and the processes of propaganda. The notion of rational man, capable of thinking and living according to reason, of controlling his passions and living according to scientific patterns, of choosing freely between good and evil — all this seems opposed to the secret influences, the mobilizations of myths, the swift appeals to the irrational, so characteristic of propaganda.
The conviction of the invincible force of truth is tied to the notion of progress and is a part of this ideology. Democracies have been fed on the notion that truth may be hidden for a while but will triumph in the end, that truth in itself carries an explosive force, a power of fermentation that will necessarily lead to the end of lies and the shining apparition of the true. This truth was the implicit core of the democratic doctrine.
One must stress, furthermore, that this was in itself a truth of an ideological kind that ended by making history because it imposed itself on history. This attitude contained the seeds of, but was at the same time (and still is) the exact opposite of, the current Marxist attitude that history is truth. Proof through history is nowadays regarded as the proof. He in whose favor history decides, was right. But what is ‘to be right’ when one speaks of history? It is to win, to survive, i.e., to be the strongest. This would mean that the strongest and most efficient, nowadays, is the possessor of the truth. Truth thus has no content of its own, but exists only as history produces it; truth receives reality through history.
One can easily see the relationship between the two attitudes and how one can pass easily from one to the other: for if truth possesses an invincible power that makes it triumph through itself alone, it becomes logical — by a simple but dangerous step — that triumph is truth. But — and this is frightening — the consequences of the two attitudes are radically different.
To think that democracy must triumph because it is the truth that leads man to be democratic and to believe that when the democratic regime is opposed to regimes of oppression, its superiority will be clear at first sight to the infallible judgment of man and history. The choice is thus certain. What amazement is displayed again and again by democrats, particularly Anglo-Saxon democrats, when they see that a man selects something else, and that history is indecisive. In such cases they decide to use information. ‘Because democratic reality was not known, people have made a bad choice,’ they say, and even there we find the same conviction of the power of truth. But it is not borne out by facts. We will not establish a general law here, to be sure, but we will say that it is not a general law that truth triumphs automatically, though it may in certain periods of history or with respect to certain verities. We cannot generalize here at all. History shows that plain truth can be so thoroughly snuffed out that it disappears, and that in certain periods the lie is all-powerful.
Ik verzoek de lezer met mij mee te denken omdat ik al jaren verloren rondtast op zoek naar het antwoord op de vraag: waarom is voor mijn oude vrienden in de journalistiek het overleven van de mensheid niet meer centraal? Waarom hebben zij lak aan het lot van ons nageslacht? Tot nu toe meende ik dat de oorzaak simpel was, namelijk onverschilligheid die grenst aan misdadigheid. Ik denk nu dat Jacques Ellul de waarheid veel dichter benadert. Hij schreef dat het geloof als zou e democratie wel moet triomferen, omdat zij nu eenmaal de hoogste waarheid is, dit automatisch leidt tot de onwrikbare conclusie dat het ‘democratisch zijn’ het recht geeft anderen, die dit niet geloven, te overheersen. Net als elk ander geloof eindigt het geloof in democratie onvermijdelijk tot haar tegendeel, oftewel in onverdraagzaamheid. De niet-gelovige moet bekeerd worden. De gelovige kan immers zijn geloof niet opgeven, omdat hij dan geen betekenis aan het leven kan geven. De overgrote meerderheid van de massa kan niet zonder betekenis, net zo min als hij tegen een gebrek aan zuurstof kan. En daarom is de westerse bevolking zelfs bereid haar eigen ondergang gelaten over zich heen te laten komen. Het is niet misdadigheid die de journalistiek en de politiek drijft, maar domheid, een groot gebrek aan verbeeldingskracht, en een bepaalde onverschilligheid. Voor mij is het voorbeeld bij uitstek hiervan mijn oude vriend en domineeszoon Geert Mak die in 2005 tegenover het 'feministische' maandblad Opzij plechtstatig verklaarde dat hij sinds een jaar of tien zich opnieuw als ‘gelovig, christelijk’ beschouwde. Ter verduidelijking zei hij voortaan te geloven in:
Ziedaar, hoe God’s wegen ondoorgrondelijk zijn en zelden aangenaam. Hier spreekt de bekendste zielenherder van Nederland, die overal bijgesleept wordt om zijn ‘profetische’ visie uit te spreken tegenover de massa, niet beseffend dat, zoals Ellul stelt, de ‘Geschiedenis aantoont dat de naakte waarheid dermate uitgedoofd kan zijn dat het totaal verdwijnt, en dat in sommige tijdperken de leugen almachtig is.’ En daar gaat Mak’s ‘vaderlijke, milde, liefdevolle God,’ met zijn onvermijdelijke ‘riot squad. They're restless. They need somewhere to go. As Lady. And I look out tonight. From Desolation Row.’
Het gruwelijke is dat het blinde geloof in de eigen superioriteit onvermijdelijk leidt tot grootscheeps geweld zodra De Ander met een volstrekt andere geschiedenis en cultuur, een andere geografie en klimaat, een andere filosofie, iets anders kiest dan de westerse ideologie voorschrijft. De legitimering ervan is even simpel als primitief, de houder van de waarheid, ‘de democraat,’ meent namelijk het recht, nee zelfs de plicht te hebben om nu met massavernietigingswapens zijn ‘waarheid’ te laten zegevieren, ook al betekent dit de dood van miljarden mensen. Daar is een kleine tienduizend jaar ‘beschaving’ in uitgemond.
Het was Adolf Hitler die stelde:
Wij streven niet naar gelijkheid, maar naar dominantie. Het land van een buitenlands ras zal opnieuw een land van horigen, van agrarische dagloners of industriële werkers moeten worden. Het gaat niet om het opheffen van de ongelijkheid tussen mensen, maar om het versterken ervan, en om daar een wet van te maken.
Ian Buruma is een typisch voorbeeld van ‘De nieuwe kosmopoliet,’ het thema van het vijftigste jubileumjaar van de Stichting Praemium Erasmianum in 2008; iemand die met kennis en betrokkenheid, maar ook met distantie reflecteert over de maatschappelijke ontwikkelingen in de gehele wereld.
https://erasmusprijs.org/prijswinnaars/ian-buruma/
Laat ik een ‘typisch voorbeeld’ geven van hoe ‘de nieuwe kosmopoliet,’ met zijn ‘kennis’ maar ook ‘distantie reflecteert’ over de wereld waarin u, ik en hij leven.
Tijdens een discussie met de Brits/Indiase cultuurcriticus Pankaj Mishra op vrijdag 23 juni 2017 in de Bibliotheek Den Haag beweerde Buruma, die in de VS als hoogleraar democratie, mensenrechten en journalistiek doceert aan het door de miljardair George Soros zwaar gesubsidieerde Bard College:
I think that Napoleon is an interesting thing to talk about because, yes, a lot of people were killed as a consequence of his military campaigns, but his brand of universalism is actually something we — in this country as well as other countries — still benefit from, the idea of equality for the law and so on, did come from them (Napoleon en de Verlichtingsideologen. svh), the emancipation of minorities came from them, precisely because he had the idea of the universality of rights, and that not just one particular elite or one particular people deserved rights, but that it were universal rights.
Is Buruma's claim juist dat Napoleon Bonaparta ‘de universaliteit van het recht’ nastreefde? Was de Franse keizer er werkelijk van doordrongen dat ‘not just one particular elite or one particular people deserved rights’? Het antwoord is onomwonden: nee, integendeel zelfs. Desondanks trachtte Buruma met deze leugen te bewijzen dat het Verlichtingsdenken vanaf eind achttiende zijn stempel drukte op de westerse buitenlandse politiek, en daarmee de vooruitgang van de hele mensheid bevorderde. Weliswaar waren er zeker 15 miljoen militairen en burgers om het leven gekomen tijdens de talloze Napoleontische Oorlogen, maar volgens Buruma stond daar tegenover dat de kleine Corsicaan de joden had geëmancipeerd en de Verlichtingsidealen had toegepast, waardoor ieder mens op aarde gelijk voor de wet was geworden. Althans volgens Buruma. Dit is allemaal onjuist; de conclusie is daarom dat ook mijn oude vriend Ian zich gedraagt als een propagandist, een ‘con man.’
Three days after the fall of France in 1940, Napoleon, lying in his marble tomb in Paris, received a visit from his greatest admirer.
Adolf Hitler, on his one and only visit to the French capital, made an unannounced trip to the tomb in Les Invalides.
In his white raincoat, surrounded by his generals, Hitler stood for a long time gazing down at his hero, his cap removed in deference.
He was said later to have described this moment as 'one of the proudest of my life.’
The next day, during his official sightseeing tour of Paris, Hitler again visited Napoleon's tomb to salute him.
Conscious that his hero was known to the world simply as Napoleon, Hitler boasted that he would not need a rank or title on his gravestone. 'The German people would know who it was if the only word was Adolf.'
Throughout the war, Hitler had sandbags placed around Napoleon's tomb to guard against bomb damage.
Wooden floorboards were laid across the marble floor of Les Invalides so that they would not be scarred by German jackboots.
Until recently, the French would have been incensed by any comparison between Napoleon and Hitler.
But to their rage and shame, new research has shown that France's greatest hero presided over mass atrocities which bear comparison with some of Hitler's worst crimes against humanity.
These reassessments of Napoleon have caused anguish in France. Top politicians backed out of official ceremonies to mark what was possibly Napoleon's greatest victory, the battle of Austerlitz, when Napoleon's Grande Armee defeated the combined armies of Austria and Russia in just six hours, killing 19,000 of their adversaries.
A street in Paris named Rue Richepanse (after Antoine Richepanse, a general responsible for atrocities in the Caribbean) has recently had its name changed to Rue Solitude.
During his reign as Emperor, concentration camps were set up and gas was used to massacre large groups of people.
There were hit squads and mass deportations. And all this happened 140 years before Hitler and the Holocaust.
Claude Ribbe, a respected historian and philosopher and member of the French government's human rights commission, has been researching Napoleon's bloodcurdling record for some years.
He accuses him of being a racist and an anti-Semite who persecuted Jews and reintroduced widespread slavery just a few years after it had been abolished by the French government.
The most startling of these findings, the attempted massacre of an entire population over the age of 12 by methods which included gassing them in the holds of ships, relate to the French Caribbean colony of Haiti at the turn of the 19th century.
In Ribbe's words, Napoleon, then First Consul, was the man who, for the first time in history, 'asked himself rationally the question how to eliminate, in as short a time as possible, and with a minimum of cost and personnel, a maximum of people described as scientifically inferior.’
Haiti around 1800 was the world's richest colony, a slave-powered export factory which produced almost two-thirds of the world's coffee and almost half its sugar.
The black slaves were lashed and beaten to work and forced to wear tin muzzles (muilkorven. svh) to prevent them from eating the sugar cane.
If the slaves were fractious (weerspannig. svh), they were roasted over slow fires, or filled with gunpowder and blown to pieces.
When the slaves began to fight for their freedom, under the leadership of a charismatic African military genius called Toussaint L'Ouverture, Napoleon sent 10,000 crack troops (speciale eenheden. svh) under the command of his brother-in-law, General Leclerc, to crush Toussaint and restore slavery.
In 1802, a vast program of ethnic cleansing was put in place. Napoleon banned inter-racial marriages and ordered that all white women who'd had any sort of relationship with a black or mulatto (person of mixed race) be shipped to France.
He further commanded the killing of as many blacks in Haiti as possible, to be replaced by new, more docile slaves from Africa.
The French troops were under orders to kill all blacks over the age of 12. However, younger children were also killed — stabbed to death, put in sandbags and dropped into the sea.
The Haitians fought to the death for independence, which they finally declared in 1804.
Prisoners on both sides were regularly tortured and killed, and their heads were mounted on the walls of stockades or on spikes beside the roads.
Non-combatants, too, were raped and slaughtered. According to contemporary accounts, the French used dogs to rip black prisoners to pieces before a crowd at an amphitheatre.
Allegedly on Napoleon's orders, sulphur was extracted from Haitian volcanoes and burned to produce poisonous sulphur dioxide, which was then used to gas black Haitians in the holds of ships — more than 100,000 of them, according to records.
The use of these primitive gas chambers was confirmed by contemporaries. Antoine Metral, who in 1825 published his history of the French expedition to Haiti, writes of piles of dead bodies everywhere, stacked in charnel-houses (knekelhuizen. svh).
'We varied the methods of execution,' wrote Metral. 'At times, we pulled heads off; sometimes a ball and chain was put at the feet to allow drowning; sometimes they were gassed in the ships by sulphur.
'When the cover of night was used to hide these outrages, those walking along the river could hear the noisy monotone of dead bodies being dropped into the sea.’
A contemporary historian, who sailed with the punitive expedition, wrote that: 'We invented another type of ship where victims of both sexes were piled up, one against the other, suffocated by sulphur.’
These were prison ships with gas chambers called etouffiers, or ‘chokers,' which asphyxiated (verstikten. svh) the blacks, causing them terrible suffering.
Even at the time, there were French naval officers who were appalled at this savagery, claiming they would rather have braved a court martial than have forgotten the laws of humanity.
But from the Emperor's point of view, gassing was a way of cutting costs. Ships continued to transport prisoners out to sea to drown them, but corpses kept being washed up on beaches or tangled in ships' hulls (scheepsrompen. svh).
Toussaint, who called himself the Black Napoleon, was kidnapped after accepting an invitation to parlay (wapenstilstandsbespreking. svh) with a French general and shipped back to France in chains, where he died of pneumonia after being imprisoned in a cold stone vault.
Guadeloupe, an island to the east, suffered a similar fate to Haiti's.
Once again choosing not to recognize France's abolition of slavery, Napoleon in 1802 promoted a comrade of his, Antoine Richepanse, to the rank of General, and sent him with an expeditionary force of 3,000 men to put down a slave revolt on the island.
During his purge, General Richepanse slaughtered any men, women and children he encountered on his route to the capital. Then he worked through a plan of extermination apparently approved by the First Consul (Napoleon. svh).
A military commission was set up to give what followed a veneer of legality. Some 250 'rebels' were shot in Guadeloupe's Victory Square. Another 500 were herded down to the beach and shot there.
Richepanse and Lacrosse, the former colonial governor now restored to power, thought of piling up the dead in vast mounds to intimidate the islanders, but gave up the plan for fear of starting a disease epidemic.
Instead, using a technique which the French were to copy during the Algerian War, they sent death squads into every part of Guadeloupe to track down farmers who were absent from their homes.
These men were treated as rebels. A bounty was promised for each black man captured, and the rebels were summarily shot or hanged. The ferocity of the repression sparked another uprising, which Lacrosse subdued with the most barbarous methods yet.
'Being hung is not enough for the crimes they have committed,' he said. 'It is necessary to cut them down alive and let them expire on the wheel [prisoners were bound to a cart wheel before having their arms and legs smashed with cudgels (knuppels. svh)].
'The jails are already full: it is necessary to empty them as quickly as possible.' In this he was successful, hanging, garotting (wurgen. svh) and burning the rebels and breaking their limbs on the wheel.
Lacrosse developed possibly the most fiendish instrument of slow execution ever created.
The prisoner was thrust into a tiny cage and had a razor-sharp blade suspended between his legs. In front of him was a bottle of water and bread, neither of which he could reach.
He was stood in stirrups (stijgbeugels. svh), which kept him just above the blade, but if he fell asleep or his legs tired, he was sliced by the blade. Neither fast nor economical, it was pure sadism.
After four months in Guadeloupe, the French lost patience with the islanders, and the ferocity of their repression reached new heights.
Blacks with short hair were shot out of hand, since the expeditionary force considered short hair to be a sign of rebellion. Orders were given that 'the type of execution should set a terrifying example.’
The soldiers were encouraged 'to cut open insurgents, to strangle and to burn them'. French officers spoke proudly of creating 'torture islands.’
In a letter to Napoleon, his brother-in-law Leclerc wrote: 'It is necessary to destroy all the negroes of the mountain… do not leave children over the age of 12.’
Ribbe, in his work in progress, sees continual affinities between Napoleon and Hitler. He argues that many of Napoleon's actions were later echoed in Nazi Germany, right down to his enthusiasm for slavery reflecting the grim message 'Arbeit Macht Frei' ('Work Sets You Free'), which appeared over the gates of Auschwitz.
Napoleon, like Hitler, also used his own army like cannon fodder when the occasion demanded.
His retreat from Moscow in 1812 squandered the lives and courage of 450,000 soldiers of the Grande Armee; many of them were found frozen to death while embracing each other to harvest a last flicker of warmth, in what was one of the bitterest winters in living memory.
Nothing shows more clearly the contempt the Emperor showed for his minions (volgelingen. svh) than the bulletin announcing the destruction of his Army.
Napoleon blamed his horses and ended by declaring that his health had never been better.
As theaters for Napoleon's callousness (hardvochtigheid. svh), Haiti and Guadeloupe were too far away to attract much public notice, let alone condemnation.
Syria was a different matter. In the war between France and the Ottoman Empire (most of it modern-day Turkey), Napoleon led the siege of the ancient walled city of Jaffa, whose harbor he needed as a vital shelter for his fleet.
The city fell on the fourth day, whereupon Napoleon's troops ran amok through the town, slaughtering Christians, Jews and Muslims indiscriminately.
To escape the slaughter, part of the garrison (garnizoen. svh) locked themselves into a large keep.
Napoleon sent his officers, who negotiated their surrender and marched them back to the French camp.
Rations were short, so Napoleon now decided that he had been too magnanimous (edelmoedig. svh).
For three days he kept the 4,000 mostly Turkish prisoners with their arms tied behind their back; then the massacre began.
Somewhere between 2,500 and 4,000 men were slaughtered there and then, either by shooting them or by running them through with bayonets.
Shortly afterwards plague broke out, decimating the troops on both sides… It did not deter him from suggesting to the doctors that seriously ill French troops who could not be evacuated should be given a fatal dose of the opiate laudanum. The doctors forced him to back down.
From Jaffa, Napoleon marched to Acre, a city constructed on a peninsula and therefore impregnable, given that there was British control of the seas. Napoleon launched seven major assaults; each one failed. Marching back to Cairo, Napoleon left 2,200 of his troops dead, and 2,300 more seriously ill or wounded.
As far as Napoleon was concerned, these wounded were already dead men. Most of them he left behind, knowing that the Turks would cut off their heads as soon as his army left. They did their best to follow his retreat, crying out not to be abandoned.
They straggled along, their throats parched in the debilitating heat, which reduced their cries to a croak. Injured officers were thrown from their litters and left to die in the dunes.
Soldiers were abandoned in the cornfields, which were still smoldering in the devastation of crops and villages ordered by Napoleon. In all, some 5,000 Frenchmen lost their lives.
If Hitler learned any lessons from Napoleon, one must have been that victory required callousness, not just in the leader but in those around him.
'Like those working in the Nazi system, the French carrying out Napoleon's killing did so with little thought to morality,' Claude Ribbe says today. 'There was no sense of good or evil: it was just a matter of getting a difficult job done. In the end, the killing methods had to be efficient and cheap.’
So is Napoleon to be feted (bejubeld. svh) as a great leader or denounced as a dictator? A poll published in Le Figaro in 2005 found that nearly 40 per cent of Frenchmen regarded Napoleon as 'a dictator who had used all means to satisfy his thirst for power.’
However, considering what was done in Napoleon's name in Haiti and Guadeloupe, there is one memorial which deserves to be added.
Next to the unknown soldier at the Arc de Triomphe should be erected the Tomb of the Unknown Slave.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1038453/The-French-Fuhrer-Genocidal-Napoleon-barbaric-Hitler-historian-claims.html
Kort samengevat: opiniemaker en hoogleraar democratie, mensenrechten en journalistiek, Ian Buruma, de stem van de gevestigde orde, verspreidde een mega-leugen door met grote stelligheid te verkondigen dat Napoleon ‘had the idea of the universality of rights, and that not just one particular elite or one particular people deserved rights, but that it were universal rights.’ Het was precies andersom. Het was juist de zwarte rebellenleider 'Toussaint L’Ouverture, the Genius Who Embodied the Enlightenment.' Het feit dat Buruma juist de door Hitler bewonderde Napoleon als exemplarisch naar voren schuift, demonstreert de ware opvattingen van het westers establishment. Hij is voor hem het schoolvoorbeeld van de superioriteit van de westerse beschaving vanwege diens ‘brand of universalism,’ waar ‘wij — in dit land zowel als andere landen — nog steeds profijt van trekken.’ Het is waar dat ‘wij’ nog steeds profiteren van Napoleon’s ‘brand of universalism,’ maar ‘zijn soort van universalisme’ was in werkelijkheid geen ‘universalisme,’ vanwege het simpele feit dat ‘Volgens het universalisme er waarden en normen [zijn] die ook buiten de eigen groep geldig zijn.’ Het spreekt voor zich dat Napoleon’s slavernij, martelingen en dictatuur juist het tegenovergestelde van ‘universalisme’ was, net zoals de westerse terreur in het Midden Oosten en Afghanistan niets te maken had met democratie en mensenrechten. Sterker nog, Buruma’s onverschilligheid ten opzichte van de ruim 200.000 zwarte Haïtianen die op bevel van Napoleon werden vermoord omdat zij geen slaaf meer wilden zijn, demonstreert dat ook bij hem als liberal opiniemaker sprake is van onderhuids racisme.
Ik stel deze vraag met nadruk omdat zij zo actueel blijft. Iedere enigszins geïnformeerde westerling kan dat constateren aan de hand van de mentaliteit van het Joodse regime in Israel ten opzichte van de Palestijnse bevolking, in zowel de zionistische staat zelf, als in de bezette en belegerde gebieden. Zeker voor iemand als Buruma, die zichzelf ziet als een kosmopolitische intellectueel, moet zijn ‘affiniteit’ met het al dan niet ‘geassimileerde Jodendom’ toch een extra aansporing zijn om het autisme onder een niet gering aantal joden in zowel de zogeheten diaspora als in de zelfbenoemde 'Joodse staat' te onderzoeken. Als pleitbezorger van de Verlichting met haar beroep op de rede, het rationalisme, tolerantie, grondrechten voor allen, en op de veronderstelling dat kennis de mens verstandiger maakt, ontkomt zeker hij niet aan het vraagstuk hoe het komt dat zoveel ‘joden’ kennelijk niets geleerd hebben van zowel de Verlichtingsidealen als van de eigen ervaringen met massaal onrecht. Op wat is Buruma’s Vooruitgangsgeloof gebaseerd, wanneer zelfs de joden, sterk beïnvloed door het Westen, even irrationeel en tribalistisch blijven reageren als bijvoorbeeld de aanhangers van ISIS? Hoe is het te verklaren dat Buruma zelf sprookjes blijft verspreiden over bijvoorbeeld Napoleon? Waarom heeft hij het universalisme van de Verlichting niet geïnternaliseerd? De enige logische verklaring die ik heb, is dat zijn onverzadigbare manifestatiedrang het streven naar een leven in waarheid onmogelijk heeft gemaakt. De zoektocht naar de werkelijkheid is onverenigbaar met het zich laten meeslepen door irrationele krachten, zo hebben de grote denkers in de geschiedenis ons duidelijk gemaakt. Hierop is in feite Pankaj Mishra’s kritiek gebaseerd op Buruma’s claim dat het Napoleon — het Westen — ‘the universality of rights’ heeft verspreid. Maar bij gebrek aan argumenten bleef Buruma van Mishra eisen om ‘an alternative way of thinking’ te geven ‘that could change things in countries for the better.’ Hoewel Mishra’s scherpzinnige analyse niet wil doordringen tot het botte bewustzijn van westerse ideologische opiniemakers, was zijn reactie op Buruma's vraag wel degelijk voor de hand liggend:
Maar omdat de westerse elite — gedomineerd door witte, hoog geschoolde mannen, erfgenamen van een eeuwenlange hegemonie — te zelfgenoegzaam en betweterig is, ontbreekt het haar aan de menselijke capaciteit om zich te verplaatsen in de positie van de underdog. Mainstream-opiniemakers zijn zelfs niet eens bij machte zich te realiseren dat hun orde een eufemisme is voor een gewelddadige wanorde die zijn langste tijd heeft gehad. Het autisme van de elite is allereerst voor haarzelf een bedreiging geworden, aangezien het haar belet te beseffen dat ook haar eigen voortbestaan op het spel staat. In de huidige tijd moet ruim 7 miljard inwoners zien te overleven temidden van de klimaatverandering, de dreigende uitputting van vitale grondstoffen, de voortgaande bevolkingsexplosie, de almaar desastreuzere oorlogen door massavernietigingswapens, de grootscheepse vervreemding, de razendsnel toenemende milieuvernietiging, het groeiende verlies aan biodiversiteit. Het accepteren dat een zeer kleine kongsi almaar rijker wordt, berust vanzelfsprekend op een psychische stoornis die de overleving van de mensheid onmogelijk maakt. Dat is toch niet moeilijk om te begrijpen? Iemand met een greintje verstand moet toch in staat zijn de propaganda van de Buruma's te weerleggen? Het is toch niet moeilijk te beseffen dat hij het ancien regime blijft verdedigen? Zijn hubris is ‘overdreven trots, hoogmoed, overmoed, grootheidswaanzin, brutaliteit, onbeschaamdheid’ tegenover datgene wat in de Griekse oudheid ‘de goddelijke orde’ heette, de orde van de natuur, zo u wilt. En toch blijft de mainstream blind, en is daardoor niet in staat te beseffen dat de westerse onverzadigbare mateloosheid de eigen ondergang bewerkstelligt. De buitensporigheid van het neoliberale kapitalisme staat vijandig tegenover het ‘Meden Agan,’ het ‘Alles met Mate,’ dat als motto boven de ingang van het heiligdom in Delphi geschreven stond. De nieuwe rijken en hun mainstream-media haten het aloude ‘Noblesse Oblige,’ het besef dat adeldom verplicht. Nog in de negentiende eeuw wist de aristocratie dat 'het gestage proces van verfijning in de loop van drie generaties efficiënte boerenkinkels verandert in kwetsbare heren.' Maar deze wijsheid, zo zet Tomasi di Lampedusa uiteen in zijn roman De Tijgerkat, ging niet meer op toen de nouveau riche de macht greep, daarbij 'niet gehinderd door de honderden belemmeringen die eerlijkheid, betamelijkheid en zelfs een goede opvoeding voor de meeste anderen vormen.’ De nieuwe rijke bewoog:
zich door de jungle van het leven met de zekerheid van een olifant die in rechte lijn voort walst, bomen ontwortelend en hutten vertrappend, zonder ook maar iets te merken van de schrammende doornen en de jammerende slachtoffers.
Dit laatste gaat zeker op voor een opiniemaker van de 'corporate press' als Ian Buruma. Voor hem zijn ‘de jammerende slachtoffers’ slechts ‘collateral damage’ in de onstuitbare opmars van de Vooruitgang. Uit angst om zijn oude geloof te verliezen weigert hij te begrijpen dat op dit moment ontelbare mensen, zelfs in het Westen, maar vooral daarbuiten, in een ‘post-political condition of being left outside’ verkeren, en hier ook diep van doordrongen zijn. Vandaar ook de huidige noodzaak van de Deep State om een proxy oorlog in Oekraïne te financieren. Meer daarover de volgende keer.
Net zoals Hitler door Amerikaans kapitaal werd gefinancierd, wordt nu een andere gevaarlijjke komediant door de Amerikaanse elite van wapens en geld voorzien om de 'proxy war' in de Oekraïne mogelijk te maken, in een hernieuwde poging Rusland uiteen te laten vallen.
Fikra, een nieuw online Palestijns cultureel en literair tijdschrift, is deze week begonnen met een crowdfunding-campagne. Het tijdschrift streeft ernaar om wekelijks originele stukken van hoge kwaliteit te publiceren, die afwijken van de gebruikelijke stereotypen en ouderwetse ideeën over Palestina. Fikra wordt gemaakt door en voor Palestijnen – uit Gaza, de Westelijke Jordaanoever, Oost-Jeruzalem, Israël en de diaspora. De artikelen zullen zowel in het Engels als het Arabisch worden gepubliceerd. 
