The Tyranny of Liberalism by Israel Shamir

http://www(dot)israelshamir.net/English/Eng7.htm

Shamir said:
A Talk given at the conference on Religion in the International Relations: Liberalism and Tradition, International Relations Faculty, St Petersburg State University, 24 November 2006

Modern Liberalism is the dominant paradigm in the US, and it plays a major role in Europe, in post-Soviet Russia and elsewhere. This line is preached by the powerful world-wide mass media syndicate whose elements are ostensibly independent yet they transmit the identical message James Petras has called The Tyranny of Liberalism. A “liberal tyrannyᾠ may strike some as oxymoronic if not a contradiction in terms since Liberalism likes to represent itself as the neutral ground of freedom rather than as an ideology and as an arbiter of religious pluralism and freedom rather than an anti-religious ideology. Liberalism is the ideology than denies that it is such a thing; ask a liberal and he will tell you he is against the dominance of any ideology or of any religion.

In our attempt to pierce this protective colouring we shall apply some ideas of the late German thinker Carl Schmitt who learned of liberalism the hard way. After Germany was subdued and conquered in 1945, Carl Schmitt lived for a while in the Soviet and the American occupation zones, which had later been converted into the German Democratic Republic and the Federal Republic of Germany. On the basis of his comparative experience in the occupation, Carl Schmitt noticed that American Liberalism is a militant ideology less prone to compromise than Soviet Communism. The Americans demanded that Schmitt give proof of belief in Liberal Democracy, while the Russians never asked him to swear an oath upon the Communist Manifesto. This personal experience led Schmitt to conclude that the Modern American Liberalism is not an ideology-free live-and-let-live paradigm, but a positive ideology, and an ideology even more dangerous than the Communism he greatly disliked. Schmitt saw the traditional balance of power threatened by the new triumphant Anglo-American air and sea global imperium based on an aggressive ideology. For this reason Schmitt welcomed the Cold War, as he thought the USSR the only force capable of containing the American ideological drive.

Most other academics came late to the realization that Liberalism is an aggressive ideology, when the US had waged wars in Iraq and Afghanistan for the achievement of certain ideological goals. The ideological and cultural liberalism enforced by US arms called for certain principles to be implemented world-wide. These principles can be described either in positive or negative terms: a restaurant guest and an oyster would describe the arrival of Chablis and lemon in different ways. Much depends on whether you eat or you are eaten.

· Human rights OR denial of Collective Rights.
· Minority Rights OR denial of Majority Rights.
· Non-governmental ownership of media OR exclusive right of Capital to form public opinion.
· Women rights and protection OR dissolution of family.
· Homosexual unions OR denial of the sanctity of marriage
· Antiracism OR denial of “the need for rootsᾠ in Weil’s terms.
· Economical self-dependence, OR ban on social mutual help (in theological terms agape and charity)
· Separation of Church and State OR freedom for anti-Christian propaganda and ban on Christian mission in the public sphere.
· Public elections of government («democracy»), limited by voters and authorities’ acceptance of the liberal paradigm, OR denial of authentic self-determination.

Carl Schmitt postulated an important assumption: every ideology is a crypto-religious doctrine, or in his words, «all of the most pregnant concepts of modern doctrine are secularized theological concepts». Let us compare Communism and Liberalism in light of this thought.

Though it originated in the West, Communism first arose in the society formed by the Russian Orthodox Church, and it had many features one would expect to find in a secularised Orthodoxy. Poets felt it well, and Alexander Blok sang of Christ “with the blood-red flag, invulnerable to bullets, fleeting foot above the blizzard, in a white crown of rosesᾠ leading his Twelve Red Guards. In the late Soviet days, the Russians proclaimed the Christian principle “Man is to Man a Friend, Comrade and Brother.ᾠ The Russian Communists despised material comforts as had their Orthodox predecessors, and placed their sobornost (Catholicity, or togetherness-in-the-Church) and solidarity above all other virtues.
Solidarity and Catholicity are features shared by ideologies Liberalism is hostile to. Last week, Yehuda Bauer, the Yad Vashem Memorial director, the High Priest of the Holocaust cult, in a speech given to counterbalance the Tehran Conference, said:

There are great differences between National Socialism, Soviet Communism, and radical Islam, but there are also some important parallels. All three are or were religious or quasi-religious movements. Unquestioning, quasi-religious belief in Nazi ideology was central to the existence and policies of the regime, and it was Nazi ideology that was the central factor that produced the Holocaust; Marxist-Leninism was the quasi-religious dogma that everyone in the Stalinist empire had to swear by. The same applies to radical Islam.ᾠ

This is undoubtedly true, or, in the light of Carl Schmitt’s words, rather a truism: if it is an ideology, it has theological underpinnings. We shall notice that Bauer did not mention one important ideology, contemporary with the named three and at war with them. Just recently, some fifty years ago, Marxists-Leninists, National Socialists and Liberals sorted out their differences on the battlefields of Europe. Why does the Liberal Bauer give a pass to Liberalism?

Beyond being coy, Bauer’s significant omission has an important theological message. A liberal places liberalism above “ordinaryᾠ religions and ideologies; on a higher plane than any religious or ideological construct. The adepts of any ideology other than Liberalism are “totalitariansᾠ or “fanaticsᾠ, in the eyes of a Liberal. This arrogant attitude of the only possessors of truth reminds us of the Judaic narrative of the Old Testament, where the devotees of One God are presumed to be a level above the “pagansᾠ. Theoretically, this attitude of superiority was inherited by the three great religions of our oikouménè, of Eastern and Western Christianity and of Islam as well; but it wasn’t internalised. An Orthodox Christian did not consider himself a cut above Muslims and Catholics. However, modern Judaism (widely divergent from Biblical Judaism in other respects) preserved this unpleasant claim to superiority of its predecessor.

Bauer’s reluctance to name the religious component of Liberalism provides us with a clue pointing to something he might wish to conceal. But here is an additional hint. Bauer continues to seek parallels in the three indicted movements:

“All three target Jews as their main, or immediate, enemy: the Nazis murdered them; the Soviets planned, in 1952, to deport all Soviet Jews to Siberia, with the obvious intention that most of them should die. The genocidal message of radical Islam to the Jews is loud and clear.ᾠ

If Bauer believes his claim about the Nazis is as true as his assertion about Soviets and Muslims, his place was at the head of Tehran Conference as the chief H-denier. If he does not believe his own claim, he is a liar and a defamer. The story of “Soviets planning to deport Jewsᾠ is an Israeli fabrication as false as a three-dollar bill and thoroughly debunked, too. If Stalin and Hitler were able to read Bauer’s talk in 1940, they won’t enter mutual annihilation war. But what is important for us is that Bauer construes every solidarist modern movement as “anti-Jewishᾠ, while Liberalism is as Jewish as gefilte fish.

What indeed is Liberalism? Some scholars follow Weber and describe Liberalism as secularised Protestantism. Others pay attention to its anti-religious anti-Church tendency and see Liberalism as secularised Satanism. The late Alexander Panarin considered it a form of idolatry based on the “heathen Myth of de-contextualised Goods and their de-socialised Consumersᾠ.

Armed with Schmitt’s thought and Bauer’s words and omissions, we may conclude: the “liberal democracy and human rightsᾠ doctrine carried by the US marines across the Tigris and the Oxus is a form of secularised Judaism. Considering the predominance of Jews in mass media and especially among the media lords, it is only natural that the ideology they promote is so close to Jewish heart. Its adepts retain classic Jewish attitudes; and the “uniqueness of Israelᾠ is a tenet of this “non-religiousᾠ school, whether in the form of the “uniqueᾠ Holocaust, or a “uniqueᾠ attachment to Palestine, or a “uniqueᾠ love of freedom and diversity. Indeed, while mosques burn in the Netherlands and churches are ruined in Israel, no emotions are stirred up in comparison to those set in motion when graffiti is written on a synagogue wall. The US grades its allies by their attitude towards Jews. The Holocaust Temple [“Museumᾠ] stands next to the White House. Support of the Jewish state is a sine qua non for American politicians. Bauer describes the horror of possible Nazi victory in such telling words: “There would be no Jews, because they would all be annihilated. This would end history as suchᾠ. In other words, history in Bauer’s eyes is about Jews. No Jews – no history. The rest of mankind are just sheep.

Secularised Judaism feels no aversion to Judaism, and this is the only religion protected within the dominant Liberal discourse. When some Russians tried to apply the Instigation of Hatred Law to Judaic anti-Christian diatribes, they were condemned not only by Jewish bodies, but by the White House and by the European Community as well. This week, a Lubavitch rabbi demanded that the Christmas trees be removed from Seattle Airport until a menorah was installed. The airport removed the trees, disclaiming its expertise in “cultural anthropology.ᾠ New York city schools won’t allow mention of Christmas but celebrate Hanukkah, Ramadan, and the silly Kwanza because they are all multicultural whereas Christmas is not. (Vdare.com is a good source for the war against Christmas strenuously denied by the media.) Every reference to Christ is fought off by the network of Human Rights bodies, ADL, ACLU and other PC enforcers, who never object to Jewish religious symbols.

When Secularised Orthodoxy, that is Russian Communism, conquered lands, they shared their faith and their resources with the conquered. Indeed, Soviet Russia was a net supplier to its “satellitesᾠ, and spent a fortune supporting Cuba, East Germany, Hungary, Poland and the Baltic states. After 1991, the ex-Soviet states remained owners of great industrial enterprises and energy complexes they thoroughly lacked before their integration within the Soviet Commonwealth. One of the more successful propaganda slogans of the USSR’s liberal destroyers was “enough of feeding foreignersᾠ.

Secularised Judaism conquers lands in order to rob and destroy them. For forty years of Jewish rule in Palestine, not a single building was constructed by the authorities, but thousands were demolished. Although thoroughly secularised, the Jewish state embodies the paranoid Jewish fear and loathing of the stranger, while the Cabal policies of the Pentagon are another manifestation of this same fear and loathing on a global scale. The Secular Judaic Jihad in Iraq turned the fertile Mesopotamia into a wasteland. Countries that have been fully subdued by the Liberals – Haiti, Malawi – are the poorest of all.

Hold on here! you’ll say. What a load of trash! Judaism is one of the great monotheistic religions; Judaists believe in the same God we Christians and Muslims believe. Judaists are our comrades in the common struggle against godless subversion. Judaism has nothing in common with anti-spiritual, materialistic, anti-religious cult of globalisation, neo-liberalism, consumerism, alienation, denial of roots, destruction of family and of nature. It’s the other way around: Judaism postulates the priority of spirit, the sanctity of family, the preservation of nature; Judaic communities are well known for their solidarity and mutual support, for tradition and for the togetherness of people united-in-God.

This is strong objection; and apparently it shatters our identification of Liberalism as Secular Judaism. But only apparently; for this objection is based on faulty premise. Judaism (like the Roman God Janus) has two faces; one facing the Jews, and other facing the Goyim, non-Jews. It makes two opposing sets of demands to Jews and to Goyim. This is the difference between Judaism on one hand, and Christianity, Islam, Buddhism on the other hand. These great faiths place no demands on non-adept except for the call to become one. The only thing the Church wants from a non-Christian is to become Christian. Judaism does not want to transform a goy into a Jew. It is almost impossible, almost forbidden, certainly disproved of. But Judaism places definite demands on a non-Jew who has the misfortune to be under its rule. He should not imitate a Jew, and thus the goy is forbidden to have a religion, he may not celebrate his own religious feasts, he may not help his brethren; he should be an economic animal. Secularised Judaism tends to be Judaism for Goyim, for Judaism-for-Jews has its sacral core.

Moreover, all the liberal ideas we described fit Judaism-for-Goyim.

· Denial of Group Rights. In Judaism, Goyim have no group rights. Jews are entitled to participate in the society as a group, but non-Jews should play as individuals, an attitude of “You have individual rights, we have group rightsᾠ. Communal property of goyim is considered as abandoned. In the Jewish state, Jews freely take over the lands belonging to Palestinians as a group; it is only about confiscation of private Palestinian lands that discussion is permitted. In Liberal Secularised Judaism, workers’ solidarity should be broken, trade unions must be dismantled, but rich men’s solidarity is permitted. Privatisation is such a denial of group rights: if an asset does not belong to a private rich person, it is up for grabs.

· Minority rights and denial of majority rights. In Judaism, a non-Jewish majority has no rights; certainly not over Jews, and this is fully inherited by Liberalism. In the Russia of 1991-1993, the victory of Liberalism over Communism was achieved through the media de-legitimisation of Majority: it was called the “Aggressive and obedient majorityᾠ as opposed to the Enlightened Minority. An enlightened discourse in the West usually contains a hidden reference to John Stuart Mill, Madison, Alexis de Tocqueville and to the fear of the majority’s tyranny.

· Private (as opposed to public) ownership of media, or the exclusive right of rich men to form public opinion. A publicly-owned paper is usually contrasted with “free mediaᾠ, as if a newspaper belonging to a rich Jew is somehow more free than one that belongs to a state, to a church, or to a trade union.

· Women’s rights and Homosexual rights. Judaism does not recognise the goy’s family. This is fully inherited by liberalism: liberals do not believe in the non-privileged man’s family and want to dismantle it.

· Antiracism for a Jew is a tool in his natural struggle against the indigenous population; in the liberal paradigm, antiracism allows for the importation of a cheaper labour force, to undermine trade unions and to operate world-wide in a race to the bottom for wages.

· Judaism considers welfare a unique feature of Judaic community, while the goyim are not allowed such prerogatives as agape for mutual aide and protection. Liberals are actively undoing welfare, unless it serves to support their companies and corporations or as a government policy to foster support for immigrants and demographic upheaval as an ad hoc measure to undermine national communities and to racialize politics.

· Freedom of anti-Christian propaganda. Liberalism does not fight Judaism, but carries on a relentless struggle against Christianity. In liberal America, judges condemn the Catholic Church for its teachings, ban Christmas trees and usher a new expurgated Bible.

· Democracy. In the liberal paradigm, if you do not agree with the liberal ideas, your voice is not counted; a defence against the Tyranny of Majority is activated. If you agree, it does not matter for whom you vote, as the result will the same. They call Israel “a democracyᾠ, though the majority of its goyim have no right to vote, and those who can vote are kept out of power by invoking the “Jewish majorityᾠ. The democratic victories of Hamas in Palestine, and of Lukashenko in Belarus were considered illegal; in Serbia, they repeated the elections until they obtained the sought-after result.

· Thus we come to a conclusion: modern American liberalism is secularised Judaism for Gentiles, and not freedom from religious pressure, as its proponents claim.

Why have the US and Britain succumbed to this strange ideology? A probable answer to this can be found in British history. Recent studies by Dr Mark Thomas, UCLA claim that in 5th-7th century, pre-Christian Saxon tribes conquered Britain and established an “apartheid societyᾠ of 10000 invaders in the midst of 2 million natives. They eventually outbred the natives: “An initially small invading Anglo-Saxon elite could have quickly established themselves by having more children who survived to adulthood, thanks to their military power and economic advantage. They also prevented the native British genes getting into the Anglo-Saxon population by restricting intermarriage in a system of apartheid that left the country culturally and genetically Germanised. As the result, Britain has a population of largely Germanic genetic origin, speaking a principally German language,ᾠ writes Thomas.

Thus, some of the British population have an inbuilt genetic memory of a successful evolutionary strategy connected with apartheid and with application of “Judaicᾠ principles. The Jews have no copyright on being nasty; and the quaint British meddling with the Lost Tribes myth has more to do with Saxons than with Israelites. As long as Britain was Catholic and Christian, this tendency was kept in check; but came the Reformation, with its wholesale import of Judaic ideas of the Old Testament, followed by the import of their Talmudic reading from the Netherlands during the Orange Revolution. The religious muzzle came off, and the enclosures devoured traditional England. In this great bout of privatisation, the landlords partitioned, privatised and fenced off the commons. Like their Judaic predecessors, they disregarded the group rights of native underprivileged classes, of “the goyimᾠ of the New Order. They applied their strategy in Ireland and Wales, and later in North America and Australia, and caused the extinction of millions of natives. Many Brits, Americans and Australians have the memory of the successful strategy; it makes them so prone to philo-Judaic policy and to the implementation of quasi-Judaic measures.

Certainly, colonisation and ruling military caste formation did not occur only in Britain. There is the Aryan Conquest in the Indian tradition, or Frank rule in France. The French solved the problem by the National Razor of Dr Guillotin in the Big Terror of 1793, where the idea of different-by-blood aristocracy was heavily exploited by the middle-class revolutionaries. Even today the Polish nobles claim that they are descendants of non-Slavic Sarmats, as opposed to ordinary Poles who are Slavs. This “Sarmatᾠ claim of the Polish nobility (which entails contempt for an ordinary Pole as an alien) was an important reason why Poland tolerated and nurtured the biggest Jewish community ever to exist on earth.

Wherever it gains the upper hand, the Liberal Secular Judaic doctrine creates enormous gaps between the upper and lower castes. Indeed, in the US, 60 million Americans live on $7 a day, while a happy few have billions they can’t possibly spend. This represents a very successful evolutionary strategy for the ruling minority. It is so successful, that eventually the ruled majority may have to apply drastic measures to moderate its success.
 
Carl Schmitt? I would beware of anyone who bases their ideas on Carl Schmitt. He was a leading Nazi theorist. Not to say he didn't have some interesting ideas, but you have to be REALLY careful with these types of ideas.

Also, 'inbuilt genetic memory'? Nonsense. At least in the way it's used in this piece.

Are you saying by quoting this piece that racism is good? That's the implication if Shamir says anti-racism is bad. If not, how do you )or Shamir, for that matter) resolve this?
 
I'm not saying there isn't something to be gleaned from this article, but most of this seems to be poorly researched and even more poorly written. I think it's main flaw is Shamir's liberal (pun intended) use of undefined 'isms'. There are some many 'isms' its hard to even thouroghly critisize the piece, so I will second what Donald wrote.
 
I noticed the quote by Carl Schmitt too, and the name did ring a bell. I knew he was a leading Nazi philosopher (and a possible influence on current Neocon thinking) but even a broken clock is right twice a day.

The main reason I appreciated this article was his comments on the ideology of liberalism and the fact that it is indeed an aggressive ideology. Being in university in political science I can say that liberalism is the basis on which everything else is judged. The fact that liberalism is used as a weapon against other people, something that is supposidly contradictory, is also something that resonated with me.

I don't remember reading about the "inbuilt genetic memory" nor that he necessarily approved of racism. Although just because I posted the article does not mean I agree with the entire thing. I happen to disagree with a some of it particularly the way he seems to pander to the conservative right wing christian mentality. The War on Christmas, aside for a few glaring examples, is mostly absurd bunk used to distract the small minded (even a cartoon like "American Dad" was able to demonstrate this).

Still the main appeal to me in the article was its critique on liberalism as an ideological weapon used domestically and abroad while pretending that it is the highest form of living possible and not just another ideology in itself. That's pretty much it. That and the fact that Shamir's articles have appeared here before, and the current zeitgeist of critiquing ideologies, I figured the article would have some value.
 
I agree that liberalism has its own peculiar tyranny. I wouldn't want to throw out the tolerance, equality and individual rights and all that with the bathwater.

I agree that there is value in discussing this, though. Like Kesdjan said, though, Shamir is kind of sloppy. I think I might check out Schmitt, though. Lots of non-racist, non-fascist thinkers have cited Schmitt.

OPINMYND81 said:
Still the main appeal to me in the article was its critique on liberalism as an ideological weapon used domestically and abroad while pretending that it is the highest form of living possible and not just another ideology in itself. That's pretty much it. That and the fact that Shamir's articles have appeared here before, and the current zeitgeist of critiquing ideologies, I figured the article would have some value.
 
The Americans demanded that Schmitt give proof of belief in Liberal Democracy, while the Russians never asked him to swear an oath upon the Communist Manifesto.
How odd. This is how I would have interpreted these actions through the lense of a lot of cynisism, lol.

Americans: We don't trust you, Mr Political Thinker, we need you to swear an oath of loyalty so we can trust you a bit more... Oh, and by the way we just might be able to 'make use' of you at some stage because people listen to you, right?

Russians: Go away, you're just a nobody. We're not interested in your political views, in fact we are completely indifferent to them. As long as you stay quiet and agree to have communism foisted on you like all the other 'citzens'... we won't make life 'difficult'. Its all the same to us, now don't bother us.

I'm not sure if this reveals any biases in my attitudes towards Russian and American behaviour just after the war. :)
 
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