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Nationalist negation of the diaspora and theodicy: where they intersect

When the audio transcript of John Hagee’s theodical justification of the Holocaust (and, by extension, Christian anti-Semitism) as a means of accomplishing Christian eschatological ends through mass Jewish aliyah surfaced online in 2008, various political sectors observing the then-ongoing presidential election leveled intense scrutiny against Hagee and the Republican presidential aspirant who had courted Hagee’s support in the election; not least among those reacting sectors were the demographically-dwindling Jewish members of the Holocaust survivor community, who took particular exception to Hagee’s open and explicit co-opting of both an ideologically-driven tragedy that wreaked so much havoc upon them and the repatriative ideology of Israeli Jewish nationalism – both of which emphatically exclaim that the adherents to the Jewish religion, including the dead victims and living survivors of the Holocaust, do not belong anywhere else in the world but Israel – as a positive step toward the eventual end and destruction of the world (according to the Christian worldview).

Within Judaism, theodical explanations for the Holocaust have been offered – and just as fiercely rejected and demeaned among Jewish survivors of the Holocaust – by Haredi (Orthodox) rabbis and rabbinical authorities, including former Sephardic Chief Rabbi of Israel Ovadia Yosef (repeatedly) and the late Rebbe of the Chabad Lubavitch sect, Menachem Schneerson. 

But an interesting aspect of John Hagee’s intersection of Jewish aliyah with the Holocaust (as a forceful push), Israel (as a destination to be pushed toward), anti-Semitism (as an ideological justification), Negation of the diaspora (as a process) and Christian eschatological timing (as the end and answer to all of the above) is that he only added a further layer to the belief that the Jews are only a collective object to be pushed around at the whim of their neighbors, most of whom want to push them entirely away from themselves and reject the view that these people are citizens of their own countries (or, in the case of Iran and the USSR, keep them within their own states in order to eventually drive the Jewish religion or sense of ancestral/cultural homeland out of their adherent citizens and turn them into compliant, assimilated citizens). Another, more crazed dimension to this meme is the long list of ethnic enclaves to which various powers sought to pull or push the Jews as a people, the majority of which placed the Jews in the most-isolated (or least-populable) outposts of various continents.

This meme of constricting an entire people into one place in the world was also visited at one point by both U.S. philanthropists and (repeatedly) Afro-American ethnonationalists upon the Afro-American minority of the U.S. in the view that Afro-Americans cannot ever belong in this society, and that the colorism, racism, ethnic segregation and slavery foisted upon them was the end result of existing in a majority-European-populated country, and that the only country in which they could feel safe and defend themselves and their interests would be in a country that was ruled and majority-populated by their "kind", reasonably removed from the land of their should-be-former oppressors, and build alliances with foreign powers which work to their own best interests. Of course, Liberia didn’t attract the majority of the African-American population, and neither did Sierra Leone attract the majority of former British Empire slaves and maroons, but both countries became templates for the sometimes-mutual ideological movement for repatriation, which presented the two agents – the repatriater and the receiver – view the same people within endemic views which complimented each other: the repatriating country saw the ethnicity as trash, and the receiving country saw the ethnicity as treasure. 

This trash-treasure view is embraced in some countries in Europe by far-right nationalists, who often participated in discussions which demonized the Jews as "parasitic" "trash" which could only gain respect if they were as far away from their own white, European Christian selves as possible (hence the oft-used expression by far-rightists in Europe "go back to Israel", which is probably less used than "to the ovens" or "Hitler should’ve finished the job"). The BNP in the UK (and, perhaps, the NASOFI group in Germany) is one of the more notable "converts" to this ideology, particularly as it pragmatically-partners with the pro-Israel right (seeing that Israel plays a useful role in decimating the presence of Jews in Europe and earns its macho stripes in "kicking barbarian ass") against Muslim fundamentalists in an about face from their previous stance against the presence of Jews in the UK. 

To the theodical and eschatological views typical of Hagee, however, perhaps the Jews are seen less within the "trash-to-treasure" spectrum and more along a "wandering, rebellious ram to docile, sacrificial lamb" spectrum. For Hagee, it matters less that the Jews get out of his country and stop being "parasitic" "pests" and more that they stop being so gosh-darn rebellious and proceed to fully populate Israel and the West Bank in order to set the stage for Christian eschatology already (even if it means that there are few rebellious Jews left in North America in his view, or the less, the merrier!).

What do Israelis get out of repatriation (whether it is justified by anti-Semitic or "philo-"Semitic reasons)? They regain their homeland in full, get back the Temple Mount, smooth out the wrinkles caused by the initial Roman kickout of their ancestors nearly 2000 years prior (or get those other tribes’s lost descendants back as genetic citizens, if possible), let the Arab-Israeli dispute settle down somewhat, hope that the European Union can nip the pervasive anti-Judaism meme that caused incidents like the Holocaust in the root, hope that both Christianity and Islam both deservedly grind themselves and each other into dusty minority stubs over their very structures of propagation and expansion, and so on. (Sorry, no Holocaust Part 2: Christian Apocalypse – ed.).

But perhaps there will be an end to the usage of the Jewish people as an object to be carried around. Maybe the Jewish nationalism in Israel will be less propelled (or resisted) in its persistence and will morph into something else (like most nationalisms do after the threat of eminent danger has passed), even as the religion continues among its practitioners and leaders without as much molestation, or becomes subject to another cataclysmic schism within the group. 

EDIT 1/1/2011: Let me also emphasize that one component of this belief – that the Jews are a monolithic people who are destined to be placed in some part of the world at the end of time – also intersects with the study of any nation-state’s own intersection with its own diaspora. Diasporas can be used as couriers and beneficiaries of the homeland state’s own relationship with another state, or they can be rejected by their homeland state’s government due to an antagonistic foreign policy against political exiles. 

 
Thus, if diasporas are seen as "useable" or "disposable" by the home country’s ruling government when they are not resident inside the home country, then such a perception should be judged by observers of human rights as a barometer in terms of that home country’s civil and human rights record, holing just as much validity in terms of observation as the treatment of that same country’s current residents and citizens, immigrants, expatriates, etc. 

Wiley Drake’s “imprecatory prayers” as autoterrorism

Still thinking about Wiley Drake long after his notorious pronouncement of imprecatory prayer upon Obama’s life.  

I’m wondering, though, about how befuddled the immediate reaction against Drake’s announcement became, as the reaction varied between "This is Abrahamic religion in the raw" to "well, he’s not encouraging others to pray the same prayer, but it still could inflame violent opinion or reaction against Obama".

Now let’s think about it: Drake was officially entitled by the 1st amendment to pray this prayer for himself as long as he didn’t communicate this as a desire for other people to act upon (which could be described as "incitement to murder", or if there is a monetary incentive, "solicitation of murder"). However, that the reaction against the idea of an imprecatory prayer – where you pray to your preferred imaginary friend or imaginary surrogate parent to wreak havoc upon another individual’s life or livelihood so that you don’t have to – tends to exhibit the continuing fear within the public of incitement of the supernatural to harm a mortal individual.

But if, from an atheist standpoint, such incitements of imaginary beings are only being directed to a memory or concept within one’s mind, and that the violent thought is only involving the burning of an effigy within one’s mind rather than a public effigy burning, then maybe this burning or killing of one’s enemy within one’s mind counts as "autoterrorism", or terrorism against one’s own self.

It can be considered an act against the self because it dedicates the mind’s resources to killing one’s own concept of a living being through incitement of the imagination to that effect. Since this does not involve any mock killing of an effigy in public or the solicitation/incitement to the public to kill a living person, then the act of terrorism only takes place within the mind against an externally-influenced product of the mind. This playout of terroristic acts by the mind against its own production can only be described as terrorism against the self if the skeptical outside observer ignores or denies the existence of supernatural beings.

So prayer, when directed toward the solicitation of murder by a supernatural being, is meant as a reinforcement toward the mind’s own action of terrorism against its own concepts of an individual or group. Imprecatory prayer (including curses) can be best described as autoterrorism. 

Privatization of the family: a furry example

Among many libertarians and a few progressivists, the concept of marriage privatization – where the state does not involve itself in the definition of marriage – has gained increasing worth as the debate over LGBT rights continues to intensify in the United States. Of course, a main fear over the concept is the possibility that religious groups could run amok with their own definitions and performances of family relationships which would clash with other religious groups’ definitions and performances, particularly as those who advocate for marriage privatization have not as forcefully argued for a secularization of the institution (in which religious groups’ performances are not recognized by the state, which only recognizes privately-composed contracts).

More on furries, marriage privatization, and the Internet…

Idea on the next generation of virtual worlds

A thought just came to mind less than an hour ago: the upcoming decade will see virtual world networks (within the "3D web") which are much less emphasizing of the "world" aspect (as in the "outside" environment of Second Life) and much more emphasizing of interconnected "rooms" (a bit like IMVU, but where the user creates one’s own persistent room in which to store models and widgets and simply invites or is invited to other rooms through hyperlinks embedded within the room).

This came to mind as I thought about how the World Wide Web had evolved in the 1990s and 2000s. In the ’90s, the emphasis was laid upon allowing people to create their own custom homepages, with a variety of template arrangements, on a number of ad-supported or user-paid webhosts (Geocities, Tripod, Angelfire, Freewebs, .Mac, FurNation, Furtopia). In the 2000s, most attention was paid to the rise of social networking sites which, while increasingly restricting the ability to arrange visual cues and templates within the page (i.e., from MySpace to Facebook), allowed users to post a larger variety of content by streamlining user publication of webpages. 

So, if the variety of 3D virtual worlds continues to increase in the 2010s, I expect that the ability to create 3D spaces/rooms and post models into them will become further streamlined and automated, but the spaces will also become further boxed in and increasingly uncustomizable in the process. 

This dynamic room publication will also allow users to make as many rooms in the 3D WWW as there are pages on the 2D WWW.

Enemies lists: or, “The world is going to hell, YAY!”

Whether its DiscoverTheNetworks, Masada2000’s (s)hitlist, the Nuremberg Files, or Nixon’s (or Scientology’s) Enemies list, any public, Internet-accessible list of names of personalities who are categorized as agents and foot soldiers of the list compiler’s "true enemy" tends to invite general public scrutiny concerning the purpose or intended use of that list. However, a public hit list is not often designed in a similar fashion as a solicitation to murder (such as that lobbed by the Iranian clerical regime against Salman Rushdie in the 1980s), as these lists can serve as invitations to general intimidation of the mentioned individuals. These databases of names, at best, are a sort of non-governmental "know your enemies" directive which are intended to influence and direct the minds and actions of fellow ideologues against specific targets which are perceived as the most tender joints and tendons of the larger body of that most fearsome "conspiracy" against the pet ideology of the list’s compilers.

I cannot say that enemies’ lists, (s)hitlists and rogue galleries are an effective means of ensuring the success of the list compiler’s ideology, but it is interesting in how such lists are used by non-governmental, non-commercial organizations and social-religious movements. Should such lists be compiled?

More on editing the Jefferson Bible: de-geographization

I edited a copy of Jefferson’s Bible to remove the words "Jews" (replaced with "the people"), "Israel" and "Judaea" (replaced both with "the land"), and "Jerusalem" (replaced with "Great City"). I’m still thinking about replacing other notable cities in Israel with non-descript synonyms.

The reason for that is my recent idea that Christianity’s doctrinal obsessions over Judaism, Israel and Jerusalem are manifested both in anti-Judaic/anti-Semitic and Christian Zionist/apocalyptic extremes, both of which de-humanize the Jews into tools for Christian eschatological machinations; the same treatment is afforded regularly to Israel and its cities, especially Jerusalem. 

In fact, what helped me come to this conclusion is a documentary on Jerusalem syndrome which I watched a long while back. The syndrome, which has been documented by psychologists as happening primarily among both adherents to, and former subscribers to, Christianity in its more established forms and denominations, is an affliction which manifests itself in a number of ways ranging from tripping out (as in coming to the idea that you are a reincarnation of King David) to falling out (as in running around in the street, claiming that you are a prophet for "God’s imminent coming", or trying to blow up the al-Aqsa Mosque in order to hasten the aforementioned eschatological event). 

Perhaps, by removing all explicit references to landforms and extant human settlements in Israel and nearby areas, Jefferson’s Bible can be further removed from the precipice of absent-minded bigotry and inanity which has been occupied by various translations and versions of the New Testament for over a thousand and a half years or more. 

My edit of Jefferson’s Bible is designed, in my opinion, to resemble the Book of Job – sans the supernatural content – in its non-localization; basically, the less that people know of the whereabouts of the land of Uz, the better chance that Christians won’t desire a Crusade to gain it back for Christendom. The same approach should be used for explaining Jesus’ concepts on ethics – that he was simply a guy who lived in such-and-such place who demanded a reform of the ethical system of his culture and pissed off the cultural leaders enough that he was accused of apostasy and was executed. No depiction as a prophet, no virgin birth, no miracles, no blaming a specific extant people and religion for the problems in society, no mentioning of a specific target people. Just the facts and no more.

Furthermore, if neither the Jews nor any part of Israel are mentioned in the New Testament, then perhaps it will finally exempt Judaism’s subscribers and associates from those special "tender mercies" and "caring love" which Christians and ex-Christians, for millenia, have desired to shower upon the Jews in particular (and, with just as much fervor, LGBT people). The Jews won’t be that group of people upon which so much is blamed (issues in Southwest Asia, blood libel, world domination, being too smart – for which I had fallen a few years ago and have yet to shake off – and so on).

It doesn’t mean that I will convert to a customized Christianity or identity as a Christian; too many hangups from years past, so I can never fathom returning to it. I COULD convert to Reform Judaism or anything left of that (the more conservative Judaic denominations tend to wax more authoritarian and chaotic against their members and competing sects), but I fancy the more ancient (semi-)polytheistic – or even (semi-)polyDEistic – folk belief systems, at least more for their ability to not rule out other fellow deities with as much fervor as Abrahamic monotheism.

Of course, if I were to identify with a religion now, I’d say Buddhism mixed with a fondness for Pagan and Neopagan traditions.

But if I’ve only made one contribution to the world for which I can have no regrets, it is to help de-supernaturalize and somewhat de-bigotize the scriptural basis of a religion which holds sway over a sixth of the world’s population. 

IdeaTorrent

IdeaTorrent, the server software which runs Ubuntu Brainstorm, may be the best user-generated approval and discussion system that I’ve seen since Digg was launched some years back. Instead of the initial post link being the only thing (besides comments) upon which users can submit single votes of approval (or, since Reddit, downvotes of disapproval), users can now submit and vote upon proposed "solutions" which are listed under an initial post, in addition to providing comments (I don’t think comments are voted upon in IdeaTorrent’s system). 

I would describe IdeaTorrent’s approach as a sort of user-driven vote-based survey forum, in which questions or concerns are voiced (once, preferably) and users submit and vote upon answers or solutions for such concerns before they offer their comments and reactions.

I think that this could be used by user-driven news-discussion/news-vetting forums which are often solicited for answers or solutions, such as Care2, GreenChange, and Reddit. It could help users focus less upon the popularity or awareness of a recent issue or information (as in how many votes have been recorded, how many comments have been submitted, how long the story stays on the front page), and more upon what solutions or responses are most ideal or popular. 

Furthermore, this may be a further elaboration upon the separation of reactions from comments which I’ve come to favor in newer user-ranking news discussion forums. IdeaTorrent’s model is, overall, a step in the right direction.

Skin color in LGBT artistic porn

 Being someone who identifies as gay but is hardly acculturated to the lives of gay and bi males in constant close proximity and density compared to those who live in more urbane areas, I can readily admit that most of my day-to-day experience with the gay experience is composed of perusing artistic, fantastical displays on the Web. I’m not as frequent in coming across photographic depictions of m/m and m/solo models, unless fantastical photomanipulations can count as photographic depictions.

Read more of this hackey-sounding rant on skin color in LGBT porn…

Religion, descent and the one-drop rule

This morning, I thought about how religion uses patrilineal or matrilineal descent as a means of indicating whether one has been born into the religion of his or her most immediate ancestor(s), and how, in the case of Judaism and Islam, such stipulations have been contorted by both adherents, non-adherents and detractors from a simple Abrahamic membership inheritance issue into an ethnoracial issue in those societies which observe an Abrahamic religion on a majority basis.

Continue reading Religion, descent and the one-drop rule

Exile politics

I understand the impulse for diaspora/exile politics, especially the types which exist regarding Burma, Tibet, China, Cuba, Israel, Sri Lanka and Zimbabwe, even though I somewhat abhor the violence, propaganda and ill feelings which usually accompany such politics. I’m far less understanding of the bitter anti-exile feelings which pervade much of the left wing in the United States.

For instance, when Spain’s Civil War ended in 1939 with a Falangist victory, a Republican government-in-exile was created in the resulting Spanish Republican diaspora which jettisoned to the United Kingdom and many parts of Latin America, and that same diaspora did not make amends with the Spanish state until democracy returned under the rule of the current monarch, Juan Carlos I, in the late 1970s.

At the same time, when a diaspora in favor of a currently-installed regime has a larger presence in another country, a large number of that diaspora’s local branch will lobby in favor of satisfactory treatment in foreign relations with their home country’s current regime.

I don’t even think that most people on the left know how to perceive diaspora politics or understand the feelings and impulses which are embedded in such politics, unless (of course) they revert to early 20th century paranoia about "dem hyphenated Americans" which were uttered by at least one or two presidents.