Trump's recent decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel is first of all an act of diplomatic 2D checkers (as opposed to 4D chess) that greatly undermines America's position in the Middle East. But it also raises the specific question of how Israel morally justifies its existence, and the general question of how moral power flows and shapes political power in the World (and vice versa). This is not as simple as it sounds when you are effectively a post-colonial colonial state as Israel is, having been born in 1948 in the teeth of the great wave of decolonisation that swept the World for the next 30 years.
A true Dissident Right position on Israel—as opposed to the rubbish found in the Alt-Right's Stormer wing—would be rather complex, as there is much that is admirable about the state of Israel from a Dissident Right perspective.
Firstly it is an ethnostate, which is simply a term for a healthy state that endeavours to pursue the interests of the ethnos that defines it; and, secondly, due to its extremely recent establishment in the face of opposition, it appears to enshrine notions of struggle, overcoming, victory, and merit—in short the very essence of historical progress throughout the ages, whereby superior political entities displace inferior ones, thus advancing the great wheel of civilisation. The fact that it is a uniquely post-colonial colonial state, may actually be one of its great merits.
The Dissident Right is objective enough to actually recognise how history works—the sacred laws of history—rather than indulge in cheap chronocentric emotionalism and trite moral signalling. This means that we can ascribe moral values to the operative principles that have underlain much of history, such as the "principle of conquest." The Left, by contrast, with its shrill, "pacifist" Bonobo mentality, absurdly views all historical conquest as automatically "evil" and as a means to guilt trip any historically successful society that is going through a decadent phase. In its essence this is simply the weaponisation of cheap, post-Christian morality in order to enable Leftists to rent-seek and socially signal in various demonstrably pathological ways.
Cuckservatives, as intellectual midgets, have little to offer to the debate. They are simply cowed by the trite analysis of the Left and seduced by the whiff of departed Christianity, and trail along in its wake, reluctantly and dragging their heels, but challenging nothing, and meanwhile quietly outraged that the Dissident Right rejects this false morality, and views conquest in terms of how it facilitates greater historical progress.
While the Leftist bleats about the conquest of America and Australia by the British, the Dissident Rightist points to the vast improvements for all concerned in the creation of high-powered modern societies in these territories (with some caveats about creeping degeneracy and decay). But even though these societies are far from perfect and may even be in relatively rapid decline, they would have to decline an extremely long way to reach the low levels of what they replaced.
But while the Left attempts to deny the kind of historical morality generated by a "superior" state displacing an inferior one, this process has a general validity, as revealed by the conduct of Israel itself and its propaganda.
From its foundation as a "settler state" displacing, absorbing, and imposing itself on the previous inhabitants, Israel used this idea of civilisational—and indeed technological and agricultural—progress as one of the chief planks of its campaign of moral justification. This was best encapsulated in the "meme" of the "greening" of the Negev desert by the introduction of irrigation farming, with the implication that under the "primitive" Palestinians, the "rich potential" of the un-kibbutzised and unsecured land had gone to waste.
However, there is a major problem with using this principle of conquest and improvement to justify the existence of Israel. While a more historically progressive state, like Britain in the 18th century or America in the 19th century could claim the right to conquer and colonise land, this was only valid because they could do it unaided and on their own merits. Indeed, the British conquered North America, among other places, not just from the indigenous peoples but against opposition from other European powers.
Israel, by contrast, has been given a leg up and put into the saddle by others. Britain essentially incubated the future state during the mandate period, protecting it when it was most vulnerable from those whom it would later replace, while America has been to the fore ever since, supplying every kind of assistance. To the degree that Israel has benefitted from—and continues to accept—Western help to achieve its existence, it invalidates its moral claim on the land by this principle of conquest.
Instead, the fact of its reliance on the Global West means that it is a de facto colonial excrescence of that nebulous entity, and thus shares in the general moral vacuity of the Western rejection of colonialism in the post-WWII period. Much of Israeli propaganda aims to obfuscate this reliance on Western help, which we see encapsulated in another meme, that of the state being created despite British attempts to prevent refugee Jews emigrating to Israel, as if Israel somehow had to overcome Britain in order to be born—an actual inversion of reality, as it was the British government's Balfour Declaration and subsequent acts that allowed Israel to take shape under the protection of the British.
But Israel likes to have it both ways. Rather than allowing any perception of its dependence on Western support to invalidate its claim "by conquest" on the territories it now possesses, Israel perversely seeks to use this dependence to also justify its claim. It does this by presenting itself as a "representative" of Western democratic civilisation and values, and makes a call on the West for help in an implied civilisational struggle for "common values." The typifying meme here is one about Israel being The Only Democracy in the Middle East™. To the degree that the West swallows this narrative, and goes along with helping Israel to maintain its existence on this false basis, it unwittingly gives substance to the moral claim made by Israel that it is "representative" of Western democratic values and civilisation.
This may seem like an example of Jewish chutzpah, but is in fact an expression of Israel's power to manipulate and distort morality. But the moralistic sleight of hand here is an admission of the underlying absurdities and contradictions in the Jewish moral position when viewed objectively, i.e. from a Dissident Right perspective.
In the early years of its existence, Israel played a clever game, posing as a non-religious, soft-Leftist, "accidentally Jewish" state that was open to the World and unfairly threatened by its Soviet co-opted neighbours. For the particular benefit of the American public, it even posed as an anti-Soviet bastion, against states like Nasserite Egypt and Syria, which had been subverted to some degree by Soviet influence.
In fact, the Cold War was extremely useful for Israel, allowing it to signal its "Western-civ" credentials without these being looked at too closely, and without questions being raised about the inherent contradictions in Israeli positions that have become much more noticeable in recent years.
Especially during the period in which Netanyahu has dominated its politics (1996-the present), Israel has become increasingly and blatantly ethnonationalist—the very antithesis of what are supposed to be contemporary "Western values" according to the position supported by the Jewish lobby in the West. This more overtly ethnonationalist tendency is driven by demographic shifts within Israel, as well as concerns about terrorism and territorial consolidation. But it also happened because America enjoyed for much of that period a relatively unchallenged hegemony (following the collapse of the Soviet Union), allowing Israel to take liberties it couldn't take in the 1970s and 80s, and which it will find difficult to take in the more Russian-dominated Middle East that is now emerging.
This means, however, that there is now a blatantly exposed moral contradiction at the heart of Israeli position, as it is increasingly recognised that the "Western democratic values" that Jewish organisations promote in the West ("open borders" and anti-nationalism) would in fact destroy Israel, if implemented there. This is something that the Left and the BDS movement clearly understand, and accordingly they attempt to hold Israel to the same values that the Jewish lobby promotes in the West.
Surprisingly, the main weakness of Israel has turned out to be its enormous donative and media might, which has allowed it to put itself in this ultimately untenable position through short-termist moral manipulations.
Israel has had enormous "moral power"—i.e. the ability to distort moral arguments in its favour—but moral power, let us be clear, is not the same as morality. Moral power is the ability to twist morality, and is therefore in a sense its exact opposite. Without broad-based strength, this is a major problem and indeed ultimately a weakness. Israel can constantly propagandise, bribe, and trick others, but in so doing it ultimately ends up tricking itself. More importantly, its reliance on such perverse "moral power" means that it avoids grounding itself in a true, sustainable morality that is suitable for its situation.
That situation, to be precise, is a situation of conquest, either in its own name or as part of a greater entity, namely the global West—or it is nothing. With that as the foundational premise, there are two possible true moralities for the state of Israel to adopt:
But the more moral choices are also hard. The first of the two mentioned above clearly has heavy social costs and would require a constant state of tension and alarm that the Jewish people seem temperamentally unsuited for. There would be extreme brittleness in all that. Indeed the present Israeli state is developing partly along these lines, and is showing some of these dangerous stresses and strains.
The second moral choice is perhaps the best one, the most natural, and also the easiest, although that too has deep costs. This is mainly because it would require World Jewry to start behaving in quite different ways from those that have defined it. But if the effort were made honestly and sincerely, this would have the best chance of reconciling Israel with the West, and thus securing the future of Israel, as part of a more assertive and ethnocentric Western civilisation, holding Islam in check.
However, most of the trends now underway are clearly working against this, creating the conditions of growing Israeli isolation, long-term weakness, and ultimate destruction.
In short, only the Dissident Right can save Israel. One wonders how that undeniable truth sits with the most perspicacious among the Jews.
A true Dissident Right position on Israel—as opposed to the rubbish found in the Alt-Right's Stormer wing—would be rather complex, as there is much that is admirable about the state of Israel from a Dissident Right perspective.
Firstly it is an ethnostate, which is simply a term for a healthy state that endeavours to pursue the interests of the ethnos that defines it; and, secondly, due to its extremely recent establishment in the face of opposition, it appears to enshrine notions of struggle, overcoming, victory, and merit—in short the very essence of historical progress throughout the ages, whereby superior political entities displace inferior ones, thus advancing the great wheel of civilisation. The fact that it is a uniquely post-colonial colonial state, may actually be one of its great merits.
The Dissident Right is objective enough to actually recognise how history works—the sacred laws of history—rather than indulge in cheap chronocentric emotionalism and trite moral signalling. This means that we can ascribe moral values to the operative principles that have underlain much of history, such as the "principle of conquest." The Left, by contrast, with its shrill, "pacifist" Bonobo mentality, absurdly views all historical conquest as automatically "evil" and as a means to guilt trip any historically successful society that is going through a decadent phase. In its essence this is simply the weaponisation of cheap, post-Christian morality in order to enable Leftists to rent-seek and socially signal in various demonstrably pathological ways.
Cuckservatives, as intellectual midgets, have little to offer to the debate. They are simply cowed by the trite analysis of the Left and seduced by the whiff of departed Christianity, and trail along in its wake, reluctantly and dragging their heels, but challenging nothing, and meanwhile quietly outraged that the Dissident Right rejects this false morality, and views conquest in terms of how it facilitates greater historical progress.
While the Leftist bleats about the conquest of America and Australia by the British, the Dissident Rightist points to the vast improvements for all concerned in the creation of high-powered modern societies in these territories (with some caveats about creeping degeneracy and decay). But even though these societies are far from perfect and may even be in relatively rapid decline, they would have to decline an extremely long way to reach the low levels of what they replaced.
 |
| Inscribing ownership through agricultural improvement. |
From its foundation as a "settler state" displacing, absorbing, and imposing itself on the previous inhabitants, Israel used this idea of civilisational—and indeed technological and agricultural—progress as one of the chief planks of its campaign of moral justification. This was best encapsulated in the "meme" of the "greening" of the Negev desert by the introduction of irrigation farming, with the implication that under the "primitive" Palestinians, the "rich potential" of the un-kibbutzised and unsecured land had gone to waste.
However, there is a major problem with using this principle of conquest and improvement to justify the existence of Israel. While a more historically progressive state, like Britain in the 18th century or America in the 19th century could claim the right to conquer and colonise land, this was only valid because they could do it unaided and on their own merits. Indeed, the British conquered North America, among other places, not just from the indigenous peoples but against opposition from other European powers.
Israel, by contrast, has been given a leg up and put into the saddle by others. Britain essentially incubated the future state during the mandate period, protecting it when it was most vulnerable from those whom it would later replace, while America has been to the fore ever since, supplying every kind of assistance. To the degree that Israel has benefitted from—and continues to accept—Western help to achieve its existence, it invalidates its moral claim on the land by this principle of conquest.
Instead, the fact of its reliance on the Global West means that it is a de facto colonial excrescence of that nebulous entity, and thus shares in the general moral vacuity of the Western rejection of colonialism in the post-WWII period. Much of Israeli propaganda aims to obfuscate this reliance on Western help, which we see encapsulated in another meme, that of the state being created despite British attempts to prevent refugee Jews emigrating to Israel, as if Israel somehow had to overcome Britain in order to be born—an actual inversion of reality, as it was the British government's Balfour Declaration and subsequent acts that allowed Israel to take shape under the protection of the British.
But Israel likes to have it both ways. Rather than allowing any perception of its dependence on Western support to invalidate its claim "by conquest" on the territories it now possesses, Israel perversely seeks to use this dependence to also justify its claim. It does this by presenting itself as a "representative" of Western democratic civilisation and values, and makes a call on the West for help in an implied civilisational struggle for "common values." The typifying meme here is one about Israel being The Only Democracy in the Middle East™. To the degree that the West swallows this narrative, and goes along with helping Israel to maintain its existence on this false basis, it unwittingly gives substance to the moral claim made by Israel that it is "representative" of Western democratic values and civilisation.
This may seem like an example of Jewish chutzpah, but is in fact an expression of Israel's power to manipulate and distort morality. But the moralistic sleight of hand here is an admission of the underlying absurdities and contradictions in the Jewish moral position when viewed objectively, i.e. from a Dissident Right perspective.
In the early years of its existence, Israel played a clever game, posing as a non-religious, soft-Leftist, "accidentally Jewish" state that was open to the World and unfairly threatened by its Soviet co-opted neighbours. For the particular benefit of the American public, it even posed as an anti-Soviet bastion, against states like Nasserite Egypt and Syria, which had been subverted to some degree by Soviet influence.
 |
| Six Days War: Western vs. Soviet technology. |
Especially during the period in which Netanyahu has dominated its politics (1996-the present), Israel has become increasingly and blatantly ethnonationalist—the very antithesis of what are supposed to be contemporary "Western values" according to the position supported by the Jewish lobby in the West. This more overtly ethnonationalist tendency is driven by demographic shifts within Israel, as well as concerns about terrorism and territorial consolidation. But it also happened because America enjoyed for much of that period a relatively unchallenged hegemony (following the collapse of the Soviet Union), allowing Israel to take liberties it couldn't take in the 1970s and 80s, and which it will find difficult to take in the more Russian-dominated Middle East that is now emerging.
This means, however, that there is now a blatantly exposed moral contradiction at the heart of Israeli position, as it is increasingly recognised that the "Western democratic values" that Jewish organisations promote in the West ("open borders" and anti-nationalism) would in fact destroy Israel, if implemented there. This is something that the Left and the BDS movement clearly understand, and accordingly they attempt to hold Israel to the same values that the Jewish lobby promotes in the West.
Surprisingly, the main weakness of Israel has turned out to be its enormous donative and media might, which has allowed it to put itself in this ultimately untenable position through short-termist moral manipulations.
Israel has had enormous "moral power"—i.e. the ability to distort moral arguments in its favour—but moral power, let us be clear, is not the same as morality. Moral power is the ability to twist morality, and is therefore in a sense its exact opposite. Without broad-based strength, this is a major problem and indeed ultimately a weakness. Israel can constantly propagandise, bribe, and trick others, but in so doing it ultimately ends up tricking itself. More importantly, its reliance on such perverse "moral power" means that it avoids grounding itself in a true, sustainable morality that is suitable for its situation.
That situation, to be precise, is a situation of conquest, either in its own name or as part of a greater entity, namely the global West—or it is nothing. With that as the foundational premise, there are two possible true moralities for the state of Israel to adopt:
- Complete Juche-style self-reliance, justified by constant vigilance and strength. Essentially this would see Israel morphing into a Yiddish version of North Korea or 18th-century Prussia, and relying on its nuclear arsenal and a culture of extreme militarism, to be the unloved catalyst of ever-increasing Islamic unity. End result, a perpetual regional Cold War, in which Israel would face increasing diplomatic isolation and where one major misstep could see its end, possibly in a nuclear war.
- Israel as a true outpost of the the West, and thus supported by an undeceived West. But this would have to be a stronger, more expansionary, and anti-Islamic West, cleansed of the Leftist ideologies that the Jews have overwhelmingly supported in the past, and where Israel and the Jews fully supported Westerm ethno- and racio-centrism that echoed that of Israel itself. In such a West, Jews would no longer be seen as traitors, endeavouring to undermine the greater civilisation of which they were a part, but as defending that which defended them. This arrangement could only be achieved through what are essentially Dissident Right ideas of race realism, civilisational hierarchy, and culturism.
But the more moral choices are also hard. The first of the two mentioned above clearly has heavy social costs and would require a constant state of tension and alarm that the Jewish people seem temperamentally unsuited for. There would be extreme brittleness in all that. Indeed the present Israeli state is developing partly along these lines, and is showing some of these dangerous stresses and strains.
The second moral choice is perhaps the best one, the most natural, and also the easiest, although that too has deep costs. This is mainly because it would require World Jewry to start behaving in quite different ways from those that have defined it. But if the effort were made honestly and sincerely, this would have the best chance of reconciling Israel with the West, and thus securing the future of Israel, as part of a more assertive and ethnocentric Western civilisation, holding Islam in check.
However, most of the trends now underway are clearly working against this, creating the conditions of growing Israeli isolation, long-term weakness, and ultimate destruction.
In short, only the Dissident Right can save Israel. One wonders how that undeniable truth sits with the most perspicacious among the Jews.
