GEOPOLITICAL WELFARISM?

Special relationship

by Colin Liddell

It's a much respected adage on the Right side of politics that welfare and charity are bad for the recipients, especially too much of them.

Take, for example, sending your old clothes to Africa to help the naked and the starving. Great idea!

They were useless to you anyway, and destined for the dump. But now you're not only "saving the planet" by recycling, but you're also helping that touchstone of moral "feels," the lowly but entirely wonderful African, in his daily life. Almost as good as going to his village and digging him a well.

But are you really helping him?

Well, basically, no. All those free clothes dumped on the market end up getting sold and putting local clothes producers out of a job, encouraging yet more of the passive dependency that got them there in the first place—an ever downward spiral.

On a much bigger scale, this same phenomenon—facilitating dependency and interrupting "virtue-intensifying reality feedback loops"—can be seen in the relationship between America and Israel.

A few days ago the U.S. announced that it was pulling out of the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC), claiming that the body was extremely biased and hostile to Israel.

Nikki trying to curry favour at the UN.

Just one little detail, the UNHRC represents all the other countries in the World, who take it in turns to sit on the 47-member council—i.e. it is not some exclusive little cabal of Israel haters, as Nimrata "Nikki" Haley would like you to believe.

If the UNHRC is hostile to Israel that's because the whole f**king World is hostile to Israel, apparently.

OK, America is still batting Israel's corner, but even there there are clouds on the horizon. The entire Left in the U.S. is exactly where the UNHRC is—and that's even with all the Jewish donations still flooding in!

Whisper it, don't shout it, but Israel's position has never been as bad as it is today. I mean, I've seen this thing before with South Africa, and now I'm seeing it all over again with Israel. The writing, as they say, is not only on the wall but coming through the other side!

A few weeks ago, Natanyahu made a big diplomatic push, visiting Europe in an attempt to isolate what he claimed was the "terrorist state of Iran." However, in every major capital he touched down in, he was essentially slapped in the face with a cold fish and told to f**k off.

This is what happens when you gun down several hundred civilians on your borders, and then go to some nice ex-White country with a growing population of Muslims to ask for a bit of sympathy and understanding. An additional irony is that Jewish organisations in those countries have long supported Islamic population growth.

Now, the real reason Israel has been acting in this idiotic and self-isolating way is (1) it chose the wrong piece of territory for its ethnostate in the first place, and (2) it has been the recipient of vast amounts of Geopolitical Welfarism from the United States in the shape of weapons, financial aid, and diplomatic support.

Essentially, all this "geopolitical gibs" has made Israel weak both militarily and morally.

Morality, btw, in its essence has little to do with "good" and "evil." It is rather a tactical quality of not pissing off too many people all at the same time. This is why Hitler is usually regarded as an immoral c*nt by most people, even though Stalin was more correctly the real "bad" guy.

Early Israel, despite being dealt an extremely poor hand by being located in the heart of a hostile civilisation with crappy boundaries—land on three sides, FFS!—realised the difficultly of its situation and played its cards accordingly with great skill. For much of the 1950s and 1960s it signalled to both Washington and Moscow to keep both Superpowers guessing about its true or future leanings, while also throwing a few curve balls at the Arab states. 

Ben Gurion doing a clever piece of cognitive dissonance
well beyond the ability of a blunt tool like Netanyahu

But, from the late 1970s onwards, and the rise of Likud—essentially the "Geopolitical Welfare Party"—Israel started to really binge on copious amounts of American Geopolitical welfarism. In the process it became a slimy, pudgy, surly, spoilt little brat—at least as far as the international community was concerned—and was only tolerated extremely reluctantly on account of America's temporary ascendancy as undisputed global hegemon.

Indeed, Netanyahu is a perfect personification and incarnation of this version of Israel. It is not for nothing that he has been Prime Minister so often and so long.

Without all that sweet and easy Geopolitical Welfarism to bolster it and breed its vices, Israel would have had to survive on its merits. This would have involved either (a) a nice, peaceful approach, or (b) a more ugly, warlike approach. But whichever one it was, both options would have required a degree of intense virtue in the sense of the state and its people showing real skill, discipline, and sacrifice.

For example, a non-geopolitical-welfare-case Israel that chose the path of peace would have had to trim the sails of its arrogance towards its neighbours, and instead work towards real and respectful relationships. Perhaps they could have given up the West Bank and tried to get on better with the Syrians and Lebanese, etc., oiling the wheels with a win-win economic approach that maximised the benefits for Israel and its neighbours. Difficult, yes, but success would have been real success, not the simulacrum of success presented by the propped up pariah state that we now see.

Welfare Junkie

Of course, such an approach would have been risky. The site of the Jewish ethnostate was an extremely stupid choice—possibly the worst piece of Geopolitical Feng Shui ever. Combine this with all the bad karma from 1948 and 1967, and we see what a mountain Israel would have had to climb, and not with the most trustworthy neighbours either.

For this reason, a more warlike approach might well have been justified.

But this would have been quite different from the glib aggressiveness of contemporary Israel—essentially a hard shell that hides a soft-as-putty centre. Without the giant military crutch of misdirected U.S. power, Israel would have been forced to dig deep, rely on its own virtues, and build real strength.

This would probably have involved creating a much more "Spartan" society that seems rather an awkward fit with the contemporary Jewish temperament.

The critics of Netanyahu's Israel often present it as such a state—a brutal, almost fascistic state—but in reality is just another weak, hedonistic, consumerist Western society, behind a high-tech military wall. Usually it is only a matter of time before such states collapse.

A truly Spartan state would have required more than a big army, lots of expensive weapons, and a lack of moral compunction about bombing its neighbours. It would also have needed to evolve a kind of "samurai culture" that touched all aspects of society. Perhaps an analogy could be drawn with the Juche state of North Korea.

Once again, in such a scenario, Israel would have had to organically develop on the basis of its own challenges and merits, without the artificial and ultimately weakening influence of U.S. Geopolitical Welfare.

Thanks to America's misguided generosity, Israel's "strength" is fake. It is an unnatural import, a shell that doesn't belong to it, a safe space helping to grow the vices that will ultimately kill it.

Connected content:
Who Benefits Most from U.S. Aid to Israel

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Along with Andy Nowicki and Richard Spencer, Colin Liddell co-founded the Alt-Right in 2010. In 2018 he founded the Affirmative Right, a movement designed to address the many flaws in the Alt-Right. His latest book is Interviews & Obituaries, a collection of encounters with the dead and the famous. Support his work by buying it here. He is also featured in Arktos's new collection A Fair Hearing: The Alt-Right in the Words of Its Members and Leaders.