[Majorityrights News] Alex Navalny, born 4th June, 1976; died at Yamalo-Nenets penitentiary 16th February, 2024 Posted by Guessedworker on Friday, 16 February 2024 23:43.
[Majorityrights Central] A couple of exchanges on the nature and meaning of Christianity’s origin Posted by Guessedworker on Tuesday, 25 July 2023 22:19.
[Majorityrights News] Is the Ukrainian counter-offensive for Bakhmut the counter-offensive for Ukraine? Posted by Guessedworker on Thursday, 18 May 2023 18:55.
Kevin MacDonald’s Individualism and the Western Liberal Tradition: Evolutionary Origins, History, and Prospects For the Future (2019) is the first book that employs an evolutionary psychological approach to explain the rise of the West — actually, it is the first book that aims to comprehend the dynamics of the entire history of the West from prehistoric to current times to explain as well the decline of the West, the ways in which the “egalitarian individualism” originated by northwest Europeans in hunting and gathering times planted the seeds of the West’s current decision to destroy its genetic heritage through the importation of masses of immigrants.
Difficult as this task may seem, MacDonald performs it extremely well. In a normal academic world in which criticism of immigration was permissible, MacDonald’s book would have been the subject of immediate debate rather than complete silence. The books currently dominating the “rise of the West” tend to downplay any substantial differences between the West and other civilizations. They talk about “surprising similarities” between the major civilizations as late as the 1750s, and argue that the West diverged only with the spread of the Industrial Revolution. Some books go back in time to the family structure of medieval northwest Europe, or to the enforcement of monogamy by the Catholic Church, or to the rise of modern science in the seventeenth century. While MacDonald makes effective use of earlier arguments on Western uniqueness, including my own argument about the importance of the “aristocratic egalitarianism” of prehistoric Indo-Europeans, he believes that the starting point must be “the genetic history of the West”.
For MacDonald, the most unique trait of Europeans is their individualism, a trait manifested in two different forms, in the aristocratic individualism of Indo-European cultures, and in the hunter-gatherer egalitarian individualism of northwestern Europe. There is a genetic basis for these two forms of individualism. To understand their origins it is necessary to document how these two forms were naturally selected within populations living in particular environmental settings, as well as within the novel cultural-environmental settings they created. The egalitarian form of individualism, in MacDonald’s estimation, was the form that eventually came to dominate European culture. While the aristocratic individualism of Indo-Europeans predominated in ancient Greece and Rome, the trend in European history was for the accentuation of egalitarian individualism, with the Church playing a critical role, and then the Puritan revolution with its “moralistic Utopianism” gradually spreading in the United States.
The Jews did not invent this egalitarian individualism. They interpreted this egalitarianism into a call for a plurality of cultures and races inside the West — the “ethnic dissolution of non-Jews” — while protecting Jewish in-group solidarity and ethnocentrism. They insisted that the egalitarian values of Europeans required them to abolish their exclusive and unequal ethnic-based concept of citizenship for the sake of a truly egalitarian multiracial concept open to the arrival of millions of immigrants.
MacDonald’s emphasis on the “primordial” foundations of the egalitarian individualism of northwest hunter gatherers should not be confused with the standard observation that hunters and gatherers across the world were egalitarian. His focus throughout the book is on kinship systems, whether lines of descent were bilateral or patricentric, whether marriages were exogamous or endogamous, monogamous or polygamous, whether families were nuclear or extended, whether there was individual choice in marriage or arranged marriages, and whether individuals were inclined to establish relations outside their kinship group, with relatively weak ethnocentric tendencies, or whether they were seen as embedded to their kinship group, with relatively strong levels of ethnocentrism. His central argument is that already among northwest European hunter gatherers we can detect relatively weaker collective kinship systems, which gave room for more individual initiative and relationships outside extended families and blood lines, with individuals forming associations outside kinship relationships, as if they were in a state of equality rather than in a state of inequality between ingroups and outgroups.
It is this focus on the individualistic family systems of the West that allows MacDonald to offer a comprehensive explanation of both the rise and the decline of the West. Most scholars writing about the rise of the West today are concerned to answer why the Industrial Revolution occurred in eighteenth century England/Europe. Some emphasize the unique family structure of northwest Europe, but they trace this family structure to the Middle Ages, and none of them go back to the evolution of genetic dispositions among northwest hunter-gatherers to explain the rise of the West. I am not aware of any scholar who focuses so consistently on the weak ethnocentric tendencies of Europeans to explain both the rise and decline of the West. If meeting the scientific criteria for parsimony is valuable to you, then reading MacDonald’s book will be very illuminating indeed.
What follows is the first of nine or ten commentaries I will be writing about Individualism and the Western Liberal Tradition
Three Foundational Genetic Populations of Europe
Chapter One brings up the latest research on population movements into prehistoric Europe to argue that three distinct populations came to constitute the genetic foundations of this continent:
1. A “primordial population” arriving in Europe about 45,000 years ago, which he calls “Western hunter-gatherers (WHGs),” and which developed a unique culture of egalitarian individualism in the northwest areas of Europe.
2. Early Farmers arriving from Anatolia about 8000 years ago, bringing agriculture and having the greatest genetic effect on the WHG population in the southern areas of Europe.
3. Indo-Europeans migrating from the Pontic-Steppes beginning around 4500 years ago, starting with the Yamnaya peoples and later associated with the Corded Ware culture. The greatest genetic impact of the Yamnaya and Corded Ware peoples was on central Europe and some regions in the north, with less impact in the east and south.
(Note: this article was originally written before the US assassination of Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani on January 2nd)
Trump kept the promise he made to AIPAC in March 2016: “We will move the American embassy to the eternal capital of the Jewish people, Jerusalem.” Its fulfillment gave a timely support to Netanyahu, whose popularity in Israel is entirely based on his capacity to manipulate the United States, of which he brags. Commenting in May 2018 on Trump’s decision, Netanyahu paid him this compliment:
“This will be remembered the way we remember the Cyrus declaration of 2500 years ago, when he told the exiles of Babylon, ‘you can go back and rebuild the temple in Jerusalem.’ This is a historical moment and we will always remember.”
Cyrus is that Persian king whose spirit “Yahweh roused … to issue a proclamation” and “build him a temple in Jerusalem,” according to the Book of Ezra (1:1-2) A successor to Cyrus later appointed Ezra to oversee the building. For his decree, Cyrus is bestowed the title of Yahweh’s “Anointed” (Mashiah) by the prophet Isaiah:
“Thus says Yahweh to his anointed one, to Cyrus whom, he says, I have grasped by his right hand, to make the nations bow before him and to disarm kings: […] It is for the sake of my servant Jacob and of Israel my chosen one, that I have called you by your name, have given you a title though you do not know me. […] Though you do not know me, I have armed you.” (Isaiah 45:1-5)[1]
Yahweh, who “roused Cyrus’ spirit” and “grasped him by his right hand,” stands, of course, for “Jewish Power”.
Netanyahu hailed Trump as a modern-day Cyrus on several occasions, and his enthusiasm was echoed on Fox News, when Jeanine Pirro declared: “Donald Trump recognizes history. He, like king Cyrus before him, fulfills the biblical prophecy…”
Trump was like Cyrus again in March 2019, when he signed a decree recognizing Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights (top photo). It inspired Miriam Adelson, wife of Trump’s biggest donor, to comment that the President deserves his “Book of Trump” in the Bible.[2] Israel’s history is always biblical, one way or another.
I was made aware of this “Trump is Cyrus” meme by Adam Green’s impressive film “God’s Chosen People”. It seems that Trump was already promoted as a new Cyrus to Christian Zionists during the 2016 campaign. It has also been noted that, just a couple of months after taking office, Trump used the occasion of the Persian new year (Nowruz) to mention in a White House statement to the Iranian embassy that “Cyrus the Great, a leader of the ancient Persian Empire, famously said that ‘freedom, dignity, and wealth together constitute the greatest happiness of humanity.’” Using the name Cyrus rather than the form Koresch preferred by historians is an implicit reference to the Bible story. Zionists like Jonathan Cahn believe this was a cryptic message: “It was not only that the president had issued a public statement in which he spoke of Cyrus but that he spoke words attributed to the ancient king. In other words, he wasn’t only speaking of Cyrus; he was now speaking as Cyrus.”[3] Such interpretation tells us more about the Zionists’ wishful thinking than about Trump’s real intention (who wrote that statement anyway?). But then, the Zionists have proven very good at fulfilling their wishful thinking.
Of course, moving the American embassy to Jerusalem is not exactly like rebuilding of the temple. But Trump’s announcement nevertheless boosted messianic yearnings for the Third Temple. Plans, funds, and even cultic personnel are all ready. Prayers are sent to heaven that an Iranian missile would mistakenly, by Yahweh’s hand, find its way on the Al-Aqsa Mosque to get rid of the last obstacle. Confident that Trump is the new Cyrus, the Mikdash Educational Center has minted medals with Trump’s portrait superimposed on Cyrus’ on one side, and the future temple on the other. Of course, ecstatic Jews and Evangelicals have no clue that the so-called Temple Mount never supported a temple at all: what they take for the walls of Herod’s Temple is actually the remains of the Roman fort housing the legion that destroyed the Temple (as demonstrated archeologically in the documentary “The Coming Temple”).
It is not the first time that a Christian statesman is compared to Persian king Cyrus. It was said before of Lord Balfour and Harry Truman. Netanyahu actually referred to both of them when meeting Trump in the Oval Office in March 2018:
“I want to tell you that the Jewish people have a long memory, so we remember the proclamation of the great king, Cyrus the Great, the Persian king 2,500 years ago. He proclaimed that the Jewish exiles in Babylon could come back and rebuild our Temple in Jerusalem. We remember a hundred years ago, Lord Balfour, who issued the Balfour Proclamation that recognized the rights of the Jewish people in our ancestral homeland. We remember 70 years ago, President Harry S. Truman was the first leader to recognize the Jewish state. And we remember how a few weeks ago, President Donald J. Trump recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. Mr. President, this will be remembered by our people through the ages.”
Zion is a biblical program
Netanyahu’s declaration provides a good opportunity for reflecting on the importance of biblical narratives in Israel’s national consciousness, propaganda, diplomacy, and geopolitical strategy, and to analyze the Cyrus pattern in the history of the relationship between Israel and imperial powers.
Netanyahu is certainly typical of Israeli leaders’ tendency to see history as a perpetual reenactment of Bible stories. In 2015, he dramatized his phobia of Iran by referring to the Book of Esther, in an allocution to the American Congress that he managed to program on the eve of Purim, which celebrates the happy ending of the Book of Esther—the slaughter of 75,000 Persians.
Esther’s story is not unlike Ezra’s: through her, Yahweh “roused the spirit” of another Persian king, Ahasuerus, to protect the Jews and hang their persecutors. This last December, Trump became a modern-day Ahasuerus when he signed an executive order against anti-Semitism and Israel-boycott in university campuses.
Actually, the Book of Esther, Netanyahu’s favorite, is the only book in the Tanakh that makes no mention of God, which proves that “biblical” does not necessarily mean “religious”. This is a point sadly misunderstood in the Christian world.
The biblical foundation of secular Zionism is underestimated, even denied, by critics of Zionism, even when it is affirmed by the Zionists themselves. It is true that Theodor Herzl did not argue in biblical terms for his 1896 program, The Jewish State. Yet he named his movement after the Bible: Zion is metonymic designation for Jerusalem used by biblical prophets, especially Isaiah. Later on, the pioneers of the Yishuv and the founders of the Jewish State were steeped in the Bible. Ben-Gurion, an avowed atheist, used to say: “There can be no worthwhile political or military education about Israel without profound knowledge of the Bible.”[4] That statement should be taken seriously. If it is true for Zionists, then it is also true for the critics of Zionism: there can be no real understanding of Israel without profound knowledge of the Bible. The Tanakh is the alpha and the omega of Zionism. Moshe Dayan, the military hero of the 1967 Six-Day War, justified his annexation of new territory in a book titled Living with the Bible (1978).
One important thing that Ben-Gurion learnt from the Bible is that Israel’s destiny is not to be a nation like others, but the center of the world and the ruler of all nations. When asked in 1962 his prediction for the next 25 years, he declared that Jerusalem “will be the seat of the Supreme Court of Mankind, to settle all controversies among the federated continents, as prophesied by Isaiah.”[5] He was referring to Isaiah 2:2-4, announcing the messianic Pax Judaica, when “the Law will issue from Zion” and Israel “will judge between the nations and arbitrate between many peoples.” Ben-Gurion’s prophetic vision, which may be called Universal Zionism (the title of a book by the director of a Jerusalem Summit that promotes that vision), has been shared more or less by all subsequent Israeli leaders up to Benjamin Netanyahu.
It should be evident, and it surely is to Netanyahu as it was to Ben-Gurion, that for Jerusalem to become the headquarter of a “Supreme Court of Mankind” that will replace the United Nations, another world war is necessary. The fall of the American Empire, or at least its total transformation into Zionist occupied territory, is also part of the plan.
The Tanakh does not just teach Zionists the ultimate goal, it also shows them the way to go: Cyrus’ edict reproduced in the Book of Ezra, whether genuine or fake, is the blueprint for Zion’s exploitation of the Empire’s foreign policy in modern times. Transforming Gentile leaders into Cyrus-like figures is the rule of the game. That is what I would like to illustrate below.
Jeremiah, Babylon and Persia
Before we recall the way the proto-Zionists Ezra and Nehemiah worked the Persian administration into giving them control over Jerusalem, let’s go back one century earlier. In 588 BC, to subdue the rebellious Judeans, Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar II besieged and finally burned Jerusalem, then deported some of its elites (Jeremiah 52:30 gives the plausible figure of 4,600 people). The exiles enjoyed broad autonomy in Babylon, and some acquired wealth and influence. Speaking on behalf of Yahweh, Jeremiah wrote to them, from Egypt: “Work for the good of the city to which I have exiled you; pray to Yahweh on its behalf, since on its welfare yours depends” (Jeremiah 29:7). Yahweh even asked Jeremiah to convey the following message to the kings of Syria-Palestine:
“For the present, I have handed all these countries over to Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, my servant … Any nation or kingdom that will not serve Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon and will not bow its neck to the yoke of the king of Babylon, I shall punish that nation with sword, famine and plague, Yahweh declares, until I have destroyed it by his hand.” (Jeremiah 27:6-8)
But twenty chapters later, Jeremiah announced the “vengeance of the Lord” on the Babylonians and called on their Persian enemies to “slaughter and curse with destruction every last one of them” (50:21). In the same spirit, the author of Psalm 137 wrote: “Daughter of Babel, doomed to destruction, […] a blessing on anyone who seizes your babies and shatters them against a rock!” The reason for this violent shift in Yahweh’s sentiment was that the situation had changed: in 555 BC, a prince named Nabonad seized power in Babylon. He made war against the Persian king Cyrus (Koresch). It is believed, by Jewish historian Heinrich Graetz in particular, that the Judean exiles in Babylon sided secretly with the Persians, and perhaps “opened secret negotiations with Cyrus.” That would explain “the kindness shown later on to the Judeans by the Persian warrior, and their persecution by Nabonad.”[6]
