I recently did a translation of Igor Shafarevich’s “Postscript to ‘The Three-Thousand-Year-Old Enigma’”. You can read it here.
I then wrote a critique of his Postscript for Occidental Observer. You can read it here.
I feel quite honored to be able to make a contribution, however modest, to the most important field of academic inquiry: the burgeoning field of counter-Semitic studies.
What follows are a few excerpts from my critique which fit well into the topics covered on this section of the blog.
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Another important point that Shafarevich hones in on though is the idea of the Jews’ self-ordained role as priests for all of humanity, dedicated to toppling the idols of other peoples whether they be the native gods or the native culture. This is now well-known in our circles as “Tikkum Olam” or the Jewish dedication to “healing the world,” i.e., remaking the world to better suit themselves and their agenda. Jews also conceive of themselves as “idol-destroyers.” And, in the Jewish conception of them, “idols” can mean any idea or cultural practice that is not approved of by Jewish authorities.
Also, while monotheism is not a Jewish invention, the Jews certainly did promote the worship of one god, their god, Yahweh, above all other nations’ gods. Sadly, the early Christians who opposed Yahwehism lost their battle with Christian orthodoxy, and the Old Testament’s capricious ethnic deity became our God.
Pre-Socratic Greek thinkers, Zoroastrians, and Gnostics, in contrast, believed that there was indeed a powerful, but evil, materialistic, petty deity that ruled over this world. Polytheistic Aryan pagan religion conceptualized the gods as being capricious and cruel. However, this all began to change with Plato. This famous Greek was equal parts philosopher as much as he was a political activist and a Klaus Schwab-style social planner. Plato’s “Great Reset” began with him arguing to ban Homer’s Odyssey and working to combat the peasants’ leery attitudes towards the gods. Plato believed that criticism of the god(s) and their intentions ought to be banned in his priest-run utopian society.
Shafarevich demonstrates an awareness of how deeply the general thrust of Western thinking has been affected by Judaism and Plato. We are the products of Platonic, Judaic and then Christian (an offshoot of Judaism) thinking, he says, and the trajectory of our society was defined by the merger of these intellectual and religious traditions.
Recent scholarly analysis of the Old Testament, however, reveals that it was probably written far later than what the Jews have historically claimed. In fact, scholars in the “minimalist school” like Russel Gmirkin make a convincing case that the Bible was written in the second century BC and inspired by Plato’s work. The Torah, the Jewish nationalist foundation myth, took Plato’s idea of a higher mono-deity as its guiding principle. Now, Plato was not the first monotheist, but he was, however, one of the first to insist that the mono-deity had to be both omnipotent and good. Also, he was the first to outline a WEF-style program for the radical transformation of society through the use of psycho-religious tactics to manipulate the population.
Jews like to claim credit for inventing monotheism, but, as Shafarevich points out, they take credit for just about everything. He plays down their accomplishments by stating that the Jews have observably invented or contributed very little throughout modern history and were only able to do what they did using the tools that were handed to them by the host cultures in which they found themselves.
The controversial example of the Old Testament would fit neatly into this observable phenomenon of Jews only being able to adopt, modify or invert what already exists. It is, after all, a goulash stew of borrowed and, in some cases, inverted legends and myths from the people that they came into contact with over the course of their history. The Jews then claimed that their knock-off copy predated the originals and took credit for what they stole. A classic Jewish move. As a result, we ended up with a convenient Judeo-centric narrative to theology and history in which the Jews invented monotheism, had the oldest written religious text, were God’s chosen, and so on.
Shaferevich was unaware of this particular revisionist school of Biblical scholarship when he was writing and doing his own research. His own analysis of the Old Testament, however, would rankle many generic Western conservatives and even veteran counter-Semites. It should come as little surprise that Soviet scholars were freer to question some of the core claims of Christianity and, encouraged even, to deconstruct holy texts like the Bible. As a result, skepticism of Jewish religious history, by extension, became more acceptable in the USSR. America, in contrast, remained largely Protestant. i.e., Old Testamentarian and never had a period of state-imposed atheism during which the Bible was delegitimized and stripped of its holy veneer.
This accounts for one of the subtle differences between Russian and Western counter-Semitic thought.
Also, for fear of rocking the boat, most Western counter-Semites try to stay away from religious debates, or, rather, away from asking too many questions about the Old Testament. Nowadays, there is, however, a disturbing trend of counter-Semites identifying with the Jews of the Old Testament by claiming that they were, in actual fact, Scandinavians or Germans and that the current stock of Jews are “fakes” from Khazaria. It is easy to understand why many are drawn to this ideology. After all, it is rather strange to be a nationalist and then to adopt the national myths and ethnic deity of an enemy people as your own. It is harder still to admit that our ancestors lived in a low-information environment and were simply duped centuries ago.
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Perhaps the solution for peoples who struggle to close ranks because of low levels of ethnocentricity ought to be to do what they do best and re-adopt religious thinking and Puritan-style religious fervor, to which they seem so well-suited naturally. If this is to be done however, perhaps it makes sense to stop pretending to be the real Jews and start focusing on becoming the real Christians instead. My contribution to the debate on possible solutions to the Jewish Question would be to recommend Marcionite Christian thinking, with its rejection of the Old Testament and juxtaposition of Christ to Yahweh, as a theologically sound and spiritually exclusionary alternative approach to religion.
While religious thinking certainly has its drawbacks, it does seem able to convince conscientious people from time to time of the possibility that destructive self-serving actions have grave metaphysical consequences. Again, both Shafarevich and myself agree that the only way to break out of the political, economic and social prison that the Jews have constructed for us is to close ranks and learn to engage in cooperative behavior with our own people. But, the only way to get Whites to cooperate and think about saving more than just their own skin is to adopt best practices that encourage cooperative behavior, punish self-serving selfishness and exclude the Jews by recognizing them as mortal enemies.
The how or the actual practice of closing ranks and promoting cooperation among our own is what we should be developing and debating now. Sadly, there has been very little progress on this front in either the West or the East.
My modest opinion is that religion was a powerful force mainly due to its helping to explain natural phenomena as the result of supernatural causes (spirits and deities).
From the end of the XVII century onwards - mainly with the advent of the scientific method, but also with that of capitalism allowing multiplication of riches that before could come only from owning land or taking it from others - it was found that natural phenomena could be more easily explained recurring to the laws of mechanics, chemistry, etc.
Once an easier explanation is discovered, the far-fetched ones can be discarded, i.e. Occam's razor. It's like: in order to determine the calendar, it was found easier to determine the motion of planets by having the Earth revolving around the Sun than the other way around. In case the Earth were supposed fixed at the centre, then there would be the need of a lot of complicated, ad-hoc modifications to the equations of motions for the singular planets. Similarly, when Nature can be predicted by Physics, there is no need to resort to the Supernatural any more.
Thus people were free to release the wild spirits of Capitalism so they could fully pursue their own personal gain. The inner need of man for an ethic framework to believe in was now provided by the newly concocted secular religion of Liberalism, Freedom, Equality, Democracy, etc.
What is religion useful for right now? To quench the existential dread of death through offering the hope of an afterlife. Also, fear of hell instilled in childhood is effective in imprinting good moral habits, i.e. stops sociopathic tendencies stemming from the relentless pursue of self-interest. Plus, from experience I can say that only Christians can be trusted: other people will stab you in the back if convenient to them.
All the above to say that fostering some new religion or refreshing the old one, in my humble view, misses the point. Tendencies currently in vogue should be ridden, e.g. countering immigration by formulating what in the Liberal framework amounts to a more moral position: for example, stating that immigrants themselves would prefer to stay at their own places if given the possibility, etc. Now this was a silly example, but I hope the message is clear: subverting progressive liberalism in a more based direction. I guess I am a TuckerCarlsonist after all.
We are too divided and too conquered nowadays.