The former Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, is in serious trouble after an interview with BBC Radio London in which he defended a suspended Labour MP for her anti-semitic FB posts (BBC). In that interview, Mr Livingstone claimed that “Hitler had supported Zionism before he went mad and ended up killing 6 million Jews” (Guardian). Mr Livingston denies being anti-semitic and refuses to apologise as he claims to speak the “truth” and that it’s just a “matter of fact”. He even defends himself by referring to the October 2015 statement in which the Israeli PM accused the Palestinian Grand Mufti of Jerusalem for suggesting the holocaust to Hitler (Guardian). Also see my blog of 25 October 2015 – Accountability versus Responsibility.
The feeling of racial superiority is deeply rooted in every race. Every race looks down on another race. Every nation looks down on another nation. Every city looks down on another city. Every tribe looks down on another tribe. Essentially, every single human is a racist including myself. The louder people deny that they are racist, the more you should distrust their sincerity. One could even argue the relevance of the term racism, considering that it is a universal feeling.
Anti-semitism is probably rooted in a very simple, basic emotion: jealousy. Jealousy for not being the chosen people. Eradicating 6 million Jews has nothing to do with going “mad”, Mr Livingstone, but is the consequence of a philosophical Belief system that is based on racial superiority. Hitler even died for his Belief which shows the ultimate characteristic of any Belief system.
Mr Livingstone states that anti-semitism does not equal anti-Zionism. I would love seeing his arguments for that. Probably they would be strictly theoretical and would deliberately ignore the immense overlap between both. Again, the louder people deny their racism (including anti-semitism), the more you must distrust their sincerity.
The only way to overcome racism is by acknowledging that there is a spark of racism inside ALL of us. That spark is most likely a leftover of – again – evolutionary psychology. Millions of years of human survival have learned us to distrust strangers. We distrust and fear the ones who do not resemble us in our external features (eg, hair colour, eye colour, and – most of all – skin colour). Also see my 10 September 2015 blog – Strangers. The human fear for aliens – or even insects – is just a logical next step.
Nowadays, I just acknowledge this spark inside me and deal with this leftover evolutionary fear. Before I felt ashamed for these unspoken feelings and didn’t confront them (to myself). I assumed these feelings were mine and didn’t even understand where they could have come from. Open-mindedness was / is the key to the solution. Perhaps transhumanism may once allow upgrades of human firmware. I’m skeptic about this. What remains for now, is to acknowledge our human fears which were inherited from our ancestors.
Choosing these feelings today, is a result of closed mindedness. Denial that we have these feelings is lying towards yourself and lying to everyone else. Actually, it’s rather difficult to choose between the denial of anti-semitism by left-wing politics and its acknowledgement by right-wing politics. What’s worse? Denial seems to be closed mindedness, wrapped in a thin layer of pretentious “open” mindedness. I think I prefer dealing with ignorance rather than dealing with liars. Ignorance can be cured with knowledge and wisdom. Lying is compulsive.
I Scare Myself (1984) by Thomas Dolby
artist, lyrics, video, Wiki-1, Wiki-2
Note: all markings (bold, italic, underlining) by LO unless stated otherwise.
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