It would almost be comical if it wasn’t so desperately tragic: Much of the informed world is again splitting into two halves with one half detesting the other. The occasion this time is the Hamas-Israel conflict, which has split the world into supporters of Hamas and the State of Israel, respectively. Or – as it is in danger of becoming – into one half supporting Arabs and another half supporting Jews.
Those who lean to the left politically tend to support the Palestinians and those who lean to the right politically tend to support the Israelis. Those who go against the grain and support the side that their political tribe does not are asking to be cancelled, de-platformed, or worse.
The Anti-Defamation League in New York reports that antisemitic incidents in America rose by 388% between October 7th and 23rd compared with the same period of the year before. In Dagestan, an antisemitic mob of hundreds of men recently attacked the main airport in order to hunt down random Jewish passengers who had arrived on a flight from Tel Aviv. Meanwhile, Israeli counterattacks on Gaza have claimed a death toll amongst Palestinians exceeding 8,000, with 1.4 million having been displaced. The often-indiscriminate killing of people from the other side, who are always demonised and de-humanised, thus continues apace.
Taking sides in the Hamas-Israel conflict means that you align yourself with people carrying out some fairly horrendous things. If you side with Hamas, you thereby endorse the killings and hostage-taking of politically clueless Jewish teenagers and old grannies. If you side with Israel, you will find yourself having to defend the deaths by bombing of thousands of innocent civilians – including children and pensioners – who had absolutely nothing to do with the actions of Hamas.
Unfortunately, the large extent to which people choose to take sides in the Hamas-Israel conflict is just one of a long list of examples where there are deemed to be only two sides to any issue. For those who take sides, one side is deemed unequivocally good and saintly while the other side is deemed unequivocally bad and evil. Some other examples of binary group-think that immediately come to mind are the following:
• Trump vs. Biden
• Foreigner vs. non-foreigner
• Russian vs. Ukrainian
• Left-wing vs. Right-wing
• Muslim vs. Christian
• Hutu vs. Tutsi
• White vs. Black
Mindlessly dividing humanity up in good people (your own tribe) and bad people (everybody else) is a problem as old as humanity itself. This is what most people resort to in matters of politics, religion, sport, and other matters where logic and reason carry little weight. However, I simply refuse to accept that the human brain is incapable of considering non-binary options. Is there another way? Yes, there is, but that involves engaging the brain in order to stop falling for the temptation of group-think, i.e., thinking in collectivist terms.
Group-think – the judging of people according to which group they are deemed to belong rather than their individual views, qualities, or guilt – is the direct route to the killing of innocents. Especially when the levers of a strong state fall into the hands of group-thinkers who can then realise their bigoted antipathies by carrying out genocide in the name of the nation, the people, the King, and/or God. One of the precious few things that states are really good at are genocides.
History is replete with examples of this happening. In recent times, some that come to mind are Nazi-Germany, India in 1947, Cambodia under Khmer Rouge, Rwanda in 1994, and the Rohingya genocide in Myanmar, to name but a few. Conversely, I can think of no genocide that was not perpetrated by a state. Separate individuals seldom have enough power to orchestrate an undertaking as huge as a genocide.
The alternative to collectivist group-think is, of course, individualism. I.e., always judging a person on the basis of his or her individual qualities, opinions, and actions. Consistently applying individualist principles is harder than it sounds, though. For instance, many people happen to identify with a state. They speak of “we” and “us” when they refer to the foreign policy actions of the government of the state in which they live. They even speak of “we” and “us” when they refer to historical events predating their own birth by hundreds of years. Or when they refer to sports events involving the local national team. But the state is not them, and they are not the state. To avoid group-think it is necessary to be absolutely clear about this.
If you want to avoid punishing innocents for the actions of others, you must use an individualist approach. Applying an individualist approach to the Hamas-Israel conflict means not identifying with either side. An individualist approach involves prosecuting individuals accused of having killed other people – whether Jews or Arabs – and punishing them or acquitting them accordingly. With thousands engaged in the killings, it is a huge task to hold each individual to account for his or her actions. However, expediency is hardly a very good moral argument against that approach.
There are often – perhaps even always – more than two sides to any issue. Moreover, your enemy’s enemy is not always your friend. Just because the Israeli military is evil, that does not necessarily mean that the Hamas militia is nice. Or vice versa. The fact that Trump is a scumbag does not necessarily mean that Biden is a saint. Or vice versa. I could go on. However, suffice to say that always putting the individual first would avoid an unfathomable number of gross injustices and deaths in the world. The world is not just black and white. There are many more colours than that.
The Exile
Many years ago, I left my native Denmark to escape its sky-high taxes and smothering welfare state. I have taken refuge in England where the situation is not quite as bad. Issues close to my heart are immigration (should be free and unrestricted), taxes & government (there should be none), and the sanctity of individual liberty and private property.
Thursday, November 9, 2023
Group-think in Gaza
Friday, September 9, 2022
Does It Hurt Yet?
It is now some six months since the EU and other Western states imposed sanctions on Russia. The sanctions were - at least officially - intended to force Russia to stop the war against Ukraine. Now - half a year later - we can evaluate the effect of those sanctions as some of the results are in.
Firstly, have the sanctions stopped the war, reduced its severity, or limited its scope? No. Not even close. It has, however, thrown Putin’s Russia into the arms of Communist China which does not support any sanctions. It has also heralded the beginning of an era in which countries are seeking to create more self-sufficiency in energy and food supplies so as better to be able to impose and withstand sanctions in the future. The latter is immensely damaging to the long-term prospects of the world economy as basic economic wisdom has it that products and services are best produced in the countries that have a competitive advantage in those specific products and services, irrespective of national borders. That is the basis of international trade, which will be eroded to the detriment of everybody.
Secondly, have the sanctions damaged the Russian economy? Not only have they not had any serious effect, the reduced gas supplies from Russia mean that global gas prices have increase by about 1,000 per cent since September 2021. So of course the limited quantities of gas that Russia still sells command prices that produce significant revenue for the Russian suppliers. Thus, The Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA), a Finnish think tank, has calculated that Russia has earned revenue of EUR 163 billion for sales of oil, gas, and coal since the invasion of Ukraine. Over the same period, they estimate that Russia has spend around EUR 100 billion on the invasion of Ukraine. So Russia is not about to run out of money to finance the war.
It is likely that the Western politicians knew perfectly well that the sanctions were never going to work. The sanctions were pure virtue-signalling designed to please the media and the voters who were baying for Putins blood at the time of the invasion. Also, one could be forgiven for suspecting that the politicians introduced the sanctions well knowing that they would cause sky-rocketing energy prices and therefore create an artificial need for governments to intervene with more “generous” government handouts (of people’s own money), more government borrowing, and - eventually - more government taxation, thus expanding the scope of the state yet again. I.e., in much the same way as the government-induced pandemic lockdown panic did. But perhaps that is giving the politicians too much credit as their ability to predict obvious consequences may not be all that impressive.
It is certainly a fact that the scope of the state is rapidly increasing due to the sanctions. France is now completely nationalising EDF, the major French energy company, and price caps, rationing, and subsidies proliferate as if we were already in World War 3. The expansion of renewable but heavily taxpayer-subsidised energy sources such as wind and solar power is accelerated, using self-sufficiency and lack of Russian fossil fuels as pretexts. All this in the holy name of sanctions that are not fit for purpose, and that cause untold suffering and pain to the civilian populations and businesses at both ends of the sanctions, i.e. both in the East and in the West.
In addition to being ineffective and even counterproductive, the immorality of the sanctions are on such a scale that it beggars belief. Almost the entire world population - not just the populations of the sanctioned and sanctioning countries - are suffering under eye-watering gas prices, fuelling rampant inflation that quickly erodes the value of people’s hard-earned assets. Sanctions are the collective punishment of innocent people for the purpose of ‘sending messages’ to national leaders. Messages that are happily ignored by people such as Putin who will personally suffer no adverse consequences of the sanctions. On the contrary, he is understandably very happy that it gives him an opportunity to manipulate the energy markets and earn billions for deliveries of much less gas.
So what to do about Ukraine? They way to go would seem to be continued support for the Ukraine by voluntary groups and organisations that should be allowed to send the Ukrainians any supplies needed to continue the resistance against the Russian forces, including weapons. One could then hope that Russia eventually tires of the war in the same way that the Soviet Union (and later the US) tired of war in Afghanistan, leading to withdrawal. But as it should be painfully obvious from the above, sanctions are clearly not the answer.
Tuesday, August 17, 2021
The Taliban Victory
I have so far not commented on the fall of Afghanistan to the Taliban. This is partly because my comment could be summed up in the few words ‘I told you so’.
From Day 1, there was never any doubt in my mind that the Afghan government created by the US and her allies would not last much beyond the Western military occupation of the country. Looking back through history, there are numerous examples of Western powers trying to force their own puppet regimes and their own values on other countries very different from their own. Usually, such efforts have failed miserably sooner or later.
This is hardly surprising, given that it is a basic human instinct to group together against others who speak different languages, who come from very different cultures, and who have very different values. Especially when such others are occupying your country militarily and are trying to force through changes based on their culture rather than yours.
Now, after 20 years, at least a trillion dollars of taxpayers money, innumerable unnecessary deaths, and immense suffering, the Western powers have learned anew the hard lesson outlined above. Hopefully, it will finally sink in, although I am not holding my breath, knowing the nature of governments.
This is not to say that I applaud the victory of the Taliban. The Taliban is about as nasty as its worst detractors claim. However, Westerners need to understand that there are parts of the world that they simply cannot control. If they really want to help the unfortunate Afghans who want a life different from the one stipulated by the Taliban, there is, however, one thing they can do: Open the borders!
Allowing the persecuted Afghans to escape from the Taliban is the one obvious and humane solution that simultaneously avoids the West getting entangled in Afghanistan. However, surprisingly few of the people who claim to have the best interests of the Afghans at heart are open to this solution. Yes, they want to help the Afghans, but only if the Afghans stay well away from them. Such is the hypocrisy of the West. No wonder if the Afghans find such Western values rather lacking in both sincerity and consistency.
Sunday, January 31, 2021
The Cost of Xenophobia
In the afternoon of 28th March 1997, the Albanian motorboat Kateri i Radës sailed towards Italy with some 142 people on board. They were all desperately trying to escape the political and economic mayhem in their home country and make a better life for themselves abroad. Still within Albanian territorial waters, the boat was challenged by the Italian naval vessel Sibilia on suspicion of carrying ‘irregular migrants’. The Italian vessel ended up colliding with the motorboat, causing the boat to capsize and sink. Some 83 people, aged between 3 months and 69 years, drowned as a result. Thus, 83 Europeans were arbitrarily killed by other Europeans in just one such event of the supposedly enlightened 1990s.
The wreck of the Kateri i Radës was raised and for years laid neglected in a corner of the Italian port of Brindisi. It was eventually converted into a memorial with the fitting title L'Approdo. Opera all'Umanità Migrante (The Landing. A work dedicated to Migrating Humanity):
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Fast forward to 2020 and the development of the first approved vaccine against Covid-19. The vaccine was created by two scientists from the German company BioNTech. But the scientists - Uğur Şahin and Özlem Türeci - are, in fact, 1st and 2nd generation migrants from Turkey. In other words, they are not even of European extraction.
This beggars the question how many brilliant minds are lost to the world due to the paranoid fear in Western countries of migrants from elsewhere. How many Uğur Şahins have drowned in the Mediterranean Sea or died of thirst on the US-Mexican border? How many parents of Özlem Türecis have been prevented from leaving their blighted home countries in search of better lives, thus condemning their children to lives in obscurity?
As Johan Norberg writes in his book Open - The Story of Human Progress:
If people were allowed to move to the place where their labour is paid the best, the gains to world income would be astronomical. According to a back-of-envelope calculation, world GDP would increase by around $80 trillion, in effect doubling world GDP, and those gains would be accrued every year.
Abolishing all barriers to goods and services would increase global GDP by a couple of percentage points – nothing to be sniffed at – but abolishing barriers to people would increase it by 60 - 150 per cent, according to several different estimates. And even partial eliminations of barriers to labour mobility could increase global wealth by trillions. This is why economists talk about ‘trillion-dollar bills on the sidewalk’ when they refer to the simple policy of allowing people to go and work where they want to go and work. …
… it is startling that no policy in today’s world could be more controversial than picking up trillion-dollar bills on the sidewalk, especially since new cultures often inject energy into our own, and it helps people to escape poverty and hopelessness, flee persecution and to be with their loved ones.”
Even so, the world seems to be going in a different direction. Witness, for instance, the recent end of free movement between the UK and the remaining countries of the EU, and Trump’s relentless campaign against migrants from Mexico and Muslim countries.
So when you encounter a taxi driver or a peasant by the roadside on your next visit to Morocco, Turkey, or Mexico, please do remember that they are not lesser beings than you, and that they might have been even more successful than you if they had simply not committed the unforgivable sin of being born in the wrong country.
Tuesday, March 31, 2020
Collectivists and the Coronavirus
Thursday, March 19, 2020
The False Security Of Closed Borders
Wednesday, August 15, 2018
Nationalism On The March Again: The Re-emergence Of European Right-wing Collectivism
WHY NATIONALISM?