In his essay, Notes on Nationalism, published in 1945, Orwell used the term ‘nationalism’ where we would now use ‘fascism’ but, so soon after the war, he didn’t want to confuse his (mainly English) readers who saw fascism as something that happens “over there.” He didn’t agree. He was very clear to distinguish between patriotism and nationalism. Patriotism, in his view, was a mild and defensive sense of valuing one’s homeland and lifestyle over all others but with no wish to force it on anybody else. He implied that a real patriot doesn’t want outsiders intruding and changing things. Nationalism, on the other hand, was completely different: “A nationalist is one who thinks solely, or mainly, in terms of competitive prestige.” He argued that it involved not just countries but all extremist movements and even religions. As he never tired of pointing out, while lying and self-deception are core features of extremist movements, they don’t just affect our enemies. He felt it was particularly pervasive in the upper classes in England, and one of its most obvious features was its dishonesty:
Nationalism is power-hunger tempered by self-deception. Every nationalist is capable of the most flagrant dishonesty, but he is also — since he is conscious of serving something bigger than himself — unshakeably certain of being in the right (Orwell, [1]).
Talking of lying and self-deception, let’s look at some figures. This week, the US used 7 of its B2 bombers, costing $2.1billion each, to drop 14 of its biggest bombs, costing some $3.5million each, on Iranian nuclear installations. Mr Trump boasted that the targets were “obliterated” although the intelligence community reports the raids had little effect. These attacks were a gross breach of the UN Charter and are illegal under international law but Trump maintains that it’s Iran’s fault, they’re on the verge of getting nuclear weapons. Nobody believes this as a fatwa in 2003 forbade them.
Last week, in responding to dozens of Israeli bombing raids, Iran launched a missile at a military target in Beersheba, a city in south-central Israel. The military building was close to the city’s main hospital which was damaged in the blast but Israeli authorities said there were no injuries. Immediately after, Mr Netanyahu gave an angry interview in which he said attacking a hospital was a major war crime and Iran’s leader should be “taken out.” Anybody watching him would be impressed by his fervour and would have no doubt that he believed he was in the right. What the audience may not have known is some figures released recently by World Health. In the past twenty months, Israel has directly attacked 697 health centres in Gaza, with most of the smaller ones completely destroyed. Of the 36 hospitals in Gaza in September 2023, 17 have been reduced to rubble and some have even been bulldozed level. Of the remainder, seven are so badly damaged that they provide only a first aid service. The twelve hospitals still standing are able to take in-patients but are barely functional due to lack of water, power, drugs, medical supplies, food, oxygen and so on. The surviving staff work under appalling conditions, tired, hungry and terrorised by deliberate targeting of health staff. This has resulted in over 1400 deaths, including an atrocity where a doctor’s husband and nine of her children were killed.
Deliberately targeting health facilities is a major war crime, yet this policy was authorised by Netanyahu himself. He knows exactly how many hospitals have been hit and precisely what medical supplies are getting through the blockade he has imposed, yet anybody watching his Oscar standard performance for the cameras would not guess that he is himself guilty of a million times worse. Orwell was very aware that we, the goodies, lie prodigiously when it suits us:
Actions are held to be good or bad, not on their own merits, but according to who does them, and there is almost no kind of outrage — torture, the use of hostages, forced labour, mass deportations, imprisonment without trial, forgery, assassination, the bombing of civilians — which does not change its moral colour when it is committed by ‘our’ side [1].
If Iran accidentally does a bit of damage to a hospital because it was too close to a military building, that’s enough to blow up the other country’s leadership but if Israel does it, using American bombs dropped from American bombers, everybody has to pretend it isn’t happening. This raises the very important question of the quality of public life in the West these days which has been completely taken over by people who think “…solely, or mainly, in terms of competitive prestige.” It seems politics has become something people lie to get themselves in, lie to stay in and then lie to get themselves up the ladder.
Trump, of course, lies as easily as he breathes. If he ever had any awareness of the concept of truth, he has less now due to his advancing dementia. After Tulsi Gabbard, his director of national intelligence (herself no mean liar) reported to Congress in March that Iran was not developing nuclear weapons, he said she was wrong. When his spooks said his $100million bombing raid didn’t do any real damage, he said they were wrong. Gabbard has now fallen into line and issued a statement denying she ever said that, although the Congressional record is clear. Trump’s entire cabinet and his huge retinue of hangers-on struggle to keep up with his endless flow of lies for fear they will be caught contradicting him and will be chucked out. Their plight is made worse as he often doesn’t appear to remember what he said a week ago. Nothing that comes out of Trump’s mouth can be taken at face value unless it’s “I want that so give it to me.”
Netanyahu, on the other hand, is fully in command of his faculties. For 33 years at least, he has been shouting that Iran is on the verge of developing nuclear weapons and must be bombed. It’s all a lie. If all they needed was a dash over a few weeks or months to produce one, they would have done it in April last year, when Israel bombed their embassy in Damascus (itself a major crime), or July, when Israel assassinated a Hamas leader in Tehran for talks, or October, when Israel bombed some of their anti-aircraft sites. Netanyahu is a highly polished liar because he’s had a lot of experience, but he’s following a long tradition. Nahum Goldmann, who was one of the major architects of the Israeli state and who knew absolutely everybody, said of David Ben Gurion, its first prime minister:
(He was) a very able and cunning diplomat and politician, really one of the best I have ever come across. A promise from him was quite worthless. He did not hesitate to promise one thing and then do the opposite. He was absolutely unscrupulous… he never had his fill of power… he only wanted to dominate [2, p94].
He never had his fill of power. Like teacher, like student, you could say. Nothing that comes out of Netanyahu’s mouth can be taken at face value, unless it’s “Destroy all the Arabs like Amalek.”
How do they get away with this? Well, we’ve seen a small example in Australia this week. In December 2023, Antoinette Latouf, a presenter with Australian Broadcasting Commission (ABC) was dismissed for reposting some items about Gaza on her private social media. This week, she won her case for unlawful dismissal and the ABC will have to pay damages, but the judgement was revealing. Her employer, a statutory body, was shown to have given in to pressure from “an orchestrated campaign by the Jewish lobby.” The what? This is Australia, we’re on the other side of the world from Israel and the US. We’re a small country with little weight in international forums so why is there an “Israel/Jewish/Zionist lobby” here, why do they even know we exist? Important questions, especially when there are a lot of people who fly into a rage when anybody suggests there is such a thing. Well, there is, as shown in an interview this week between American journalist, Katie Halper (who is Jewish) and author and investigative journalist, Whitney Webb. Halper is also a print journalist and is a capable interviewer. Her knowledge of all things Israeli and Palestinian is prodigious so she is widely disliked by people who want to keep things quiet.
I’ve mentioned Webb in this pages before. She is also American but now lives in Chile. Two years ago, she published a two volume expose of the hidden world of Jeffrey Epstein and his many, many friends in business, government and crime. In One Nation Under Blackmail: the sordid union between intelligence and organized crime that gave rise to Jeffrey Epstein, she gives a vastly detailed account of the century-old links between organised crime, the world’s interlinked espionage services and international banking [3]. In addition to her monumental work of discovery of the endless dirt that swirls around out of sight, she has a YouTube channel where she discusses the world of cryptos (it took me a while to work out that the author and the YouTube presenter are the same person, especially as she seems to be no more than late twenties, so it’s quite an achievement). In the interview above, they are discussing the links between crime, Wall St and spying. At 4.10, Webb says:
The illegitimate and the legitimate worlds have become so interlinked that you can’t stop the illicit one without breaking the whole system (of international banking).
Now they don’t say or imply that any particular banker or spy is involved with criminals, only that the systems are interwoven to the point where nobody can say where the legitimate world stops and the illegitimate takes over, or who is doing what covertly. As Webb spells out in almost numbing detail in her book, this is absolutely true of the US spy system with its 17 separate and squabbling agencies, and of Israel’s Mossad. Sex trafficking, drugs, spying, money laundering, bribing and kickbacks, illegal arms dealing, murder for hire, you name it, they do it. The same is true of Putin’s Russia [4].
Meantime, back in the US of A, the web of corruption around the presidency gets thicker and thicker, and not just his gifted $400million 747. His family’s involvement in Trump Crypto, in Trump phones (bought for about $100 in China and sold for $499), hotels and golf courses in half a dozen Gulf states, arms companies, media and so on just grows and grows. Trump, as they say, is a transactional president, meaning “What’s in it for me?” So far, not five months into his four year stint, the answer to that is “Billions.” The problem is, his entire cabinet and the institutions of power, the vaunted “checks and balances” seem to be unchecked and unbalanced. As the machinery of government is hollowed out and sold to the highest bidder, everybody with power to do something is waiting for their cut of the action and won’t speak out. The US has now become a mafia state and is being led along by a ring through its nose by the religious fanatics who have taken control of the Israeli state. Crooks to the right, cranks to the left, and the Palestinians in the middle get crushed. But it’s not just the Middle East, this goes on everywhere: Ukraine, Darfur, Syria, the Sahel, Columbia and Ecuador, you name it. As they say, fish rot from the head down. If the president and prime minister freely spin lies, so does everybody else.
Orwell put his finger on it: the lust for power produces criminality. For the power-hungry, power always Trumps integrity (!). Faced with the choice of losing power honestly or winning it dishonestly, the hunger wins. People who show integrity, like Antoinette Latouf, are targeted for attack but it’s all done behind the scenes. Is the Australian version of the Israel lobby connected to the underworld inhabited by the Epsteins of the world? I don’t know but according to Webb, who knows a great deal, there are no firewalls separating them, people move back and forth in the darkness, shaking hands, patting backs and exchanging favours as they go. But this is also true of all lobbies, which thrive on secrecy. They are immensely damaging to the democratic state. The only way to deal with them is to force them into the open. Each and every meeting with a politician, every email or phone call, every “confidential” letter or “discreet” meeting, must all be made public so we can all see what’s going on behind our backs. Otherwise we are in grave danger of losing our democracy, or what’s left of it. These three women provide the example.
References:
1. Orwell Notes on Nationalism. First published: Polemic. — GB, London. — May 1945. Reprinted: ‘England Your England and Other Essays’. — 1953.
2. Goldmann N. (1976/78). The Jewish Paradox. Weidenfeld & Nicholson: London.
3. Webb WA (2023) One Nation Under Blackmail: the sordid union between intelligence and organized crime that gave rise to Jeffrey Epstein (two volumes). New York: Trine Day.
4. Belton C (2020). Putin’s People: How the KGB took back Russia and then took on the West. London: Harper Collins.
Excellent coverage of the highly relevant past and present