Emancipation for Jews in nineteenth century Europe meant freedom from persecution and acceptance. Too long strangers in the towns & cities where they lived and worked, for Jews to be accorded the same rights as Christians had been a long held dream, and it was a dream worth fighting for. — “…in political warfare…/…racism was calculated to be a more powerful ally than any paid agent or organisation of fifth columnists,” wrote Hannah Arendt, and then later affirming that the “old misconception of racism as an exaggerated form of nationalism is still given currency,” statements that remain pertinent even all these…

Is the war on Gaza is the final physical manifestation of Western colonialism; the last gasp of white supremacy & the end of Western global dominance? — “Morality is a body of principles and rules which must be applied in every realm of human activity: in family life as in business, in art as in politics. …

As levels of antisemitism rise once again in the West, I take a look at theories that can explain the roots of modern Jewish persecution, as well as the legislative background that led, post-WWII, to the legal protections & human rights laws that we all now know and recognise. — “…it must be possible to face and understand the outrageous fact that so small (and, in world politics, so unimportant) a phenomenon as the Jewish question and antisemitism could become the catalyst agent for first, the Nazi movement, then a world war, and finally the establishment of death factories.”

The Western application of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights for Me and My Mates, But Not for Anyone Else Outside of this Club is resulting in the biggest miscarriage of justice since the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Collective punishment and mass starvation are being normalised and even applauded, as the pain and anguish of stricken Israeli families is being used to slaughter thousands in the name of what they call targeted justice, and most definitely “not retribution.”

As levels of antisemitism rise once again in the West, it worth considering where the roots of Jewish persecution lie, what makes us continually susceptible to its message, & how different societies have used this racist narrative to their advantage or detriment. — “Antisemitism, a secular nineteenth century ideology — which in name, though not in argument, was unknown before the 1870’s — and religious Jew-hatred, inspired by the mutually hostile antagonism of two conflicting creeds, are obviously not the same; and even the extent to which the former derives its arguments and…

Nihilistic, nationalist movements of the 1930’s needed an enemy on which to pin their anger, their hatred & their resentment. The Jews were a soft target & suffered dreadfully because of it. Today as the memory of WWII fades, the spectre of extreme nationalist sentiments is on the rise again in Germany & across the West…is it all about to happen again? — “His simplifying approach (to shoe-making) would be universally applicable, but was especially pertinent to the Catholic Church, in whose doctrine his elders had educated him. Drawing on the sayings of the prophets of the Old Testament, he objected first to the ceremonial ostentation of papal elections and then to their…

The Great Schism, the Reformation, the Renaissance, the ascent & decline of Utopian secularism, & the fracturing of Christian worship has left the West in a moral vacuum that many blame for the ills that beset our world. — “It is not morning in America,” Mr. Ramaswamy, 38, shot back in his rapid-fire Harvard debating style. “We live in a dark moment. And we have to confront the fact that we’re in an internal sort of cold, cultural civil war.”

Decades after von Manstein’s epic battles, Putin took the Crimean peninsula with no such drama. Exhibiting deft tactical slight of hand together with misinformation overload, the peninsula was taken without a shot fired. Here’s how Putin did it… — “There are certain special characteristics and I think they have to do with values. I think that a Russian person, or, to speak more broadly, a person of the Russian World, thinks, first, that man has a moral purpose, a higher moral basis. The is why the Russian person, a…

Under the command of Generaloberst Erich von Manstein, Hitler’s armies prepared for what would be the final assault on the great fortress city of Sevastopol, belief in their destiny as humanity’s superior race meant ultimate victory was their due. What neither he, nor Hitler knew, was that this would be the Nazis last great victorious battle… — “The two outstanding characteristics of the German mind since the (First World) war have been, first, a sense of national grievance, and second, a declining faith among all classes in liberal capitalism. National Socialism fused the two in the conception of Germany as a “coolie” nation, exploited like any colony…