The International League of Divided Loyalties

Last month I quoted Paul Belien of The Brussels Journal, who had written approvingly of Geert Wilders:

Wilders regards support for Israel as the litmus test to decide with whom he is willing to cooperate.

About which I commented:

In the excellent Wilders manner, this is stated so simply and directly. It gets to the heart of the issue and comprehends other, unspoken issues within it.

I then added:

A lot of people at other sites, and a couple of VFR commenters, were put off by this, because they feel I’m making automatic support for everything Israel does a condition of conservatism. Of course by support I don’t mean automatic support for everything Israel does. I mean support for Israel’s existence, its right to exist and thus to defend itself—rights which much of the world at present denies.

I wrote to Bjorn Larsen, president of the International Free Press Society-Canada:

A lot of people got very annoyed with me for agreeing with Wilders’s litmus test, because they feel I’m trying to force them to support Israel. Do you think I made a mistake by doing that?

Mr. Larsen replied:

Of course this was not a mistake, in the context of Wilders’s warning the world about Islam.

Islam’s continuous jihad against Israel, and our support for Western Civilization (in its roots based on Judaism’s idea of equality under God, and therefore equality under the law, and therefore freedom and civilization), must lead to our unconditional support of Israel in its fight to survive against Islam. This is what Wilders means when he says, “We are Israel.” Where Israel goes, so do we.

Support for Israel has nothing to do with being a conservative, neo, paleo or any other version, or a liberal. One’s political leanings on this existential question are as irrelevant as saying that freedom of speech is only a conservative issue, or, even more absurd, saying that we can only agree on the life-or-death issue of Islam if we also agree on social policy, taxation, and health care.

Support for Israel will be automatic for rational freedom-loving people—Israel’s survival is a universal and existential issue, as basic as freedom versus slavery. So let’s agree on the basic threat of Islamization and deal with specific policies when that problem has been solved.

Now let’s see. Geert Wilders, a non-religious Dutch politician, believes that support for Israel’s existence is a litmus test for whom he would cooperate with. Paul Belien, a Catholic Belgian journalist and a supporter of the Flemish independence movement, agrees with Wilders’s litmus test. Bjorn Larsen, a Norwegian by birth and a Canadian by adoption, and not of any religious affiliation, agrees with Wilders’s litmus test. Lawrence Auster, an American who is Jewish by birth and Christian by religion, agrees with Wilders’s litmus test.

But guess who, among these four individuals, has been accused, on the basis of his agreement with Wilders’s litmus test, of caring “at least” as much for Israel as for his own country? Only the Jew.

- end of initial entry -

Daniel S. writes:

You are correct in stating that many of the attacks being directed toward you have their foundation in anti-Semitism. The anti-Semitism issue aside though, what position would your critics have us take toward Israel? They cannot claim an attitude of indifference, as they make very clear their hostility toward Israel and its supporters. So what then? Should we rally to the cause of the Muslim Palestinians? Should we champion Hamas, Iran, and Hezbollah? And if we are to support the political aspirations (or should I say, theo-political aspirations) of the Muslims against Israel, then how can we oppose it elsewhere? If Israel is to be sold out to the jihad, then why all the griping by paleo-conservatives about Kosovo or Chechnya? Why is Israel to be damned for fighting off Islamic imperialism, but not Russia, who has far less claim to Muslim-dominated Chechnya and Dagestan then Israel does to “Palestine”? But the answer to that question would naturally lead us back to the latent anti-Semitism of your critics.

LA replies:

As you point out, anti-Semitism / anti-Israelism becomes particularly incoherent when a given anti-Israelite is also anti-Islam. For example, Richard Spencer has said that the West’s long term goal vis a vis Islam should be to drive back the Muslims from Istanbul and re-Christianize it. At the same time, he publishes Kevin MacDonald’s article demonizing Israel as a morally illegitimate, apartheid state, which of course is the Muslim take on Israel. So Spencer would simultaneously undercut and isolate Israel and allow the Muslims to destroy it, giving Islam its greatest victory since the conquest of Constantinople in 1453; AND he wants to drive the Muslims out of Constantinople!

What can explain such incoherence? The fact that when a person embraces anti-Israelism / anti-Semitism, it takes over his thought process and makes it impossible for him to think logically toward any logical and good purpose.

April 21

Sage McLaughlin writes:

To add to your International League of Divided Loyalties, I’m a supporter (read: non-hater) of Israel as well. I was born to a Jewish mother and an Irish Catholic father, and am a baptized, practicing Catholic. So perhaps I am living evidence of MacDonald’s thesis—maybe we really are genetically programmed to defend the Jewish state at the expense of our loyalty to the white West. After all, having been raised an American Catholic without any significant relationship with my Jewish relatives, what else could possibly explain my divided loyalties?

What’s dispiriting is that the theory as I’ve just described it isn’t a caricature—people really do believe it, and would literally hold me up as evidence for it.

John P. writes:

Well, I’m as WASP as they come and I support Israel. I just wish more Jewish intellectuals would return the favour.

LA writes:

Several more members of the International League of Divided Loyalties have come forward in this entry.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at April 20, 2010 06:19 PM | Send