[D-G] analysis state of affairs Billy Budd

[Johnatan Petterson]

hello Mike


i wonder what do you think about this writer

he published an article on the intercept


i think it is interesting in light of the upcoming elections in EU:

my opinion is that the universalism like Macron defends, and about which
Hazony is talking

is down next elections here in Europe. Deleuze himself by the way was
against Human Rights Organisation,

and saw the introduction of the East of Europe ( see for that
'Negotiations'1989)

as a chief source of wonder for the becomings in the continent.


the question is why there aint no political parties attacking universalism

besides the parties of the illiberals.

there could be ecologists, leftists, and center (that is 'democratic' or
'liberal' family ) parties capable to defend

an other vision of Europe, but the yellow jackets 'communication' between
people is a bit 'wrong' because unleashing everyone in the net of LePen

who are so cynical folks.

so the leaders of these liberal parties are freaking out, frightened as says

here Mister Hussain by the sliding of opinions which is the disaster

of an nothingness of will, or a will to nothingness. as pointed by Melville
in

Billy Budd with the so dirty (alien 'violet' eyed) officer Claggart sudden
attack Billy unduly who is described as a nobleman of the

sails.

Capitain Vere is the one uncapable to make the right decision, and
sacrifices Billy.

the crowd of sailors nods. (the end)

the new version of Europe would instead  be one more centered on nation
states

which would indeed each acquire more independence


there would remain capitals , for debates and thoughts , for exchange
between those states,

which shall strongly be needed.




the logic behind Mister Hussain is that the US having chosen Independence
from ONU and such,

will loose 'previous' credit

within the chief of those defending Europe, and these folks

from the other ships are betting on 'autodestruction'

be it the ship Israel, or the one of Europe


let's be preserved from all that violence !!


JPett










Murtaza Hussain <https://theintercept.com/staff/murtaza-hussain/>


May 5 2019, 3:00 p.m.

RIGHT-WING ISRAELI AUTHOR WRITES “THE VIRTUE OF NATIONALISM” — AND
ACCIDENTALLY EXPOSES ITS PITFALLS



OVER THE PAST decade, far-right nationalist movements have swept into power
across the world, from the United States to India, from Brazil to Europe.
Every movement needs its texts. Today, the nationalists seem to have found
one: “The Virtue of Nationalism,” by the conservative Israeli philosopher
Yoram Hazony. Among other plaudits, the book was recently awarded “Conservative
Book of the Year
<https://www.c-span.org/video/?459062-1/isi-conservative-book-year-award>”
by an influential conservative campus organization. If nothing else, the
award is an indicator of where conservative thought is headed.

Hazony has a gift for unpacking complex ideas in an accessible way. The
problem is that his ideas are not very consistent. They are also
potentially dangerous, especially for people living in small, isolated
countries like his own.

Nationalism has a reputation for starting wars, a painful historical legacy
that caused the idea to fall out of favor. But “The Virtue of Nationalism”
makes the case for embracing it again as a positive force. Hazony argues
that nationalism is the only defense against “imperialism” — defined today,
by Hazony and some other nationalists, as the tyranny of universal values
and liberal international organizations like the United Nations, the North
Atlantic Treaty Organization, and the International Criminal Court. The
book is a rallying cry against a world of universal rights and laws. It
calls instead for each individual nation to govern itself as it sees fit.
Such an arrangement will bring greater peace to the world, Hazony suggests,
as each country focuses on tending its own garden instead of going on
ideological adventures abroad.


There’s an important subtext running through the book: Hazony’s anger over
international criticism of Israeli human rights abuses. Despite the
incredible international support extended to Israel over the years, Hazony
feels that recent criticisms of its abuses amount to “a shaming campaign of
a kind that few nations have historically experienced.” For this insult,
he’s ready to cast all the liberal institutions of the world — the ones
that have been sustaining and defending Israel for decades — as its mortal
enemies. He appears positively gleeful about the potential destruction of
liberal internationalism at the hands of the new nationalist vanguard.

Hazony’s disdain for international norms and the organizations that promote
them might already be winning out. President Donald Trump is in the White
House; Brexit is casting a pall over the European Union; China is focused
on its own development with little else in mind; and authoritarian leaders
are taking power in northern Europe, South Asia, Latin America, the Middle
East, and elsewhere.

When I noticed high-profile conservatives in the United States praising
“The Virtue of Nationalism,” I picked up a copy, expecting to be grudgingly
impressed by an argument that I disagreed with. It failed to deliver on
even that modest goal. The whole argument instead felt like an extended
tantrum. In that sense, at least, it partly reflects the mood of the
historically untutored nationalist movements that are upending politics all
over the world.

THE CASE FOR the new nationalism is justified by an old ideology: the
anti-imperialism of the right. This version of anti-imperialism is distinct
from its left-wing variant. Right-wing anti-imperialism holds that
outsiders have no legitimate interest in what countries do within their own
borders. Unlike liberals and leftists, they recoil from the idea of global
standards for human rights and governance. In their worldview, the major
imperialists of today are the international institutions that seek to
impose such standards — notably the EU and the U.N.


These institutions, Hazony argues, are “a version of the old imperialism”
which bludgeons the sovereignty of nations. Their tools are global
governance and the ideology they seek to impose is liberalism. In the words
of former Trump adviser Steve Bannon, they are the “globalists,” a term
that Hazony also uses. The heroes fighting this global empire, meanwhile,
are anti-EU political movements, Trump supporters, and illiberal
governments like Brazil and Hungary.

“The Virtue of Nationalism” is in large part a work of nostalgia — calling
back to and justifying historic notions of nationalism. As for the baggage
that entails, Hazony gets around it by claiming that the two world wars it
helped foment happened because the countries involved weren’t really
nations. Germany under the Nazis was actually an “empire” because it sought
to interfere in the affairs of others, as the EU does. Even World War I
happened not because of a scramble to steal the wealth of overseas
colonies, the traditional historical explanation, but because Europeans had
been seduced by the idea of making their way of life universal.


There are, of course, perfectly valid reasons to criticize institutions
like the EU and NATO. These international bodies are often justly accused
of entrenching inequality or privileging the interests of their most
powerful members. Still, it’s hard to take seriously the claim that being a
member of the EU is anything like being subjugated by Genghis Khan.

Unlike medieval villagers conquered by the Mongols, countries today
fiercely compete to become members of the EU and NATO. They seek membership
for the considerable economic and political benefits it brings. But they
also do it because they’re afraid of traditional nations like Russia, which
is not as peacefully inward-looking
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_military_intervention_in_the_Syrian_Civil_War>
as
Hazony’s book might suggest, despite having shed any pretense of wanting to
spread a universal ideology. Seeing nationalism as a force for peace
requires looking at both the past and present with some heavy blinkers.

AS ANY GOOD nationalist would be, Hazony is extremely defensive of his own
country: Israel. Here’s how he portrays the Jewish state’s predicament: In
a world overrun by liberal globalists, Israel stands out as a place that
jealously defends its own sovereignty. For asserting the right to act as it
sees fit, it has been shamed by the international community and its
tyrannical human rights rhetoric.

Remarkably, for a book that talks about Israeli nationalism so much, the
word “Palestinian” appears a grand total of once in its text: when the
author asks in frustration why the world keeps haranguing Israelis about
Palestinian statehood.


Alongside Israel, there are two other countries Hazony claims that have
been similarly victimized by the shaming campaigns of liberals and
globalists: apartheid South Africa and Serbia under the dictatorship of
Slobodan Milosevic. The reason for this is liberal racism. “The reason
these people were singled out for special hatred and disgust, and for
special punishment, is that white South Africans and Serbs are seen as
Europeans, and are held to a moral standard that is without any relation to
what is expected of their African or Muslim neighbors,” Hazony writes. It
is axiomatic to him that whatever crimes white Afrikaners or Serbs commit
must obviously pale in comparison to the barbarism of black Africans and
Muslims.

For all his righteous defense of nationalism, Hazony’s argument against
liberal imperialism is not even consistent. The U.S. invasion of Iraq in
2003 was justified in no small part on the grounds of spreading democratic
values, even at the cost of hundreds of thousands of dead and maimed
Iraqis. Incredibly, Hazony doesn’t seem to consider that imperialism. In
the book, he suggests that the real imperialists during the war were the
U.N. and EU officials complaining about American unilateralism. “Their
problem,” Hazony writes, “is that the United States acts as an independent
nation.”

IT’S WORTH NOTING that Hazony’s hostility towards liberal internationalism
is consistent with the calculus of Israel’s current leadership. Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has made no secret of his enthusiasm for
nationalist leaders like Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro and Hungary’s Viktor
Orban. These strongmen are apparently a refreshing change from the liberals
who — having created, sustained, and defended Israel for decades — continue
to make annoying inquiries about Palestinian statehood and human rights.


Israelis pining for the return of right-wing nationalism should think
twice. It’s not clear that their country would do so well in such a world.
The U.S.’s crucial support for Israel is frequently justified not on pure
grounds of American national interests, but because of the two countries’
supposed “shared values,” their democratic characters — however specious,
in Israel’s case — chief among these. As the world’s lone superpower, the
United States has been waging wars in the Middle East for decades in the
name of promoting liberalism and democracy. These wars have sometimes been
justified as defenses of Israel, or have at the very least converged with
Israel’s proclaimed security interests. If the U.S. shifts to a purely
nationalist footing, this shared ideological interest disappears.

What might the foreign policy of a nationalist U.S. look like? A country
focused more strictly on its own self-interest may find it more profitable
to make peace with the populous, oil-rich nations of Iran and the Arab
world rather than fighting endless wars against them over ideological
differences. During the 2016 presidential campaign, Trump gave hints of
these kinds of sentiments and the response to his candidacy suggests that a
desire for this approach also lurks among significant segments of the
American public. If the U.S. ever truly turns nationalist and abandons the
liberal universalism that Hazony finds so oppressive, it would have less
impetus to maintain its current approach towards the Middle East. A country
with few friends like Israel would then have much more serious problems on
its hands than it does today.


In Israel and beyond, the nationalist movements that we see across the
world today are united by a sense of grievance. Spoiled by years of
relative security and prosperity, even those who owe their very existence
to liberal indulgence now consider the slightest demand asked in return to
be a form of tyranny. If nothing else, Hazony’s book does a great job of
encapsulating the psychology of the new nationalists.

“The Virtue of Nationalism” isn’t all bad, then. The book also restates
some familiar criticisms of life in liberal societies, which stand accused
of failing to provide a sense of meaning and shared purpose. Such critiques
will always be poignant on some level. It’s a monumental irony, however, to
see people in small, isolated countries like Israel now openly express
nostalgia for the old world of nationalism. If history is any guide, they
should be careful what they wish for.


cfr

https://theintercept.com/2019/05/05/israel-virture-of-nationalism-book/