By Theodore Shoebat
It seems that the masses are governed by imbalance. If you disagree with one thing, people assume that you must agree with something else that is equally wrong or atrocious. There is a chaotic chasm that people have fallen into, where one evil thing means a justification of another evil, and the shedding of any light on this duplicitousness is met with accusations of supporting the evil they use as a pretext for their own insidious ideas and goals. Such a mentality is akin to the belief of “might makes right.” One can say, ‘Because I have the power, I have the right to be a tyrant, despot, an oppressor.’ But a right does not mean a wrong, just as two wrongs do not make a right. This reality can be seen in the story of Jeroboam and the divide between the Hebrews which led into the horrendous civil war between Israel and Judah.
God was angry with Solomon because of his paganism and so declared that He would give ten tribes to Solomon’s servant, Jeroboam, but that Solomon’s heir will get to have Judah so that “David my servant may always have a lamp before me in Jerusalem, the city where I have chosen to put my name.” (1 Kings 11:36) God did not wish evil for these ten tribes, but merely split them away from the House of David as a punishment on Solomon. For God tells Jeroboam (through Ahijah):
“And if you will listen to all that I command you, and will walk in my ways, and do what is right in my eyes by keeping my statutes and my commandments, as David my servant did, I will be with you and will build you a sure house, as I built for David, and I will give Israel to you. 39 And I will afflict the offspring of David because of this, but not forever.” (1 Kings 11:38-39)
Solomon, angry at the prophecy of ten tribes no longer being under his family’s rule, sought therefore to kill Jeroboam. (1 Kings 11:40). After Solomon died his son, Rehoboam, succeeded the throne. The officials of Israel told him: “Your father made our yoke heavy. Now therefore lighten the hard service of your father and his heavy yoke on us, and we will serve you.” (1 Kings 12:4) The counsels advised him:
“If you will be a servant to this people today and serve them, and speak good words to them when you answer them, then they will be your servants forever.” (1 Kings 12:7)
But the idea of respect was forsook, and arrogance and obnoxiousness was championed. For Rehoboam rejected the advise of the councilors and sought out the opinions of his friends and asked them:
“What do you advise that we answer this people who have said to me, ‘Lighten the yoke that your father put on us’?” And the young men who had grown up with him said to him, “Thus shall you speak to this people who said to you, ‘Your father made our yoke heavy, but you lighten it for us,’ thus shall you say to them, ‘My little finger is thicker than my father’s thighs. And now, whereas my father laid on you a heavy yoke, I will add to your yoke. My father disciplined you with whips, but I will discipline you with scorpions.’” (1 Kings 12:9-11)
Three days later Rehoboam told the officials of Israel:
“My father made your yoke heavy, but I will add to your yoke. My father disciplined you with whips, but I will discipline you with scorpions.” (1 Kings 12:14)
The people of Israel were so upset by the haughtiness of Rehoboam that they decided it best to split from Judah as opposed to being ruled by a ruthless tyrant. They exclaimed:
“What portion do we have in David? We have no inheritance in the son of Jesse. To your tents, O Israel! Look now to your own house, David.” (1 Kings 12:16)
The injustice of King Rehoboam to deny the Israelites their dignity led to a revolution. Rehoboam took one truth — that was king — to justify an evil. Instead of being a servant to this people, he became a bludgeon. One cannot blame the Israelites for severing themselves from Judah. At the same time, Jeroboam, now ruling over ten tribes, pointed to the evil of Rehoboam while justifying the crime of paganism. Instead of listening to God and doing “what is right in my eyes by keeping my statutes and my commandments”, he feared that if the people worshipped God that they would eventually kill him and go back under the reign of Jeroboam. “If this people go up to offer sacrifices in the temple of the Lord at Jerusalem, then the heart of this people will turn again to their lord, to Rehoboam king of Judah, and they will kill me and return to Rehoboam king of Judah.” (1 Kings 12:27) So he made idols of golden calfs, the very image that the Hebrews forged with their jewelry while in the desert exodus from Egypt.
It is true that Rehoboam wronged Israel with his attempt at despotism, but it was also wrong for Jeroboam to keep Israel away from Judah through idolatry. Here we have two evils — tyranny and paganism —; the former is advanced affirmatively while the latter uses the other to justify its existence. The strategy of using one evil to justify another goes right along the very title of Satan; for his name means accuser, since he exploits the sins of people for his own hatred of humanity. So in the human races there are legions of those who wait for certain people to do wrong so that they can point the finger and justify some sinister agenda. They shed light on certain transgressions to then make their plan of destruction appear sound.
They will point to Communism to justify Fascism; Fascism to justify Communism; government corruption to bolster anarchism; they will point to the dirty deeds of ecclesiastical figures to justify atheism, they will garner attention on fanaticism to justify liberal religion, and they will pull your gaze to liberal religion to give grounds for mechanical, dry, callous and authoritarian religion. An evildoer is like a compass: he constantly is pointing towards a certain direction, guiding you down that route while you feel the need to hold onto the compass as your savior. So too do people hold onto these foes as their protectors from one particular evil as they look away from what inhumanities their protectors do. One can see this moribund occurrence throughout the globe: from the lives of individuals to politics, the deceptive ways of pretexts abound.
When the Japanese were doing their genocide of millions of civilians in China in the 1930s, the Buddhist establishment in Japan believed that it was a righteous war because it was liberating the Chinese from Communism. In October of 1937, Hitane Jozan, a scholar-priest of Zen Buddhism, wrote:
“Speaking from the point of view of the ideal outcome, this is a righteous and moral war of self-sacrifice in which we will rescue China from the dangers of Communist takeover and economic slavery.” (See Victoria, Zen at War, ch. 9, p. 134)
Communism is destructive, yes, but so is the fascism of the Japanese imperial cult of sun and emperor worship which brought about the massacres of tens of millions in Asia. One can act with consternation at the idea of Communism and then bolster up some regime as our heroes, but if the solution entails fascism and bloodlust, then such should be rejected. But (and to quote Gaddafi), “How cruel people can be when they rise up together, a crushing flood that has no mercy for anything in its path.” (Gaddafi, Escape to Hell, ed. Salinger). And out of all people, Gaddafi would be amongst those most qualified to speak of the tyranny of the masses.
They are taken easily by propaganda, and if anyone questions the narrative that they are so pulled by they will hate the one who warns them. If one says, for example, ‘Yes, illegal immigration is a problem, but it is not as though swarms of people are merely rushing into the country without any difficulty because they “hate America” and desire to destroy our sovereignty and drain American citizens of jobs and resources. People who cross the border come into this country after walking and traveling hundreds of miles. They could be murdered, raped, kidnapped and their organs taken, forced into sex slavery or even eaten by wild animals. Who goes through such dangers and endures such travails because they are living a comfortable life in their own home country? One would have be living a pretty poor and volatile life to have the willingness to go through such a difficult path. Most of them come here to work because they don’t have a chance at a better life where they come from. Moreover, in the 1800s the US made it easier for workers to come here because we needed their labor in agriculture and there was no outcry about Mexican or Central American migrants like we hear today. By making these people “illegal”, they then go through illegal means to come here so that they can give their much demanded work in farms and construction. Even when Trump was first complaining about Hispanic migrants, American farmers in the South, who generally vote Republican, were advising Trump not to execute massive deportations of these people because their labor is so necessary.’
If one were to say this, one would be met with the fickle remarks of, ‘They are criminals!’ ‘They are bloodsuckers!’ ‘Illegal is illegal!’ ‘Not our problem!’ And if I were to show that these migrants are not our enemies, but in fact are being exploited and used for slave labor and that this exploitation will continue as long as they are labeled as “illegal,” they would argue that these migrants are “leeches” and are indeed enemies of America’s sovereignty. And if I were to show how little crime comes from these people they call “illegal aliens,” I would receive the infamous term of “Fake news!” If you tell them that the Bible calls us to love those who are foreigners (Deuteronomy 10:19), they will argue that this does not apply to the migrant.
These same people will then spread around articles from Breitbart to prove that these immigrants are the monsters they perceive them to be. They will not care at all about the fact that Breitbart has been used to promote anti-immigrant sentiment and was, in fact, being told by Stephan Miller to push more stories about immigrants and violence; Miller even referenced openly eugenist organizations, VDARE and Amren, to prove himself in his correspondence with Breitbart. Miller, in these same exchanges with Breitbart, praised the racist immigration policy of President Coolidge, as we learn from the New York Times:
“In the emails to Breitbart, a topic Mr. Miller referred to more than once was the Coolidge-era immigration law, which ushered in 40 years of lowered immigration levels with discriminatory quotas aimed at southern and Eastern Europeans, whom critics at the time attacked as nonwhite.
On Aug. 4, 2015, Mr. Miller sent an email supporting the idea of a complete ban on immigration “like Coolidge did,” an apparent reference to the 1924 law. As a result of those new “national origin quotas,” immigration fell by half and the arrival of Italians and Poles fell by 90 percent. Mr. Sessions, Mr. Miller’s boss at the time, was known for publicly praising Coolidge’s policies because he believed they had bolstered American wages.
The 1924 law endorsed by Coolidge is widely seen today as a symbol of bigotry and was heavily influenced by the eugenics movement.”
But this fact does not make the ones spreading around Breitbart’s articles about immigration wonder that this website that they love so much really has its own agenda of tension. They will in fact hate the one who warns them about such spawners of propaganda. They don’t care at all that what evils have been done by illegal immigrants are being used to condemn a whole group. The migrant is not our enemy, but is merely a victim of exploitation forced in a predicament of either risking the dangerous journey of La Frontera or being stuck in an dangerous place with no economic future. The real enemy is not the migrant, but the one who points to the migrant while getting you drunk off of the wiles of the devil and lost in the inebriation of imbalance.