Walking and War

Yesterday I went for a walk as I often do. Normally I have in my head the route I will take, this being chosen as I put on my shoes and go through the various several routes I have taken over the previous few years. This was also the case yesterday and as I set out I had pre-selected one of the shorter routes. But about 15 minutes into the walk, as I was walking through my local park, a thought suddenly occurred to me. This thought was that my next hour had been planned out in my head ahead of time by my decision. By pre-selecting the route I knew where I would be going, probably what I'd see, etc. I thought about this as I kept walking and compared it to what would be case if I'd not pre-selected my route and just set off at random, not deciding ahead of time which direction I would take at junctions and, therefore, not knowing where I'd be going. The second option seemed suddenly more attractive, especially the not knowing and the consequent unfolding surprise such a walk would be. 

I was coming to the path at the bottom of the park where I would be forced to turn either left (as I'd preselected) or right and suddenly in my head there was a jeopardy for, suddenly, I imagined not knowing which way I would go. I thought to myself that I would go left anyway, as I wasn't feeling particularly energetic and this way was the shortest. I settled into this idea for a minute. But then the possibility of turning right and going the longer, unprepared for, way began to reassert itself as a possibility. I vacillated back and forth, not knowing what option I would take. Then, annoyed with myself, I determined to stop this nonsense, enjoy the moment of my walk and let a momentary decision decide when I actually got to the point a few hundred meters ahead of me when I would have to make a choice. I did notice, however, that the rest of the walk then became better as a result of this choice, this not knowing what would happen, this living in the moment rather than having my immediate future pre-planned and decided.

The last book of the Christian bible and so, logically, the culmination of the bible's story, is a vision of a cosmic war. One of the things this book describes itself as is a prophecy by which, in common parlance, we take it to mean a foretelling of the future. It is a fact you may become aware of in the unlikely scenario that you ever take a course in biblical studies that "prophecy" is not usually regarded as "foretelling"; its more a case of "forth telling" but I digress. In any case, should you be one of those who thinks of prophecy as foretelling the future then Revelation presents itself as the story of the end of the world, the way God wraps up the whole story of this creation he has, according to the script of the bible, made. It is not a pleasant scene. Here God sends his champion, that Jesus fella who was formerly in the bible saying "Blessed are the poor," healing sick people and telling people to turn the other cheek, on a big white horse to slaughter all the unrepentant people who don't believe in God. Basically, what we have is the notion that, at the end of all this "God is love" business you might have heard of, God is actually just going to kill all the people who haven't done what he wanted. Its divinely sanctioned violence. That is the story of the world, that is our future foretold.

Now as with my walk, I'm not too happy about this when I realise that someone has written a story in which "the end" is apparently foretold. (Put aside the question of if its true or not. Its not, but that doesn't matter.) In my new, post-realisation mind set, not knowing things gives a better opportunity for a fresh look at and appreciation of life than one that is planned out. And then there is all this violence business. Its bad enough that actual people will be violent to each other without the gods joining in. But do I have this the right way round? I wonder how many Christians over two millennia have read Revelation, seen that the way the story ends is by God killing all the bad guys, and then thought, "Well if that's what's going to happen in the end anyway then what's the problem with dusting off a few unbelievers right now?" 

Since Revelation was written we have had Crusades and an Inquisition and I sense a latent desire from some good old white Christian boys across the water (and not just across the water) to kill the unbelieving Muslims because they are on the wrong side of this pre-decided history. Preachers of hate such as Britain First, a ragtag band of self-aggrandizing troublemakers made more famous when Trump retweeted their error-strewn material, have expressly used "Christian" imagery in their ideological war against immigrants as, apparently, it is their lack of "Christian values" that marks them out as not like us the most. Which "Christian values" are these, I wonder, the ones from Revelation where all the ones not on our Christian side will be slaughtered for making the wrong choice?

So there is a problem with divine violence in Revelation and its not a Muslim problem or a problem of any other religion (although I won't deny their problems with a similar thing either): its a Christian problem. Revelation, so at least two New Testament scholars I respect have said, is "the most violent book in religious history." The problem is that by telling us the violent end of the story this book has apparently mandated violence in the name of its God and religious violence is probably the most insidious form of violence for how do you stop someone convinced that a divine being has authorised their activities? As I intimated before, its only bumping up the schedule if we good Christians dust off a few bad guys now, its not fundamentally changing the script. And what's worse, God is actually shown to be approving of violence in Revelation. Revelation acts as a divine endorsement of divine violence. Jesus, that nice fella from the gospels who was, in the time-worn phrase, "meek and mild" is not very meek and mild in Revelation. He is a Terminator or a Predator hunting down all the people who don't follow a certain religious path. And chopping their heads off. No more "King of Kings," he is now "Warlord of Warlords". In fact, as someone who has worked on "the historical Jesus" at university for PhD studies and written a couple of books about it, I don't recognise this guy. Whoever wrote Revelation has a massive hard-on for killing and death for Revelation is a major revenge fantasy. They've taken Mr Meek and Mild and turned him into a violent killer and called it "good news"!

I mentioned earlier that, of course, Revelation is not true. I also said it didn't matter because, as with any literature, what matters is what it disseminates and motivates and not whether its true or not. Things don't need to be true, they just need to be believed. Have we not learned this lesson by now? Does it matter if Revelation is true if Christians across the centuries see in it a warrant to kill the enemies of God? I imagine the writer of Revelation never figured as he wrote his revenge fantasy of the Christians beating their persecutors that before too long the Christians would actually be running the show and could begin the timetable of Revelation a bit early. Oops. But there we are, what's done is done. I do wish, however, that the writer had not decided to tell us the end before we got there because, in a way, he has ruined everything and there's blood on his hands. In retrospect, isn't it just better not knowing and trying to enjoy each moment we get without worrying about ultimate destinations? Do we need to exist in our own version of the Final Destination films where we know there will be a grisly death and its shadow blights everything we do? Ends can always cast mighty long shadows and not really for any good. At least, that's how it seems to me. 

So, there are some stories we human beings probably shouldn't tell for, in the end, we cannot blame gods for them. Revelation, on the face of it a tale about how God subdues and takes over everything, making it wholly divine, is actually a story about how God just becomes a man, a man like us, a man who, when things haven't gone his way, resorts to killing to resolve his problems. Revelation is a book which shows God as very manly, aggressive and violent. Go on son (of God), knock him out! We here on planet Earth still have our own violence problems, of course, and many still envisage themselves or their countries as in a violent struggle for resources as, apparently, that people from one country prosper and survive is more important than that people from another one do. I wonder where such people see their story ending and what destination they have pre-selected? Is it in Orwell's perpetual war of 1984? On the other hand, don't tell me. I don't want to know.

PS I turned right.

Terrorism: Know Your Enemy

It is either a brave or a stupid person who, in the current climate, would choose to write a blog about terrorism. And yet I find that I must, primarily because I see so much comment about it and so much of it seems, to me, to be either misguided, incendiary, ignorant, understandable but naive, or, often, all of these things. You may take it as read before continuing to read this blog that I am not in favor of random killings of any human beings by any other set of human beings. You may equally take it as read that I am not here to take sides as much of the media-led public would like people to do. I do not see killers and murderers of any persuasion as anything but representatives of themselves and their own beliefs. People do what they choose to do for the motivations and justifications that they themselves devise. So I am here to resist the notion that some belief system or foreign deity makes anyone do anything or that any text has mandated the deaths of innocent people. There is an ancient man who was quoted as saying "Let him who is without sin cast the first stone". If we follow that thinking then there should be no one around picking up any rocks.

The recent attacks in Brussels are, of course, horrible. Anyone with human empathy would feel that way I imagine. But, to me, watching the reactions coming in on social media yesterday, I couldn't help but think that many of the reactions I saw from western Europeans, who are largely those I would see the responses of, were somewhat naive. Yes, the bombings yesterday were horrible. But my mind wandered across the globe a little to the east and settled in the arab region. Some people, fueled by the incendiary and barely disguised racist thinking of those who would consider themselves nominally Christian (and almost always white), would like you to believe that an area from roughly Istanbul to Afghanistan is full of foaming at the mouth Muslim killers. This is what we see on the news, right? But, of course, this is not so. The vast majority of people here are just as normal, and as peaceful, as you or I would consider ourselves to be. They are mothers and brothers and sons and daughters. They want to feed and clothe themselves, work, get some money, build something of whatever kind of life can be made out there. In other words, no, not everyone out there is a foaming at the mouth religious extremist pledged to kill the infidels. And, what's worse, they actually get bombed and killed a whole lot more then we in the West do. I find this map instructive:

What this map shows is that in the last 15 months there have been horrific attacks in Europe and America. But relatively few (this does not lessen their horror, by the way). What this map further shows is that if you happen to be an ordinary person going about your business in northern Africa or what we may loosely term "Arabic Asia" then you are much more likely to be shot or bombed by terrorists. Indeed, there are some places in that area where I imagine this is a regular occurrence. Yesterday I read that certain politicians are saying we are "at war" with something. (I'm not sure what we are supposed to be at war with - an idea? a religion? certain individuals?) But it occurred to me that for people who just happened to be born in Sanaa or Gaza or Mogadishu or Homs - through no fault of their own - that their daily experience of life is war. They do not have the luxury of declaring themselves to be at war with anything. They are just there right slap bang in bombing central. They didn't ask for this anymore than Parisians, Londoners, Brusselaars or New Yorkers. They, too, are victims. And so this situation can never be the cartoon version that Fox News will present you, a thinly disguised version of white Christian protestants versus the filthy Arab hordes. The only fight this can ever be is between those who want to live in peace without blowing people up and those who are prepared to use violence and death to bring their ideas about. And if we use that definition it muddies up the waters considerably.

Yesterday the loudmouth troll, Katie Hopkins, a Z list celebrity from the UK famous only for the fact she is outrageously right wing for money, tweeted the following:

I don't dignify Hopkins by seeking to argue here that she stands for a certain point of view. She doesn't. She stands merely for padding out her ego with the most attention-getting thing she can think of to say. She is, if we must credit her with anything at all, merely taking sides. Of course, her notion is absurd and suggests that "refugees" and "terrorists who blow people up" are the same group of people. Yet, as I have already shown, there are many, many places in north Africa and arabian Asia where people are being even more terrorized than we are. Here a terrorist is not "someone who looks like an Arab" because there they all do. Because they all are. Hopkins, of course, does not have an argument. She is, like many, a mere sloganizer. It is remarkably easy, and remarkably simple, to see people who are not like you and who come from somewhere else and to regard them as all the same, the dangerous foreigner. In polite society we would call judging people by how they look racism but nevertheless. It takes a particular kind of mind held by particular beliefs to equate refugees fleeing their own death and destruction with people who might do the same thing to you. Has it escaped the mind of Hopkins and those who would think so shallowly about this that the really bad people, the ones who do want to kill people, might be taking advantage of their countrymen? There is a certain kind of person, and Hopkins is one, who seeks no answer to the problems of violence and also has none. They merely want to cynically prosper themselves by talking about it in bigoted terms, blissfully unaware of the disharmony and enmities that they sow or, worse, very much aware and joyfully stoking the fires of division.

(NOTE: So far, the Paris and Brussels bombers have almost entirely been EU citizens. NONE are refugees. So Hopkins is wrong as a matter of fact. If we had to label the perpetrators at all "criminals known to the police" would be the best description, not a faith or state-based description.)

So one point I want to get across here is that the terrorism we are currently enduring today is not a matter of a struggle of beliefs or of faiths or of Arabs against people with other skin colors. These are all PR agendas pushed by people with their own beliefs. If we think we are ourselves on some crusade on the side of right then we are no better than those who think they are on the other side. The thinking of both is equally flawed and in the same way. So there is no Islam versus Christianity here for neither those regarding themselves as true Muslims or those regarding themselves as true Christians can stand in for the whole of those belief systems. People do things in the name of other things. But it is all rhetorical. It is their retrospective justification for things. The Norwegian mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik claims to be a Christian of sorts but do we judge all Christians by his measure? No. Should we? No. But in the West we find it very easy to judge an entire faith, one we don't personally happen to hold (quite coincidentally!), based on the actions of a minuscule percentage of people who claim adherence to it. This is a double standard. Instead, we should be saying that there are people who want to kill for their own reasons, criminal, violent people, and that they are our enemy. In fact, such killers are probably everyone's enemy.

Of course, it is not the case that only Muslims have ever wanted to kill people. The historian Ned Richardson-Little, who specializes in the area of human rights and has an extensive knowledge of German history from the past century, wrote a blog recently about the Deutsche Christen which was a Nazi protestant Christian denomination in Hitler's Germany. Richardson-Little makes many salient points in his blog and also gives the example of one Ernst Biberstein, a theology student and one time pastor (just like your local priest in other words) who went on to become an Obersturmbannführer in the SS and was later charged with the responsibility for over 2,000 deaths, at least 50 of which he personally oversaw during a mass shooting in which the bodies were then pushed into a mass grave. This example serves to show only that it is not only adherents to various exotic religious beliefs who can become killers. Your common or garden Christian can too when the local village priest becomes a vicious killer. The narrative of "them and us" in which they are nothing like us is both insidious and deceptive. But what makes a terrorist a terrorist is not so easy to pin down. It is not to be equated with a faith or a race. That is simplistic in the extreme, flawed and simply wrong. Should all white Americans be judged as Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma terrorist? Probably not. It was not his whiteness or Americanness that was the issue.

So what unites those who want to use violence? It is often thought that religion is the answer. The trouble with this answer is that religions are followed by many hundreds of millions of people, the vast majority of which are no more violent than the granny who goes to church and serves the coffee at the end of the service. For me what unites these people is not some generalized creed but the desire to use violence. Using violence is the creed that should be being attacked and not other, more easy targets which, in the final analysis, cannot be blamed. Neither Christianity nor Islam nor any other major world belief system that I have become aware of call for mass killings. It does not say in the Bible or the Koran "Blow people up with bombs". These are the actions of individual people with their own reasons and justifications. They may seek to hide themselves under a more generalized rationale but we should not fall for their rhetoric and make it something it isn't. Terrorism is a matter of making things seem other than they really are and pulling you into some huge struggle when really it isn't. The number of actual terrorists is a small number, relatively speaking, but they wish to embroil everyone in their death fantasy and we should not let them.

It is, of course, at times like these that you have to decide who you are. You need to ask yourself what you stand for. The men of violence (on all sides) want you to sign up to their fantasies and become a fantasy warrior on the side of this or that, thinking of yourself as good or bad. I think we should not do this. We should be clear-headed and think sanely. We should realize that our enemy is not anyone who looks a certain way or comes from a certain place. We should recognize that we ourselves are not mere ciphers for a state, country, land or faith. We are all individual people with individual responsibilities. Terrorists cannot palm off responsibility for what they do to a faith or a belief system or a state or an aim. And neither can we. 

We each live the lives we do and make the choices we make and are held responsible for them as individuals. That is the way it should be. Set apart and alone, each one of us wants the same things in life. But we don't all kill someone else to get it. If we are going to live together as societies without reverting to the law of the jungle (there is a whole other discussion here about whether "the law of the jungle" ever really went away but that's not for today) then those who want to live in peace need to come together to make that so. Life is ugly and we should not imagine that everyone can survive. Frankly, some will only be stopped by killing them because they are determined to live the life of violent criminals. But that harsh reality does not mandate indiscriminate killing by anyone else. American drones aimed at terrorists that kill innumerable anonymous bystanders are not defensible in my eyes anymore than suicide bombers in airports. It will simply require serious, patient work by those in our societies tasked with protecting our peace to establish who the murderers and the people of violence are so that they can be captured or, if necessary, killed. If we can do that without perpetrating our own violent stealth war for power and resources so much the better.

None of this is easy to deal with or to discuss. World geo-politics is a complicated business. There is much more that could be said here. Perhaps, in the end, it comes down to your vision of the world. When innocents die we feel many things - numbness, rage, disorientation, bemusement - and this is normal. It is hard to see other points of view but we must unless we are ourselves simply determined to destroy anyone who thinks differently to us. Revenge or a creed of killing is no better a way of living than that of the terrorist who thinks he can get what he wants by killing a few innocents. Violence is our enemy here and those who would use it. Those who think deaths are a legitimate means to a goal are those we should be against whatever they say they believe and wherever they come from.



Ned Richardson-Little's blog on the Deutsche Christen can be referenced at:
https://historynedblog.wordpress.com/2015/11/18/whos-to-blame-for-aryan-jesus-some-thoughts-on-religion-atrocities-and-the-fallacy-of-collective-guilt/