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What is racism? Basically, racism means any distinction based on race or ethnic origin that results in the persecution or the restriction of human rights of groups that are discriminated against.
The racist ideology or, rather, pathology, is abhorrent and condemnable under any circumstances and excuses. Unfortunately, there are still more subtle forms of racism, as e.g. against women - in certain cultures and religions more than in other ones - racism against old people, disabled people, the poor, the ugly, and even racism against people living in a particular locality of the same country.
However, xenophobia, which is usually a reaction to mass and uncontrolled immigration, is not exactly racism, at least it is not the worse expression of racism. This is my opinion, anyway.
Xenophobia is an age-old universal phenomenon, as it stems from man’s basic animal instincts and/or simply from pure common sense. It has to do with the powerful instinct of self-preservation...
If you suddenly drop an alien chicken into a hencoop, most probably she will get head bitten to the point of bleeding, or even to death, by the other chicken - old inhabitants there. Why? Because the ‘native’ chicken feel threatened. They will now have to share their food with a stranger. Altruistic feelings are non-existent here. There might not be enough food left for them. So it is in the poultry’s best interests to get rid of the new intruder.
The same applies to men. They feel threatened by foreigners - legal or illegal immigrants - flooding their country. The strangers might take their jobs, as they do. Right from the beginning, they flood their National Health System and get treated free of charge, without having contributed a dollar for insurance. Perhaps, if they don’t get employed, they may turn to crime in order to survive, which they sometimes do… If they multiply rapidly, which is usually the case, they may cause political problems in the future, perhaps social instability, by forming inassimilable ethnic minorities and violently demonstrating, advocating their rights.
It is happening in most countries, where immigrants often provoke the natives by burning the host country’s flag. Hence most people, whether they openly admit it or not, develop a xenophobia. So, this kind of racial discrimination is a natural phenomenon thriving from times immemorial, and it is due to fear and to unregenerate and selfish man’s animal instincts.
Needless to say, the immigrants are not saints. They themselves are racist, too, and they don’t hide it. If the situation were reversed, they would behave exactly the same way against immigrants flooding their own country. But even in their host country they exhibit racism against the natives.
No government or individual can ever do enough to earn their appreciation and sympathy, let alone a trace of gratitude. They, too, are xenophobic and suspicious. Add some inferiority complex to it and you get an inflammable mixture. They even criticize openly the natives and refuse to socially integrate, at least the first generation of them. They want to guard their national identity as the pupil of their eyes. When, through admittedly hard work, they prosper, they often look down in a derogatory attitude to the natives who are poorer than them.
So, racism and xenophobia are universal phenomena, and it takes spiritual enlightenment and full realization of the brotherhood of all peoples in order for one to rise above those ugly but natural animal instincts.
Under the relentless pressure of populist political parties and demagogic Media, a government might have legislated the best laws in order to eliminate phenomena of racism, and most governments of western nations usually do - some times exhibiting an anti-racist hysteria, even to the extent of discriminating against the natives - but, alas, racism cannot be deleted from the hearts of people with external laws.
As regards the anti-racist hysteria that is promoted by the Media and certain political groups or parties of leftist outlook - the anarchists being at the top of the list - I believe it has exactly the opposite effect. Instead of combating racism, it gives rise to it, according to the law of action and reaction. Take, for example, the worldwide systematically orchestrated propaganda against anti-Semitism during the last decades.
I have no doubt that the Jews had suffered a holocaust in the hands of the Nazis during the Second World War. They have all my sympathy for that. However, to strive to keep alive the memory of the holocaust does not help anyone. Besides, those who perpetrated the genocide of the European Jews are now dead. Their descendants, contemporary Germans, shouldn’t be held responsible for the heinous crimes of their ancestors, since the vast majority has certainly denounced them. Most Germans, I am sure, even feel ashamed for the crimes the Nazis committed not only against the Jews but also against other European peoples. But it is only the Jewish holocaust that must be commemorated forever and ever! For what purpose?
I was never able to fully figure this out. Other genocides must be forgotten, if acknowledged at all, but for some reason, not this one! In fact, due to the extended publicity it has taken over the last decades, the memory of the Jewish genocide becomes all the more vivid, as if it all had happened last year. We have even arrived at the point whereby racism has become almost synonymous of anti-Semitism, as if there existed no other racism at all!
Let the shrewd policy makers rethink about this, lest one day it might bring on - God forbid! - the crisis that is dreaded. Just as faith draws near that which is believed, so fear tends to draw nigh and manifest that which is feared. It is nothing mysterious about it. Forgetting, forgiving, expecting the best, and working for peace, understanding, and cooperation among all peoples, is the only remedy of deep old wounds in the collective soul of nations.
Talking about other unadvertised holocausts, we must admit that most nations, and especially those with imperialist records, at one time of history or another, have been guilty of genocides, while all peoples have been stained with racism. The native red Indians of the USA, having suffered their own unadvertised genocide, are still struggling to get equal civil rights with black and white Americans.
Another ethnic group that has been victim of racism is the Australian Aborigines. The same have suffered genocide and discriminating policies implemented by all Australian governments from British settlement (1788) until today.
Then there is the Armenian holocaust of 1915, which was virtually the first genocide of the twentieth century, perpetrated by the Turkish military. Few people acknowledge it and even fewer talk about it… It is most surprising - but not unexplainable - that the state of Israel has not recognized the Armenian genocide. It is all politics…
Still, there is the mostly unacknowledged Greek genocide by the Turks .
Further, there is the Palestinian genocide, the Kurdish Genocide, the most recent Iraqi genocide, to mention but a few.
The point I am trying to make is that the nations of the world, instead of dwelling in the past, nurturing and advertising nightmarish atrocities, something that perpetuates self-pity, resentment, hatred and distrust among peoples, each should acknowledge its own crimes, ask for forgiveness and stretch forth a conciliatory hand. We must realize, at last, that this is the only way to Peace.
At this point, it is worth having a look at “sanctified” Biblical racism. To my knowledge, the first nation to sanctify their racism and attribute it to God’s preference was the Jews. Their patriarchs called them, “the chosen people”! They, alone were “God’s people”, and brainwashed pseudo-Christians acknowledge them as such to this day. I have no idea whose people are the rest of humanity…
The Old Testament is full of references where the prejudice of the Jews against the “gentiles” led them to detestable crimes and genocides of entire tribes, all in the name of Jehovah! I have written about this before, but I shall repeat here that the Bible needs catharsis from such heinous records, since it is used as a Christian book containing what is considered to be “The Word of God”.
For the sake of truth, I shall quote a few such instances, hoping that I would NOT be labeled as “anti-Semitic”. You see, the anti-antisemitism propaganda is so prevalent in our societies that people are afraid to speak the truth when this does not favor the Jews. Apparently, the fundamental human right of freedom of speech seems to stop when it comes to criticizing the Jews! And who wants to be falsely labeled as anti-Semite?
Here are some Biblical instances that refer to genocides supposedly ordered by God!
---“When the LORD your God brings you into the land that you are entering to take possession of it, and clears away many nations before you, the Hittites, the Girgashites, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, seven nations more numerous and mightier than yourselves.
And when the LORD your God gives them over to you, and you defeat them, then you must utterly destroy them. You shall make no covenant with them and show no mercy to them.” (Deut. 7: 1-2)
---“Hear, O Israel: you are to cross over the Jordan today, to go in to dispossess nations greater and mightier than yourselves, cities great and fortified up to heaven, (…)
Know therefore today that he who goes over before you as a consuming fire is the LORD your God. He will destroy them and subdue them before you.
So you shall drive them out and make them perish quickly, as the LORD has promised you.”(Deut. 9:1-3)
---“But in the cities of these peoples that the LORD your God is giving you for an inheritance, you shall save alive nothing that breathes; but you shall utterly destroy them: the Hittites and the Amorites, the Canaanites and the Perizzites, the Hivites and the Jebusites, as the LORD your God has commanded.” (Deut. 20: 16-17)
---“And the LORD said to Joshua, ‘See, I have given Jericho into your hand, with its king and mighty men of valor.’ (…)
And the city and all that is within it shall be devoted to the LORD for destruction. (…)
Then they devoted all in the city to destruction, both men and women, young and old, oxen, sheep, and donkeys, with the edge of the sword. (…)
And they burned the city with fire, and everything in it. Only the silver and gold, and the vessels of bronze and of iron, they put into the treasury of the house of the LORD.” (Joshua 6 : 2, 17, 21, 24)
It is one thing for a nation to commit a genocide - many nanions have been guilty of this - and it is a different thing to put words in God’s mouth in order to sanctify one’s atrocities… The latter is pure blasphemy. I feel ashamed on behalf of Chistianity that has kept such abominable records in its official Scriptures and preaches that this book, in its entirety, is the Word of God! But the Jews have not protested against it either… I can find no words to express my indignation over this. Another thing that has surprised me is the reference to the Greeks in the O.T. as being Jehova’s enemies!
Just look at this: “For I have bent Judah as my bow; I have made Ephraim its arrow. I will stir up your sons, O Zion, against your sons, O Greece, and wield you like a warrior's sword.” (Zec. 9:13)
May I take this opportunity to mention here that 20 years ago I had come across some so-called “Messianic Jews”, i.e. Jews who, supposedly, had accepted Christ as the Messiah and had come to Greece to “pray” for our nation!
Incidentally I had been asked by a Greek-American friend who organised those “prayer” sessions to be the interpreter. I had accepted the “assignment”, and so I learned from Wolf’s mouth that there are two spirits in the world: The Jewish spirit, that serves God, and the Greek spirit that opposes God! I loudly protested there and then, and as a result I was replaced from being their interpreter. But it was only then that I understood the meaning and the origin of the Biblical verse against the Greeks that I quoted above.
The free thinkers, and especially those who have studied ancient Greek philosophers, can judge the motives behind this age-old covert antagonism between the Jews and the Greeks. Ambition and envy is all that is behind this rival, since the western civilization has been shaped by those two “spirits” that complement each other.
I close this article expressing my heartfelt wishes for 2008: May there be Peace and reconciliation among the nations; may we start realizing, at last, that all humans are one family, with common roots and the same destination: DEATH! Is it worth killing each other for land, for petrol and for power over others?
LIFE IS SO PRECIOUS, BUT ALSO SO SHORT!
Let us live in PEACE and LOVE, for everybody’s sake.
HAPPY NEW YEAR!
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