grim neighbourhood, in a polluted industrial area, a red bastion of the
"socialist" labour party. The latter would have easily qualified as
Bolshevik-communist anywhere else. It exerted the subtly pernicious
decadently corrupt kind of all-pervasive influence that is so typical
in one party states. Sure, there were a few token fringe opposition
parties but Labour's dominance went uninterrupted for more than 90
years. And corruption was both rife and rampant - nepotism, cronyism,
outright bribery. During the 70s, the recently appointed governor of
the central bank was imprisoned and a minister committed suicide. Many
more immolated themselves or ended serving long sentences in
over-crowded jails. Massive scandals erupted daily. Some of them cost
the country more than 10% of its GDP each (for example, the crisis of
the bank shares in 1983). In the 80s, privatisation turned into an orgy
of privateering, spawning a class of robber barons. Red tape is still a
major problem - and a major source of employment. And then there were
the wars and armed conflicts and vendettas and retributions and mines
and missiles and exploding buses and the gas masks. In its 52 years of
independence the country has gone through 6 major official wars and
more than 10 war-sized conflicts.
Yet, despite all the above, Israel emerged as by far the most
outstanding economic miracle. Its population was multiplied by 10 by
surges of immigrants. During the 50s, it tripled from 650,000 (1948 -
Jewish population figures only) to 2,000,000. The newcomers were all
destitute, the refugees of the geopolitics of hate from both the
Eastern block and from the Arab countries. The cultural, social and
religious profile of the latter stood in stark contrast to that of
their "hosts". Thus the seeds of long term inter-ethnic,
inter-cultural, social and religious conflicts were sown, soon to
blossom into full-fledged rifts. During the 90s - 800,000 Russian
immigrants flooded a Jewish population of 4,500,000 souls. But these
demographic upheavals did not disturb a pattern of unprecedented
economic growth, which led to a GDP per capita per annum of 17,000 USD.
Israel is a world leader in agriculture, armaments, information
technology, research and development in various scientific fields. Yet,
it is a desert country, smaller in area than Macedonia and with much
fewer and lesser natural endowments. It was subjected to an Arab
embargo for more than 40 consecutive years. On average it had c. 3
million inhabitants throughout its existence.
Israel's secret was the Jews in the Jewish Diaspora the world over.
From its very inception - as a budding concept in the febrile brain of
Herzl - the Jewish State was considered to be the home of all Jews,
wherever they are. A Law of Return granted them the right to
immediately become Israeli citizens upon stepping on the country's
soil. The Jewish State was considered to be an instrument of the Jewish
People, a shelter, an extension, a long arm, a collaborative and
symbiotic effort, an identity, an emotional apparatus, a buffer, an
insurance policy, a retirement home, a showcase, a convincing argument
against all anti-Semites past and present. There was no question
whatsoever regarding the implicit and explicit contractual obligations
between these two parties. The Jews in the Diaspora had to disregard
and ignore Israel's warts, misdeeds and disadvantages. They had to turn
a public blind eye to corruption, nepotism, cronyism, the inefficient
allocation of economic resources, blunders and failures. They had to
support Israel financially. In return, the Jewish State had to ensure
its own successful survival against all odds and to welcome all the
Jews to become its citizens whenever they chose to and no matter what
their previous record or history is. Hence the constant arguments about
WHO is a Jew and which institution should be allowed to monopolize the
endowment of this lucrative and, potentially, life saving status. Hence
the bitter resentment felt in many circles toward the 200,000 or so
non-Jewish immigrants, the relatives of the Jewish ones who flooded
Israel's shores in the last decade.
But the consensus was and is unharmed, appearances notwithstanding. And
the Jews supported Israel in numerous straightforward and inventive
ways. They volunteered to fight for it. They spied for it. They donated
money and built hospitals, schools, libraries, universities and
municipal offices. They supported students through scholarships and
young leaders through exchange programs. They managed and financed a
gigantic network of educational facilities from youth summer camps to
cultural exchanges. They bought the risky long-term bonds of the
nascent state, which was constantly fighting for its life (and they did
an excellent business in hindsight). Some of them invested money in
centrally planned, periphery bound, lost economic causes - ghost
factories that produced shoddy and undemanded goods. Year in and year
out they poured an average of half a billion US dollars a year annually
(about 200 million US dollars a year in net funds). Most of the money
did not come from the stereotypical Jewish billionaires. Most of it
came through a concerted effort of voluntary (though surely peer
pressured) money raising among hundreds of thousands of poor Jews the
world over. The Jewish people set up a horde of organizations whose aim
was collection of funds and their application to the advancement of
Zionist and Jewish causes. Every Jew deposited a few weekly cents into
the "Blue Box" - "for the cause": to redeem land, to establish
settlements, to open educational institutions, to publish a Jewish
newspaper, to act against anti-Semitism, to rebrand Judaism and fight
nefarious stereotypes. It was a grassroots movement directed only by
the dual slogans of "No Other Choice" and "The Whole World is Against
Us". Emanating from posttraumatic and paranoiac roots - it later became
a groundswell of goodwill, enthusiastic co-operation and pride.
And all this time, the Jews knew. Not only the sophisticated, worldly
Jewish moneymen. Not only the cosmopolitan, erudite Jewish
intellectuals. But also the more typical small time tailors and
shoemakers and restaurateurs and cab drivers and plumbers and sweatshop
textile workers. They all knew - and it did not sway them one bit. It
did not drive them away. They did not gripe and complain or abstain.
They kept coming. They kept pouring money into this seemingly
insatiable black hole. They kept believing. They kept waiting and they
kept active. And all these long decades - they knew.
They knew that Israel was ruled by a caste of utterly corrupt
politicians whose avarice equalled only their incompetence. They knew
that central planning was going nowhere fast. They knew that elections
were rigged, that red tape was strangling entrepreneurship and
initiative, that inter ethnic tension was explosive. They knew that
Israel lost its not to a demographically exploding Arab population
coupled with endless acts of terrorism. They knew that Israel's conduct
was not fair, not always democratic, and often unnecessarily
aggressive. They knew that tenders were won by bribes, that
transparency was a mockery, that the courts were negligent and
inefficient. They knew that property rights were not protected and that
people were pusillanimous and greedy and petty and self-occupied (not
to say narcissistic). They witnessed the waste of scarce resources, the
indefinitely protracted processes, the bureaucratic delays, the free
use of public funds for private ends. They watched as ministers and
members of the Knesset and top law enforcement agent conspired to
engage in crime and then colluded in covering it up. And they felt
betrayed and agonized over all this.
Yet, they NEVER - NEVER - not even for a second, considered giving up.
They NEVER - NEVER - stopped the money coming. They did not discontinue
the dialogue intended to make things better, over there, the land of
their so distant fathers. They always donated and invested and financed
and visited and cajoled and argued and opined and hoped and dreamed.
Because this was THEIR country, as well. Because it was a partnership
and the inexperienced, stray partner was given the benefit of
indefinite doubt. Because they saw the opportunity - the economic
opportunity, for sure - but, above all, the historical opportunity.
When Israel did mature, when it became a law state, orderly,
transparent, efficient, forward looking, the high tech Israel we all
know - it repaid them over and over again. They all made money on their
decades of patience and endurance. The rich made big money. The small
guys made less. But there is no Jew today who can say that he lost
money in Israel because he became financially or economically active
there in the long run.
They stuck to Israel primarily because they were Jews (and, by easy
extension, Israelis). And this is what being a Jew meant. And they were
richly rewarded by the Justice Minister of history. Perhaps there is a
lesson to be learnt here by Macedonians in the Diaspora. I, for one, am
sure there is.
Thank you.
Return
The Magla Vocables
The Macedonians have a word for it - "Magla", fog. It signifies the
twin arts of duplicity and ambiguity. In the mental asylum that the
swathe of socialist countries was, even language was pathologised. It
mutated into a weapon of self-defence, a verbal fortification, a medium
without a message, replacing words with vocables. Easterners (in this
text, the unfortunate residents of the Kafkaesque landscape which
stretches between Russia and Albania) don't talk or communicate. They
fend off. They hide and evade and avoid and disguise. In the planet of
capricious and arbitrary unpredictability, of shifting semiotic and
semantic dunes that they inhabited for so many decades (or centuries) -
they perfected the ability to say nothing in lengthy, Castro-like
speeches. The ensuing convoluted sentences are Arabesques of
meaninglessness, acrobatics of evasion, lack of commitment elevated to
an ideology. The Easterner prefers to wait and see and see what waiting
brings. It is the postponement of the inevitable that leads to the
inevitability of postponement as a strategy of survival.
It is impossible to really understand an Easterner. The syntax fast
deteriorates into ever more labyrinthine structures. The grammar
tortured to produce the verbal Doppler shifts essential to disguise the
source of the information, its distance from reality, the speed of its
degeneration into rigid official versions. Buried under the lush flora
and fauna of idioms without an end, the language erupts, like some
exotic rash, an autoimmune reaction to its infection and contamination.
And this newspeak, this malignant form of political correctness is not
the exclusive domain of politicians or "intellectuals". Like vile weeds
it spread throughout, strangling with absent minded persistence the
ability to understand, to agree, to disagree and to debate, to present
arguments, to compare notes, to learn and to teach. Easterners,
therefore, never talk to each other - rather, they talk at each other.
They exchange subtexts, camouflage-wrapped by elaborate, florid, texts.
They read between the lines, spawning a multitude of private languages,
prejudices, superstitions, conspiracy theories, rumours, phobias and
mass hysterias. Theirs is a solipsistic world - where communication is
permitted only with oneself and the aim of language is to throw others
off the scent.
This has profound implications. Communication through unequivocal,
unambiguous, information-rich symbol systems is such an integral and
crucial part of our world - that its absence is not postulated even in
the remotest galaxies, which grace the skies of science fiction. In
this sense, Easterners are nothing short of aliens. It is not that they
employ a different language, a code to be deciphered by a new
Champollion. The Cyrillic alphabet is not the obstacle. It is also not
the outcome of cultural differences. It is the fact that language is
put by Easterners to a different use - not to communicate but to
obscure, not to share but to abstain, not to learn but to defend and
resist, not to teach but to preserve ever less tenable monopolies, to
disagree without incurring wrath, to criticize without commitment, to
agree without appearing to do so. Thus, Eastern contracts are vague
expressions of intentions at a given moment - rather than the clear
listing of long term, iron-cast and mutual commitments. Eastern laws
are loopholed incomprehensibles, open to an exegesis so wide and so
self-contradictory that it renders them meaningless. Eastern
politicians and Eastern intellectuals often hang themselves by their
own verbose Gordic knots, having stumbled through a minefield of
logical fallacies and endured self inflicted inconsistencies.
Unfinished sentences hover in the air, like vapour above a semantic
swamp.
In some countries (the poorer ones, which were suppressed for centuries
by foreign occupiers), there is the strong urge not to offend. Still at
the tribal-village stage of social development, intimacy and
inter-dependence are great. Peer pressure is irresistible and it
results in conformity and mental homogeneity. Aggressive tendencies,
strongly repressed in this social pressure cooker, are close under the
veneer of forced civility and violent politeness. Constructive
ambiguity, a non-committal "everyone is good and right", an atavistic
variant of moral relativism and tolerance bred of fear and of contempt
- are all at the service of this eternal vigilance against aggressive
drives, at the disposal of a never ending peacekeeping mission.
In other countries, language is used cruelly and ruthlessly to ensnare
one's enemies, to saw confusion and panic, to move the masses, to leave
the listeners in doubt, in hesitation, in paralysis, to gain control,
or to punish. There, symbols are death sentences in both the literal
and the figurative senses. Poets, authors and journalists still vanish
regularly and newspapers and books are compiled into black lists with
dreadful consequences. In these countries, language is enslaved and
forced to lie. There is no news - only views, no interest - only
interests, no facts - only propaganda, no communication - only
ex-communication. The language is appropriated and expropriated. It is
considered to be a weapon, an asset, a piece of lethal property, a
traitorous mistress to be gang raped into submission.
And yet in other places in the East, the language is a lover. The
infatuation with its very sound leads to a pyrotechnic type of speech
which sacrifices its meaning to its music. Its speakers pay more
attention to the composition than to the content. They are swept by it,
intoxicated by its perfection, inebriated by the spiralling complexity
of its forms. Here, language is an inflammatory process. It attacks the
social tissues with artistic fierceness. It invades the healthy cells
of reason and logic, of cool-headed argumentation and level headed
debate. It raises the temperature of the body politic. It often kills.
It moves masses. Submerged in and lured by the notes issued forth by
the pied piper of the moment - nations go to war, or to civil war,
resonating with the echoes of their language.
Language is a leading indicator of the psychological and institutional
health of social units. Social capital can often be measured in
cognitive (hence, verbal-lingual) terms. To monitor the level of
comprehensibility and lucidity of texts is to study the degree of
sanity of nations (think about the rambling "Mein Kampf"). There can
exist no hale society without unambiguous speech, without clear
communications, without the traffic of idioms and content that is an
inseparable part of every social contract. Our language determines how
we perceive our world. It IS our mind and our consciousness. The
much-touted transition starts in the mind and consciousness determines
reality. Marx would have approved.
(Article written on December 8, 1999 and published December 13, 1999
in "Central Europe Review" volume 1, issue 25)
Return
The Elders of Zion
I was shown the same book in Yugoslavia, in Macedonia and in Bulgaria -
"The World Conspiracy" - a shabby tome written by an ageing "scholar".
The main, unabashedly anti-Semitic, hypothesis (presented as undisputed
fact) is that the Jews rule the world supreme - always have, probably
always will. Lists of prominent Jews in the world of international
finance reprinted with lists of influential Jews in the Soviet
communist regime. And it all amounts to a well-organized secretive
machinery of illicit power, claims the author with all the persuasion
of a paranoid. In here, trash magazines dwell endlessly on these and
similar themes.
Yet, anti-Semitism is only one species in a zoo of rumours, conspiracy
theories, Meta histories and metaphysics. Superstitions, prejudices and
calumny thrive in the putrid soil of disinformation, mis-information
and lack of information. In the void created by unreliable, politicised
and corrupt media - rumour mills spring eternal. It is a malignant
growth, the outcome of a breakdown of trust so compleat - that
communication is rendered impossible. This is the main characteristic
of the East (from Russia to Albania): distrust. Citizens and
politicians, businessmen and government, the media and its consumers,
manufacturers and service providers, the sick and their doctors - all
suspect each other of ulterior motives and foul play. All are more
often than not quite right to do so.
It is a Kafkaesque, sealed universe in which nothing is, as it appears
to be. This acrimonious divorce between appearances and essence, facade
and truth, the Potemkin and the real - is a facet of daily life, of the
most mundane exchanges, of the most trivial pursuits. Motives are
sought with increasing urgency - why did he do it, what did he try to
achieve, why had he not chosen a different path, why here, why with us,
why now, what can it teach us. Information is pursued frantically,
appearances discarded, data juggled, heated debates ensue, versions
erupt, only to subside and be replaced by others. It is a feverish
ritual, the sound of clashing exegeses, of theories constructed and
demolished in vacuo.
At the heart of it all, is the unbearable uncertainty of being.
Political uncertainty under communism was replaced by economic
uncertainty under the insidious and venal form of capitalism that
replaced it. Tucked in identical cubicles, the citizens of planet
communism were at least assured of a make belief job in a sprawling
bureaucracy or in a decrepit factory, manufacturing redundant documents
or shoddy goods. Subsistence was implicitly guaranteed by the
kleptocracy that ruled them and, in principle, it was always possible
to ignore the moral stench and join the nomenklatura, thereby
developing instant upward mobility. Corruption, theft and graft were
tolerated by the state as means of complementing income. Life was drab
but safe as long as one abstained from politics and subserviently
consumed the bitter medicines of acquiescence and collaboration. The
vast majority (with the exception of the USSR under Stalin) were not
affected by the arbitrary capriciousness of history. They decayed
slowly in their housing estates, morally degenerate, possession-less
but certain of a future that is the spitting image of their past.
Under the spastic orgy of legalized robbery of state assets that passed
for privatisation, millions were made redundant while thousands
enriched themselves by choreographed looting. The results were
instability, unpredictability, uncertainty and fear. In a world thus
unhinged, the masses groped for reason, for a scheme, for a method in
the madness, for an explanation, however sinister and ominous. Anything
was preferable to the seemingly random natural forces unleashed upon
them with such apparent vengeance. Even a "World Government" (a
favourite), the Illuminati (a Freemasonry-like movement but much more
odious), the Jews, the USA, aliens. The greatest conspiracy theory of
them all - the Phoenix of religion - sprang back to life from the ashes
it was reduced to by communism. A host of mystical beliefs and sects
and cults mushroomed noxiously in the humid shadows of irrationality.
Thus, every event, no matter how insignificant, any occurrence, no
matter how inconsequential and any coincidence, no matter how
coincidental - assume heraldic meaning. People in these domains carry
their complex jigsaw puzzles with them. They welcome each new piece
with the zeal of the converted. They bellow triumphantly with every
"proof" of their pet theory, with every datum, with each rumour. Things
don't just happen - they whisper, conspiratorially - things are
directed from above, ordained, regulated, prevented, or encouraged by
"them". A group of 400 rule the world. They are Jews, they are the Serb
mafia, or the Bulgarian. Or the Americans who plan to dominate (which
obviously puts Kosovo in context). They are the rich and powerful, the
objects of envy and frightened admiration, of virulent hate and rage.
They are responsible. We pay the price - we, the small and powerless
and poor. And it is hopeless, it has been like that forever. The
disparity between them and us is too great. Resistance is futile.
Why was this president elected? Surely, the West demanded it. Or
political parties conspired to rig the vote. Or rich businessmen
supported him. What is the real aim of foreign investors in coming to
these godforsaken places, if not to infiltrate and penetrate and
establish their long-term dominion? And wouldn't it be safe to assume
that al the foreigners are spies, that all the Jews collaborate, that
the neighbours would have liked to conquer and to subjugate us, that
the world is a colossal puppet show? In other words, is it not true
that we are puppets - victims - in a theatre not of our making? They
filter out that which does not conform to their persuasion, does not
accord with their suspicions, and does not fit within their schemes.
This deferral of responsibility brings relief from shame and blame.
Guilt is allayed by symbolically and ritually passing it onto another.
Fear is quelled by the introduction of schemata. These are potent
psychological incentives. They provide structure to the amorphous,
bring order to the chaos that is the brave, new world of the economies
in transition. Flux is replaced by immutable "truths", possibilities by
certainties, threats by "knowledge". It is a re-construction and
reconquest of a paradise lost by giving up the fruit of the tree of
knowledge.
It is this hyper-vigilance, this elevated suspicion, these instant
certainties fabricated from frail pseudo-theories and conspiracies -
that make the Man of the East so easy to manipulate, so vulnerable, so
amenable to collude in his own downfall. Bewitched by his self-spun
myths, captivated by his own paranoia, under the spell of his magical,
immature, thinking - non critical, non analytical, non discriminating -
he is exquisitely susceptible to crooks and charlatans, to manipulators
and demagogues, to the realization of the very threats he tried to fend
off in the first place.
Here is what the DSM ("Diagnostics and Statistics Manual") IV (1994)
published by the APA (American Psychiatric Association) has to say
about paranoids and schizotypals:
The Paranoid Personality Disorder
A pervasive distrust and suspiciousness of others such that their
motives are interpreted as malevolent, beginning by early adulthood and
present in a variety of contexts, as indicated by four (or more) of the
following:
1. Suspects without sufficient basis, that others are exploiting,
harming, or deceiving him or her;
2. Is preoccupied with unjustified doubts about the loyalty or
trustworthiness of friends or associates;
3. Is reluctant to confide in others because of unwarranted fear
that the information will be used maliciously against him or her;
4. Reads hidden demeaning or threatening meanings into benign
remarks or events;
5. Persistently bears grudges, i.e., is unforgiving of insults,
injuries, or slights;
6. Perceives attacks on his or her character or reputation that
are not apparent to others and is quick to react angrily or to
counterattack;