1. I recently came across the following quotation in an article on the situation in Gaza and it seemed to me to sum up, in two short sentences, a large amount anthropocentric confusion. I think it is a level of confusion that needs addressing.

“We don’t need or want the false idol of Zionism. We want freedom from the project that commits genocide in our name.”

2. It is clear that the ‘We’ referred to in this statement by a well known  Jewish writer and celebrity is the Jewish people. It’s yet another version of the frequent ‘not in our name’ plea from within a narrow social constituency that tries to serve two contradictory needs. The first need is to conserve the advantages of belonging to a narrowly drawn relatively privileged section of humanity and the second need is to avoid being held responsible in any way for the inhuman actions of that privileged section. However, I hope to demonstrate that these two practical needs cannot be reconciled. The reason being that in this case Zionism, is actually an authoritarian expression of Jewish nationalism. The two aspects of hierarchical mass societies, nation creation and genocide are part of the same project. Unlike ideas about them, which can be separated by full stops, in practice, nation-building and genocide are only separated by commas. They are part of the same project; you cannot have one without the other.

3. For example, Fascism in the 1930’s and 1940′ was an extreme authoritarian expression of the ‘expansion’ of German, Italian and Spanish nationalism. Similarly, the earlier ‘Empire building ‘isms’ of the colonialist and imperialist period were also extreme authoritarian expressions of European nationalist expansion, manifested by Britain, France, Spain, Holland and Portugal. Incidentally, extreme authoritarian expansions of hierarchical mass societies are not something entirely new or unique. There has not been one hierarchical mass society since those of ancient Sumer, Babylon, Egypt, Persia, Greece and Rome that hasn’t ruthlessly controlled it’s own citizens and seized territory and assets from control by another human community. In the internal and external processes of authoritarian control the ruling elites throughout history have killed and tortured their own citizens as well as the citizens of other communities (frequently at genocidal levels) or enslaved them at the level of entire communities.

4. Extreme authoritarianism, territorial conquest and genocidal elimination are part of the essential socio-economic DNA of hierarchical mass societies. Therefore, the idea that members of a hierarchical mass society are free to reject what they do not like and accept what they do, does not reflect how such societies function. The menu of available choices to its citizens is strictly limited by the governing elite and obedience to their defining characteristics and actions are mandatory. It is not individual objectors, but the governing elites, who by law and custom, define and determine what ideas and actions constitute the essence of their respective communities. Hierarchical societies are defined by what the elite do, what ordinary citizens think is immaterial. Individuals who genuinely and seriously object to elite determined characteristics of their society must either seek to overthrow the governing elite or must renounce their adherence to the collective. Anyone who really wants “freedom from the project that commits genocide in our name,” needs to emphatically renounce the nationalism and hierarchical mass society forms of social organisation which produces it and embrace a consistent and unequivocal humanist identity and perspective. Otherwise, their rhetorical opposition is just token posturing.

5. At a more global level, anyone who supports hierarchical nationalist divisions among humanity implicitly or explicitly supports past, present or future acts of genocide against other human beings. In order to understand why this is so, the first thing to fully grasp – and not skip over when considering this particular form of mass society living and producing – is the following. Hierarchical mass society forms have similar physical charactetistics to the pyramids of ancient Egypt and elsewhere. They require large areas of land to be located upon and require huge natural resources of labour and material for their construction. More specifically, large scale, settled agricultural and pastoral modes of production, require sufficient land and sufficient general fertile resources to satisfy the actual and anticipated needs of the three basic classes making up the hierarchical mass society social pyramid. First, there are the existential needs of the bulk of the working population located at the base of the social pyramid (resources in the form of food, water, clothing and accomodation) which need to be met 24/7 and 365.  The labour and products of this sector in various ways supports everything and everyone that are ranked in the classes above them.

6. Second, there are the substantial additional resources required to meet the daily needs and official demands of the administrative middle classes. Finally in the top layers of the hiearchical mass societies the luxury needs (and demands) of its ruling elites are also required to be met on a daily, monthly and yearly basis. All this must come directly or indirectly from the land and its inorganic and organic resources, available to the society. This socio-economic necessity – for each and every form of hierarchical mass society – means that whenever the available land and resources are (or become) insufficient, then severe implications follow. To continue their collective existence each hierarchical mass society must obtain ownership or absolute control of extra land and resources to meet all of these extensive socio-economic needs and demands. This ownership or control of extra land and resources by the elite, therefore, is not a pious wish but an existential imperative.

7. However, if nearby land and resources are already occupied by a similar or different form of social organisation, then struggles, including wars over and conquests of, already occupied land and resources become inevitable. Indeed, these characteristics (and others) have epitomised this hierarchical form since the very first ones based upon agricultural production for feeding mass societies, were created. The histories of ancient Sumer, Babylon, Egypt, Persia, Greece and Rome, vividly demonstrate this inevitable outcome of the hierarchical mass society form. Furthermore, two other characteristics of such human societies also arises from within this particular social form. First; sooner or later there becomes a need for armed bodies of citizens to a) defend their existing land and resources from dispossesion by other hierarchical mass societies; and b) to be able to settle on or conquer new land and resources when these extra resources become urgently needed. Zionism is the Jewish form of authoritarian nationalism which emerged from within the Jewish community itself in line with a general communal desire in the 20th century to create it’s own national community by controlling it’s own exclusive stretch of fertile land.

8. Furthermore, it should be obvious that the idea of Zionism did not create the Jewish desire for a country and a national identity. It was the Jewish experience of living in a global environment made up of competing nationalities, whose elites had already occupied and/or controlled the fertile resources of the entire planet, that some of them eventually came to the conclusion that the Jewish people should follow suite. Following suite meant obtaining or conquering a sufficiently large territory and creating their own nation. However, rather than choose some huge unoccupied tract of land in South America (or elsewhere) to build this Jewish state, the decision was made by the Zionist pioneers, to locate it in the former Ottoman controlled land called Palestine. However, this land was already peopled with a viable culture, a mixed economy and a thriving population. Thus the occupation of Palestine by the Jews was not the erection of a false idol but a practical Jewish national project, and it has been understood and embraced as such by almost all Jewish people since 1948.

9. The fact that the Jewish people – as a whole – endorsed the dispossession of the Palestinian people of their historic land and natural resources, and still do, is indicated by the following facts. 1. Even during the Nakba and the subsequent sixty plus decades of atrocities carried out by the Israeli defence forces and the militant settlers, no significant questioning of the entire nationalist and colonialist project has ever seriously arisen within any of the Jewish communities. The best that has emerged from within the entire Jewish ethnicity has been an apparent willingness by a few liberal minded Jews to allow a legitimate Palestine social existence within a small area of the historic land of Palestine. But this patronising willingness by a small section of the Jewish people, was always a tokenistic non-starter because the majority of the Jewish elite understood what was outlined in paragraphs 5, 6 and 7 above.  That a viable and sustainable hierarchical mass society required a large area of land and substantial control of sustainable resources.

10. Moreover, once hierarchical mass societies have become firmly established it is the elites that determine practically everything. The whole point of hierarchical mass societies since their inception is that through direct or indirect control of certain social structures, the elite determine how society functions and of course, also by direct or indirect means, their interests always dominate those determinations. The two modes of social control by elites are a) relatively peaceful by the manufacture of majority consent, backed up by legal regulations and restrictions;  and b) relatively violent by ensuring compliance to elite directives by the use of police forces or armed soldiers. Even in relatively peaceful periods, it still remains a demonstrable fact that half a dozen elite individuals at the pinnacle of hierarchical power can start an all out war; decide to atom bomb a whole society into oblivion; decide to curfew, silence or bio-chemically infect a whole nation; or even violently suppress a peaceful strike, whenever they see fit to do so. And apart from a revolutionary overthrow of the entire system, its hierarchy and its entire ethos, there is nothing, absolutely nothing, anyone can do to stop them.

11. For example, massive global demonstrations against the Vietnam War did not prevent it continuing. The huge demonstrations against the Invasion of Iraq could not alter or prevent the decisions of Bush and Blair (et al) to unleash the dogs of war. More recently, the hundreds of countries assembled in the United Nations and the massive global demonstrations against the genocide in Gaza could not prevent the Israeli government from continuing the genocidal massacre of the unarmed civilian people of Palestine in Gaza and the occupied West Bank. The hierarchical mass society system locally, nationally and globally is designed to be unstoppably in exactly that way. It is the failure to recognise the purpose and function of hierarchical mass societies, particularly by middle-class citizens who are provided with certain financial and cultural benefits from membership of such societies, that gives rise to a typical level of confusion among those classes. They imagine they can effectively distance themselves from the bad sides of this system, whilst continuing to be comforted by the good.

12. It is an aspect of this individual and collective middle-class confusion which today, as I write this article (3 June 2024), globally celebrates the election of a female President of Mexico as – an unprecedented and meaningfull historic event – when in actual fact the Mexican Nation is in existential meltdown with organised gangs and political corruption ruling and ruining whole districts and populations whilst carrying out daily assasinations of working class male and female activists. All this petite-bourgeois theatrical celebration of an individual females ascendency further up the chain of hierarchical mass society authoritarian control, is occurring when this form of hierarchical mass society has already caused an unprecedented level of regional and global climate disasters, wholesale pollution of air, land and seas and ecological destruction. Even the level of ecological disturbance that is releasing sources of viral infection, into continents and regional areas with no pre-existing immunity, has been insufficient to deflect the petite-bourgeois Anthropocentric self-absorbed narcissism of the  middle-classes  away from the project of nation building and further destruction of human and non-human life on earth.

13. The sad fact is that most educated citizens trained within their own particular socio-economic community are provided with particular illusory tropes, concerning human societies, democracy and the so-called rule of law which renders them unable to see the hierachical mass society system as it actually is. They also fail to consistently view humanity as one biological species that via its dominant mode of production is now causing multiple existential problems – for all forms of life on earth. Therefore, most individuals continue to view humanity and the world through the distorting ideological lenses of personal self interest, religious affiliation, national identity, ethnic orientation or ‘racial prejudice. Most human beings have been persuaded to prefer an individual or sectarian group level of affiliation and identity over a species level of affiliation and identity which in combination with hierarchical mass society membership divides humanity into competitors who then carry out genocidal wars against each other and ecocide type wars against nature.

14. For example, in the initial quotation above, what is described as the ‘false idol of Zionism’, amounts to an extremely narrow sectional assessment of life on earth from a petite-bourgeois cultural perspective. Its focus is firmly located within the narrow ethnocentric perspective of Judaism which is itself located within a broader, but still narrowly drawn, anthropocentric set of exclusively human concerns. Thus, the conscious level of understanding of Life on Earth revealed by that particular ‘educated’ contributor to understanding the situation of humanity in Gaza (and many others recently) has been reduced to the narrowest individual level (the writer) located within a particular Jewish section of the human species. In starting from this self-interested individual and ethnocentric  perspective, the writer has failed to register that the rest of humanity, in every religion, nation, ethnicity or so-called race, has its almost identical ‘false idols’. These ideological falsities, whether ‘worshiped’ as idols or not, represent the intellectualised product of the now almost universal hierarchical mass society form.

15. This hierarchical mass society form of human aggregation, consists of a pyramidal type social structure which in its ‘advanced’ forms has been mistakenly represented as the highest point in humanities evolution. The hierarchical mass society form is considered by its elite supporters and advocates as a ‘natural’ or even ‘supernatural,’ form of human aggregation, rather than a socially constructed, fiercely competitive and highly destructive form of human communal organisation. In fact the false idol for humanity – as a whole – is the hierarchical form of society itself. This is manifested in the various religious, national, ethnic and racial  hierarchical aggregations within the human species. The false idols are the actual social structures themselves not simply the various named ‘isms’ which are just the ideological ‘expressions of the practices taking place within them. Once hierarchical mass societies are fully understood as based upon elite domination and elite control of the production of essential material (food, water, clothing, shelter) extracted from nature in order to be used exclusively for human consumption, then such confusions can be more easily avoided.

Roy Ratcliffe (June 2024)