HOWARD JACOBSON renounces Western self-hatred — in the Independent!
If we are the responsibility of those who beget us, then they must be our responsibility in turn. The past flows through us as certainly as the future. A genetic no less than a theological truth. But that’s not the same as taking blame when there is no blame to be taken. An obscene act of arrogation, I now realise, making one’s culpability the heart of everything. Unjust to one’s immortal soul, which wants no part of it. And unjust even to the Nazis and their like, who must be allowed to sin egregiously on their own behalf and go to hell unmolested.
Ditto those who blew apart the however many hundreds of kids dancing the last of their lives away in Bali. It behoves us to stay out of their motives. Utterly obscene, the narrative of guilty causation which now waits on every fresh atrocity – “What else are the dissatisfied to do but kill?” etc – as though dissatisfaction were an automatic detonator, as though Cain were the creation of Abel’s will. Obscene in its haste. Obscene in its self-righteousness, mentally permitting others to pay the price of our self-loathing. Obscene in its ignorance – for we should know now how Selbsthass operates, encouraging those who hate us only to hate us more, since we concur in their conviction of our detestableness.
Here is our decadence: not the nightclubs, not the beaches and the sex and the drugs, but our incapacity to believe we have been wronged. Our lack of self-worth.
Why do they hate us? In part because so many Western intellectuals tell them they should.
UPDATE: Reid Reynolds (who’s no relation) emails:
“Western intellectuals tell them they should.” Truer words were ne’er spoken. Every time I check into these foreign websites it’s Noam Chomsky said this and Robert Fisk said that, and all these lesser demons like Mark Crispin Miller et al. are regularly cited, too.
These guys are literally killing us. I wish someone would publicize these guys and their evil scribblings. Most Americans, I think, don’t even know who they are.
Well, we of the Blogosphere are doing our best!