Daily Times

Crying wolf and restoring democracy are the latest shenanigans of capitalism, which manufactures new but inglorious excuses for its invasion of autonomous or semi-autonomous states. For the nation states of the modern era, allowance of the word ‘freedom’ seems a bit far-fetched if not altogether a farce, since none of them is economically independent. Without economic freedom the concept of concrete political freedom remains an illusion. Beside this, no society, including the ones of the modern industrial world, has managed to create an environment where a human being “is no longer enslaved by institutions which vitiate self-determination from the beginning. In other words, freedom is still to be created even for the freest of the existing societies” (Marcuse).
In this context, one can analyse a buoyant or perhaps an altogether desperate prime minister of Israel roaring at and threatening a state already besieged by the hegemonic forces of the globe. Instead of Palestinians, this time the victim of his wrath/swashbuckling is Iran, a state stifled by sanctions imposed by an empire and a plethora of acutely subservient states lacking any moral high ground, yet described as the “international community”.
Who says that Freud has been proved wrong and the Oedipus complex is a mere lampoon, a thing of the past, eclipsed by history? The most illuminating example of this complex can be overtly seen in the power corridors of a hegemonic empire where the destinies of nations are decided by the sheer nod of a select few. No sooner did the father figure, the US establishment, including Obama, come to threaten its child, Netanyahu, with the castration complex, the US Congress — immediately acting as a mother figure — eloped and embraced its ‘blue-eyed’ son. To the present day, incest continuum continues to survive as a veritable part of human unconsciousness. When it comes to Israel, any evident threat of castration turns out to be a mere hoax/sham but, as Freud suggests, the threat itself continues to carry its historical impact. It would be equally interesting to know what Freud would have thought about the “infantile neurosis” that has afflicted Netanyahu perniciously. What is playing on the nerves of this premier: narcissism, fear or guilt?
Ruling out the sense of guilt will be imprudent since in our courtesy-repressive civilisation it resides under the surface of every individual. The more the aggression is intensified, the more the intensity of sense of guilt will be. This could also mean that the intensity of progress is directly proportional to intensified unhappiness and coercion. However, guilt is intimately connected with shame and in Netanyahu’s arrogant, brazen and vivid attitude one hardly finds any trace of either. As he mentions his concern about the security of the only Jewish state in the world, he can be viewed confronting himself while attempting to relieve his sense of guilt by exchanging it with religion. If guilt is not the point of his concern then is it a fear of losing his hegemonic position in the Middle East that is instilling panic in his mind? Fear of whom, especially when Israel remains the most invincible power in the Middle East? The US’s might lurking right behind it makes it absolutely immune to any external aggression. This sense of impregnability consequently leads to narcissism, which is overtly manifested by the leaders of this Zionist state. Whether one can declare Israel a state is a different question, since every state requires certain borders, no matter how disputable they may be, but Israel refuses to have one at least as far as the territory of Palestine is concerned. This is why the two-state solution, a typical capitalistic answer to this imbroglio, has met its nemesis.
In his speech, Netanyahu has consumed quite a few interesting similes. He has compared the current Iranian regime with Islamic State (IS) and declared Iran the foremost sponsor of international terrorism, which is “busy gobbling up” nations across the Middle East. This is characteristic of what is considered as an imposition/ projection of one’s ‘otherness’ upon one’s opponents. The term owes its popularity to Edward Said, himself a US-Palestinian. For those who are affiliated with the Frankfurt School, this process of othering is linked to the power of the established reality, which, to maintain its domination, utilises this othering as an instrument to achieve a certain political agenda. In the case of Netanyahu, who himself is responsible for afflicting the sum total of all these atrocities on humanity, this instrument has played well to masquerade the real image of Israel, especially for those who need no deception, since for the preservation of the status quo they themselves deem this practice vital and necessary. To perpetuate the present condition based on exploitation and expropriation, civilisation integrates the reality with ambiguity making it impossible to discern right from wrong. The media, itself an instrument of hegemonic control, creates a mindset for which everything that affects the vital interests of a society, including truth or farce, friends and foes, war and peace, is predefined. The person is no longer left with room to evade the system. His adjustment is total; he acts like a vocal chord of the very system that thrives on his blood, his alienated labour. Everything other than the system appears to him as otherness.
In Jungian terminology, this othering is the “shadow” of one’s own self, which is much less enviable, hence one likes to depart from it as quickly and swiftly as possible. “Shadow wears many faces: greedy, angry, selfish, fearful, resentful, manipulative, weak, judgmental, controlling, hostile — on and on. This dark side of ourselves acts as a storage place for all the things that we find unacceptable in ourselves: things which we get embarrassed by and pretend that we are not, aspects which we do not wish to allow the world to see, and which we often do not allow ourselves to see. It lies concealed, just below the surface of ourselves, masked by our more ‘proper’ selves, remaining untamed, unexplored territory for most of us” (Ford, 1998, Zweig and Abrams, 1991).
Netanyahu, a ‘character mask’ of imperialism, finds himself under the whip of a superior agency that is commonly known as the military-industrial complex, a complex that castrates nations with or without the Oedipus situation. Otherness is its all time favourite idea since it creates fodder for its consumption. Despite lacking the metaphysical feature of a leader, the speech by Netanyahu, based on distorted facts and twisted realities, won accolades since, instead of being a prescription for peace and security for his country, it proved to be an advertisement for war. The expertly expressed opinion and the Orwellian language dominating his speech carried the stench of caveman hostility towards everyone, including Obama, who had the audacity to differ from him. Time and again his thoughts were applauded since they justified themselves by their usefulness to an established group, the only interest of which lies in continuation of a permanent war. If modern day’s truth is nothing beyond the successfulness of an idea (generally touted as political opportunism), which akin to a hot commodity can be sold in the market based on the principal of laissez faire, Netanyahu’s unblemished performance won the day for him. His most disconcerting revelation, which amazingly did not take anyone aback, was his comparison of Iran, a pre-historic state with IS, a non-state actor, created and beyond doubt sponsored both by his own state and the one of his mentor’s, the US. His speech revealed the intensity of aggression simmering in his bosom, which only depicts the intensity of hidden guilt and the extent of ‘unfree’ enslavement he is haunted with.

(To be continued)

The writer is based in Australia and has authored books on socialism and history. He can be reached at saulatnagi@hotmail.com