The following article by Dianne Kirby was first published in Unity, the weekly paper of the Irish Communist Party.
PALESTINE is symptomatic of the raging crisis, the existential threat of ‘might is right’, provoking questions to which most people previously paid little heed. Senselessness seemingly prevails. German intelligence has classified the watermelon an antisemitic symbol and the slogan ‘from the river to the sea’ as extremist. At the height of the Gazan genocide, Ireland approved 20 million euros in dual-use exports to the IDF and Israeli Defence Ministry. Governments unresponsive to popular demands, are pursuing policies detrimental to the national interest, spouting lies made obvious by what can be seen live streamed online. Protest is increasingly criminalised, civil liberties eroded, free speech trashed. An Intercept statistical media analysis definitively determined over a range of issues that international mainstream media consistently favours Israeli narratives, deliberately disregarding, even discrediting, Palestinian perspectives.
With transnational class formation and its projection of political power viewed through the lens of the impunity accorded Israel combined with western support for its crimes, the resurrection of dangerously misleading antisemitic tropes of an international Jewish conspiracy to control the world are on the rise. Dr Kees van der Pijl places class before economics, stressing that the capitalist ruling class is not simply a profit-seeking economic imposition, but a social formation that operates on several fronts. It continually restructures in accordance with the most successful format. ‘Global Finance’ previously appropriated the largest share of mass profits by persuading societies that self-regulating markets worked in the interests of all. The ideological framework assured societal cohesion while imposing a comprehensive concept of control.
At every juncture in social development there is a sector of the capitalist system which leads the process by projecting a vision of society that benefits all. Ruling elites derive the most. In the 1990s the spearhead of capitalist development was embodied in the triangle of IT, media conglomerates and intelligence services. For example, In-Q-Tel, the CIA’s venture capital arm founded in 1999. It launched more than 800 companies. Some are known. Others secret. In-Q-Tel’s investments build technologies for US national security.
Founded in 2003 with support from In-Q-Tel, Palantir Technologies, perhaps the world’s most influential data analytics firms, has major global contracts with governments, militaries and corporations. CEO Alex Karp and Palantir head of corporate affairs, Nicholas Zamiska, recently published The Technological Republic. It calls for the introduction of national service, the ‘moral’ duty of technology companies to participate in ‘defence’, the necessity for hard power to protect freedom and democracy, and, notably, the embrace of religion in public life. Critics describe its messaging as ‘technofascism’, adding to the threat of nuclear Armageddon that of AI, driven by a dangerous ‘ideological agenda’.
With the ability to survey entire populations, generating immense profits in the process, ‘total information’ is displacing the financial sector which, along with market self-regulating concepts, lost credibility following the 2008 financial crisis. The new ideological framework preaches that tight control is essential while AI offers the good life.
Throughout the 20th century there was an Atlantic ruling class whose decline was accelerated by the collapse of the Soviet Union. The new social structures contain assertive Zionist elements for whom the fate of Israel supersedes that of their respective nations. As the era of sovereign equality between states ended, a wave of Israeli investments bolstered Zionist profiles at a time when the main socio-economic governing forces rose to a higher plane, organizing themselves as a transnational class.
Wholly unrelated to Judaism, Zionist influence within this class is best understood as a form of cosmopolis, like the medieval Catholic church. Transnational, cosmopolitan elites generally possess coincident interests. The evolution of this socio-political-economic transnational class ruthlessly pursuing wealth and influence is marked by the endless wars, chaos and crisis on which this murderous cabal thrives. Mass suffering, genocide, even ecocide, matters not to them.
Standing with Palestine is more than a moral imperative, it is a matter of civilizational life and death. Palestine’s survival is intertwined with ours.
Both require collective consciousness and mass action.