The limited television series thriller (and Zionist propaganda) The Patient evokes the hell that was the Nazi killing center Auschwitz with a direct reference to Victor Frankl’s memoir, Man’s Search for Meaning:
“I shall never forget how I was roused one night by the groans of a fellow prisoner, who threw himself about in his sleep, obviously having a horrible nightmare. Since I had always been especially sorry for people who suffered from fearful dreams or deliria, I wanted to wake the poor man. Suddenly I drew back the hand which was ready to shake him, frightened at the thing I was about to do. At that moment I became intensely conscious of the fact that no dream, no matter how horrible, could be as bad as the reality of the camp which surrounded us, and to which I was about to recall him.”
Western media, infected by Zionist ideology, would have us believe that the scourge of our times is skyrocketing antisemitism. This is a lie; one meant to distract us from the state-run slaughterhouse that Gaza has been turned into by Israel and the United States Imperial Government (USIG).
The hell that is Gaza has called into question the “liberal, rules-based international order” and “Western values.” But we should go further. We should call into question the very project of human civilization. We should interrogate the past 12,000 years of human existence with extreme suspicion.
Our species, homo sapiens, emerged approximately 300,000 years ago. For more than 90% of our history, our members were hunter gatherers and hunter horticulturalists. We were not peaceful creatures. There was lots of killing and lots of rape. It is estimated that on average 15% of pre-“civilizational” humans were killed by other humans, whereas for contemporary humans the average is less than 1%. Our hunting ancestors also had a version of war and genocide, but they didn’t have states and they didn’t have militaries.
About 12,000 years ago our species began embracing formal agriculture (intentional, sophisticated, and committed cultivation of crops and domestication of animals). This “Agricultural Revolution” or “Neolithic Revolution” or “Neolithic Shift” or “Neolithic Turn” is one of the best plot points in any good Big History. Eventually, this revolution facilitated the rise of cities, states, militaries, writing, money, industry, and “godlike technology.”
There is a debate about who was better off, our hunter gatherer ancestors or us. Yuval Noah Harari argued contemporary humans are way better off, while David Graeber and David Wengrow argued there has been a catastrophic mistake and hunter gatherers had it pretty good compared to us. Both visions contain an unfortunate anti-capitalist edge.
From a libertarian perspective, ain’t nothing wrong with agriculture, trade, money, prices, and markets. But, the rise of the state was a concerning development since the state is a monster. The USIG is the most powerful state in the history of the world; the “essential” nation. And while you and I might have it better than the average paleolithic human, the people of Gaza do not.
Structurally speaking, the USIG has been waging a techno-war of destruction against the innocent people of Gaza for almost ten months, with no end in sight. Israeli stormtroopers have been pushing buttons and pulling triggers, but the entire Israeli nation state (not just its military) only exists because of direct USIG support. And the slaughter is being live streamed for anyone who wants to bear witness to the truth (or celebrate the carnage as the Zionists and their apologists do).
We’ve been gaslit by the state and its minions at levels probably not seen since the archaic states defended their “regimes of certainty” and control of agriculture during the first famine. They want us to believe that Jews around the world (even in America) are moments away from being victims of a second Holocaust. Spray painting a synagogue, splashing paint on a Holocaust memorial, or harassing people because they are Jewish is wrong. But waking from a nightmare to that reality is not the hell of Auschwitz.
Gaza, meanwhile, is littered with the pieces of children every single day. They are being ripped apart by high explosives that are “Made in the USA.” None of the nightmares the children of Gaza are surely having can compare with the waking horror the empire is inflicting upon them.
Our government was complicit to an extent in the Holocaust, but it wasn’t running and funding the slaughter. And the Nazis were understood as the Enemy Other, not our greatest ally.
Meanwhile, the genocide in Gaza risks escalating to a regional conflict and even a global nuclear war. E. O. Wilson had it right when he said:
“Humanity today is like a waking dreamer, caught between the fantasies of sleep and the chaos of the real world. The mind seeks but cannot find the precise place and hour. We have created a Star Wars civilization, with Stone Age emotions, medieval institutions, and godlike technology. We thrash about. We are terribly confused by the mere fact of our existence, and a danger to ourselves and to the rest of life.”
When you look at it like that, the world of the hunter gatherer looks like a pretty decent past and a pretty likely future.
