Ezra Ben-Shalom
jewish state. com

8 March 2008

Rather than analyzing the world and its peoples as outsiders, Westerners have always naturally seen other peoples through the frame of their own psychological needs. Certain needs must be filled, meaning that certain roles must be filled. While the actors available for these roles remain constant, changing conditions mean that the same actor may find himself in different roles in different eras of history.

The violent, unstable uncle represents one of these roles. The actor to play this role has shifted through the ages, depending on which nation actually does behave violently and unpredictably. The bulk of Westerners have always known exactly how to handle this character; they devote themselves to pleasing and loving him. If the uncle is German, suddenly Germanophiles spring up all over Europe and America, becoming more German than the Germans themselves. The appeasing majority seek to unite with the uncle so that when he enters his drunken rage he will go after the designated target, not them. Furthermore, they disdain and disparage this object of hatred more fiercely than does the uncle himself to further consolidate their union with him.

The good but incompetent sub-human represents the second role. Westerners feel sorry for him and acknowledge that he must remain dependent on their charity, thereby at once proving to themselves their superiority and compassion.

The third role is the uppity sub-human. When he stands at the whipping post, suffering, people can either watch gleefully, or bow their heads in a compassionate pose, depending on personal preference. But in either case, they rejoice that he fills this role - and not them. If he dares break away from the post, turns and fights, or runs away, the entire crowd helps bring him back to the violent uncle, regardless of the affect they had assumed during the beating.

In previous years, Africans and Jews played either the good sub-human or uppity sub-human roles. But in the 1960's and 1970's, with the advent of the civil rights movement and Western intellectuals' belief that what they saw as their superior civilization had finally rubbed off on American and European people of African descent, the roles became more carefully distinguished. Africans would henceforth exclusively play the role of the good but incompetent sub-human.

Today, Western celebrities and others congratulate themselves on their charity trips to Africa, showing off their compassion, their implied superiority among people who supposedly need their generosity, and their bravery at making the voyage to the land of savages. Hardly ever do they invest their fortunes to build a factory or to start a business, as genuine development has little to do with their purpose. (The Chinese and the Africans themselves, meanwhile, endeavor to take advantage of the economic potential of the continent.)

Not surprisingly, Western news media have quite a hard time treating African economic success in an objective fashion. This week, NPR broadcast the story of the Wall Street Journal's list of billionaires. When mentioning the case of a certain Nigerian who had made his fortune in concrete and other products, the news presenter opined that the African entrepreneur "showed the dark side of the list [of billionaires]," as though if any African miraculously should encounter success, he had better share it out immediately among his fellow incompetents, as they might not receive another windfall for some time. She did not refer to any of the American, European, or Asian success stories as demonstrating a "dark side".

When an African transgresses, Westerners claim that he cannot be held to the same standards as a normal man. For example, now that Australian reporters have revealed that Ishmael Beah's memoir of the life of a child soldier largely represents invention, his defenders protest that his detractors must have some sinister motive for going after such an African. Indeed, how can a Westerner do anything vis-à-vis a pathetic African, save pour sympathy from above? The African unwittingly serves to protect Western societies from fear of inferiority.

The Israeli now plays the role of the uppity sub-human. As long as he remains tied to the whipping post and does not try to flee or fight, many bow their heads in pretend solidarity with his pain. Western news media will visit the site of terrorist attacks and rarely even show the grief of the victims' families. However, lest no one forget that he remains the uppity sub-human, the newscast will always include the justification for the Israeli's cursed status: he exists. He exists and he also inhabits his Eternal Homeland, less than 1% of the region, a sanctuary for the Children of Israel which could never acquire permanent borders because it was immediately and repeatedly attacked by all of its neighbors from the day of its modern revival.

However, should the uppity sub-human break away from his pole and attempt however clumsily to defend himself, the reaction from Westerners becomes much more severe. The crowd jumps at the occasion to re-attach him to his whipping post. The global community declares his self-defense "disproportionate", while newspaper headlines proclaim his cruelty and the inevitability of further discipline. Israeli suffering satisfies the Western need to feel in control of the meting out of pain.

In the current era, the Arab world plays the role of the violent uncle. One must attend to his sensibilities at any cost. When the uppity sub-human has struck him a blow, Western journalists run to his side, not to ask when the whipping might finally stop, but to ask how the blow felt. Europeans and Americans demonstrate a growing sympathy for radical Islam, from the English royal family and the head of the Anglican church to university professors, passing by the bulk of the news media. The Arab serves Westerners' need to feel safe from violence and social discord.

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Comment from Dr. Daniel Pipes (8 March 2008):

My inclination is to say that Western attitudes toward Jews are far deeper than those toward Africans and that the latter shed only limited light on the former.