Pilgrims and Zionists

October 10th, 2005 at 22:29 Björn Hallberg

Not exactly news anymore but George Galloway’s appearance on the Alex Jones radio talk show is still reverberating around the blogosphere. Kurt Nimmo has continued to build on some of the malice seen on right wing hate sites in yet another blistering series of articles, “Galloway and the Stampeding of Arab Jews (Part 2).” It makes for lovely reading and forces this ragtag group of people, label them Zionists if you will, to go on the defensive and try to rationalize their ideology for once, even if the discourse is crude and predictable.

Upon going through the many links in the articles above I came across a two year old sentiment by Michael Gove, one of the apologists for .. well .. whatever the US and Israel comes up with. Forgive the lack of timeliness but I don’t usually don’t read these right wing psychotic moonbat rags on regular basis.

Both America and Israel were founded by peoples who were refugees from prejudice in Europe. Europe’s tragedy is that prejudice has been given new life, in antipathy to both those states.

As tempting as it is to slash this simplistic drivel with direct rebuttal, I realized the man is right. Well not really but in his own haphazard and clueless way. So I opened up my cultural toolbox and looked at these unnamed founders. The Zionists on the one hand and the … Pilgrims for lack of a more precise definition. Zionists made Israel possible, through political lobbying and terrorism, and also became the advance party for later immigration. Pilgrims set up the Mayflower Compact and became a base for future immigration. What should be noted here is that this post-settlement immigration is by no means “refugees from prejudice” or political refugees but generally economic refugees as it were. In short, in search for a better life for themselves. Like the million or so Swedes that immigrated to the US in the late 1800s. The same is true for the post-genesis immigration of Israel. But the interesting nucleus of the discourse that Gove touches upon is the ideology of these frontier settlers. Zionists and Pilgrims if you wish.
Is it plausible that they HAD to leave Europe? Indeed, but both groups were notoriously uncooperative and equally religiously fanatical, in their own way of course. Furthermore it is a great disservice to moderate Christians and Jews everywhere to confuse them with hardcore isolationistic zealots. It makes about as much sense as to claim that Peoples Temple cult was forced, due to prejudice and persecution, to leave the US for Guyana. The truth of the matter was that they, as well as the people of Jonestown, were zealot conformists led by a more or less fanatical elite.
Upon doing basic research on the Mayflower pilgrims I came upon another very pertinent fact. Before leaving Europe, some of these Pilgrims to be had tried making a new life for themselves in Leiden, Netherlands, where they were enjoying full religious freedom. However, here is the snag, and one that they share with fanatical Zionists, they feared the pervasive Dutch influence on their children and were unable to secure civil autonomy. Ahh, yes, of course. The dreaded cultural contamination and assimilation paradox. Notoriously propagated by intolerant bigots, extremists and racists across all time, politics and groups. So I guess one shouldn’t wonder why the US and Israel are the way they are. Sins of the fathers and all that.

Entry 272 filed under: Rants and raves. This entry was posted 4 years, 5 months ago. RSS feed for comments on this post.