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Live Encounters Magazine July 2023
Thank you Dr. Goebbels – Us and Them, Nationalism and the Herd by Mark Ulyseas.
“Europe is a garden. We have built a garden. Everything works. It is the best combination of political freedom, economic prosperity and social cohesion that the humankind has been able to build – the three things together,” Borrell said during the event.
“The rest of the world,” he went on, “is not exactly a garden. Most of the rest of the world is a jungle, and the jungle could invade the garden.”
- Josep Borrell, European Union’s foreign policy chief (https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2022/10/19/josep-borrell-apologises-for-controversial-garden-vs-jungle-metaphor-but-stands-his-ground)
When confronted with this distasteful statement, Borrell replied,
“Europe had managed to replace centuries of war with lasting peace, cooperation and the rule of law, while other countries outside the continent, such as Russia, were resorting to “force, intimidation and blackmail to get their way.”
Perhaps the learned gentleman is suffering from amnesia. Europe has raped, rampaged, murdered, looted, colonised countries ‘outside the garden’. The oft repeated slogan of ‘International Rules Based Order’ is in sharp contrast to the West forcing Ukraine to discard the 2014 Minsk Treaty, thus leading to the bloody ongoing war.
The murderous invasion of Iraq by USA/Britain that led to the destruction of an ancient country along with the slaughter of nearly a million Arab Muslims is forgotten. Meanwhile, the ICC (International Criminal Court) has been quick to issue an Interpol Warrant for the arrest of the Russian President Vladimir Putin. The war criminals Bush and Blair who had ordered the invasion of Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Syria among others have been overlooked. Their (USA/UK/Australia etc.) politicians and armies have granted themselves automatic immunity against prosecution. Murder and mayhem being their divine right.
But why are we not surprised. After all, wasn’t Europe the birthplace of Nazism?
Dr. Joseph Goebbels has left an indelible mark on the western psyche. The potency of flag waving and nationalism has been expertly used by governments to ‘mind-bend and corral the multitude’. For flag and country is, perhaps, the greatest fraud committed by politicians in democracies.
Us and Them. Nationalism and the Herd.
What makes people behave like lobotomized folk when they rally around the flag of their country?
And when one adds religion, then country and religion become two sides of a coin – A potent amalgamation of delusions that is highly contagious.
We have lost our ability to reason in a crisis and instead resort to mindless chanting of slogans while waving our blood stained flags. Is this self-induced brainwashing alienating us from life itself, from the natural order of things, and driving us against the force of Nature onward to our extinction?
Those possessing the power to herd people together like cattle have successfully created their own niches in the form of countries, countries that barricade themselves with borders, checkpoints and religion. These powerful people project an illusion of greatness, while in fact they have feet of clay. But their mesmerized followers choose to ignore the obvious and prefer to accept the standard fare dished out by spin doctors whose sole objective is to turn the populace into dumbed down citizens with a herd mentality. They are winning. Look around and witness the controlled order in the chaos amidst the inhumanity and the rising tide of frenzied flag waving.
Why do we need to respect a flag and national anthem? And why does disrespect translate into one being called a traitor? Should such indignation in fact be directed at growing poverty, homelessness, physical/mental/sexual abuse, lack of education and rape of the environment? Or, are these man-made afflictions unimportant when it comes to flag and country? And does religion override these festering sores of humanity?
The theme song of nationalism, often spiced by religion, has morphed into a catchy advertising jingle. The brand name, colour coding and strategic media placing has colonised the sub-consciousness of the herd…a herd that is proliferating at an alarming rate. Often the herd is frightened into stampeding, destroying everything in its path. The mechanism used to frighten the herd is a non-existent internal or external threat often engineered for profit at the expense of innocent lives and the truth.
The warped understanding of the term our values is used as a weapon to drive out or destroy those who are alien to it and therefore viewed as a threat.
It matters little if the concerned herd has invaded, occupied and turned another’s land into their own grazing ground.
It matters little if a herd descends on a land and displaces those living upon it for centuries, citing excerpts from a book as proof of previous ownership.
It matters little if a herd creates its own grazing ground and builds borders and hoists its flag…dividing a land in a bloody encounter, displacing millions and creating a permanent state of hostilities with another herd.
It matters little if the history of a herd has been creatively reinvented by self-appointed guardians with the sole intention of developing an exceptional brand of nationality.
It matters little if a herd anoints the founders of their herd as Founding Fathers. As if these ‘Fathers’ were the ones that fathered the herd.
It matters little if members of a herd commit mass murder on behalf of the herd for it is good to kill and/or die with honour not protecting one’s country but annexing others or simply destroying the homes of innocent people for land and/or natural resources and/or for political purposes.
It matters little if the national anthem is sung with great pride above the cries of squabbling vultures feeding off corpses on a battlefield or those who are starving to death in the herd.
However, what does matter is the sanitised history of the herd, its religion and our way of life (whatever this means).
The rest is unimportant; like the sanctity of life, preservation of Nature and the adherence to one’s Faith of peace, love, charity and forgiveness.
In the words of Rabindranath Tagore,
“But now, where the spirit of the Western nationalism prevails, the whole people is being taught from boyhood to foster hatreds and ambitions by all kinds of means—by the manufacture of half-truths and untruths in history, by persistent misrepresentation of other races and the culture of unfavourable sentiments towards them, by setting up memorials of events, very often false, which for the sake of humanity should be speedily forgotten, thus continually brewing evil menace towards neighbours and nations other than their own. This is poisoning the very fountainhead of humanity. It is discrediting the ideals, which were born of the lives of men who were our greatest and best. It is holding up gigantic selfishness as the one universal religion for all nations of the world.”
Om Shanti Shanti Shanti Om
© Mark Ulyseas
Mark Ulyseas has served time in advertising as copywriter and creative director selling people things they didn’t need, a ghost writer for some years, columnist of a newspaper, a freelance journalist and photographer. In 2009 he created Live Encounters Magazine, in Bali, Indonesia. It is a not for profit (adfree) free online magazine featuring leading academics, writers, poets, activists of all hues etc. from around the world.
March 2016 saw the launch of its sister publication Live Encounters Poetry, which was relaunched as Live Encounters Poetry & Writing in March 2017. In February 2019 the third publication was launched, LE Children Poetry & Writing (now renamed Live Encounters Young Poets & Writers). In August 2020 the fourth publication, Live Encounters Books, was launched.
Mark has edited, designed and produced all of Live Encounters’ 269 publications (till July 2023).
Mark’s philosophy is that knowledge must be free and shared freely to empower all towards enlightenment. He is the author of three books: RAINY – My friend & Philosopher, Seductive Avatars of Maya – Anthology of Dystopian Lives and In Gethsemane: Transcripts of a Journey. https://liveencounters.net/mark-ulyseas-publisher-editor-of-live-encounters-magazines/ https://www.amazon.com/Mark-Ulyseas/e/B01FUUQVBG