Today Navi Pillay, one of the devils that spread The Great Genocide Blood Libel, was awarded The Nobel “Eternal Islamist War” Prize. This tells you everything you need to know about our Palestinianised institutions, our contempt for Truth and the fall of our corrupted world.

This is why I was called to write The Genocide of Truth. This is why you need to sign up as paid today to read and spread the work that will bring the world back to sanity.

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THE GENOCIDE OF TRUTH: The Deep Roots of a Modern Blood Libel

by Daniel Clarke-Serret

Introduction: The Genocide of Truth

PART 1: The Tree of Knowledge

Chapter 1: Truth // Chapter 2: Ideology // Chapter 3: Religion // Chapter 4: Science // Chapter 5: Attention // Chapter 6: Distraction // Chapter 7: (True) Expertise // Chapter 8: Authority

PART 2: The Descent to Babylon

Chapter 9: Declaration // Chapter 10: Confusion // Chapter 11: Conversation // Chapters 12: Democratisation // Chapter 13: Sophistry // Chapter 14: Image

PART 3: The Rise of Byzantium

Chapter 15: Guilt // Chapter 16: Belief // Chapter 17: Christ // Chapter 18: Mission // Chapter 19: Doctrine // Chapter 20: Heresy // Chapter 21: Sin (below)

Chapter 21: Sin

The Pear Tree or The Tree of Knowledge?

The Historical Project to end Evil

What is it that causes human beings to engage in wrongdoing? This is a question that has perplexed philosophers, theologians and educationalists for centuries, being very much interrelated with the evergreen problem of evil. Its implications for modern-day malaises from schooling to anxiety relief to “genocide” activism are powerful and in need of immediate explication. Far from a matter of pure academic import, it is a topic that reaches to the very roots of the postlinguist religion and should be revived from the ancient vaults in which it is currently buried.

There are many explanations for the roots of human action. The perversity of our individual and collective behaviour has led many over the centuries to question the existence of a benevolent God. How is it that an all-powerful loving deity could permit the existence of evil on the planet which He is said to have created? It is not my intention to needlessly repeat the theodicies which have been well explained in my other work. Theologians, ancient and modern, have turned to the explanations of contrast, soul-making and, above all, free will to explain the coexistence of a monotheistic Creator with His fallen world.

Yet beyond the theodicies here and elsewhere mentioned, there is one classical response which requires further deliberation, that provided by the extinct world religion of Manichaeism. Unlike Christianity and Islam, which flourish numerically to this day, and Judaism, which survives lion-heartedly in diminished form, Manichaeism was the 7th world faith that is no more. In the classical world, it was a belief system of region-spanning popularity and amongst its celebrity adherents was a young Saint Augustine.

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The Ancient Woke of Manichaeism

Manichaeism was a faith which spoke of the existence of two deities, one good and one evil. In the Roman world of the early Church, its followers identified the Creator “God of the Old Testament” as being the God of darkness in contrast with the “loving God” of the New. His supposed evilness was demonstrated not only by his anthropomorphic jealousy and regular interventions to smite the disobedient, but more fundamentally by His association with matter. As the creator of material things, He was intimately associated with the sinfulness of the flesh. With the spiritual being inherently superior to the material - and the former perpetually being in conflict with the latter - YHWH was the Satanic force keeping us in touch with wrongdoing.

As a Jew, the author is naturally uncomfortable with the literal demonization of the Hebrew Bible, but as a purported resolution to the problem of evil, one can see its attractions. It is easy to understand the cruelty and suffering of this life if it is implicit in the material substance of things, a substance which was created and maintained by an all-powerful divine force. The spiritual good God may try to aid us in our fight against the flesh, but we are confounded by the material reality in which we live.

Nonetheless, this creed faces some severe problems, and not merely the anger of long-defamed Jewish theology. From a classical Christian perspective, it reopens the Pandora's box of Byzantine era heresies. If the flesh is inherently evil, then the “good God Jesus” could not have been made of such a substance. He may have appeared to have been a human; he may have seemed to have died on the Cross; but in reality he was a non-human person of full divinity.

More practically for the modern era, Manichaeism, intentionally or otherwise, presupposes a world of limited accountability. If the physical human is so wracked by unavoidable sin, then he is helpless in its wake. There is nothing he can do; therefore no wrongdoing can be attributed to its author. Such a rationalist philosophy would either lead followers to chronic inaction underwritten by guilt or, more likely, a life pursuing power, pleasure and meaninglessness with gay abandon. Lack of enforced responsibility births necessary impunity. Who is fallen man to overcome the evil god of flesh?

Manichaeism is the classical equivalent of scientific or historical determinism. “I can’t help it” philosophised. I act as I do because of my genes, historical injustice and how I was beaten up as a child. I come from a victim group and was blighted with a disability. In brief, it’s not my fault Officer Krupke.

In truth, Manichaeism never died; it just morphed into modern mutations. Wokeness and the like are its contemporary bastard children. As a philosophy, it was an intellectually satisfying explanation of evil, but a morally warped basis for a just society. It was time for St Augustine to look elsewhere.

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Neoplatonism: “Education is the solution”

The second stop on Augustine’s train of intellectual discovery was Neoplatonism. Would the celebrated Athenian’s teachings be able to explain the perpetual wrongdoing of humankind?

We're all familiar with the Allegory of the Cave, with the unfortunate inhabitants chained against the subterranean wall, all the while seeing reflected shadows of the reality beyond. To those who need a refresher, this description from Neel Burton is appropriately evocative:

“Human beings have spent all their lives in an underground cave or den which has a mouth open towards the light. They have their legs and their necks chained so that they cannot move, and can see only in front of them, towards the back of the cave. Above and behind them a fire is blazing, and between them and the fire there is a raised way along which there is a low wall. Men pass along the wall carrying all sorts of statues, and the fire throws the shadows of these statues onto the back of the cave. All the prisoners ever see are the shadows, and so they suppose that the shadows are the objects themselves.”

The famed metaphor presents the cave-dwelling residents as being in a state of ignorance. Uneducated and unenlightened, they mistake the unreality of the reflected images as being the genuine, unmediated truth. Having (literally) turned their backs on veracity, which is to say the undefiled light of The Sun beyond, they stumble around in their ignorance.

According to Neoplatonist thought, it is this absence of education that directly leads to wrongdoing. The Transcendent One, the Sun of the Allegory, is pure goodness and unadulterated light. Once we have ascended from the cave and fully turned our faces to the purity of the Good, wrongdoing will be banished from our lives. In contrast, turning our backs to the Sun will lead us, by our own hand, to our own demise.

The Transcendent One can create no evil nor be held responsible for the existence of sin in the world, but Her absence can lead to meaning-deprived groping and a nihilism which seeks only for power and riches. Thus there is no divine-created evil in this world; only that which we create for ourselves by turning our back on the One.

On one level, Neoplatonism is intellectually satisfying as it conceives of a finely-graded ladder between complete materialism and complete spirituality. As we gradually ascend from the cave and become closer to the One, we desist in our ignorance and thereby our resultant wrongdoing. It makes it clear that there is a ladder between materialism and spirituality, whereby we must ascend to learn the highest truth (education) before descending to apply our learnings in the world (service). It also absolves the Higher Being of blame for human misery and places full accountability upon the citizen.

Put simply, where there is evil, we are to blame. If we do wrong, it is because we decided to remain in ignorance. If we - the uneducated - chose to do evil, it is us that must be held accountable. If our world is absent of inspiration and meaning, it is because, having ascended to the truth, we refused to return to serve our fellow countrymen. Neoplatonism is a vision of an educated citizenry, the enlightened teaching the ignorant and spiritual advancement leading to service in the material realm.

Neoplatonism continues to be one of the greatest forces in the modern world. Although not named as such, its presence is all around us; those who say that the answer to every problem is education. No matter the issue, they claim that there is nothing that the right schooling cannot correct. Yet, as with many such easy political formulas, it denies the complexity of reality.

We need not look far to see evidence to the contrary: educated men turned evil. Did not Robert Mugabe work as a school teacher? Did not Hitler and Stalin read widely and enjoy classical music? Isn't postlinguistic antisemitism rampant on American university campuses, more contagious among the educated than in the impoverished streets of Mississippi? In each and every here listed case, there are multiple factors at play, Yet it seems that education is no simplistic cure to evil —and in some campus-confined cases, it actually exacerbates it behind the sainted cloak of rational detachment.

So if pure education fails, where else can we turn?

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The Case of the Pear Orchard

Ultimately Augustine was to reject both Manichaeism and Neoplatonism and it is this intellectual journey that is clearly laid out in his famed Confessions. For the purposes of this chapter, we are going to focus on Augustine's story of the Pear Orchard, a tale which holds significant insight on the question of wrongdoing. Far from being an ancient story of little interest, it is an anecdote of far-reaching contemporary implication.

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THE GENOCIDE OF TRUTH: The Deep Roots of a Modern Blood Libel

by Daniel Clarke-Serret

Introduction: The Genocide of Truth

PART 1: The Tree of Knowledge

Chapter 1: Truth // Chapter 2: Ideology // Chapter 3: Religion // Chapter 4: Science // Chapter 5: Attention // Chapter 6: Distraction // Chapter 7: (True) Expertise // Chapter 8: Authority

PART 2: The Descent to Babylon

Chapter 9: Declaration // Chapter 10: Confusion // Chapter 11: Conversation // Chapters 12: Democratisation // Chapter 13: Sophistry // Chapter 14: Image

PART 3: The Rise of Byzantium

Chapter 15: Guilt // Chapter 16: Belief // Chapter 17: Christ // Chapter 18: Mission // Chapter 19: Doctrine // Chapter 20: Heresy

Chapter 20: Heresy

Living with Contradiction

The Great Genocide Blood Libel is founded upon doctrine and doctrine is founded upon religion. Yet religion is not founded upon the Bible, neither the Hebrew nor the New. For Biblia means books (a library) and the books are from very different schools with very different views. It is the glory of the Bible that it is a collection of opinions - a recorded debate - rather than a synthesized, monolithic viewpoint. In its unharmonised diversity, it is the civilisational counterpoint to postlingualism.

“Genocide” is a fruit of this postlinguistic doctrine: it precedes the evidence, survives irrespective of evidence and its contradiction is heresy. Its statement is a Nicene Creed, “truthful” only by repetition and enforced by an emperor of recognized authority. Refutation is tantamount to sedition and an attack upon the unity of the human rights empire.

While modern democratic “christianities” (plural) are content to tolerate one another, to listen to contradiction in competing christologies, the Emperor Constantine, elevated upon high in his Cambridge-based temple will only accept the diffusion of the accepted view: that there are oppressors and oppressed, and that the Zionist Project, infected by antichrists who refuse doctrine, is destined for the hellfire. This is the Greco-Roman legacy: Universities. Indoctrination on the Jewish “devil”.

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And the “proof” of this Johannine demonology? The statement of agreement enshrined in orthodoxy: That the Jews are committing genocide, not because they are, but because they don’t accept the new dispensation. That “human rights” are divine and embodied in the flesh; that they existed prior to the formation of the cosmos and are incarnated physically in the Global South. That they were pronounced, not only by the Hebrew Prophets, but directly from the Burning Bush —from the voice of “I Am” himself.

Many were the Jews that pioneered human rights. Out of the embers of Auschwitz they spoke of genocide and the need for never again. They built up international institutions and preached the oneness of humanity. Yet the followers of this loyal Jewish sect, committed to The Law - international law - created a judicial creep that amounted to perfected impossibility.

As it was written in the Gospel of Matthew, so it was repreached in our generation:

You have heard it is said from the Hebrew Scriptures that slavery is an abomination. Well I say that the slavery of your neighbor’s great-grandfather must be subject to reparation and overt repentance.

You have heard it said in times of old that one must love their neighbour. Well I say that love transcends neighbours, for all your enemiesshould be loved unconditionally — unless they have different views.

You have listened to preachers who have railed against genocide. Well I say that war, even in defence, amounts to genocide.

Matthew was the Jew who loved the law and extended it to the reach of the saints. All members of the community - Jew and gentile - were to follow Mosaic injunction and beyond the letter. His was the text of a man who loved the Law only to see its precise legal provisions turned against his people.

“Hypocrites!” they cried, as they created a new religion, a post-Mosaic confection not of his imagining.

“Legalists”, they bellowed, as precise lawyered injunction was metaphorised into doctrinal slogan.

The Word came out from Jerusalem and was turned mercilessly against its creators; law became slogan in the name of love. And this is no ancient story for it was reproduced in our own days and in our own generation. The words of Isaiah, engraved with irony upon the walls of New York, were used as a stick to destroy the prophet’s own flock.

The New Testament is perhaps the model of our malaise and yet, I confess, it may contain our salvation. For though Constantine and his Byzantine descendants may have transfigured intellectual diversity into orthodoxy, they maintained the Bible as a biblia, a library of books.

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THE GENOCIDE OF TRUTH: The Deep Roots of a Modern Blood Libel

by Daniel Clarke-Serret

Introduction: The Genocide of Truth

PART 1: The Tree of Knowledge

Chapter 1: Truth // Chapter 2: Ideology // Chapter 3: Religion // Chapter 4: Science // Chapter 5: Attention // Chapter 6: Distraction // Chapter 7: (True) Expertise // Chapter 8: Authority

PART 2: The Descent to Babylon

Chapter 9: Declaration // Chapter 10: Confusion // Chapter 11: Conversation // Chapters 12: Democratisation // Chapter 13: Sophistry // Chapter 14: Image

PART 3: The Rise of Byzantium

Chapter 15: Guilt // Chapter 16: Belief // Chapter 17: Christ // Chapter 18: Mission // Chapter 19: Doctrine (see below)

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Chapter 19: Doctrine

A Genealogy of Post-Linguistics

“There are two different kinds of people in the world….”

“There are two different kinds of people in the world….”

How many times have we heard this phrase? The insistent idea that the complex mass of humanity can be neatly divided into two categories. But those who resist the clarion call with passionate refusal are soon dragged into its irresistible orbit. For though we rail against simplicity; though we anger at dividing the world into us and them; we soon succumb to its temptation:

“There are two different kinds of people in the world, those who use phrases of the type ‘There are two different kinds of people in the world….’ and those who avoid such distinctions”. Oh dear…

Dichotomous thinking is at the heart of language and from its grip there is no escape. In every encounter with the world, we are forced to make distinctions. From the most mundane to the most complex of ideas we divide the world into x and not-x.

At the most humdrum of levels, we classify whether everyday objects make the categorical grade. Is this a table or is it not a table? If it has 4 legs, is of a certain height, is of a certain shape and has a particular function, it’s a table. In most cases, the appropriate definition is clear. But as with the law, there are hard cases. Is it a table or a workbench or a movable breakfast bar? Here we either concede that it’s a table, choose an alternative, pre-existing category or in extremis, invent an entirely new denotation. Our world is mediated through either-or categories into which we unceremoniously shoehorn all that we encounter.

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The Law and the Facts

But the linguistic magnetism towards division is most starkly brought to life in more abstract domains. Their Lordships in the appellate courts are tasked with defining the limits of the law; does this or that action fall within the ambit of the legislative clause?

Let us examine a classic example: Theft. In most cases, whether an act should be categorized as such is clear. The only question before the jury is “Did they do it?”. But upon appeal, controversy may remain. Even where the facts may be agreed upon, the law may not. Theft is defined as “Dishonestly (appropriating) property belonging to another with the intention of permanently depriving the other of it”3. In a challenging factual matrix, every non-function word in this sentence may be susceptible to legal challenge:

Do the facts amount to appropriation?

What is dishonesty?

Did it belong to another?

Did the thing taken amount to property?

Was there an intention to permanently deprive?

Dishonesty, property, appropriation, permanently deprive, intention and another: all these are linguistic concepts about which we are called to decide: are the facts to be categorised as x or not-x? Property as with tables is daily subject to dichotomous decision making.

In Somerset v Stewart, Lord Mansfield was asked to decide upon the matter of property. Could an escaped slave be considered as property or belonging to another? According to our modern philosophy, and indeed according to the philosophy that has existed since time immemorial on the British island, the answers to these questions are clear: no person may be considered property nor as belonging to another. But in the era of the Atlantic Slave Trade such questions were controversial and the appellate court was called to rule definitively.

Today, where such questions are settled, others emerge to take their place; the matter of forced consent being of particular interest. But note this: even though language, by its nature, necessitates distinctions, language is separate from the underlying reality.

Where the Supreme Court is called to decide upon the definition of appropriation, the case’s factual matrix has already been determined by the jury. Assuming that the 12 men and women have correctly determined the true sequence of events, they have, through so doing, determined a reality beyond the realm of legal definitions.

First the lower courts decide the facts. Then the appellate court categorises the facts in relation to legal concepts. This is precisely the ordering that the “genocide” discussion inverts. Instead of determining the actual facts - the length and nature of a people’s presence upon a land; the stated intentions of the parties, evidenced in speech, document and deed; the comparative treatment of civilians and combatants; the proportion of a population killed against the proportion protected; the presence or absence of a systematic policy of extermination - the facts become subservient to the first-declared ideological verdict.

This is an aberration of the international law, for only once appropriate facts are established does the second, legal and definitional question arise: do these facts amount to genocide, as that term has been defined since Nuremberg and the Convention that followed it?

What this process would engender is not solely justice, but the application of the prima-facie principle. It will be quickly seen that Gaza is so far from the Nazi paradigm case that it should be thrown out of court before the process begins.

Yet the post-linguistic reverse of natural justice allows absurdity to have its day in court. Having appointed themselves judge, jury and appellate court in a single motion, they first assign the category — coloniser, oppressor, perpetrator of genocide — and only then, if at all, seek facts to fit it. Jews become the accused not because a factual matrix demands it, but perversely because the category was required as the demonic outcome.

This, as we shall observe, is the necessary consequence of idealism colliding with reality. The word is applied first; the world is expected to comply. But it doesn’t. Nature punishes hubris.

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Reality and Defining Reality

Tornados exist in the realm of reality. They really do. The a posteriori decision to define the phenomenon as a tornado as opposed to a hurricane is a human construct within a particular community. But the thing being described by Great Plain Americans as a tornado is a real thing.

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THE GENOCIDE OF TRUTH: The Deep Roots of a Modern Blood Libel

by Daniel Clarke-Serret

Introduction: The Genocide of Truth

PART 1: The Tree of Knowledge

Chapter 1: Truth // Chapter 2: Ideology // Chapter 3: Religion // Chapter 4: Science // Chapter 5: Attention // Chapter 6: Distraction // Chapter 7: (True) Expertise // Chapter 8: Authority

PART 2: The Descent to Babylon

Chapter 9: Declaration // Chapter 10: Confusion // Chapter 11: Conversation // Chapters 12: Democratisation // Chapter 13: Sophistry // Chapter 14: Image

PART 3: The Rise of Byzantium

Chapter 15: Guilt // Chapter 16: Belief // Chapter 17: Christ // Chapter 18: Mission (see below)

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Chapter 18: Mission

Greta Pan and The Tik-Tok Crocodile

The desire to be a forever child, this time in 24 hour news cycle technicolour. To shout simplistic slogans, to provide simplistic solutions, to construct a world divorced from reality: such is to be celebrated in our modern, post-linguistic world. To be an activist has never been easier. All you need do is write a three word cliché on a placard and you’ll have the world’s cameras lapping at your feet. Show them some old razzle dazzle and they’ll make you a star. The days of grappling with difficult issues are over.

Greta Pan is always in search of Captain Hooks to fight. Evil fiends who can be easily identified and slayed by a crocodile in a 30 second tik-tok. Just assemble your group of Lost Boys and be Tinker Belled to a land that only exists in your imagination. A world where arrested means kidnapped, where aid means your pack lunch and where genocide means anything you damn well please. Don’t worry about the consequences; you’ll stay immature forever to the applause of the crowd.

The picture of Greta picking up her Israeli packed lunch was ever so apt. The young girl, who had run away from home, had been rescued by her childminder. Just as the Mediterranean heat was beginning to drain away her idealism; just as the “essential aid” for Gaza was beginning to run out; Mummy and Daddy arrived just in time so that Pan could dream for another day. An adult of the same age, who had lived the horrors of war and the fear of an unstable “peace”, could provide bread for a girl who had never finished her education. “22 years old” means a very different thing in countries on the front line.

How long have we been told that Greta is an inspiration? How brave she is to travel around the world to lecture us that we must never travel around the world! How noble she is to suffer a “kidnapping” to damn the fate of the true kidnapped!

Even were her conclusions right on any of her chosen issues, of what use is her activism to real world progress? She provides us no route map, no detailed economic analysis, no geopolitical strategy and no scientific breakthrough in carbon capture. She mocks the politicians who have to make the tough decisions and chides the people who have to live with them. She lives in a movie of her own creation where right intentions are all that are needed to save the day.

It isn’t only Gaza. It isn’t only climate change. It isn’t only Greta. It is the whole university student culture of simplistic sloganising. Of calling for bleeding the fleeing rich to pay for ever more unfunded entitlements. Of cranking up the national debt to make us feel better. Of calling for the end of civilization to ensure its future.

No-one is denying that climate change, the Middle East, poverty reduction and other issues aren’t serious. We all acknowledge that they are. Which is precisely why we demand serious science, serious research, serious dialogue and serious, adult, grown up analysis to arrive in a better place than where we are now. Yet our current crop of what Kemi Badenoch calls “student union politicians” are bringing their unenlightened, Peter Pan analysis to the mind-boggling complexity of the real world.

It doesn’t work. It isn’t serious. Captain Hook doesn’t really exist.

What I want from my leaders and future leaders is the understanding that some issues are so complex that, though they may be ameliorated, they may never truly be “solved”. Even our most blessed achievements, from liberal democracy to free speech, were slow in the coming; and their foundations need to be relearnt in every new generation. The world of false Messiahs and Greta Pans with their childish calls for "Utopia Now!” have never improved our world nor will they ever do so. Rather they lead their band of adolescent sheep to the destruction of Jerusalem.

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This polemic may seem out of place in a serious, philosophical work. Have I lost my mind? Did I think and am I still “am”?

The reader may rest assured. My marbles are still in the container and my cogito definitely exists. But there comes a time where art must imitate life; where explanation must be demonstrated, not just delivered.

Polemic, poetry prose and stream of consciousness: they are all that is left when reason is cast aside and language is held uncommon. If all the activist need do is cry “Free Palestine” and wave a triangle tricolour, how is argument meant to persuade them back to sanity?

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THE GENOCIDE OF TRUTH: The Deep Roots of a Modern Blood Libel

by Daniel Clarke-Serret

Introduction: The Genocide of Truth

PART 1: The Tree of Knowledge

Chapter 1: Truth // Chapter 2: Ideology // Chapter 3: Religion // Chapter 4: Science // Chapter 5: Attention // Chapter 6: Distraction // Chapter 7: (True) Expertise // Chapter 8: Authority

PART 2: The Descent to Babylon

Chapter 9: Declaration // Chapter 10: Confusion // Chapter 11: Conversation // Chapters 12: Democratisation // Chapter 13: Sophistry // Chapter 14: Image

PART 3: The Rise of Byzantium

Chapter 15: Guilt // Chapter 16: Belief (see below)

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Chapter 16: Belief

A Chosen People?

There’s a pink elephant in the room —and it’s decidedly kosher. It’s the question that no-one ever asks and those who do, are the wrong people. It’s this: Is Israel a normal country or is it somehow special?

Let’s step back a moment. What is it that so perturbs readers of this work? What is it that makes our blood boil and our words spill with rage? It’s the hypocrisy of it all. The relentless focus of the world on one people and one small nation to the exclusion of all else. It’s the moral judgment on the Jews while the rest get off without agency. The wall-to-wall coverage. The UN resolutions. The hyper-focused dinner parties. All combine to make us explode with indignation.

And let’s not forget the conditionality: that Israel alone must justify its existence; that younger, ethnically-divided, Western-conceived States, some founded on partition (many on expulsion), escape the dark torchlight of history.

Objectively, it’s an outrage. From a secular standpoint too. Yet it raises the awkward question: despite our protestations of irreligiosity, have we really lost faith? Or are we in denial about our true beliefs? Perhaps when the “secular” declare the fashionable, that Israel’s existence is conditional on behaviour, they’re channeling a far older scripture?

I speak of course of the Tenakh, the Hebrew Bible, or as some disingenuously call it “The Old Testament”. Disingenuous because they quote with modern abandon without knowing its source. For it is from this legendary text, that the idea first emerged: that Israel is special; that behaviour determines its fate; that wrongdoing leads to expulsion from the Land.

It was the Bible that first asked the question, then repeated it ad nauseum: Does Israel have a right to exist in its Land?

It never denied Israel the people. It affirmed the Land as their treasured possession —but only on condition of good behaviour. Where they strayed and sinned and rebelled against God, they were spat out from their borders and Zion became a wasteland.

As with the “secular leftists” today, all agency was placed on the shoulders of Israel. It was taken as a given that empires would leave the land in ruins; a shadow of its former self; a wasteland before the invention of the bomb. And so it proved. From the Babylonians to the Ottomans, they left the Land in desolation, a physical manifestation of their low moral standards. And so too the Land would become again if it fell under terrorist dominion.

Yet the visions of ruin, predicated on two-tier moral judgment, were seen as the divine will. The Jews, though declared more virtuous than the empires, were held to account for their failings. Scrupulously, and from the King of Kings himself.

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THE GENOCIDE OF TRUTH: The Deep Roots of a Modern Blood Libel

by Daniel Clarke-Serret

Introduction: The Genocide of Truth

Chapter 1: Truth // Chapter 2: Ideology // Chapter 3: Religion // Chapter 4: Science // Chapter 5: Attention // Chapter 6: Distraction // Chapter 7: (True) Expertise // Chapter 8: Authority // Chapter 9: Declaration // Chapter 10: Confusion // Chapter 11: Conversation // Chapters 12: Democratisation // 13: Sophistry

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Chapter 14: Image

The Art of Suffering

Where the word is no more, only the image remains —and it has its consequences…

The Purpose of Art

Art has two primary purposes. The first is innocent and even uplifting: it is the aesthetic necessity to create beauty in our lives. Paintings decorate our living rooms and sculptures adorn our yards. They turn solemnity into celebration, greyness into joy. Decontextualized and serving this basic function, the second commandment seems to hold little sway. Surely only a puritanical society could hold such a dim view of graven images. Surely the second “thou shalt not” should be restricted to idols cast in stone.

Yet art has a second purpose more closely aligned with the vision of the artist. Today, we may view ancient art as objects of beauty, but in their day the maestros were making truth claims. They were making a statement about what “is” in the world and in this endeavor they were encroaching on dangerous ground.

An artist, and the artist’s patron, are not merely in the business of making beautiful things. When working with integrity, they care little about the Beverly Hills living room that centuries hence will showcase their work. Instead they use paint as we use words. They manipulate stone to describe “reality”.

The problem, however, is that artists, ancient and contemporary, fail in this endeavor. Rather they distort reality - intentionally or otherwise - to turn the world of things in themselves (Kant's Ding-an-sich) into the world of limited appearances. In an act of uncritical alchemy, they make their inner world outward “fact” and cajole the viewer to see the world through the master’s limited eyes. Thus, visual art is untrue, a beautiful lie told by magicians who seek to heal their wounded souls.

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The Crucifixion: The Christian Message Usurped

Let us take the most celebrated subject of the visual arts: the crucifixion of Jesus. Stop and ask yourselves: why did medieval artists (or their patrons) endlessly choose this gruesome subject? Why did they decorate Catholic Church after Catholic Church with paintings of unimaginable suffering and altar pieces of bloody hell on Earth?

The answer isn’t that they lived in a Christian age, for the Crucifixion is not and was not the true message of Christianity. Easter, far from being a glorified retelling of the death of Jesus, instead concerns itself with his overcoming of death. According to tradition, he rose from his tomb come Sunday morn and in that event Christians learned the Good News: that life was more powerful than death. Hope sprung eternal. Had Jesus died that day on the cross, in agony and humiliation, what would be the story of the faith? That God abandons those who spread His message?

So I ask again: Why do Christians past and present focus so heavily on the Crucifixion? Why are churches adorned with crosses splattered with sculpted human blood? Surely a true Church would celebrate the resurrection, both of Jesus and of Lazarus before him. So why the morbid fascination with the inverse of the Christian message? Why the fixation with death over life?

It was not Christianity that motivated painting after bloody painting of Roman-induced agony. Instead it was the ever present human desire to represent suffering. With every splash of paint, the Masters bore their own soul in an era of plague, want and eternal war. They defied the religious message to present their own doubts and fears. They railed against injustice, cloaked in a devout tunic of faith. They fought against the Machine using the Machine itself.

But in doing so they erred. They cast aside the Good News with frivolous abandon. For half a millennium the Crucifixion had been best forgotten, unvisualised amongst the Greek, un-understood words of an ancient text. To see the Crucifixion in blood would have been an abomination, a traumatic reminder of the Roman devil. “Thou shalt not make unto thee a graven image”. Yet as the “dark” centuries passed, art reasserted itself. The Masters emerged to present suffering in all its unwelcome detail.

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THE GENOCIDE OF TRUTH: Twenty Roots of a Modern Blood Libel

by Daniel Clarke-Serret

Introduction: The Genocide of Truth

Chapter 1: Truth // Chapter 2: Ideology // Chapter 3: Religion // Chapter 4: Science // Chapter 5: Attention // Chapter 6: Distraction // Chapter 7: (True) Expertise // Chapter 8: Authority // Chapter 9: Declaration // Chapter 10: Confusion // Chapter 11: Conversation // Chapters 12 and 13 below.

Chapter 12: Democratisation

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Chapter 13: Sophistry

The Descent of Politics

The past is not a foreign country. We are living “the past” as we speak. For no work emerges in a vacuum and no inspiration is absent of context. We live in the era of The Great Genocide Blood Libel, the most pernicious abomination of our age. The claim that civilian war dead amounts to extermination. The claim that Israel, with its advanced weaponry and precision technology, is incapable of doing to civilians in two years what any competent military power could do in two days. It’s an affront to common sense; an offensive joke. But it’s an old joke, a tried and tested affront to obviousness that has been with us throughout recorded history. And speaking of history, let’s turn to its founding father: Thucydides.

To reference the famous Greek in his history of the Peloponnesian War, words change their meaning. In his case “reckless audacity” came to be “courage of a loyal ally”, “prudent hesitation” was rebranded as “specious cowardice” and the “ability to see all sides of a question” was deemed “inaptness to act on any”. Oh how little has changed! For it was as true then in the civil war at Corcyra as it is now in the non-existence genocide in Gaza.

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THE GENOCIDE OF TRUTH: Twenty Roots of a Modern Blood Libel

by Daniel Clarke-Serret

Introduction: The Genocide of Truth

Chapter 1: Truth // Chapter 2: Ideology // Chapter 3: Religion // Chapter 4: Science // Chapter 5: Attention // Chapter 6: Distraction // Chapter 7: (True) Expertise // Chapter 8: Authority // Chapter 9: Declaration // Chapter 10: Confusion

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CHAPTER 11: Conversation

Death of the Overton Window

We all believe in free speech – or so we tell ourselves. In reality we believe in a range of acceptable opinions out which speech is politically verboten. Since the 1990s, this space of free expression has been known as the Overton Window.

During the 21st century, and particularly within the last 10 years, the Overton Window has changed dramatically —in terms of what is deemed acceptable, the definitions of Right and Left, and the range of ideas that can be socially aired. Most noticeably of all, we have shifted from a national Overton Window to a factional one.

Where the mainstream Right and Left in the past differed in their views, they shared an Overton Window. Whether you were Labour or Conservative - or the equivalent in your own countries - you had an identical sense of where Extreme Right and Left lay. Thus you could debate openly with your political opponents, come to regular consensus and stonewall the extremes.

An excellent example of this is in the Israeli context is Likud’s attitude to the Extreme Right. In the halcyon days of Yitzhak Shamir, it was Likud policy to boycott Meir Kahane and his political ideas, yet his political son Itamar Ben Gvir is a full member of the current Netanyahu Administration. So whereas the Likud and the Centre-Left once shared an Overton Window, now they live in different political universes.

The effects can be seen beyond Parliamentary politics —in the heart of the mainstream media. When the British largely shared one Overton window, the BBC could genuinely claim to be impartial, if by that one means airing all manner of acceptable political views. Regardless of the staffing of the Corporation, It would be duty bound to showcase voices from both the Left and Right —and it did. Allegations of bias would have had less traction because everyone in political life agreed on the extremes and most accepted that one’s opponent’s views were legitimate.

In the internet age, however, where each man is an Overton Window Island, it is impossible for the BBC (and equivalents) to maintain impartiality. Even if it were genuinely so minded, and even where acting in completely good faith, impartiality is a foreign concept in a world without bounds of acceptability.

So, in the context of the Gaza War, for example, the BBC may claim impartiality through showcasing both Israeli and Hamas voices; but given that Hamas is so far outside the author’s Overton window, it is hard for him to consider the result non-prejudicial. Impartiality doesn’t mean in the middle; it means showcasing the full range of acceptable voices. Where John says Hamas is a terrorist organization and Jane says Israel is committing “genocide”, there are no parameters of acceptable debate — the two cannot share a platform with integrity.

Progressive activists would point to the positive effects of a shifting Overton Window. It was only through the mainstreaming of previously outlandish views that homosexuality became legalized and National Health provision became a reality.

Free Speech enthusiasts would warn of the dangers of defining extremity on high. If a radical views cannot be heard, how can we cast away the shibboleths of the past? How can we move beyond dogma and religious superstition? How can we advance science in the face of clerical opposition? How can we create a better world in the face of “reactionary politics” —or a radicalism that has gone too far?

Surely people need a space to think the unthinkable and say the unsayable?

The above listed arguments have much merit. A world of stifling conformity is a world without change or progress. A world of taboos is a world when neither society nor the individual can grow. But the flaw with unbound progressivism and free speech is that we’re not working together as a unity — as a united nation. There will always be leaders and followers, trendsetters and laggards, but the successful society moves in the manner of an earthworm: the forward section moves on ahead, stretching the animal until the rest follows of its own accord. There is change; there are new ideas; but we move together as a body —a communal spring.

And so it was the British national health provision was not a radical advance by a radical government, but the cumulation of a slowly growing consensus. The Labour party may have dragged the earthworm along, but the Conservative tail followed willingly. Only the “extremist” doctors of the British Medical Association held out against change —ironic one might think.

Similar results were evident in social policy. Wilson’s government may have legislated the previously unthinkable - on homosexuality and much besides - yet they were supported in their efforts by much of the Conservative Parliamentary corpus.

Thus the Earthworm Effect brought about change and progression, all the while maintaining the cohesion of a national Overton Window.

Today, however, we live in a very different world where ne’er the twain shall meet. There is no national, even generational, conversation because we have such different views of what’s acceptable. Badenoch and Corbyn have both been leaders of mainstream political parties in recent times, but their views on Israel, the Middle East and much besides are not just different, but mutually illegitimate. Political debate, of the sort that we saw during the mid-20th Century Consensus, is therefore impossible. Parliamentary contributions have been reduced to mere sloganizing for a Tik-Tok, 1 minute world.

Where there is no common Overton Window - no common conversation - there is no real nation. This is a problem in Britain, Israel and throughout the Western World. Cohesion doesn’t imply agreement, but a recognition of mutual legitimacy. And what brings mutual legitimacy? Living in a shared moral universe buttressed by common terminology.

Incomprehensibility leads to certain contempt and where we hold each other in contempt, there seems no way out of the impasse.

This chapter was first drafted in the milieu of my Substack publication Guerre and Shalom. There, amongst the fluff and foolishness of the internet, free speech is a living and breathing organism. A wide range of views are both encouraged and showcased. It is fair to say that right-wing Benjamin Kerstein and famed liberal feminist Prof Susan Bordo have little in common on a practical policy level. They undoubtedly voted for different candidates in the recent American election — and are both very vocal as regards their political views. Yet they co-exist quite happily in “The World’s Intelligent Journal”. Why? Because each views the other as promoting incorrect, yet legitimate, viewpoints. Neither live in the la-la-land of The Great Genocide Blood Libel. Both - let’s be blunt - are proud Jews.

It is indeed the common rejection of The Great Genocide Blood Libel that makes so many Jews of so very different perspectives live in the same political universe. You don’t need to be an aficionado of Benjamin Netanyahu - I certainly am not - to utterly reject the inversion of language that the human rights establishment characterises as scholarship.

From Dr Khaled Salih to Professor Steven Pinker, we all believe passionately in the truth of words and we mutually rail against the disgraceful linguistic deception of hate-marching New Left. Indeed, it’s remarkable that the always mild-mannered Pinker himself used the expression “blood libel” in terms of the hijacking of genocide memory. But the question, of course, is why reasoned debate is no longer possible within a shared Overton Window. Why is it that Mill’s free speech can no longer swoop in on horseback to save the day? For that we must turn to a theory of knowledge in an act of Cartesian meditation…

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THE GENOCIDE OF TRUTH: Twenty Roots of a Modern Blood Libel

by Daniel Clarke-Serret

Introduction: The Genocide of Truth

Chapter 1: Truth // Chapter 2: Ideology // Chapter 3: Religion // Chapter 4: Science // Chapter 5: Attention // Chapter 6: Distraction // Chapter 7: (True) Expertise // Chapter 8: Authority // Chapter 9: Declaration

CHAPTER 10: Confusion

The 21st Century Tower of Babel

DIRECT TRANSLATION OF BABEL: Hebrew for Babylon

ETYMOLOGY OF BABEL: From the Hebrew root B-B-L meaning “confusion”

You are literally going to glow with pure joy once you’ve finished reading this chapter. Or not. Because, as you know, literally really means really. It's giving a precise description of what is actually going to happen in the realm of reality. If you mean to say metaphorically then why don’t you use the word?

There are two schools of thought. The first is that words have a self-contained, hidden essence - an “ostensible definition” - that isn't susceptible to a posteriori tinkering. Literally means really; in real life; not metaphorically. This is set and unchanging. You understand meaning by following granite-set, pre-existing rules of interpretation.

The second school holds that meaning is determined by usage. According to this theory, words and phrases have no inherent meaning. They are hollow shells: vessels to be filled with usage in the everyday reality of a given community. Village x may use the word differently to village y and its meaning will change accordingly. Although the original usage of “literally” was the inverse of “figuratively”, in modern “street America” it means the inverse of the inverse. Literally means figuratively.

Proponents of this “forms of life” theory, notably Wittginstein1, see this as a description of the real rather than a norm to be supported or criticized. When you are immersed in the life of a particular community or country, you implicitly understand the precise meaning of terms. If modern Americans want to invert the previous meaning of certain words, then that is a natural consequence of the dynamism of language.

The natural, laissez-faire, “free market” development of English is one of its most endearing features. No government institute tells us the parameters of “real English”. There is no French, top down, elitist approach and though some may mourn the death of certain forms of speech, it is more than made up for by the creative fruits of freedom. In my writings, I enjoy creating new words and resurrecting antique phraseology and the liberty afforded to me by my mother tongue means that I do so shorn of the criticism of the reader.

But though English linguistic-libertarianism is both exciting and impossible to contain from on high, it has its limits. Feeling that certain words and phrases should have a reserved meaning, philosopher/university professor Simon Cushing2 takes issue with the full implications of the Wittgensteinian view. He gives the example of “literally”, above articulated, as well the phrase “beg the question”3.

While in philosophical circles, this expression has traditionally had a precise, clearly-bounded meaning, in common parlance it has come to mean “raises the question” or “makes you think of a further question”. The common man, hoping to convey that meaning, could simply say “Your point raises the question”, but instead they chose to raid the locked safe of clearly defined terms and pollute the sea of precise understanding. Philosophers, hoping to use that phrase in its originally intended form, may, through its contemporaneous usage, beg more questions in the mind of the listener.

Indeed it is here that we see the full collateral damage of laissez-faire linguistics. Though literal freedom of expression is life-affirming, all ideologies are susceptible to extreme implementation. “Literally” and “beg the question” may be Simon Cushing’s “pet peeves”, subverting, as they do, clarity of expression and precision of meaning. But mine is “genocide”, a word that has gone from describing the worst human crime imaginable, the Nazi slaughter of the 6 million in extermination camps, to mere evidence of civilian deaths in war. Although all innocent deaths in conflict are to be mourned, evidence of those deaths alone clearly and obviously fails to amount to genocide, both as defined in the official international definition, or more pertinantly, according to the original meaning of that term.

If the increasingly disturbing modern usage of “genocide” is to be believed, namely that all civilian deaths in war amount to (rhetorical) genocide, then all war is genocide in the public imagination. If that be so, then the Nazis and their protegees in Rwanda are no more guilty of genocide than Winston Churchill or Barack Obama, a proposition which is as absurd as it is offensive.

This is the problem with Wittgenstein. It is descriptively so that words change meaning and that at the same time, within different communities, the same words can have distinct usages. To complain about this can be likened to complaining about the British weather. But, as Cushing says, there are some words that must be “reserved” else we do great, irreparable damage to our discourse.

To say that genocide is equal to war is problematic not only because it is legally and descriptively imprecise (what term do we now use to describe real 1940s genocides and bring those responsible to justice?), but more importantly because genocide is a term which brings with it extreme moral turpitude. To commit genocide is to condemn the author as being the worst of humanity. War, though tragic, doesn’t suggest that connotation. Wars can be just. Wars can be in self-defence, notwithstanding that they inevitably bring the death of innocents.

Although it is generally true that words must be interpreted in their used context, not all meanings change naturally and innocently. Just as a court witness may fake empathy or a pained Seneca may be stoic, so meanings can be intentionally changed with maleficent intent. Contrary to the general Wittgensteinian description, such meanings can be devised in one’s internal, mental world then disseminated vexatiously (or at least with gross negligence).

Today’s modern blood libel is a perfect illustration of this. Genocide’s sudden, intolerable, anti-legal change of definition in common discourse came about as an act of deliberate strategy, done with the nefarious intent of blacklisting one particular nation. It is one thing for language to evolve as a matter of natural genealogy or authored creativity, but quite another for meanings and their related emotional states to be intentionally hijacked for ill. Through malicious misinterpretation, the meanings of words become not only imprecise, but unusable. Meaningful communication becomes extinct.

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[Image: Charles de Gaulle on the BBC, 18 June 1940]

THE GENOCIDE OF TRUTH: Twenty Roots of a Modern Blood Libel

by Daniel Clarke-Serret

Introduction: The Genocide of Truth

Chapter 1: Truth // Chapter 2: Ideology // Chapter 3: Religion // Chapter 4: Science // Chapter 5: Attention // Chapter 6: Distraction // Chapter 7: (True) Expertise // Chapter 8: Authority

CHAPTER 9: Declaration

Gaullist chutzpah: Creating reality through the power of language

In the face of the confusion of French souls, in the face of the disintegration (?) of a government fallen under enemy servitude, in the face of the impossibility of bringing our institutions into play, I, General de Gaulle, French soldier and leader, am aware that I speak in the name of France.

Charles de Gaulle on the BBC, 19 June 1940

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There are leaders and there is Charles de Gaulle. There is audaciousness and there is Charles de Gaulle. He may not have been Jewish, but his life was the very embodiment of chutzpah. Here was a barely known military man who, upon fleeing to London from the Nazi terror, simply declared himself the leader of the free French people!

He represented nobody. Absolutely nobody. To be sure he had shown extraordinary military bravery in both World Wars, spying on the German trenches in the former and valiantly leading an armoured regiment in the latter. To be sure he had just been selected undersecretary of defence by then-ousted French premier Paul Reynaud. Yet at just 49 years of age, and hardly a household name in metropolitan France, he announced himself on the BBC as the true leader of the “free French”. Although Marshal Pétain, installed at the head of a Nazi puppet government in Vichy, was by far his senior in military ranking and despite being a Pétain mentee in better times, he spoke of his senior officer as accepting “an act of debasement” in agreeing to servile armistice terms with the German government.

What is extraordinary here is less de Gaulle’s statements, but more the acceptance of the new Gaullist reality by others who were unforced by either power or logic to accept them. “You are alone”, Churchill said to de Gaulle. “Well I will recognise you alone”.

Many have been the men in American prisons who have claimed to be Jesus Christ resurrected. Few have been the listeners that have accepted these claims. Yet on this occasion, we see a typically Churchill-esque break from the norm. For though France had its own government on its own territory with citizens of multiple and unknown opinions upon the concept of France, and though there were other former governmental figures such as Édouard Deladier and Georges Mandel with greater seniority and experience to run a shadow government in exile, de Gaulle had the unprecedented brass neck to claim that he alone had the embodied authority to represent the “real France”. [And Churchill had the brass neck to support such pretentious positions against Roosevelt’s unsurprising scepticism.]

De Gaulle’s extraordinary approach to leadership, which amounted to changing established reality through sheer force of will, continued unabated throughout the war years:

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THE GENOCIDE OF TRUTH: Twenty Roots of a Modern Blood Libel

by Daniel Clarke-Serret

Introduction: The Genocide of Truth

Chapter 1: Truth // Chapter 2: Ideology // Chapter 3: Religion // Chapter 4: Science // Chapter 5: Attention

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CHAPTER 6: Distraction

What about Whataboutism?

What do we think about whataboutism? Legitimate rebuttal or the ultimate tool of diversion? Although it may be unfashionable, let us examine the evidence.

For those resting in blissful ignorance, whataboutism is the one word answer should one deign to speak about any foreign policy issue other than Gaza. What about the Afghan refugee crisis? Whataboutism. And the mass starvation in Yemen? Whataboutism. And the targeting of tribes in The Sudan? The reader will forgive me if I decline to furnish them with further examples. Essentially one is not permitted to test claims about the so-called Gazan “genocide” with reference to other global situations.

Now you will note my somewhat limited definition. I could have stated that whatboutism is a topic-non specific diversionary tactic; delicately moving from one topic to another be it to reason by analogy, to highlight hypocrisy, to raise awareness of unspoken issues or - occasionally - to avoid answering direct challenges which make one uncomfortable. Whataboutism need not be geopolitical in nature and to the extent it is, it need not relate uniquely and solely to the actions of the world’s only Jewish state.

Yet, and here the reader need not feign surprise, one only hears about it in the Gazan context. Not by those debating Africa or Burma; nor by those debating domestic policy; but merely by those that believe that all human problems run through a tiny strip of Mediterranean-hugging land.

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And interestingly, it only works in one direction. So for example, should an interlocutor concerned about global events, rest their gaze on Papua New Guinea’s human right record, and particularly if said interlocutor is Jewish, the activist respondent will be sure to reply “whataboutism” —which is ironic, one may think, as they are guilty of the crime they accuse. Surely human beings have the right to discuss Papua New Guinea; perhaps not everyday but once in a while. Yet the activist respondent will assuredly divert the conversation to Gaza. Isn’t that a textbook case of whataboutism in and of itself?

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THE GENOCIDE OF TRUTH: Twenty Roots of a Modern Blood Libel

by Daniel Clarke-Serret

Introduction (below)

Chapter 1: Truth

Chapter 2: Ideology

Chapter 3: Religion

Chapter 4: Science

Chapter 5: Attention

More chapters to come for paid subscribers! This introduction is free, but please sign up today.

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Introduction

This book isn’t about Gaza. Neither is it about Israel. It makes no comment on the October 7th attacks nor the subsequent war. Its focus is far more limited: the claim that Israel is committing “genocide.” And not the claim itself, whose falsehood the book takes as a foundational premise, but the deep philosophical and cultural roots of this modern language inversion.

We don’t say that “genocide” is the only case of language inversion; rather that it is the tipping point, the usage that makes an emergency out of chronic, pre-existing symptoms. In my previous book Pax Arabica, to which this is a sequel, I highlighted several such inversions, promoted by the West, that have shielded Arab governmental and societal actions from criticism. Yet “genocide” is the example par excellence, a falsehood that has torn Western society apart. Lancing this boil, I argue, is the precursor to liberal democratic renewal.

Neither is this book yet another example of geopolitical analysis. We will not revisit the events of the last 3 years nor give our detailed take on misinformation and military outcomes. Instead we will focus on the philosophical, with an emphasis on Western intellectual collapse. To ape Bernard Lewis on Middle Eastern decline: What went wrong?

This book is written for readers who already know that no genocide is occurring in Gaza — just as no serious person needs to be persuaded that the Earth is round.

They’ve watched Schindler’s List and found the Gaza connection a gross insult to common sense.

They’ve observed Gazans increase in number, while the Jews of Europe were decimated.

They’ve seen Iranian protesters slaughtered in their tens of thousands, and over just a few weeks, while the same civilian death toll over three years in Gaza has been described as genocide.

They’ve heard of Dresden and Tokyo, firebombed in the War, yet have never once described heard them described as genocide.

They’ve seen one of the world’s most sophisticated militaries, in an advanced technological age, spectacularly fail to exterminate a population in a densely populated urban area.

And then they’ve look in utter incredulity as the great and good have spoken of intent!

If the Israelis had intended to destroy the population of Gaza, it would have been over in a day. Yet somehow, here we are, years later, and we still haven’t reached the civilian death level from the Iranian 2026 protests.

It really isn’t that complicated. If the Israelis are said to intend x, and have the means to do x, but aren’t doing x—not even incrementally over a very long time—then they clearly didn’t intend to.

An awful lot of attention is given to the outrageous statements of a few far-right Israeli ministers. One spoke of dropping a nuclear bomb as “one of the options”, yet, unsurprisingly and thankfully , it hasn’t happened. So we can conclude 1 of 2 things (or, almost certainly, both): either nuclear war was never intended or it was intended, but the speaker had no authority to implement his statement. Either way, it’s clear from what’s actually happened on the ground that said minister didn’t represent Israeli government policy. Instead, the ratio of civilian to combatant deaths shows the reverse: an intent to meticulously protect civilian lives in the pursuit of the war aim of destroying Hamas.

(Indeed, and as an aside, it’s fascinating how widely certain fridge, extreme Israelis are believed in their every statement, while official pronouncements on military operations, death statistics and other important matters are dismissed by the media as “claims”. It’s almost as if they want to believe the worst).

Although the introduction may seem to suggest the inverse, this book is philosophical, not polemical, in nature, but the animating genocide claim is so utterly pathetic that even in a serious and thoughtful work such as this, it needs to be called out as a sham in plain and provocative words. There are times to speak academically and times to speak in dumbfounded satire. This is a case of the latter.

Now we may sympathise with victims on all sides, and we may disagree sharply on the justice or conduct of this war, or on the wider history of the region. But sympathy is not evidence, and the “genocide” charge is not a matter of sympathy. It is a claim of fact and law, and on that claim, the case has not been made. Not even close. The same applies to “apartheid” and the other terms that now travel alongside it. This book takes no position on the conflict itself. It takes a position only on the misuse of these words.

We are aware of the consensus among certain elites — UN agencies, special rapporteurs, the “human rights community,” and, increasingly, the courts themselves — and we are aware that their authority has lent the “genocide” charge a credence it has not earned on the evidence. Yet their failure to establish a common sense case diminishes their once venerable institutions; for that there is no Holocaust in Gaza is as clear as tge cloudless sky; obvious to all with eyes to see and brains to think. Merely engaging in the debate on their own terms allows absurdity to gain a hearing it does not deserve.

Indeed it is only because they are international elites that we are even engaging seriously with this debate. Had it be proposed by a forty year old singleton from a basement in Idaho, we would have dismissed it instantly as unserious. Yet the words Human Rights Watch somehow project authority. Unfortunately, in the eyes of those guided by evidence, sense and moral bearing, it highlights a civilisation in distress —a world where authority trumps truth in an act of spectacular fallacy.

I’ve thought long and hard about how to structure this book — whether I should lay out the anti-genocide argument once more in academic terms. I’ve written articles on this many times. I’ve cited numbers, ratios, and statistics. I’ve made historical comparisons and referred to evidence. I’ve spoken of law and precedent. Yet all to little avail. Not because the case is (close to) wrong, but because the word United Nations carries moral weight, and the appearance of impartiality gives the credulous hope. After all, who wouldn’t believe the General Assembly and the Human Rights Council? Who wouldn’t accept a ruling from The Hague?

And so we come to a pretty pass, where you cite Amnesty International and I cite a democracy. You cite Guterres and I raise Steven Pinker. You claim the backing of the “human rights establishment” — including the courts that were meant to stand above it — and I cite someone who hasn’t worked for Hamas. In this context, footnotes become pointless. It is a question of authority over evidence, and on that question, we have no means of conversation.

This is the reason I have written this book. Not to debate with those who are lost, nor to persuade the incorrigible — after all, they claimed “genocide” on October 8th, even before Israel began its ground invasion. Rather, this book asks why. Why has the Western world fallen so far from truth? Why are we forced to debate a dogma that has no basis in reality? How can we survive as a civilization where words are mere emotional signals divorced from definition? For without conversation there is no true debate, and without true debate there is no liberal democracy. Worse there is no cohesive nation except in the blandest sense of bureaucratic citizenship.

I have identified twenty roots of language inversion — twenty possible causes of this abuse of language. Note that I speak of roots, not branches. I am less interested in the obvious explanations: bias in the media, sectarian campaigning, the activist academy. Instead we will dive deeper — the disrespect for truth, the need for religion, the fall of science, the forced evolution of language. Education, art, empathy and Western psychology: all these and more will be investigated until we arrive at a more complete understanding.

If our focus is narrow, our aims are ambitious: to reinvigorate a Western political tradition built on enquiry, evidence, and the search for truth. The “genocide” claim is the tip of the iceberg — the latest and most serious manifestation of language inversion. Beneath it lies an entire structure of discourse that prizes affect over evidence, activism over reason. We submit that reversing this process is essential to the health of our liberal democratic polities.

Those wedded to “genocide,” and to other ‘epistemological certainties’, will likely turn from these pages before the case has been made. That is their right. But it is also a symptom — a sign of a society without cohesion, for without a common language we have no means of communication. Only power speaks.

We hope, still, to revive a common project: a return to a shared purpose built on truth, reason, respectful discussion, and curious inquiry. We will not agree on the specifics of the Middle East, nor on any other contentious issue — nor does this book (or the Israeli democratic system) ask us to. What we might unite around is the fact of debate itself: the belief that only through discourse, grounded in a common understanding of terms and predicated on truth as the imperative, can we begin to understand one another.

Perhaps, as a writer, I would have been wiser to avoid the Gaza framing — to reach instead for sexual rights, or another hot-button controversy, and mildly lower the temperature. My honest belief is the reverse: that only by confronting the most obvious and widespread example of linguistic decline can we hope to topple the whole pyramid of Babelesque confusion.

Today we seek to unite our nations and our liberal democratic polities — not in agreement, nor in conformity to consensus, but in mutual understanding. We may fail. Much of academia has already bowed to the “genocide” dogma. But the future will bring a new generation, one that can state truth with a loud and confident voice. Today we begin that historical echo: that through understanding the other — literally, through language — we might hope, at last, to be understood.

THE GENOCIDE OF TRUTH: Twenty Roots of a Modern Blood Libel

by Daniel Clarke-Serret

Note: Preface / Introduction etc to come…

Chapter 1: Truth

Chapter 2: Ideology

Chapter 3: Religion

Chapter 4: Science

CHAPTER 5: Attention

Why Facts Aren’t Enough: The Scientific Capture of Context

Debates on the Middle East suffer from two injuries: both seemingly opposite, both engaging different sides of the brain.

The first is scientific rejectionism, overturning the fruits of the celebrated method. Its modus operandi varies, but the options are presented à la carte: Denying the facts. Inventing the facts. Selecting the facts that suit. Evidence to the contrary is ignored if it contradicts an ideological standpoint. Information delivered by terrorists is believed, quoted and cited.

Yet the other injury is almost as bad. Even where facts are real and verified, they are abstracted from their context.

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THE GENOCIDE OF TRUTH: Twenty Roots of a Modern Blood Libel

by Daniel Clarke-Serret

Introduction: The Genocide of Truth

Chapter 1: Truth // Chapter 2: Ideology // Chapter 3: Religion // Chapter 4: Science // Chapter 5: Attention // Chapter 6: Distraction // Chapter 7: (True) Expertise

CHAPTER 8: Authority

The Crisis of Citation

The Great Genocide Blood Libel has done more than discredit international organizations. It has destroyed the very basis of academia.

Academic authority, as we’ve understood it, has been based on more than argument from first principles and logical deduction. To be deemed serious by the great and the good, a rigorous academic paper has required citation. A quote here, a reference there, a bibliography in all its glory. Without the last third of your tome decorated in unreadable notes, you condemn yourself to irrelevance in the world of the professoriat.

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Yet there has always been a problem with this convention. To the non-politically correct, it has amounted to Chinese whispers. To the politically correct, it was whispers without reference to a particular nationality. Yet the label aside, the practice relied on trust –faith even; that the first reference in the chain was itself accurate. Once that faith dissipates, whither academic writing?

So, for example, Khaled Salih has written recently on the Anfal Genocide1; the systematic attack on Kurdish life in Saddam’s Ba’athist Iraq. The author relies for that legal designation on evidence gathered by Human Rights Watch; evidence that proved invaluable in the case built before the Iraqi High Tribunal.

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by Daniel Clarke-Serret

Introduction: The Genocide of Truth

Chapter 1: Truth // Chapter 2: Ideology // Chapter 3: Religion // Chapter 4: Science // Chapter 5: Attention // Chapter 6: Distraction

CHAPTER 7: (True) Expertise

On the Standard of Opinion Formation

Preface to the chapter:

Let us begin with a short story.

Many moons ago, I formed part of a local badminton group. We played week after week, honing our skills at the parish leisure centre. Then, regular as clockwork,  we would go to a cosy pub for a beer and a chinwag.

One evening, while sipping the Berkshire ale and crunching on our Walkers crisps, the issue of the Middle East came up. I don’t remember how. And it certainly wasn’t me that ushered in the poisoned chalice.

We were a reasonably diverse bunch in terms of age, nationality and origins. The lady on one side of me was descended from the Kindertransport refugees. The lady to the right came from Germany. And it was from the latter that the controversy unforgettably sprung.

She began to spoke of her sadness for the “poor Palestinians”. Members reacted diversely to this socially-shattering nuclear incursion; and from quite different perspectives. I was taking the calm, moderate, rational and decidedly equanimous approach firing one piece of information after another at her in an unfailingly polite manner.

Then, suddenly, she stopped making her case and said - and I will never forget this - that it was unfair debating with me. And why? Because “(I knew) too many facts!”

It is indeed a problem when one party knows their facts and the other is relying on hearsay, emotion and unfactual declarations of “genocide”; for by relying on emotion alone, your case is automatically without merit. Instant disqualification. A red card in the World Cup Final.

And it raised the most salient of questions: What really qualifies someone to comment on geopolitics? It’s a nagging question that’s stayed maturating in my mind ever since. Until one magical day; the moment that I read a marvelous essay from David Hume: that literary and philosophical masterpiece “On the Standard of Taste”. And though it may ostensibly concern artistic appreciation over geopolitical analysis, the analogies it pricked in my mind were overwhelming. So now, over a decade later, I feel (I use this word advisedly) qualified to answer that pressing enquiry. And in the chapter below I reveal my conclusion. It will be for you to decide whether I fulfill the exacting criteria…

*****

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[ Image: Cenk Uygur vs Mosab Hassan Yousef on Piers Morgan Uncensored, two of many guests to have opined on the Middle Eastern conflict. Who is really qualified to comment on this issue?]

The Genocide of Truth is all about thought-provoking essays. And there can be no essay more thought-provoking than that penned by the Scottish wizard David Hume. “Of the Standard of Taste” was ground-breaking in the way it broached the topic of artistic appreciation.

Noting that opinions on art are many and varied - both here and abroad, in our time and throughout history - we are left with the obvious question: is everyone’s opinion equally valid? If matters of taste may not submit to one right answer, then is my view on a restaurant dish equal to that of a Michelin starred chef?

It is a matter of dispute as to whether an object in itself can manifest beauty or whether instead “beauty is in the eye of the beholder”. But even if one were to fall back on a position of radical subjectivity, one would still be forced to defend the proposition that all opinion formers were equally qualified to proffer a judgment. In the view of David Hume, there was no equality in the matter. A true judge of the aesthetic would need to fulfil a fivefold set of criteria which he summarised thus:

Strong sense, united to delicate sentiment, improved by practice, perfected by comparison, and cleared of all prejudice, can alone entitle critics to this valuable character; and the joint verdict of such, wherever they are to be found, is the true standard of taste and beauty.

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THE GENOCIDE OF TRUTH: Twenty Roots of a Modern Blood Libel

by Daniel Clarke-Serret

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CHAPTER 2: Ideology

The Whole Truth (and Nothing but the Truth)

Entrepreneur Peter Sage doesn’t watch the news. When asked why, he gave an Amazonian analogy. Imagine that you are walking through the rainforest, admiring the teeming wildlife and fearfully watching your step. Suddenly you get out your torch and shine it unplanned on an arbitrary patch of nature. You text your friends: “This is the Amazon rainforest!” you declare.

Are you lying? No.

Do you intend to deceive? No.

But is the Truth? Is the illuminated object of your camera really “The Amazon”? Not at all.

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*****

Guerre and Shalom in a paragraph:

Peace through Truth.

Truth about history.
Truth about law.
Truth about politics.
Truth about geopolitics.
Truth about definitions.
Truth about reality.
Truth about what we just don’t know.

Truth is our guiding light towards the goal of peace.
So let’s educate for truth.

****

As part of our commitment to defending civilisation, Guerre & Shalom will be releasing a comprehensive audio course on ‘The Genocide of Truth’. The inspiration, as the title suggests, is “The Great Genocide Blood Libel”, the endlessly repeated and deceitful claim that Israel is committing a “genocide” in Gaza. Yet that issue is just the canary in the coalmine. Untruth has infected our entire civilisation and it must be combatted as a matter of urgency if we are to continue living as a free people.

Unlike other “Israel advocates”, this will not be a history lesson on the Middle East nor a defence of any particular military action. The word Israel will barely be mentioned. Instead it will go deeper: What is truth? Why is it important? Where can it be found? How has it been eroded in domains from education to religion to journalism? On these foundations, our understanding of topics from geopolitics to art will be transformed. This will then help our opinion formers review their understanding of the world.

This course doesn’t have “an audience”. Truth is the concern of us all. But I do hope that Jewish community leaders will purchase and use the course, both to change their understanding of the struggle and hone the form of their arguments. Discussions of current affairs are irrelevant when faced with a generational struggle for the Truth as concept.

Transcripts of the course are available for paid subscribers. Courses can be delivered live online for an hourly rate.

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Transcript for Paid Subscribers:

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by Daniel Clarke-Serret

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CHAPTER 4: Science

Reclaiming the scientific method in the search for truth

Let us agree on one basic premise: That science has been a boon to our civilisation. Medicine has been transformed and life has become a pleasure. It is - at last - something that humanity can be proud of.

Yet science is misunderstood. Especially under the guise of natural science, it is wrongly thought of as objective; a rock of truth in a world of myth. A rare case of epistemological certainty.

Yet that is a mischaracterisation. Even a cursory look at medieval medicine shows us that science evolves with the times and what we once thought of as certain is now simply laughable. So if the science of yesterday seems incredulous, what store should we place on the wisdom of today? Will our great pronouncements not be derided in turn?

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THE GENOCIDE OF TRUTH: Twenty Roots of a Modern Blood Libel

by Daniel Clarke-Serret

Introduction: The Genocide of Truth

Chapter 1: Truth // Chapter 2: Ideology // Chapter 3: Religion // Chapter 4: Science // Chapter 5: Attention // Chapter 6: Distraction // Chapter 7: (True) Expertise // Chapter 8: Authority // Chapter 9: Declaration // Chapter 10: Confusion // Chapter 11: Conversation

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[Image: A world without Word Inflation.]

CHAPTER 12: Democratisation

This is the Age of Word Inflation

This chapter is long. Perhaps I talk too much? Perhaps we all do? For the internet is the proliferation of talking personified. Today every fool with wi-fi has the unprecedented ability to opine, insult and insinuate. But it wasn’t always thus.

There was an age when only the educated could speak. Those who could read and write. Those, monastery ensconced, that could pick up a pen. Religious leaders were at once medics, lawyers, preachers and brewers1. It was they that were masters of their arts for it was they alone that had access to the Word. The priests and the Rabbis; the brains of the Islamic Golden Age; all could claim Divine knowledge and with right. For it is the Word that creates worlds and they had privileged access.

The printing press then came to spread its blessings. Knowledge disseminated to all corners of the continent. Opinions unheard spoken. Subversive opinions. Opinions that could topple an all-powerful Church2. From the pulpit, they heard the Word in their own language, spread forth in their own tongue. The mysteries of Davidic beauty understood in their full glory.

Yet though the Word was released from captivity it was a pyrrhic release. A confinement beyond the confinement, gated in the chains of illiteracy. For although knowledge was now spoken from beyond the pulpit; and although books could be written in voices once silenced; the impenetrable code of symbols stood in the way of understanding3. Education was the final frontier.

But though it hid in shadows, it came. The school. Education. The glorious prospect of mass literacy. The Word, imprisoned in medieval purgatory, could now be released to reach the masses. Books unread, articles unappreciated: all these jewels were suddenly open to the swell of humanity. Advancement, progress, individual flourishing: all these were now within our reach. The spark of true personhood no longer mere imaginings.

But alas this is romance wrapped in the ribbon of nostalgia…

For prepared (only) for industry they emerged in their millions. Workers equipped with the necessities of labour, but workers unfamiliar with the joy of learning. Travails of life on the conveyor belt required no knowledge of Shakespeare nor acquaintance with poetry. Only with the lightest of touches did the student court letters, the captains of industry mixing profit with practicality in their design of the minimalist curriculum. So the Word flew free, but unloved; unperceived by the hungry, unnoticed by the toiling. Potential energy yet to be transformed into kinetic metamorphosis.

Elite capture of knowledge, hoarded like gold beyond the imaginings of men, was once a fact of history; an immutable law of nature like might and oppression. Yet the 21th Century saw its demise. The doors of the academy were blown wide open. Books could be self-published, the Word democratised for all. The age of letters had arrived.

But though its coming was long prophesied, the Grand Unveiling disappointed. We had queued for hours; slept upon the streets in anticipation. But when the cathedrals doors were opened; when they trooped in exuberance beyond the threshold, safety in numbers, quality abandoned; our long suffering seemed in vain.

We sighed; for we had hoped for the true Messiah. Education may now have been for all, but its wisdom saw placid distribution. The partisan articles, the celebrity fluff, the 140 character irrelevances4: all these cruelly mocked the Word, as if to destroy with unfaint horror the interminability of His long absence. The Word still flew free, so much is true; but its discovery proved impossible amongst the swarm of locusts. The books - the gems - were daily distributed, no gatekeeper to halt their path; but to what end? Diamonds are worthless when flailing anonymously amongst “genocide” dirt.

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THE GENOCIDE OF TRUTH: Twenty Roots of a Modern Blood Libel

by Daniel Clarke-Serret

(Chapter 2 is here: Ideology)

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CHAPTER 1: Truth

The commitment to which all others are subordinate

What is the purpose of thiswork? It is to defend Truth, objective Truth, Truth with a capital T.

Truth is not a destination but an attitude. At no point can anyone say that they have found the whole Truth. A 19th Century doctor would have been perfectly aware that they hadn’t arrived at the frontiers of medicine. A modern doctor knows just the same. But they had and have the correct attitude, namely that we must follow the scientific method, in good faith, to move towards the Truth.

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