Previously I wrote about how, through Zionism, Israel as a state and institution became fully representative of Judaism. Israel = Judaism in this framing, and the actions, good or bad, of the state are performed qua Jewish, and any attack on Israel becomes an attack on Jewishness. In this claim, it can’t help but be antisemitic since it forces a generalization across the Jewish population. This got me thinking.
This situation of an institution claiming to act on behalf of a group is not unique to Israel. For example, the Catholic church is codified in the actions and words of the Vatican. Does that make the Vatican anti-Christian? And the short answer is: yes!
Martin Luther was indignant with the corruption of the Vatican when he posted his 95 theses on door of the Wittenberg’s Castle church. He was resisting its claim over his identity. He did not believe that the Pope spoke for his faith, and he started a religious revolution in rebuke. The actions and claims of the Catholic Church were an insult – they felt they were entitled to imbue their authority onto the identity of every single Catholic around the world, and the oppression of that authority was resisted and overthrown.
Well, it was reformed into the guise of Protestantism. The Catholic Church is obviously still around, and obviously the Vatican is still representative of the identity of Catholics everywhere. However, the power of the Pope is much more symbolic than it used to be. Granted I speak as someone who is not Catholic, but whenever the Pope decrees something, it gives off the vibes of a Hollywood celebrity giving their opinion about politics: it’s going to be get attention, but it won’t actually mean anything tangible. The power of the Pope over the identity of Catholics has waned; the reformation was happening inside the house all along!
The decline in papal power over identity mirrors the decline in power of the Western monarchies. The secular state has similar power over identity: the British Monarch would speak and act on behalf of all Britons. Yet still, the Monarchs of today hold no more power than all the other glitterati we fawn over. Democracy has replaced monarchism, for the better.
The modern Western states still have governments that claim to act and speak on behalf of their people. The difference is that if the people disagree with that representation, the people are able (in theory) to remove them when the representation is no longer accurate. The people of that shared identity have greater control over how that identity manifests itself on the world stage.
This is ultimately why Israel maintains its antisemitism despite being a democracy (ignoring the apartheid). Israeli governments are not elected through the votes of every single Jewish person worldwide. The Zionist claim of Jewish representation is much more akin to the Catholic Church of the Middle Ages than the secular states of today. And I am quite comfortable with that comparison.
Any institution that claims to speak for an entire identity, but is not developed and held accountable by the voices of those who fit that identity, will always be an insult.
Blog for Chumps 