Hello, What Hypernormalization?

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Disclaimer & Context setting: This blog post aims to help provide intellectual and moral support. The authors believe that the general public are basically being gas-lit by severely stunted public discourse. This is a safe space to tell the truth, welcome to the world as we see it. We know and acknowledge that we will not get everything correct, and in this format cannot discuss every incredibly important nuance. Discussion and comments are strongly encouraged. See you in the digital town-square.

As Brits, it can blow our flipping noggins that our American cousins, friends and neighbours have the relationship with facts that they do. That is to say, whether or not one believes in the big man upstairs, whether or not Jesus was a Caucasian (or a man of Terrorist Descent [cf. The Boondocks]) or if it’s a good idea to bother trying to participate in a Democracy, are all generally somehow considered examples of one’s essentially god-given right as an American to just arbitrarily choose without explaining yourself. 

Well, we at WJH believe in Democracy. We’re egalitarians. Democracy dies in the darkness. The deregulation of communications in the US has been a major part of generating the current situation where a lot of people live in more or less an information blackout. The news is too stressful, disingenuous and manipulative for people to want to expose themselves to it. Though there isn’t a clear path out of the darkness… We at WJH are trying to help blaze that trail back to honesty and trust. We’re doing that by leading by example, citing our sources, making our reasoning explicit and telling the bloody truth. We’ll also talk to you about it if you engage in a conversation, so with all that said, welcome! Thank you for joining us. This is: Hello! What Just Happened? in 2024. 

The Meat of the Issue (Do two genocides make a right?)

When one hears self-immolation, the history of Tibetan monks protesting a tyrannical Chinese Communist Party comes to mind. For the slightly older among us, and those with an interest in modern history, a Vietnamese Buddhist monk (Thích Quảng Đức) might come to mind. “No news picture in history has generated so much emotion around the world as that one” said JFK of this particular monk’s most extreme protest against the brutal oppression the native’s suffered at the hands of a Catholic, colonial occupying power. The fall of the U.S. backed government in Vietnam is broadly understood to have been influenced by a free and effective Western Press (Overthrown by the Press [The US Media’s Role in the Fall of Diem]). This is one of the main points we’ll be hammering home, the U.S. journalism industry is not fit for purpose and we’re going to describe how to fix it. 

We like to imagine that if an active-duty member of the British Royal Air Force self-immolated in protest of his nation’s ostensible complicity in genocide, then the British establishment would be in quite the panic indeed. The British people would be up in arms. People would take the day off work, flags would be flown at half mast. A succinct and extreme moral panic would swiftly ensue. Everyone would completely lose the plot, in recognition of their society having completely so-done. 

The other thing we’re going to help set the record straight on is whether or not Aaron Bushnell told the truth, since very few (if any) major media outlets are interested in trying to do their jobs. 

Aaron Bushnell was a bright young US Airman who doused himself with gasoline and set himself on fire in front of the Israeli embassy in Washington DC on Sunday February 25th, 2024. 

Why did he do it? He speaks calmly and lucidly before his historically significant suicidal protest, explaining that he will no longer be complicit in genocide. He yells Free Palestine over and over as he stands burning, before first responders scream at security staff that they don’t need guns, they need fire extinguishers.

This 25 year old man lost his life because of a moral crisis over his government’s foreign policy. If you think anything else happened you’ve got your head in the sand. 

We’ll spend the rest of this post covering two topics before making good on our promise to help shine light on the path out of the darkness. 

1. Is the U.S. sponsoring a genocide in Palestine? 
2. To what extent are “journalists” in the U.S. responsible for Aaron Bushnell’s death? Alternative topic title: What is Hypernormalization?  

On the first item. We’re not going to tell you the answer but we’re going to present you with facts and invite you to reach your own conclusion. 

The British started harassing the Arabs, to massively understate the colonial project, in the early 20th century. Mandatory Palestine was created as the Ottoman Empire collapsed, which had seen native Arabs living in the area that is now mostly Israeli territory for many hundreds of years. The Zionist project picked up steam, accelerated by the Holocaust and the horrific persecution and genocide of European Jews, alongside various other minority groups (gays, gypsies, the disabled etc.). In order to make room for the European settlers via the Zionist project, the indigenous were brutally displaced. 

The 1948 Palestine War, which kicked off the broader Israeli-Arab War (1948), saw the British withdraw from Mandatory Palestine as Zionist settlers displaced some 700,000 Palestinians while gaining the vast majority of territory. This is often considered the beginning of the Nakba, which is the Arabic for catastrophe or disaster. 

Right, so what is a genocide? According to the UN, and people who’ve spent a great deal longer than most of us thinking about this:  

“a crime committed with the intent to destroy a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, in whole or in part. It does not include political groups or so called “cultural genocide”. This definition was the result of a negotiating process and reflects the compromise reached among United Nations Member States while drafting the Convention in 1948. Importantly, the Convention establishes a duty on State Parties to take measures to prevent and to punish the crime of genocide, including by enacting relevant legislation and punishing perpetrators, “whether they are constitutionally responsible rulers, public officials or private individuals” (Article IV).”

THE CONVENTION ON THE PREVENTION AND PUNISHMENT OF THE CRIME OF GENOCIDE (1948)

So take the above high level summary of the historic backdrop, at least for the past few hundred years; and then add in the fact that the new state that’s displacing indigenous Arabs is doing so such that it can carve out a safe place for people who belong to a specific ethno-religious group, and it starts to look like one is entering really, really dangerous territory. 

Right, so let’s hear it from the intellectual leaders of Zionism:

“ [writing of the settlers, that] they suddenly find themselves in unrestricted freedom and this change has awakened in them an inclination to nepotism. They correspond the Arabs with hostility and cruelty, deprive them of their rights, offend them without cause and even boast of these deeds; and nobody among us opposes the despicable and dangerous inclination…””

Asher Zvi Hirsch Ginsberg, aka Ahad Ha’am [Truth from Eretz Yisrael, 1891]

Quite a bit over a hundred years later, this rings rather true today to anyone who’s familiar with images of West Bank extremist settlers harassing and murdering their indigenous neighbours. The international community broadly agrees that this is unacceptable behaviour and against the Geneva Convention. The US, UK and Israel stand alone as rogue states on the World Stage, backing only themselves. 

“Since 1970, the US has used the veto far more than any other permanent member, most frequently to block decisions that it regards as detrimental to the interests of Israel” 

Security Council Report [October 2015]

There was a marked escalation in violence following the horrific terror attacks of October 7th, 2023. This was the most significant invasion of Israeli territory since the Arab-Israeli War of 1948, led by the militant wing of Hamas and a collaborating coalition of extremist groups. 1,139 people were killed, 766 civilians (695 Israelis and 71 foreign nationals) and 373 soldiers; in addition to 253 hostages being taken. As of February 14th, 112 hostages were returned alive and 134 hostages are believed to remain in the Gaza strip. Approximately 19 bodies have been repatriated of 32 killed and Israeli intelligence suspect the number might be closer to 50. 

Israel swiftly responded to these attacks with a massive retaliatory bombing campaign followed by a ground invasion that has led to the killing of about 30,000 people in Gaza, mostly civilians, women and children, the displacement of almost the entire population, and the apparent siege of millions of civilians leading to a rapid onset of malnutrition and outright starvation almost without parallel. The World Food Program (WFP) reached 900,000 people in Gaza in December of last year, a territory of approximately 2,000,000 people. Unicef was warning about the need to scale up aid in order to prevent famine in January.

This is being considered among the most brutal scorched Earth campaigns in modern history (worse than the raising of Aleppo, Syria) and was described as constituting “indiscriminate bombing” by Joe Biden. These senseless deaths are at the hands of the most advanced military force in the world, we remind you. They can do a lot better if they want to. 

The UN general assembly voted overwhelmingly (153 for, 10 against, 23 abstentions) for a humanitarian ceasefire and the release of all hostages in December of 2023. The UK has continually been the only abstention (or joined by Russia) at the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) through 3 ceasefire resolutions on the situation in the Middle East and specifically Palestine. 

The UK representative to the UN said on October 18th, 2023 after abstaining said: 

“We will continue to work closely with Israel and our partners in the region to respond to the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, to ensure that civilians are protected and have access to food, water, medicine and shelter and to work towards the peace and stability promised by the two-State solution” 

S/PV.9442 The situation in the Middle East, including the Palestinian question

We leave it to the reader to determine whether or not the UK has honoured it’s commitment there. 

In the history of modern conflicts between predominantly European settlers, backed by the most powerful army in the world, and an indigenous population that hardly ever industrialised, Western media outlets have had no trouble parroting Hamas Health Authority statistics for the dead and wounded. 

“GENEVA, Oct 27 (Reuters) – U.S. President Joe Biden has cast doubt on casualty figures provided by Palestinian officials in Gaza, but international humanitarian agencies consider them broadly accurate and historically reliable”

Reuters, Oct.27th,2023

So this brings us to our next point, the second item called out above, what happens when you lie to the public completely egregiously for long enough? Well, people start to lose their minds (metaphorically speaking, morally speaking, not literally). Also, having laid all of that out, we challenge our readers (or anyone) to make a case that this is not a genocide. 

On the second item. If you haven’t cried for Aaron Busnell, or even thought about it, or even heard about it… then let us please explain the concept of Hypernormalization, what it is and how it works. 

Hypernormalization is a term originally coined by the Soviet era Sci-Fi authors, the Strugatsky Brothers. This term was popularised in the 21st century by British documentary filmmaker Adam Curtis. In essence the idea is that propaganda and social coercion are sufficiently effective that the general public lose the ability to tell the truth, or to even recognize it. The fact that my American peers are not all losing their minds about Aaron Bushnell’s historically grim end, is in my mind an alarming indicator of the extent to which the US has come to mimic old Soviet public discourse (or lack thereof). 

So, how do we get out of this? We tell the truth. Out of respect for the minds of the people. For the minds of young men and women like Aaron Bushnell. 

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