Why the ruling class mourns Nasrallah

The New York Times’s ode to the genocidal terrorist indicates that the American elite is on the verge of collapse.

The elite American media’s reaction to the execution of Hezbollah kingpin Hassan Nasrallah (may his name be erased) was certainly quite striking. The New York Times, for example, burst into the same oceans of tears with which it met the death of Iran’s top terrorist Qassem Soleimani (may his bones be ground to dust) in 2020.

For those who have forgotten, the Times marked Soleimani’s departure from the world at the wrong end of a US missile by essentially erecting a mourning tent to the fiend, hailing him as an Iranian national hero who fell in noble combat. 

In short, even though Soleimani was a genocidal racist pursuing genocidally racist policies on behalf of a genocidally racist regime, the Times did everything in its power to assure readers that he was something like a rare and precious combination of Mahatma Gandhi, Albert Einstein, and Jesus.

Following this, of course, the Times returned to its usual practice of defaming the United States as a genocidal and racist country, apparently without noticing the irony inherent.

Today, that irony is redolent: Soleimani was the architect of Iran’s “ring of fire” strategy of surrounding Israel with terrorist armies. This strategy has now plunged the Middle East into a war of which the Times appears to disapprove. Yet in death, the warmonger himself had the Times in his corner.

This vile spectacle was repeated almost exactly on behalf of Nasrallah. The Times hailed the “tremendous devotion” Nasrallah aroused among his supporters, who loved his “charismatic” dedication to “resistance.” It went on to indulge in a Winnie-the-Pooh furry fantasy, lovingly describing the terrorist’s “roly-poly figure, a slight lisp, and a propensity to crack jokes.” The Times also informed readers that Nasrallah “never pushed hardline Islamic rules,” a claim so ludicrous that the paper could not possibly believe it.

Most horrifically, the Times essentially endorsed Nasrallah’s genocidal project. It sympathetically proclaimed that Nasrallah “had long called for the liberation of Jerusalem and referred to Israel as ‘the Zionist entity,’ maintaining that all Jewish immigrants should return to their countries of origin and that there should be one Palestine with equality for Muslims, Jews, and Christians.” 

The Times may have adopted Nasrallah’s blatantly disingenuous language, but the reality of what this monstrous act of ethnic cleansing would involve is obvious: The Jews would “go back to Poland” in order to create a “Palestine” ruled by a Muslim supremacist apartheid state. To describe this genocidal project in such glowing terms is to endorse it.

All of this presents a rather remarkable spectacle: America’s most elite publication, which wields enormous unelected influence and an inexplicably invulnerable halo effect, essentially endorsed genocidal, racist, supremacist, theocratic, antisemitic terrorism and war.

It is very unlikely that the Times’s factotums or its proles toiling in the newsroom realized precisely what they had done: In a single moment, the Times had detonated any claim to moral legitimacy. It placed itself proudly on the side of the devil. It did so, moreover, without receiving a single penny in exchange for its soul. 

As such, the Times effectively forwent any right to admonish its countrymen, or indeed anyone, for their supposed sins past or future. The Times did so even though—as evidenced by its sponsorship of such bonfires of the vanities as the 1619 Project—it cherishes that right above all.

This raises the question: Why did the Times do it? Why would such an ostensibly prestigious and respected institution commit moral suicide for essentially no reason at all? Even suicide bombers believe they will receive sexual ecstasies in heaven. The Times, one presumes, entertains no such fantasies.

The answer lies in what the Times actually is. Contrary to popular belief, the Times is not a newspaper or a media outlet of any kind. It is scripture. It is the Bible of the American ruling class. It is a fiery and censorious preacher who decrees to that class what is true and not true, good and not good. It tells that class what to believe, what not to believe, and what is forbidden to believe. It defines both faith and heresy. 

This is not a one-way street, however. The Times also expresses the sentiments and ethos of the American ruling class. It is commissar and spokesman in one.

Understood this way, the Times’s wailing on behalf of Nasrallah is perfectly understandable. Nasrallah was a member of the “resistance” to many things—common decency and humanity among them—but perhaps most of all to the United States. Like the Iranian theocrats, Nasrallah saw the United States as the “Great Satan,” the ultimate enemy that had to be ejected from the Middle East and finally destroyed outright. Israel and others are simply standing in the way.

On this most essential of all issues, the American ruling class that rules and is ruled by the Times is in perfect agreement. Mired in total moral bankruptcy and self-loathing, this ruling class hates its own society. It sees the United States as a satanic entity that, poisoned by the usual litany of original sins, marauds the world through racism, imperialism, genocide, and exploitation of every kind. 

As such, the Times and its class believe, any decent person must “resist” the United States by, in one of their favorite mantras, “any means necessary.” Nasrallah may have been in too much of a hurry, but his cause was a noble one.

Whether this class is capable of consciously admitting to itself that this is what it really believes is probably unknowable. I imagine that more of its members are willing to do so than one would expect. But the result, in any case, is the same: sympathy for the devil.

It must be emphasized: This is not normal. Most societies are not ruled by people who hate their own society. There is a good reason for this: natural selection. That is, societies run by people who hate them do not last very long. Hence their rarity.

This means that, in any country that is not a barbarous tyranny—and the US, despite the paranoid fantasies of many, is not a barbarous tyranny—such self-hatred is not an amusing annoyance but an existential threat. A society ruled by those who hate it will inevitably be outstripped and overcome by societies ruled by those who do not. 

At the moment, the United States is faced with precisely this unwelcome scenario. Men like Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping may be quite monstrous, but it is certain that Putin does not hate Russia and Xi does not hate China. They want their societies to be powerful, respected, and prosperous. That this serves their personal interests is undeniable but, to a great extent, it is irrelevant. Theirs may be a toxic patriotism, but it is patriotism all the same. This gives them enormous motive power that a decadent and self-loathing ruling class cannot possibly match.

Moreover, in the United States and a great many other societies that are not dictatorships or tyrannies, patriotism is very far from toxic. It is, in fact, absolutely essential. Ukraine, for example, could never have effectively countered Putin’s invasion without it.

George Orwell explained why this is so when he wrote, “One cannot see the modern world as it is unless one recognizes the overwhelming strength of patriotism, national loyalty. In certain circumstances it can break down, at certain levels of civilization it does not exist, but as a positive force there is nothing to set beside it. Christianity and international socialism are as weak as straw in comparison with it.”

Sadly, at the level of the American ruling class, Orwell’s “positive force” does not exist. That class’s self-hatred may be risible, but that is not why it is a threat. It is a threat because it makes the American ruling class flaccid, impotent, incompetent, and ineffective. Put simply, it cannot do its job.

It is the duty of any ruling class to enrich and improve the society it rules. A ruling class riven by hatred of both its society and itself cannot begin to fulfill this duty. It cannot even save itself from enervation and collapse. The New York Times’s encomiums to a genocidal terrorist are but a small indication of the fact that the enervation is now terminal and the collapse has begun. They are a slight tremor that warns of the inevitable earthquake. 

That earthquake is certain to arrive. The American ruling class will collapse because it cannot survive its own scorn. The United States, however, does not have to go down with it. 

But to save itself, America needs a Thatcherite solution. Its ruling class must be remade from top to bottom. As yet, sadly, there seems to be no Thatcher on the horizon. But if American history has proven anything, it is that the United States has remarkable powers of resurrection. It has saved itself before and may well do so again. 

In the meantime, Americans need only remind themselves that they do not have to listen to these people. They are under no obligation to heed the admonitions of apologists for genocide, terrorism, Islamic supremacism, self-immolation, and death. 

The American ruling class should remember this because, while there is a perverse thrill in self-hatred, it is a double-edged sword. Americans may decide, after all, that their ruling class does have good reason to hate itself, but the people and the nation it rules do not.