The following headline appeared on the Gateway Pundit, October 11, 2023:
In a speech posted on YouTube, the founder of Hamas called for a global uprising, emphasizing the need for bloodshed, martyrdom in a holy war.
“Mashal has proclaimed the coming Friday the 13th as ‘the Friday of Al-Aqsa flood,’ urging Muslims worldwide to display their anger not just in Muslim countries but also in diaspora communities around the world [emphasis added].”
So what is a diaspora community? According to etymonline.com., the noun diaspora is of recent vintage, originating from Greek diaspeirein, “to scatter about, disperse.” Used on a limited basis in the 19th century, referring to Jewish and Moravian Protestant exiles, the term gained popularity to describe “displaced persons” in the aftermath of World War II. Civil war in Syria, and destabilization of Libya, Iraq and Afghanistan, facilitated an unchecked influx of North African Muslim refugees (a diaspora) into Europe.
Since January 2021, the dislocation has intensified, as a surge of “irregular migration and forced displacement” daily inundates the southern border of the US. As forensic investigator Bob Bishop recently observed, the influx of “over 7 million primarily young military-age males” illegally crossing the US border looks less like a euphemistic “humanitarian crisis,” and more akin to the largest military invasion in world history. Bishop’s argument is compelling, backed by documentation of a well-financed, highly coordinated, transcontinental movement of illegal aliens along a 3,000-mile invasion route from South America into the heart of the US.
Perhaps diaspora is an apt term to apply to the unhindered flow of unvetted “asylum seekers” into the western nations, what was formerly known as Christendom. The diaspore is a mineral whose name is derived from the same Greek root. A tiny fragment of the diaspore, when exposed to heat or flame, suddenly bursts into fragments, dispersing with a loud crackling noise. Mashal has ignited the flame; it remains to be seen what follows on Friday.
In his philosophical treatise on the citizen, De Cive[1], Thomas Hobbes (the quintessential virtue-signaler) argues that our “natural state” – the mythical state of nature when all men roamed the earth in complete isolation from each other – was mere “War, and that not simply, but a War of all men, against all men,”[2] a bellum omnium in omnia. To Hobbes, as well as Locke, Rousseau, Maxwell, Filmer, etc., every encounter of pre-political man with his neighbor ended in a deadly struggle (which, if true, would mean that no one would have survived beyond the stone age, but roll with it).
At some point – how or when is never clarified – brutish man reasoned that life would be easier if he cooperated with his neighbor rather than wage war against him; hence, they entered into a “social contract,” each agreeing to place himself under the authority of a “civil society” of their own creation, with the power to restrain them from doing what they would otherwise wish to do. Thus, the State affords the only security against a war of all against all. Problem solved.
Hypothetical scenarios are wonderful until they are tested against experience, that record of the past called history. The pages of history testify to a record of State oppression, corruption, coercion, and predation.[3] Experience dictates that, while liberty is impossible without a limited level of government, government has always been the greatest enemy of liberty. No, the bellum omnium in omnia is not a result of man without the State, it is the result of man dominated by the uncontrolled, unaccountable State.
What good is an all-powerful national government that opens its borders to alien hordes and potential terrorists? How are peaceful citizens to protect their most valuable property, their life and limbs, when the State seeks to disarm them? How is a government that plunders its citizens (through taxes, debt, and inflation) to subsidize its cronies different than a professional criminal class?
Lord Acton’s maxim (which is misstated more often than not) still holds true: Power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely.
[1] Thomas Hobbes, "De Cive (1651 Edition)," in Collected Works of Thomas Hobbes (Hastings, East Sussex, UK: Delphi Classics, 2019).
[2] Ibid., Book 1, Chapter 12.
[3] Far be it for me to make such a bold statement without providing evidence to support my argument. However, that discussion is beyond the scope of this essay and will be covered in the next essay.