On this day 1,988 years ago, a humble carpenter rode through the gates of Jerusalem where four days later He would find His death and martyrdom. He sat astride a donkey, a beast of burden and living symbol of humility, but was received as a king. After years preaching love, repentance and forgiveness across Judea, the elderly, women and children, the sick, the wretched, the poor hailed his arrival in Jerusalem as a saviour, celebrating him with palm branches and calling Him son of David (Matthew 21:9). The meek of the Earth had long awaited the arrival of their prophet, and their prophet would come as the Paschal Lamb so that they may inherit the Earth (Matthew 5:5). Easter, or Pascha in Latin, as in Greek, Aramaic and most languages outside of the Anglo-Saxon world is referred to in some form or another as a transliteration of the Hebrew pesah, Passover. Yesterday our Jewish brethren began celebrating Passover, commemorating the liberation of the Israelites from their bondage in Egypt. They commemorate the night when the Angel of Death claimed the lives of all first-born sons of Egypt, but 'passed over' Jewish households sparing the lives of the children of the God of Israel, and allowing His people to escape from Egypt. Judaism celebrates this day of liberation with the sacrifice of a lamb, the Paschal Lamb, which Christ, the Son of Man willingly incarnated when he crossed the gates of Jerusalem. The sacrifice and resurrection of the Lamb of God, marks another pesah, another pass-over, another liberation from bondage. It is a liberation for all men of goodwill to attain the Kingdom of Heaven, because the Son of Man taught us that "the Kingdom of God lies within each and every one of us" (Luke 17:21).
Palm Sunday is a heartfelt celebration, commemorated with joy amongst Christians. It is a moment of respite from the solemnity of Lent, ushering the Holy Week where the faithful open once again the wounds of their souls reliving the Passion of Christ and His immense sacrifice for all of us, before we can finally rejoice in His Resurrection on Easter Sunday. It is a festive time, before we are reminded once more of the suffering in this world, lived as a witness of Christ's martyrdom, feeling the pain of His mother, our beloved Blessed Virgin, Theotokos, the Mother of God, witnessing the fruit of Her womb humiliated and His flesh shredded. Yet, today, in the Age of Covid, millions of Christians across countless regions in Western liberal democracies have been deprived of this joy. For the second year in a row Christians in wealthy liberal democracies have been forbidden to celebrate the arrival in Jerusalem of the Paschal Lamb. We have been told these measures were put in place for our own good, to safeguard our health. Yet around the world only residents of Western liberal democracies have been asked to endure this penance. Even more specifically only residents of wealthy Western liberal democracies, regions with thriving middle classes and a strong fabric of SMEs, have been asked to forsake this moment of happiness commemorating the arrival of the Kingdom of God. Outside of Europe only the USA, Israel, Australia and New Zealand have imposed a third lockdown.[1] All other countries in Asia, Africa, South America and the Middle East were sparred this austerity. There may be valid reasons for this peculiarity that has allowed a virus to isolate wealthy democracies from the rest of the world, but noting how numerous MNCs have immensely benefitted from lockdowns, with several tech giants tripling their market cap, it is not only legitimate but necessary to ask ourselves why these few countries have been hit with such anomalous policies. The same lockdown policies that have tremendously benefitted a number of MNCs, have also exasperated digital dependency, especially on our youth, while millions of SMEs and family owned enterprises have been forced out of business. Why? Why has this little virus acquired the extraordinary ability to distinguish societies built on SMEs with free and independent citizens benefitting from their own hard work and generational savings?
History always helps to contextualise our present.
By 1492, when after 15 years of seeking funding, first in Portugal and then in Spain, Columbus crossed the Atlantic Ocean, heralding the Age of Great Explorations of which we all are heirs, Europe had become a unique microcosm unlike the rest of the world. Europe, a tiny continent of nation states constantly at war with each other was in fact the only area on the planet where the twin horrors of slavery and genocide had been successfully eradicated. At the time of Columbus in fact, in the rest of the world, whether it be Asia, Africa, America or the Middle East, slavery was never the exception but the rule and genocide was the most likely outcome of any conflict. Regardless of one’s religious beliefs or political sympathies the merit of this unique achievement is two-fold. Specifically the adoption by European nations of Judeo-Christian values and the practice of Hellenic consensus societies. Our modern liberal democracies are the evolutionary outcome of this cultural marriage as are the near-totality of all social and technological achievements that have allowed humanity to reach our current level of emancipation, quantified in prosperity and liberty. Thus, while the tales of unspoiled, lush, virgin lands inspired the minds of many a European explorer, the harsh brutality of cruel societies that practiced slavery, cannibalism and genocide without any sense of remorse was just as bewildering to them. It would take centuries before a madman by the name of Hitler, inspired by Turks and Mongols, would ask his officers to completely abandon the moral restrains of “weak Western European civilisations” so as to reintroduce wilful genocide. In his own words:
“Our strength lies in our quickness and in our brutality; Genghis Khan has sent millions of women and children into death knowingly and with a light heart. History sees in him only the great founder of States. As to what the weak Western European civilisation asserts about me, that is of no account. (…) Who after all is today speaking about the destruction of the Armenians?”[2]
Slavery instead experienced a more immediate appeal. The Age of Great Explorations opened direct trade routes between Christian Europe, which forbade such practice, and the rest of the world that thrived in it. Contamination from this commercial relationship brought slavery into the Christian world and only in few areas where the Catholic Church exerted the greatest authority, such as Italy and the Iberian Peninsula, was the practice of slavery prevented from taking roots. Today, a novel model of globalisation driven by very few MNCs and financial institutions seems to suffer from a new form of cruel contamination.
In 1942, well before the Allied Landing in Sicily and later in Normandy, turned the tides of the Second World War, Joseph Schumpeter, the extraordinary and profoundly visionary Austrian economist, the godfather of entrepreneurship responsible for formalising the concept of innovation through ‘creative destruction’, made some remarkable forecasts in his Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy. Schumpeter not only predicted the fall of Fascism and National Socialism, he also predicted the fall of Communism, because he explained that the dynamics of Capitalism and democracies would largely outperform these other models. This may seem as a self-evident notion to us living in comfort today, but it was absolutely not as clear in the midst of the largest military conflict humanity has ever experienced. Schumpeter made another prediction, a far more astonishing one, a prediction so spectacular that far too few realise its significance even today. Schumpeter had predicted that the success of Capitalism would eventually create a disaffected intellectual class, that would lobby against free markets and private property. Consequently, capitalism would eventually lose favour in the eyes of the public preferring equality, security and government regulations. He predicted that the yielding result would be a form of corporatism run by a monopolistic oligopoly that would control the means of production and the distribution of wealth in a manner akin to what Marx had called for. Schumpeter nevertheless lived at a time when he did not have visibility of totalitarian regimes far away from Europe and America, practicing pre-Hellenic and pre-Christian social models, adopting this form of corporatism and contaminating global corporations with illiberal principles. Nor, I fear, did he fully appreciate the implication of governments becoming agents of corporatism and the impact on the ability of the public to form independent, mature political choices, for he thought this transition would be smooth and willed by the public. Unfortunately, it does not seem to be the case. Global oligopolies are indeed imposing novel forms of corporatism around the world, but they are neither benign nor are they a product of public consensus. Just like the globalisation in the Age of Great Explorations had reintroduced slavery in Christian Europe, today’s globalisation, believed until very recently to be an instrument for the spread of democracy, is now proving to be an instrument for the rise of authoritarian corporatism and the recession of democracy.
General Dwight D. Eisenhower made his last speech as President of the United States a memorable and dramatic event. On January 17, 1961, in his Farewell Address as President, the Commander in Chief of the Allied landings in Sicily and later in Normandy, one of the world’s greatest heroes in the struggle against totalitarian tyranny, warned his citizens of a new potential threat from a novel possible tyranny.[3] In his own words, Ike warned America (and the world) of the potential threat from what he called the industrial-military complex. Needless to say, anyone with a sliver of compassion in their heart can see how those words delivered a hard truth after 9/11 provided a handful of ruthless people the opportunity to highjack the world’s most powerful army for petty personal profit. The fabrications concerning WMDs in Iraq became the pretext for a war that served no geopolitical purpose other than securing post-war reconstruction contracts to a handful of powerful families. Today, these corrupt relationships at the heart of global corporatism are no longer limited to just the military. On the eve of the Subprime Financial Crisis, financial institutions who had enjoyed over two centuries of public trust, almost to the extent of becoming a fourth or fifth pillar of modern democracies, together with the power of the media and after Montesquieu’s division of powers into judiciary, legislative and executive, demonstrated a similar sort of corrupt collusion. Subprime bonds, which economists today gladly classify as toxic bonds were awarded triple A standing by agencies such as Moody’s and Standard & Poor. The same agencies enjoying such global trust and clout as to judge entire countries by awarding ratings capable of determining the economic outcome of those countries, vouched for absurdly dangerous financial products that became the catalyst for the largest financial crisis since the Great Depression. Just like those who profited from the fabrications of WMDs in Iraq remained largely unaccountable, so did those financial agencies and the banks they colluded with, surrendering their integrity in evaluating financial products, manage to avoid any significant degree of accountability. It would be dutiful to ask whether the military-industrial complex Ike spoke of has now become a global financial-military-industrial complex and seek to understand what influence this complex possesses over our sovereign governments and our lives.
I do not have clear answers as to why we have been asked for a second year in a row to renounce celebrating the arrival in Jerusalem of the Paschal Lamb, but I do have plenty of questions. Most of all the question I ask of my brethren preparing to follow with a pure heart the coming passion of Christ and rejoice in the promise of Resurrection, is whether these policies favouring corporatism are genuinely produced for the public good, notwithstanding clearly benefiting very few. We cannot change the past and the choices made by our governments have already been implemented, but if these irrational measures dehumanising our societies persist, I trust and hope many more of us will raise the same questions. Let us be patient and use this last lockdown as a litmus test of the genuine intentions of our governments, but let’s remain vigilant without succumbing to apathy or despair, and without allowing our governments to implement once again measures that benefit the few at the expenses of the many.
Maintain a lucid mind, a vigilant body and a pure heart. Practice repentance, love and forgiveness. Most important, do not despair. Commemorate the passion of the Son of Man, even if you have to do it alone, separated from your community and your loved ones, because in His own words the Kingdom of God is within you. The Paschal Lamb unveiled a realm beyond duality and beyond plurality, a universal realm where All is One. In this realm, which we all can attain, lies the promise of an eternal, indestructible and undying peace produced from pure love. The evils of this world can do you no harm once you grasp the power of this higher realm beyond good and evil. Thus do not despair, carry on the good fight for the meek to inherit the Earth. Defend the weak, the sick, the poor. Defend your elderly, your family, women and children. Beware of the threat of global corporatism and never surrender your reason nor your compassion. Demand that your governments respond to the canons of Aristotelian consensus societies rooted in logos, ethos and pathos (logic, empiricism and compassion). Demand that they be accountable to all their citizens, not just corporations, and carry your good fight without fear of what lies ahead, because you already possess the keys of Heaven.
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