THE EVILS OF FACTIONALISM

A common feature of factionalist behavior is a nomination of a scapegoat group or class.  When a  particular people or faction finds it cannot adequately solve its problems, it often strikes out heedlessly, irrationally seeking and blaming other factions or members thereof, in reckless attempts to happen upon a solution--or at least to divest itself of blame.  An emotion which often prompts such factionalist scapegoating is jealousy.  In an economically distressed place wherein there exists a market-dominant minority, it is easy to convince the less successful majority that they are the "rightful owners" of their locale, and that the wealthier "outsider" minority deserves to be disfavored, scorned, and even acted against with violence.  Ironically, such feelings and behaviors are often actually manifestations of unconscious admiration, awe, and envy for the hated group, 

 One apparent current example of this lies in the recent and ongoing Arab-Israeli conflicts.  In this part of the world, over two hundred million Arabs living in or close to poverty observe five million Jews existing in relative comfort.  In the face of such a pitiful situation, it is not difficult for a hostile demagogue, seeking to create and lead a multitude, to rally feverish popular support for an ethnonationalist movement against the hated market-dominant minority.  With a worldside government, more equal conditions and benefits would be feasible and attainable by all.  Opportunity for similar success could not and would not be withheld from anyone due to his or her national (or other) designation.  It is likely that--notwithstandinhg current situation-based attitudes and positions--this would encourage and lead to individuals of different ethnic and/or religious persuasions to begin working together, and eventually result in similar economic (even though not necessary social or doctrinal) associations and successes.

Another example was to be perceived in the attitude of many European persons or groups toward America"s meteoric rise to economic success.  Viewing America's triumphs as a product of recklessness and undeserved good fortune, many European countries responded with both reactive and individual nationalism as well as rising "Euronationalism."  This was evidenced by reports that talk of European integration had increasingly gone hand in hand with anti-American rhetoric.  Moreover, this phenomnenon wherein the numerically dominant faction expresses distrust of, and hostility toward, the economically successful minority faction) is occurring more and more frequently and in more and more places of late, as globalization encircles and shrinks our world.  And, as capitalism and democracy are joined together in an ever-increasing number of regions and locales, demagogues are increasingly able to seize the opportunity thus created to organize and manipulate numbers of the less foertunate majority, forging them into armies of "have-nots," eager to wage war against the "haves."

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