If Protection Becomes Control — Antisemitism, Surveillance, and the Test of Conscience
This is a piece not just on civil liberties, but more importantly, Christology. The thesis of this article centers only indirectly on rights, threats, and freedom.
At its direct core is the person of Christ and his Cross.
In the wake of stories of violence, governments often claim they are enacting measures to protect vulnerable communities. In fact, I’d venture to claim that “always” should replace “often,” because it is only when these stories get run through the electronic screens that we as a people are corralled into an emotional response, thus making the government action all the more logical and…helpful.
Consider how many trauma events never get filtered through the screen. Consider how much we don’t know, how much isn’t shown to us.
The problem-reaction-solution model should be a fundamental recognition for everyone by now. Whether or not recent events on the screen qualify for a sprinkling of cynicism, the government and media–yes including the alternative right–should have lost our trust a long time ago. The default should never be “believe and post on Facebook.” It should be “believe not–and proceed carefully.” This is becoming increasingly paramount, especially as antisemitism, hate speech laws, and national security cooperation are being invoked to justify new forms of surveillance and enforcement.
Is this the Hegelian Dialectic yet again? Are viewpoints–perhaps legitimate on some level–being exaggerated to our detriment?
Everyone should know and pray about the meaning behind the Noahide Laws.
We should never allow the argumentative appeal to pathos (Greek, emotion/feelings) to cloud reason and judgment, particularly when we are talking about our capacity to worship freely–which I as a Traditional Catholic will always fight for. That is the context for this piece today.
Plus we as Catholics are taught to rejoice when people hate us for our religion, which is a totally different way of handling suffering in the first place. Very quickly goes away the concept of victimhood or offense, when one considers that the most holy man ever to walk the earth was tortured and murdered on a cross. My “goodness” doesn’t seem so good when placed next to his.
No one’s does.
For the Christian, we must ask these questions…
- What does suffering mean in light of Christ?
- If Christ was rejected, why should his followers expect safety?
- Is persecution proof of failure… or fidelity?
And make these three statements…
- Christ is the measure of innocence and suffering.
- Christ is the pattern by which all injustice is interpreted.
- Christ is the standard against which our outrage is humbled.
Christ–and nothing else.
Digression aside but necessary, following the recent trauma events, including the Bondi Beach attack in Australia, reports now indicate more coordination between worldwide authorities and Israeli security services. Officials frame this as a response to rising antagonism toward the Zionist cause against Gaza–what they call the latest worldwide example of antisemitism. The question is not whether antisemitism exists. The question is how it is being defined, and who gets to define it:
That is why a new move is required: establishing a Jewish People’s Guard. Not a local organization, not a security company and not a temporary initiative, but a permanent global structure that creates an international Jewish safety net.
Such a system would connect communities around the world with the State of Israel and official security bodies. It would enable rapid emergency responses, provide orderly training for community response teams and identify incitement processes before they turn violent.
A Jewish People’s Guard would create a global alert mechanism, provide unified protocols and build an efficient defensive capability, working in full coordination with governments, local law enforcement agencies and key allies, especially the US. This is not an attempt to form militias, but to build a regulated and supervised system: a shared Jewish safety network that strengthens communities rather than replacing those responsible for protecting them.
When governments redefine speech as violence, enforcement rarely begins with law. It begins culturally. Ideas are stigmatized. Speech is conflated with harm. By the time legislation is proposed, the public has already accepted the premise that restriction is “necessary.” This is how hate speech criminalization becomes normalized.
Even an article such as this one might be looked at as pro-Muslim terrorist, based on the magic dust they have doused us with for centuries–a most sinister outcome of the binary trap I am constantly teaching in my work.
The nuance of it all is not even considered–I’m simply a Traditional Catholic who wants to keep his freedom to do so without worrying that some worldwide police state is going to start meddling in my life.
If you think that is out of the question, just consider what government and media colluded to do post-9/11 and post-COVID. No matter what bravado we may speak to our family and friends at the dinner table, the alarming reality is that seemingly most Americans believe anything that comes through that electronic screen.
And this isn’t even the early proving ground of this storyline. I was warning about this back in 2024, even as far back as October 2023 when it comes to this specific storyline. Here is a pull from May 2024:
Uniparty baby HR 6090 has passed the House, saying something or other about antisemitism, one of society’s many lame pejoratives created only to shut people up. The measure passed 320-91. Twenty-one Republicans and 70 Democrats voted against it. This is simply a continuation of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) and the The US-National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism, which lists several groups besides Jews on page 1 as being under this umbrella, but you’d be looking for eternity if you were looking for anything mentioning anti-Christian. Perhaps we fall in the dignified “and so many others” category.
At this point the mere attempt to eliminate a voice or the truth should say something about what exactly is being protected from the truth, not to mention everything that must therefore mean. We’ve come a long way since 2020 and even 2022.
I think it was Voltaire, but Google tells me that it may not have been him, who said, “To learn who rules over you, simply look to those you cannot criticize.” I’m not a Voltaire fan, or a Google fan, but at the end of the day the quote still stands true.
Proposals to bring this issue to our neighborhoods raise obvious questions. This is a heart issue, not a political one. The government should have no jurisdiction over this–particularly when it and its media tentacles have done so much to deteriorate America’s moral capacity in the first place.
Will databases of “antisemitism” be created?
Who determines inclusion?
What determines inclusion?
This very article you’re reading, perhaps?
What happens when those labels are shared with employers, banks, or technology platforms?
Oh no. The government might track us. Let’s get angry about it for about three days or even three hours and go back to giving the government all the information it needs through the public outpouring of our personal lives on social media.
The truth is, they already did track us. Probably for much longer, but a good marker is 9/11, under the Patriot Act when they scared us about all those terrorists that might fly planes into your cities buildings next. They did it with bipartisan, supposedly “patriotic” backing. And the people cheered as they gave away their rights, their privacy, and their future for the illusion of security….
And the surveillance itself? Old news. The government knows everything about us already. They used the chaos of 9/11 to justify their omniscience, and we let them. We posted our lives online and called it “connection.” They harvested it and called it “protection.” You think Palantir is new?
They’ve been watching. The only question is: why remind us, or even reveal it to some, now?
This isn’t just a Star Wars movie. There is a real Palpatine in the world. He is many–the mob–for sure, and quite possibly, he is one.
We already know how this works and could work to an ever-debilitating degree in the digital age. Deplatforming, financial sanctions, and reputational destruction often precede formal charges. Informal enforcement operates long before courts are involved.
Just consider all the insanity concerning COVID and how angry people got that some of us were killing grandma.
We had better stop basing reality on our own common sense, and start considering the lack thereof of so many others.
When “protection and security” becomes control, everyone should ask where the line is being drawn.
And whether even that can be erased one day. As a man of Christ, I’d have to seek out the catacombs.
But I’d rather not.
