by Piero Cammerinesi

Just a few decades ago, I would never have believed that history would repeat itself in such a senseless and disastrous way as we are witnessing today.
Our Masters did prepare us for difficult and dangerous times, for a 21st century marked by madness that would shape a society increasingly tied to material values and ever less interested in spiritual and moral ones.
A society ensnared by radical materialism and brazen selfishness.
The signs were all there, if only one cared to see them.
However, even those who have been warned of an approaching catastrophic hurricane often delude themselves into thinking that some god or fortunate combination of events might stop or divert it.

The events of the first quarter of the 21st century amply demonstrate that this did not happen. Not only was the hurricane not stopped, but, as is the case with tropical hurricanes that strike the American coasts, it gradually gained ever greater strength and destructive power.
From 11 September to the proliferation of ‘colour revolutions’, from wars of aggression waged by one people against another, to the war declared on their own peoples through the 2019 pandemic and overt genocides, not to mention the utter disregard for signed conventions and the rules-based international order, today we are faced with the total acceptance of international lawlessness dictated by the law of the strongest.

We can unhesitatingly describe this as an apocalyptic landscape.

In other words, it is a manifestation of evil and falsehood on a global scale, in which all the demons of past history seem to be descending upon humanity en masse, without it – and this is the most disturbing thing – realising or reacting in any way.
The idea that the First World War should be ‘the last war’ was dramatically disproven by the outbreak of the Second World War, which ushered in an era of even more destructive conflicts.
Similarly, after the Second World War, it was said that a Third World War would be impossible to envisage – on pain of global destruction – due to the strategy of nuclear deterrence based on the principle of mutually assured destruction.
We have seen that this has not come to pass either. War has changed its face and its methods, but its ferocity sweeps across the whole world like an unstoppable demon.

The sense of exceptionalism that a people (the ‘chosen people’) or a race (the ‘superior race’) ascribes to itself is certainly one of the main causes of wars throughout human history.

By exceptionalism, we mean the belief that a people, nation or so-called ‘race’ is inherently superior, unique or destined for a role guided by history or a divine force.
As the American historian Howard Zinn writes,

‘If we believe that our nation is exceptionally good, then whatever we do — whether it be invading a country, bombing a city or overthrowing a government — is seen as an act of benevolence.’

This is the supreme danger of exceptionalism: it transforms war crimes into moral missions.

Exceptionalism throughout history

It must be said that this concept has deep roots.
Even in antiquity, the belief that one is the sole guardian of justice led powers to justify any war of conquest, as Thucydides states.
The fact is that men, naturally driven to dominate, always allow themselves to be dominated by ambition and force.

Consider ancient Greece, for example, with its clear division between Greeks and ‘barbarians’, or the Chinese Empire, conceived as the ‘Middle Kingdom’ – a civilisation surrounded by nomadic peoples.

This leads us to Manifest Destiny: a nineteenth-century political and cultural doctrine which claimed that the United States of America had a divine right and duty to expand across the North American continent and spread its ideals of freedom, democracy, and American exceptionalism.

However, since the current age is meant to move towards overcoming nationalism and racism, certain impulses have emerged, such as the birth of the United Nations, globalism and the European Community. Nevertheless, these have promptly been reclaimed and subverted by those who seek to subjugate humanity.
The project of the European Union and the concept of inclusion as a form of social openness to diversity have certainly represented attempts to banish the notion of exceptionalism, which some peoples or ethnic groups regard as fundamental, if not sacred.

However, what was thrown out of the window has come back in through the door: whilst racism has merely changed colour, the exceptionalism of certain peoples or countries has cast off its mask and revealed itself in all its nakedness.

Noam Chomsky states:

‘Exceptionalism is a fundamental principle of imperial intellectual life… The doctrine holds that we are different and better, and therefore have the right to carry out actions that would be considered terrible if carried out by others.’

Having lived in the USA for a decade, I have seen first-hand how the American people have been conditioned to believe that their country is the best in the world. This belief is reinforced not only by the narrow and manipulated version of history taught in schools, but also by the entire media landscape, which bombards citizens with the idea that the US has a salvific mission and the right to dominate. This idea is also formally articulated in the document Project for the New American Century.

President Vladimir Putin also highlighted the exceptionalism of the USA as a cause for concern in an article published in the New York Times in September 2013 entitled ‘A Call for Caution from Russia’.

‘It is extremely dangerous to encourage people to regard themselves as exceptional, whatever the motivation.’ There are large countries and small countries, rich and poor, those with long democratic traditions and those still seeking their own path to democracy. Their policies also vary. We are all different, but when we ask for God’s blessing, we must not forget that he created us all equal.’

Since 1945, the global dominance of the Anglosphere has led hundreds of millions of people to view the Anglo-Saxon peoples as superior. After the Second World War, the baton of the British Empire was passed to the United States of America, ushering in a cultural, artistic, financial and military colonisation on an unprecedented scale.
The main charge levelled against Germany during the Third Reich – openly advocating the superiority of the Aryan race – has been implemented more subtly, but even more effectively, by the new American Empire since the end of the Second World War.

Not to mention that, until the 1960s, racism was rife in the USA, particularly against black people — remember the Ku Klux Klan? — but also against Italians. Meanwhile, South Africa was officially isolated and sanctioned because of apartheid.
From the Thousand-Year Reich – ‘Blut und Boden’ – to the New American Century, we have now arrived at a new form of exceptionalism and supremacism openly espoused by the leadership of the State of Israel.
ùListen to what Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, the spiritual leader of the ruling Shas party, said during a Sabbath sermon in 2010:

‘The goyim [non-Jews] were born only to serve us. Without this, they have no place in the world, only to serve the people of Israel… Why do the gentiles serve? They will work, plough and reap. We will sit like lords and eat.’

Consider also what the former Minister of the Interior, Eli Yishai, said in 2012 about non-Jews living in Israel:

‘Most Muslims who come here do not even believe that this country belongs to us, the white man.’

However, these are the words of the current Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, who, during the war in Gaza in 2023, justified blatant racism in Israel by citing religious texts:

“Remember what Amalek did to you,” says the Holy Bible. And we do remember.’

He was referring to the biblical texts of Samuel and Deuteronomy, which call for the total extermination of the Amalekites.

Spiritual significance of exceptionalism

Those who have addressed this subject from historical, political and spiritual perspectives are well aware that the only way to overcome racial or ethnic exceptionalism is to view the matter from the standpoint of the spiritual evolution of humanity as a whole. In this view, cultural and racial specificities are regarded as transitional stages, superseded by the central value of individuality.

The prospect of reincarnation makes it completely nonsensical to refer to any people or race as superior. During our time on Earth, we are reincarnated amongst different peoples and races in different eras and places.
What is the point in feeling superior to black people if I am white, or to Muslims if I am Christian, when I know that I have been, and will be again, part of different cultures, religions and peoples on my evolutionary journey?

In fact, if I knew that I would be reincarnated precisely among the people or race that I hate most in this life, I would be very careful about how I treat them.
The most radical impulses of nationalism and racial hatred experienced by humanity in one era pave the way for its future destiny. The cosmic order demands that the soul experience from within what it has judged or persecuted from without. Many of those who harbour blind nationalistic hatred today will be reborn precisely amongst the people they despise in their next incarnation (Rudolf Steiner, The Destiny of Individuals and of Nations, GA 157).

While it is true that every age is guided and inspired by particular Volksgeister (People’s Spirits), spiritual entities that shape the specific characteristics of a given community, this does not imply a hierarchy of values. Every people has a unique ‘mission’ that is complementary to those of others and is necessary for the spiritual progress of humanity.

Rudolf Steiner repeatedly emphasised that racial differences belong to past, outgrown stages of human evolution. Human beings are not defined by their physical bodies, blood, or genetics, but by their spiritual individuality, which reincarnates in ever-changing cultural contexts, eras, and geographical settings.
The souls of peoples had a mission in the past. However, humanity is progressing, and clinging to old ties of race and blood — the idea of regarding oneself as a separate or chosen people for hereditary reasons — runs counter to true evolution.

In the past, peoples had a mission. However, as humanity progresses, clinging to old ties of race and blood — the idea of regarding oneself as a separate or chosen people for hereditary reasons — runs counter to the true evolution of the spirit. Today, human beings must find the divine within themselves as individuals, rather than through their membership of an ethnic group (Rudolf Steiner, The Mission of the Individual Folk-Souls in Relation to Teutonic Mythology, GA 121).

Furthermore:

‘It is far worse for the evolution of humanity to frame our minds in such a way as to ask what mission this or that fragment of a people has.’ We must transcend borders, erase them, and discover our shared humanity, allowing us to take ownership of our place in the universal human experience (Rudolf Steiner, ‘Social Ideas, Social Reality, Social Practice II GA 337b).

Steiner‘s words are indispensable when we consider the appalling manifestation of racism in today’s Israel. In my article The Spiritual Roots of the Palestinian Tragedy, I quoted Steiner, who sheds a clarifying light on recent events in the Middle East:

Judaism has this aspect: everything associated with the Jews takes on a personal character. However, people must come to see the spiritual in others. Today, everything Jewish is still dominated by race. As a rule, they predominantly marry amongst themselves, and therefore still see the racial aspect rather than the spiritual one. In response to the question, ‘Has the Jewish people fulfilled its mission in the development of human knowledge?’, Steiner answers, ‘Yes, it has, because at one time there had to be a single people leading to a specific form of monotheism. Today, however, the mission must be spiritual knowledge itself.This mission has therefore been fulfilled. This Jewish mission is no longer necessary for evolution; the right course for Jews is to intermingle with other peoples (Rudolf Steiner, The History of Humanity and the Worldviews of Civilised Peoples, Lecture XI, 8 May 1924).

Therefore, if ‘the Jewish people have fulfilled their mission in the development of human knowledge’ and this ‘mission is no longer necessary in the course of evolution’, it is hardly surprising that it is re-emerging today with unprecedented ferocity. It is likely being guided by the same figures who organised and carried out the Holocaust. They are now driven by Asuric demons intent on preventing the true mission from being fulfilled at all costs: ‘spiritual knowledge’.
Indeed, if a deep and fanatical hatred develops towards a particular group of people or a nation in a lifetime, the feelings of aversion imprinted in the astral body are transformed into a magnetic force of attraction in the period between death and rebirth. The soul becomes bound to that which it has rejected (Rudolf Steiner, Occult Investigations into Life Between Death and Rebirth, GA 140).

Therefore, it is not far-fetched to hypothesise that today’s genocidal atrocities against the Palestinian people are the work of the same souls who carried out the Endlösung, or the ‘final solution to the Jewish question’, eighty years ago.
As the years 2030–2033 approach, we can expect further escalation of violence, which will leave the Holy Land drenched in blood and overwhelmed by hatred. This will hinder the commemoration of significant Christian anniversaries: the 2000^(th) anniversary of Christ’s birth in a human body (2030) and His death and resurrection on Golgotha (2033).

The exceptionalism propagated by Zionists is the root of racism and inhumanity, manifesting as hatred between peoples. However, all hatred between peoples is simultaneously a struggle against the spirit. It is precisely because our age is so inclined to struggle against the spirit that it possesses such a talent for hatred between peoples. This is one of the deepest secrets of our present spiritual culture (Rudolf Steiner, Inner Impulses of Evolution, The Mexican Mysteries, The Knights Templar, GA 171).

Therefore, it is increasingly necessary for us all to guard against narratives of hostility and the demonisation of other peoples or races. Overcoming hatred on both an individual and national level is the only hope of averting the total destruction of our civilisation.

This includes hatred towards those who hate.