The Opiate of the Revolutionary
CW: genocide, fear, destruction of cultural heritage
If your utopia is a society without ethnic, cultural or religious identities... I don't trust you, I fear you, the idea of you and your ilk at the reigns of power is an existential threat.
No matter what social or economic conditions you imagine will bring about this homogeneous world without pressure or coercion, it simply will not... And so like every other governing entity throughout history that has found subject peoples unwilling to assimilate you will turn to force.
You say we will not exist and we will be happy for it. But I have seen Torah scrolls decaying behind glass in a monastery, taken as trophies of the inquisition. I have seen bins filled with tefillin, taken as trophies of the Third Reich who built a museum expecting it to explain a people that used to exist. I have seen the triumphal arch depicting the sacking of the Temple in Jerusalem, the Menorah carried away by the Romans.
You say we will not exist, and I see in my vision our places of community burning. I see our holy items confiscated and destroyed. I see my people fleeing wherever they can and hiding when they must. I see us surviving still, as we always have.
A revolution that doesn't liberate us on our terms is trading one oppressive society for another, no matter your good intentions.
עם ישראל חי
I have never, ever considered this perspective and I am so glad to have read this. I need to go fix some of my fiction ideas
The greatest trick Christianity ever pulled was convincing the world that the elimination of other cultures and the goal of “universal brotherhood” was liberation rather than empire.