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| "Fascism: Any program for setting up a centralized autocratic national regime with severely nationalistic
policies, exercising regimentation of industry, commerce, and finance, rigid censorship, and forcible suppression of opposition."
--Merriam-Webster Dictionary "Fascism may be defined as a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation, or victim-hood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy, and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites , abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion." - Robert Paxton That, in its essence, is fascism -- ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt - “National Socialism was a revulsion by my friends against parliamentary politics, parliamentary debate, parliamentary government—against all the higgling and the haggling of the parties and the splinter parties, their coalitions, their confusions, and their conniving. It was the final fruit of the common man's repudiation of 'the rascals'. Its motif was, 'Throw them all out.' I fooled myself. I had to. Everybody has to. If the good had been twice as good and the bad only half as bad, I still ought to have seen it. But I didn't want to see it, because I would have then had to think about the consequences of seeing it, what followed from seeing it, what I must do to be decent. I wanted my home and family, my job, my career, a place in the community.” Milton Mayer, They Thought They Were Free- |
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You can view neofascism as fixed state ( fixed social system), or as a trend to more extreme forms of nationalism and more close alliance of large corporations and the state under neoliberalism. I view it more like a trend, with the revival of far right nationalism as a reaction on excesses of neoliberalization and destruction of the civil society under neoliberalism with its cult of globalization. Kind of neoliberal globalization blowback.
In its essence fascism is a form of crisis management via imposing of the society military style organization. Fascism grows if three factors are in place. First, a nation must be in a severe economic crisis. Second, people must believe that existing institutions and government parties cannot improve the situation. The third ingredient is a sense that a country used to be great.
The key feature of neofascism is a more flexible and more sophisticated mechanism of suppression of opposition, which no longer rely solely on brute force like in classical fascism but more on the combination of total surveillance with powerful propaganda machine. They also learned to operate within the framework of parliamentary democracy, not striving to depose it as during "fascist quarter century" in Europe 1919-1945.) It is still denounced as degenerate, corrupt, and incapable of dealing with current problems -- the charge that is, unfortunately, not totally untrue if we think about Russiagate and look as such players as Schiff, Pelosi, Trump, Biden, etc.
At the same time the role surveillance agencies as the backbone of any fascist or neofascist regime only strengthened. So in a way parliamentary democracy became a Potemkin village, an illusion to placate masses. RussiaGate is just a nice example here: in best traditions on NKVD anybody can be declared a Russia spy (which a mirrors NKVD tactic to declare such people British spies) and put under such a pressure that he accept this change. Threat to prosecute children are especially effective as General Flynn case had shown.
While a different movement then classic fascism, neofascism retained to a large extent several features of classic fascism such as extreme militarism, disregard for the historic rights of others, drive for Lebensraum, and fear of extinction. It is undeniable that fascism played an important role in European culture since at least since 1920 (if not from 1905 if we count from Vladimir Purishkevich and the Union of the Russian People). The key "justification" for fascism was always its extreme anti-communism. It should not be thought, however, that fascism was exclusively shaped by its hostility to communism; the key here is that at some point of social crisis (and we can talk about the crisis of neoliberalism now with the same certainty as the crisis of capitalism in 1920th) a part of the elite (and first of all financial elite), fearing the people may use their political democracy to gain economic democracy, begins to destroy political democracy in order to retain its power of exploitation and special privileges.
And while created and supported by financial oligarchy is did not represent obiendient child. Even during its classic period fascism displayed large variations. There were traditionalist "protofascist" regimes (e.g., Horthy, Pilsudski, Alexander of Yugoslavia, Salazar), less traditionalist regimes (e.g., Franco), non-traditionalist regimes (e.g., Mussolini), and anti-traditionalist, radical regimes (e.g., Hitler's Nazi Germany)
Fascism was the first ideology (neoliberalism is the second as such can be viewed as related to the classic fascism; some kind of merger of fascism and Trotskyism) openly based on deception: "the governments that have emerged from the fascist movements never actually pursued policies that are economically populist, were used by them during elections and brought them to power".
Fascist and neofascist governments are always pro-monopolies, not pro-people. They serve as the last bastion of financial oligarchy against popular discontent. The root of the rise of neofascism (and far right nationalism, which is close but differs in in the social program part, see below) is the impoverishment of working (both blue and lower strata of white collar) and lower middle class under neoliberalism. Creation of a mass of students with no future, and disenfranchised, impoverished mass of veterans after WWI were critical for the emergence of the classic fascism.
To what extent this is true for neofascism as a reaction on crisis of neoliberalism (which started in 2008 and so far did not end producing "permanent stagnation") remain to be seen. Extreme inequality, and the threat from neoliberal globalization to the existence of nation-states definitely feed far right nationalism which became a political factor in Europe (Poland, Hungary, Ukraine, France, Baltic republics; even Belorussia ) In other words, neoliberalism is a powerful enabler of both neofascism and far right nationalism.
Like Bolshevism fascism is just another party oligarchy centered, “top- down ” [ that is, controlled/managed by the elite at the top of the party and state apparatus], bound-to-fail [for the masses], economic system of expropriation, to benefit the narrow strata of people defined as Ubermench and impoverish everyone else.
Simplifying neofascism means classic fascism with the following major features removed/modified:
Neofascism rejects or revise several postulates of fascism:
Neofascism like classic fascism is a derivative of corporatism (control of the state by financial oligarchy and large industrialists) and political power still belongs to the capitalists, but the preference is given to "national" monopolies and large banks instead of transnational. So while all pigs are created equal some pigs are not equal then others. All-in-all neofascism ideology proved to be compatible with neoliberalism, and allows emergence of such flavors as Trump's "national neoliberalism."
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Neofascism is compatible with neoliberalism and allows emergence of such flavors as Trump's "national neoliberalism." Like Neoliberalism Fascism uses Social Darwinism as its base |
In the USA the main part of the neoliberal elite (or more correctly several different parts of the neoliberal elite) support the current shift to neofascism and far right nationalism. Among them are "imperial servants" and what Eisenhower defined as "military-industrial complex." The latter includes politicized intelligences agencies (the "Deep state" in a narrow sense of this word). In this sense Russiagate is a the second stage of the shift to neofascism in the USA after Bush II regime unleashed series of neocolonial wars after 9/11 (which in this sense is an equivalent to Reichstag fire)
At the same time neofascism has a large number of common elements with fascism. Among them:
It is important to understand that neofascism inherits all major elements of fascism foreign policy. It is interesting to compare definition of neofascism with the definition of Neoconservatism. The latter, according to Wikipedia was defined by prominent neocons Robert Kagan as:
In 2008, Kagan wrote an article titled "Neocon Nation: Neoconservatism, c. 1776" for World Affairs, describing the main components of American Neoconservatism as
- A belief in the rectitude of applying US moralism to the world stage,
- Support for the US to act alone,
- The promotion of American-style liberty and democracy in other countries,
- The belief in American hegemony,[31]
- The confidence in US military power,
- a distrust of international institutions.[32]
According to Kagan, his foreign-policy views are "deeply rooted in American history and widely shared by Americans".[33]
As we can see in foreign policy Neoconservatism and neofascism are almost identical. I would say that the idea of Neoconservatism was to take fascist foreign policy and recreate it as a separate political supremacist movement using Trotskyism with its idea of "World revolution" as the common glue.
In this sense, the victory of the USA after WWII quickly backfired as with the creation of Truman powerful and uncontrollable intelligence agencies and McCarthyism campaign the key elements of neofascism quickly emerged within the country. Especially important in this sense was the creation by Truman powerful intelligence agencies (CIA and FBI) and JFK assassination in 1963. It is also important to remember that the first McCarthyism hysteria lasted for over decade.
This two developments created preconditions for the slide toward the flavor of neofascism which prominent political scientist Sheldon Wolin called "inverted totalitarism". The existence of a powerful intelligence agencies (or network of such agencies -- the Deep state in a narrow sense) is a litmus test for "inverted totalitarism". As soon a Truman created CIA such the slide became inevitable and 1963 was in this sense the defining year after which we can consider the USA has have "inverted totalitarism" regime established. The dominance of intelligence agencies and assumption by them of political functions is a very important indication of the slide toward neofascism, as it the size of the military budget in general. In a way, the role of military establishment in general and intelligence agencies in particular in the rise of neofascism deserves more detailed study.
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The role of military establishment in general and intelligence agencies in particular in the rise of neofascism deserves more detailed study. |
The natural logic of evolution of powerful intelligence agencies presuppose acquiring by them political function (JFK assassination happened just after 15 years of existence of CIA) as well as assuming of FBI the critical role in crushing the political dissent (FBI under Edgar Hoover). If we view intelligence agencies as special, semi-controlled by the state type of organized crime (and sometimes they have ties with organized crime and are involved in narcotrade and arms trade) there are some similarities with the term "mafia state":
The term mafia state is a political buzzword to describe a state system where the government is tied with organized crime, including when government officials, police, and/or military take part in illicit enterprises.[1] The term mafia is a reference to any organized crime groups strongly connected with the authorities.
According to the critics of the mafia state concept, the term "has now been so used and abused in popularized descriptions of organized criminal activity that it has lost much of its analytic value".[2]
The term may also be used in a positive sense, and be used to describe a political system in which the government has been replaced by organized crime.
As for political role of intelligence agencies, in 2016 the US intelligence agencies (mainly CIA and FBI) definitely attempted to become "kingmakers" in the national election (although previously CIA also played crucial role in Carter defeat, as well as Nixon impeachment; not this not the first case). After they failed to prevent Trump from being elected they launched a color revolution against him (known mostly under the term of Russiagate). Other measures are taken against politicians who deviate too much from the accepted "Party line" in best traditions of blackmail by Gestapo, STASI and NKVD. Assassinations in case the politician who is classified as "hopeless" or "dangerous" is another. Robert Kennedy assassination probably belongs to this case.
In this sense no society with powerful intelligence agencies (be it CIA, MI6, FSB, Mossad, etc) can not be properly called democracy as it has one of the most important elements of neofascism imbedded in the particular society. From the moment of their creation the process of politization and the loss of civil control over intelligence services is an inevitable process, which is difficult to control, although some countries fared better in this respect then the other. As soon as politization reach critical state and "the tail starts waging the dog": such agencies very quickly assume purely political function (such as "kingmakers") and start behaving like the Praetorian Guard in Rome.
Intelligences agencies also play prominent role in brainwashing the population, as they often covertly control substantial part of the national press and the major part of foreign correspondents corps. Former CIA Director William Casey quote "We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false" (I think the quote has two levels: level one is about foreign events coverage in the USA; the level two is about CIA attempt to deceive Soviet intelligence which like the US intelligence relied for 80% of their data on public sources ). in proper historical context this can be viewed as a refined statement about importance of creation of national myth under neofascism and the level of distortion of foreign events coverage which is the hallmark of any fascist or neofascist regime. It can be attributed to any the major fascist propagandas machine official, such as Goebbels.
Elimination of political figures using trump up changes of foreign conspiracy is the most obvious sign of politicized intelligence agencies. This essentially makes political dissent a dangerous activity because they are framed as stooges (or worse agents ) of the foreign state. This is the key feature of all fascists and neofascist states (as well as Bolsheviks regime -- look at Stalin "Show Trials") . While McCarthyism period was a specific for the US decade, similar periods can be observed in other nations too.
And now McCarthyism was re-ignited on new level with the framework of Russiagate. In this sense the current color revolution against Trump (aka Russiagate) can be interpreted as a sign of a new stage of sliding of the USA toward neofascism. Please note the that in this case intelligence agencies clearly assumed important political role. As Patrick Martin noted (Inside The FBI's 'Police State' Operation Against Trump, Jan 23, 2019, Off-guardian.org)
The Times article goes on to describe how FBI officials monitored the platform adopted at the Republican National Convention, reporting that the spy agency "watched with alarm as the Republican Party softened its convention platform on the Ukraine crisis in a way that seemed to benefit Russia." That is, the nation's top police agency was concerned that the positions adopted contravened certain basic tenets of dominant sections of the foreign policy establishment.
By what constitutional authority can the FBI, based on political positions adopted by one or the other of the two main capitalist parties, open up a secret investigation into treason and conspiracy? Such an operation bespeaks a police state and recalls the methods of the Stalinist NKVD.
The agency also investigated four of Trump's campaign aides over possible ties to Russia, and even made use of the notorious Steele dossier, consisting of anti-Trump gossip collated from Russian sources by a former British intelligence agent on the payroll of the Democratic Party.
After Trump fired Comey, according to the Times , "law enforcement officials became so concerned by the president's behavior that they began investigating whether he had been working on behalf of Russia against American interests. Counterintelligence investigators had to consider whether the president's own actions constituted a possible threat to national security. Agents also sought to determine whether Mr. Trump was knowingly working for Russia or had unwittingly fallen under Moscow's influence."
The operations of the FBI, encouraged, aided and abetted by the Times , recall the paranoid rantings of the John Birch Society, the ultra-right group formed in the 1950s, whose founder, Robert Welch, notoriously claimed that President Dwight D. Eisenhower, the former World War II commander of Allied forces in Europe, was a "a dedicated, conscious agent of the Communist conspiracy."
Claims that once were the province of an extremist group, on the fringes of American politics, are now embraced by the military-intelligence apparatus, appear on the front page of the most influential American daily newspaper, and dominate the network and cable television news.
But these allegations have no credibility. Why should anyone believe claims that Trump, at age 70, after decades as a real estate mogul, con man and media celebrity, with a billion-dollar fortune, suddenly decided to throw in his lot with Vladimir Putin? Even the Times report itself concedes, in a single sentence buried in the 2,000-word text, "No evidence has emerged publicly that Mr. Trump was secretly in contact with or took direction from Russian government officials."
The third defining feature is rampant militarism and open disregard of all international norms ("might makes right" mentality). That include the pipe dream of "full spectrum dominance" which is the USA neoliberal elite goal since 1991 -- the year of the collapse of the USSR. The USA under Trump administration actually pursued openly disregard international law. Please note that all Presidents since Clinton pursued this policy. Only the degree of violation of international norms varied between those presidencies. all four "post-Soviet" (Clinton, Bush, and Obama and Trump) launched aggressive wars under false pretences (with Bush and Obama -- multiple wars; Trump so far only color revolution in Venezuela with Iran as a possible next step)
One interesting nuance that distinguishes the recent mutation of neofascism in the USA from all previous versions is that political mobilization of masses are discouraged under neoliberalism. "Go shopping" was famous Bush II recommendation to US citizens after the 9/11, while he pushed Patriot act which essentially make intelligence agencies key political actors in the USA, the role which they played both in Third Reich and Stalin regime. In this sense it is important to understand that the use of the term "fascism" by neoliberal propaganda more often then not constitute projection and neoliberalism always carry within itself strong elements of neofascism, and they became even stronger when neoliberalism entered an ideological crisis in 2008.
In a sense the notorious female warmonger and former Secretary of State under Bill Clinton Madeleine Albright (of Yugoslav bombing face and her remark about Iraq children) with her book Fascism A Warning screaming the certain Central European states are sliding toward neofascism is a classic example The pot calling the kettle black. The same is true about primitive (and corrupt) neocon warmonger like Max Boot (chickenhawk who cheerleadered Iraq invasion; see The Iraq War cheerleaders who are still around 15 years later) who claim that Putin is a fascist dictator. Putin probably can be called authoritarian ruler, but he is a neoliberal. If he can be called "fascist dictator" then both Nobel price winner Barack Obama (with his past connections to CIA via his mother family and wars of aggression in Libya and Syria) and Trump with his "humanitarian bombings" of Syria, clear authoritarian tendencies, nepotism and pandering to the oligarchy (Trump tax cuts) are fascist dictators two. In this sense it is important to abstract from neoliberal/neocon propaganda of the USA MSM in order better understand this complex and interesting issue. Aggressive militaristic posture, cult of militarism in the society, are classic features of fascism and neofascism.
And only very naive person can deny the fact that cult of militarism in the USA is an official state policy. Whether of not neocons can be called neofascists is an interesting and so far unresolved question. But the fact that their foreign policy is identical to neofascist policies is undisputable.
By Nuremberg principles all US officials who participated in unleashing Iraq war are war criminals
Principle VI[edit]
The crimes hereinafter set out are punishable as crimes under international law:
- (a) Crimes against peace:
- (i) Planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements or assurances;
- (ii) Participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of any of the acts mentioned under (i).
- (b) War crimes:
- Violations of the laws or customs of war which include, but are not limited to, murder, ill-treatment or deportation to slave labor or for any other purpose of civilian population of or in occupied territory; murder or ill-treatment of prisoners of war or persons on the Seas, killing of hostages, plunder of public or private property, wanton destruction of cities, towns, or villages, or devastation not justified by military necessity.
- (c) Crimes against humanity:
- Murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation and other inhumane acts done against any civilian population, or persecutions on political, racial, or religious grounds, when such acts are done or such persecutions are carried on in execution of or in connection with any crime against peace or any war crime.
Principle VII[edit]
Complicity in the commission of a crime against peace, a war crime, or a crime against humanity as set forth in Principle VI is a crime under international law.
According to Marxist doctrine Fascism is a class term. The Fascist Offensive and the Tasks of the Communist International in the Struggle of the Working Class against Fascism
It describes a mass movement of the petty-bourgeoisie that seeks to destroy all vestiges of the working-class movement. Fascism is a violent, procapitalist mass movement of the middle-class that employs socialist phrase-mongering.
Adapted from Fascism and neofascism (by L. Proyect)
Fascism is the most extreme form of counterrevolution. Counterrevolution itself only emerges as a response to revolution. Nazism, for example, didn't arrive because the German people all of a sudden lost their bearings from an overdose of Wagner's operas and Nietzsche's aphorisms. It arrived at a time when massive worker's parties threatened bourgeois rule during a period of terrible economic hardship. Big capital backed Hitler as a last resort. The Nazis represented reactionary politics gone berserk. Not only could Nazism attack worker's parties, it could also attack powerful institutions of the ruling class, including its churches, media, intellectuals, parties and individual families and individuals. Fascism is not a scalpel. It is a very explosive, uncontrollable weapon that can also inflict some harm on its wielder.
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Bonapartism, populism and fascism overlap to a striking degree. We see elements of fascism, populism and Bonapartism in the politics of Pat Buchanan. Buchanan rails against African-Americans and immigrants, both documented and undocumented. He also rails against Wall St. which is "selling out" the working man. Is he a fascist, however? Ross Perot employs a number of the same themes. Is he?
The problem in trying to answer these questions solely on the basis of someone's speeches or writings is that it ignores historical and class dynamics. Bonaparte and Hitler emerged as a response to powerful proletrian revolutionary attacks on capital. What are the objective conditions in American society today? Hitler based their power on large-scale social movements that could put tens of thousands of people into the streets at a moment's notice. These movements were not creatures of capitalist cabals. They had their own logic and their own warped integrity. Many were drawn to Hitler in the deluded hope that he would bring some kind of "all-German" socialism into existence. These followers were not Marxists, but they certainly hated the capitalist class. Are the people who attend Buchanan, Perot and Farrakhan rallies also in such a frenzied, revolutionary state of mind?
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Fascism is a class term. It describes a mass movement of the petty-bourgeoisie that seeks to destroy all vestiges of the working-class movement. This at least is the Marxist definition.
Fascism is not intolerance, bad attitudes, meanness or insensitivity. It is a violent, procapitalist mass movement of the middle-class that employs socialist phrase-mongering
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The target of McCarthyite "fascism" was the working-class and its unions. The Militant stated on January 18, 1954:
"If the workers' organizations don't have the answer, the fascists will utilize the rising discontent of the middle class, its disgust with the blundering labor leadership, and its frenzy at being ruined economically, to build a mass fascist movement with armed detachments and hurl them at the unions. While spouting a lot of radical-sounding demagogy they will deflect the anti-capitalist wrath of the middle class and deploy it against labor, and establish the iron- heel dictatorship of Big Capital on the smoking ruins of union halls."
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In the face of the atomization of the US working class, it is no surprise that many workers seem to vote for Buchanan. He offers them a variant on the personal solution. A worker may say to himself or herself, "Ah, this Buchanan's a racist bigot, but he's the only one who seems to care about what's happening to me. I'll take a gamble and give him my vote." Voting is not politics. It is the opposite of politics. It is the capitalist system's mechanism for preventing political action.
2) Buchanan is a bourgeois politician.
Pat Buchanan represents the thinking of an element of the US ruling class, and views the problems of the United States from within that perspective. Buchanan's nationalism relates very closely to the nationalism of Ross Perot, another ruling class politician.
A consensus exists among the ruling class that US capital must take a global route. The capitalist state must eliminate trade barriers and capital must flow to where there is greatest possibility for profit. Buchanan articulates the resentments of a section of the bourgeoisie that wants to resist this consensus. It would be an interesting project to discover where Buchanan gets his money. This would be a more useful of one's time than comparing his speeches to Father Coughlin or Benito Mussolini's.
Still the rise of far right nationalism movement in Europe is an important political factor of modern times. And many ask question: Is this the neofascism or not? I view it more like the reaction to neoliberalism that neofascism some elements of neofascism: both are variations of corporatism. But at the same time fascism in many of its elements is identical to the reaction of any society on grave threat. And neoliberal globalization represents such a threat. Which makes reaction of some Eastern European states look similar to neofascism, but each incarnation of neofascism has important differences and neofascism movements that emerged after 2008 differ from classic fascism movements of 1930th in many key elements.
Again, as used in the USA neoliberal MSM the terms "fascism" or "neofascism" more often then not constitutes projection. Despicable warmongers, especially female neocon Madeleine Albright exploits those terms as a powerful propaganda cliché ( Everything Madeleine Albright Doesn’t Like is Fascism ). In the review of her book Guillaume Durocher noted:
Opponents of American imperialism will observe that Albright's list of quasi-Fascist states corresponds quite closely with those who have opposed U.S. foreign policies in recent decades. There is barely a word about America's authoritarian allies Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States.
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Strikingly, the word "Netanyahu" does not appear in the book's Index at all. The existence of a democratic ethno-nationalist state goes against her whole narrative. For what it's worth, I suspect most people in European nationalist parties and in the Alt-Right would be happy to preserve democracy if they could have their own Netanyahus, with the establishment of Western ethnostates dedicated to their own people, with the explicit goal of preserving or restoring ethnic European demographic supermajorities.
This selectivity will encourage the impression that the State Department's talk of "human rights" has less to do with upholding universal moral principles than with demonizing the United States' geopolitical opponents du jour . The American Establishment does not bully China as much as Russia, despite being obviously more authoritarian. I suspect this is because China is already too big to bully, while Russia can still be pushed around and serve as a useful bogeyman (always useful to the Military-Industrial Complex, the National Security State, and for all the Establishmentarians who need a scapegoat for the rise of populism). On that note, I suspect most diplomatic conflicts today have less to do with "realist" international power dynamics than with the utility of foreign enemies for governments domestically.
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In a dictatorship, the elimination of political and ideological pluralism means that the country can enjoy political stability. This, by the way, is crucial in multiethnic countries such as Yugoslavia or Iraq, for which the fall of the dictatorship and democratization led to atrocious ethno-religious civil war. As Lee Kuan Yew , my favorite antidote to the political childishness that prevails in the West today, said concerning his multiracial state of Singapore: "We had to lock up people, without trial, whether they are communists, whether they are language chauvinists, or religious extremists. If you don't do that the country would be in ruins today!" Few things have been as murderous as the promotion of "democracy" in Iraq, Libya, and Syria, a policy which, not coincidentally, has destroyed several geopolitical opponents of Israel.
In any case, it is important to understand that corporatism is a very resilient political system, which can take many forms and mutate from one form into another. With some being if fierce conflict with each other. Both "classic neoliberalism" and "national neoliberalism" are flavors of the same political system -- corporatism. One promotes globalism including using the force of arms for opening countries to transnational corporations and financial institutions, the other rejects it and promote strengthening of national borders and wars on weaker nations as the way of solving internal problems.
The USA is the example of the country which set a precedent for Deep State type of corporatism structure: Tweed's system was the corrupt mafia-style organization with the level of cohesion so strong that it lasted for decades (Tammny Hall's political patronage "machine" thrived from 1850's to the 1930's.) It was described as:
It's hard not to admire the skill behind Tweed's system ... The Tweed ring at its height was an engineering marvel, strong and solid, strategically deployed to control key power points: the courts, the legislature, the treasury and the ballot box. Its frauds had a grandeur of scale and an elegance of structure: money-laundering, profit sharing and organization [organized crime].
All forms of fascism (aka "national socialism") are forms of corporatism and as such are based on the merger of government and corporations. From classic fascism modern form borrowed the role of intelligence agencies. But, in a sense we can view intelligence agencies as powerful corporations with the majority stakes on government and minor stake of Wall-Street (especially, in case of CIA) and add them to the list of corporations, as they operate semi-independently from the government and often have goals which does not correlate (and sometimes are opposite) with the goals of executive branch especially in foreign policy.
They form the core of so called Deep State and position themselves of a new praetorian guard that makes of breaks presidential candidates at will. The suppression of Hillary Clinton "emailgate" investigation, surveillance over Trump campaign and launching by intelligence services color revolution against Trump (aka Russiagate) after Presidential election of 2016 in the USA are just most prominent illustration of this trend. Derailing Sanders by suppressing emailgate definitely position them as kingmakers Here we are talking about CIA, FBI and the State Department. The role of NSA is not that clear and is somewhat controversial, due to Admiral Mike Rogers warning to Trump (The Last Refuge, Mar 3, 2017).
Fascism combines nationalism, militarism and revival/rebirth of nation fantasies in a unique but very eclectic and self-contradicting framework. It simply lacks a coherent theoretical/ideological core: oscillating between elitism and populism, between anti-capitalist and anti-socialist themes, and between ethnic and cultural nationalism. In all cases fascist movements (and often modern neofascist movements) offers an alternative to liberal and neoliberal ideology and social practice, making the nationalism as the core of the resistance to neoliberal globalization.
The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence is a 1974 controversial non-fiction political book written by Victor Marchetti, a former special assistant to the Deputy Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, and John D. Marks, a former officer of the United States Department of State. The book discusses how the CIA works and how its original purpose (i.e. collecting and analyzing information about foreign governments, corporations, and persons in order to advise public policymakers) has, according to the author, been subverted by its obsession with clandestine operations.
The book was a critically acclaimed bestseller whose publication contributed to the establishment of the Church Committee, a United States Senate select committee to study governmental operations with respect to intelligence activities, in 1975. The book was published in paperback by Dell Publishing in 1975.
Victor Marchetti used the expression "cult of intelligence" to denounce what he viewed as a counterproductive mindset and culture of secrecy, elitism, amorality and lawlessness within and surrounding the Central Intelligence Agency in the service of American imperialism:
There exists in our nation today a powerful and dangerous secret cult -- the cult of intelligence. Its holy men are the clandestine professionals of the Central Intelligence Agency. Its patrons and protectors are the highest officials of the federal government. Its membership, extending far beyond governmental circles, reaches into the power centers of industry, commerce, finance, and labor. Its friends are many in the areas of important public influence -- the academic world and the communications media.
The cult of intelligence is a secret fraternity of the American political aristocracy. The purpose of the cult is to further the foreign policies of the U.S. government by covert and usually illegal means, while at the same time containing the spread of its avowed enemy, communism. Traditionally, the cult's hope has been to foster a world order in which America would reign supreme, the unchallenged international leader.
Today, however, that dream stands tarnished by time and frequent failures. Thus, the cult's objectives are now less grandiose, but no less disturbing. It seeks largely to advance America's self-appointed role as the dominant arbiter of social, economic, and political change in the awakening regions of Asia, Africa, and Latin America. And its worldwide war against communism has to some extent been reduced to a covert struggle to maintain a self-serving stability in the Third World, using whatever clandestine methods are available.[1]
In his 1978 memoir, Honorable Men: My Life in the CIA, William Colby, a former Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, endorsed Marchetti's critique and adopted the use of the expression "cult of intelligence":
Socially as well as professionally they cliqued together, forming a sealed fraternity. They ate together at their own special favorite restaurants; they partied almost only among themselves; their families drifted to each other, so their defenses did not always have to be up. In this way they increasingly separated themselves from the ordinary world and developed a rather skewed view of that world.
Their own dedicated double life became the proper norm, and they looked down on the life of the rest of the citizenry.
And out of this grew what was later named -- and condemned -- as the "cult" of intelligence, an inbred, distorted, elitist view of intelligence that held it to be above the normal processes of society, with its own rationale and justification, beyond the restraints of the Constitution, which applied to everything and everyone else.[5]
Control of MSM by intelligence agencies is another important feature of neofascism ( The CIA and the MSM 50 Facts the World Needs to Know Humans Are Free):
This is exactly the reason why news organizations and individual journalists are tapped as assets by intelligence agencies and, as the experiences of German journalist Udo Ulfkotte (entry 47 below) suggest, this practice is at least as widespread today as it was at the height of the Cold War.Consider the cover-ups of election fraud in 2000 and 2004, the events of September 11, 2001, the invasions Afghanistan and Iraq, the destabilization of Syria, and the creation of “ISIS.”
These are among the most significant events in recent world history, and yet they are also those much of the American public is wholly ignorant of. In an era where information and communication technologies are ubiquitous, prompting many to harbor the illusion of being well-informed, one must ask why this condition persists.
Further, why do prominent US journalists routinely fail to question other deep events that shape America’s tragic history over the past half century, such as the political assassinations of the 1960s, or the central role played by the CIA major role in international drug trafficking?
Popular and academic commentators have suggested various reasons for the almost universal failure of mainstream journalism in these areas, including newsroom sociology, advertising pressure, monopoly ownership, news organizations’ heavy reliance on “official” sources, and journalists’ simple quest for career advancement.
There is also, no doubt, the influence of professional public relations maneuvers. Yet such a broad conspiracy of silence suggests another province of deception examined far too infrequently — specifically the CIA and similar intelligence agencies’ continued involvement in the news media to mold thought and opinion in ways scarcely imagined by the lay public.
The following historical and contemporary facts–by no means exhaustive–provides a glimpse of how the power such entities possess to influence if not determine popular memory and what respectable institutions deem to be the historical record.
- The CIA’s Operation MOCKINGBIRD is a long-recognized keystone among researchers pointing to the Agency’s clear interest in and relationship to major US news media. MOCKINGBIRD grew out of the CIA’s forerunner, the Office for Strategic Services (OSS, 1942-47), which during World War Two had established a network of journalists and psychological warfare experts operating primarily in the European theatre.
- Many of the relationships forged under OSS auspices were carried over into the postwar era through a State Department-run organization called the Office of Policy Coordination (OPC) overseen by OSS staffer Frank Wisner.
- The OPC “became the fastest-growing unit within the nascent CIA,” historian Lisa Pease observes, “rising in personnel from 302 in 1949 to 2,812 in 1952, along with 3,142 overseas contract personnel. In the same period, the budget rose from $4.7 million to $82 million.” Lisa Pease, “The Media and the Assassination,” in James DiEugenio and Lisa Pease, The Assassinations: Probe Magazine on JFK, MLK, RFK and Malcolm X, Port Townsend, WA, 2003, 300.
- Like many career CIA officers, eventual CIA Director/Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) Richard Helms was recruited out of the press corps by his own supervisor at the United Press International’s Berlin Bureau to join in the OSS’s fledgling “black propaganda” program. “‘[Y]ou’re a natural,” Helms’ boss remarked. Richard Helms, A Look Over My Shoulder: A Life in the Central Intelligence Agency, New York: Random House, 2003, 30-31.
- Wisner tapped Marshall Plan funds to pay for his division’s early exploits, money his branch referred to as “candy.” “We couldn’t spend it all,” CIA agent Gilbert Greenway recalls. “I remember once meeting with Wisner and the comptroller. My God, I said, how can we spend that? There were no limits, and nobody had to account for it. It was amazing.” Frances Stonor Saunders, The Cultural Cold War: The CIA and the World of Arts and Letters, New York: The New Press, 2000, 105.
- When the OPC was merged with the Office of Special Operations in 1948 to create the CIA, OPC’s media assets were likewise absorbed.
- Wisner maintained the top secret “Propaganda Assets Inventory,” better known as “Wisner’s Wurlitzer”—a virtual rolodex of over 800 news and information entities prepared to play whatever tune Wisner chose. “The network included journalists, columnists, book publishers, editors, entire organizations such as Radio Free Europe, and stringers across multiple news organizations.” Pease, “The Media and the Assassination,” 300.
- A few years after Wisner’s operation was up-and-running he “’owned’ respected members of the New York Times, Newsweek, CBS, and other communication vehicles, plus stringers, four to six hundred in all, according to a CIA analyst. Each one was a separate ‘operation,’” investigative journalist Deborah Davis notes, “requiring a code name, a field supervisor, and a field office, at an annual cost of tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars—there has never been an accurate accounting.” Deborah Davis, Katharine the Great: Katharine Graham and the Washington Post Empire, Second Edition, Bethesda MD: National Press Inc, 1987, 139.
- Psychological operations in the form of journalism were perceived as necessary to influence and direct mass opinion, as well as elite perspectives. “[T]he President of the United States, the Secretary of State, Congressmen and even the Director of the CIA himself will read, believe, and be impressed by a report from Cy Sulzberger, Arnaud de Borchgrave, or Stewart Alsop when they don’t even bother to read a CIA report on the same subject,” noted CIA agent Miles Copeland. Cited in Pease, “The Media and the Assassination,” 301.
- By the mid-to-late 1950s, Darrell Garwood points out, the Agency sought to limit criticism directed against covert activity and bypass congressional oversight or potential judicial interference by “infiltrat[ing] the groves of academia, the missionary corps, the editorial boards of influential journal and book publishers, and any other quarters where public attitudes could be effectively influenced.” Darrell Garwood, Under Cover: Thirty-Five Years of CIA Deception, New York: Grove Press, 1985, 250.
- The CIA frequently intercedes in editorial decision-making. For example, when the Agency proceeded to wage an overthrow of the Arbenz regime in Guatemala in 1954, Allen and John Foster Dulles, President Eisenhower’s Secretary of State and CIA Director respectively, called upon New York Times publisher Arthur Hays Sulzberger to reassign reporter Sydney Gruson from Guatemala to Mexico City. Sulzberger thus placed Gruson in Mexico City with the rationale that some repercussions from the revolution might be felt in Mexico. Pease, “The Media and the Assassination,” 302.
- Since the early 1950s the CIA “has secretly bankrolled numerous foreign press services, periodicals and newspapers—both English and foreign language—which provided excellent cover for CIA operatives,” Carl Bernstein reported in 1977. “One such publication was the Rome Daily American, forty percent of which was owned by the CIA until the 1970s.” Carl Bernstein, “The CIA and the Media,” Rolling Stone, October 20, 1977.
- The CIA exercised informal liaisons with news media executives, in contrast to its relationships with salaried reporters and stringers, “who were much more subject to direction from the Agency” according to Bernstein. “A few executives—Arthur Hays Sulzberger of the New York Times among them—signed secrecy agreements. But such formal understandings were rare: relationships between Agency officials and media executives were usually social—’The P and Q Street axis in Georgetown,’ said one source. ‘You don’t tell William Paley to sign a piece of paper saying he won’t fink.’” Director of CBS William Paley’s personal “friendship with CIA Director Dulles is now known to have been one of the most influential and significant in the communications industry,” author Debora Davis explains. “He provided cover for CIA agents, supplied out-takes of news film, permitted the debriefing of reporters, and in many ways set the standard for the cooperation between the CIA and major broadcast companies which lasted until the mid-1970s.” Deborah Davis, Katharine the Great: Katharine Graham and the Washington Post, Second Edition, Bethesda MD: National Press Inc, 1987, 175.
- “The Agency’s relationship with the Times was by far its most valuable among newspapers, according to CIA officials,” Bernstein points out in his key 1977 article. “From 1950 to 1966, about ten CIA employees were provided Times cover under arrangements approved by the newspaper’s late publisher, Arthur Hays Sulzberger. The cover arrangements were part of a general Times policy—set by Sulzberger—to provide assistance to the CIA whenever possible.” In addition, Sulzberger was a close friend of CIA Director Allen Dulles. “’At that level of contact it was the mighty talking to the mighty,’ said a high‑level CIA official who was present at some of the discussions. ‘There was an agreement in principle that, yes indeed, we would help each other. The question of cover came up on several occasions. It was agreed that the actual arrangements would be handled by subordinates…. The mighty didn’t want to know the specifics; they wanted plausible deniability.’” Bernstein, “The CIA and the Media.”
- CBS’s Paley worked reciprocally with the CIA, allowing the Agency to utilize network resources and personnel. “It was a form of assistance that a number of wealthy persons are now generally known to have rendered the CIA through their private interests,” veteran broadcast journalist Daniel Schorr wrote in 1977. “It suggested to me, however, that a relationship of confidence and trust had existed between him and the agency.” Schorr points to “clues indicating that CBS had been infiltrated.” For example, “A news editor remembered the CIA officer who used to come to the radio control room in New York in the early morning, and, with the permission of persons unknown, listened to CBS correspondents around the world recording their ‘spots’ for the ‘World News Roundup’ and discussing events with the editor on duty. Sam Jaffe claimed that when he applied in 1955 for a job with CBS, a CIA officer told him that he would be hired–which he subsequently was. He was told that he would be sent to Moscow–which he subsequently was; he was assigned in 1960 to cover the trial of U-2 pilot Francis Gary Powers. [Richard] Salant told me,” Schorr continues, “that when he first became president of CBS News in 1961, a CIA case officer called saying he wanted to continue the ‘long standing relationship known to Paley and [CBS president Frank] Stanton, but Salant was told by Stanton there was no obligation that he knew of” (276). Schorr, Daniel. Clearing the Air, Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1977, 277, 276.
- National Enquirer publisher Gene Pope Jr. worked briefly on the CIA’s Italy desk in the early 1950s and maintained close ties with the Agency thereafter. Pope refrained from publishing dozens of stories with “details of CIA kidnappings and murders, enough stuff for a year’s worth of headlines” in order to “collect chits, IOUs,” Pope’s son writes. “He figured he’d never know when he might need them, and those IOUs would come in handy when he got to 20 million circulation. When that happened, he’d have the voice to be almost his own branch of government and would need the cover.” Paul David Pope, The Deeds of My Fathers: How My Grandfather and Father Built New York and Created the Tabloid World of Today, New York: Phillip Turner/Rowman & Littlefield, 2010, 309, 310.
- One explosive story Pope’s National Enquirer‘s refrained from publishing in the late 1970s centered on excerpts from a long-sought after diary of President Kennedy’s lover, Mary Pinchot Meyer, who was murdered on October 12, 1964. “The reporters who wrote the story were even able to place James Jesus Angleton, the CIA’s head of counterintelligence operations, at the scene.” Another potential story drew on “documents proving that [Howard] Hughes and the CIA had been connected for years and that the CIA was giving Hughes money to secretly fund, with campaign donations, twenty-seven congressmen and senators who sat on sub-committees critical to the agency. There are also fifty-three international companies named and sourced as CIA fronts .. and even a list of reporters for mainstream media organizations who were playing ball with the agency.” Pope, The Deeds of My Fathers, 309.
- Angleton, who oversaw the Agency counterintelligence branch for 25 years, “ran a completely independent group entirely separate cadre of journalist‑operatives who performed sensitive and frequently dangerous assignments; little is known about this group for the simple reason that Angleton deliberately kept only the vaguest of files.” Bernstein, “The CIA and the Media.”
- The CIA conducted a “formal training program” during the 1950s for the sole purpose of instructing its agents to function as newsmen. “Intelligence officers were ‘taught to make noises like reporters,’ explained a high CIA official, and were then placed in major news organizations with help from management. These were the guys who went through the ranks and were told ‘You’re going to he a journalist,’” the CIA official said.” The Agency’s preference, however, was to engage journalists who were already established in the industry. Bernstein, “The CIA and the Media.”
- Newspaper columnists and broadcast journalists with household names have been known to maintain close ties with the Agency. “There are perhaps a dozen well known columnists and broadcast commentators whose relationships with the CIA go far beyond those normally maintained between reporters and their sources,” Bernstein maintains. “They are referred to at the Agency as ‘known assets’ and can be counted on to perform a variety of undercover tasks; they are considered receptive to the Agency’s point of view on various subjects.” Bernstein, “The CIA and the Media.”
- Frank Wisner, Allen Dulles, and Washington Post publisher Phillip Graham were close associates, and the Post developed into one of the most influential news organs in the United States due to its ties with the CIA. The Post managers’ “individual relations with intelligence had in fact been the reason the Post Company had grown as fast as it did after the war,” Davis (172) observes. “[T]heir secrets were its corporate secrets, beginning with MOCKINGBIRD. Phillip Graham’s commitment to intelligence had given his friends Frank Wisner an interest in helping to make the Washington Post the dominant news vehicle in Washington, which they had done by assisting with its two most crucial acquisitions, the Times-Herald and WTOP radio and television stations.” Davis, Katharine the Great: Katharine Graham and the Washington Post, 172.
- In the wake of World War One the Woodrow Wilson administration placed journalist and author Walter Lippmann in charge of recruiting agents for the Inquiry, a first-of-its-kind ultra-secret civilian intelligence organization whose role involved ascertaining information to prepare Wilson for the peace negotiations, as well as identify foreign natural resources for Wall Street speculators and oil companies. The activities of this organization served as a prototype for the function eventually performed by the CIA, namely “planning, collecting, digesting, and editing the raw data,” notes historian Servando Gonzalez. “This roughly corresponds to the CIA’s intelligence cycle: planning and direction, collection, processing, production and analysis, and dissemination.” Most Inquiry members would later become members of the Council on Foreign Relations. Lippmann would go on to become the Washington Post’s best known columnists. Servando Gonzalez, Psychological Warfare and the New World Order: The Secret War Against the American People, Oakland, CA: Spooks Books, 2010, 50.
- The two most prominent US newsweeklies, Time and Newsweek, kept close ties with the CIA. “Agency files contain written agreements with former foreign correspondents and stringers for both the weekly newsmagazines,” according to Carl Bernstein. “Allen Dulles often interceded with his good friend, the late Henry Luce, founder of Time and Life magazines, who readily allowed certain members of his staff to work for the Agency and agreed to provide jobs and credentials for other CIA operatives who lacked journalistic experience.” Bernstein, “The CIA and the Media.”
- In his autobiography former CIA officer E. Howard Hunt quotes Bernstein’s “The CIA and the Media” article at length. “I know nothing to contradict this report,” Hunt declares, suggesting the investigative journalist of Watergate fame didn’t go far enough. “Bernstein further identified some of the country’s top media executives as being valuable assets to the agency … But the list of organizations that cooperated with the agency was a veritable ‘Who’s Who’ of the media industry, including ABC, NBC, the Associated Press, UPI, Reuters, Hearst Newspapers, Scripps-Howard, Newsweek magazine, and others.” E. Howard Hunt, American Spy: My Secret History in the CIA, Watergate, and Beyond, Hoboken NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2007, 150.
- When the first major exposé of the CIA emerged in 1964 with the publication of The Invisible Government by journalists David Wise and Thomas B. Ross, the CIA considered purchasing the entire printing to keep the book from the public, yet in the end judged against it. “To an extent that is only beginning to be perceived, this shadow government is shaping the lives of 190,000,000 Americans” authors Wise and Ross write in the book’s preamble. “Major decisions involving peace and war are taking place out of public view. An informed citizen might come to suspect that the foreign policy of the United States often works publicly in one direction and secretly through the Invisible Government in just the opposite direction.”Lisa Pease, “When the CIA’s Empire Struck Back,” Consortiumnews.com, February 6, 2014.
- Agency infiltration of the news media shaped public perception of deep events and undergirded the official explanations of such events. For example, the Warren Commission’s report on President John F. Kennedy’s assassination was met with almost unanimous approval by US media outlets. “I have never seen an official report greeted with such universal praise as that accorded the Warren Commission’s findings when they were made public on September 24, 1964,” recalls investigative reporter Fred Cook. “All the major television networks devoted special programs and analyses to the report; the next day the newspapers ran long columns detailing its findings, accompanied by special news analyses and editorials. The verdict was unanimous. The report answered all questions, left no room for doubt. Lee Harvey Oswald, alone and unaided, had assassinated the president of the United States.” Fred J. Cook, Maverick: Fifty Years of Investigative Reporting, G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1984, 276.
- In late 1966 the New York Times began an inquiry on the numerous questions surrounding President Kennedy’s assassination that were not satisfactorily dealt with by the Warren Commission. “It was never completed,” author Jerry Policoff observes, “nor would the New York Times ever again question the findings of the Warren Commission.” When the story was being developed the lead reporter at the Times‘ Houston bureau “said that he and others came up with ‘a lot of unanswered questions’ that the Times didn’t bother to pursue. ‘I’d be off on a good lead and then somebody’d call me off and send me out to California on another story or something. We never really detached anyone for this. We weren’t really serious.’” Jerry Policoff, “The Media and the Murder of John Kennedy,” in Peter Dale Scott, Paul L. Hoch and Russell Stetler, eds., The Assassinations: Dallas and Beyond, New York: Vintage, 1976, 265.
- When New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison embarked on an investigation of the JFK assassination in 1966 centering on Lee Harvey Oswald’s presence in New Orleans in the months leading up to November, 22, 1963, “he was cross-whipped with two hurricane blasts, one from Washington and one from New York,” historian James DiEugenio explains. The first, of course, was from the government, specifically the Central Intelligence Agency, the FBI, and to a lesser extent, the White House. The blast from New York was from the major mainstream media e.g. Time-Life and NBC. Those two communication giants were instrumental in making Garrison into a lightening rod for ridicule and criticism. This orchestrated campaign … was successful in diverting attention from what Garrison was uncovering by creating controversy about the DA himself.” DiEugenio, Preface, in William Davy, Let Justice Be Done: New Light on the Jim Garrison Investigation, Reston VA: Jordan Publishing, 1999.
- The CIA and other US intelligence agencies used the news media to sabotage Garrison’s 1966-69 independent investigation of the Kennedy assassination. Garrison presided over the only law enforcement agency with subpoena power to seriously delve into the intricate details surrounding JFK’s murder. One of Garrison’s key witnesses, Gordon Novel, fled New Orleans to avoid testifying before the Grand Jury assembled by Garrison. According to DiEugenio, CIA Director Allen “Dulles and the Agency would begin to connect the fugitive from New Orleans with over a dozen CIA friendly journalists who—in a blatant attempt to destroy Garrison’s reputation—would proceed to write up the most outrageous stories imaginable about the DA.” James DiEugenio, Destiny Betrayed: JFK, Cuba, and The Garrison Case, Second Edition, New York: SkyHorse Publishing, 2012, 235.
- CIA officer Victor Marchetti recounted to author William Davy that in 1967 while attending staff meetings as an assistant to then-CIA Director Richard Helms, “Helms expressed great concerns over [former OSS officer, CIA operative and primary suspect in Jim Garrison's investigation Clay] Shaw’s predicament, asking his staff, ‘Are we giving them all the help we can down there?’” William Davy, Let Justice Be Done: New Light on the Jim Garrison Investigation, Reston VA: Jordan Publishing, 1999.
- The pejorative dimensions of the term “conspiracy theory” were introduced into the Western lexicon by CIA “media assets,” as evidenced in the design laid out by Document 1035-960 Concerning Criticism of the Warren Report, an Agency communiqué issued in early 1967 to Agency bureaus throughout the world at a time when attorney Mark Lane’s Rush to Judgment was atop bestseller lists and New Orleans DA Garrison’s investigation of the Kennedy assassination began to gain traction.
- Time had close relations with the CIA stemming from the friendship of the magazine’s publisher Henry Luce and Eisenhower CIA chief Allen Dulles. When former newsman Richard Helms was appointed DCI in 1966 he “began to cultivate the press,” prompting journalists toward conclusions that placed the Agency in a positive light. As Time Washington correspondent Hugh Sidney recollects, “‘[w]ith [John] McCone and [Richard] Helms, we had a set-up when the magazine was doing something on the CIA, we went to them and put it before them … We were never misled.’ Similarly, when Newsweek decided in the fall of 1971 to do a cover story on Richard Helms and ‘The New Espionage,’ the magazine, according to a Newsweek staffer, went directly to the agency for much of the information. And the article … generally reflected the line that Helms was trying so hard to sell: that since the latter 1960s … the focus of attention and prestige within CIA’ had switched from the Clandestine Services to the analysis of intelligence, and that ‘the vast majority of recruits are bound for’ the Intelligence Directorate.” Victor Marchetti and John D. Marks, The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1974, 362-363.
- In 1970 Jim Garrison wrote and published the semi-autobiographical A Heritage of Stone, a work that examines how the New Orleans DA “discovered that the CIA operated within the borders of the United States, and how it took the CIA six months to reply to the Warren Commission’s question of whether Oswald and [Jack] Ruby had been with the Agency,” Garrison biographer and Temple University humanities professor Joan Mellen observes. “In response to A Heritage of Stone, the CIA rounded up its media assets” and the book was panned by reviewers writing for the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, the Chicago Sun Times, and Life magazine. “John Leonard’s New York Times review went through a metamorphosis,” Mellen explains. “The original last paragraph challenged the Warren Report: ‘Something stinks about this whole affair,’ Leonard wrote. ‘Why were Kennedy’s neck organs not examined at Bethesda for evidence of a frontal shot? Why was his body whisked away to Washington before the legally required Texas inquest? Why?’ This paragraph evaporated in later editions of the Times. A third of a column gone, the review then ended: ‘Frankly I prefer to believe that the Warren Commission did a poor job, rather than a dishonest one. I like to think that Garrison invents monsters to explain incompetence.’” Joan Mellen, A Farewell to Justice: Jim Garrison, JFK’s Assassination, and the Case That Should Have Changed History, Washington DC: Potomac Books, 2005, 323, 324.
- CIA Deputy Director for Plans Cord Meyer Jr. appealed to Harper & Row president emeritus Cass Canfield Sr. over the book publisher’s pending release of Alfred McCoy’s The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia, based on the author’s fieldwork and Yale PhD dissertation wherein he examined the CIA’s explicit role in the opium trade. “Claiming my book was a threat to national security,” McCoy recalls, “the CIA official had asked Harper & Row to suppress it. To his credit, Mr. Canfield had refused. But he had agreed to review the manuscript prior to publication.” Alfred W. McCoy, The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade, Chicago Review Press, 2003, xx.
- Publication of The Secret Team, a book by US Air Force Colonel and Pentagon-CIA liaison L. Fletcher Prouty recounting the author’s firsthand knowledge of CIA black operations and espionage, was met with a wide scale censorship campaign in 1972. “The campaign to kill the book was nationwide and world-wide,” Prouty notes. “It was removed from the Library of Congress and from college libraries as letters I received attested all too frequently … I was a writer whose book had been cancelled by a major publisher [Prentice Hall] and a major paperback publisher [Ballantine Books] under the persuasive hand of the CIA.” L. Fletcher Prouty, The Secret Team: The CIA and Its Allies in Control of the United States and the World, New York: SkyHorse Publishing, 2008, xii, xv.
- During the Pike Committee hearings in 1975 Congressman Otis Pike asked DCI William Colby, “Do you have any people paid by the CIA who are working for television networks?” Colby responded, “This, I think, gets into the kind of details, Mr. Chairman, that I’d like to get into in executive session.” Once the chamber was cleared Colby admitted that in 1975 specifically “the CIA was using ‘media cover’ for eleven agents, many fewer than in the heyday of the cloak-and-pencil operations, but no amount of questioning would persuade him to talk about the publishers and network chieftains who had cooperated at the top.” Schorr, Clearing the Air, 275.
- “There is quite an incredible spread of relationships,” former CIA intelligence officer William Bader informed a US Senate Intelligence Committee investigating the CIA’s infiltration of the nation’s journalistic outlets. “You don’t need to manipulate Time magazine, for example, because there are Agency people at the management level.” Bernstein, “The CIA and the Media.”
- In 1985 film historian and professor Joseph McBride came across a November 29, 1963 memorandum from J. Edgar Hoover, titled, “Assassination of President John F. Kennedy,” wherein the FBI director stated that his agency provided two individuals with briefings, one of whom was “Mr. George Bush of the Central Intelligence Agency.” ” When McBride queried the CIA with the memo a “PR man was tersely formal and opaque: ‘I can neither confirm nor deny.’ It was the standard response the agency gave when it dealt with its sources and methods,” journalist Russ Baker notes. When McBride published a story in The Nation, “The Man Who Wasn’t There, ‘George Bush,’ C.I.A. Operative,” the CIA came forward with a statement that the George Bush referenced in the FBI record “apparently” referenced a George William Bush, who filled a perfunctory night shift position at CIA headquarters that “would have been the appropriate place to receive such a report.” McBride tracked down George William Bush to confirm he was only employed briefly as a “probationary civil servant” who had “never received interagency briefings.” Shortly thereafter The Nation ran a second story by McBride wherein “the author provided evidence that the Central Intelligence Agency had foisted a lie on the American people … As with McBride’s previous story, this disclosure was greeted with the equivalent of a collective media yawn.” Since the episode researchers have found documents linking George H. W. Bush to the CIA as early as 1953. Russ Baker, Family of Secrets: The Bush Dynasty, America’s Invisible Government, and the Hidden History of the Last Fifty Years, New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2009, 7-12.
- Operation Gladio, the well-documented collaboration between Western spy agencies, including the CIA, and NATO involving coordinated terrorist shootings and bombings of civilian targets throughout Europe from the late 1960s through the 1980s, has been effectively expunged from major mainstream news outlets. A LexisNexis Academic search conducted in 2012 for “Operation Gladio” retrieved 31 articles in English language news media—most appearing in British newspapers. Only four articles discussing Gladio ever appeared in US publications—three in the New York Times and one brief mention in the Tampa Bay Times. With the exception of a 2009 BBC documentary, no network or cable news broadcast has ever referenced the state-sponsored terror operation. Almost all of the articles referencing Gladio appeared in 1990 when Italian Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti publicly admitted Italy’s participation in the process. The New York Times downplayed any US involvement, misleadingly designating Gladio “an Italian creation” in a story buried on page A16. In reality, former CIA director William Colby revealed in his memoirs that covert paramilitaries were a significant agency undertaking set up after World War II, including “the smallest possible coterie of the most reliable people, in Washington [and] NATO.” James F. Tracy, “False Flag Terror and Conspiracies of Silence,” Global Research, August 10, 2012.
- Days before the April 19, 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City DCI William Colby confided to his friend, Nebraska State Senator John DeCamp his personal concerns over the Militia and Patriot movement within the United States, then surging in popularity due to the use of the alternative media of that era–books, periodicals, cassette tapes, and radio broadcasts. “I watched as the Anti-War movement rendered it impossible for this country to conduct or win the Vietnam War,” Colby remarked. “I tell you, dear friend, that the Militia and Patriot movement in which, as an attorney, you have become one of the centerpieces, is far more significant and far more dangerous for American than the Anti-War movement ever was, if it is not intelligently dealt with. And I really mean this.” David Hoffman, The Oklahoma City Bombing and the Politics of Terror, Venice CA: Feral House, 1998, 367.
- Shortly after the appearance of journalist Gary Webb’s “Dark Alliance” series in the San Jose Mercury News chronicling the Agency’s involvement in drug trafficking, the CIA’s public affairs division embarked on a campaign to counter what it termed “a genuine public relations crisis for the Agency.” Webb was merely reporting to a large audience what had already been well documented by scholars such as Alfred McCoy and Peter Dale Scott, and the 1989 Kerry Committee Report on Iran-Contra—that the CIA had long been involved in the illegal transnational drug trade. Such findings were upheld in 1999 in a study by the CIA inspector general. Nevertheless, beginning shortly after Webb’s series ran, “CIA media spokesmen would remind reporters seeking comment that this series represented no real news,” a CIA internal organ noted, “in that similar charges were made in the 1980s and were investigated by the Congress and were found to be without substance. Reporters were encouraged to read the “Dark Alliance’ series closely and with a critical eye to what allegations could actually be backed with evidence.” http://www.foia.cia.gov/sites/default/files/DOC_0001372115.pdf
- On December 10, 2004 investigative journalist Gary Webb died of two .38 caliber gunshot wounds to the head. The coroner ruled the death a suicide. “Gary Webb was MURDERED,” concluded FBI senior special agent Ted Gunderson in 2005. “He (Webb) resisted the first shot [to the head that exited via jaw] so he was shot again with the second shot going into the head [brain].” Gunderson regards the theory that Webb could have managed to shoot himself twice as “impossible!” Charlene Fassa, “Gary Webb: More Pieces in the Suicided Puzzle,” Rense.com, December 11, 2005.
- The most revered journalists who receive “exclusive” information and access to the corridors of power are typically the most subservient to officialdom and often have intelligence ties. Those granted such access understand that they must likewise uphold government-sanctioned narratives. For example, the New York Times’ Tom Wicker reported on November 22, 1963 that President John F. Kennedy “was hit by a bullet in the throat, just below the Adam’s apple.” Yet his account went to press before the official story of a single assassin shooting from the rear became established. Wicker was chastised through “lost access, complaints to editors and publishers, social penalties, leaks to competitors, a variety of responses no one wants.” Barrie Zwicker, Towers of Deception: The Media Coverup of 9/11, Gabrioloa Island, BC: New Society Publishers, 2006, 169-170.
- The CIA actively promotes a desirable public image of its history and function by advising the production of Hollywood vehicles, such as Argo and Zero Dark Thirty. The Agency retains “entertainment industry liaison officers” on its staff that “plant positive images about itself (in other words, propaganda) through our most popular forms of entertainment,” Tom Hayden explains in the LA Review of Books. “So natural has the CIA–entertainment connection become that few question its legal or moral ramifications. This is a government agency like no other; the truth of its operations is not subject to public examination. When the CIA’s hidden persuaders influence a Hollywood movie, it is using a popular medium to spin as favorable an image of itself as possible, or at least, prevent an unfavorable one from taking hold.” Tom Hayden, “Review of The CIA in Hollywood: How the Agency Shapes Film and Television by Tricia Jenkins,” LA Review of Books, February 24, 2013,
- Former CIA case officer Robert David Steele states that CIA manipulation of news media is “worse” in the 2010s than in the late 1970s when Bernstein wrote “The CIA and the Media.” “The sad thing is that the CIA is very able to manipulate [the media] and it has financial arrangements with media, with Congress, with all others. But the other half of that coin is that the media is lazy.” James Tracy interview with Robert David Steele, August 2, 2014,
- A well-known fact is that broadcast journalist Anderson Cooper interned for the CIA while attending Yale as an undergraduate in the late 1980s. According to Wikipedia Cooper’s great uncle, William Henry Vanderbilt III, was an Executive Officer of the Special Operations Branch of the OSS under the spy organization’s founder William “Wild Bill” Donovan. While Wikipedia is an often dubious source, Vanderbilt’s OSS involvement would be in keeping with the OSS/CIA reputation of taking on highly affluent personnel for overseas derring-do. William Henry Vanderbilt III, Wikipedia.
- Veteran German journalist Udo Ulfkotte, author of the 2014 book Gekaufte Journalisten (Bought Journalists) revealed how under the threat of job termination he was routinely compelled to publish articles written by intelligence agents using his byline. “I ended up publishing articles under my own name written by agents of the CIA and other intelligence services, especially the German secret service,” Ulfkotte explained in a recent interview with Russia Today. “German Journo: European Media Writing Pro-US Stories Under CIA Pressure,” RT, October 18, 2014.
- In 1999 the CIA established In-Q-Tel, a venture capital firm seeking to “identify and invest in companies developing cutting-edge information technologies that serve United States national security interests.” The firm has exercised financial relationships with internet platforms Americans use on a routine basis, including Google and Facebook. “If you want to keep up with Silicon Valley, you need to become part of Silicon Valley,” says Jim Rickards, an adviser to the U.S. intelligence community familiar with In-Q-Tel’s activities. “The best way to do that is have a budget because when you have a checkbook, everyone comes to you.” At one point IQT “catered largely to the needs of the CIA.” Today, however, “the firm supports many of the 17 agencies within the U.S. intelligence community, including the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA), the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and the Department of Homeland Security Science and Technology Directorate.” Matt Egan, “In-Q-Tel: A Glimpse Inside the CIA’s Venture Capital Arm,” FoxBusiness.com, June 14, 2013.
- At a 2012 conference held by In-Q-Tel CIA Director David Patraeus declared that the rapidly-developing “internet of things” and “smart home” will provide the CIA with the ability to spy on any US citizen should they become a “person of interest’ to the spy community,” Wired magazine reports. “‘Transformational’ is an overused word, but I do believe it properly applies to these technologies,’ Patraeus enthused, ‘particularly to their effect on clandestine tradecraft’ … ‘Items of interest will be located, identified, monitored, and remotely controlled through technologies such as radio-frequency identification, sensor networks, tiny embedded servers, and energy harvesters — all connected to the next-generation internet using abundant, low-cost, and high-power computing,” Patraeus said, “the latter now going to cloud computing, in many areas greater and greater supercomputing, and, ultimately, heading to quantum computing.” Spencer Ackerman, “CIA Chief: We’ll Spy on You Through Your Dishwasher,” Wired, March 15, 2012.
- In the summer of 2014 a $600 million computing cloud developed by Amazon Web Services for the CIA began servicing all 17 federal agencies comprising the intelligence community. “If the technology plays out as officials envision,” The Atlantic reports, “it will usher in a new era of cooperation and coordination, allowing agencies to share information and services much more easily and avoid the kind of intelligence gaps that preceded the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.” “The Details About the CIA’s Deal With Amazon,” The Atlantic, July 17, 2014.
And the objective causes of fascism "renaissance" that we observe have less to do with "revival" fantasies of ‘rebirth’ of the society in crisis, than with the failure of neoliberalism as the ideology of modern "market economies." In a way fascism is a revolutionary ‘third way’ ideology, combining elements of conservatism and socialism, anti-materialist revision of Marxism which reflects synthesis of right wing nationalism (some researchers consider fascism as the most extreme form of nationalism) and trade unionism (syndicalism). The key fascist myth of unity and national identity oppose both capitalism and socialism. It also has specific flavor due to the fantasy of ‘national rebirth’ ("Make America Great Again" is the variation on the same theme).
In this sense the events after WWII proved that the merger of government and corporate power was not accidental and proved to have a staying power. Germany, Italy and Spain, each with its own national idiosyncrasies were simply pioneers in this direction. There are strong objections of using the term "fascism" due to its historical baggage (and first of the connection to all the crimes committed by Nazi Germany in WWII), but the ideology of neofascism now experience strong Renaissance in most European countries, the USA and GB.
Critics claim that the term lost any precision and in many respects become a catchall for any kind of totalitarianism and far right policies. But this is not completely true. What is true is that ideas of national socialism recently mutated in more modern forms of "inverted totalitarism" and national security state.
There are distinct new elements in those new political structures, which were absent in the classic fascist states. Some prominent element of classic fascist state such using violence to suppress opposition are now lost relevance. Moreover the dominance of "military industrial complex" is viewed by many as a new form of fascism, which was the essence of warning of President Eisenhower.
Other critics claim that the term became useless because it lacks strict definition. I disagree with this position. Despite clear deficiency the term "neofascism capture important class of social reaction again neoliberalism in various countries and as such a legitimate political/sociological term. It does have more or less "well structured" definition which allows to distinguish it from "classic fascism" on one side and "neoliberalism" on the other. Wikipedia defines the term stressing the neofascism possesses significant elements of fascist ideology, and defining what are those significant elements as:
Neo-fascism is a post–World War II ideology that includes significant elements of fascism. Neo-fascism usually includes ultranationalism, populism, anti-immigration policies or, where relevant, nativism, anti-communism, anti-socialism, anti-Marxism, anti-anarchism, and opposition to the parliamentary system and liberal democracy. Allegations that a group is neo-fascist may be hotly contested, especially if the term is used as a political epithet.
You can see the Wikipedia authors experience difficulties with the definition. That's why they included the phases "usually" and "where relevant." So in their opinion three trait are more important then the other:
Classic fascism (as implemented in Germany by NSDAP and in Italy by Mussolini) can be viewed as a variant of ultra-nationalism which aspires to bring the renewal of a nation deeply in crisis and advocates the replacement of the corrupt liberal democracy with (supposedly temporary) authoritarian dictatorship under a strong leader with extraordinary powers (like in army).
At the same time "classic fascism" it was closely linked to the post WWI realities, especially for Germany. In many ways, Classic Fascism strongly correlates with the mental state of nation which is attacked by strong enemy, the enemy which has supporters inside the country.
But it is more then that. The distinct feature of fascism is its strong aversion to the excessive financialization of economy and banking, which fascist consider evil (in a way prosecution of Jews under Fascism was closely connected with their role in banking, not only as a repression against the ethnic group the refuses to assimilate). And this feature of national socialism now is instrumental in its revival, as financialization was the essence of neoliberalism. Which can be consider as the rule of financial oligarchy -- the same class of people against which original German fascist tried to fight, while masking it with the particular national identity, due to historical for Europe overrepresentation of Jew in financial industry.
Unlike Trotskyism and neoliberalism, fascism is always nationalistic, so attempt to equate neoliberalism and fascism is the attempt to ignore the core difference between them. That's why neofascism is on the rise due to the crisis of neoliberal globalization. It is true though, that neoliberalism carry elements of neofascism and represent a rich subtract on which neofascism can grow, because like situation after the WWI it creates mass of disenfranchised workers and small entrepreneurs, who are deprived of chances to be the valuable members of society
As a consequence, masses of people find themselves excluded and marginalized: without work, without possibilities, without any means of escape.
Human beings are themselves considered consumer goods to be used and then discarded. We have created a “disposable” culture which is now spreading. It is no longer simply about exploitation and oppression, but something new. Exclusion ultimately has to do with what it means to be a part of the society in which we live; those excluded are no longer society’s underside or its fringes or its disenfranchised – they are no longer even a part of it. The excluded are not the “exploited” but the outcast, the “leftovers”.
Both have the elements of Nietzschean Ubermench philosophy imbedded in hem
If one looks at NSDAP program of 1920, one can clearly see the requisite elements of fascist social movements. Paradoxically those demands now position the US neofascists to the left of the Clinton wing of the Democratic Party, which is in the pocket of financial oligarchy and is ready to privatize Social Security and Medicare to please its Wall Street sponsors. To say nothing about Republican Party:
The 25-point Program of the NSDAP
… … …
7. We demand that the state be charged first with providing the opportunity for a livelihood and way of life for the citizens. If it is impossible to sustain the total population of the State, then the members of foreign nations (non-citizens) are to be expelled from the Reich.
8. Any further immigration of non-citizens is to be prevented. We demand that all non-Germans, who have immigrated to Germany since 2 August 1914, be forced immediately to leave the Reich.
9.All citizens must have equal rights and obligations.
10.The first obligation of every citizen must be to work both spiritually and physically. The activity of individuals is not to counteract the interests of the universality, but must have its result within the framework of the whole for the benefit of all. Consequently, we demand:
11.Abolition of unearned (work and labor) incomes. Breaking of debt (interest)-slavery.
12.In consideration of the monstrous sacrifice in property and blood that each war demands of the people, personal enrichment through a war must be designated as a crime against the people. Therefore, we demand the total confiscation of all war profits.
13.We demand the nationalization of all (previous) associated industries (trusts).
14.We demand a division of profits of all heavy industries.
15.We demand an expansion on a large scale of old age welfare.
16.We demand the creation of a healthy middle class and its conservation, immediate communalization of the great warehouses and their being leased at low cost to small firms, the utmost consideration of all small firms in contracts with the State, county or municipality.
17.We demand a land reform suitable to our needs, provision of a law for the free expropriation of land for the purposes of public utility, abolition of taxes on land and prevention of all speculation in land.
18.We demand struggle without consideration against those whose activity is injurious to the general interest. Common national criminals, usurers, profiteers and so forth are to be punished with death, without consideration of confession or race.
… … …
21.The State is to care for the elevating national health by protecting the mother and child, by outlawing child-labor, by the encouragement of physical fitness, by means of the legal establishment of a gymnastic and sport obligation, by the utmost support of all organizations concerned with the physical instruction of the young.
22. We demand abolition of the mercenary troops and formation of a national army.
In addition Classic Fascism typically promotes militarism and territorial or economic expansion as the way to deal with internal problems. In this sense it is indistinguishable from neoliberalism (and both have common roots in Trotskyism). Both consider violence including foreign wars a useful political tool. With neoliberalism openly advocating Trotskyite-type of "Permanent revolution" in countries the refuse to switch this social system.
Another important feature of fascism that distinguishes it from neoliberalism is that this ideology has strong suspicion the liberal democracy is just a tool for the dictate of financial oligarchy, which has all the money to buy politicians. In this sense neofascism starts when the party/movement that adhere to the fascism social program renounce violence and accepts parliamentary democracy as the "necessary evil", still striving to get to power using the election mechanisms and use for suppression of financial oligarchy, especially international investment banks and speculators like Soros. But instead of military coup d'état they accept the goal of winning the election within the constrains imposed by this model in Western states (although tremendous growth of political power of intelligence agencies, which really became "kingmakers:, and which in the core can be considered as new type of proto-fascist political parties, put important corrections into this consideration; in a way they stand in the direct opposition to the parliamentary system, like classic fascism)
In its essence any form of fascism is an attempt to simplify control of population by the elite, by "bribing" the dominant in the particular state nationality. It remains a viable right wing program for setting up a highly centralized regime with militaristic, nationalistic policies (especially external expansion, for example in the form of neoliberal empire expansion), merge of industrial and financial corporations with the government, total population control, rigid control of MSM by intelligence agencies, and "extra-judicial" methods of suppression of opposition, including McCarthyism witch hunts and "Russiagate"
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In its essence any form of fascism is an attempt to simplify control of population by the elite, by "bribing" the dominant in the particular state nationality. |
Neofascism essentially relax the same postulates of "classic fascism" making it more socially acceptable, but preserving the core resentment against financialization of the economy (but no longer associates it with the particular ethnic group) as well as immigration, viewing foreigners as a group which "steals" jobs and wealth from the core demographic group of the particular country.
Unlike "classic fascism", neofascism does not directly oppose to parliamentary democracy and is ready to work within parliamentary system to get to power. It does not advocate violence against political opponents as the primary means of suppressing the opposition, although it does not shut from using it when necessary or expedient.
At the same time modern technology polished the ways of suppression any opposition by other means (see Inverted Totalitarism == Managed Democracy == Neoliberalism ) so this difference is pretty superficial -- the level of spying on the population in any modern Western state is comparable with the level that existed in Germany under the rule of NSDAP.
The strongest common link is rampant militarism and exaggeration of external threat to the nation well-being (for example, the threat from Islamic terrorism), which makes it surprisingly close to the ideology of National Security State and not that different from neoliberalism (Fascism - Wikipedia ):
Fascism is a form of radical authoritarian nationalism[1][2] that came to prominence in early 20th-century Europe, influenced by national syndicalism. Fascism originated in Italy during World War I and spread to other European countries. Fascism opposes liberalism, Marxism and anarchism and is usually placed on the far-right within the traditional left–right spectrum.[3][4]Fascists saw World War I as a revolution that brought massive changes in the nature of war, society, the state, and technology. The advent of total war and total mass mobilization of society had broken down the distinction between civilian and combatant. A "military citizenship" arose in which all citizens were involved with the military in some manner during the war.[5][6] The war had resulted in the rise of a powerful state capable of mobilizing millions of people to serve on the front lines and providing economic production and logistics to support them, as well as having unprecedented authority to intervene in the lives of citizens.[5][6]
Fascists believe that liberal democracy is obsolete, and they regard the complete mobilization of society under a totalitarian one-party state as necessary to prepare a nation for armed conflict and to respond effectively to economic difficulties.[7] Such a state is led by a strong leader—such as a dictator and a martial government composed of the members of the governing fascist party—to forge national unity and maintain a stable and orderly society.[7] Fascism rejects assertions that violence is automatically negative in nature, and views political violence, war, and imperialism as means that can achieve national rejuvenation.[8][9][10][11] Fascists advocate a mixed economy, with the principal goal of achieving autarky through protectionist and interventionist economic policies.[12]
Since the end of World War II in 1945, few parties have openly described themselves as fascist, and the term is instead now usually used pejoratively by political opponents. The descriptions neo-fascist or post-fascist are sometimes applied more formally to describe parties of the far right with ideologies similar to, or rooted in, 20th century fascist movements.[13]
In other words while classic fascism now is almost extinct, there are multiple and more viable mutations of far right nationalism (which experience renaissance due to impoverishment of population caused by neoliberal austerity) that are called by generic name of neofascism. And it proved to be highly adaptable ideology with higher survivability potential than classic Bolshevism. In almost all European countries and in the USA nationalist movements are on the rise and far right parties often enjoy success in elections. They come to power in several European states such as Poland, Ukraine, and several Baltic republics.
The most distinct feature of this set of political movements is obsessive preoccupation with militarism, community decline, humiliation, or victim-hood (Nation under attack meme) and by compensatory cults of unity, energy and the idea of national rejuvenation (as reflected in "Make America Great Again" (MAGA) slogan, although it originated in the Paleoconservatism movement which is not connected to fascist ideology of any kind).
After all, the concept of national rejuvenation after a deep economic/political crisis historically was one of the key reasons classic fascist regimes of the last century came to power. Both Mussolini and then Hitler espoused citizens’ duty to recover their respective nations ancient strength and glory from the situation of deep decline after the defeat in the WWI and reparations imposed. Both fought with valor in WWI.
The key question for particular country is:
"Do the country has an organized, committed nationalistic (please note that "exceptionalism" is a form of nationalism) militants, in alliance with traditional elites, who are ready to use extra-judicial methods (not necessary violence) with minimal legal restrains for internal cleansing of the society and external expansion?".
Without far right nationalists organized in military fashion as was the case in Ukraine it is difficult to classify a movement which adheres to those ideas and is as a fascist movement. But it can well be neofascist. The readiness to go to extra-legal means is the key distinction between neofascism (and any far right nationalism) and regular nationalism (which essentially adhere to "law and order" paradigm).
Both "Regular" nationalism, "national neoliberalism" followers (Trumpism) and economic nationalists still are adhering to the existing legal framework and fights for their ideas on election booth. Fascists cross this boundary (and that's why they often are called far-right). They despise traditional dual law enforcement (one for elite and one for common people) and oligarchic democracy (the democracy for only top 1% or less of population) and think that authoritarian model is preferable to the existing level of corruption in legal system as well as harsh punishment for transgression (not understanding that while the existing "far from being perfect" legal system might be eliminated, both injustice in the form of preferential treatment of the elite (which essentially is above the law) and corruption will remain; just the composition of the elite changes)
Another important distinction is presence of elements of social democratic requirements, requirements for social justice in their program: neofascists movements typically are more pro-middle class and, at least partially, pro working class then far right movements. One litmus test is the level of animosity toward financial oligarchy and "unearned" income. This is the key distinction of neofascism and "national neoliberalism" (Trumpism). Unlike neoliberals, which hare many trials with fascism and neofascism they view sovereignty of the nation as an "ultimate good" that need to be preserved and defended.
They are also anti-elite, and anti multinational corporations and transnational organizations like NAFTA or WTO. And especially against transnational financial oligarchy (in Nazism that degenerated into anti-Semitism as the percentage of Jews among top levels of financial oligarchy was always very high, but it is not necessary for a fascist movement to be anti-Semitic per se; other nationalities can serve as scapegoats).
Like classic economics, a typical neofascist movement distinguished between "earned" and "unearned" income and consider the later a sign of parasitism and decadence of the society. NSDAP program of 1920 explicitly stated
"Abolition of unearned (work and labor) incomes. Breaking of debt (interest)-slavery."
Without this point we can talk only about for-right nationalism or in case of "economic nationalism" and "national neoliberalism" (neoliberalism without globalization as to a certain extent professed by Trump administration).
The idea of Lebensraum - Wikipedia is inherent of fascist movements but typically is absent or is suppressed of neo-fascism movements: .
The German concept of Lebensraum (German pronunciation: [ˈleːbənsˌʁaʊm] "living space") comprises policies and practices of settler colonialism which proliferated in Germany from the 1890s to the 1940s. First popularized around 1901,[2] Lebensraum became a geopolitical goal of Imperial Germany in World War I (1914–1918) originally, as the core element of the Septemberprogramm of territorial expansion.[3] The most extreme form of this ideology was supported by the Nazi Party (NSDAP) and Nazi Germany until the end of World War II.[4]
And as far as external expansion goes, neoliberalism can definitely viewed as a form of neofascism ("Permanent War for Permanent Peace"), so there is a strong connection between neoliberalism and neofascism in foreign policy area and for this reason Neoconservatism should probably be viewed as a modern flavor of neofascism. See Professor Andrew Bacevich excellent book Washington Rules: America's Path to Permanent War
But, in reality it is not, even if it is used as a synonym of "far right nationalism", because most modern far right nationalism movement borrow key ideas of the three classic fascist regimes -- Mussolini in Italy, Nazism in Germany and Fracoism (falangism) in Spain. New is often well forgotten old. As Robert O. Paxton noted in his essay "The Five Stages of Fascism":
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We cannot give up in the face of these difficulties. A real phenomenon exists. Indeed, fascism is the most original political novelty of the twentieth century, no less. ... If we cannot examine fascism synthetically, we risk being unable to understand this century, or the next.
We must have a word, and for lack of a better one, we must employ the word that Mussolini borrowed from the vocabulary of the Italian Left in 1919, before his movement had assumed its mature form. Obliged to use the term fascism, we ought to use it well.
Similarly there is a right for existence of the term neofascism, which is general denotes more aggressive and violent forms of far right nationalism, but at the same time expressing interests of lower middle and working class and having strong anti financial oligarchy sentiments (for example, distinguishing between earned and unearned income (rent)). This is a set of trends and far right political movements now observable in many countries which experienced neoliberal austerity, especially in Europe.
Like fascism and neoliberalism, in no way neofascism is a coherent ideology. It is often self-contradicting and contains mutually exclusive elements. That are several sometimes conflicting types of neofascism in modern societies:
Neofascism ideology is pretty fuzzy and flexible (remember that allies of Nazi Germany in WWII were Japanese, which were as far from Arian ethno type as we can get; while Nazi were adamantly anti-Slav, which represents very similar to Arian ethnic type).
All-in-all it represents a popular and rising in importance on the political scene post–World War II ideology, which proved to be more enduring and popular then the communist ideology. It well coexists with neoliberalism (and can be completely merged with it as in Chile under Pinochet). While "excesses" of classical fascism are rejected it still has the key elements of "national socialism" in the form of "socialism for 1%", if you wish.
There are multiple similar terms, such as military-industrial complex (neoconservatives can be viewed as lobbyists of military industrial complex, and as such neofascist at least in foreign policy strategy and goals), predator state, national security state, etc which essentially describe the same phenomenon, stressing different aspects of it.
While still adhering to the core postulates of fascism, neofascism is very flexible and thus more difficult to define precisely. It relies on achievement of modern technologies and first of all new possibility of surveillance. Neofascism replace physical suppression of internal opposition with MSM control (the situation which already is fully achieved in neoliberal societies). Opposition is simply pushed out of mainstream media into alternative media and ignored, but not physically suppressed.
Along with computers and communication technologies, other technological achievement plays in neofascism favor as well. for example war against weaker opponents now can be conducted with much less casualties and most via technological supremacy on the battlefield.
Similar the idea of racial/ethnic purity can be replaced by cultural "belonging", by rejection of speakers of alternative languages (and culture) in particular country. It can be Spanish in the USA, or Russian in Ukraine.
Neo-fascism also deploy more sophisticated forms of identity politics, than classic fascism. And it less oriented on open violence. Neo-fascists often reject ethnic-based identity policies replacing "ethnic nationalism" with the "cultural nationalism" based solely on the language and culture identifies.
Similar, the idea of one party rule system present in classic fascism can be replaced with two party system, producing the same effect and allowing to preserve parliamentary democracy, while achieving basically the same goals as one party system as both party candidates are selected by non-elected party functionaries, be it the "Deep state" in the form o intelligence agencies control of elections, or the "party elite", or some mixture of the two.
Mass authoritarian, far right party can now be replaced by personnel of intelligence agencies which serve the same purpose with intelligence agencies brass becoming political leaders of the movement, much like Nazi bonzes in the past.
Look how close to basic tenets of neofascism (if we assume that Arian nation is limited to financial, government and corporate oligarchy) is what James K Galbraith called the predator state (from the review by Thomas I Palley of the book in Asia Times Online, Aug 22, 2008):
Economist Jamie K Galbraith's recent book [1] describes modern (Bush-Cheney) Republicanism as creating a "predator state". Its predatory aspects are starkly visible in the gangs of corporate lobbyists who roam Washington DC, the Halliburton Iraq war procurement scandal and the corruption and incompetence that surrounded the Hurricane Katrina relief effort.However, the broad concept of a predator state needs qualification as we are really talking of an "American corporate" predator state. Thus, the predatory nature of contemporary US governance is quintessentially linked to corporations, and it is also a uniquely American phenomenon.
Kleptocratic predator states, such as Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe or Sese Seko Mobutu's Zaire in Africa, are fundamentally different. There is no equivalent in Europe, and none in East Asia where ruling elites have a sense of obligation to the nation even as they often enrich themselves illicitly. Nor is there an equivalent in Latin America because government there never reached an economic size proportional to that of government in the US.
It is important to understand the social origins of the American corporate predator state because understanding is a necessary part of developing responses for caging the predators and replacing them with another, better, order. Those origins clearly trace back to the military-industrial complex that president Dwight Eisenhower warned about in his final televised address to the nation on January 17, 1961.
That complex has captured politics and corrupted the business of government, including of course the conduct of national security policy. The fact that it has wrapped itself with the flag makes it impossible to confront without being charged as unpatriotic. Worst yet, its enormous enduring profitability has provided a model for imitation by other industrial complexes like Big Pharma and Big Oil.
The political success of these predators is clearly linked to money's role in politics. Money gives the power to buy the political process, and that power is defended by a gospel of free speech that takes no account of the fact that out-shouting someone is qualitatively equivalent to silencing them. Economics also comes to money's defense with its absurd myth of a market for ideas in which participants compete on a level playing field and truth is effortlessly sorted from error.
The American worship of business and businessmen, which Sinclair Lewis (Babbitt, 1922) wrote about long ago, also plays a role. This worship privileges business over thought and other activities, and is behind the dismissive sneer "if you're so smart, how come you're not rich?" As a result, Americans are all too willing to hand over their government to business predators. Today, it is in Goldman Sachs we trust.
Another feature of business worship is a tendency to conflate profit with free markets. That means the distinction between fair competition (which is good) and fat profits (which are bad) is lost, thereby providing cover for predators.
Lastly, there is the legacy of the Cold War which contributed to economic dumbing-down and suppression of awareness of class and class conflict. This suppression was seen as necessary for blunting the dangerous appeal of Soviet communism, but a consequence was to create blindness to the predators in our midst.
All of this reveals a deep deficit in America's social and economic understanding (some deficits really do matter). And as long as this deficit remains, the predators will have a starting-gate advantage in the game of political persuasion.
Yet, how to close the deficit and insert another understanding is an enormous challenge. There are deep institutional obstructions in the academy, the media, and the Democratic Party. Moreover, raising these issues may create unsettling cognitive dissonance that pushes voters into denial and a closer embrace of the predators.
In effect, there is a paradox to be solved. Lasting progressive political victory requires transforming understanding, but the immediate political incentives are aligned to discourage engagement with such a project.
Note: The Predator State: How Conservatives Abandoned the Free Market and Why Liberals Should Too, by James K Galbraith, Free Press, 2008.
Thomas I Palley is the founder of the Economics for Democratic and Open Societies Project.
Fascism is not a uniform doctrine. From the very beginning there were different flavors of it. In this sense attempt to distill key features of such regimes are difficult and non-rewarding task because fascism was always a national not universal (like Marxism) phenomenon. Such attempts as Arendt's leave much to be desired. Even within a single country there can be several competing version of fascism. They can be even hostile to such an extent that the supporters of one of fascism movement strive to completely destroy the supporters of the other.
Since 30-ies of XX century, there were four "classic" flavors of fascism: Italian fascism, Nazism, and Spanish Francoism(falangism) and (mostly Latin American) "induced fascism" régimes. All "classic" versions rely on mass political movement of the "middle class" making a claim to political power -- to the detriment of the traditional elites and "working classes". They were mildly hostile to monopolies and, sometimes, to financial oligarchy. For example, Nazi decried "unearned income" -- rentier capitalism. All those regimes were revolutionary in a sense that they accepted violence as the legitimate political tool in the struggle to get to power.
But even within them there are multiple and significant differences both in social base and proclaimed goals:
Mussolini started his political career as socialist and at one time was the editor of Avanti While associated with socialism, Mussolini's writings after 1913 indicated that he had abandoned Marxism and egalitarianism in favor of Nietzsche's Ubermensch concept and anti-egalitarianism. After being ousted by the Italian Socialist Party for his support of Italian intervention in 1914, Mussolini made a radical transformation, ending his support for class conflict and joining in support of revolutionary nationalism transcending class lines. Mussolini got his start in politics with the help of a £100 weekly wage (the equivalent of £6000 as of 2009) from the British security service MI5, to keep anti-war protestors at home and to publish pro-war propaganda.
After coming to power after "March on Rome" (27 and 28 October 1922), Mussolini start removing most of the political opposition
using secret police and by outlawing labor strikes. Power was consolidated by converting Italian state into
one party dictatorship through a series of laws. Mussolini enjoyed a wide support in the military and among the industrial and agrarian
elites. Mussolini was also supported by Catholic church. He later initiated an aggressive expansion (limited to Mediterranean region);
But all in all Italian fascism (many of who were former socialists, including Mussolini himself) were not hell bent on racial purity.
They simply viewed their "revolution" as a preventive act - to prevent the "bolshevization" of Italy; In the merger of the state
and the party the state was probably more dominant then the party. Nazism based was the urban "middle class" and first of
all small business owners; it has strong redistributive component and strives to rebuild the German state as a hierarchical technocratic
military industrial complex (country as a giant military factory); it was supported by a large part of industrialists, by German
military brass. It at least partially rejected religion replacing it with a specific flavor of "pan-German" mysticism, and the drive
for racial purity; its goal was a rapid modernization of the country after the crushing defeat in WWI. It put the state in the subordination
of the party, while like Bolshevism by-and-large merging the Party and the state.
In its racial categorization, Nazism viewed what it called the Aryan race as the master race of the world—a race that was superior to all other races.[106] It viewed Aryans as being in racial conflict with a mixed race people, the Jews, whom Nazis identified as a dangerous enemy of the Aryans. It also viewed a number of other peoples as dangerous to the well-being of the Aryan race. In order to preserve the perceived racial purity of the Aryan race, a set of race laws were introduced in 1935 which came to be known as the Nuremberg Laws. At first these laws only prevented sexual relations and marriages between Germans and Jews, but were later extended to the "Gypsies, Negroes, and their bastard offspring", who were described by the Nazis as people of "alien blood".
Like Italian fascism Nazism rejected the Marxist concept of class struggle, but supported the idea of "class struggle between nations", and sought to resolve internal class struggle in the nation while it identified Germany as a proletarian nation fighting against plutocratic nations. The Nazi Party had many working-class supporters and members, but its strongest appeal was to the middle class, especially small business owners. The financial collapse of the white collar middle-class of the 1920s also led to their strong support of Nazism. The Nazi Party Programme of 1920 guaranteed freedom for all religious denominations not hostile to the State and endorsed Positive Christianity to combat “the Jewish-materialist spirit” (read Marxism). The Nazis were initially highly hostile to Catholics. In 1933, extensive Nazi violence occurred against Catholics due to their association with the Centre Party and their opposition to the Nazi regime's sterilization laws. At the same time in propaganda, the Nazis used elements of Germany's Catholic history, in particular the German Catholic Teutonic Knights and their campaigns in Eastern Europe. The Nazis identified them as "sentinels" in the East against "Slavic chaos".
While Nazis benefitted from the first post-Depression economic upswing, their public works projects, job-procurement program, and subsidized home repair program reduced unemployment by as much as 40% in one year, a development which tempered the unfavorable psychological climate caused by the earlier economic crisis and encouraged Germans to support the regime. march in step with the regime. The Nazis also promised "progressive" social policies like a national labor service, state-provided health care, guaranteed pensions, and an agrarian settlement program.
The Nazis sought to gain support of workers by declaring May Day, a day celebrated by organized labor, to be a paid holiday and held celebrations on 1 May 1933 to honor German workers. Nazi were strongly against "non earned" income and financial sector in general which they considered to be parasitic.
The Nazis argued that capitalism damages nations due to international finance, the economic dominance of big business, and
Jewish influences. Nazi propaganda posters in working class districts emphasized anti-capitalism, such as one that said:
"The maintenance of a rotten industrial system has nothing to do with nationalism. I can love Germany and hate capitalism. Adolf
Hitler, both in public and in private, expressed disdain for capitalism, arguing that it holds nations ransom in the interests of
a parasitic cosmopolitan rentier class. He opposed free market capitalism's profit-seeking impulses and desired an economy
in which community interests would be protected. Hitler told a party leader in 1934, "The economic system of our day is the creation
of the Jews." On other occasion he said to Benito Mussolini that capitalism had "run its course". Hitler also said that the business
bourgeoisie "know nothing except their profit. 'Fatherland' is only a word for them." Hitler was personally disgusted with
the ruling bourgeois elites of Germany during the period of the Weimar Republic, who he referred to as "cowardly shits". A
number of other Nazis held even more strong revolutionary socialist and anti-capitalist beliefs, most prominently Ernst Röhm, the
leader of the Sturmabteilung. Another radical Nazi, Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels had stressed the socialist character of Nazism,
and claimed in his diary in the 1920s that if he were to pick between Bolshevism and capitalism, he said "in final analysis", "it
would be better for us to go down with Bolshevism than live in eternal slavery under capitalism."
Because "induced" fascism was highly depended on a "democratic metropolis" it is often observed in varying degrees of "democratic decorum": there was a Parliament, multiparty system and periodic "elections". Of course, it was to a greater or lesser extent a sham (in Paraguay during the Stroessner the question of "cohabitation" of fascism with parliamentary democracy was solved simply and elegantly: in the country has a military regime, except for one day - election day).
In order to facilitate the creation of regimes "induced fascism" in third world countries the army, police and intelligence services have turned into some kind of fascist parties without the parties themselves and Nazi ideology became part of indoctrination in those organizations. In hindsight, after the military coup in Chile, it became clear that the diehard fascists in the Chilean army were much father to the right then the "civilian" fascist organizations in Chile. Same thing became clear in hindsight in relation to the Brazilian police and military counterintelligence.
"Induced" fascism represent a bridge between parliamentary democracies and the right-wing authoritarian (aka totalitarism) regimes, movements and doctrines, "blurring" the concept of fascism and making it "more acceptable" to liberals. So, the regime of Somoza in Nicaragua planted by the USA, ideologically was close to European fascism, and even helped the Uruguayan fascists to prepare their coup - and at the same time acted as a strategic US ally in the region and was formally at war with the "Axis powers".
In Europe, the first case of "induced" fascism was a post-war pro-British regime in Greece, where after the liberation of the country from German troops the civil war started. The British labor party denounced Churchill for his support in Greece "monarchist fascists" and "Nazi collaborators", but when they came in 1945 to power, themselves supported by the same "monarch-fascist" and "Nazi collaborators".
The political views of the "new right" coincided with the views of practitioners of neoliberalism in the era of Reaganomics and Thatcherism. Not by chance the Pinochet regime (a classic example of "induced, puppet fascism") is characterized as "Militant Thatcherism". Even the fundamental views publicly expressed by Thatcher and Pinochet, were often identical (e.g., he and the other refused to recognize the existence of society - which was, in fact, merely a repetition of the doctrine of Italian fascism). What parties and movements, connecting the idea of "new right" has achieved in recent years greater success in elections in Western Europe: the national front of Le Pen in France, the party of P. Fortuyn in the Netherlands, the freedom Party. Haider in Austria, etc. (revealing, incidentally, that the Freedom Party is included in the Liberal international!).
Other cases pre-war neofascism was monarchist far right regimes developed in countries of Eastern Europe. Rapid inclusion of these parties and regimes in the orbit of Italian and German influences have masked their identity, on the one hand, and did not allow them to develop into independent phenomenon.
There can me multiple fascism movements in the same country. In France before the war all three classic brand of fascism were well represented: French version of the Italian fascism ("francism", etc.), the French version of Nazism (French people's party, etc.), the French version of francoism ("capulary") and, finally, the original aristocratic elitist fascism "action française", close to the monarchist-fascism. Sometimes the supporters of the different flavors of fascism fight with each other. In Austria supporters of Italian fascism came to power in February 1934, but in July, the Nazis organized a putsch and killed Chancellor E. Dollfuss, and ended the fight by smashing austrofascism and initiating the Anschluss. In Hungary, the supporters of Italian fascism - hungarista led by Admiral Horthy was overthrown in 1944 by the Hungarian Nazis movement headed by Salashi. In Romania, the confrontation between supporters of Italian fascism and Nazism - "seleniumselenium", "jeleznovodask", Antonescu and Horia SIMA - has resulted in mutual mass terror .
After World war II the Western ruling elite has never repeated his pre-war mistakes and understood that fascism is a tricky bet in the fight against social revolution. So it was relegated as a tool for countries "About which we do not care" They understood that such a movement as "classical" fascism or other extremist movements of "middle class" easily get out of control. All post-war fascist regimes relied on mass movements. Such movements were outlawed in most Western countries.
As neofascism has a lot of common features with far right nationalism it is very difficult to say when one ends and another starts. Those terms can be used as synonyms, but I would suggest that neofascism is a specific flavor of far right nationalism that has anti-financial oligarchy bent. It is a more "socialist" version of far right nationalism and always was.
So far right nationalism a more generic term then neofascism: all neofascists are far right nationalists, but the reverse is not true.
Neofascism is more narrow concept that emphasizes/defines more features of the movement then far right nationalism. Typically neofascism movements are a more radical, more anti-democratic, more statist than an "average" far right nationalism movements. And their flavor of militaristic bent includes the idea of expanding the "living space"/empire for the particular nation (or country) by promoting rampant militarism (which also serves as a tool to "unify" the nation and suppress dissent). Like for example neoconservatives in the USA. Also neofascism has a certain flavor of "victimhood" which far right nationalism does not necessary possesses.
What is clear that there is a much larger political space for far right nationalist movements then for neofascist movements in modern societies. The backlash against neoliberal globalization now mainly take the form of far right nationalism, but not necessarily neo-fascism: many such far right movement are completely devoid of the hostility to financial oligarchy and unearned income.
So it's given that far right movements and their more specific case -- neofascism -- have many common features, many similarities:
A perception is manufactured that opposition to the power elite is tantamount to an attack on religion.
But there are some important differences.
Griffin, who is a professor of history and political theory at Oxford Brookes University, puts it best: "You can be a total
xenophobic racist male chauvinist bastard and still not be a fascist." For example, as long as Trump does not advocate the abolition
of America's democratic institutions and constitution, and their replacement by some sort of national security state, he, at least
technically, is not a fascist or neofascist. But at the same time calling the current political system corrupt and exaggerating the
level of the degradation of the US society as well as pushing for its "renewal" ("Make America great again" slogan) might still
qualify him as a neofascist.
Like communists, classic fascists promote violence as a legitimate political tool, but this is less true about neofascist. Classic fascism, Payne says, requires
"a philosophical valuing of violence, of Sorelian violence. [Fascists believe] that violence is really good for you, that it's the sort of thing that makes you a vital, alive, dedicated person, that it creates commitment. Fascism makes violence not just a political strategy, but also a philosophical principle. For fascists "war is the health of the nation".
That's mentality is unique to fascism. This feature is reduced and subdued in neofascism, but still is present.
Classic fascism also has some anti-clerical bent and typically promotes a specific secular, "political religion" in which the nation is considered a real, living, and yet sacred thing to be revered and protected, instead of traditional religion. This goes well beyond typical far right nationalism views on religion. Far right nationalists more commonly promote an existing religion (Vox). But those two trends can happily co-exists.
The idea of rejuvenation of the nation also is typical for both. But look more closely at the way Trump talks about rejuvenating America:
- "I will build the finest and most modern veterans hospitals in the world."
- "This lower rate makes corporate inversions unnecessary by making America’s tax rate one of the best in the world."
- "Our highspeed Internet access is only 16th best in the world … The World Economic Forum ranks the US infrastructure as only the 12th best in the world."
These statements are much closer to the "I want my soccer team to win" version of patriotism — and much more concerned with the qualities of Donald Trump as the leader, than America the nation.
Fascism was the first ideology openly based on deception: "the governments that have emerged from the fascist movements never actually pursued policies that are economically populist and brought them to power". Fascist and neofascist governments are always pro-monopolies, not pro-people. They serve as the last bastion of financial oligarchy against popular discontent.
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The governments that have emerged from the fascist movements never actually pursued policies that are economically populist and brought them to power |
An important element of fascist deception is a specific flavor of identity politics. Neoliberal MSM brainwash people by demonizing specific categories of people, by running a campaign hypertrophied dehumanization of Untermensch. This idea was actually borrowed from the classic fascism.
Essentially this campaign is directed toward conditioning people to view "lower classes" as a category of cattle, much like in slavery. This tendency of "blaming poor" under neoliberalism is definitely a neofascist element of the neoliberal ideology
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Redefinition of poverty as inferiority is clearly a neofascism element in the neoliberal societies |
Socialism in national socialism exists only for Ubermensch. And for them (and for them only) it does contain almost all major socialist elements. This is undeniable if we analyze the NSDAP Party program announced by Hitler on February 20, 1920 (as fake as it was: in reality NSDAP leadeship never intended to persue those goals, they were added exclusively for winning the electorate).
It is also important to remember that some fascists leaders, such as Benito Mussolini (who previously was the editor in chief of Avate), previously were prominent figures in the social-democratic movement (Wikipedia)
The National Socialist Programme (aka the 25-point Programme and the 25-point Plan) was the party program of the National Socialist German Workers' Party. Originally the name of the party was the German Workers' Party (DAP) but on the same day of the announced party program it was renamed the National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP, Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei), headed by Adolf Hitler. Hitler announced the party's program on 24 February 1920 in front of around 2000 people in the Munich Festsaal of the Hofbräuhaus. The National Socialist Program originated at a DAP congress in Vienna, then was taken to Munich, by the civil engineer and theoretician Rudolf Jung, who, having explicitly supported Hitler, had been expelled from Czechoslovakia, because of his political agitation.[1]
... ... ...
- We demand the unification of all Germans in the Greater Germany on the basis of the people's right to self-determination.
- We demand equality of rights for the German people in respect to the other nations; abrogation of the peace treaties of Versailles and St. Germain.
- We demand land and territory (colonies) for the sustenance of our people, and colonization for our surplus population.
- Only a member of the race can be a citizen. A member of the race can only be one who is of German blood, without consideration of creed. Consequently no Jew can be a member of the race.
- Whoever has no citizenship is to be able to live in Germany only as a guest, and must be under the authority of legislation for foreigners.
- The right to determine matters concerning administration and law belongs only to the citizen. Therefore we demand that every public office, of any sort whatsoever, whether in the Reich, the county or municipality, be filled only by citizens. We combat the corrupting parliamentary economy, office-holding only according to party inclinations without consideration of character or abilities.
- We demand that the state be charged first with providing the opportunity for a livelihood and way of life for the citizens. If it is impossible to sustain the total population of the State, then the members of foreign nations (non-citizens) are to be expelled from the Reich.
- Any further immigration of non-citizens is to be prevented. We demand that all non-Germans, who have immigrated to Germany since 2 August 1914, be forced immediately to leave the Reich.
- All citizens must have equal rights and obligations.
- The first obligation of every citizen must be to work both spiritually and physically. The activity of individuals is not to counteract the interests of the universality, but must have its result within the framework of the whole for the benefit of all. Consequently we demand:
- Abolition of unearned (work and labor) incomes. Breaking of debt (interest)-slavery.
- In consideration of the monstrous sacrifice in property and blood that each war demands of the people, personal enrichment through a war must be designated as a crime against the people. Therefore we demand the total confiscation of all war profits.
- We demand the nationalisation of all (previous) associated industries (trusts).
- We demand a division of profits of all heavy industries.
- We demand an expansion on a large scale of old age welfare.
- We demand the creation of a healthy middle class and its conservation, immediate communalization of the great warehouses and their being leased at low cost to small firms, the utmost consideration of all small firms in contracts with the State, county or municipality.
- We demand a land reform suitable to our needs, provision of a law for the free expropriation of land for the purposes of public utility, abolition of taxes on land and prevention of all speculation in land.
- We demand struggle without consideration against those whose activity is injurious to the general interest. Common national criminals, usurers, profiteers and so forth are to be punished with death, without consideration of confession or race.
- We demand substitution of a German common law in place of the Roman Law serving a materialistic world-order.
- The state is to be responsible for a fundamental reconstruction of our whole national education program, to enable every capable and industrious German to obtain higher education and subsequently introduction into leading positions. The plans of instruction of all educational institutions are to conform with the experiences of practical life. The comprehension of the concept of the State must be striven for by the school [Staatsbürgerkunde] as early as the beginning of understanding. We demand the education at the expense of the State of outstanding intellectually gifted children of poor parents without consideration of position or profession.
- The State is to care for the elevating national health by protecting the mother and child, by outlawing child-labor, by the encouragement of physical fitness, by means of the legal establishment of a gymnastic and sport obligation, by the utmost support of all organizations concerned with the physical instruction of the young.
- We demand abolition of the mercenary troops and formation of a national army.
- We demand legal opposition to known lies and their promulgation through the press. In order to enable the provision of a German press, we demand, that: a. All writers and employees of the newspapers appearing in the German language be members of the race; b. Non-German newspapers be required to have the express permission of the State to be published. They may not be printed in the German language; c. Non-Germans are forbidden by law any financial interest in German publications, or any influence on them, and as punishment for violations the closing of such a publication as well as the immediate expulsion from the Reich of the non-German concerned. Publications which are counter to the general good are to be forbidden. We demand legal prosecution of artistic and literary forms which exert a destructive influence on our national life, and the closure of organizations opposing the above made demands.
- We demand freedom of religion for all religious denominations within the state so long as they do not endanger its existence or oppose the moral senses of the Germanic race. The Party as such advocates the standpoint of a positive Christianity without binding itself confessionally to any one denomination. It combats the Jewish-materialistic spirit within and around us, and is convinced that a lasting recovery of our nation can only succeed from within on the framework: The good of the state before the good of the individual.[9]
- For the execution of all of this we demand the formation of a strong central power in the Reich. Unlimited authority of the central parliament over the whole Reich and its organizations in general. The forming of state and profession chambers for the execution of the laws made by the Reich within the various states of the confederation. The leaders of the Party promise, if necessary by sacrificing their own lives, to support by the execution of the points set forth above without consideration.
Neoliberalism demonstrate the resurgence of classic fascism tendencies with the sharp division between upper class (Ubermensch) and lower class, "inferior people" (Untermensch) and the associated cult of violence. Although in new slightly more moderate form, but with the same set of core ideas and principles.
In neofascism unrestricted violence, terror against "inferior people" is subdued. As the criteria nationality is often (but not completely) replaced with culture and especially the national language (language nationalism) and is directed almost exclusively to foreigners, immigrants and national minorities who continue to use "wrong" language because it is their mother tongue (for example, Russians in case of Far Right Forces in Ukraine).
In neoliberalism nationality is replaced by "creative abilities", which are understood as the ability of capital accumulation and self-enrichment. In cultural variant of neofascism the language and culture replace the race as a defining point of "belonging", and the key distinction between "Arian race" and Untermensch. Replacement of nationality with the cultural identity makes it closer to ultra-right republicanism as exists in the USA. It is also clearly visible in Ukrainian far right movement:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=vUDhy4BA-Xs
But all-in-all neofascism remains just a mutation of classic fascist ideology (yuricareport.com):
Call it Pseudo Fascism. Or, if you like, Fascism Lite. Happy-Face Fascism. Postmodern Fascism. But there is little doubt anymore why the shape of the "conservative movement” in the 21st century is so familiar and disturbing: Its architecture, its entire structure, has morphed into a not-so-faint hologram of 20th-century fascism.
...Unlike the genuine article, it presents itself under a normative, rather than a revolutionary, guise; and rather than openly exulting in violence, it pays lip service to law and order. Moreover, even in the areas where it resembles real fascism, the similarities are often more familial than exact. It is, in essence, less virulent and less violent, and thus more likely to gain broad acceptance within a longtime stable democratic system like that of the United States.
It is important to understand that neofascism inherited the major traits of fascism connected with creating a scapegoat nationality or anti-immigration sentiments, often induced by actual misbehavior of immigrants (such a rapes, beating of people by criminal gangs, etc) or large influx of immigrant from other nation in economic crisis (Immigrants in Europe, Russia, to lesser extent in other "countries of immigrants" such as USA, Australia, Canada, etc). At certain stages it can actually "return to the roots" and adopt violence as the key form of dealing with the opponents (see EuroMaidan )
The key element of any flavor of fascist ideology is rejection of liberalism and opposition to the parliamentary system and liberal democracy (and implicitly to the rule of law). It is the cult of "strong hand" the makes it similar to authoritarism. While officially neofascists parties no longer endorses violence as a chief means to silence the opposition, they often resort to it as a temporary mean to achieve their goals, and, especially, to come to power.
Allegations that a group is neofascist are typically hotly contested, especially if the term is used as a political epithet.
neofascism can be viewed as one of the forms of the "revolt of the elite", a mutation of corporatism that invariably emerges during acute economic crises and related loss of profitability of many businesses. While cannon fodder of neofascism are small business owners, the puppeteers always are large business owners and, especially, financial oligarchy and oligarchy connected to military-industrial complex. For the latter neofascism is an ideal regime.
That's why right now proto-fascist and neofascist groups and sentiments are on the rise in many countries including, but not limited USA, France, Germany, Holland, Russia, Poland, Greece, Ukraine, Hungary, Finland, Norway. In many cases neofascist parties such as Ukrainian Svoboda get enough votes to be represented in national parliaments (algemeiner.com/2013/05/24):
In Ukraine, the noisiest anti-Semitic group is the Svoboda ( "Freedom”) party. Established in 1991 as the "Social-National Party of Ukraine” under the SS-era symbol of the Wolfsangel. In 2004, with new leader Oleh Tyahnybok, the party renamed itself and adopted innocuous symbols.
That, however, didn’t change the Nazi characteristic of the party. Tyahnybok himself has stated on several occasions that the "Moscow-Jewish mafia” is running Ukraine. Other prominent party members have often used the derogatory, anti Jewish slur ”zhid”, including against Ukrainian-born American actress Mila Kunis, suggesting she was not a "real” Ukrainian because of her Jewish heritage.
Svoboda supporters include among their heroes leaders of pro-Nazi World War II organizations known for their atrocities against Jews and Poles, such as the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), and the 14th Waffen-SS Galicia Division. (To Svoboda’s vocal displeasure, Poland’s parliament recently introduced a resolution condemning the OUN and the UPA for wartime massacres of Polish civilians.)
Here is another telling video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Z24XaNIbmp0
Skinheads is also a prominent phenomenon which is typical for many European countries. They are definitely part of neofascism movement. This rage is directed toward immigrants. Torch processions borrowed from classic fascism now became common in many countries (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-20929755)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=MEKJDle0nZ07 January 2013 Last updated at 01:38 ET Help
A sudden rise in popularity of Ukraine's ultra-nationalist party, Svoboda, has caused concern both inside and outside the country.
Svoboda, which means "freedom" in Ukrainian, is allied with European far-right parties. But many observers warn that its views are extremist.
David Stern reports from Kiev.
Also popular are typical for classic fascism physical violence such as street fights with opponents. A new element is that now it can happen during football matches like recently in Poland: video was removed by Youtube
While neofascism is anti-democratic, anti-liberal, and corporatist, unlike classic fascism which openly declared itself as such, they deployed as thick smoke screen of propaganda to present itself in completely different light. The destruction of meaning by creating "empty phrases" combining opposite ideas has, as we have seen, become a prominent strategy deployed by the conservative movement.]
Another key element of neofascism is "vast, systemic, blanket collection of the personal data of innocent people." It often covered with a fig leaf of "fight against terrorism". DW.DE 09.01.2014
Like classic fascism neofascism remains rabidly anti-socialist. Actually socialists and communists, let's not forget, were among the first people imprisoned and "liquidated" by the Nazi regime.
Early on during the first term of the Bush presidency many progressives characterized Bush's statements and actions as "neofascist". It is also true that Bush II has some neofascist baggage, as Bush family did has some ties with fascist regimes in the past and the U.S. government found that Bush's grandfather had illegally aided the Nazis during the 30's. It's true that regime of Bush II has some neofascist leanings. It definitely introduced into public discourse and tried to implement in practice several elements of neofascist ideology. Some of them with some interesting innovations. For example, unlike classic fascism instead of mass mobilization Bush government preferred political passivity as prescribed by Inverted Totalitarism doctrine ("go shopping" was his famous recommendation after 9/11).
But full development of neofascist ideas and forming a popular party is impossible without acute economic distress
www.youtube.com/embed/Z24XaNIbmp0
or political crisis (like the one in Ukraine) and a real economic crisis arrived only at the end of Bush Presidency (2008). So paradoxically the major implementer of Bush neofascist ideas and first of all the idea of total surveillance was the regime of Barack Obama. With a tea-party being a close proxy of radical neofascist parties in Eastern Europe. There is distinct racial element in it. Nobody will try to disprove the claim that it has mainly white middle class composition. And like European radical parties of neofascist orientation it endorses violence to achieve its goals. See Tea Party and right wing rage
But even if we assume that 9/11 was a false flag operation that is reminiscent of Reichstag Fire generally the USA neofascist elements were innovatively mixed with the ideas from the theoretical model called Inverted Totalitarism. Direct violence toward opponents never materialized. Just the pre-existing process of the conversion of the USA into National Security State dramatically increased. Now we know more about the new role assigned to NSA during this period.
American exeptionalism ideas promoted by Bush administration clearly resonate with the proto-fascist "... uber alles" ideas. The unique feature here is that they were integrated into the framework of globalist neoliberal regime. So it's more like "top 1% uber alles" then "The USA uber alles" ;-).
It should be stressed that some of the ideas inherent in neofascist doctrine are integral part of European culture. As Paxton describes them (Robert O. Paxton, "The Five Stages of Fascism," The Journal of Modern History 70 (March 1998): pp. 3-5.) in the following way:
...Feelings propel fascism more than thought does. We might call them mobilizing passions, since they function in fascist movements to recruit followers and in fascist regimes to "weld" the fascist "tribe" to its leader. The following mobilizing passions are present in fascisms, though they may sometimes be articulated only implicitly:
- The primacy of the group, toward which one has duties superior to every right, whether universal or individual.
- The belief that one's group is a victim, a sentiment which justifies any action against the group's enemies, internal as well as external.
- Dread of the group's decadence under the corrosive effect of individualistic and cosmopolitan [neoliberalism.
- Closer integration of the community within a brotherhood (fascio) whose unity and purity are forged by common conviction, if possible, or by exclusionary violence if necessary.
- An enhanced sense of identity and belonging, in which the grandeur of the group reinforces individual self-esteem.
- Authority of natural leaders (always male) throughout society, culminating in a national chieftain who alone is capable of incarnating the group's destiny.
- The beauty of violence and of will, when they are devoted to the group's success in a Darwinian struggle.
Paxton's list makes easier to identify typical "passions" which are at play in proto-fascist environment, particularly during the debate over the Iraq war and the attacks on dissenters that occurred during it (Rush, Newspeak and Fascism An exegesis IV Tracking Fascism):
1. [Group primacy]: See, again, the Bush Doctrine. An extension of this sentiment is at play among those jingoes who argue that Americans may need to sacrifice some of their civil rights -- say, free speech -- during wartime.
2. [Victim mentality]: This meme is clearly present in all the appeals to the victims of Sept. 11 as justifications for the war. It is present at nearly all levels of the debate: from the White House, from the media, even from the jingoist entertainment industry (see, e.g., the lyric of Darryl Worley's extraordinarily popular country-western hit, "Have You Forgotten?": "Some say this country's just out looking for a fight / Well after 9/11 man I'd have to say that's right.").
3. [Dread of liberal decadence]: This meme has been stock in trade of the talk-radio crowd since at least 1994 -- at one time it focused primarily on the person of Bill Clinton -- and has reached ferocious levels during the runup to the war and after it, during which antiwar leftists have regularly and remorselessly been accused of treason.
4. [Group integration] and 5. [Group identity as personal validation] are, of course, among the primary purposes of the campaign to demonize liberals -- to simultaneously build a cohesive brotherhood of like-minded "conservatives" who might not agree on the details but are united in their loathing of all things liberal. It plays out in such localized manifestations as the KVI Radio 570th On-Air Cavalry, which has made a habit of deliberately invading antiwar protests with the express purpose of disrupting them and breaking them up. Sometimes, as they did recently in Bellingham, this is done with caravans of big trucks blaring their horns; and they are also accompanied by threatening rhetoric and acts of physical intimidation. They haven't yet bonded in violence -- someone did phone in a threat to sniper-shoot protesters -- but they are rapidly headed in that direction.
6. [Authority of leaders]: This needs hardly any further explanation, except to note that George W. Bush is actually surprisingly uncharismatic for someone who inspires as much rabid loyalty as he does. But then, that is part of the purpose of Bush's PR campaign stressing that he receives "divine guidance" -- it assures in his supporters' mind the notion that he is carrying out God's destiny for the nation, and for the conservative movement in particular.
7. [An aesthetic of violence]: One again needs only turn to the voluminous jingoes of Fox News or the jubilant warbloggers to find abundant examples of celebrations of the virtues -- many of them evidently aesthetic -- of the evidently just-completed war.
In 2002, Laurence W. Britt's Fascism Anyone? analyzed seven fascist regimes in order to find the common features that constitute "generic fascism". He selected the following regimes: Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, Franco's Spain, Salazar's Portugal, Papadopoulos's Greece, Pinochet's Chile, and Suharto's Indonesia. He found 14 common characteristics (reprinted below, with 6 additions by Umberto Eco) and concluded:
"Does any of this ring alarm bells? Of course not. After all, this is America, officially a democracy with the rule of law, a constitution, a free press, honest elections, and a well-informed public constantly being put on guard against evils. Historical comparisons like these are just exercises in verbal gymnastics. Maybe, maybe not."
We think "maybe not." It's just a matter of degree. There is an ongoing transformation of the US in this particular direction.
It is difficult to tell when far right nationalistic group get brown color. Litmus text is the creation of paramilitary group (death squads, stormtroopers, etc) for repression of opponents and adoption of terror as a legitimate methods of struggle for power. Those paramilitary group exists outside law, the key interpreter of which became the party not the counts. Another telling sign is the creation of concentration camps.
Here are six more characteristics found in Umberto Eco's "Eternal Fascism: Fourteen Ways of Looking at a Blackshirt," from New York Review of Books, 22 June 1995, pp.12-15.
Both Eastern and Western Europe are experiencing a new and important cultural and political development: the appearance of a new breed, new generation, of far right, extremist movements. These are some indications of the emergence of a new, emerging political forces in Europe which emerged as a reaction to neoliberalism with its dominance of globalized banking. That lead to paradoxical situation when many of Le Pen's votes come from former Red strongholds. In other word like in 20th and 30th the working class is, for very understandable reasons, is turning to nationalism as an antidote to casino capitalism enforced by the USA. So the USA neoliberal empire is the main precondition for resurgence As Slavoj Žižek noted:
The Ukrainian nationalist right is one instance of what is going on today from the Balkans to Scandinavia, from the US to Israel, from central Africa to India: ethnic and religious passions are exploding, and Enlightenment values receding.
These passions have always been there, lurking; what’s new is the outright shamelessness of their display.
... ... ...
One of the signs of this regression is a request often heard on the new European right for a more "balanced" view of the two "extremisms", the right and the left. We are repeatedly told that one should treat the extreme left (communism) the same way that Europe after the second world war treated the extreme right (the defeated fascists)
But in reality there is no balance here: the equation of fascism and communism secretly privileges fascism. Thus the right are heard to argue that fascism copied communism: before becoming a fascist, Mussolini was a socialist; Hitler, too, was a National Socialist; concentration camps and genocidal violence were features of the Soviet Union a decade before Nazis resorted to them; the annihilation of the Jews has a clear precedent in the annihilation of the class enemy, etc.
The point of these arguments is to assert that a moderate fascism was a justified response to the communist threat (a point made long ago by Ernst Nolte in his defence of Heidegger’s involvement with Nazism). In Slovenia, the right is advocating the rehabilitation of the anti-communist Home Guard which fought the partisans during the second world war: they made the difficult choice to collaborate with the Nazis in order to thwart the much greater evil of communism.
Among other condition that favor resurgence of such groups we can name such features of neoliberal regimes, what now dominate the continent as demographic pressures from immigrant labor, social dislocation due to dismantling of social security state, and economic pressures inherent in "dog eat dog" capitalism and outsourcing to lower wage countries advocated by neoliberalism. In many ways neoliberalism represents a perfect environment for nurturing neofascist movements.
Those pressures are very similar to pressures which used to exist in 20th and 30th of the last century. As before they stimulate the formation of a new generation of far right movements whose motives and characteristics while somewhat differ from the right wing groups of the early twentieth century what came to power in Italy, Germany and Spain are still driven by the same resentment of middle class and "Lumpenbourgeoisie". They use the same ideas of dominance of particular ethnic group. scapegoat in form of another ethnic group, glorification of state, using violence against opponents, limitations on civil rights in the name of giving the state more power to protect the populace from "destructive elements" within the society and external aggressors. Fall of "fist generation" fascist regimes did not destroy the movement which acquired strong roots in neoliberal societies across the globe.
They are different from classic far right nationalist of the past that the criteria of belonging is no longer ethnicity per se (although some elements, for example anti-Semitism and Russophobia, of this remained) but "cultural affiliation" and first of all the language. In other words they are not fascists, they are neofascists. But in Ukraine they are not only alive, they are particularly well. Ukraine is the first European state where element of neofascist Party were included in the government after putsch of February 22.
All that means that the huge rise of Ukrainian far right forces is not a unique and isolated phenomenon. Far right organizations that first crystallized around football ultras and skinheads are European-wide phenomenon. See for example https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gG-2HdFdvkY
This process also includes Russia although level of suppression of nationalism and especially neofascism in Russia is probably one of the highest among European countries.
And it goes without saying that all major EU counties experience dramatic rise of far right forces too. That includes Germany, France, Sweden as well as usual suspects Hungary, Poland and Baltic states (Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia). The whole story of the EU since the Maastricht Treaty and the establishment of the Euro was about neoliberal conversion similar to the USA conversion. And this conversion destroyed standards of living of lower middle class, especially small merchants, across southern Europe. Now the Southern Europe have had enough and are going to send nationalists to the European Parliament (The Guardian, May 14, 2014):
This new wave of nationalism is different then the previous wave which arose in the beginning of XX century and which led to establishment of "classic" fascist regimes. It can be called "cultural nationalism" where not ethnicity, but cultural identity was put in the center of the nationalistic doctrine.In France, Denmark and Finland, rightwing nationalist and racist parties are set to win more than 20% of the vote – with Geert Wilders' Muslim-baiting Freedom party not far behind in the Netherlands. So is the virulently anti-Roma and anti-Semitic Jobbik in Hungary, while the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party in Greece is on the way to winning its first Euro seats.In France, Denmark and Finland, rightwing nationalist and racist parties are set to win more than 20% of the vote – with Geert Wilders' Muslim-baiting Freedom party not far behind in the Netherlands. So is the virulently anti-Roma and antisemitic Jobbik in Hungary, while the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party in Greece is on the way to winning its first Euro seats.
For "cultural nationalism" a common identity is based more on acceptance for the language and the culture than on the racial solidarity (although it dies not exclude xenophobia). Due to the power of the USA and general alliance with the West, fewer of this movements and parties are openly anti-Semitic and if they are anti-Semitic then the stress is on refusal of Jews to accept the national culture, the charge similar to the change of "country less cosmopolitans" trials in the USSR in late 40th of the last century.
Ukrainian fascists love the Russia-hammering NATO, but detest the Russia-accommodating and supra-nationalistic EU.
And they aren’t alone. Fascism — and anti-EU sentiment — pervade parts of Europe that never felt Stalin’s wrath. In the last elections for the European Parliament, "eurosceptics” and xenophobic ultra-nationalists scored significant gains, led by Marine Le Pen, whose National Front took 25% of the French seats.
A lot of it has to do with the equivocal track record of globalized neo-liberal capitalism in the last decade. We’re all Pikettyists now, and it seems that among the most important outcomes of neo-liberalism are income inequality and oligarchs.
It is anathema to liberal democrats, but it should be acknowledged that fascism is catching on, largely as a result of a growing perception that neo-liberalism and globalization are failing to deliver the economic and social goods to a lot of people.
Democracy is seen as the plaything of oligarchs who manipulate the current system to secure and expand their wealth and power; liberal constitutions with their guarantees of minority rights appear to be recipes for national impotence. Transnational free markets in capital and goods breed local austerity, unemployment, and poverty. Democratic governments seem to follow the free market playbook, get into problems they can’t handle, and surrender their sovereignty to committees of Euro-financiers.
Fascism, with its exaltation of the particular, the emotional, and the undemocratic provides an impregnable ideological and political bulwark against these outside forces.
Fascism has become an important element in the politics of resistance: a force that obstructs imposition of the norms of globalization, and an ideology that justifies the protection of local interests against the demands of liberal democracy, transnational capital, and property and minority rights.
Maybe it’s neo-liberalism, not fascism, that is facing a crisis of legitimacy and acceptance.
So the idea that fascism can be treated as a delusional artifact of the 20th century and the challenge of fascism to the neo-liberal order can be ignored is, itself, wishful thinking.
... ... ...
For some, resentment will, inevitably, congeal around nationalism and the perception that fascist resistance, defiantly militant, uncompromising, and irrational, racial and undemocratic, exclusionary and brutal, is the best instrument to achieve local identity and agency—power– in an ever bigger, more dangerous, and less responsive continental order.
New nationalist movements and far right groups widely use Internet and have well established Web presence including such social sited as Facebook and Google++. They also establish cross-border links with similar parties. For example Ukrainian far-right group have links not only with Germany far right (which is natural for them), but paradoxically also with Polish far-right with which they theoretically should be bitter enemies and sometimes even with Russian neo-liberals (several of them visited EuroMaidan in "support missions") and far-right groups (despite the fact that Russian culture and by extension people are official cultural enemy of Ukrainian nationalism)
The story of 20th and 30th repeats again. Far right groups are nurtured by both government and part of the big business as the most adequate response to the challenging and poorly controlled political situation at home. That happened, for example, in Ukraine under Yanukovich who essentially nurtured his own demise. As Helena Smith reported about Greece (The Observer, [Jun 09, 2014):
It has been a bad week for democracy in Athens. All around this great Greek city, the politics of hate now lurk. On Friday I got a taste of it in the tiny Italian-style cafe I frequent off Syntagma Square.
It arrived in the form of two middle-aged men, both supporters of the neofascist Golden Dawn – and, by their own account, the holders of university degrees, well-travelled and well-informed. Over espressos, they began to engage in an animated discussion about all that is wrong with Greece.
The first, a self-described businessman decked out in designer suit, brogues and silk tie, blamed the country's economic collapse on malfeasance, corruption and uncontrolled immigration. "The only way to teach our filthy politicians is to bring in Golden Dawn," he trilled, his eyes locked in a fierce glare. "These gentlemen are patriots, proud Greek nationalists, and they know how to deal with the scum, the foreigners who never pay taxes, who steal our jobs, who have taken over our streets."
What makes Ukrainian experience more interesting is the Ukrainian far right forces are classic case of forces brought to the front stage and openly supported by the neoliberal government. They were covertly supported by all Ukrainian governments, but, especially, by pro-US "democratic" Yushchenko regime, since 1991 as a way to create "Ukrainian national identity". This is when they got open state support and Yushchenko even dared to bestow the title of hero of Ukraine to the leader of Ukrainian nationalists in WWII Stepan Bandera, who is guilty of serious crimes such an ethnic cleansing against Polish citizens and Jews.
Viktor Yushchenko, the president produced by the last American-supported Ukrainian uprising, the "Orange Revolution,” put the full weight of the ideological apparatus of the Ukrainian state into reinventing the history of Ukrainian complicity with Nazism into a "national liberation” mythology.
But paradoxically it was not Yushchenko, but Yanukovich regime and his financial and logistical support which essentially launch Svoboda into mainstream. As CounterPunch noted (The Durability of Ukrainian Fascism):
Ukrainian nationalists turned largely toward fascism, specifically toward a concept of "integral nationalism” that, in the absence of an acceptable national government, manifested itself in a national will residing in the spirit of its adherents, not expressed by the state or restrained by its laws, but embodied by a charismatic leader and exercised through his organization, whose legitimacy supersedes that of the state and whose commitment to violence makes it a law unto itself.
That leader, at least for many Ukrainians of the fascist persuasion, was Stepan Bandera. The organization, his OUN-B faction.
This state of affairs persists in today’s successor to the OUN-B, Pravy Sektor, with its fascist trappings, leader cult, and paramilitary arm. The "mainstreaming” of the second major fascist grouping, Svoboda, looks more like a strategic repackaging in order to strive for greater electoral success by hiding its fascist antecedents.
So, unfortunately for apologists for the current Kyiv regime, the correct description of these two groups is not "nationalist” or "ultranationalist”; it is "fascist”.
Fatally, the Ukrainian government has turned to fascist nationalism and heroes in order to forge a post-Soviet, essentially Ukrainian, identity for the post-1991 state
Paradoxically, part of Ukrainian far right groups, at least superficially, are pro-EU. It is less paradoxical then it sounds is we assume that the cultural affinity is the key to the new nationalism. Ukrainian nationalists cultural identity is based on strong, fanatic rejection of all things Russian demonstrating a perfect example of Narcissism of small differences -- the tendency to exaggerate the dissimilarities of those who resemble us in an effort to buttress our own self-regard...
An excellent discussion of why this is the case and why they are nurtured by the US government was provided in the article Charge of the Right Brigade: Ukraine and the Dynamics of Capitalist Insurrection from The Polemicist blog (March 19, 2014). I recommend to read this excellent analysis in full, but here is a (large) relevant quote:
To pretend that the ex-post-facto parliamentary maneuvers that ratified the result of this insurrection actually confer some kind of retroactive constitutional legitimacy on it is ludicrous. As Nicolai Petro points out, these actions were taken by "a Parliament that rules without any representation from the majority party – since most of the deputies of the east and the south of the country are afraid to set foot in Parliament… [and] all across the country, headquarters of parties are being sacked by their opponents,” by a parliament that outlawed the only effective remaining opposition party (the Communists) and that "consolidate[ed] the powers of the speaker of the Parliament and the acting president in a single individual, giving him greater powers than allowed under any Ukrainian constitution,” in a context where "Vigilante militias routinely attack and disperse public gatherings they disapprove of.”25 Please, let’s recognize these parliamentary acts as what they are – the ratification of an insurrection, in defiance of the extant constitutional order. Call them the first steps in a new, post-insurrection constitutional order if you want, but recognize the radical break they represent.
And why not call this what it is? Isn’t that what revolutionary change is all about – a radical break with the old order? To reprise what I said in a previous post on Egypt: An electoral process can be a thin facade of democracy and, effectively, a tool of disempowerment, justifying militant extra-electoral politics, or even insurrection. A serious revolutionary conjuncture, a real break into a new social order, usually involves both. It’s an unapologetic, forceful, seizure of power that seeks to be definitive and irreversible. (Of course, not every insurrection is a revolution, or even a step forward, but let’s leave that aside for the moment.)
As someone who accepts the revolutionary socialist argument, I do not object to extra-legal, extra-parliamentary, insurrectionary politics per se. And guess what? All the self-proclaimed liberal, conservative, moderate, non-violent, constitutional, parliamentary democratic thinkers, politicians and commentators who are proudly and loudly supporting what happened in Ukraine also do not object to extra-legal, extra-parliamentary, insurrectionary politics per se – they just don’t want to admit it. Like me, they will support an insurrection, depending on what it’s about. Unlike me, they will pretend it wasn’t really an insurrection at all, just another, maybe somewhat "messy,” but fundamentally non-violent, constitutionally-authorized transition within the rules of bourgeois parliamentary democracy. And that’s because, as the man said: We wouldn’t permit that in any Western capital, no matter how righteous the cause.
It’s quite amusing, until it gets sickening, to watch American leaders—who cling to the notion that a thin, corrupt, disempowering electoral process legitimizes them — embrace the forceful overthrow of a democratically-elected leader in a functioning parliamentary democracy while insisting they are doing no such thing.
Let’s recognize that virtually nobody really supports or opposes what happened in Ukraine, or anywhere else, because it was an insurrection, but because of what kind of insurrection it was – what it’s explicit and implicit socio-political objective was, what different kind of society and polity it was moving toward creating. And let’s recognize that the US would denounce, and help to crush, any insurrection, no matter how popular or righteous the cause, in which leftist forces played anything close to the prominent fighting role that right-wing, neofascist forced played in this one. If revolutionary anarcho-syndicalists had been the vanguard of the Maidan, Yanukovych would have been America’s "democratic” hero.
As for "democracy” (along with "nonviolent,” one of the most dishonestly abused words in the American political vocabulary), it certainly does not just mean having an election. It means power to the people. Neither Ukrainian oligarchs, nor the EU-IMF neo-liberal "technocrats,” nor the American government, nor NATO, want that. They have too much to lose.
It was a right-wing, imperialist insurrection, powered by fascist groups and permeated with fascist ideology.
The overthrow of Yanukovych was an insurrection accomplished by a political movement that was driven by popular socio-economic discontent and thoroughly imbued by "ultranationalist”—i.e., neofascist—ideology.
It was decidedly not a revolution, in the strong sense of the word. A revolutionary insurrection marks the beginning of a change in the social order. This movement did not, will not, and, given its foundations, could not, establish a popular government that will create anything like more widespread prosperity and deeper democracy, let alone a new social order.
It was a regime change, fuelled by popular discontent, powered by neofascist militants, and surreptitiously managed by American intelligence diplomats, with Ukrainian oligarchs maneuvering for ultimate control behind the scenes—factions that have different, sometimes internally contradictory, agendas. It will create a government that will be controlled by and benefit some Ukrainian oligarchs at the expense of others, that will benefit European and American capitalism at the (acknowledged, indeed promised!) cost of austerity and immiseration for Ukrainian working people, and that will benefit American and NATO plans for an ever-tightening military encirclement of Russia at the expense of possible war and perpetual tension for Ukraine.
The only possibility for a more serious, "revolutionary” break from neo-liberal standards of oligarchic-imperial rule in the near future would come from the neofascist groups, who indeed imagine themselves to have a radically different agenda. But guess what? Faced with any popular uprising against its policies, from the right or the left, the new neo-liberal, Euro-facing, Russia-hating, America-loving, Ukrainian government, and its international supporters, will trot out the bourgeois democratic principles that its leaders, of course, never really contravened, and insist, Berkut (by any other name) and all: We won’t permit that in our democratic, European capital, no matter how righteous the cause.
Is there anybody who honestly doubts any of this?
Brendan O’Neill makes the point quite nicely:
For what we have in Ukraine is not revolution, but regime change …As for the word ‘revolution’ … its deployment in Ukraine takes its bastardisation to a new low: there has of course been no replacement of one social order by another in Ukraine, or even the installment of a people’s government; instead various long-established parties in parliament, some of which are deeply unpopular among certain constituencies in Ukraine, are forming an interim government. Revolutionary? Hardly.
The Western debate and coverage … has certainly made externally generated regime change seem revolutionary, and the Western-assisted anti-democratic removal of an elected leader seem like an act of people’s democracy. It has exposed a severe dearth of independent critical thinking among the Western commentariat. …
The truth of what has happened in Ukraine is this: the EU and Washington have effectively brought about regime change, replacing an elected pro-Russian regime with an unelected, still-being-formed new government that is more amenable to the institutions of the West.26
Regarding the "fascism” question, Max Blumenthal’s Alternet piece, and Per Anders Rudling’s detailed scholarly study are indispensable sources. Rudling understates considerably, when he says: "The far-right tradition is particularly strong in western Ukraine.” The fascist currents in the Kiev movement are undeniable. They are represented in the parliament by the Svoboda (Freedom) Party (originally called the Social National Party). In December, 2012, the European Parliament condemned Svoboda for its "racist, anti-Semitic and xenophobic views,” and urged other Ukrainian parties "not to associate with, endorse or form coalitions with this party.”27
As Blumenthal notes, Svoboda’s leader, Oleh Tyahnybok, defines his mission as freeing his country from the "Muscovite-Jewish mafia.” His deputy, Yuriy Mykhalchyshyn founded a think tank named after a historical figure he admires greatly: The Joseph Goebbels Political Research Center. Svoboda’s – and, unfortunately, much of western Ukraine’s – "nationalism” is embodied in the revered figure of Stepan Bandera, a World War II-era Nazi collaborator who led the pro-fascist Organization of Ukrainian (OUN), which helped to form a Ukrainian division of the Waffen SS to fight with the Nazis against the Soviet Union. From 1942-1944, Yaroslav Stetsko, the "Prime Minister” of ONU-B (Bandera’s wing), who supported "bringing German methods of exterminating Jewry to Ukraine,” oversaw the killing of "more than 90,000 Poles and thousands of Jews” in western Ukraine. Banderists in Lvov circulated a pamphlet telling the city’s Jews: "We will lay your heads at Hitler’s feet.”28
After the war, Bandera’s Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) continued its fascist campaign for "a totalitarian, ethnically pure Europe,” engaging in a futile armed struggle against the Soviet Union, until KGB agents assassinated him in Munich in 1959. Nothing "neo” about this Nazi.
Viktor Yushchenko, the president produced by the last American-supported Ukrainian uprising, the "Orange Revolution,” put the full weight of the ideological apparatus of the Ukrainian state into reinventing the history of Ukrainian complicity with Nazism into a "national liberation” mythology. He "tasked a set of nationalistically minded historians” into "disseminating a sanitized, edifyingly patriotic version of the history of the ‘Ukrainian national liberation movement,’ the leaders of which were presented in iconographic form as heroic and saintly figures, martyrs of the nation.”
Thus, in 2010, against the protestation of the European Parliament—which he accused of having a "historical complex” — Yushchenko awarded Stepan Bandera the title of "Hero of Ukraine."29 As Rudling notes: "There was little protest from intellectuals who identify themselves as liberals.” It was the government of big, bad Yanukovych that later annulled the award.
And thus, still satisfied by their political research, Svoboda led a 15,000-person march in honor of Bandera in Kiev on January 1st of this year, with chants of "Ukraine above all” and "Bandera, come and bring order!” 30
Now, as a result of the insurrection, Svoboda, which won about 10% of the vote in the last election, has effectively muscled the much larger (34% of the last vote) Party of the Regions out of parliament, and seeks nationally to outlaw it and the Communist Party (13% of the vote), whose leader’s house was burned down. With the help of its Right Sector allies, these parties have already been banned in a number of regions. Svoboda now holds "key leadership positions in the parliament and law enforcement, four ministerial portfolios in the new government [including Prosecutor General and Deputy Prime Minister] and several appointed governorships.” Svoboda’s co-founder, Andriy Parubiy, is head of the National Security & Defense Council of the new, democratic, government of Ukraine.31
So, fourteen months after denouncing Svoboda for its "racism, anti-Semitism and xenophobia,” European governments are gushing over the new "democracy” in Ukraine over which Svoboda presides. And, as the BBC reports: "Inside the columned central hall of Kiev's city council, an activist base of operations, hung a giant banner with a Celtic cross, a symbol of ‘white power,’ and an American confederate flag….and an immense portrait of Stepan Bandera.”32
Keep in mind, too, Rudling’s point that the whole Banderist "national liberation” narrative "was well received in western Ukraine but was received coldly or met open hostility in the eastern and southern parts of the country.”As Svoboda represents fascism in the parliament, Right Sector (Pravy Sektor) represented fascism in the maidan, and continues to do so with its intimidating tactics in the streets and administrative offices of Kiev and the regions, as well as from its new positions in government. Right Sector is a confederation of far-right groups such as Patriots of Ukraine, the Social-National Assembly, White Hammer, Stepan Bandera’s Trident, and the Ukrainian National Assembly-Ukrainian People's Self-Defense (UNA-UNSO). Their favorite ensign is the wolfsangel--a favorite, too, of the Waffen SS--which was on display all over the maidan:
As Ukrainian journalist Oleg Shynkarenko points out, Right Sector leader, Dmytro Yarosh defines the group's creed thusly: "We are against degeneration and totalitarian liberalism, but we support traditional morals and family values, against the cult of profit and depravity.” Right Sector’s websites rail against the "liberal homodictatorship” of modern Western society.33 Blumenthal points out that Right Sector is: "linked to a constellation of international neofascist parties,” and "through the Alliance of European National Movements (AEMN), Right Sector is promising to lead its army of aimless, disillusioned young men on ‘a great European Reconquest’.” In some ways, the neofascist right does want power to the people—just the morally and ethnically pure people.
BBC did a decent report on the "Neo-Nazi threat in new Ukraine.” Again, maybe not so "neo.” The reporter, Gabriel Gatehouse, interviews Svoboda and Right Sector militants, meets a group called C14 (apparently an armed wing of Svoboda) under a portrait of Lenin in the Communist Party headquarters they had taken over, and shows two Svoboda MPs displaying "14” and "88” tokens. These numbers, which are often displayed in combination, and which appeared in graffiti throughout the maidan, have special fascist significance: "14” stands for from the Fourteen Words coined by an American white supremacist: "We must secure the existence of our people and a future for White children” (there’s an alternate version, about "the White Aryan woman”); "88” represents a double of the eighth letter of the Latin alphabet, HH, for Heil Hitler. [I cannot make this stuff up.]
Yes, it depends what you’re fighting for.
My favorite is this 2½-minute tidbit from a young Right Sector gentleman, explaining the group’s, and his, affinity for "National Socialist themes,” and assuring his interviewer that they want a society that’s just "a little bit like” that "under Hitler”:
"http://www.youtube.com/embed/5SBo0akeDMY
The leader of the Right Sector, Dmytro Yarosh, is now the deputy head of the National Security Council, and is running for President, of Ukraine’s new, democratic, government.
You might also take a look at this video, where Right Sector leader Aleksandr Muzychko roughs up a local prosecutor to show him who’s the boss now, and threatens to have him lynched: "Shut the fuck up, you bitch! Your fucking time is over… If you think I am goodie because I’ve come without my rifle, you are gravely mistaken. I’ve come with a pistol. There are a few choice videos of Muzychko, who is also identified as a member of the "Wiking" unit of the Ukrainian National Assembly – Ukrainian People’s Self-Defense (UNA-UNSO), another post-Banderist right-wing paramilitary group.
So there’s no question that fascists were part of the insurrection, and there is no question that they were crucial to its success. As Oleg Shynkarenko insists, the scenes of fighting resistance and advance were led by Right Sector and allied groups:
[I]t was the far right that first started to talk back to Yanukovych in his own language. They were the first to throw Molotov cocktails and stones at police and to mount real and well-fortified barricades. They were amongst those who burned two military troop carriers that attacked the barricades on February 18. The Euromaidan won thanks to the resoluteness of people who were ready to fight rather than to negotiate in parliament when any negotiation became pointless.Nicolai Petro agrees, and points out the political ramifications:I ascribe a much greater role to the Right Sector…the spearhead of the revolution. … [T]he actual coup was accomplished thanks to the armed intervention of extreme nationalists, led by the Right Sector. And the fact that they were so instrumental in accomplishing this change of power has put them in the driver’s seat. From now on, whatever political decisions are arrived at will really be at the sufferance of the Right Sector.Let’s be clear, also, that these neofascist groups not only fought and defeated Yanokovych’s police, they attacked and drove away any political group from the left that tried to establish a presence in the maidan. The fascists made sure they controlled the radical politics of the square. Sascha, a member of AntiFascist Action Ukraine, a group that monitors and fights fascism in Ukraine, recounts in an interview published in mid-February:A group of 100 anarchists tried to arrange their own self-defense group, different Anarchist groups came together for a meeting on the Maidan. While they were meeting a group of Nazis came in a larger group, they had axes and baseball bats and sticks, helmets, they said it was their territory. They called the Anarchists things like Jews, blacks, Communists. There weren’t even any Communists, that was just an insult. The Anarchists weren’t expecting this and they left. People with other political views can’t stay in certain places, they aren’t tolerated.34And Mira, of the same group, adds:One of the worst things is that Pravy has this official structure. They are coordinated. You need passes to go certain places. They have the power to give or not give people permission to be active. We’re trying to be active but we have to avoid Nazis, and I’m not going to ask a Nazi for permission!...Early on a Stalinist tent was attacked by Nazis. One was sent to the hospital. Another student spoke out against fascism and he was attacked.Pravy Sektor got too much attention after the first violence, the media gave them popularity and they started to think they’re cool guys. Pravy existed before but now it’s growing and attracting a lot of new people.Ilya Budraitskis, a Russian Socialist who came to the maidan in January, tells us how the "ultranationalists” brutalized and evicted everyone from leftish Europhiles to anarchists:Another part of the left repetitively tried to join the movement, even after they were repetitively kicked out of it. Some of the "euro-enthusiastic” leftists came to Maidan in November with red (instead of blue) flag of the EU, with banners for free healthcare and education, and with feminist slogans. They were brutally attacked by Nazis. Then there was an episode when the far-right attacked the tent of the Confederation of Free Trade Unions of Ukraine near the Maidan. A man on the stage said that there were some "provocateurs” and said that "men know what to do”; as a result, a mob of Nazis has broken ribs of the trade union activists, tore their tent with knives and stolen their property. The victims hadn’t been doing anything "leftist” per se, but they were members of the left movement, known to their political adversaries, and that was enough….[T]here is also another group of people who are often confused with the radical left. …who call themselves anarchists but actually have a very conservative political agenda full of machismo and xenophobia. After the protests have begun, they shifted to the right dramatically; they reached truce with the nazi groups and showered Molotov cocktails at the police together. Eventually, they parted ways with left movement finally.A week ago they, together with some actual leftists who wanted to "act”, decided to form an "anarchist sotnia [defense unit]” in the Maidan self-defence. In order to do that, they were prepared to give an oath to [Svoboda leader] Andriy Parubiy. But when they formed their ranks to do this, they were met by approximately 150 Svoboda fighters with baseball bats and axes. The fascists accused them of being racially impure and politically irrelevant and forced them out of Maidan.35So much for Professor Snyder’s agora.Of course, the great majority of the people in the square are not fascists, but, for all the reasons of history and ideology discussed above, a lot of people in western Ukraine are susceptible to their charms. As Denis, from Kiev Autonomous Workers Union says: "[I]n the long run the rightist political hegemony is being reinforced,” because "That’s what happens when you don’t have a developed left movement and your liberals are too corrupt and ugly!” Here’s how he describes the rightward political momentum on the maidan:
[Far right] ideology has really become more acceptable in the mainstream (which had initially been leaning to the right!). ... Of course, most protesters really say they want political pluralism, bourgeois democracy. … But at the same time the crowd at the Maidan revives some deeply buried pre-modern, medieval social practices like whipping post, lynching, reinforced traditional gender roles. This scary readiness to slip into barbarism is born from the general disenchantment with parliamentary politics and the ubiquitous nationalist mythology about the golden past, imposed in schools and media.The original Euromaidan agenda in November was a right liberal one, standing for the EU, "economic liberties” and bourgeois democracy. But even then the issues of multiculturalism, LGBT rights, workers’ rights and freedoms were severely repressed by the politically conscious far-right activists … [whose] political programme had always included critique of the EU’s "liberal fascism”. … The attackers didn’t represent the majority of protesters, but the majority was very susceptible to their political agenda which they had been aggressively pushing through…[P]eople are new to politics, they just "know” they are rightists and nationalists. And therefore they trust the more politically experienced leaders to express their views and formulate their programme for them. It just so happens that those leaders are nationalists or even Nazis. And they shift the centre of the political discourse even further to the right.But, first of all, their ideas are welcome among the apolitical crowd; second of all, they are very well organized, and also people love their "radicalism”. An average Ukrainian worker hates the police and the government but he will never fight them openly and risk his comfort. So he or she welcomes a "vanguard” which is ready to fight on their behalf; especially if that vanguard shares "good” patriotic values….And since the basic "common sense” had long ago been established on the nationalist fundamental assumptions, the radicalization goes only further in that direction.36As we all know, fascists don’t have to be a majority to determine outcomes, and their power to do so can increase very quickly under favorable conditions. Perhaps the most telling, and disturbing remark of the leftists cited in these interviews was this, from Sascha of AntiFascist Action Ukraine, a couple of weeks before the head of Right Sector became deputy head of the National Security and Defense Council: "If Pravy [Right Sector] has positions in a new government that would be really dangerous but that isn’t possible, they aren’t powerful enough.”Oh, yes they are. Consider the stunning turn of events we have just witnessed: "the ascension of a genuinely fascist mass movement into the corridors of power” in a European country for the first time since WWII, greeted with a stunning non-chalance—nay, embraced as an exemplar of democracy—by the Western liberal democracies. University of Ottawa political scientist Ivan Katchanovski specifies: "The paramilitary right sector has de facto power at least in some Western Ukrainian regions,” and "The far right in Ukraine has now achieved the level of representation and influence that is unparalleled in Europe.”37
Then imagine, please, Professor Katchanovski’s last sentence with "left” substituted for "right,” and consider how unthinkable it is that any American government would be so welcoming of such a "democratic” outcome. The United States and its allied liberal democracies are, in other words, willing to accommodate very hard swings to the right in order to secure and/or extend the neo-liberal capitalist, and US/NATO imperialist, order, but will abide not an inch of movement toward resistance from the left—no matter how righteous or democratic the cause.
Intelligence agencies represent now a distinct and powerful political force with employees of those agencies as a surrogate of the authoritarian party that brought to power such leaders as Mussolini. And top brass as the leadership of the this quasi-party. In a way the tremendous growth of intelligences agencies creates state within the state and makes possible neofascism without mass political party. Professor Stephen Cohen aptly noted this newfound role of intelligence agencies in determining the results of the USA elections as well as the USA foreign policy in his article in Nation (US Congress has no Russian policy other than sanctions)
Oct 17, 2018
Inconvenient thoughts on Cold War and other news. Intelligence agencies, Nikki Haley, sanctions, and public opinion.
1. National intelligence agencies have long played major roles, often not entirely visible, in international politics. They are doing so again today, as is evident in several countries, from Russiagate in the United States and the murky Skripal assassination attempt in the UK to the apparent murder of Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Turkey. Leaving aside what President Obama knew about Russiagate allegations against Donald Trump and when he knew it, the question arises as to whether these operations were ordered by President Putin and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MbS) or were " rogue " operations unknown in advance by the leaders and perhaps even directed against them.
There have been plenty of purely criminal and commercial " rogue " operations by intelligence agents in history, but also " rogue " ones that were purposefully political. We know, for example, that both Soviet and US intelligence agencies - or groups of agents - tried to disrupt the Eisenhower-Khrushchev détente of the late 1950s and early 1960s, and that some intelligence players tried to stop Khrushchev's formal recognition of West Germany, also in the early 1960s.
It is reasonable to ask, therefore, whether the attacks on Skripal and Khashoggi were " rogue " operations undertaken by political opponents of the leaders' policies at home or abroad, with the help of one or another intelligence agency or agents. Motive is a - perhaps the - crucial question. Why would Putin order such an operation in the UK at the very moment when his government had undertaken a major Western public-relations campaign in connection with the upcoming World Cup championship in Russia? And why would MbS risk a Khashoggi scandal as he was assiduously promoting his image abroad as an enlightened reform-minded Saudi leader?
Growth of censorship ad the level of control of MSM are another two signs of growing influence of intelligence agencies in political life of many countries and first of all the USA (Article Globalist Traitors Seek to Delete History--Who Are the Real Fascists OpEdNews )
We're living in a moment where we are seeing people adopting what used to be denounced as fascist policies--the shutting down of free speech, the destruction of opposition voices--and the people who are doing it are arguing that the president is a supporter of fascism. It is Orwellian...
--Harley Schlanger
... ... ...
Through the Foreign Intelligence Court (FISC), and a reciprocal intelligence-sharing partnership among the nations of Great Britain, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the U.S. called the "Five Eyes," the Obama administration manufactured, altered and misrepresented various pieces of evidence in an attempt to justify conducting surveillance on certain individual Americans. The Obama administration--in conjunction with the FBI, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and, yes, the CIA--employed the same process that is used to spy on foreigners deemed to be severe terror threats to America against American citizens... specifically, in this case, political opponents vying against the Clinton-Obama globalist cabal.
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Fascism is a system of political authority and social order intended to reinforce the unity, energy, and purity of communities in which liberal democracy stands accused of producing division and decline. [...] A form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion. Robert Paxton |
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Jul 03, 2021 | www.wsj.com
... ... ...
In their book "Critical Race Theory: An Introduction," Mr. Delgado and Jean Stefancic list several of its core premises, including the view that "racism is ordinary, not aberrational," and that it "serves important purposes, both psychic and material, for the dominant group," that is, for white people. In recent years, these ideas have entered the mainstream thanks to the advocacy of the Black Lives Matter movement, which was catalyzed by several high-profile cases of police violence against Black people, as well as the New York Times's 1619 Project and bestselling books like Robin DiAngelo's "White Fragility" and Ibram X. Kendi's "How to Be an Antiracist." Critical race theory also informs instruction at some schools and other institutions.
...Far more Americans have learned about critical race theory from its opponents than from the theorists themselves. That may be inevitable, since their writing was mostly aimed at other scholars. But at least one major work is more accessible: "Faces at the Bottom of the Well," the 1992 book by Derrick Bell, who is often described as the founder or godfather of critical race theory.
Bell died in 2011, but the response to his work foreshadows today's controversies. In "Faces," he blends the genres of fiction and essay to communicate his powerfully pessimistic sense of "the permanence of racism" -- the book's subtitle. Bell's thought has been an important influence on some of today's most influential writers on race, such as Ta-Nehisi Coates and Michelle Alexander.
Derrick Bell was born in Pittsburgh in 1930, and after serving in the Air Force he went to work as an attorney in the Civil Rights Division of the Eisenhower Justice Department. He left the job in 1959 after being told that he had to resign his membership in the NAACP to avoid compromising his objectivity. That experience reflects a major theme in Bell's work: Can traditional legal standards of objectivity and neutrality lead to justice for Black Americans, or does fighting racism require a more politically engaged, results-oriented approach to the law?
In 1971, Bell became the first Black professor to receive tenure at Harvard Law School. As he writes in "Faces," "When I agreed to become Harvard's first black faculty member I did so on the express commitment that I was to be the first, but not the last, black hired. I was to be the pioneer, the trailblazer." But the school was slow to hire more Black faculty, leading Bell to leave in protest in 1990. He ended up spending the last part of his career at NYU Law School.
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The political scientist Adolph Reed, Jr., whose work focuses on race and inequality, wrote about a conference he attended at Harvard Law School in 1991, where "I heard the late, esteemed legal theorist, Derrick Bell, declare on a panel that blacks had made no progress since 1865. I was startled not least because Bell's own life, as well as the fact that Harvard's black law students' organization put on the conference, so emphatically belied his claim." Mr. Reed dismissed the idea as "more a jeremiad than an analysis."
In the conclusion to "Faces," Bell argues that the struggle for racial equality is worthwhile even though it will never succeed. Like the French existentialist Albert Camus, who saw Sisyphus's eternal effort to roll a boulder uphill as a symbol of human endurance in an absurd world, Bell demands "recognition of the futility of action" while insisting "that action must be taken."
To the journalist and historian James Traub, who profiled Bell for the New Republic magazine in 1993, this amounted to a recipe for paralysis: "If you convince whites that their racism is ineradicable, what are they supposed to do? And what are blacks to do with their hard-won victim status?"
... ... ...
These experiences inform "Faces at the Bottom of the Well," which is made up of nine fables, some with a science-fiction twist. In one story, a new continent emerges in the Atlantic Ocean, with an atmosphere that only African-Americans can breathe. In another, the U.S. institutes a system where whites can pay for permission to discriminate against Blacks -- a kind of cap-and-trade scheme for bigotry.
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Jun 09, 2021 | www.unz.com
GMC , says: June 9, 2021 at 7:19 am GMT • 18.5 hours ago
@beavertalesMy good friend in Canada says that it seems to be a "BioSecurity Fascist State" forming also. And it's not against Cuba , it's against the populace of Canada. Worse than anything in the US. < >
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May 18, 2021 | www.moonofalabama.org
Max , May 17 2021 19:15 utc | 37
Trump represented a FACTION of the establishment. Which one? He did their bidding and in the process alienated other factions. The other factions worked together to get him replaced. There are factions within neocons, neoliberals and establishment. It is a nuanced and complex structure, not monolithic. It is misleading to state, "he publicly broke away from the American oligarchy's class interests".
Trump's biggest MISTAKE was that he didn't build a good sounding board of advisors. He surrounded himself with his family members and believed his orders will be implemented like a corporate president. Jared Kushner is a Bilderberg. So Trump was connected to the global syndicate and part of the swamp.
The unipolar order ended in 2014/15 and the multipolar order is establishing. The U$A or NATO can't launch a foreign war like they did in Libya. Russia and China have warned the Financial Empire and defined the redlines. This is the reason behind Trump not launching a new major foreign war. Will Biden launch a new war? However, Trump did launch hybrid wars in Venezuela, Bolivia, Belarus,... Trump didn't break from FOREIGN adventures.
During Trump's term:
– How many bombs were dropped?
– How much new DEBT was created?
– How much did the money supply increase by?
– What happened to the trade deficit?
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May 16, 2021 | www.amazon.com
4.0 out of 5 stars The roots of National Socialism in cultural criticism Reviewed in the United States on November 30, 2019 Verified Purchase Written originally in 1961 as part of venerable scholar Fritz Stern's doctoral thesis The Politics of Cultural Despair is a classic study of the cultural criticism and irrational ideologies of three 19th and early 20th century German writers that helped pave the way for the rise of the Third Reich and the triumph of national socialism. The book traces the lives and works of the obscure German writers and scholars Lagarde, Langbehn, and Moeller to illuminate how ideas conducive to national socialism, including antisemitism, extreme German nationalism (volk movement), anti-liberalism, anti-intellectualism, the desire for an authoritarian Caesar or "Fuhrer", and the primacy of "the will", became pervasive in 19th and early 20th century Germany.
All three authors relentlessly attacked liberal democracy, the enlightenment tradition, and the modern industrial society that had separated the German people from their "spiritual" and "pure" connection with the Germany's ancestral forests and countryside. They were, as Stern puts it, "Conservatives with nothing left to conserve". They viewed Germany's unification and the advancement of liberal democracy and modernity as a disastrous development that divided Germany's people and drained them of their spiritual essence. Their criticism also took on extreme antisemitism that egregiously blamed the Jewish people and portrayed them as conspiratorial outsiders who promoted capitalism and diluted Germany's ethnic purity. They also felt that traditional sources of authority, such as religion and the Bismarck nation state, were entirely inadequate and stale in the age of Nietzsche. Seeing Germany in crisis, and with no traditional political or cultural forces to turn to, all three authors became their own prophets of change. They expounded vague and irrational theories that found salvation in nationalists myths and desired a return to a illusory past where the German people lived in unified harmony and prosperity in their ancestral lands. The authors took on the delusional path from cultural critics to Nihilistic prophets. Starting from somewhat credible attacks on Germany's political and cultural shortcomings and transforming them into irrational and delusional political programs with little grasp on reality and dangerous support for authoritarian policies. Tragically, their works enjoyed a consistent level of support among Germany's population and influenced many philosophers and political theorists, such as Alfred Rosenberg, that would formulate the National Socialist ideology. While none of the three were Nazis, all of them clearly proliferated ideas central to the National Socialist program and advocated for a dangerous and authoritarian cultural regeneration.
Stern's work is classic in the sense that it represents the mid 20th century political and historical scholarly work that focuses on the impact of political ideologies and political ideas. While this focus on "ideas" is far less emphasized today in modern political science scholarship, the book reminds us that the rise of National Socialism and Fascism was far more than a reaction to Germany's disastrous defeat in World War I and the impact of the Versailles Treaty. Instead, the ideas of national socialism were deeply embedded in German society and represented a dangerous undercurrent acting against the forces of democratic liberalism, industrialization, and the enlightenment. In advocating a "politics of cultural despair" all three turned towards delusional, dangerous, and authoritarian solutions that could have only supported a political program as appalling and devastating as national socialism. As Stern reminds us, "the politics of cultural despair" can come from any region of the political spectrum where the most unwavering cultural critics can become "nihilistic" prophets who desire not just cultural change, but cultural and political regeneration based on a mythic and nonexistent past or promise a millenarian utopia . A statement that applies not only to Germany's lost 19th and 20th century conservatives, but to idealistic leftist terrorist groups in the 60s and 70s, and Islamic and right wing terrorist groups today. In summary, Stern reminds us not only that Fascism and National Socialism had deep roots in 19th and 20th century Germany, but also of the dangers of irrational and delusional political programs that depart from reality.
However, like any good skeptic, one has to wonder how important the cultural and political critiques and ideas of Stern's three authors really were. Modern political science has mostly moved beyond the focus on political ideas found in Stern's work and without concrete quantitative data, it is close to impossible to determine the impact of their work. The book also suffers from a narrow focus that makes it less approachable for the casual reader. Unlike other introductory works on Fascism and National Socialism, Stern writes for an expert audience that is expected to be well versed in 19th and 20th century German political, philosophical, and intellectual history. Readers less versed in these subjects may find the book less enjoyable and insightful. Although this work has probably been superseded by more modern works, it remains a classic in the field of intellectual and political history and represents classic political and cultural history at its best. I also recommend George Mosse's 1964 work "The Crisis of the German Ideology" that covers very similar ground, as well as Zeev Sternhell's "The Birth of Fascist Ideology" on the intellectual origins of Italian Fascism. >
A presage of the rise of German National Socialism. Similarities to modern Islamic Radicalism. 4.0 out of 5 stars A presage of the rise of German National Socialism. Similarities to modern Islamic Radicalism. Reviewed in the United States on August 5, 2006 Verified Purchase Stern's book gives us valuable insight into currents of German thinking from the 19th century up to the rise of National Socialism in the 20s and 30s. Stern's books focuses on the writings of Paul de Lagarde, Julius Langbehn, and Moeller van den Bruck.
Paul de Lagarde was a biblical scholar and a master of oriental languages like Aramaic and Persian. He was also a rabid Jew hater who openly called for extermination. He loathed classical Western liberalism, science, and capitalism. For him, these were all spiritless abstractions. For Lagarde, Western liberalism, capitalism, science, and the Jews where the monstrous embodiment of all he hated. He had a romantic notion of a mythical Germanic past, and he believed the Jews and the modern society of the West were conspiring to pollute and corrupt this pure German spirit. He advocated a Great Leader, a "purge the Jew" program, and a divinely inspired expansionist foreign policy to rekindle an authentic and noble Germanic way of life.
Lagarde despised bourgeois 19th century German Christianity, and he called for a "new" German religion that would purge all the Jewish elements of Christianity and become the unifying spiritual basis and justification for the new German state. This new religion would fuse the squabbling German factions and sects into a unified people and nation with one single will .... embodied in the form a "Great Leader."
Lagarde rejected the premise of general education, and instead, he proposed a totally new education system based on social status and intellectual promise. This new, state-run authoritarian education system would mold the leaders of the new German nation.
Julius Langbehn wrote a book that extolled the Dutch artist Rembrandt as an authentic "German man". If this sounds confusing, well ... it is ..., but recall that many years later the Nazis attempted to use Rembrandt as a cultural symbol to force a Dutch-German alliance after they occupied Holland during the war.
Like Lagarde, Langbehn hated the modern liberal society because of its mechanization, realism, bourgeois lifestyle, and commercialism. Like Hitler, Langbehn was an "artist"; he was anti-scientific, anti-Western, and anti-rational. He postulated a "cult of the young" (think Hitler Youth) and a "Hidden Emperor" (think Führer) who would emerge to unite the German people. Again like Lagarde, Langbehn hated the U.S.A because it was the embodiment of all he despised. He warned that Jews were destroying the German "Volk" by "worming" their way into German life. For Langbehn, modernity itself was the ultimate cause of German decay, and the Jews were to blame for bringing this modernity to German society. For Langbehn, the Jews were "democratically inclined; they have an affinity for the mob," and like Lagarde, Langbehn called for extermination of the Jews.
I won't go on about Moeller van den Bruck, because it is similar to Lagarde and Langbehn. One important footnote: The Nazi's got the term "The Third Reich" from one of Moeller's books.
In summary, we find a set of three German intellectual romantics who were alienated by modernism and who abhorred all that was new. They suffered from "cultural despair." For these three, the "Jews" were the immediate agents of corrupting change, and it was America that was the colossal embodiment of all they detested. For them, a pure and authentic German way of life was lost due to the conspiracy and confluence of these horrible forces of modernism. All of the ills and fractiousness and faithlessness of German society were attributable to Jews and liberal modernism (as exemplified by America).
These three sought to annihilate the bourgeois modern society they found themselves in and they sought to replace it with a utopian dream. Their utopia was a unified and harmonious German people -- purged of Jews -- who would be orderly, hierarchical, and authentic. This unified German nation would be led by a strong emperor who would perfectly embody the unified will of the people. They sought a "New German religion", free of Jewish influence, that would provide a unifying framework for this new society. They proposed state-controlled education and propaganda, leadership by a small elite, annexation and conquest of middle Europe, and they called for the extermination of Jews.
In short - these three "culturally despairing" egg heads predicted much of the horror of the Nazis. All three were widely read in German society at various points in time leading up to the rise of National Socialism.
We know that Hitler emphatically read Lagarde. For more on this, see "Hitler's Forgotten Library" in the May 2003 issue of The Atlantic Monthly, by Timothy W. Ryback. On p.295, Stern shows how Lagarde, Langbehn, and van den Bruck influenced other key Nazi ideologists like Alfred Rosenberg.
The book contains extensive footnotes and end notes, a large bibliography, and a good index. I have one gripe with the book. There are several book titles, quotes, and passages that are in German without English translation. I could not work them out with my meager German. I wish translations were provided. I also wish pictures or portraits of Lagarde, Langbehn, and van den Bruck were provided.
Finally, I'd like to add that many of the themes we see having emerged from Lagarde, Langbehn, and van den Bruck are similar to what is found the more recent work of the influential Islamic radical Sayyid Qutb. I strongly recommend the Paul Berman book "Terror and Liberalism" for a very readable and enlightening treatment of Qutb.
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May 12, 2021 | www.moonofalabama.org
Stonebird , May 12 2021 20:56 utc | 47
psychohistorian | May 12 2021 19:44 utc | 31
I'm not sure that it is global private finance that is the key. Although I used to.
Either we consider the Oligarchs (Bezos Zuckerberg) as the newest form of low life, or the Banking cartels and billionares are even lower.
BUT - There is a third class of Global financiers. That is "Corporations" (as a class). Corporations are immortal, and like a hydra, with many heads, have more arms than an "image of a covid-virus" ( Octopussii are simply too limited, although they are a good example of multi-brained resourceful animals ). They are also "persons" in front of the law, with all the protections and privilges that offers. On other occasions they are simply above the law (Twit-Facebook and free speech). The people running them are only occasionally reprimanded, but the "corporation" itself is never touched. *1*
They pay, sometimes, a bit of taxes, have different laws and have lobbies working in their favour. Can corrupt Politicians with the offer of directorships or whatever. They can even be "foundations" and pay no tax at all. They deal across many different National laws, obey what they will, and are extra terrritorial in scope. They can have a nominal "center", while decisions are made elsewhere. They are in fact a new type of alien supra-being .
Of course, the "leaders" of Corporations are rich, but they can be replaced by others at the wishes of "shareholders". Untouchable and unknown.Very useful for storing wealth and speculating at the same time.
In spite of Musk and others taking all the limelight, it is the corporations that work in the background that seem to be the real seat of power.
---
*1* One of the last real actions taken against Corporate power was the breaking up of Rockefellers Standard Oil .*****
*2* In the case of the "breakup" of either the US or the EU - would the corporations be touched (eliminated), or hailed as saving civilisation?
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May 09, 2021 | www.moonofalabama.org
jared , May 5 2021 16:50 utc | 49
I think that there is an on-going effort to create fads/movements in which the public becomes caught-up and distracts the from reality.
The more binary and controversial the better. Red/Blue. I used to be a big fan of sports but have the opinion it is a pointless waste of time and my life is better for that realization.
Additionally/tangentially, I feel there is a habit in the English language in particular to create new words to describe things these words are not well define and generate a lot of discussion and heat about things that nobody knows what they are actually talking about and end up arguing the meaning of the words.
People who don't know the new words must try to catch up or be left out of the discussion. I don't direct this at your discussion. I just wonder how we might see things if we were constrained to a limited vocabulary - as I am as a programmer of sorts.
EoinW , May 5 2021 16:57 utc | 52
gottlieb , May 5 2021 17:06 utc | 54NonPartisanRinsed | May 5 2021 16:03 utc | 30
Characteristics of the Woke: They always attack, especially with insults, like "paranoia nonsense". They never address the actual point made, instead they reinterpret the point to make it appear pure evil. Which allows them to attribute the worst possible motivations on the person they are attacking. Naturally they invent things the other person hadn't even mentioned, like climate change.
psychohistorian , May 5 2021 17:17 utc | 55Again the whole woke 'identity' culture that cancels dissent and promotes 'minorities' in positions of power is simply woke fascism. Just as military recruitment is about turning violent video games real for young men, so too is CIA recruitment about inviting the 'woke' for murder and mayhem in the name 'freedom' without which the woke could not wake.
I will believe that any of this is worth a shit when Snowden wades in with his opinion...until then its just another distraction
The CIA is why we can't have "wokeism" about the right issue like global private/public finance.....where is Occupy 2.0?
The current wokeism is like the pet rocks of old days.....would want folks to focus that woke on the inherited class structure of the private property West, would we?
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May 03, 2021 | www.nakedcapitalism.com
Posted on April 25, 2021 by Lambert Strether
By Lambert Strether of Corrente.
Recently, the political class has been working hard to rehabilitate George W. Bush into an elder statesman, no doubt to continue the liberal Democrat conversion of suburban Republicans, with headlines like " George Bush reborn as the nation's grandfather " (the London Sunday Times, but you know it will migrate over here), " George W Bush is back "" but not all appreciate his new progressive image " (Guardian), " Bush calls on Congress to tone down "˜harsh rhetoric' about immigration " (CNN), and "George W Bush reveals who he voted for in 2020 election "" and it wasn't Biden or Trump " (the Independent. Bush wrote in Condaleeza Rice, who Exxon once named a tanker for). I could go on. But I won't. These stories from major outlets seem to be erasing early coverage like " The 7 worst moments of George W. Bush's presidency " (WaPo, 2013), " The blood on George W Bush's hands will never dry. Don't glorify this man " (The Guardian, 2017), " Reminder: George W. Bush Is Still Very, Very Bad " (Vice, 2018), " Seth Meyers: Don't Let Trump Make You Forget How Awful George W. Bush Was " (Vanity Fair, 2020), and " We Shouldn't Have to Remind People George W. Bush Was a Terrible President : (Jacobin, 2020). That's unfortunate, because George W. Bush (hereafter "Bush"; the "W" distinguishes him from his spook Yankee patrician Dad, oil bidnessman George H.W. Bush). As with so much else that is fetid in the miasmic air of our current liberal Democrat dispensation, Bush's rehabilitation begins with the Obamas, in this case Michelle Obama, in this iconic photo:
(The backstory: " Michelle Obama Reveals What Really Happened During Her Sweet Exchange With George W. Bush ," and "Michelle Obama: George W. Bush is "˜my partner in crime'[1] and "˜I love him to death' ").
Bush became President in the year 2000. That was "" let me break out my calculator "" 2021 "" 2000 = 21 years ago. It occurs to me that our younger readers, born in 2000, or even 1990, may not know how genuinely horrid Bush was, as President.
I was blogging even back then, and I remember how horrid Bush was; certainly worse than Trump, at least for Trump's first three years in office, until the Covid pandemic. To convey the full horror of the Bush years would not a series of posts, but a book. The entire experience was wretched and shameful.
Of the many horrors of the Bush years, I will pick three. (I am omitting many, many others, including Hurricane Katrina , the Plame Affair , Medicare Part D, the Cheney Energy Task Force , that time Dick Cheney shot an old man in the face , Bush's missing Texas Air National Guard records , Bush gaslighting the 2004 Republican National Convention with terror alerts, and on and on and on. And I didn't even get to 9/11, " You've covered your ass ," WMDs, and the AUMF. Sorry. It's exhausting.) I'm afraid my recounting of these incidents will be sketchy: I lived and blogged in them, and the memories of the horror well up in such volume and detail that I lose control of the material. Not only that, there was an actual, functioning blogosphere at that time, which did great work, but unfortunately most of that work has succumbed to link rot. And my memory of events two decades ago is not as strong as it could be.
The White House Iraq Group
Here I will rely on excerpts from Colonel Sam Gardiner's (PDF) "Truth from These Podia: Summary of a Study of Strategic Influence, Perception Management, Strategic Information Warfare and Strategic Psychological Operations in Gulf II" (2003), whose introduction has been saved from link rot by the National Security Archive and a full version by the University of Leeds . I would bet, long forgotten even by many of those who blogged through those times. ("Gulf II" is what we refer to as the "War in Iraq.") Quoting from the full version:
You will see in my analysis and comments that I do not accept the notion that the first casualty of war is truth. I think we have to have a higher standard. In the most basic sense, Washington and London did not trust the peoples of their democracies to come to right decisions. Truth became a casualty. When truth is a casualty, democracy receives collateral damage.
Seems familiar. (Gardiner's report can be read as a brilliant media critique; it's really worth sitting down with a cup of coffee and reading it all.)[2] More:
My research suggests there were over 50 stories manufactured or at least engineered that distorted the picture of Gulf II for the American and British people . I'll cover most in this report. At the end, I will also describe some stories that seem as if they were part of the strategic influence campaign although the evidence is only circumstantial.
What becomes important is not each story taken individually. If that were the case, it would probably seem only more of the same. If you were to look at them one at a time, you could conclude, "Okay we sort of knew that was happening." It is the pattern that becomes important. It's the summary of everything. To use a phrase often heard during the war, it's the mosaic. Recognizing I said I wouldn't exaggerate, it would not be an exaggeration to say the people of the United States and UK can find out more about the contents of a can of soup they buy than the contents of the can of worms they bought with the 2003 war in the Gulf.
The White House was, naturally, at the center of the operation:
One way to view how the US Government was organized to do the strategic communications effort before, during and after the war is to use the chart that was used by the Assistant Deputy Director for Information Operations. The center is the White House Office of Global Communications, the organization originally created by Karen Hughes as the Coalition Information Office. The White House is at the center of the strategic communications process"¦.
Handy chart:
And:
Inside the White House there was an Iraq Group that did policy direction and then the Office of Global Communications itself.
Membership of the White House Iraq Group:
So, in 2020 Bush's write-in vote for President was Condi Rice, the [x] Black [x] woman who helped run a domestic disinformation campaign for him in 2003, to sell the Iraq War to the American people. Isn't that"¦. sweet?
Of course, I was very naive at that point. I had come up as a Democrat, and my first real political engagement was the Clinton impeachment. Back in 2003, I was amazed to discover that there was a White House operation that was planting fake stories in the press "" and that I had been playing whackamole on them. At a higher level, I was disturbed that "Washington and London did not trust the peoples of their democracies to come to right decisions." Now it all seems perfectly normal, which is sad.
Torture at Abu Ghraib
There are a lot of images of our torture prison in Iraq, Abu Ghraib. This one ( via ) is not the most famous , but to me it is the most shocking:
What kind of country sets dogs on a naked prisoner? Well, my kind of country, apparently. (Later, I remember discussing politics with somebody who came from a country that might be considered less governed by the rule of law than my own, and they said: "Abu Ghraib. You have nothing to say." And they were right.)
For those who came in late, here's a snapshot (the detail of the story is in fact overwhelming, and I also have pity for the poor shlubs the brass tossed into that hellhole[3].) From the Los Angeles Times, " Few have faced consequences for abuses at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq " (2015):
[A] 44-year-old Al Jazeera reporter named Salah Ejaili, said in a phone interview from Qatar that he was arrested in 2003 while covering an explosion in the Iraqi province of Diyala. He was held at Abu Ghraib for 48 days after six days in another facility, he said.
"Most of the pictures that came out in 2004, I saw that firsthand "" the human pyramid where men were stacked up naked on top of each other, people pulled around on leashes," he said in the interview, with one of his attorneys translating. "I used to hear loud screams during the torture sessions."
Ejaili says he was beaten, left naked and exposed to the elements for long periods, and left in solitary confinement, among other acts.
"When people look at others who are naked, they feel like they're animals in a zoo, in addition to being termed as criminals and as terrorists," he said. "That had a very strong psychological impact."
The plaintiffs also say they suffered electric shocks; deprivation of food, water and oxygen; sexual abuse; threats from dogs; beatings; and sensory deprivation.
Taha Yaseen Arraq Rashid, a laborer, says he was sexually abused by a woman while he was cuffed and shackled, and also that he was forced to watch a female prisoner's rape.
Ejaili said that his face was often covered during interrogations, making it difficult for him to identify those involved, but that he was able to notice that many of the interrogators who entered the facility wore civilian clothing.
His attorneys, citing military investigations into abuses at Abu Ghraib and other evidence, say the contractors took control of the prison and issued orders to uniformed military.
"Abu Ghraib was pretty chaotic," said Baher Azmy, legal director for the Center for Constitutional Rights, which brought suits against CACI and L-3 Services. "They were involved in a conspiracy with the military police to abuse our clients.""¦. Eleven U.S. soldiers were convicted in military trials of crimes related to the humiliation and abuse of the prisoners.
(So Abu Ghraib is a privatization story, too. Oddly, whoever signed the contract never ended up in court.) All this seemed pretty shocking then. But now we know that the Chicago Police Department ran a torture site at Homan Square while Rahm Emanuel, Obama's Chief of Staff, was Mayor , so perhaps this is all perfectly normal too.
Warrantless Surveillance and the Destruction of the Fourth Amendment
Here is the wording of the Fourth Amendment :
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers , and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
If our legal system had the slightest shred of integrity, it would be obvious to the Courts, as it is to a six-old-child, that what we laughingly call our "personal" computers and cellphones contain "paper," not in the tediously literal sense of a physical material made from wood fibre, but in the sense of content . Bits and bytes are 20th Century paper, stored on silicon and hard disk platters. Of course a warrant should be needed to read what's on my phone, ffs.
That Fourth Amendment common sense did not prevail is IMNSHO due in large part to Bush's program of warrantless surveillance, put in place as part of the Global War on Terror. Here again, the complexity is overwhelming and took several years to unravel. I'm afraid I have to quote Wikipedia on this one :
A week after the 9/11 attacks, Congress passed the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Terrorists (AUMF), which inaugurated the "War on Terror". It later featured heavily in arguments over the NSA program.
Soon after the 9/11 attacks President Bush established the President's Surveillance Program. As part of the program, the Terrorist Surveillance Program was established pursuant to an executive order that authorized the NSA to surveil certain telephone calls without obtaining a warrant (see 50 U.S.C. § 1802 50 U.S.C. § 1809). The complete details of the executive order are not public, but according to administration statements, the authorization covers communication originating overseas from or to a person suspected of having links to terrorist organizations or their affiliates even when the other party to the call is within the US.
In October 2001, Congress passed the Patriot Act, which granted the administration broad powers to fight terrorism. The Bush administration used these powers to bypass the FISC and directed the NSA to spy directly on al-Qaeda via a new NSA electronic surveillance program. Reports at the time indicate that an "apparently accidental" "glitch" resulted in the interception of communications that were between two U.S. parties. This act was challenged by multiple groups, including Congress, as unconstitutional.
The precise scope of the program remains secret, but the NSA was provided total, unsupervised access to all fiber-optic communications between the nation's largest telecommunication companies' major interconnected locations, encompassing phone conversations, email, Internet activity, text messages and corporate private network traffic .
Of course, all this is perfectly normal today. So much for the Fourth Amendment, good job. (You will note that the telcos had to be in on it; amusingly, the CEO of Qwest, the only telco that refused to participate, was charged and convicted of insider trading, good job again.) The legal aspects of all this are insanely complex, but as you see from my introduction, they should be simple.
Conclusion
Here's a video of the Iraqi (now in Parliament) who threw shoes at Bush (who got off lightly, all things considered):
https://www.youtube.com/embed/OM3Z_Kskl_U
We should all be throwing shoes at Bush, seriously if not literally. We should not be accepting candy from him. We should not be treating him as an elder statesman. Or a "partner in crime." We should not be admiring his paintings. Bush ran a bad, bad, bad administration and we are living with the consequences of his badness today. Bush is a bad man. We are ruled by bad people. Tomorrow, Obama!
NOTES
[1] Indeed.
[2] For example, I vividly remember playing whack-a-mole as a blogger with the following WMD stories: Drones, weapons labs, WMD cluster bombs, Scuds, nuclear materials from Niger, aluminum tubes, and dirty bombs. They one and all fell apart on close inspection. And they were only a small part of the operation, as Gardiner shows in detail.
[3] My personal speculation is that Dick Cheney had a direct feed from the Abu Ghraib torture chambers to the White House, and watched the proceedings live. Some of the soldiers burned images of torture onto CDs as trophies, and the prison also had a server, whose connectivity was very conveniently not revealed by the judge in a lawsuit I dimly remember being brought in Germany. So it goes.
flora , April 25, 2021 at 6:46 pm
Does anyone believe that W, son of H. W. Bush, H. W. son of Senator Prescott Bush, would have been been pres without that familial lineage and its important govt connections? The pity is W wasn't smart enough to grasp world politics and the US's importance as an accepted fulcrum in same beyond his momentary wants. imo. Brent Scowcroft and others warned him off his vain pursuits. The word "squander" come to mind, though I wish it did not.
flora , April 25, 2021 at 7:43 pm
See for example Kevin Phillips' book American Dynasty: Aristocracy, Fortune and the Politics of Deceit in the House of Bush . ( Kevin Phillips is a great modernist American historian, imo, who saw the rise of Nixon before anyone else.)
Teejay , April 27, 2021 at 10:16 am
" saw the rise of Nixon"? Phillips worked on the '68 campaign.
JTMcPhee , April 25, 2021 at 8:12 pm
Don't deny W his agency. As I followed the horrors, from Vietnam to Iraq to Syria to Central America and elsewhere, the full list that was visible anyway, of the W regime, it sure seemed clear to me that W played the bumbling yuk very well.
He did what he set out to do, no doubt with careful guidance from that sh!t of a father (magically turned into a laid-in-state "statesman") and mother-of-string-of-pearls, and of course Cheney and the rest of the corpo-gov policy gang.
The Consent Manufacturers are whitewashing an evil man and his slicker but equally evil successor and his glamorous spouse.
Helluva job, Georgie! Full marks for kicking the world a long way down a dark road.
anon y'mouse , April 26, 2021 at 12:24 pm
the dumb cluck thing was mostly an act. he was deliberately talking that way not only to paint himself as stupid, but also because those in power assume we must be spoken to as children (they've studied president speeches since JFK have decreased from high school level to 6th grade in complexity, word usage etc).
see Pelosi's daughter's film of his campaign trail. He's no Angel Merkel, but sly enough for politics in this country and most third world corruptocracies.
In our kayfabe duoparty system, it also gave the "opposing" side the "W is a Chimp" talking point to harp on (dress rehearsal for the same stuff against tRUMP).
Tom Stone , April 25, 2021 at 6:49 pm
Abu Ghraib was not an anomaly, Con Son Island served the same purpose during the Vietnam War. When I was young I was proud to be an American Citizen, we had the Bill of Rights, the Military was controlled by Civilians and their oath was to defend the Constitution from "All Enemies Foreign and Domestic.". I have been horrified, ashamed and deeply saddened by what has happened in the US over the last half Century or so.
And it's going to get a lot worse before it gets better.ambrit , April 25, 2021 at 7:00 pm
You actually "˜blogged' back when we had to use punch cards to program our PCs? How oh how did you clamber on up out of "the Well" so many times a week? I am somewhat convinced that the Hollerith Cards Protocol was the origin of the Twitter 140 character limit.
I also "lived through" the "˜Reign of "W""˜ and see it as a Time of Prophecy. Most of the things we are now staring down the barrel of were effectuated then.
I may be foilly, (may be? who am I kidding,) but I view the 2000 election as a major turning point of American history.
albrt , April 25, 2021 at 7:20 pm
I view the 2008 election as the major failing-to-turn-back-when-we-had-the-chance point. Obama could have undone Bush's worst policies, but instead he cemented them into place forever.
Our elites are both stupid and evil, but Bush is more stupid and Obama is more evil.
drumlin woodchuckles , April 26, 2021 at 12:08 am
So was the 1963 " election at Dealey Plaza". Very pivotal.
Susan the other , April 26, 2021 at 1:56 pm
I go with JFK's assassination too. But little George is a close second.
Paul Whalen , April 26, 2021 at 6:42 am
you are 40 years off the mark-It was Reagan who's brand of avuncular fascism, celebrating stupidity as a virtue who paved the way.
Jason , April 26, 2021 at 6:59 am
All the pomp and circumstance surrounding the personage of the President serves to conceal the people behind the scenes who vetted and groomed said president, and actively advise him while in office. It's in this way that a Jimmy Carter may be viewed as a gentle soul so far as presidents go, but he was actually vetted by Brzezinski on behalf of the CFR goons. Once in office he was then advised by Brzezinski and Volcker, among other assorted lunatics. And he gladly took their advice the entire time. That's how he came to be president in the first place. And so it goes.
Ashburn , April 26, 2021 at 4:29 pm
albrt: I agree with your take. Obama campaigned as an anti-war candidate (at least wrt Iraq). He then proceeded to "˜surge' into Afghanistan and added Libya, Syria, and Yemen, to the regime change mix. Never a thought given to prosecuting the war criminals: Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Tenet, Feith, Wolfowitz, Powell, et al; much less even consider a truth and reconciliation commission.
Obama was equally complicit in this never ending horror show and, I am hopeful, history will hold him equally accountable.
km , April 25, 2021 at 7:19 pm
Is it not written that Margaret Thatcher's true legacy was Tony Blair? If that is true, then the true legacy of Dubya is Obama.
Tom Doak , April 25, 2021 at 7:43 pm
That gives W too much credit. Obama continued the legacy of Cheney.
John Wright , April 25, 2021 at 9:58 pm
Could you explain your view that Obama and Trump are "worse than that" (Bush-Cheney).?
As far as harm that George W. Bush did and launched (illegal/immoral wars, domestic surveillance, tax cuts for the wealthy"¦.) Bush should take the award.
Obama did push for military action in Libya, but at least held back from Syria.
The administrations after Bush "kicked the can down the road" but he initiated the events they simply continued. And Trump did attempt to pull troops back from Bush initiated wars. How is Trump worse than Bush? What are your metrics?
drumlin woodchuckles , April 25, 2021 at 10:04 pm
I am just a commenter here, but I would say that . . .
When Obama deliberately and with malice aforethought turned all the admitted (and in fact proudly self-avowed) war-criminals and criminals-against humanity loose, free and clear under "look forward not back", he routinised and permanentized the up-to-that-very-minute irregular and extra-constitutional novel methods of governance and practice which the Cheney-Bush Administration had pioneered. Obama deliberately made torture, aggressive war, etc. "legal" when America does it and "permanent" as long as America is strong enough to keep doing it.
He did some other things like that which I don't have time to mention right now. Maybe others will beat me to it.
Most of all, by slickly conning or permitting to self-con numbers of people about "hope and change" to come from an Obama Administration, he destroyed all hope of hope. He destroyed hope itself. Hope is not a "thing" any more in this country, thanks to Obama.
He may also have destroyed black politicians' dreams of becoming America's " Second Black President" for several decades to come. Been there, done that. Never Again. But since I am not Black, that is not my problem. That is something Black America can thank Obama for, if they decide to wake up to the fact of that reality.
Of course , if the Evil Countess Draculamala becomes President after Biden, then I guess I will be proven wrong about that particular observation.
tegnost , April 25, 2021 at 10:47 pm
Bush was the set up guy, Obama was the closer
norm de plume , April 26, 2021 at 6:51 am
The Greatest Disappointment in History. No-one else comes close, in terms of the sheer numbers of people globally who he let down. The Bait and Switch King, The Great Betrayer. After the nightmare of Bush we got him and his "˜eloquence', pulling the wool over the dazzled sheeple's eyes while he entrenched the 1% and the neocon MI complex, his paymasters, and sponsors for his entry into the overclass.
Last, does any single person with the possible exception of Hillary Clinton, bear so much responsibility for the election of Trump?
quackery , April 26, 2021 at 7:57 am
When Obama campaigned for president he claimed he wanted to get rid of nuclear weapons. Instead, he upgraded the nuclear arsenal.
Mr Grumpy , April 26, 2021 at 10:28 am
It is ironic that the far right views Obama as the antichrist but they benefited from all of his policies.
Cat Burglar , April 26, 2021 at 11:19 am
Remember that Obama voted in favor of FISAA, the bill that immunized Bush and his flunkies from prosecution for their felony FISA violations, as a senator, not long before the presidential election. It was impossible to make myself vote for him after that.
Hotei , April 25, 2021 at 11:53 pm
Excellent documentation of that lineage here: http://www.obamatheconservative.com/
Norm Norton , April 26, 2021 at 11:14 am
"Is it not written that Margaret Thatcher's true legacy was Tony Blair?" If that is true, then the true legacy of Dubya is Obama."
And for Obama, Trump!
upstater , April 25, 2021 at 7:42 pm
Lambert, you forgot this one" Biden presents Liberty Medal to George and Laura Bush Instead of a war crimes trial at the Hague, Biden gave him a (family bloging) medal!
Jason , April 25, 2021 at 7:51 pm
Thanks Lambert. I'd add that the intelligence being sent to the "White House Iraq Group" was being manufactured by the Office of Special Plans (OSP) which was set up and run by Douglas Feith and Paul Wolfowitz. Following Feith's history and connections alone is a fruitful endeavor for those so inclined.
Among other things, Feith co-authored, along with Richard Perle and David Wurmser, the A Clean Break: A New Strategy For Securing the Realm paper prepared for the prime minister of a certain foreign country. This is back in 1996. Around the same time the PNAC boys were formed by Kagan and Kristol and started selling the same policy prescriptions vis a vis Iraq to the pols and public here.
Feith was also fired from the NSC back in the early 80's for passing classified information to some little country. Fast forward to his OSP days and, lo and behold, his employee Larry Franklin is convicted of the same thing, along with Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman of AIPAC.
That's just a taste of the malfeasance.
John , April 25, 2021 at 8:26 pm
I guess sometimes people need to be reminded that water is wet. The Buddhists say that ignorance is the root poison. True dat. Especially in Amrika.
JTMcPhee , April 25, 2021 at 8:56 pm
This stuff has gone on forever. What amount of ventilation is needed to blow this kind of dung out of the Augean stables of geopolitics? Not much chance of that anyway, given all the incentives and and interests"
Is it luck that Putin and Xi might be a little less monstrous?
Elizabeth , April 25, 2021 at 10:20 pm
It's really sickening to see George W being "rehabilitated" and made to look like some kind of a senior statesman, when he should be hauled off to the Hague to spend the rest of his life in prison for war crimes. For me, his election in 2000 was mostly the beginning of the end of the rule of law in this country. As a result, the U.S. has Guantanamo, the Patriot Act, in addition to all the other events mentioned, and don't forget he tried to privatize Social Security.
His eight years as president, for me, was a horror show. What really bothers me is that he got away with all of it "" and now he's hailed as an eminence gris. I can't help but think that his rehabilitation is to remind us all of how bad Orange Man was "" Obama was just as bad because he cemented everything W did "" and more.
Thanks for the horrible memories.
Joe Hill , April 25, 2021 at 11:02 pm
I understand you disagree with the policies of Mr Bush, but war crimes?
Please describe what charges would be brought against him if you were to prosecute at a war crimes tribunal.
Yves Smith , April 26, 2021 at 3:23 am
That is an assignment, which is a violation of our written site Policies. This applies to reader comments when you could easily find the answer in less than 30 seconds on Google rather than being a jerk and challenging a reader (or even worse, me derivatively) on bogus grounds.
https://www.amnesty.org/download/Documents/28000/amr510972011en.pdf
Robert Gray , April 26, 2021 at 1:57 am
> For me, [W's] election in 2000 was mostly the beginning of the end of the rule of law in this country.
At this moment I'm writing it is still early days for this thread: there are only 24 comments. In these comments are named many bad people. However, one name that does not (yet) appear is "˜Clinton'. W was a monster as president (and likely remains a monster as a human being) but surely Billy Jeff needn't yield to him in his contempt for the rule of law.
Yves Smith , April 26, 2021 at 2:29 am
I loathe Bill Clinton but nothing he did approaches the Iraq War in the level of damage to the US and many foreign countries"¦.starting with Iraq.
Robert Gray , April 26, 2021 at 3:52 am
Quite right, of course. My comment was specifically in regard to his disdain for and abuse of the rule, and rôle, of law in the American polity, e.g., his perjury > disbarment. Sort of like the famous photograph of Nelson Rockefeller who, while serving as VP, was captured giving the finger to a group of protestors; Clinton also oozed that kind of hubristic impunity.
Alex Cox , April 26, 2021 at 12:01 pm
Regarding Clinton, the damage he caused to his own country and the world was substantial. The destruction of Yugoslavia caused considerable mayhem "" in addition to bombing and breaking apart a sovereign nation, it enabled "liberals" to feel good about war again, and paved the way for the invasions of Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, etc.
And the damage done by NAFTA was enormous "" in terms of leading to deaths of despair in both the US and Mexico I suspect NAFTA has a higher domestic "body count" than any of the subsequent forever wars.
anon y'mouse , April 26, 2021 at 12:33 pm
and welfare "reform", the crime bill. Talk of privatizing SSI made commonplace acceptable. Repeal of Glass Steagall. They were going to do to healthcare what oBLAM succeeded at, 20 years before him but got sidelined by Lewinsky's blue dress stains. Clintoon is a criminal and so is his spouse, and he did his share of damage everywhere. people who think otherwise might be looking back with nostalgia on a simpler (pre 9.11) time.
little known covered up crime from his ARK days is the selling of HIV tainted blood (taken from prisoners) to Canada, among other things.
yet another who had credible rape allegations. which damages our image at home and abroad.
tegnost , April 25, 2021 at 10:36 pm
Total Information Awareness https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/homefront/preemption/tia.html
Adm. John Poindexter"¦ https://www.nytimes.com/1990/04/08/us/poindexter-is-found-guilty-of-all-5-criminal-charges-for-iran-contra-cover-up.html
yep, that one"¦drumlin woodchuckles , April 26, 2021 at 12:14 am
I read that for the very briefest time, somebody or other was selling Total Information Awareness memorabilia with the Total Information Awareness symbol on it. I wish I had thought to buy a Total Information Awareness mug.
I imagine knockoffs and parodies exist, but I am not sure the real thing is findable any more.
Darius , April 25, 2021 at 10:43 pm
After Dennis Rader, the Wichita serial killer, murdered someone, the cops always found his semen on the floor next to the mutilated victim. He got sexual pleasure out of gruesome murder. This is how I always pictured Cheney's attitude toward torture. Well. I tried not to actually picture it.
Kevin Carhart , April 26, 2021 at 12:06 am
Bush also whipped votes for Kavanaugh, during the cuddly years.
https://theweek.com/speedreads/798796/george-w-bush-reportedly-working-phones-kavanaugh
Colonel Smithers , April 26, 2021 at 4:26 am
Thank you, KC.
Kavanaugh accompanied Bush fils on his state visit to the UK. Even then, Kavanaugh was being touted as a future Supreme Court judge.
The Rev Kev , April 26, 2021 at 3:48 am
Talk about your target rich environment. Where do you even start? Where do you begin? A serial business failure, draft dodger, military deserter, drunk driver "" and all that was before he became President. A man so incurious about the world "" just like Trump "" that he never even owned a passport until he actually became President and who never knew that Islam (prior to the Iraq invasion) , for example, was just not one religion but was divided into Sunni and Shia in the same way Christianity is divided into "" mostly "" Protestant and Catholics. But to me he was always the "Frat Boy President". His family always protected him from his many flaws and he never had to grow up like his father had to in WW2. Even as President he never grew into the job, again, just like Trump.
Lambert gives a few good reminders but there were many others and these are just the top of my head. He cared little for the US Constitution and called it nothing more than a goddamn scrap of paper. He officially made the US a torture nation, not only by pretending that US laws did not apply in Guantanamo bay but also aboard US Navy ships for which laws definitely did apply. As part of a movement to make America an oil-fueled hegemony for the 21st century, he invaded Iraq with the firm intention on invading Iran next so that Washington would have a firm grip on the fuel pump of the world. As he said "" "America is addicted to oil." He dropped the ball on 9/11 through over-obsessing on Iraq and in the immediate aftermath sent jets around the country "" when all jets were grounded "" to fly Saudi royalty back to Saudi Arabia before the FBI could interrogate them about all their knowledge of the attack. All this to hide his very deep connections with the Saudis.
I could go on for several more paragraphs but what would be the point? For the neocons he was a great fronts-man to be followed by a even greater one. I sometimes think that if Biden was a "˜real' Republican, then he would have been a great vice-president for Bush. And now the establishment and their trained seals in the media are trying to make him out as "America's Favourite Uncle" or something so that when he dies, he will have the same sort of funeral as John McCain did. And I predict that tens of thousands of veterans around the country will then raise their glasses to him "" and then pour the contents on the ground.
Colonel Smithers , April 26, 2021 at 4:22 am
Thank you, Lambert.
W's rehab continues in the UK MSM, not just the Independent. The worst offenders are probably the Grauniad and Channel 4, both Blairite.
The rehab mirrored the rise of Trump. His lack of interest in war upset these preachy imperialists.
Using Michelle Obama to facilitate the rehab brought id pol into the equation and made it easier. It was remarkable how often the above photo is used in the neo liberal and neo con media.
The Rev Kev , April 26, 2021 at 5:43 am
Thank you, Colonel. That foto is remarkable and I suspect that the origins for the idea for it may lay on the other side of the pond as it seemed so familiar-
drumlin woodchuckles , April 26, 2021 at 5:36 am
There is a blog called Rigorous Intuition 2.0. Many of its blogposts are about the Bush period and Bush related subjects and events. ( Many others are not). The sections on 9/11, Iraq, and Katrina probably have the highest percent of Bush-related blogposts, in case one is interested.
norm de plume , April 26, 2021 at 7:26 am
Jeff Wells wrote some interesting essays in the Bush years, though many of his connections were a bit too far out, even for me. He had some striking collateral evidence for his concept of High Weirdness in high places "" sex abuse, torture and magick figuring prominently, juxtaposed with political skulduggery, and financial crimes and misdemeanours. The Gannon/Guckert affair, the Franklin ring and Gary Caradori were the sort of thing that laced his quite penetrating analyses of events. Facts were jumping off points for speculations, but given our lack of facts his imaginings were a nourishment of sorts, though often very troubling indeed.
Tony massey , April 26, 2021 at 1:58 pm
Who needs to make shit up during those years?
The facts"¦the shit he actually did, was glossed over or simply forgotten.
If shit was made up about his sorry ass i didn't bother checking, Sir.
I just assumed it was true.
Bushies destroyed the country. If there's a country in 100 years they'll be paying for those years.
And then came obama and big Mikejackiebass63 , April 26, 2021 at 6:14 am
People have been brain washed by the glossed over history of the US they are taught. It gives people a false belief of our past. The phrase American Exceptionalism comes to mind. It is a myth. The real history is out there but you have to search it out. From it's beginning continuing to today our government is responsible for bad behavior.
Some scholars like Noam Chomsky write about our real history. Unfortunately most people don't read this material. They are content with our glossed over shining star version of US history that unfortunately continues to be taught in our educational system , starting in elementary school continuing through a 4 year college education. Our system of government is so corrupted , I don't believe it can be fixed.
Jason , April 26, 2021 at 7:17 am
Arguing over degrees of presidential evil. Perfect.
farmboy , April 26, 2021 at 8:03 am
Nixon was rehabbed so he could open China, Kissinger got to keep his mantle. W portrayed by Josh Brolin pretty good take. Nice to see dunking on GW, but the cycle of rehabilitation is due. The question is can he do some good or is there too much mud on his boots. Can't see W as a new Jimmy Carter. Glossing over history begins the moment it's made. Makes me miss LBJ
Carlos Stoll , April 26, 2021 at 9:23 am
Between 1998 and 2000, under the rule of Saddam Hussein, about 1000 prisoners from Abu Ghraib prison were executed and buried in mass graves. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abu_Ghraib_prison How many Abu Ghraib prisoners did the US army execute?
The Rev Kev , April 26, 2021 at 9:48 am
Tell me again how many Iraqis were killed by the US Army because they were doing their own version of "Red Dawn"? And that tens if not hundreds of thousands of Iraqis would still be alive if Saddam was simply left in place. Here is a video to watch while you have a little think about it-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HfvFpT-iypw (17:46 mins)
Phil in KC , April 27, 2021 at 8:02 am
We Americans have this thing called exceptionalism which among other things creates the idea that our government is more virtuous than others. It's a useful idea in that it calls us to be different and better than the average nation, and certainly different and better than a cruel dictatorship. But it's also a dangerous idea because too many of us actually believe it to be true. Our atrocities are different in kind, but the scale is the same.
We are not at Hitler/Stalin/Mao standards ""yet"" but who's to say that could never happen here? One of the bafflements of the 20th century was how a civilized people descended into the dark barbarism of Nazi Germany.
Deschain , April 26, 2021 at 10:55 am
"(I am omitting many, many others, including Hurricane Katrina, the Plame Affair, Medicare Part D, the Cheney Energy Task Force, that time Dick Cheney shot an old man in the face, Bush's missing Texas Air National Guard records, Bush gaslighting the 2004 Republican National Convention with terror alerts, and on and on and on. An I didn't even get to 9/11, "You've covered your ass," WMDs, and the AUMF. Sorry. It's exhausting.)"
You left out the housing bubble and the GFC!
Mr Grumpy , April 26, 2021 at 10:58 am
Agree with all the criticism of Bush, Cheney, Obama. On a lighter note, my father-in-law is a high tech oil prospector in W Texas, much of it in Midland, overlapping in time with W. Both members of the Petroleum Club (been there once, very stuffy) and worked out at the same gym. Naturally, my wife asked if he had ever seen W naked. Her dad wouldn't answer, but did turn beet red. We take this as confirmation.
Phil in KC , April 26, 2021 at 12:24 pm
Noam Chomsky observed some thirty years ago that if the Nuremberg standards were applied to all the post-war American Presidents, then all of them would hang. Chomsky could not have imagined the future sequence of presidents from that point forward, but certainly they did not break the chain of criminality. My point is that Bush is not unique in the type of crimes, just the enormity of them. But I also believe he set new standards (lower) for shamelessness. Remember his smirk?
But also remember Obama joking about killing people.
John Wright , April 26, 2021 at 3:25 pm
Remember the comedy skit in which GWB "looked" for Iraq WMD's in the Oval office as part of the White House Correspondent's dinner?
Anyone with any sense of decency would have refused to do this skit, but Bush apparently followed his handlers' advice to get some laughs. That the USA was led by someone of such limited talent for 8 years speaks volumes. Years ago, a New York Times reader wrote that Hillary Clinton is a "well-connected mediocrity".
That comment may be true for ALL of the recent political candidates, from both parties, for a great many years.
LBJ was definitely not mediocre (civil rights/war on poverty), and would be viewed far more favorably, maybe as great, if he had pulled out of Vietnam rather than escalating. Carter in his post presidency has much to recommend. Post presidency Bush is painting his portraits rather than having any retrospective regrets for the harm he did.
Susan the other , April 26, 2021 at 2:27 pm
We have such a dismal record. Little George was the most audacious of all our criminal presidents, but he has plenty of company. My question is now, looking back, why was the USA incapable of organizing a peaceful world after WW2? I start there. 1945. How did our ideology become so inept? And everything I have read about our failures over the years is contrasted with what might have been. We have operated under a system that could not function without extraction. There was always a sell-by date on the cover; one that we tried to ignore. There's no doubt in my mind that it has finally failed completely. Ignominiously. But we have also learned and come to admit certain realities. The most important one is that there can be no more war; civilization cannot survive a modern war. So, ironically, our advanced warfare might well bring a peaceful world without world war. And our advances in science (mostly militarily inspired) will help us now survive.
Sue inSoCal , April 26, 2021 at 4:56 pm
Lambert, thank you for this piece. I won't repeat what others have opined. I've had a real problem with Michelle Obama being the rehabilitation cheerleader leader for Dubya. Imho, we lost all of our rights under the odious Patriot Act, which was pre-written. Russ Feingold was the lone Senate holdout. And I recall Byrd's ire and rant at the tome they had no time to read, but he caved. It went downhill from there. The links below, (apologies, I don't know how to fashion a hot link..) are about Bush's crimes and Amnesty International's exhaustive investigation of them.
I don't have the citation anymore, and I've knocked myself out trying to find it. But there exists a UN human rights commission memo suggesting (?) Obama to do a number of things: hold Bushco accountable for war crimes etc, as well as address what is termed as "systematic racism" in incarceration (and more). I had printed it out a number of years ago and can't find it.)
I'm not buying that Bush fils is any elder statesman. He and his cronies used torture, extreme rendition, hired mercenaries and completely destabilized the Middle East. We still don't have our rights back, and I'm betting the Patriot Act will never go away. (Nor will data mining under the guise of "targeted advertising" and sold to..the military.) The NYT's link is how Obama elected to rug sweep and just move ahead! I look forward to Lambert's take on the Obama administration..https://www.amnesty.org/download/Documents/28000/amr510972011en.pdf
https://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/12/us/politics/12inquire.html
techpioneer , April 26, 2021 at 4:56 pm
Finally, someone has the courage to point out the obvious. An excellent article, well researched and nicely nuanced.
I'm disappointed with the remedy proposed, however. Throwing shoes is not enough; it's merely symbolic. The potential crimes committed here, including lying us into war, the extent of torture committed, and practices that violate international military norms and intelligence require a transparent and impartial investigation. One possible venue is the International Criminal Courts in the Hague.
I've been told many times that sunlight can be an effective deterrent against disease.
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May 03, 2021 | www.moonofalabama.org
These folks have had it with the constant stream of baseless propaganda U.S. intelligence is spilling over the world:
Dear Director of National Intelligence,we, the the 4-star Generals leading U.S. regional commands all over the world, are increasingly concerned with about the lack of evidence for claims you make about our opponents.
We, as true believers, do not doubt whatever judgment you make about the harmful activities of Russia, Iran and China. However - our allies and partners do not yet subscribe to the bliss of ignorance. They keep asking us for facts that support those judgments
Unfortunately, we have none that we could provide.
You say that Russia thought to manipulate Trump allies and to smear Biden , that Russia and Iran aimed to sway the 2020 election through covert campaigns and that China runs covert operations to influence members of Congress .
Media reports have appeared in which 'intelligence sources' claim that Russia, China and Iran are all paying bounties to the Taliban for killing U.S. soldiers. Fortunately no soldier got hurt by those rumors.
Our allies and partners read those and other reports and ask us for evidence. They want to know how exactly Russia, Iran and China are doing these things.
They, of course, hope to learn from our experience to protect their own countries.
Currently we are not able to provide them with such information. Your people keep telling our that all of it is SECRET.
We therefore ask you to declassify the facts that support your judgments. *
Sincerely
The Generals
----
PS: * Either that or shut the fuck up.The above may well have been a draft for the letter behind this report :
America’s top spies say they are looking for ways to declassify and release more intelligence about adversaries’ bad behavior, after a group of four-star military commanders sent a rare and urgent plea asking for help in the information war against Russia and China.The internal memo from nine regional military commanders last year, which was reviewed by POLITICO and not made public, implored spy agencies to provide more evidence to combat "pernicious conduct."
Only by "waging the truth in the public domain against America’s 21st century challengers†can Washington shore up support from American allies, they said. But efforts to compete in the battle of ideas, they added, are hamstrung by overly stringent secrecy practices.
“We request this help to better enable the US, and by extension its allies and partners, to win without fighting, to fight now in so-called gray zones, and to supply ammunition in the ongoing war of narratives," the commanders who oversee U.S. military forces in Asia, Europe, Africa, Latin America, as well as special operations troops, wrote to then-acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire last January.
“Unfortunately, we continue to miss opportunities to clarify truth, counter distortions, puncture false narratives, and influence events in time to make a difference," they added.
The generals must have been seriously miffed to write such a letter. There have been a number of published intelligence judgments where the NSA had expressed low confidence in conclusions made mainly by the CIA. The NSA is part of the military.
Between two bureaucracies such an accusing letter or internal memo is the equivalent of a declaration of war. It is doubtful that the intelligence folks would win that fight.
That gives some hope that the Office of the DNI and the agencies below it will now lessen their production of nonsensical claims.
Posted by b on April 28, 2021 at 15:49 UTC | Permalink
Josh , Apr 28 2021 16:02 utc | 1
Right on man.Kartoschka , Apr 28 2021 16:04 utc | 2
Thank You.I hope you're right.psychohistorian , Apr 28 2021 16:12 utc | 3
It could go the other way.
They will produce more "evidence"Thanks for that b....is it rubber meets the road time?Caliman , Apr 28 2021 16:25 utc | 4I just read that the US is getting all its ambassadorial folk out of Afghanistan....maybe somebody is believing May 1 is a firmer deadline than the Biden 9/11 myth.
The shit show is about to crash, IMO, but if it is in slow motion, this crazy could go on for a while....what geo-political straw will break the camel's back?
Lewis Black, a pretty good US comedian, used to have a bit in the mid-2000's where he would ask the W administration flacks why they didn't just make up evidence about the Iraq WMDs after they "found out" that there were no weapons in the country. Black would tell them just make it up; we're used to it. Just give us an excuse to believe in the BS for God's sake; we'll do it!Serg , Apr 28 2021 16:29 utc | 5I feel it's the same with our satrap nations around the world. At this time, is there anyone who does not understand that US foreign policy is conducted for and by MICIMATT (look it up)? So the generals have got nothing to worry about: keep pounding out that BS; there's a willing, able, and ready corps of salesmen and women in the media who will make enough of the public believe it for "democracy's" purposes.
General Mackenzie who testified before the US House Armed Services Committee said Iran’s widespread use of drones means that the US is operating without complete air superiority for the first time since the Korean War.librul , Apr 28 2021 16:30 utc | 6Iran has time and again stated that its military capabilities are merely defensive and are designed to deter foreign threats.
General Flynn had been head of the Defense Intelligence Agency (military).gottlieb , Apr 28 2021 16:36 utc | 7
The CIA was out to get him. It took a while but they eventually hamstrung him good."Dear Generals, who haven't won a war in 75 years, so much for the DIA huh? We'd love to share our intelligence with you, our evidence showing the overwhelming and egregious misdeeds of our hateful, spiteful disgusting enemies, whose questioning of our Word should be met with charges of treason, but to give you evidence on top of our own unquestionable and 100% correct threat estimations, would compromise our Intelligence Gathering Methods which are of the strictest security and would threaten the ongoing ability of this Agency to gather and disseminate the unquestionable facts that without fear of contradiction we know is the truth. In short, dear Generals - work on winning a war, any war, and don't meddle in places that befuddle your ability to follow orders. Hooah! The CIA."librul , Apr 28 2021 16:51 utc | 8This fight has been ongoing for years.Canadian Cents , Apr 28 2021 17:10 utc | 11
Bottom line: The CIA wants to control the messages and narrative.Article from 2013, great lead photo. Robert Mueller, James Clapper, John Brennan
and General Flynn all seated near each other.https://www.defenseone.com/policy/2013/07/intel-wars-dia-cia-and-flynns-battle-consolidate-spying/66716/
Headline and subtext:Intel Wars: DIA, CIA and Flynn’s Battle to Consolidate Spying
The Defense Department wants in on the spying game. But will the CIA block their efforts?
The CIA essentially absorbed the Pentagon’s only military-wide spying agency seven years ago [2006]
when the Defense HUMINT Service was dismantled -- and now, the Pentagon wants it back.The CIA is quietly pushing the Armed Services committees along, hoping that Flynn’s DCS will be remembered by history as a failed power grab.
rgl , Apr 28 2021 17:31 utc | 13The CIA/FBI/17+ known/unknown agencies are clearly a security apparatus that's gone out of control when even the USA's "nine regional [four-star general] military commanders" are out of the loop and pleading to be better informed. Worryingly, though, they ask for "ammunition in the ongoing war of narratives," which they apparently are ready to go right along with.
Western news media, of course, has become but a compliant weaponized appendage of that security apparatus, and democracy, which depends on informed voters, is nowhere in control of any of this.
Down this slippery slope, lies fascism.
librul , Apr 28 2021 17:48 utc | 15I do not see how this is possible. Every major event, from Vietnam, to JFK, to 9-11, and a myriad of others, had US lies baked into the cake. If the US ceased to lie, it would cease to function as America functions today. It would be incapable of empire.
The US establishment, from the President on down, is based on lies. They cannot survive on truth.
No. Nothing is going to change in this regard.
m , Apr 28 2021 18:13 utc | 17b ended his post with: " lessen their production of nonsensical claims."
"Nonsensical" misses the mark. They are *agenda-driven* claims.
I don't believe the Generals care one whit whether the spineless jellyfish pols
in other countries see through our lies. The Generals want the Pentagon to
have more participation in shaping the agenda and it's attendant narrative.Erelis , Apr 28 2021 20:31 utc | 26The military used to be that part pf the US government apparatus ("deep state") that emphasized the value and importance of allies the most.
IMHO what is happening here is that the generals sense the imcreasing cracks in the US-centered alliance system. They attribute it to the work of the intelligence community, which is certainly a contributing factor, but thr real cause is the relative decline in US power and general unreliability due to political instability. The USA is less and less attractive as a partner. When the generals ask another country for a favour as they had been used to for decades they increasingly often get just questions and excuses in return.
K_C_ , Apr 28 2021 22:26 utc | 28Is this a sign of a struggle between the CIA and Pentagon as to who is the boss of foreign and war policy? Anybody remember when CIA supported jihadists were fighting Pentagon supported groups (were they jihadists?) in Syria. Seems like the Pentagon is the one deciding on relations with the Syrian Kurds, and not the CIA. Flynn was actively helping the Damascus with info about the CIA backed jihadists.
I would rather have the Pentagon win as they are not all that hot-to-trot for actual wars. The CIA should just go back to running US media, law makers, corporation and ruining civil liberties.
Isn't it safe to assume that *anything* the CIA says publicly, either through direct channels or their co-opted corporate media, is false? Cue the Mike Pimpeo quote: "We lied, we cheated, we stole..." and of course the entire history of that useless agency, lol.
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Apr 07, 2021 | www.zerohedge.com
Foe Jaws 8 hours ago
drjd 6 hours agoThe globalists are behaving just like the Bolsheviks of old. It is down right scary to see this happen in America. We lost the major cities 40 or 50 years ago and now the entire country (except that 1 percent stealing all the money) is on the verge of going 3rd world banana republic.
YuriTheClown 2 hours agoIf this was truly "communism", would 1% be stealing all the money? Why don't we just call it what it really is: "globalist crony capitalism."
artless 1 hour ago remove linkThe internationalists are behaving just like the Bolsheviks of old.
You must not know your history. High powered US bankers prop up the big Bolshevik names in New York until it was time to loose them on Russia. Then they financed the whole operation.
And who is financing the Bolsheviks in the USA now???
The word you are looking for is fascism. This use of "crony this" and "crony that" along with ANY use of the word capitalism-because their is nothing capitalist about any of this- needs to stop. It is fascism. Not communism, not socialism...
words matter.
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Mar 06, 2021 | www.zerohedge.com
Kreditanstalt 1 hour ago (Edited) remove link
TBT or not TBT 1 hour agoHaha. IT BEGINS...
The Democratic Party civil war between the 'progressive anti-war socialist' and 'neocon Wall Street beltway' wings. It will go on for at least two years
King of Kalifornia 1 hour agoOh hogwash. The minute Obama took over from Bush Cindy Sheehan and the rest disappeared from the news. There was no real push back within the Dem electorate against the foreign wars because they all support the Democrat War on America above all. They only pretend to give a rip about some backward misogynist theocratic craphole people when Republicans are in office.
It's been going on for years. The socialists keep falling for it, and the neoliberals (in the mold of their heroes, Reagan and Thatcher) have forced their compliance.
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Mar 06, 2021 | www.moonofalabama.org
snake , Mar 4 2021 21:42 utc | 32
pfizer not the USA, wants military bases
very interesting.. extension of the office of the president to a private corporationThis does not comport with Article II(Section 2) of the USA constitution.. which says
"The President shall be the Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the usa, and of the Militia of the serveral states, when into the actual service of the USA,but no where do I find a private corporation may exercise the power of the Office of the President ...? What did I mis?
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Feb 27, 2021 | www.unz.com
Andy Ngo's new book Unmasked: Inside Antifa's Radical Plan to Destroy Democracy is as important to understanding where we are today as Ann Coulter's Adios America! was before Donald Trump election. Ngo shows that far from being just an "idea," as President Joe Biden would have us believe , Antifa comprises highly organized groups of dedicated activists with an extreme political agenda and a commitment to violence. But Ngo also shows, perhaps less consciously, that Antifa operates with de-facto backing from the Ruling Class, including Main Stream Media journalists, the principal enforcers of the current order. Ngo suggests Antifa are a revolutionary threat to the power structure and could overthrow it. But the truth is much worse -- Antifa are simply the System's militant wing.
What makes Unmasked so remarkable is that Ngo doesn't limit himself to anecdotal reporting, nor does he retreat to abstract theorizing. Instead, like a great historian, he seamlessly integrates his experiences and other primary sources with political theory. He shows, often literally with chapter and verse, what motivates Antifa, how they are organized, how they are trained, and how this is turned into concrete action:
Where there is no single capital A 'Antifa' organization with one leader, there are indeed localized cells and groups with formalized structures and memberships. Though officially leaderless, these are organizations by every definition.
The [ Rose City Antifa ] curriculum is modeled on a university course. Yet it includes training on how to use guns and do reconnaissance against enemies.
Ngo also helpfully reports on the history the Antifa brand, especially its origins in the Red Front Fighters' League of the pre-Hitler German Communist Party. He's especially astute to note that "the German Communist Party [KPD] and its various offshoots viewed social democrats and liberals as 'social fascists' no different from Nazis." Needless to say, KPD leader Ernst Thälman 's strategy of fighting the more moderate Social Democrats ahead of the Nazis was glossed over by Communist propaganda after World War II. East German hagiographies of Thälman, like Sohn Seiner Klasse and Führer Sonne Klasse ("Son of His Class," "Leader of His Class") portray him as fighting the Nazis above all else.
Ngo also describes "anti-fascism's" parallels with the East German regime. After all, the Berlin Wall was formally called the "Anti Fascist Protection Rampart." The East German secret police, the so-called Stasi, resemble nothing so much as today's journalists (and FBI) complaining that they can't tattle on people listening to Clubhouse [ From Clubhouse to Twitter Spaces, social media grapples with live audio moderation , by Elizabeth Culliford, Reuters, February 25, 2021].
When Ngo describes the Communist takeovers of East Germany and Vietnam, the latter of which his family fled, he's warning Americans that we face a Communist coup . Historically, "anti-fascism" was created by, and has always been a front for, Communist or Communist-adjacent groups.
(I don't dispute Ngo's characterization of the movement as "anarchist-communist." It sounds clumsy, but anarcho-communism is a venerable Leftist tradition that goes back to Marx's great rival Mikhail Bakunin. I was surprised, though, that Ngo didn't mention that the three-arrow "Iron Front" symbol widely used by Antifa today actually came from the German Social Democratic Party (SPD.) The SPD opposed the Communists just as much as they did monarchists and the National Socialists.
Ngo has been physically attacked by Antifa -- causing him a brain injury -- and says the conservative meme that Antifa are all physically weak isn't true: they are violent and dangerous .
He's right, but when looking at what Antifa prioritize today, it does seem preoccupied with boutique progressive causes like transgenderism and policing speech. While physical attacks are common, doxing and complaining to capitalist employers are what Antifa do best of all.
Indeed, it's hard to imagine East Germany or the USSR tolerating the cultural degeneracy championed by today's Antifa. The Soviet Bloc was positively social-conservative compared to 2021 post-America.
Ngo's reporting on the specific individuals, curriculum, tactics, and operational plans of Antifa are a testament to his skill as a researcher (not mention his guts.) However, one thing jumps out of the book repeatedly. Despite all their emphasis on "OpSec" and paranoia about law enforcement, Antifa aren't actually especially secret. Like illegal aliens who lecture us on television about their lives " in the shadows ," it's not a huge mystery who is in Antifa. We know what groups exist, where they operate and what they are doing. They openly operate on Twitter, Facebook etc.
In contrast to the Proud Boys or bewildered Boomers who wandered into the Capitol last month, Antifa can operate openly because it has the tacit approval of law enforcement and Main Stream Media outlets . Thus Ngo describes in shocking detail Antifa groups' training workshops, including combat training. Right-wing activity even at this level would be shut down by the government instantly.
It's an obvious point but bears repeating -- how radical are your opinions when you have police, the military, corporate America, and the media all supporting you? Antifa violence exists because it is permitted, arguably encouraged, to exist. Despite President Trump's blustering promises, these Antifa groups were never labeled "terrorists" nor, inexplicably, was systematic federal law enforcement action ever taken against them.
During the CHAZ insurrection , Antifa was allowed to more or less claim sovereignty in a major American city for a period of weeks. If nationalists had tried that, it would have ended in drone strikes. The glee with which progressives hailed the execution of Ashli Barrett tells us what they're willing to do. The "Capitol Insurrection" would have been heralded as another Bastille Day had it come from the other side .
Antifa is faux rebellion. None of these people have ever faced real opposition in their lives. And when groups like the Proud Boys did emerge to challenge them -- and actually started winning, for example at the Battle of Berkeley -- the state intervened to save Antifa. See FBI Arrests White "Serial Rioters" -- And Ignores Antifa , Proud Boys Persecution: Four Years For Fighting Back , and Ann Coulter On Jake Gardner: Innocent Until Proven Trump Supporter .
Ngo points out repeatedly that Antifa conduct themselves to present a certain media image. Yet this is a two-way relationship. While Antifa are eager to make sure only their narrative gets out, Regime journalists willingly collaborate. It's a mistake to even speak of journalists or Antifa as being separate categories of people.
After all, we know that journalists change their coverage to help Antifa present their narrative. Consider New York Times hackette Taylor Lorenz, who recently started an online controversy by accusing someone of using a slur on the Clubhouse application [ New York Times' Taylor Lorenz blasted for false claim tech entrepreneur used 'r-slur' on social media app , by Joseph Wulfsohn, Foxnews, February 8, 2021].
But back in 2017, Lorenz reported from Charlottesville Unite The Right rally that she had been punched by Antifa and also that police at the time thought James Fields was simply "scared. "
Perhaps she was told such tweets would be career-ending or maybe she figured that out on her own. She deleted them and joined the winning team.
The rest is history. Lorenz has made a career doxing random people, notably Pamela Geller's daughters.
This also explains why Regime "journalists" -- make that Journofa -- seem to hate Ngo so much. Ngo provides many examples of independent journalists like himself recording and livestreaming footage that provide "the up-close, raw, and uncensored look into Antifa's extremism." Such raw footage strips Regime Media reporters of the ability to craft the Narrative.
Ngo writes that Antifa "have made it a priority to keep out journalists like myself, even releasing manuals on how to obstruct to the work of unapproved press." However, the critical point is what he says next:
"[T]hey've [Antifa] made key allies in the media to counter negative coverage, amplify their propaganda messaging, and discredit their shared opponents. The American public has been inundated with n onstop propaganda that obfuscates and lies about Antifa , simultaneously presenting them as anti-fascists righting racism, and a figment of the right's imagination ." [Emphases added]
Thus Ngo accuses corporate journalists, quite rightly, of knowingly spreading propaganda or being "actually members of the militant Antifa movement."
Ngo's guide on how to "identify Antifa press" is important. If you see a reporter freely videoing protests without being attacked, "that is a good sign the journalist produces Antifa-approved content."
But I must take issue with Ngo's conclusion that the "movement is made of organized networks of anarchist-communists who have the goal, training, and determination to overthrow the US government." Is that what Antifa actually fights for in the real world?
For example, CHAZ didn't end with a heroic last stand. It ended after bored city workers scattered some riffraff without much effort. It existed as long as Left-wing city politicians defended it against then-President Donald Trump. It vanished the moment that city authorities decided to regain control.
Insofar as Antifa have a real impact, it's not in organizing rent strikes or fighting banks. Instead, they are most effective when calling up oligarchs to get working-class people fired. Is such a group really a threat to the US government or something of a partner?
Last week, the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security held a hearing on domestic terrorism. Andy Ngo was one of the witnesses [ Republican witness hits media coverage of Antifa and far-left violence at domestic terrorism hearing , by Zachary Halachak, Washington Examiner, February 24, 2021]. However, the main focus of the hearing was "white supremacy and right-wing extremism," at least according to Rep. Val Demings [ Domestic Terror Still Thorny Issue for Lawmakers After Capitol Attack , by Brandi Buchman, Courthouse News Service, February 24, 2021]. The World Socialist Web Site sneered that Ngo "served as a sounding board for all the lies and libels against hundreds of thousands of youth and workers of all races and ethnicities who marched peacefully in response to last May's police murder of George Floyd" [ Republicans use hearing on domestic terrorism to defend Trump and promote far-right forces , by Jacob Crosse, WSWS, February 24, 2021].
Ngo himself tweeted that Democrats "rebuffed" him.
https://platform.twitter.com/embed/Tweet.html?dnt=true&embedId=twitter-widget-0&frame=false&hideCard=false&hideThread=false&id=1364808781327122433&lang=en&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.unz.com%2Farticle%2Fandy-ngos-unmasked-antifa-not-anarcho-communism-but-anarcho-tyranny%2F&theme=light&widgetsVersion=e1ffbdb%3A1614796141937&width=500px
The Democrats showed no interest in his testimony seriously nor did the Main Stream Media. It simply vanished into the ether of non-news like the massive increase in homicides around the country. [ WATCH: Andy Ngo testifies to Congress on the rise of domestic terrorism in America , The Post Millennial, February 24, 2021]
As Ngo himself points out early in his book, the United States government is tremendously powerful. Anarcho-communists hardly seem a credible threat to its legitimacy. Rather than wanting to crush them, at least some Democrats favor what Antifa are doing -- and certainly want to downplay it.
Thus the presumptive next Attorney General, Merrick Garland, blithely dismissed an attack on a federal courthouse because it happened at night. If anything, the new administration seems determined to put the power of the state behind these "anarcho-communists."
And rather than trying to create a Workers' Paradise, what Antifa actually do is make the world safe for Woke Capital .
While Antifa violence is real, the danger to ordinary people is not so much that some rampaging mob will come into their house at four in the morning. The danger is that Antifa will see a Politically Incorrect tweet and render a person unemployable, with an assist from "journalist" allies.
Ngo's book is essential reading. However, he may not fully understand the threat. The problem isn't that Antifa is trying to overthrow the state. The problem is that the state and Antifa are working together against ordinary Americans.
What we're living under is something far worse than Antifa's imagined " anarcho-communism ." It's what the late Sam Francis presciently called anarcho-tyranny , with the worst features of lawlessness and autocracy combined.
This is why our situation is not as bad as Ngo suggests. It's far, far worse.
James Kirkpatrick [ Email him |Tweet him @VDAREJamesK ] is a Beltway veteran and a refugee from Conservatism Inc. His latest book is Conservatism Inc.: The Battle for the American Right . Read VDARE.com Editor Peter Brimelow 's Preface here .
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Mar 03, 2021 | www.unz.com
A classic villain of 1970s and 80s was the evil tycoon. James Bond took on some of them. Meet Hugo Drax of the Moonraker , or Karl Stromberg of The Spy Who Loved Me ; these guys were willing to destroy mankind to replace it with a better version. Stromberg planned to trigger a global nuclear war and survive it underwater. Drax intended to poison mankind with his deadly gas and repopulate the world with his new chosen ones. Another one was de Wynter, the super-villain of The Avengers, played by Sean Connery. He controlled the world weather, and could kill us all off by hurricanes and tsunamis.
Before the tycoons, when the Cold war raged, a villain was a KGB agent or a Chinese operative. As détente calmed relations between the blocks, the agents went out of fashion; later, the fantastic villains of Marvel came into a vogue. The evil tycoons were uncomfortably close to the real thing; and they moved from the cinematic world into our reality.
The world we live in is the world formed by evil tycoons. They are the modern Demiurges, the evil creators of the Gnostics, an early sect that confronted the Church. Like the Demiurges, they are practically omnipotent; stronger than the State. The government needs lot of permissions and authorisations to spend a penny. If a penny had been misspent, the dark word 'corruption' will sound. 'Corruption' is a silly concept; by applying it, the oligarchs eliminated state competition, for they can pay whatever they want to whomever they wish. The State must observe intricate arcane rules, while the tycoons have no such limits. As a result, they shape our minds and lives, making the State a poor legitimate king among powerful and wealthy barons.
The Corona crisis is a result of their activity. Now, a group of WHO scientists completed its four weeks inspection tour of Wuhan trying to find out how the virus found its way to humans; some of them think (as President Trump did) the virus escaped the Wuhan Lab. Matt Ridley of The Daily Telegraph concluded his piece analysing their findings: "A growing number of top experts [he provides the list] say that a lab leak remains a plausible scientific hypothesis to be investigated". It is rather unlikely, said the WHO , but other explanations (pangolins etc) also border on the improbable . The Chinese are understandably upset. Hua Chunying, the spokeswoman for the Foreign Affairs ministry (the Chinese counterpart for the State Department's Ned Price) rejected the idea saying, "The United States should open the biological lab at Fort Detrick, and invite WHO experts to conduct origin-tracing in the United States". The Guardian report said she promoted "a conspiracy theory that it came from a US army lab"; while Ms Hua accused the US of spreading "conspiracy theories and lies" tracing the source to Wuhan. Whatever we say is a fact-based result of diligent research; whatever you say is a conspiracy theory – both the US and China representatives subscribe to this mantra.
Our own Ron Unz made an excellent analysis of these accusations and counter-accusations in his April 2020 piece . He noted that the virus attack in Wuhan took place at the worst possible time and place for the Chinese; therefore, an incidental release (or intentional release by the Chinese) is extremely unlikely. Ron Unz suggested that it was an American biowarfare attack upon China. Didn't American people suffer from the disease? Yes, the US government is "grotesquely and manifestly incompetent " and they were likely to expect "a massive coronavirus outbreak in China would never spread back to America".
Perhaps, but a better explanation is that some evil tycoon(s) played the part of Karl Stromberg who intended to nuke both Moscow and New York causing war and world-wide devastation, as in the James Bond movie. It could be somebody like Bill Gates, who is a major investor in Wuhan Lab. A fact-checking site with its weasel language admitted that the Lab "has received funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, but Bill Gates can hardly be called a "partner" in the laboratory." Sure, not a partner. Just an investor, and that is more important than a partner. And he is not the only one; other multi-billionaires also are involved in bioresearch, in vaccine manufacturing, in Big Pharma. "Glaxo, BlackRock, and Bill Gates are all partners, but not owners of Pfizer", says another fact-checker . "In 2015, Anthony Fauci did issue a USD 3.7 million grant to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, but not to "create the coronavirus" – the fact-checking site adds. Well, you could not possibly expect Fauci to word the grant in such a straightforward way, could you?
Perhaps it is too formidable a job even for an evil tycoon like Gates. A plot of several evil tycoons is more likely. Together, they could try to change the world and mankind to suit them.
The evil tycoons could poison China on their New Year holiday and take this uppity state down a ring or two. They could import the virus into the US to undermine and remove Trump whom they hated. (He was certain to win the elections but for Corona.) They could poison Europe to weaken it and make it more docile and obedient to their demands – and to buy their assets on the cheap. Corona and lockdown did not harm them for they are normally withdrawn from the bustle of the common man's life.
The billionaires control the media; that much we know, and the part media has played in the Corona crisis was enormous. The media coverage of the crisis has a huge hidden cost. Try to publish information you consider important on the front page of a newspaper. It will cost you a lot. Still, all newspapers belonging to the Billionaires' Media block beginning with the New York Times and ending with Haaretz gave at least a third of its front page to Corona news each day. The sheer cost of this advertising runs into billions. Will we ever know who paid for it?
Steven Soderbergh's (2011) film Contagion predicted many features of the Covid-19, notably the origin of the virus. In the film, the disease originates from bats in China and is spread through markets where contaminated pork meat is sold. How could Soderbergh (or his script writer Scott Z. Burns) possibly know eight years before the event that the contagion should originate in the Chinese bats? Who told him? Wouldn't you expect he knew something? Burns was instructed by WHO experts, the CNN site explains. Isn't it interesting that the same Bill Gates is a major donor of WHO? Is it entirely impossible that already in 2011 Gates' people began to leak some details of the future virus through their own WHO to Hollywood?
The tycoons could force a weak state to follow their instructions. Scientists do obey orders: otherwise, no grants, no positions. In April 2020, the German scientists were ordered , "to instill the fear of Corona". And they did it, as we learned this week, producing numbers of dead on demand.
It seems that tycoons gained most from the Corona Crisis. Their assets grew by trillions, while the assets of the middle classes decreased by the same amount. More importantly, all states suffered from the crisis; they took loans and credit, they were responsible for their citizens' health, while billionaires just had fun and enjoyed it. For this reason, I tend to dismiss the case against states, be it the US or China, while (some) billionaires appear the only possible villains.
These billionaires are able to influence people much better that the state. Consider Pierre Omidyar. Besides being the owner of eBay, he is the force behind hundreds of NGOs. His organisations form the 'progressive' agenda and train the foot soldiers of the Green Deal. Roslyn Fuller of Spiked-online checked the plethora of NGOs he employs.
She says his NGOs and charities are "engaged in 'social engineering' – that is, using their resources to artificially change the structure of society to how they think it should be. If successful this would amount to an extreme circumvention of democracy, utilising money not just to win elections, but to substitute paid or subsidised content for actual support, and thereby flip an entire political culture on to a different track by amplifying some voices and drowning out others."
He is just one of the Masters of Discourse, next to the infamous George Soros. Facebook, Google, Twitter and Amazon are even more powerful. The billionaires have immense clout and they decide what we can and can't say and write. Just last week Amazon banned my Cabbala of Power , a book that was sold by them for some ten years. The estimable The Unz Review is banned on Facebook and shadow-banned on Google. Twitter switched-off President Trump, showing who is the real boss of the United States. Probably almost all movements described as 'leftists' nowadays are engineered by the tycoons like Omidyar or Soros. True left had been left for dead on the battlefield of ideas.
The tycoons are directly involved in the Corona Crisis, because its results are good for them. And it means they have us where they want to have us, and they won't let us out. We are cancelled until we regain the government and cancel them.
SAGE, as British Corona management team rather presumptuously named itself (it included the ridiculous figure of Neil Ferguson, he of the millions of predicted deaths), already declared that lockdowns will be a part of British life for years to come, vaccine or no vaccine. The Guardian , the Voice of the Oligarchs, gently pooh-poohed them, for it is not good to declare what must happen right away. Let people have some hope, so they run to vaccinate themselves, and then only afterwards can we reveal that, sorry, it does not help, you still have to don a mask and observe social distance and, yes, suffer lockdowns. "It's much easier to follow the rules if we think of them as temporary."
The plotters' plans aren't secret; they were described by Klaus Schwab in his book The Great Reset . Schwab is not a great thinker, being merely a weak scientist with just a few publications, and not a good or even decent writer. He had to collaborate with a journalist Thierry Malleret to produce the book. He is just a voice for the tycoons. But the question is, will he/they get what they want?
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Feb 25, 2021 | www.moonofalabama.org
steven t johnson , Feb 24 2021 18:11 utc | 16
There is no such thing as "liberal-fascist." "Liberal" has never meant any sort of quasi-anarchist commitment to untrammeled individual rights. It has always meant the freedom of the press. The thing is, the real meaning of freedom of the press for the liberal is the freedom of the owners of the press to do what they want. The fact that customarily a free-for-the-owners'-press happen to produce the right kind of news suitable for owners and the advertisers is seen as the benefit of a free press. As for "fascist," no concept of fascism that doesn't include legal and illegal restrictions on freedom and government propaganda mobilizing the citizens to sacrifice for recovery from defeat/further conquest is not a serious concept of fascism at all. Both liberalism and fascism revere property but will compromise for necessity, liberalism for a certain degree of class peace, fascism for war, but if anybody is determined to indoctrinate the masses it is fascism. The implicit notion here that people daring to think or worse, live, differently than tradition may inspire rage in mad dog reactionaries. But this is at bottom the same rage that led Catholics and Protestants to murder each other or for witches to be killed by the thousands (yes, they were,) or for monarchists to kill republicans or for one ethnic/religious/national group to murder another. Modern society is not a genuine offense, no matter how bigoted you are. The keyboard has a hyphen but hitting it between "liberal" and "fascist" is just more crypto-fascist BS. It doesn't matter how many times you type it, it's not a thing.
Mao Cheng Ji , Feb 24 2021 18:14 utc | 17
@Saraj 9, "Very difficult, see https..."Mao Cheng Ji , Feb 24 2021 18:23 utc | 18It seems to me, they make it sound more difficult than it really is.
Think of thepiratebay. It gets banned, blocked, raided, sued - from 2006 at least - and yet it lives. It changes from .org to .whatever, it finds registrars and infrastructure somehow.
And you don't really need google/apple store all that much: a browser will suffice.
And search? paypal, bank - what is this all about? I'm sure thepiratebay works with advertisers somehow (definitely with VPN companies), and somehow it gets paid. And that's all there is to it. Imo.
Dear steven, when fascists call themselves 'liberal', it makes sense (to me) to identify them as 'liberal-fascist'.S , Feb 25 2021 1:39 utc | 58And that's all there is to it.
You are free to classify and identify them any way you like. May I suggest, as an alternative, 'woke-fascist'?
S , Feb 25 2021 2:13 utc | 62The term liberal-fascist refers to people who consider themselves liberals, but in reality are not; in fact, these people resemble fascists more and more with each passing day. A more precise term would be "liberal"-fascist (with the quotes). It's not so much about SJW witchhunts as about absolute faith in everything the state says and hysterical demands to censor any dissenting opinion.
Piotr Berman , Feb 25 2021 3:14 utc | 64I guess, one can use fake liberal proto-fascist to avoid the wrath of nitpickers.
ak74 , Feb 25 2021 4:32 utc | 65...In short, anywhere it deems convenient, liberals support fascists, cannibals and other charming characters. As it goes for a while, liberals acquire fascistic values and try them in their home countries. Show trials and corporate censorship for now.
MFB , Feb 25 2021 7:26 utc | 74Do not undermine faith in the NATO alliance and its stability.
Do not amplify narratives that are aligned with the Russian government.
Do not undermine faith in the NATO alliance and its stability.
Everyone got that now?
Alan MacLeod actually tweeted about this:
"This is not a joke. Twitter has deleted dozens of account for the crime of 'undermining faith in the NATO alliance.'"
https://twitter.com/AlanRMacLeod/status/1364548110521876480
Undermining faith in the North American Terrorist Organization (NATO) is a Thought Crime of the highest order!
The punishment for this crime is being forced to watch a conga line of Anglo-American media mouthpieces blather about whatever is their Moral Outrage of the Month--Clockwork Orange style.
Welcome to the United States of Oceania.
MFB , Feb 25 2021 7:26 utc | 74..I suspect that the term "liberal-fascist" derives partly from the term Islamofascist, meaning a Muslim who does not bow to Washington six times a day, and partly from the term "social-fascist", a Stalinist term for a socialist who did not bow to Moscow six times a day.
Dogon Priest , Feb 25 2021 13:15 utc | 91Apropos neoliberalism.
The liberalism which is referred to here is the economic liberalism which was adopted in the United Kingdom in the 1840s after the "reform" of the Corn Laws, which permitted free trade in grain and therefore brought down both the price of wheat and the small farming community in the UK, as it was intended to do. Later these liberal policies (largely modelled on the "comparative advantage" economic theory, which had already been refuted by the time it was developed by David Ricardo) were used to justify the Irish genocide of 1847-9.
This policy was eventually abandoned later in the nineteenth century, except for places like India, of course. It was restored in the West in the 1970s, under the name of "free trade", and therefore is called neoliberalism, or new liberalism in the economic sense.
The term is not a compliment.
I suspect that the term "liberal-fascist" derives partly from the term Islamofascist, meaning a Muslim who does not bow to Washington six times a day, and partly from the term "social-fascist", a Stalinist term for a socialist who did not bow to Moscow six times a day.
Some animals are more equal than others
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Feb 20, 2021 | www.moonofalabama.org
vk , Feb 18 2021 18:40 utc | 142
Why China, with same size of power grid, won't suffer outage like in the US
"Why does the US use the winter storm as the excuse every time?" Shu Bin, director of the State Grid Beijing Economics Research Institute, told the Global Times on Thursday, noting that the power grid system is very vulnerable and requires constant maintenance and upgrade.A report from the US Department of Energy (DOE) in 2015 said that 70 percent of power transformers in the country were 25 years or older, 60 percent of circuit breakers were 30 years or older, and 70 percent of transmission lines are 25 years or older. And the age of these components "degrades their ability to withstand physical stresses and can result in higher failure rates," the report noted.
[...]
"The US has no nationwide power grid network allocation plan like China. When it encounters extreme weather, a state won't help another state like some Chinese provinces and regions do with flexible allocation plans," Lin Boqiang, director of the China Center for Energy Economics Research at Xiamen University, told the Global Times on Thursday.
[...]
"China uses 50Hz across the country, like the country has the same heartbeat," he said, adding that China has never experienced such a scale of blackouts as the US.
[...]
China has mastered the top technologies such as "UHV transmission" and "flexible DC transmission" and started the strategic "west-east electricity transmission" and "north-south electricity transmission" projects, which in turn offer an opportunity for the development of the country's western region.
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Feb 19, 2021 | www.moonofalabama.org
Grieved , Feb 18 2021 0:45 utc | 52
@36 oldhippie
Not as apocalyptic as it may seem. I wrote a comment on the situation in the earlier thread here .
Temps are starting to move up and tomorrow (Thursday) should begin the thaw. Friday is sunny and 47 deg F for a high, then sunny weekend and following. So we're over the worst of it. The lowest it ever got was around 0 deg F.
The infrastructure failed - the people paid to manage this failed - everybody is angry, 10 people died so far last I heard.
Rolling blackouts, some people very much suffering, townships opening warming shelters - probably not millions of pipes bursting. Not totally iced in, just nowhere to go. People stayed home. Businesses stayed closed. Not totally without food, people stocked up staples in 2020.
Not that dire. Absolutely fucking disgusting, and a hardship that touched everyone - some people got really screwed and I don't know why the treatment was uneven like that - not demographics, something with the grid. Dire, yes, and life-threatening to some or perhaps many (numbers not clear to me yet), but not so dire as your picture suggests. Nothing like Katrina, except the same ineptness.
But heads will roll. The governor has mandated an investigation into the regulator, ERCOT. What follows next is of great interest. Facts will appear. I'll post anything useful.
I heard a rumor it was getting better. Could be less blackouts. Will post now in case power goes off ;)
vk , Feb 18 2021 2:24 utc | 63
vetinLA , Feb 18 2021 2:27 utc | 64Texas Could Have Kept the Lights On
This Texas debacle may light a heated debate in the USA for the next weeks, for two reasons:
1) Texas is the big alt-right/Trumpist Festung for the foreseeable future. Their nation-building process involve catapulting Texas as the anti-California , the conservative version of the Shining City on the Hill, around which the USA will be rebuilt;
2) What is happening in Texas right now goes directly to the heart of neoliberalism, which is the political doctrine that vertebrates the alt-right. That's why conservative ideologues such as Tucker Carlson et al are desperately scrambling on TV and social media to blame the outage on the so-called Green New Deal.
What is happening right now in Texas, therefore, may be another episode on the battle for the soul of the American Empire.
Thom Hartmann podcast on the Texas SNAFU;
http://dl.thomhartmann.com/private/podcasts/2021_0217_thp-021721-hour1.mp3
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Feb 10, 2021 | www.nakedcapitalism.com
PlutoniumKun , February 6, 2021 at 11:25 am
The thing is, the UK has long been captured by neoliberalism (arguably, they invented it). The UK was the Trojan horse for the worst forms of neoliberalism in the EU. Which is why I thought it was ideal for neoliberals wherever they were based for the UK to be in the EU. I think one problem is that the UK somehow regressed from neoliberalism to a dream of some form of old style 19th Century liberalism.
Patrick , February 6, 2021 at 2:46 pm
My reading attributes the term (aside from an obscure French usage) and the ideology to Friedman and Austrian ex-pats Hayek and von MIses. When I think UK in the context of neoliberalsim, naturally I think Thatcher. So yes, at least since Thatcher neoliberalism has been the prevailing wind in the UK for which – imho – Brexit is both a symptom and a solidifier.
jsn , February 6, 2021 at 5:03 pm
Slobodan's "The Globalists" is a great look at Von Mises and Hayek peddling NeoLiberalism to to the last hereditary aristocracy standing in Europe in the interwar years.
The Charlatan and Saint of NeoLiberalism didn't really get traction until the US set up the BIS to help the Germans keep the debt cycle of dependence from the Versailles treaty liquid, with German payments through France and the UK back to the US.
To my mind, this set up a deracinated pseudo-nazism, a comfortableness with exterminatory exploitation so long as it's exercised though debt contracts, that has persisted to this day in Western finance, where debt is absolute but lives are fungible.
Michaelmas , February 6, 2021 at 10:42 pm
Slobodan's "The Globalists" is a great look at Von Mises and Hayek peddling NeoLiberalism to the last hereditary aristocracy standing in Europe in the interwar years.
It's Slobodian, Quinn.
To my mind, this set up a deracinated pseudo-nazism
So you're on to something.
Hayek is the Grandfather of neoliberalism and the primary influence on Hayek's thought was the Vienna of his youth: the go-go years after Franz Josef surrendered to the Hungarians, created the dual monarchy, and there was the great cultural efflorescence of Vienna that preceded the Austro-Hungarian empire's collapse.
Two ideologies emerged after WWI from Austria in reaction to the traumatic experience of that collapse -- ideologies formulated by Austrians that then deeply damaged the rest of the world.
Neoliberalism was one, of course. The other? Well, someone once asked Ernst Hanfstaengl aka Putzi, Hitler's confidant, what caused Hitler's antiSemitism.
Hanfstaengl replied: 'Anyone who did not know Vienna before 1914 cannot understand.' Hanfstaengl then explained that before WWI Vienna was full of beautiful people, the soldiers in their uniforms, the Hapsburg Empire's citizens in their local traditional clothes etc and 'then these strange people came from the East all dressed in black and speaking a strange kind of German'. These were the Orthodox Jews who came from Silesia, a part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Kaiser Franz Josef had done much to emancipate and help the Jews, so many crossed over to Vienna to start a new life.
Now, to further put Hitler and Nazism's policies in their historical context, it's necessary to understand the situation in Germany prior to their appearance.
In 1871, Bismarck had nationalized healthcare, making it available to all Germans, then provided old-age pensions as public social security. Child labor was abolished and public schools were provided for all children. The Kaiser implemented worker protection laws in 1890. After WW I, the Social Democrats' influence had remained strong. Germany had an active union membership. An official "Decree on Collective Agreements, Worker and Employees Committees and the Settlement of Labor disputes" enabled collective bargaining, legal enforcement of labor contracts as well as social security for disabled veterans, widows, and dependents. In 1918, unemployment benefits were given to all German workers.
In the 1932 elections, the Nazi Party didn't have an outright majority. According to the Nuremberg Trial transcripts, on January 4, 1933, German bankers and industrialists had a secret backroom deal with then-Chancellor Von Papen to make Hitler the Chancellor of Germany in a coalition.
https://www.loc.gov/rr/frd/Military_Law/pdf/NT_war-criminals_Vol-VIII.pdf
According to banker Kurt Baron von Schröder:
"In February 1933, as Chancellor, Hitler met with the leading German industrialists at the home of Hermann Goring. There were representatives from IG Farben, AG Siemens, BMW, coal mining magnates, Theissen Corp, AG Krupp, and others bankers, investors, and other Germans belonging to the top 1%. In this meeting, Hitler said, "Private enterprise cannot be maintained in the age of democracy.'"
In 1934 the Nazis outlined their plan to revitalize the German economy with the reprivatization of significant industries: railways, public works project, construction, steel, and banking. Hitler guaranteed profits for the private sector; many American industrialists and bankers flocked to Germany to invest.
The Nazis had a thorough plan for deregulation. The Nazi's chief economist stated," The first thing German business needs is peace and quiet. It must have a feeling of absolute legal security and must know that work and its return are guaranteed." Likewise, businesses weren't to be hampered by too much "regulation." On May 2, 1933, Hitler sent his Brown Shirts to all union headquarters. Union leaders were beaten, and sent to prison or concentration camps. The Nazi party expropriated union funds -- money workers paid for union membership -- for itself.
On January 20, 1934, the Nazis passed the Law Regulating National Labor, abrogating the power of the government to set minimum wages and working conditions. Employers lowered wages and benefits. Workers were banned from striking or engaging in other collective bargaining rights, and worked longer hours for lower wages. Their conditions so deteriorated that when the head of the AFL visited Nazi Germany in 1938, he compared an average worker's life to that of a slave. .
The Nazis also privatized medicine. One of Hitler's economists was the head of a private insurance company. These private for-profit health insurance companies immediately started to profit from Anti-Semitism. In 1934, they eliminated reimbursements for Jewish physicians, which allowed them to profit further.
And so on.
Philip K. Dick once wrote a novel whose particular ontological riff was that the Roman empire never really ended and in the 20th century people lived in an imposed illusion under the same elite, or their heirs, that had headed the Roman empire.
That sort of science-fictional novel could be written based on our own reality, riffing on the theme: The Nazis won.
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Feb 10, 2021 | www.nakedcapitalism.com
jsn , February 6, 2021 at 12:31 pm
Reading Blacks biography of Roosevelt, Hudson's work, Talbot's "The Devil's Chessboard" and Douglas's "JFK and the Unspeakable" one discerns a clear line between the UK interwar Foreign Office, military intelligence and rentier class and the Dulles brother's post war ascent to the pinnacles of back room power.
Before the war the brothers arranged IP shares between the soon to be contending German and Anglo-sphere industries, during the war they tried to arrange a separate peace with post Hitler Germany, after Roosevelt's death and particularly in their con job on Truman, they made the CIA the collective tool of the transatlantic financial elite, David Rockefeller explicitly included.
These books all rely extensively on previously lightly touched primary sources.
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Feb 02, 2021 | en.wikipedia.org
Politics [ edit ]
Le Carré feuded with Salman Rushdie over The Satanic Verses , stating that "nobody has a God-given right to insult a great religion and be published with impunity". [35]
In January 2003, two months prior to the invasion, The Times published le Carré's essay "The United States Has Gone Mad" criticising the buildup to the Iraq War and President George W. Bush 's response to the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks , calling it "worse than McCarthyism , worse than the Bay of Pigs and in the long term potentially more disastrous than the Vietnam War " and "beyond anything Osama bin Laden could have hoped for in his nastiest dreams". [36] [37] Le Carré participated in the London protests against the Iraq War . He said the war resulted from the "politicisation of intelligence to fit the political intentions" of governments and "How Bush and his junta succeeded in deflecting America's anger from bin Laden to Saddam Hussein is one of the great public relations conjuring tricks of history". [38] [39]
He was critical of Tony Blair 's role in taking Britain into the Iraq War, saying "I can't understand that Blair has an afterlife at all. It seems to me that any politician who takes his country to war under false pretences has committed the ultimate sin. I think that a war in which we refuse to accept the body count of those that we kill is also a war of which we should be ashamed". [38]
Le Carré was critical of Western governments' policies towards Iran. He believed Iran's actions are a response to being "encircled by nuclear powers" and by the way in which "we ousted Mosaddeq through the CIA and the Secret Service here across the way and installed the Shah and trained his ghastly secret police force in all the black arts, the SAVAK ". [38]
In 2017, le Carré expressed concerns over the future of liberal democracy , saying "I think of all things that were happening across Europe in the 1930s, in Spain, in Japan, obviously in Germany. To me, these are absolutely comparable signs of the rise of fascism and it's contagious, it's infectious. Fascism is up and running in Poland and Hungary. There's an encouragement about". [40] He later wrote that the end of the Cold War had left the West without a coherent ideology, in contrast to the "notion of individual freedom , of inclusiveness, of tolerance – all of that we called anti-communism " prevailing during that time. [41]
... ... ...
Le Carré was an outspoken advocate of European integration and sharply criticised Brexit . [45] Le Carré criticised Conservative politicians such as Boris Johnson (whom he referred to as a "mob orator"), Dominic Cummings , and Nigel Farage in interviews, claiming that their "task is to fire up the people with nostalgia [and] with anger". He further opined in interviews that "What really scares me about nostalgia is that it's become a political weapon. Politicians are creating a nostalgia for an England that never existed, and selling it, really, as something we could return to", noting that with "the demise of the working class we saw also the demise of an established social order, based on the stability of ancient class structures". [44] [46] On the other hand, he said that in the Labour Party "they have this Leninist element and they have this huge appetite to level society."
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Jan 27, 2021 | www.moonofalabama.org
james , Jan 27 2021 0:15 utc | 85
quote from an article i am reading on alex ross interview...Alex Ross is the music critic of The New Yorker, among other things.. its a bit of a controversial comment which i why i am sharing it..
"America -- people have said this in so many ways -- is in need of the kind of self-examination that has become widespread in Germany. For all of its problems, the culture of working through the past is very strong in Germany. Susan Neiman recently wrote a brilliant book, Learning from the Germans, drawing a line between the German examination of the Nazi past and the Holocaust and America's, to put it mildly, very incomplete reckoning with racism, slavery, the Native American genocide, and everything else. As I say in the book, Germany becomes a sort of alibi for us -- no matter how bad things are here, we're not that bad. We're not as bad as the Germans. That undertow exists whenever German history and German culture are discussed in America. Consider the incredible profusion of books on the Nazi period that you see in bookstores -- there's always an element of wanting to go back this period when America seemed to be purely on the side of good and the Germans were absolute evil. It makes us feel better about ourselves. And so we have these Nazi characters in movies over and over -- good down-to-earth Americans out there battling evil Germans who are playing Wagner on their Victrolas, which is literally something that happens in one of the Captain America movies. It's a comforting myth, one that needs to be shaken up a bit."
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Jan 25, 2021 | www.unz.com
anti_republocrat , says: January 25, 2021 at 7:51 pm GMT • 7.0 hours ago
@anonGlobalists tell the people they are for mankind and Mother Earth, against corporate exploitation. Once in control after a year of planpanic and the Great Reset, globalists will operate for the benefit of those in control of the world's largest corporations.
In all three "different" systems, the people begin to wake up too late. The only way for those who have seized control to stay in control is to suppress the "have nots." This leads inevitably to totalitarian control and tyranny.
Thus, communism, fascism and globalism differ only in rhetoric. In all things that matter they are identical. It's all totalitarianism.
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Jan 24, 2021 | www.rt.com
A hallmark of totalitarian societies is that there's no escape from politics and the dominant state ideology. Recent events demonstrate that we've now sadly reached that point in Britain, the US and other Western countries.
...In the choice between the personal and the political, between listening to the politician, or romancing (even if only in his imagination), the poet chooses the personal. He is right to do so. Totalitarian societies come about when people do the opposite. They put politics before the personal. They betray old friendships for 'the cause', or put 'following the party line' before family and loved ones.
...Things that used to be apolitical have become completely politicised. There is no 'ring-fencing' any more. I have to say, even as someone who makes my living as a political commentator, I'm absolutely sick of the way politics has infected every aspect of our lives
...While the US presidential inauguration was being televised, and viewers were no doubt being told repeatedly what a 'great day for democracy' it was, I was doing a jigsaw puzzle. Believe me, it was far more rewarding.
Neil Clark is a journalist, writer, broadcaster and blogger. His award winning blog can be found at www.neilclark66.blogspot.com. He tweets on politics and world affairs @NeilClark66
sarcastictruth 17 hours ago 24 Jan, 2021 06:38 AM
Political correctness is the means by which the powers that be/the elite/the globalists control the masses. Why do people demonstrate political correctness? To show what a "good person" they and how they are aware of "social issues". That's why people strive to be politically correct. Its the reason we are in the lockdown situation, people accept the lockdown because you are deemed politically incorrect (a bad person) if you don't. People mistake that politically correctness is about fighting racism, whilst racism against black people is condemned, racism against white people is actively encourage. This shows political correctness has nothing to do with fighting racism, fighting gender inequality, or about being a good person. It has everything to do with fostering division amongst people and controlling the opinion of the masses.Cl K-berg 13 hours ago 24 Jan, 2021 10:33 AM100%. Here's a great extract for essay quotation: ''We should turn off television programmes masquerading as 'drama' or 'comedy' that are really political sermons dolled up in entertainment's clothing and provide no enjoyment whatsoever.'' Wow! how totally spot on.
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Jan 25, 2021 | www.rt.com
Journalist Andy Ngo, whose parents fled to the US from Vietnam in 1978, has become a political refugee himself, fleeing to London, saying he received death threats from Antifa over his coverage of the movement.
"For a number of months now, there's just been increasing threats of violence against me, promises by Antifa extremists to kill me," the Portland native said Saturday night in a Sky News interview. Local law enforcement authorities did nothing about the alleged threats, even when Ngo provided names of the suspects, he said.
"It's pained me a lot, temporarily having to leave the country and home that settled my parents who came there as political refugees," Ngo added.
Ngo came to increased prominence after he was attacked by a mob of Antifa protesters in 2019. There have been no arrests in connection with that attack – in which Ngo was beaten, robbed and hospitalized with a brain injury – even though it was caught on camera from various angles and the journalist's lawyer provided names of suspects to police.
//www.youtube.com/embed/KlCTpywgEQk
Some Antifa members have condemned Ngo for "enabling fascism" and exposing them to danger by reporting their names and posting their arrest photos. He was vilified by Rolling Stone magazine, which branded him as a "right-wing troll" and said he tries to "demonize" Antifa.
Hatred towards Ngo apparently escalated even further with the upcoming publication of his book, 'Unmasked', which chronicles Antifa's history of violence and its "radical plan to destroy democracy."
The protests, which some observers called "modern-day book burning," may have had an unintended consequence by bringing more attention to 'Unmasked'. The book, which is scheduled for release on February 2, is already the No. 1 seller in several political categories on Amazon.com. At one point earlier this month, it was the overall top seller by the online behemoth.
READ MORE'Modern-day book burners': Portland bookstore forced to evacuate after protesters demand it pulls book critical of Antifa
Ngo said the same Democrat politicians who have condemned and magnified the January 6 US Capitol riot were silent "at best" when Antifa and Black Lives Matter plagued Portland with 120 days of riots, including violent attacks on a federal courthouse, last year. He said some even promoted crowdfunding efforts to get rioters out of jail, while others described federal law enforcement officers as "Trump's Gestapo and secret police."
Rioting in Portland was so bad on President Joe Biden's Inauguration Day that 15 Antifa activists were arrested, nearly half of whom had been busted and released for similar crimes last year, Ngo said. "This is a nightmare version of Groundhog Day," he added.
Reminded that Biden had called Antifa "an idea, not an organization" during last year's presidential campaign, Ngo pointed out that documents leaked to him show Antifa's organizational setup, including processes for recruiting, radicalizing and vetting new members.
"Very sad," author Julia Smith said of Ngo's fleeing to London. "This is not the America his parents sought."
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Jan 24, 2021 | www.globalresearch.ca
"You have such a fervent, passionate, evangelical faith in this country why in the name of God don't you have any faith in the system of government you're so hell-bent to protect? You want to defend the United States of America, then defend it with the tools it supplies you with -- its Constitution. You ask for a mandate, General, from a ballot box. You don't steal it after midnight, when the country has its back turned." -- Seven Days in May (1964)
No doubt about it: the coup d'etat was successful.
That January 6 attempt by so-called insurrectionists to overturn the election results was not the real coup, however. Those who answered President Trump's call to march on the Capitol were merely the fall guys, manipulated into creating the perfect crisis for the Deep State -- a.k.a. the Police State a.k.a. the Military Industrial Complex a.k.a. the Techno-Corporate State a.k.a. the Surveillance State -- to swoop in and take control.
It took no time at all for the switch to be thrown and the nation's capital to be placed under a military lockdown, online speech forums restricted, and individuals with subversive or controversial viewpoints ferreted out, investigated, shamed and/or shunned .
This new order didn't emerge into being this week, or this month, or even this year, however.
Indeed, the real coup happened when our government "of the people, by the people, for the people" was overthrown by a profit-driven, militaristic, techno-corporate state that is in cahoots with a government "of the rich, by the elite, for the corporations."
We've been mired in this swamp for decades now.
Every successive president starting with Franklin D. Roosevelt has been bought lock, stock and barrel and made to dance to the Deep State's tune.
Enter Donald Trump, the candidate who swore to drain the swamp in Washington DC. Instead of putting an end to the corruption, however, Trump paved the way for lobbyists, corporations, the military industrial complex, and the Deep State to feast on the carcass of the dying American republic.
Joe Biden will be no different: his job is to keep the Deep State in power.
Step away from the cult of personality politics and you'll find that beneath the power suits, they're all alike.
Follow the money. It always points the way.
As Bertram Gross noted in Friendly Fascism: The New Face of Power in America , " evil now wears a friendlier face than ever before in American history ."
Writing in 1980, Gross predicted a future in which he saw:
a new despotism creeping slowly across America. Faceless oligarchs sit at command posts of a corporate-government complex that has been slowly evolving over many decades. In efforts to enlarge their own powers and privileges, they are willing to have others suffer the intended or unintended consequences of their institutional or personal greed. For Americans, these consequences include chronic inflation, recurring recession, open and hidden unemployment, the poisoning of air, water, soil and bodies, and, more important, the subversion of our constitution. More broadly, consequences include widespread intervention in international politics through economic manipulation, covert action, or military invasion
This stealthy, creeping, silent coup that Gross prophesied is the same danger that writer Rod Serling envisioned in the 1964 political thriller Seven Days in May , a clear warning to beware of martial law packaged as a well-meaning and overriding concern for the nation's security.
Incredibly enough, almost 60 years later, we find ourselves hostages to a government run more by military doctrine and corporate greed than by the rule of law established in the Constitution. Indeed, proving once again that fact and fiction are not dissimilar, today's current events could well have been lifted straight out of Seven Days in May , which takes viewers into eerily familiar terrain.
American Apocalypse: The Government's Plot to Destabilize the Nation Is WorkingThe premise is straightforward.
With the Cold War at its height, an unpopular U.S. President signs a momentous nuclear disarmament treaty with the Soviet Union. Believing that the treaty constitutes an unacceptable threat to the security of the United States and certain that he knows what is best for the nation, General James Mattoon Scott (played by Burt Lancaster), the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and presidential hopeful, plans a military takeover of the national government. When Gen. Scott's aide, Col. Casey (Kirk Douglas), discovers the planned military coup, he goes to the President with the information. The race for command of the U.S. government begins, with the clock ticking off the hours until the military plotters plan to overthrow the President.
Needless to say, while on the big screen, the military coup is foiled and the republic is saved in a matter of hours, in the real world, the plot thickens and spreads out over the past half century.
We've been losing our freedoms so incrementally for so long -- sold to us in the name of national security and global peace, maintained by way of martial law disguised as law and order, and enforced by a standing army of militarized police and a political elite determined to maintain their powers at all costs -- that it's hard to pinpoint exactly when it all started going downhill, but we've been on that fast-moving, downward trajectory for some time now.
The question is no longer whether the U.S. government will be preyed upon and taken over by the military industrial complex. That's a done deal, but martial law disguised as national security is only one small part of the greater deception we've been fooled into believing is for our own good.
How do you get a nation to docilely accept a police state? How do you persuade a populace to accept metal detectors and pat downs in their schools, bag searches in their train stations, tanks and military weaponry used by their small town police forces, surveillance cameras in their traffic lights, police strip searches on their public roads, unwarranted blood draws at drunk driving checkpoints, whole body scanners in their airports, and government agents monitoring their communications?
Try to ram such a state of affairs down the throats of the populace, and you might find yourself with a rebellion on your hands. Instead, you bombard them with constant color-coded alerts, terrorize them with shootings and bomb threats in malls, schools, and sports arenas, desensitize them with a steady diet of police violence, and sell the whole package to them as being for their best interests.
This present military occupation of the nation's capital by 25,000 troops as part of the so-called "peaceful" transfer of power from one administration to the next is telling.
This is not the language of a free people. This is the language of force.
Still, you can't say we weren't warned.
Back in 2008, an Army War College report revealed that "widespread civil violence inside the United States would force the defense establishment to reorient priorities in extremis to defend basic domestic order and human security." The 44-page report went on to warn that potential causes for such civil unrest could include another terrorist attack, "unforeseen economic collapse, loss of functioning political and legal order , purposeful domestic resistance or insurgency, pervasive public health emergencies, and catastrophic natural and human disasters."
In 2009, reports by the Department of Homeland Security surfaced that labelled right-wing and left-wing activists and military veterans as extremists (a.k.a. terrorists) and called on the government to subject such targeted individuals to full-fledged pre-crime surveillance. Almost a decade later, after spending billions to fight terrorism, the DHS concluded that the greater threat is not ISIS but domestic right-wing extremism .
Meanwhile, the police have been transformed into extensions of the military while the nation itself has been transformed into a battlefield. This is what a state of undeclared martial law looks like, when you can be arrested, tasered, shot, brutalized and in some cases killed merely for not complying with a government agent's order or not complying fast enough. This hasn't just been happening in crime-ridden inner cities. It's been happening all across the country.
And then you've got the government, which has been steadily amassing an arsenal of military weapons for use domestically and equipping and training their "troops" for war. Even government agencies with largely administrative functions such as the Food and Drug Administration, Department of Veterans Affairs, and the Smithsonian have been acquiring body armor, riot helmets and shields, cannon launchers and police firearms and ammunition. In fact, there are now at least 120,000 armed federal agents carrying such weapons who possess the power to arrest.
Rounding out this profit-driven campaign to turn American citizens into enemy combatants (and America into a battlefield) is a technology sector that has been colluding with the government to create a Big Brother that is all-knowing, all-seeing and inescapable . It's not just the drones, fusion centers , license plate readers, stingray devices and the NSA that you have to worry about. You're also being tracked by the black boxes in your cars , your cell phone, smart devices in your home, grocery loyalty cards, social media accounts, credit cards, streaming services such as Netflix, Amazon, and e-book reader accounts.
So you see, January 6 and its aftermath provided the government and its corporate technocrats the perfect excuse to show off all of the powers they've been amassing so assiduously over the years.
Mind you, by "government," I'm not referring to the highly partisan, two-party bureaucracy of the Republicans and Democrats.
I'm referring to "government" with a capital "G," the entrenched Deep State that is unaffected by elections, unaltered by populist movements, and has set itself beyond the reach of the law.
I'm referring to the corporatized, militarized, entrenched bureaucracy that is fully operational and staffed by unelected officials who are, in essence, running the country and calling the shots in Washington DC, no matter who sits in the White House.
This is the hidden face of a government that has no respect for the freedom of its citizenry.
Brace yourself.
There is something being concocted in the dens of power, far beyond the public eye, and it doesn't bode well for the future of this country.
Anytime you have an entire nation so mesmerized by the antics of the political ruling class that they are oblivious to all else, you'd better beware.
Anytime you have a government that operates in the shadows, speaks in a language of force, and rules by fiat, you'd better beware.
And anytime you have a government so far removed from its people as to ensure that they are never seen, heard or heeded by those elected to represent them, you'd better beware.
As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People , we are at our most vulnerable right now.
All of those dastardly seeds we have allowed the government to sow under the guise of national security are bearing demon fruit.
The gravest threat facing us as a nation is not extremism but despotism, exercised by a ruling class whose only allegiance is to power and money.
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Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.
This article was originally published on The Rutherford Institute .
Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute . His new book Battlefield America: The War on the American People is available at www.amazon.com . Whitehead can be contacted at [email protected] . He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
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Jan 15, 2021 | www.strategic-culture.org
It should be shocking to Republicans and Democrats alike that the Commander-in-Chief of the United States is banished from all of the main social media platforms – Twitter, Facebook and YouTube – denying him the ability to communicate with his 75 million constituents, or one half of the electorate. This is real and unprecedented violence being committed against the body politic and far more worrisome than any breach of federal property, as loathsome as such an act may be.
The Capitol building is, after all, ultimately a mere symbol of our freedoms and liberties, whereas the rights laid down in the U.S. Constitution –the First Amendment not least of all – are fragile and coming under sustained assault every single day. Why does the left refuse to show the same concern for an aging piece of parchment, arguably the greatest political document ever written, as it does for a piece of architecture? The answer to that riddle is becoming increasingly obvious.
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Big Tech began its slide towards marked fascist tendencies thanks to one of the greatest hoaxes ever foisted upon the American public, known as Russiagate. One after another, Silicon Valley overlords were called before Congressional committees to explain "how and why Russian operatives were given free rein to tamper with 2016 U.S. election," in favor of the populist Donald Trump, no less.
After this made for television 'dressing down', the Big Tech executives at Google, Facebook, Twitter and others got busy reconfiguring their software algorithms in such a way that thousands of internet creators suddenly lost not only a lifetime of hard work and their sustenance, but their voice as well. This is the moment that Big Tech and the Democrats began to really march in lockstep. A new dark age of 'McCarthyism' had settled upon the nation, which gave the left unlimited powers for blocking user accounts they deemed "suspicious," which meant anyone on the right. Now, getting 'shadow banned,' demonetized and outright banned from these platforms has become the new dystopian reality for those with a conservative message to convey. And the fact that the story of 'Russian collusion' was finally exposed as a dirty little lie did nothing to loosen the corporate screws.
Incidentally, as a very large footnote to this story, Big Tech and Big Business have not dished out the same amount of medieval-style punishment to other violators of the public peace. The most obvious example comes courtesy of Black Lives Matter, the Soros-funded social-justice movement that has wreaked havoc across a broad swath of the heartland following the death of George Floyd during an arrest by a white police officer.
Both BLM and Trump supporters believe they have a very large grudge to bear. The former believes they are being unfairly targeted by police due to the color of their skin, while the latter believes they are not getting fair treatment by the mainstream media due to 'Trump Derangement Syndrome', and possibly also due in part to their skin color. But at this point the similarities between BLM and Trump voters come to a screeching halt.
Taking it as gospel that America suffers from 'systemic racism' (it doesn't, although that is not to say that pockets of racism against all colors and creeds doesn't exist), dozens of corporations jumped on the woke bandwagon to express their support for Black Lives Matter at the very same time the latter's members were looting and burning neighborhoods across the nation. Strangely, violence has never shocked the progressive left, so long as the violence supported its agenda.
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Here are just some of the ways the corporate world responded to charges that America was a racist cauldron ready to blow, as reported by The Washington Post: "Jamie Dimon, chief executive of JPMorgan Chase, knelt alongside employees during his visit to a Chase branch. Bank of America pledged $1 billion to fight racial inequality in America. Tech companies have invested big dollars in Black Lives Matter, the Center for Policing Equity, Colin Kaepernick's Know Your Rights Camp and other entities engaged in racial justice efforts " And the list goes on and on.
Of course, private corporations are free to express their solidarity with whatever group they wish. The problem, however, is that these monopolistic monstrosities have an overwhelming tendency to pledge allegiance to liberal, progressive values, as opposed to maybe steering clear of politics altogether. Nowhere was Corporate America's political agenda more obvious than in the aftermath of the siege of the Capitol building on January 6, which led to the death of five people.
Corporate America missed a very good opportunity to keep quiet and remain neutral with regards to an issue of incredible partisan significance. Instead, it unleashed a salvo of attacks on Trump supporters, even denying them access to basic services.
Aside from the most obvious and alarming 'disappearing act,' that of POTUS being removed from the major social media platforms, were countless lesser names caught up in the 'purge.'
One such person is conservative commentator and former baseball star Curt Schilling, who says that AIG terminated his insurance policy over his "social media profile," which was sympathetic to Donald Trump, according to Summit News. "We will be just fine, but wanted to let Americans know that @AIGinsurance canceled our insurance due to my "Social Media profile," tweeted Schilling.
"The agent told us it was a decision made by and with their PR department in conjunction with management," he added.
While all forms of 'cancel culture' (which seems to be part of a move to build American society along the lines of the Chinese 'social credit system,' which rewards those who toe the party line, and punishes those who fall out of favor) are egregious and counterintuitive to American values, perhaps the most astonishing was the cancellation of Republican Senator Josh Hawley's book deal with Simon and Shuster.
"We did not come to this decision lightly," Simon & Schuster said in a statement over Twitter. "As a publisher it will always be our mission to amplify a variety of voices and viewpoints: At the same time we take seriously our larger public responsibility as citizens, and cannot support Senator Hawley after his role in what became a dangerous threat."
The so-called "threat" was a photograph of Hawley raising a fist to the crowd that had assembled outside of the Capitol building before it had breached the security perimeter. It seems that corporations may now serve as judge, jury and executioner when it comes to how Americans behave in public. Is it a crime that Hawley acknowledged a crowd of supporters who were at the time behind the gates of the Capitol building? Apparently it is.
By the way, the name of the Hawley's book? 'The Tyranny of Big Tech'. How's that for irony?
In conclusion, it would be a huge mistake for the Democrats to believe that they are safe from the same sort of corporate and government behavior that has now dramatically silenced the conservative voice across the nation. The United States has entered dangerous unchartered waters, and by all indications it would appear that the American people have inherited a 'soft' form of fascism.
Although there may not be troops and tanks on the streets and a dictator inciting crowds from his bully pulpit, the end result has been pretty much the same: the brutal elimination of one half of the American population from all of the due protections provided by the U.S. Constitution due to an unholy alliance between corporate and government power, which is the very definition of fascism. Democrats, you may very well be next, so enjoy your victory while you still can.
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Jan 22, 2021 | www.unz.com
Curmudgeon , says: January 21, 2021 at 10:35 pm GMT • 3.5 hours ago
@Cthulu SmithFascism is opposed to usury and the power of the international banking cartel. Whether Italy, Spain, or Portugal, the bankers were squeezed. The US "fascism" is a product of the banks, not an opponent.
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Jan 22, 2021 | www.zerohedge.com
Authored by Jeff Thomas via InternationalMan.com,
For many years, a handful of people have postulated that those who control industry, finance and governments are essentially the same people – a cabal of sorts that have, over generations, solidified their relationships in order to gain greater wealth and power, whilst systematically making things ever more difficult for the free market to exist.
But why should this be? Surely, corporate leaders are more ardently capitalist than anyone else?
Well, on the surface, that might appear to make sense, but once a significant position of power has been achieved, those who have achieved it recognize that, since they've already reached the top, the primary concern changes. From then on, the primary concern becomes the assurance that no others are able to climb so high as they have.
At that point, they realise that their foremost effort needs to be a push toward corporatism – the merger of power between government and business. This is a natural marriage. The political world is a parasitic one. It relies on a continual flow of funding. The world of big business is a study in exclusivity – the ability to make it impossible for pretenders to the throne to arise. So, big business provides the cash; government provides protective legislation that ensures preference for those at the top.
In most cases, this second half of the equation does not mean a monopoly for just one corporation, but a monopoly for a cabal – an elite group of corporations.
This corporatist relationship has deep roots in the US, going back over one hundred years. To this day, those elite families who took control of oil, steel, banking, motor vehicles and other industries a century ago, soon created a takeover of higher learning (universities), health (Big Pharma) and "Defense" (the military-industrial complex).
Through legislation, the US was then transformed to ensure that all these interests would be catered to, creating generations of both control and profit.
https://lockerdome.com/lad/13084989113709670?pubid=ld-dfp-ad-13084989113709670-0&pubo=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.zerohedge.com&rid=www.zerohedge.com&width=830
Of course, "profit" should not be an evil word, but under crony capitalism, it becomes an abomination – a distortion of the free market and the death of laissez faire economics.
Certainly, this sort of collectivism is not what Karl Marx had in mind when he daydreamed about a workers' paradise in which business leaders retained all the risk and responsibility of creating and building businesses, whilst the workers had the final word as to how the revenue would be distributed to the workers themselves.
Mister Marx failed in being objective enough to understand that if the business creator took all the risk and responsibility but gave up the ability to decide what happened to the revenue, he'd never bother to open a business. Even a shoeshine boy would reject such a notion and elect to go on the dole, rather than work.
Mister Marx sought more to bring down those who were successful than to raise up those who were not, yet he unwittingly created a new idea – corporate collectivism – in which the very people he sought to debase used the appeal of collectivist rhetoric to diminish both the freedoms and wealth of the average worker.
On the surface, this might appear to be a hard sell – to get the hoi polloi into the net – but in fact, it's quite easy and has perennially been effective.
Hitler's New Order was such a construct – the promise to return Germany to greatness and the German people to prosperity through increasingly draconian laws, warfare and an economic revolving door between government and industry.
Of course, a major influx of capital was required – billions of dollars – and this was eagerly provided by US industry and banks. Heads of New York banks not only funded Nazi industry; families such as the Fords, Rockefellers, Morgans, etc., sat on the boards of German corporations.
The Nazi effort failed, as they underestimated the Russian will to fight to the death. (Eighty percent of all German Army deaths were due to the Russian campaign.)
But those in New York were able to regroup and be first in the queue for the restructuring of German industry after the war and, ultimately, profited handsomely.
But most significantly, the idea of corporatist collectivism did not die. Even before the war, the same group of families and corporations had drawn up the plan for Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal.
Mister Roosevelt was a dyed-in-the-wool Wall Street man and a director of New York banks. In the 1930s and early 1940s, he created, as president, a revolving door that favoured large corporations, whilst the average American was consciously kept at the subsistence level through government entitlements.
The scam worked. Shortsighted Americans not only were grateful; they deified him for it.
Likewise, John Kennedy's New Frontier sought to revitalize the concept, as did Lyndon Johnson's Great Society: Give the little people entitlements that keep them little. Tax smaller businesses and create a flow of tax dollars to the elite industries, who, in turn, provide monetary favours to the political class.
The Green New Deal is merely the latest corporate collectivist scheme on the list.
Corporate collectivism can be defined as a system in which the few who hold the legal monopolies of finance and industry gain an overriding control over all others, and in so doing, systematically extract wealth from them.
Today, this system has become so refined that, although the average American has a flat screen TV and an expensive smartphone, he cannot raise $400 to cover an emergency that occurs in his life. He is, for all practical purposes, continually bankrupt, but still functioning in a zombie-like existence of continual dependency.
This, on the surface, may not seem all that dangerous, but those who cannot buy their way out of a small emergency are easily controlled. Just create an emergency such as an uber-virus and that fact will be illuminated quickly.
In order to maximise compliance in a population, maximise their dependence.
As stated above, this effort has been in play for generations. But it is now reaching a crescendo. It's now up to speed in most of the former Free World and those who hold the strings are ready for a major step forward in corporate collectivism.
In the coming year, we shall see dramatic changes appearing at a dizzying rate. Capital controls , migration controls, internal movement controls, tax increases, confiscation of assets and the removal of "inalienable" rights will all be coming into effect – so quickly that before the populace can even grasp the latest restrictions, new ones will be heaped on.
As this unfolds, we shall witness the erosion of the nation-state. Controls will come from global authorities, such as the UN, the IMF and the WEF. Organisations that have no formal authority over nations will increasingly be calling the shots and people will wonder how this is possible. Elected officials will increasingly become mere bagmen, doing the bidding of an unelected ruling class.
The changes that take place will be not unlike a blanket that is thrown over humanity.
The question then will be whether to, a) give in to this force, b) to fight it and most likely fall victim to it, or c) seek a means to fall outside the perimeter of the blanket.
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Unfortunately most people have no idea what really happens when a government goes out of control, let alone how to prepare The coming economic and political crisis is going to be much worse, much longer, and very different than what we've seen in the past. That's exactly why New York Times best-selling author Doug Casey and his team just released an urgent video. Click here to watch it now .
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Jan 19, 2021 | www.zerohedge.com
Authored by Caitlin Johnstone via Medium.com,
A new viral video calling on liberals to form "an army of citizen detectives" to gather information on Trump supporters and report their activities to the authorities has racked up thousands of shares and millions of views in just a few hours.
The hashtag #TrumpsNewArmy is trending on Twitter as of this writing due to the release of a horrifying video with that title from successful author and virulent Russiagater Don Winslow. As of this writing it has some 20 thousand shares and 2.6 million views, and the comments and quote-retweets are predominantly supportive.
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"On or before January 20th, Donald Trump will no longer be the Commander-in-Chief: he will lose control of the Army, Navy, Airforce, Marines, Special Forces and America's nuclear arsenal," Winslow's voice begins ominously. "On January 20th Donald Trump will become Commander-in-Chief of a different army: this army."
Viewers are then shown footage from Trump rallies while being told that they are looking at "radical extreme conservatives, also known as domestic terrorists".
"They are hidden among us, disguised behind regular jobs," Winslow warns.
"They are your children's teachers. They work at supermarkets, malls, doctor's offices, and many are police officers and soldiers."
Winslow talks about white supremacists and the Capitol riot, warning that Trump will continue escalating violence and fomenting a civil war in America.
"We have to fight back," Winslow declares.
"In this new war, the battlefield has changes. Computers can be more valuable than guns. And this is what we need now more than ever: an army of citizen detectives. I'm proposing we form a citizen army. Our weapons will be computers and cellphones. We, who are monitoring extremists on the internet and reporting our findings to authorities. Remember, before the Navy Seals killed Osama Bin Laden, he had to be found. He was found by a CIA analyst working on a computer thousands of miles away. It's up to you."
The viral video is being loudly amplified by popular #Resistance accounts like Majid M Padellan (better known as Brooklyn Dad Defiant) with frighteningly paranoid and HUAC-like rhetoric.
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"#TrumpsNewArmy is VILE," one of Padellan's Twitter shares of the video reads. "And we KNOW who they are. They are our teachers. They are our neighbors. They are our police officers. They are EVERYWHERE. EXPOSE THEIR TREASON."
"Donald trump is on his way out," reads another .
"Good riddance. But his 'army' is still here, hiding amongst us. They are traitors. They are evil. And they MUST be rooted OUT."
"I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America," reads yet another . "But SOME people they pledged their allegiance ONLY to trump. These are dangerous traitors."
"After 9/11, we were told: If you see something, say something," reads still another .
"We have TERRORISTS in our midst. Some of us KNOW these people. It is our patriotic DUTY to expose them."
So if you were hoping that maybe liberals would chill out and get a little less crazy with Trump out of the White House, I am sorry to be the bearer of bad news.
This is as insane and scary as I have ever seen these people get, and I was in the thick of peak Russiagate hysteria. An aggressively manufactured push to get an army of citizens spying on each other calls to mind the Stasi informants of East Germany , the patriotism-fueled digital "digging" of the QAnon psyop, and the NatSec LARPing of Louise Mensch Twitter, all rolled into one great big ball of crazy.
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This comes out as we are being bombarded with mass media punditry from literal CIA veterans like Sue Gordon and Elissa Slotkin forcefully hammering home the message that domestic terror is the new frontier for combating violent extremism, meaning of course that new Patriot Act-like solutions will be needed . Winslow himself spent six years traveling and doing research for a novel about a former CIA operative , and if some government agency didn't recruit him during that period they clearly should have.
This will get frightening if it keeps up. Just as a relatively low-profile lefty blogger I routinely get liberals online falsely claiming I'm a Russian agent and saying they'll report me to the FBI, and that's without an aggressive campaign urging them to join a powerful digital army. The fact that Winslow stays very vague about what he means by "Trump's new army" and constantly conflates rank-and-file Trump supporters with white supremacist terrorists means people are effectively being pointed at all Trump supporters, especially when normal Trump rallies are what he points to in the video. If this takes off it can very quickly lead to a volunteer army of power-worshipping snitches against literally anyone who is critical of US foreign policy or the Democratic Party, whether they actually support Trump or not.
In fact just following the trending hashtag I'm noticing Twitter users saying this means targeting all Trump supporters, so clearly that is the message that's being absorbed.
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"Trumpers are pushing back so hard against this video because so many of them live in the dark, cloaked behind normal jobs and seemingly normal lives," Winslow tweeted in promotion of his project.
Well maybe that's because they are half the voting public, Don?
Winslow mixes in these generic comments about "Trumpers" with comments about "white supremacists" , about whom he tweets "1. We expose them. 2. We identify them. 3. We notify law enforcement. 4. We notify their employers."
Their employers.
This is just liberals being pushed toward targeting anyone who isn't ideologically aligned with them for destruction. I really, really hope it doesn't take off, because it is profoundly ugly. Please don't let the manipulators trick you into ripping each other to pieces, America. They're only pointing you at each other so you don't look at them.
* * *
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Fudomyo 2 hours ago
cankles' server 35 minutes agoHopefully things will settle down after the inauguration. There are a lot of normal people in the US who just want to get on with fixing their lives after all the economic damage done by the lock downs. This extreme political crap is getting really exhausting for everyone in the center. The number of people who are centrists well exceed the the polar extremes. Unfortunately the extremists get the lion's share of news coverage, so it makes it appear the country is filled with lunatics. If Biden is smart he won't alienate the center or he will lose a lot of support going into the mid-terms. A quiet period where people can actually start rebuilding their lives and the economy is desperately needed. I remain cautiously hopeful that once the political circus dies down, that could actually happen.
As Greenwald said, it's easy for the neocons to switch because the D's are now the party of "militarism, imperialism, and corporatism."
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Jan 19, 2021 | www.moonofalabama.org
Zanon , Jan 19 2021 20:26 utc | 21
The U.S. seems to have gone completely crazy these day.
Two full divisions worth of soldiers are closing off Washington DC to 'protect' a mostly virtual inauguration from a non-existing threat.
26,000 National Guard members to secure Washington for inauguration
The FBI is investigating the loyalty of those troops as if it were really in doubt.
FBI vetting troops stationed in Washington ahead of Inauguration Day
On the massive military buildup = another drift towards fascism under the democrats, they have the media, military, police on top of congress, house and president. GOP will be so weak coming years, and they have themselves to blame for being so passive past years, in fact any dissent will not be heard coming years with Biden.
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Jan 19, 2021 | www.counterpunch.org
Exceptionalist Conceit
The first such hurdle was the longstanding American- exceptionalist conceit that, in the ironic title of Sinclair Lewis's dystopian 1935 novel, "It Can't Happen Here." The "it" in Lewis's title was authoritarian fascism, falsely deemed impossible in the United States during and since Lewis' time because of the supposedly strong hold here of democratic and constitutional principles and institutions. Such authoritarianism has long been falsely portrayed as beyond the pale of possibility in a nation whose media and political authorities regularly and absurdly call the "world's greatest democracy."
Apathy/Demobilization/"Inverted Totalitarianism"
A third barrier was a critical ingredient of what the late left political scientist Sheldon Wolin considered to be America's distinctive authoritarian "inverted totalitarianism" – the atomized demobilization of the populace. While what Wolin called the "classical totalitarian regimes" of fascist German and Soviet Russia aimed at the constant political mobilization of the populace, "inverted totalitarianism aims for the mass of the populace to be in a persistent state of political apathy. The only type of political activity expected or desired from the citizenry is voting. Low electoral turnouts are favorably received as an indication that the bulk of the populace has given up hope that the government will ever significantly help them." The second most common response to pleas to join popular movements against Trumpism-fascism (after "I'll vote/I voted against him") in my experience was a shrugging indifference to and/or disgust with any and all politics often combined with a sense that American political life is too ugly, boring, and/or impenetrable to merit attention.
No Real Left
Eighth, the continuing and longtime absence of any sophisticated, powerful, and relevant, many-sided Left of significance in late Neoliberal America is a significant part of the tragic equation. No such movement would have met the rise of Trump and Trumpism-fascism with four years of avoidance, denial, passivity, and diversion. There are many factors in play behind this pathetic portside weakness but two that have struck this writer and activist as particularly relevant alongside excessive localism and excessive identitarianism in the last four years are (i) the crippling holds of sectarianism (an almost pathological refusal to reach across tribal-ideological and organizational lines to form a united anti-fascist front) and (ii) single-issue silo politics whereby group A cares about the climate, group B cares about reproductive rights, group C cares about a higher minimum wages, group D cares about teachers' working conditions and so on.
Paul Street's new book is The Hollow Resistance: Obama, Trump, and Politics of Appeasement .
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Jan 15, 2021 | www.strategic-culture.org
© Photo: REUTERS
Although there may not be tanks on the streets and a dictator inciting crowds from his bully pulpit, the end result has been pretty much the same.
Most Americans can probably still remember a time when U.S. companies were in business with one goal in mind – providing a product or service for profit. It was a noble idea, the bedrock of capitalism, in which everyone stood to gain in the process.
Today, the monopolistic powers now enjoyed by a handful of mighty corporations, which are no longer shy about declaring their political bent, have tempted them to wade into the deep end of the political pool with deleterious effects on democracy. Indeed, corporate power wedded to government is nothing less than fascism.
In presenting such a case, it is important to put aside the notion that fascism is a purely right-wing phenomenon, complete with a chauvinistic demagogue haranguing a frenzied crowd. The new dictator on the block is not some fanatical Fuhrer, but rather Silicon Valley, the fountainhead of technological advancement and the formidable fortress of liberal ideology. In other words, fascism is an ideology that moves fluidly along the political spectrum, although some say the ideology grew out of European progressivism.
Jonah Goldberg argued in his 2008 book, Liberal Fascism , that even before World War II "fascism was widely viewed as a progressive social movement with many liberal and left-wing adherents in Europe and the United States." Many years earlier, the late political theorist Hannah Arendt described the Nazi Party (which stands for, lest we forget, the 'National SOCIALIST German Workers' Party') as nothing more than "the breakdown of all German and European traditions, the good as well as the bad basing itself on the intoxication of destruction as an actual experience." That sounds like a pretty accurate description of the cancel culture mentality that has now gripped the 'progressive' left with an almost demonic possession.
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It should be shocking to Republicans and Democrats alike that the Commander-in-Chief of the United States is banished from all of the main social media platforms – Twitter, Facebook and YouTube – denying him the ability to communicate with his 75 million constituents, or one half of the electorate. This is real and unprecedented violence being committed against the body politic and far more worrisome than any breach of federal property, as loathsome as such an act may be.
The Capitol building is, after all, ultimately a mere symbol of our freedoms and liberties, whereas the rights laid down in the U.S. Constitution – the First Amendment not least of all – are fragile and coming under sustained assault every single day. Why does the left refuse to show the same concern for an aging piece of parchment, arguably the greatest political document ever written, as it does for a piece of architecture? The answer to that riddle is becoming increasingly obvious.
We are living Orwell's 1984. Free-speech no longer exists in America. It died with big tech and what's left is only there for a chosen few.
This is absolute insanity! https://t.co/s2z8ymFsLX
-- Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) January 9, 2021
Big Tech began its slide towards marked fascist tendencies thanks to one of the greatest hoaxes ever foisted upon the American public, known as Russiagate. One after another, Silicon Valley overlords were called before Congressional committees to explain "how and why Russian operatives were given free rein to tamper with 2016 U.S. election," in favor of the populist Donald Trump, no less.
After this made for television 'dressing down', the Big Tech executives at Google, Facebook, Twitter and others got busy reconfiguring their software algorithms in such a way that thousands of internet creators suddenly lost not only a lifetime of hard work and their sustenance, but their voice as well. This is the moment that Big Tech and the Democrats began to really march in lockstep. A new dark age of 'McCarthyism' had settled upon the nation, which gave the left unlimited powers for blocking user accounts they deemed "suspicious," which meant anyone on the right. Now, getting 'shadow banned,' demonetized and outright banned from these platforms has become the new dystopian reality for those with a conservative message to convey. And the fact that the story of 'Russian collusion' was finally exposed as a dirty little lie did nothing to loosen the corporate screws.
Incidentally, as a very large footnote to this story, Big Tech and Big Business have not dished out the same amount of medieval-style punishment to other violators of the public peace. The most obvious example comes courtesy of Black Lives Matter, the Soros-funded social-justice movement that has wreaked havoc across a broad swath of the heartland following the death of George Floyd during an arrest by a white police officer.
Both BLM and Trump supporters believe they have a very large grudge to bear. The former believes they are being unfairly targeted by police due to the color of their skin, while the latter believes they are not getting fair treatment by the mainstream media due to 'Trump Derangement Syndrome', and possibly also due in part to their skin color. But at this point the similarities between BLM and Trump voters come to a screeching halt.
Taking it as gospel that America suffers from 'systemic racism' (it doesn't, although that is not to say that pockets of racism against all colors and creeds doesn't exist), dozens of corporations jumped on the woke bandwagon to express their support for Black Lives Matter at the very same time the latter's members were looting and burning neighborhoods across the nation. Strangely, violence has never shocked the progressive left, so long as the violence supported its agenda.
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Here are just some of the ways the corporate world responded to charges that America was a racist cauldron ready to blow, as reported by The Washington Post: "Jamie Dimon, chief executive of JPMorgan Chase, knelt alongside employees during his visit to a Chase branch. Bank of America pledged $1 billion to fight racial inequality in America. Tech companies have invested big dollars in Black Lives Matter, the Center for Policing Equity, Colin Kaepernick's Know Your Rights Camp and other entities engaged in racial justice efforts " And the list goes on and on.
Of course, private corporations are free to express their solidarity with whatever group they wish. The problem, however, is that these monopolistic monstrosities have an overwhelming tendency to pledge allegiance to liberal, progressive values, as opposed to maybe steering clear of politics altogether. Nowhere was Corporate America's political agenda more obvious than in the aftermath of the siege of the Capitol building on January 6, which led to the death of five people.
Corporate America missed a very good opportunity to keep quiet and remain neutral with regards to an issue of incredible partisan significance. Instead, it unleashed a salvo of attacks on Trump supporters, even denying them access to basic services.
Aside from the most obvious and alarming 'disappearing act,' that of POTUS being removed from the major social media platforms, were countless lesser names caught up in the 'purge.'
One such person is conservative commentator and former baseball star Curt Schilling, who says that AIG terminated his insurance policy over his "social media profile," which was sympathetic to Donald Trump, according to Summit News.
"We will be just fine, but wanted to let Americans know that @AIGinsurance canceled our insurance due to my "Social Media profile," tweeted Schilling.
"The agent told us it was a decision made by and with their PR department in conjunction with management," he added.
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While all forms of 'cancel culture' (which seems to be part of a move to build American society along the lines of the Chinese 'social credit system,' which rewards those who toe the party line, and punishes those who fall out of favor) are egregious and counterintuitive to American values, perhaps the most astonishing was the cancellation of Republican Senator Josh Hawley's book deal with Simon and Shuster.
"We did not come to this decision lightly," Simon & Schuster said in a statement over Twitter. "As a publisher it will always be our mission to amplify a variety of voices and viewpoints: At the same time we take seriously our larger public responsibility as citizens, and cannot support Senator Hawley after his role in what became a dangerous threat."
The so-called "threat" was a photograph of Hawley raising a fist to the crowd that had assembled outside of the Capitol building before it had breached the security perimeter. It seems that corporations may now serve as judge, jury and executioner when it comes to how Americans behave in public. Is it a crime that Hawley acknowledged a crowd of supporters who were at the time behind the gates of the Capitol building? Apparently it is.
By the way, the name of the Hawley's book? 'The Tyranny of Big Tech'. How's that for irony?
In conclusion, it would be a huge mistake for the Democrats to believe that they are safe from the same sort of corporate and government behavior that has now dramatically silenced the conservative voice across the nation. The United States has entered dangerous unchartered waters, and by all indications it would appear that the American people have inherited a 'soft' form of fascism.
Although there may not be troops and tanks on the streets and a dictator inciting crowds from his bully pulpit, the end result has been pretty much the same: the brutal elimination of one half of the American population from all of the due protections provided by the U.S. Constitution due to an unholy alliance between corporate and government power, which is the very definition of fascism. Democrats, you may very well be next, so enjoy your victory while you still can.
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Jan 17, 2021 | www.moonofalabama.org
Mao Cheng Ji , Jan 17 2021 19:03 utc | 23
@steven t johnson: "reactionary Republicans"
Since you like Hitler analogies so much, dear Steven, why don't you contemplate the 'reactionary' aspect of those Germans who resisted, in the 1930s, the 'progress' of the National-Socialist movement.
'Reactionary' simply means 'opposing the change', and the changes instituted by global finance, aided by their faithful servants, your liberal comrades, -- those changes should be opposed by all decent citizens.
And they are opposed by all decent citizens, and especially by the American working class, which is why your liberal comrades have to resort to fascist methods: goebbelsian propaganda, censorship, blacklisting, police repression.
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Jan 17, 2021 | irrussianality.wordpress.com
peter moritz JANUARY 11, 2021 AT 3:53 PM
"Yale historian Timothy Snyder" In light of his opinions the appellation "historian" to this person can only be considered satire.
"The term 'fascist' is far too easily abused."
It is today used – like the term anti-semite, white supremacist, racist – to smear and or discredit anybody from the left or right one disagrees with or tries to disempower.
Jonathan Cook lays out how this works with regards to the left:
I have no problem arguing conservatives, if they actually clearly define what they mean by this term and find some points I agree with someone like Peter Hitchens:
"His view is that conservatism should embody a Burkean sense of public duty, conscience and the rule of law, which he sees as the best guarantee of liberty. Furthermore, this view holds a general hostility to hasty reforms and adventurism .
Hitchens takes a critical stance on many wars. He was opposed to the Kosovo and 2003 Iraq War, on the grounds that neither was in the interests of either Britain or the United States,[66] and opposes the war in Afghanistan.[67] He believes that the UK should never have joined in World War I, and is very critical of the view that World War II was "The Good War".
Mikhail JANUARY 11, 2021 AT 3:56 PM
John Thuloe JANUARY 11, 2021 AT 6:45 PMSynchronization. Just beforehand, Rachel Maddow propped Snyder's book on fascism.
Dmitry Babich made an excellent point about how the Biden crowd cheered the storming of the Ukrainian parliament which include some folks who qualify as fascists. In comparison, last week's DC protesting MAGA group didn't appear to be so fascist. I saw an Israeli flag among these protestors as well as some African-Americans.
A related great shot at establishment politico Ian Bremmer:
Mark Sleboda @MarkSleboda1 · Jan 10 "Calling for an insurrection to overthrow the legitimate outcome of a free and fair election is crime against the nation." - Unless the nation in question is #Ukraine in 2014 or some other state & govt not aligned with US hegemony. Then calling for an insurrection is kosher.Quote Tweet ian bremmer @ianbremmer · Jan 10
Calling for an insurrection to overthrow the legitimate outcome of a free and fair election is crime against the nation. Yes, Trump only has another week in office. But he should still be impeached and convicted.
There are plenty of poseurs, blow-hards about. To be dangerous, there must be a leadership, an apparatus, discipline, and a substantial rank and file. And most importantly, all motivated by a creed, common beliefs that weld all into a force. Nothing like that exists.
But the good news is that behind the shrill loud-mouths of the Woke censorship bullies, fake news media, liberals, Democrats, burned out 'progressives – the On Duty paid for apparatchiks. Behind them is – nothing. No Party, no organizers, no apparatus at all. No store fronts for meetings, no stand by printers, no trained marshals. No seething masses burning with righteous fury ready to hit the streets. Nothing.
Sure, people are mad. But when you're mad at everything then that power is dissipated. And when you're not united by being For something then you don't amount to a hill of beans. The liberals are afraid that when their 'lockdown pandemic racket' runs out of gas, the public will turn on them with a vengeance. And they can expect no organized part of population to defend them. For a while, folks will be united on venting their fury at those that ride high now. Wait till the wheel turns. Grigory Matyunin JANUARY 11, 2021 AT 9:51 PM
It's like the misuse of the term 'conspiracy theorist' by people like Snyder, Harding and Applebaum. Anyone who merely points to the impropriety of Nuland/McCain's actions on the Maidan is pre-emptively dismissed by them as a conspiracy theorist. Yet the notion that Russia controls Trump through a pee tape, bewitched the Brits into voting for Brexit and was the sole force behind the Catalan independence movement is now axiomatic for worshippers of received wisdom. Guest JANUARY 12, 2021 AT 12:51 AM
In the case of this Ukrainian nazi – of course they knew. They just hoped no one would notice. The reason she was given this appointment was because she is who she is. Ukraine is to be the anti-Russian state with an indoctrinated population – people like this young woman are part of that policy.
Look around the world! We have seen that the west has no problem funding and supporting all sorts of disgusting groups and individuals if it meets their objectives.
yalensis JANUARY 12, 2021 AT 7:19 AM
peter moritz JANUARY 12, 2021 AT 10:07 AMNice job, Professor! It's always good to see somebody point out these hacks egregious double standards.
I want people to start scientifically as possible defining their terms for political ideologies. Like, there is actually a legitimate use for the word "fascist". From what I understand, fascism is an actual political ideology and movement and should not be used simply as a derogatory. From what I understand, fascism does not necessarily include a racialist component, although it usually does (being based on nationalism).
Mussolini was a fascist. Hitler was a fascist too. (Nazism being a subset of the broader movement fascism?) Franco was a fascist. That Ukrainian lady you mentioned is an ideological fascist, more specifically a fucking Nazi.
Donald Trump -- is NOT a fascist. He is just a right-wing conservative, Murican-style!
PaulR JANUARY 12, 2021 AT 10:20 AMI have for years tried to find a concise definition of "Fascism", but only found a lot of disagreement.
Fascism is by some defined as a corporatism where the state and the industrial and financial capitalist elite have come to a complete nexus where the state protects within a framework of "ultra" nationalism those elites who in return follow and as well directly influence the policies. By this definition the USA could be called not a fascist state, but one with fascists tendencies as the nexus has been established to a great extend.
Some conservatives and libertarians find intellectual solace in pointing out that especially in Germany fascism developed as a "national socialism". A version that opposed the internationalism of the Marxist version espoused the German Communist party, and propagated an economic based antisemitism.
They are not wrong there, as socialism is not just the socialism or communism as defined by Marx, but as Marx himself pointed out in his critiques there are various kind of socialisms. ( https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/11/prin-com.htm )What they however ignore is Hitlers move under the guise of "socialism" to establish close ties with the German financial and Industrial leadership and the attempt of a "true" National Socialism came to an end with the Strasser Brothers breaking away and one being murdered in the Night of the Long Knives when Hitler destroyed any leftwing faction within the NSDAP.
Others like Paxton define define Fascism as a developmental process. This article here lays out some of the differences in interpreting the term: https://newrepublic.com/article/154042/failure-define-fascism-today
Lyttenburgh JANUARY 12, 2021 AT 9:18 PMFascism is not the only ideology which lacks clear definition. Try looking at the literature on liberalism – it's a mess (with good reason – many modern day 'liberals' are entirely at odds with classical liberals, neoliberals, etc, but they're all called liberal). The best recent scholarship can come up with is the idea that liberalism is a 'family of resemblances' or even that it's just whatever people who call themselves liberal happen to say it is at any given time and place. Conservatism is similarly poorly defined.
"I have for years tried to find a concise definition of "Fascism", but only found a lot of disagreement."
There's still definition provided by G. Dimitrov:
"Fascism is an open terrorist dictatorship of the most reactionary, most chauvinistic, most imperialist elements of the finance capital
Fascism is not a supra-class power and not the power of the petty bourgeoisie or the lumpen proletariat over finance capital. Fascism*is* the rule of finance capital itself .
This is the organization of terrorist reprisals against the working class and the revolutionary part of the peasantry and intelligentsia. Fascism in foreign policy is chauvinism in its crudest form, cultivating zoological hatred of other peoples."
Defenders of Google, Twitter, Amazon et al saying "they CAN do that – they are PrIVaTe CoMpaNIeS!" – ha-ha!
Grigory Matyunin JANUARY 12, 2021 AT 3:01 PM
Absolutely, Paul. Comparing the neoconservative and paleoconservative traditions, for instance, reveals extraordinary divergences in conservative intellectual thought. Your recent book presents plenty of such contradictions.
Yet the lack of definitional clarity does not mean that any particular term can be thrown around as a polemical device or a catch-all form of abuse. Fascist ideologies differ between themselves, but they do have a relatively ubiquitous common denominator in being mass movements set upon utopian mass transformation relying upon extreme violence, as per the scholarship of Roger Griffin.
It's like right-of-centre political commentators who misuse the term 'Marxist' to describe modern identity politics, notwithstanding how clearly inappropriate that label is when analyzing a movement which has little commitment to class struggle.
Equally, while we may lack a one-size-fits-all definition of any given ideology, we can usually say with some confidence what it is not. In other words, while the fascism of OUN-B may differ remarkably from the fascism of Mussolini, it is sufficiently clear that these movements lack any ideological likeness with modern Russia.
yalensis JANUARY 12, 2021 AT 3:28 PM
From what I understand, one common denominator of genuine fascist movements is a cult of a national leader (Hitler, Mussolini, Franco, Bandera). However, I am not sure that this factor is REQUIRED in order to be fascist. I imagine it is theoretically possible to have a fascist nation run by a committee or collegial leadership.
And the "Leader" factor is also not definitive in and of itself, because the Stalin period in the Soviet Union was also defined by a cult of a leader; and yet the Soviet Union was definitely not fascist, it was socialist.
In this case, I would say, two different systems (capitalistic fascism and Soviet-style socialism) showed, what evolutionary biologists call "convergent" traits.
For example, in the natural world, fishes and whales both have fins and live in the water; yet these two types of animals are not related to each other genetically (except going way back). This is "convergent" evolution.
Which leads me to another thought: Perhaps ideological movements can be classified by their historical genetics rather than a static "structuralist" definition. The difference between a Darwinian vs a Linnaeus approach? I think this method is also used to categorize religions, so might be appropriate also for political ideologies.
Just musing here, but I think it's important
Lyttenburgh JANUARY 12, 2021 AT 8:57 PM
Lyttenburgh JANUARY 12, 2021 AT 10:57 PM"Outside of a particular time period (1920s to 1940s), I don't think that the term 'fascism' has a lot of meaning. "
What about:
– Spain under Franko.
– Greece under "black colonels"
– Genuine, NATO approved fascist parties working diligently and openly in the "Western democracies" throughout the period?Also:
Remember VICE's breathless coverage of the "Ukrainian Revolution of Dignity" that propelled certain Ostrovsky to the upper echelons of the journalism and punditry? From their linked article:
"She also addressed a photo that was circulated of her online, showing her as one of a group of four women holding a flag emblazoned with a swastika while giving a Nazi salute. She claimed the image was an ironic Halloween photo, mocking the Kremlin narrative that Ukrainian nationalists were neo-Nazis."
Mikhail JANUARY 12, 2021 AT 11:50 PM
Mikhail JANUARY 13, 2021 AT 12:02 AMLater with Ostrovsky.
No surprise to see PC Bulgarian Ivan Kravtsev involved with that establishment org accepting her. At the Brit based openDemocracy venue, Kravtsev felt compelled to write an article on why China (in his opinion) is freer than Russia. Tom de Waal is a Kravstev fan.
yalensis JANUARY 13, 2021 AT 7:13 AMRelated:
https://platform.twitter.com/embed/index.html?dnt=true&embedId=twitter-widget-2&frame=false&hideCard=false&hideThread=false&id=1348676388052729861&lang=en&origin=https%3A%2F%2Firrussianality.wordpress.com%2F2021%2F01%2F11%2Ffascist-blindness%2F&theme=light&widgetsVersion=ed20a2b%3A1601588405575&width=474px
There're better academics posting at this threads. By academic, I'm referring to those who intellectually and knowledge wise aren't inferior to the aforementioned folks getting the accolades.
james JANUARY 13, 2021 AT 12:18 AMIf she says it was just a Halloween costume, that means she is disowning or denying having Nazi views? That seems cowardly to me. I personally have more respect for Nazis who just come out and admit, "Yeah, I'm a Nazi." Of course, in that case, they would have to be willing to sacrifice the money and income from "respectable" bourgeois institutions.
David JANUARY 16, 2021 AT 12:18 AMYale historian Timothy Snyder – more like Yale historian – propagandist Timothy Snyder.. i figured this out on my own without having to be an academic to know this, but thank you paul for this article and confirming my viewpoint
Snyder is such a fraud. His book Bloodlands is utter drivel filled with complete falsities – none of which substantiated with sources. "Yale historian" is clearly a meaningless title. But of course he gets called on for propaganda hit pieces like this or that ridiculous Agents of Chaos series on HBO.
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Jan 14, 2021 | www.moonofalabama.org
alaff , Jan 13 2021 20:31 utc | 7From the "Biden Exploits His Capitol Gains" article:
Joe Biden's own language certainly sounded less like a magnanimous winner uniting his people than like that used by autocrats and dictators to hold onto power, argues Diana Johnstone.Diana Johnstone's opinion is quite reasonable. In fact, a "creeping"/"bureaucratic" coup d'etat took place in the United States. And it wasn't Trump at all, but Biden & Co. The fact that "Joe Biden's own language sounded like that used by autocrats and dictators to hold onto power" is further confirmation of this.
If you are in the majority and you win the election honestly, then there is no need to act the way the Democrats did. The current aggressive rhetoric of Biden (and other Democrats) is evidence that the elections were stolen/falsified. Biden knows this very well, and therefore his language is as cruel, irreconcilable and repressive as possible. After the illegitimate elections, the task is to consolidate own's power and suppress all those who reject what happened. In fact, this is what happened in Ukraine after the Maidan 2014.
That is why we are witnessing the fussy, aggressive actions of the Democrats - a ridiculous re-impeachment of the president, who will leave the White House in a week, the most severe censorship and suppression of dissent. There is no need for the real winners of fair elections to behave like that, as they are aware of their legitimacy and are confident in themselves (relying on the real, not imaginary, support of the majority of the population).
Wrote some thoughts on this issue.
Leftraru , Jan 13 2021 20:33 utc | 8
Globalization has made the United States a hollow giant. It has produced an enormous wealth gap, and this inequality is producing a breakdown in social cohesion. They have faced crisis before in the form of political polarization, economic hardship and racial tensions, but the situation now is a combination of every one of the mentioned before amplified by orders of magnitude by the pandemic.
The power of the MIC, Wall Street and Big Tech along with their MSM minions acting in a concerted way is the only thing preventing an implosion of the country. Either that or the notion of "American Exceptionalism" is truly implanted in the hearts and minds of the people, whether they realize it or not.
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Jan 13, 2021 | www.unz.com
Faihtful , says: January 12, 2021 at 5:28 am GMT • 22.8 hours ago
The mob never wins. It is always led by the nose by well organised agents provocateur. See Epoch time video:
https://www.bitchute.com/embed/FrE27FTf11Q/
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Jan 10, 2021 | www.moonofalabama.org
Francis , Jan 10 2021 19:21 utc | 36
Georgi Dimitrov. The Fascist Offensive and the Tasks of the Communist International in the Struggle of the Working Class against Fascism
Comrades, fascism in power was correctly described by the Thirteenth Plenum of the Executive Committee of the Communist International as the open terrorist dictatorship of the most reactionary, most chauvinistic and most imperialist elements of finance capital.
...
Fascism is not a form of state power "standing above both classes -- the proletariat and the bourgeoisie," as Otto Bauer, for instance, has asserted. It is not "the revolt of the petty bourgeoisie which has captured the machinery of the state," as the British Socialist Brailsford declares. No, fascism is not a power standing above class, nor government of the petty bourgeoisie or the lumpen-proletariat over finance capital. Fascism is the power of finance capital itself. It is the organization of terrorist vengeance against the working class and the revolutionary section of the peasantry and intelligentsia. In foreign policy, fascism is jingoism in its most brutal form, fomenting bestial hatred of other nations.https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/dimitrov/works/1935/08_02.htm
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Dec 30, 2020 | www.unz.com
3,000 WORDS 68 COMMENTS REPLY RSSMichael Kellogg
The Russian Roots of Nazism: White Émigrés and the Making of National Socialism, 1917–1945
Cambridge University Press, 2005With the near-universal demonization of the Third Reich, historians have developed a blind spot for the genesis of German anti-Semitism. Michael Kellogg, in his 2005 work The Russian Roots of Nazism, sheds a sharp light on this topic and points our attention eastward. He reveals how the post-World War I atrocities of the Soviet Union along with the presence of a large, vengeful, and politically active White émigré population in Weimar Germany played a critical role in developing National Socialist attitudes on Jews and Bolshevism. And in making this argument, he not only addresses the errors of other historians, but he also makes an indirect case for much of Nazism itself.
Kellogg's work is crucial for several reasons, most prominent being the facts themselves. The interwar period in Germany, the Baltic states, and Ukraine were roiled in conflict, intrigue, revolution, and, most of all, uncertainty. It was an interesting time. More importantly, it was consequential. Any history that discloses previously unknown or overlooked events from that time and place will have value.
Kellogg also exhibits remarkable academic discipline by not taking sides in the political drama he unfolds. There is nothing tendentious about The Russian Roots of Nazism aside from its pointed historiography. This is good since it lets the facts speak for themselves. On the other hand, Kellogg's avoidance of a broader political schema makes the book a bit of a slog. It's not biased, but it's not sexy, either. But Kellogg's prose is tight and serviceable, and he offers concise summaries at the end of each chapter and at the end of the book for those who wish to skim.
The Russian Roots of Nazism can also be viewed as a strike against the anti-German racism of Jewish writers such as Daniel Goldhagen. In his 1996 work, Hitler's Willing Executioners , Goldhagen accuses the Germans of being inherently racist, anti-Semitic, and "eliminationist." This takes the extreme form of what's known as the Sonderweg (special path) thesis, which posits the inevitability of the Third Reich, given the weakness of the German bourgeoisie. Kellogg demolishes this idea by uncovering the foreign influences of National Socialism during its formative years and also by portraying Adolf Hitler in his mid-thirties and other early-period Nazis as three-dimensional human beings rather than comic book villains.
Most importantly, Kellogg demonstrates how the Nazis may have had excellent reasons for their anti-Semitism and their anti-Bolshevism, thereby justifying much of what they did during the interwar period. This may not have been Kellogg's intention. Regardless, by eschewing a political agenda and by relying so heavily upon National Socialist primary sources (rather than the mountain of secondary sources that condemn the Nazis), Kellogg leaves the door open for a revisionist, and much more positive, interpretation of National Socialism.
Our story may as well begin in German-occupied Ukraine in 1918. After Soviet Russia's capitulation in the war, many disaffected Russian and Ukrainian officers began cooperating with their German counterparts, bonding over their shared sense of nationalism and their mutual hatred for the Bolsheviks. When the Germans abandoned Ukraine the following year, they took thousands of these so-called "White" officers with them, including some, such as Vladimir Biskupsky, Ivan Poltavets-Ostranitsa, Pavel Bermondt-Avalov, Fedor Vinberg, and Piotr Shabelsky-Bork, who would work closely with the Nazis in years to come. Shabelsky-Bork deserves special mention because he was the first to transfer the forgery The Protocols of the Elders of Zion to the West, thereby unleashing one of the most famous conspiracy theories upon the world.
As the Ukrainian Biskupsky became a leader among the 600,000 White émigrés in Weimar Germany, he also became one of two de facto leaders of a secret, conspiratorial organization known as Aufbau (or, Reconstruction) which promoted a particularly urgent strain of apocalyptic anti-Semitism. Max von Scheubner-Richter, a Baltic German émigré from Latvia, was the other, and soon this organization had had great influence upon the nascent Nazi Party and Adolf Hitler himself. In fact, Scheubner-Richter grew quite close to Hitler and marched arm-in-arm with him during the failed 1923 Putsch in Munich where he was shot and killed. Thereafter, Hitler considered him a martyr for National Socialism.
Two other White émigrés, Alfred Rosenberg, another Baltic German, and the Russian Fedor Vinberg, became leading theorists of National Socialism, with Rosenberg ultimately gaining the most stature in the Nazi Party. Publisher and early Hitler mentor Dietrich Eckart introduced Rosenberg to Hitler, and the men quickly grew to admire each other. When Hitler was imprisoned after the Munich Putsch, he appointed Rosenberg as his successor. By World War II, this émigré was so embedded in high-level Nazi operations that the Allies rewarded him at Nuremburg with a sentence of hanging.
Bavaria in the early 1920s was a unique petri dish of nationalist and anti-Semitic ideas and action. Stirred into the mix were the völkisch Germans. These were Aryan identitarians, Teutonic traditionalists, and Thule Society people who drew racialist ideas from the likes of Arthur Schopenhauer, Richard Wagner, and Houston Stewart Chamberlain. Many of these people were still smarting over the revolution of 1918, which forced the Kaiser to abdicate, and shared a distrust of Jews for their materialistic and "world-affirming" (that is, non-heroic, non-transcendent) behavior.
Add to this the White émigrés who brought with them not only The Protocols but the hyper-nationalist ideas of Fyodor Dostoevsky and Vladimir Solovev. A militaristic form of Christianity played into this as well, with the great Jew-Gentile struggle often being portrayed in Biblical terms. These were people who had witnessed firsthand Red atrocities during the October Revolution and the Russian Civil War and had experience in the Tsar's army or in the reactionary organization, the Black Hundreds. It's no wonder they blamed the Jews for upending their world. Their world had been upended, and they couldn't help but notice how a disproportionate number of Bolsheviks were Jews, especially at the top.
The result was an explosive burst of national and anti-Jewish sentiment which culminated in 1933 when Adolf Hitler was elected Chancellor of Germany. Kellogg repeatedly stresses that without the Whites who were more anti-Semitic and anti-Bolshevik than the Germans after World War I, the National Socialists would likely not have been as successful as they were. No so-called "far-Right" organization in Germany before the Nazis had garnered popular support. This does away with the notion that the Germans were somehow inherently anti-Semitic. Where Goldhagen insists that "German antisemitism was sui generis, " Kellogg demonstrates that it was the powerful gestalt of the German völkisch movement and the White fear and fascination with Jewish Bolshevism which was sui generis .
Hitler harbored standard socialist views well into 1919. Hitler's former immediate commander on the Western Front in World War I, Aide-de-Camp Hans Mend, asserted that his earlier underling had exclaimed towards the end of 1918 in Munich, "Thank God that the kings' crowns have fallen from the tree. Now we proletarians have something to say". . .
Hitler only began to develop a detailed anti-Bolshevik, anti-Semitic ideology beginning in the second half of 1919 through his collaboration with Eckart and Rosenberg, who served as his early mentors. Mend confirmed Hitler's rapid political lurch from the far left to the far right in postwar Munich. When he heard Hitler speak publicly at the beginning of 1920, he thought, "Adi has changed his colors, the red lad!" In addition to borrowing anti-Bolshevik, anti-Semitic ideas from Eckart and Rosenberg, Hitler soon learned far-right concepts that castigated "Jewish Bolshevism" from the Aufbau ideologues Scheubner-Richter and Vinberg as well.
The White émigrés from 1918 to 1923 lent a sense of Manichean urgency to the postwar German zeitgeist. It was, in effect, good versus evil, Christ versus Anti-Christ, and the slew of conspiracy theories emanating from the Aufbau circle painted this struggle in the starkest black and white. For example, one theory posited that Leon Trotsky was a Satanist who practiced Black Mass rituals in the Kremlin and prayed to the Devil for the defeat of the Whites. But this alliance was also practical. If the v ölkisch Germans and the émigré Whites didn't have the exact same enemies, their shared ethnocentrism gave them similar goals. Whereas the Whites aimed to conquer the Soviet Union and remove the Jewish yoke from the Slavic peoples, the Germans needed to defy the Entente and overthrow the socialist, pro-Soviet Weimar government. There was quite of bit of overlap here, and Hitler's Nazi Party approved of the White plan to invade the Soviet Union and liberate independent republics such as Russia and Ukraine. Hitler indeed had a great interest in Nazifying Ukraine, which Kellogg believes was the deciding factor behind his disastrous order for the Wehrmacht to strike south in August 1941 when it was a mere 200 miles from Moscow.Hitler only began to develop a detailed anti-Bolshevik, anti-Semitic ideology beginning in the second half of 1919 through his collaboration with Eckart and Rosenberg, who served as his early mentors. Mend confirmed Hitler's rapid political lurch from the far left to the far right in postwar Munich. When he heard Hitler speak publicly at the beginning of 1920, he thought, "Adi has changed his colors, the red lad!" In addition to borrowing anti-Bolshevik, anti-Semitic ideas from Eckart and Rosenberg, Hitler soon learned far-right concepts that castigated "Jewish Bolshevism" from the Aufbau ideologues Scheubner-Richter and Vinberg as well.
The Whites contributed more than energy and ideas to the National Socialist cause before 1923. It also provided money and manpower. Many who marched during the doomed Munich Putsch were Whites, as were many of the soldiers who fought alongside the Germans against the Bolsheviks during the Latvian Intervention of 1919. Boris Brazol, a white émigré in the United States funneled much-needed funds from industrialist Henry Ford and worked closely with Scheubner-Richter. Brazol, notably, was a contributor to Ford's anti-Semitic newspaper The Dearborn Independent and also translated Dostoevsky's Diary of a Writer into English. More importantly, Kirill Romanov, exiled heir apparent to Tsardom in Russia, gave tremendous sums to the White-Nazi alliance. Many Whites supported his bid for power, and so did Hitler.
Sadly, many White émigrés opposed Kirill in favor of his cousin Nikolai who also aspired to Tsardom. The Nikolai faction, led by the émigré Nikolai Markov II, was Russian imperialist in nature and supported restoring Russia to its pre-1917 borders. Hitler and the Aufbau contingent preferred the more ethnocentric solution of petty nationalism in the defeated Soviet Union, with Russia, Ukraine, and other republics becoming independent entities. This impasse festered into acrimony and hatred among the Whites, and effectively prevented the invasion of the Soviet Union that they all so desperately wanted.
After the failed Putsch in 1923, White influence began to wane. Regardless, it never went away and, in some ways, enjoyed a resurgence in the 1930s with Alfred Rosenberg's success in the Nazi Party. However, if there is a flaw to The Russian Roots of Nazism , in my mind, it's that Kellogg fails to adequately address the issue of Lebensraum , or living space. He gives it minimal attention and quotes the famous passage in Mein Kampf Volume II (1926) in which Hitler insists the Germans " . . . shift to the soil policy of the future" and "have in mind only Russia and her vassal border states." Lebensraum, with its all imperial implications, clearly violates Aufbau 's ethnocentric notions of Nazifying Ukraine for the sake of the Ukrainians.
Kellogg seems to think it adequate to demonstrate that Hitler fully developed his Lebensraum ideas only after the 1923 Putsch. Thus, Kellogg abides by his thesis of the Russian roots of Nazism, that is, of how White émigré thought influenced early -- and not middle or late -- National Socialism. But this is too easy. If Aufbau ideas were truly the roots of Nazism, then why did Hitler reverse some of these ideas by the late 1920s? Kellogg doesn't quite tell us.
Overshadowing this, however, is Kellogg's assertion that Hitler invaded the Soviet Union in 1941 after his 1939 non-aggression pact with Stalin in part because of the feverish anti-Bolshevism and anti-Semitism of the pre-Putsch White émigrés. The pact had devastated the Whites that were still living in Germany at that time. However,
[T]he cooperation between Hitler and Stalin that so discomfited Germany's White émigré community did not last long. Hitler soon returned to his intense anti-Bolshevik roots, which he had largely developed during his close interaction with Aufbau in the early 1920s. Even while German armed forces were still engaged in the French campaign in June 1940, Hitler expressed his intention "to take action against the menace of the Soviet Union the moment our military position makes it at all possible." He issued the first directive for the invasion of the Soviet Union in August 1940 under the telling name Aufbau Ost (Reconstruction East). In titling his planned Soviet campaign Aufbau Ost, Hitler demonstrated the lasting impression that Aufbau's warnings against "Jewish Bolshevism" had made on his thinking.
Adding to this was how Rosenberg himself had urged Hitler to invade the Soviet Union as well.
Kellogg's most valuable and revolutionary contribution to our understanding of this time involves his admirable academic restraint. Rarely does he pass judgment on his subjects, and certainly never during the 1918-1923 period on which his book mostly focuses -- except in the few cases in which certain émigrés committed crimes such as embezzlement. Yes, in the last few pages, Kellogg rightly deplores the mass murder and extermination of Jews at the hand of Hitler -- although, interestingly, he very rarely uses the term "Holocaust." Rosenberg, who served as the State Minister for the Occupied Eastern Territories during the war, greatly facilitated these horrific actions. But note how Kellogg insists on placing these actions within the larger context of Soviet atrocities from decades prior:
Rosenberg viewed his genocidal anti-Semitic actions in the occupied East as retaliation for the depredations of "Jewish Bolshevism." The November 18, 1941 press release dealing with Rosenberg's public assumption of the State Minister post stressed that the White émigré had entered politics since "he wanted to protect the German people from the same fate that he had lived through in Moscow."
And what were these depredations?
In Mein Kampf , Hitler again treated the "Jewish Bolshevik" annihilation of the nationalist Russian intelligentsia. He drew upon Aufbau and Eckartian thought to describe a ruthless Jewish drive for world domination. With the stage set for the "last great revolution," Hitler argued:
The democratic people's Jew becomes the blood-Jew and tyrant over people. In a few years he tries to exterminate the national intelligentsia and by robbing the peoples of their natural intellectual leadership makes them ripe for the slave's lot of permanent subjugation.
He further asserted, "The most frightful example of this kind is offered by Russia, where [the Jew] killed or starved about thirty million people with positively fanatical savagery, in part amid inhuman tortures."
Kellogg later quotes Mein Kampf , demonstrating how Hitler "combined völkisch German and anti-Bolshevik, anti-Semitic White émigré beliefs" when stating of "the Jew" that
[H]is ultimate goal is denationalization, the muddled half-breeding of the other peoples, the lowering of the racial level of the most superior, as well as the domination of this racial mush through the extermination of the völkisch intelligentsias and their replacement by the members of his own people.
Now, is any of this true? Kellogg doesn't say -- indeed, it's not his job to say. And we should be thankful for that. A Goldhagian approach, however, would be to dismiss it all as anti-Semitic lies and canards (just like The Protocols! ) and smear anyone swayed by them as being irredeemably racist and anti-Semitic.
But with enough research under our belt from historians such as Robert Conquest, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Kevin MacDonald, and others, we now know that Hitler and the White émigrés were much closer to the truth than not. Tens of millions were starved or murdered in the Soviet Union during the 1920s and 1930s, and millions more died in the Great Terror and the Gulag Archipelago. From such authors, we have also learned that a disproportionate amount of the Soviet leadership in all facets of its military and government was indeed Jewish. Soviet Jews as a bloc remained enthusiastic for the Soviet Union even when it was committing its greatest atrocities. Lenin himself (as reported by Yuri Slezkine in The Jewish Century ) attributed much of the success of the October Revolution to the Jews:
The fact that there were many Jewish intelligentsia members in the Russian cities was of great importance to the revolution. They put an end to the general sabotage that we were confronted with after the October Revolution. . . . The Jewish elements were mobilized . . . and thus saved the revolution at a difficult time. It was only thanks to this pool of a rational and literate labor force that we succeeded in taking over the state apparatus.
The Whites and the Nazis may have somewhat exaggerated Soviet crimes and often entertained fanciful conspiracy theories, but they were not wrong in linking Bolshevism to Jews and believing that the Soviet Union posed a dire threat to the West. By not shutting the door on such an interpretation of history, Kellogg indirectly allows the reader to develop a revisionist view of the Nazis as protectors rather than destroyers of civilization. Of course, it's extremely difficult to justify Nazi atrocities during World War II (and Kellogg does no such thing), but after we read The Russian Roots of Nazism we learn that it was even more difficult to justify the Soviet atrocities which were greater, took place beforehand, and caused millions of Whites to emigrate westward to begin with.
The Whites knew this and they made sure the Nazi knew this. And thanks to Michael Kellogg, we know it too.
stozi , says: Website December 31, 2020 at 7:52 am GMT • 11.0 hours ago
GMC , says: December 31, 2020 at 8:34 am GMT • 10.3 hours agoAs an ethnic German of Russia and (against all reason perhaps) a Tsarist, I agree that this White influence on Nazis is an important story to tell. But there is a glaring gap in the chain of logic in this article. "they were not wrong in linking Bolshevism to Jews and believing that the Soviet Union". "Linked" is a very vague word. Yes, many Old Bolsheviks were jews, many of whom were precisely the ones purged and killed in the Great Terror. I'm sure there are those who claim Stalin was a jew, but come on. The famines we ordered personally by this non-Jewish Georgian dictator who surrounded himself with a disproportionate number of other Georgians/Transcaucasians in the halls of power. The famines were arranged/permitted as you like by confiscating grain to export and fund rapid industrialization in preparation for war, and, to discipline the peasantry as a class from Ukraine to Kazakhstan whatever their ethnic makeup. Jews were overrepresented earlier on largely because they didn't have any other options, they were banned from academia and various professions. Don't under-estimate the proportion of really poor jews in the Russian Empire up to this time who had no schemes but getting by. The biases of a bunch of pogromists shouldn't be taken as gospel truth. It's always easy to blame someone else for your defeat. In the same way, my fiercly anti-soviet orthodox co-religionists need to consider how the conduct of the pre-revolutionary church establishment allowed it's virtual abolishment to be broadly accepted. The church has always been flawed because it is made up of human beings, but people were truly sick of everything establishmentarian by 1917 and were, as a Tsarist one must admit, broadly apathetic or even happy when the last Emperor abdicated. Also remember that there are other far more intellectually interesting movements within the whites like the Eurasianists.
Olivier1973 , says: December 31, 2020 at 9:20 am GMT • 9.6 hours agoWhen there are Ghosts in the Closet, one has to be very very careful about keeping them there. When other people know about those ghosts – they can use them – against you. I've hinted to a few Russian friends concerning the fact that Germany had been under the Jewish yoke and that Germany was under the impression that the Bolsheviks, that murdered and tortured millions, were in fact Jews – and some were from the US and helped fund the Revolution. I stopped my conversation after saying Hitler was very afraid of this Bolshevik Jewish – Soviet Union. I've never gotten a response from my friends , so I dropped it. Maybe, the Russian people are aware of these facts , but don't wish to bring up the past . Afterall, I'm a Gringo in Russia – what do I know look at all the skeletons in Washington's closet .
gotmituns , says: December 31, 2020 at 9:53 am GMT • 9.0 hours agoPure anti-Russian propaganda and bullshit. The roots of hitlerism are in Nietzsche.
Jon Halpenny , says: December 31, 2020 at 9:54 am GMT • 9.0 hours agoIt doesn't really matter where the concept of Nazism started. What matters was/is the idea worked until the bankers/Jews started WW2 and we didn't get to see the outcome of how Hitler's revolution would have worked. I my own mind, it would he worked well and the Jews couldn't allow that because their game would have been up. That's why all these years later after the end of WW2, the anti Nazi/Hitler propaganda is still so intense.
Nicolas Bonnal , says: Website December 31, 2020 at 10:12 am GMT • 8.7 hours agoIn WW I Germany was not anti-Semitic to any significant degree. Jews had full rights in Germany which was in marked contrast to Tsarist Russia. East European Jews tended to regard the Germans as liberators when they advanced into parts of the Russian Empire.
Lloyd George later admitted one of the reasons for the Balfour Declaration was to secure support among east European Jews for the allies and prevent them supporting Germany.
Greg Bacon , says: Website December 31, 2020 at 11:04 am GMT • 7.8 hours agoAnother stupid book serving the demonization of Russia.
Bardon Kaldian , says: December 31, 2020 at 11:05 am GMT • 7.8 hours agoRussia is starting to recover from over 70 years of Bolshevik looting of her wealth, then anudda 112+ or so years of organized looting by Wall Street financial sharpies that helped those 'Russian' oligarchs steal hundreds of billions more.
Damn near everyone was a Jew, but we can't speak truths like that in the USA anymore, why that would be anti-Semitic!
The Silence of the Jews
After the collapse of the Soviet empire, a group of Zionists in Russia seemingly steeped in 'The Protocols of the Elders of Zion', lied, cheated, stole, and murdered, their way into virtually all positions of power throughout the country. They used gangs (some of which probably included mossad agents) to intimidate and murder their opponents in order to gain control of between 70-85% of Russia's industries including most of its natural resources. They also took control of Russia's media which they then used to elect Boris Yeltsin as President of Russia despite the fact that he was a brain-dead, vodka soaked, alcoholic.
Within a matter of years these Russian traitors had become billionaires having stolen vast quantities of Russian assets. They exported as much as possible of their ill-gotten wealth to the Zionist state in Palestine just in case the Russians might ask for their money back.
As for me, I'm still trying to figure out how one gets NAZI from the term National Socialist?
But you can get NAZI from this term, Ashke nazi.
While Russia's infrastructure has vastly improved over the last decade, the USA's has went to hell, since we spend that on propping up those Wall Street Casinos–owned by whom?–and fighting endless wars for the glory of Apartheid Israel.
@stozi mp; similar cultures). This segment is very influential (or has become) & it is incurable in its hatred towards the Western historical identity (under West, I include all European Christendom, east & west, as well as their descendants).conatus , says: December 31, 2020 at 11:36 am GMT • 7.3 hours agoThere is no grand plan for anything. It's just that tribal Jewish activists, when they acquire power, tend to be bad news & they may form a hostile elite or sub-elite. Some Jewish persons have noticed that, too: https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/american-jewrys-disgraceful-hypocrisy/
American Jewry's Disgraceful Hypocrisy
Jake , says: December 31, 2020 at 11:41 am GMT • 7.2 hours agoThe Russian Roots of Nazism perhaps would be more about the millions of Deaths caused by the Bolsheviks and inflicted on a seemingly passive population(much like US YTs now) from 1917 to 1935.R.J. Rummel, researched 'Democide' or 'the murder of a people by their own government' has the Bolseviks Communists murdering over 16 million of their own people.
Perhaps Hitler had a reason to fear the Communists and invade the Bolshevik Bloodlands. Hitler wanted to prevent the Communist takeover of Germany and the ensuing Democide of Germans. Thus the real Russian roots of Nazism.https://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/NOTE4.HTM
Chapter 2. 3,284,000 Victims: The Civil War Period 1917 to 1922 Figure 2.1. Range in Civil War Democide EstimatesTable 2.1. Civil War Period Democide and Other KilledFigure 2.2. Democide Components and Soviet War/RebellionKilled 1917-1922Appendix 2.1Table 2.A. 3,284,000 Victims: SourcesChapter 3. 2,200,000 Victims: The NEP Period 1923-1928Figure 3.1. Range in NEP Democide EstimatesTable 3.1. NEP Period DemocideFigure 3.2. Democide Components for Civil War andNEP PeriodsFigure 3.3. Soviet Democide and Annual Rate by PeriodAppendix 3.1Table 3.A. 2,200,000 Victims During the NEP Period: Sources, Calculations, and EstimatesChapter 4. 11,440,000 Victims: The Collectivization Period 1928-1935 Figure 4.1. Range of Collectivization Democide EstimatesTable 4.1. Collectivization Period DemocideFigure 4.2. Democide Components for Three PeriodsFigure 4.3. Soviet Democide and Annual Rate by Period@RahanJake , says: December 31, 2020 at 12:26 pm GMT • 6.5 hours agoGood grief, says Charlie Brown.
The ideas that formed the German National Socialist Worker's Party were all in place long before WW! started, which means that even if all (rather than a small minority of) Russian emigres had gone to Germany and had done so by 1918, the Russian impact on the formation of the Nazis would have been minimal.
@Olivier197304398436986 , says: December 31, 2020 at 12:32 pm GMT • 6.4 hours agoThe roots of Hitler are also in: Hegel, Bismarck, Frederick the Great, Luther, the late 19th century German 'back to nature/nudist/proto-hippie' movement, Germanic romanticizing of Germanic paganism.
The roots of Hitler also are set firmly in his Germanic adoration of the Anglo-Saxon empire, his desire to have a Continental Germanic version.
The roots of Hitler are anti-Slavic to the core.
for-the-record , says: December 31, 2020 at 2:04 pm GMT • 4.8 hours agoThis writer recasts Slezkine's "many Jewish intelligentsia members" as "the Jews", which is typical for Hitler-worshiping genocide inciters.
They will never write an honest word about the origins of Russian socialism, both intellectual and activist, which trace back to the 1850's and earlier, even before Marxism emerged. The members of these radical literary clubs were gentile blue-bloods; they came from army families and large landowning families, and had the best religious educations. They were disgusted by the misery of the peasants in the face of the opulence of manor and church.
Decades later, with the empire continuing to decline, some secular Jews politicized, joining many anti-tsarist liberal and socialist movements. Around the time of the revolution, some threw in with Lenin's Bolsheviks, while others, such as Lenin's would-be assassin, did not. After the revolution, being literate and good at logistics, they filled important roles. In a context of civil war, with much savagery on both sides, not to mention experience of pogroms and predations of such as the Black Hundreds, some of these Jews became terrible butchers.
But what of "the Jews"? Both before and after the revolution, they were fleeing by the hundred thousand. (A rapid influx of often dishevelled and not sweet-smelling Jews into Germany in the inter-war years created problems.)
This is not what people do when they feel their co-ethnics are assuming prominence, bringing hopes of good treatment and opportunity.
The "Judeo-Bolshevism" lie is deployed by those with dreams of personal advancement through butchery and piracy, in order to mesmerize the frustrated, disenchanted and ignorant.
@Carlton Meyer t even in 1915 (during the World War I anti-Germanism), 16 of the 53 top officials in the Minindel [Ministry of Foreign Affairs] had German names" In the 1880s, the Russian Germans (1.4 percent of the population) made up 62 percent of the high officials in the Ministry of Posts and Commerce and 46 percent in the War Ministry.Germans were, occupationally and conceptually, the Jews of ethnic Russia (as well as much of Eastern Europe). Or rather, the Russian Germans were to Russia what the German Jews were to Germany -- only much more so.
The Russian Revolution, according to Slezkine, essentially served to replace the German elite by a Jewish one.
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Dec 02, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org
@William Gruff | Nov 30 2020 21:13 utc | 138
Bemildred , Dec 1 2020 11:06 utc | 160
When left becomes right, progressive become regressive, and fascist becomes anti-fascist, then we have to invent whole new vocabularies just to discuss the problems that humanity is facing. What is worse though is that upending the language of political society in this manner makes the amassed knowledge from the past less accessible to the present. I suppose that is the point though.This is pretty interesting thought, thank you very much. Kind of Orwellian ""War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength," on a new, more sinister level as in "this manner makes the amassed knowledge from the past less accessible to the present."But is reality Henry Ford quote "Any customer can have a car painted any color that he wants so long as it is black." is perfectly applicable to any US elections and political life in general.
Some commentators here for some reason think that Biden (yes, this semi-senile Biden, a marionette from the very beginning; senator from credit card companies; the worst enemy of working class in Congress ) is somehow preferable to Trump (yes, this Trump, a marionette of Zionists, the President who completely betrayed his electorate, best friend of billionaires and Pentagon; kind of Bush III replicating both intellectual level of Bush II and his policies, including a tax cut for the rich).
I don't disagree with the idea that Trump should go (he is clearly incompetent for this position), but to think that Biden (personally also completely incompetent due to his health condition, and even before that; can you imagine this second rate politician summit with Macron, Merkel, or Putin even if we ignore his current health problems ), in some ways, will be an improvement is pretty optimistic.
Biden administration will be especially dangerous in foreign policy where Russiagaters mafia clearly returned to power, (and chickenhawks like Nuland are in demand again; as well several other flavors of "national security parasites".)
Both are puppets of approximately the same social force -- the union on neoliberal oligarchy and MIC (aka Uniparty.) Biden mafia simply will be slightly more polished, and less "in your face." But both are brutal gangsters, both domestically and on foreign arena. And that's pretty depressing. And one great service of Trump administration was that it exposed what is behind the fake facade. Biden will try to rebuild this fake facade, this Potemkin village again. that's all the difference.
Posted by: likbez | December 01, 2020 at 07:04
"When left becomes right, progressive become regressive, and fascist becomes anti-fascist, then we have to invent whole new vocabularies just to discuss the problems that humanity is facing. What is worse though is that upending the language of political society in this manner makes the amassed knowledge from the past less accessible to the present. I suppose that is the point though."
Yes, that's what the gaslighing is all about, but the problem - as our self-designated betters are finding out now - is that you cannot run a sucessful competitive modern society that way, banana republics do not get to rule the world.
Even ... Henry Ford understood he had to take good care of his employees.
Biden is going to have his hands full without looking for any more trouble.
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Dec 01, 2020 | www.lettinggobreath.com
| Dec 1 2020 1:32 utc | 148
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Dec 01, 2020 | www.strategic-culture.org
Matthew Ehret
November 29, 2020 © Photo: Wikimedia
"The wrongs which we seek to condemn and punish have been so calculated, so malignant and so devastating, that Civilization cannot tolerate their being ignored because it cannot survive their being repeated. That four great nations, flushed with victory and stung with injury, stay the hand of vengeance and voluntarily submit their captives to the judgement of law, is one of the most significant tributes that Power ever paid to reason."
-Justice Robert Jackson, Nov. 21, 1945
It is often forgotten what sort of a battle occurred after WWII to establish the Nuremberg Trials which gave the world a revolutionary code of law which even today offers many of the remedies to the Gordian Knots blocking our way to a peaceful future. By the end of the war, many European leaders of the allied nations wished to simply put leading Nazis against a wall to face a firing squad and return to "business as usual".
As I've outlined in many recent writings , it was only through the intensive efforts of U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt, and his leading allies in both the USA and Russia that a different course of action was decided upon and an official international tribunal was sanctioned that generated a total legal paradigm shift in international law that has been too easily taken for granted (due largely to the lack of effect these laws have had on post-WWII practice).
Among those revolutionary reforms included the unprecedented mandate that wars of aggression would henceforth be illegal in the eyes of the law. The tendency for those higher officials carrying out inhuman orders to escape responsibility for their actions or omissions of correct action were deemed insufficient defenses under the higher moral principle of "known or should have known".
The underlying assumption of these Nuremberg laws are: 1) "might does not make right" despite what generations of Hobbesians and Niescheans have chosen to believe and 2) that every individual is responsible for their decisions based not on the arbitrary standards of whatever degenerate society they live in but rather upon the belief in the intrinsic powers of reason and conscience which all humans have access to and are obliged to guide our actions in life.
Nazi philosophers and crown jurists like Martin Heidegger and Carl Schmidt whose thoughts have penetrated the western zeitgeist over the past 70 years would obviously find such concepts repugnant and deplorable.
The fact that the "free world" has ignored these foundations of international law has not changed the fact that they are still true.
Today, many of those powerful unipolar ideologues who managed the disastrous Cold War and post-Cold War geopolitical environment have attempted to erase the precedents of Nuremburg with such atrocities as Soros' International Criminal Court, and the "Responsibility to Protect" doctrine (R2P) in defense of "humanitarian wars" as seen in Bosnia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and Syria in recent years. The disturbing rise of unipolar R2P advocacy rampant among the British ruling class like Lord Mark Malloch Brown , Tony Blair and all of the Obama-era globalists surrounding Biden make Vladimir Putin and Sergey Lavrov's recent remarks at the 75 Anniversary Moscow conference celebrating the commencement of the Nuremberg Trials that much more important.
Putin and Lavrov Celebrate the 75 th Anniversary of Nuremberg Trials
At this event, Putin reminded the attendees of the importance of the historic tribunals which ran from November 21, 1945 to October – 1946, saying:
"We constantly refer to the lessons of the Nuremberg Trials; we understand their importance for defending the truths of historical memory, for making a well-founded and solid case against deliberate distortions and falsifications of World War II events, especially the shameless and deceitful attempts to rehabilitate and even glorify Nazi criminals and their accessories It is the duty of the entire international community to safeguard the Nuremberg Trials' decisions, because they concern the principles that underlie the values of the post-war world order and the norms of international law."
Putin's remarks were amplified by Sergey Lavrov who elaborated on the new legal paradigm created at Nuremberg which provides an obvious cure for the rise of WWII revisionism, sanitation of Nazism in Ukraine and beyond as well as the revival of many of the practices that made Nazism a viral threat to mankind.
"The Nuremberg Trials -- an example of international criminal justice -- proved that justice can be achieved with a professional approach based on broad interstate cooperation, consent and mutual respect. Clearly, the Nuremberg Tribunal's legacy is not limited to law, but has enormous political, moral and educational value. A strong vaccination against the revival of Nazism in all its forms and manifestations was made 75 years ago. Unfortunately, the immunity to the brown plague that was developed in Nuremberg has seriously worn off in some European countries. Russia will continue to vigorously and consistently oppose any attempts to falsify history, to glorify Nazi criminals and their henchmen, and to oppose the revision of the internationally recognized outcomes of World War II, including the Nuremberg rulings."
So What Happened at Nuremberg?
Amidst the ashes of WWII, a major battle was waged between those deep state forces that had funded fascism as a "solution to the woes of the great depression" vs those genuine patriots who understood that the very fabric of empire and its associated financial, cultural and legal paradigm had to be destroyed and replaced with a paradigm more befitting human civilization.
Among the leading representative of the patriotic forces loyal to FDR's anti-colonial vision was a man who has been nearly lost to history named Robert H. Jackson (1892-1954). Jackson would serve as Franklin Roosevelt's most trusted legal advisor who first made a name for himself working closely with Ferdinand Pecora in prosecuting dozens of high level Wall Street financiers and pro-fascist industrialists who orchestrated the depression of 1929 and the later coup and assassination attempts against FDR in 1933-1934. After proving himself in combat, Jackson arose to become U.S. Solicitor General (1938-1940), Attorney General (1940-41) and leading member of the Supreme Court from 1941 until his death in 1954.
Knowing that the deep state coup that ousted Vice-President Henry Wallace and imposed Anglophile tool Harry Truman onto the USA might destroy the hopes for a post-WWII order of peaceful cooperation as outlined by the United Nations Charter, Judge Jackson took the lead and organized the Nuremberg Tribunals delivering the opening speech on November 21, 1945:
https://www.youtube.com/embed/L50OZSeDXeA?feature=oembed
One of the prime motives behind the hearings was the intention to give legal meaning and action to the universal ideals conveyed in the United Nations' Charter. This charter encapsulated the principles that FDR and Henry Wallace outlined repeatedly in the Four Freedoms . These freedoms asserted that all humankind regardless of race, sex, creed, or nationality would: 1) have the freedom from want, 2) freedom to worship as one's conscience dictated, 3) freedom from fear, and 4) freedom of speech. If international law could tolerate wars of aggression, or if abdication of responsibility for ones' criminal deeds could be tolerated on the basis of "I was just following orders", then the UN Charter could carry little weight indeed.
As Jackson wrote in his Summer 1945 report to the President justifying the creation of the Nuremberg Tribunal:
"We therefore propose to charge that a war of aggression is a crime, and that modern international law has abolished the defense that those who incite or wage it are engaged in legitimate business. Thus, may the forces of law be mobilized on the side of peace."
During the course of the 11 month proceedings, not only were leading cabinet members, generals, lawyers and other high officials put on trial, but the deepest facets of natural law vs Nietschean "law of the strongest" was investigated with Platonic rigor as laid out in the brilliant award-winning film Judgement at Nuremberg (1960).
https://www.youtube.com/embed/lbqDuUjm4aU?feature=oembed
Due to the leadership of Justice Jackson, the treatment of INTENTION and conspiracy was made the primary focus in the pursuit of justice and cause of criminal guilt. This was not a popular approach then or today for the simple fact that our world is shaped by many top down forces that want their victims' minds to be forever trapped in the material bottom up world of deductive/inductive logic where immaterial causal intentions and ideas can never be found. For anyone wishing to pursue this fruitful line of thinking further, I suggest reading Edgar Allan Poe's Eureka.
When one adopts the view that intentions and conspiracies (i.e.: the effect of intentions + ideas when put into action) ARE NOT a driving force of politics and life, then we forever loose our ability to judge truthfulness in any serious manner. This was the philosophical premise of leading Nazi financier Hjalmar Schacht, whose moral relativism and cold calculating principles of economics directly justified the cheap labor camps that worked millions to death in the German war production effort. This same philosophy again found fertile soil in the post-1971 consumer society that revived the logic of cheap labor production under the age of "cheapest price is the law" globalization.
Quoting Schacht who said "Truth is any story that succeeds", Justice Jackson quipped "I think you can score many more successes, when you want to lead someone, if you don't tell them the truth- than if you do tell them the truth".
Laying out the principled intention of the trial to the American people, Jackson said:
"The common sense of mankind demands that law shall not stop with the punishment of petty crimes by little people. It must also reach men who possess themselves of great power and make deliberate and concerted use of it to set in motion evils which leave no home in the world untouched .
"The case as presented by the United States will be concerned with the brains and authority in back of all the crimes. These defendants were men of a station and rank which does not soil its own hands with blood. They were men who knew how to use lesser folk as tools. We want to reach the planners and designers, the inciters and leaders .
"It is not the purpose in my part of this case to deal with the individual crimes. I am dealing with the common plan or design for crime and will not dwell upon individual offenses. My task is only to show the scale on which these crimes occurred, and to show that these are the men who were in the responsible positions and who conceived the plan and design which renders them answerable, regardless of the fact that the plan was actually executed by others .
"The Charter recognizes that one who has committed criminal acts may not take refuge in superior orders nor in the doctrine that his crimes were acts of state .
"The real complaining party at your bar is Civilization . The refuge of the defendants can only be their hope that International Law will lag so far behind the moral sense of mankind that conduct which is crime in the moral sense must be regarded as innocent in law. Civilization asks whether law is so laggard as to be utterly helpless to deal with crimes of this magnitude by criminals of this order of importance."
Today, the world sits once more on the brink of a new world order, and the emergence of a governing system that is shaped entirely on the same social Darwinistic/Nietschean operating system that gave rise to fascism in WWII. The same denial of universal truth that animated the minds of a Schacht, Goebbels, Heidegger or Schmidt has become hegemonic among western academia as well.
Very few statesmen have had the courage and insight to resist this unipolar anti-nation state system, but among those who have we are fortunate to have found the current leader of Russia and his allies who in many ways are playing the same historic role as the one played 75 years earlier by Justice Robert Jackson, Henry Wallace and President Roosevelt. Whether the rest of the world wakes up in time to recognize the superiority of the multipolar alliance over the regressive order of the unipolarists carrying us ominously towards World War 3 remains to be seen.
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Nov 28, 2020 | off-guardian.org
Moneycircus , Nov 26, 2020 5:47 PM Reply to Moneycircus"During the Cold War, the vast majority of states overthrown were left-leaning or socialist governments aligned with the Eastern Bloc."
I take issue with this. The great movement after the collapse of the British Empire was autonomy and, in attempting to throw off the plantation class, that meant land distribution as a response to popular pressure, regardless of political colour.
In short it was nationalism, which can be left or right.
As for the U.S. it was just business. Both Allen Dulles and his brother were shareholders in the Boston/United Fruit Company – and one of their first "happenings" was to defeat the threat of redistribution and secure land for their own private profit .
Even more important than land distribution was equal access to natural resources , beginning with water and firewood and extending to minerals. That is why Bolivia's Evo Morales came to power and why he was ousted.
U.S. regime change was primarily the CIA acting as muscle for the people who had founded it: the Wall Street bankers, lawyer and associated corporations.
"Left leaning" was the excuse. This is why the CIA and State Department armed Castro while halting weapon sales to Fulgencio Batista, as documented by U.S. ambassador to Cuba at the time, Earl T. Smith.
The only explanation for this is that the CIA expected Castro to become another Batista or it wanted a boogeyman in the western hemisphere as a justification for actions it had in mind.
There is even a convincing argument that the Bay of Pigs was a ruse in order to provide leverage against JFK. Nov 26, 2020 6:38 PM Reply to Moneycircus
Agreed. At the same time that Rockefeller and Kissinger were pushing for an opening with communist China and forging business deals with Chinese officials, they were also working to orchestrate a coup against socialist Salvador Allende in Chile. Allende wasn't aligned with the Eastern Bloc. He was a threat because of his nationalization program and its impact on corporate interests in Chile, banking and copper mining among others. The 'communist' thing was a pretext, as it had been when they overthrew Arbenz in Guatemala.
For Rockefeller, Kissinger and associates it was simply about serving Wall Street interests, and the CIA was their enforcement arm. They have been willing to work with communists, fascists, and anyone else who help advance their economic and global objectives. However, I don't doubt that many CIA covert operators doing the dirty work during the Cold War were true believers in the anti-communist crusade.
Researcher , Nov 26, 2020 6:42 PM Reply to Moneycircus
Most of it's a ruse. I expect Bay of Pigs was some kind of intentional ruse. Didn't JFK reject Operation Northwoods in favor of keeping Cuba communist to fuel the Cold War?
I don't even think JFK was planning to disband the CIA. I just think LBJ was far more powerful within the cryptocracy and wanted JFK and Bobby Kennedy out of the way because he was an ambitious psychopath. The Killing of the King was a ritual to inflict psychological trauma on the American public and to show those working within the system that nobody is safe.
Moneycircus , Nov 26, 2020 6:53 PM Reply to Researcher
For all the talk about the defining role of the American corporation, the country's wealth was largely secured by supplanting European empires. That did not happen once the "west" had been settled or the internal opportunities exhausted -- it anticipated the decline of European empires, starting well before the Monroe Doctrine of 1823.
To put it another way, how many of America's ruling families were not imperialists?
Grafter , Nov 26, 2020 5:13 PM
After reading that it is clear we will be entering a dark and dangerous era where those who own and control the media , corrupt the foundations and operations of their own government and believe in their psychopathic doctrine of "exceptionalism" will ensure that we will be taken to the edge of a precipice. Their greed for power and financial gain is limitless and as evidenced by the Covid scam we appear to be helpless regards whatever malign agenda they wish to implement.
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Nov 23, 2020 | scheerpost.com
40 Comments on Chris Hedges: The Ruling Elite's War on Truth American political leaders display a widening disconnect from reality intended to mask their complicity in the seizure of power by global corporations and billionaires. By Chris Hedges / Original to ScheerPostJoe Biden's victory instantly obliterated the Democratic Party's longstanding charge that Russia was hijacking and compromising US elections. The Biden victory, the Democratic Party leaders and their courtiers in the media now insist, is evidence that the democratic process is strong and untainted, that the system works. The elections ratified the will of the people.
But imagine if Donald Trump had been reelected. Would the Democrats and pundits at The New York Time s , CNN and MSNBC pay homage to a fair electoral process? Or, having spent four years trying to impugn the integrity of the 2016 presidential race, would they once again haul out the blunt instrument of Russian interference to paint Trump as Vladimir Putin's Manchurian candidate?
Trump and Giuliani are vulgar and buffoonish, but they play the same slimy game as their Democratic opponents. The Republicans scapegoat the deep state, communists and now, bizarrely, Venezuela; the Democrats scapegoat Russia. The widening disconnect from reality by the ruling elite is intended to mask their complicity in the seizure of power by predatory global corporations and billionaires.
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The two warring factions within the ruling elite, which fight primarily over the spoils of power while abjectly serving corporate interests, peddle alternative realities. If the deep state and Venezuelan socialists or Russia intelligence operatives are pulling the strings no one in power is accountable for the rage and alienation caused by the social inequality, the unassailability of corporate power, the legalized bribery that defines our political process, the endless wars, austerity and de-industrialization. The social breakdown is, instead, the fault of shadowy phantom enemies manipulating groups such as Black Lives Matters or the Green Party.
"The people who run this country have run out of workable myths with which to distract the public, and in a moment of extreme crisis have chosen to stoke civil war and defame the rest of us – black and white – rather than admit to a generation of corruption, betrayal, and mismanagement," Matt Taibbi writes.
These fictional narratives are dangerous. They erode the credibility of democratic institutions and electoral politics. They posit that news and facts are no longer true or false. Information is accepted or discarded based on whether it hurts or promotes one faction over another. While outlets such as Fox News have always existed as an arm of the Republican Party, this partisanship has now infected nearly all news organizations, including publications such as The New York Times and The Washington Post , along with the major tech platforms that disseminate information and news. A fragmented public with no common narrative believes whatever it wants to believe.
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The flagrant partisanship and discrediting of truth across the political spectrum are swiftly fueling the rise of an authoritarian state. The credibility of democratic institutions and electoral politics, already deeply corrupted by PACs, the electoral college, lobbyists, the disenfranchisement of third-party candidates, gerrymandering and voter suppression, is being eviscerated.
Silicon Valley billionaires, including Facebook cofounder Dustin Moskovitz and ex-Google CEO Eric Schmidt, donated more than $100 million to a Democratic super PAC that created a torrent of anti-Trump TV ads in the final weeks of the campaign to elect Biden. The heavy infusion of corporate money to support Biden wasn't done to protect democracy. It was done because these corporations and billionaires know a Biden administration will serve their interests.
The press, meanwhile, has largely given up on journalism. It has retreated into competing echo chambers that only speak to true believers. This catering exclusively to one demographic, which it sets against another demographic, is commercially profitable. But it also guarantees the balkanization of the United States and edges us closer and closer to fratricide.
When Trump leaves the White House millions of his enraged supports, hermetically sealed inside hyperventilating media platforms that feed back to them their rage and hate, will see the vote as fraudulent, the political system as rigged, and the establishment press as propaganda. They will target, I fear, through violence, the Democratic Party politicians, mainstream media outlets and those they demonize as conspiratorial members of the deep state, such as Dr. Anthony Fauci. The Democratic Party is as much to blame for this disintegration as Trump and the Republican Party.
The election of Biden is also very bad news for journalists such as Matt Taibbi, Glen Ford, Margaret Kimberley, Glenn Greenwald, Jeffrey St. Clair or Robert Scheer who refuse to be courtiers to the ruling elites. Journalists that do not spew the approved narrative of the right-wing, or, alternatively, the approved narrative of the Democratic Party, have a credibility the ruling elite fears.
The worse things get – and they will get worse as the pandemic leaves hundreds of thousands dead and thrusts millions of Americans into severe economic distress –the more those who seek to hold the ruling elites, and in particular the Democratic Party, accountable will be targeted and censored in ways familiar to WikiLeaks and Julian Assange, now in a London prison and facing possible extradition to the United States and life imprisonment.
Barack Obama's assault on civil liberties, which included the repeated misuse of the Espionage Act to prosecute whistleblowers, the passage of Section 1021 of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) to permit the military to act as a domestic police force and the ordering of the assassination of U.S. citizens deemed to be terrorists in Yemen, was far worse than those of George W. Bush. Biden's assault on civil liberties, I suspect, will surpass those of the Obama administration.
The censorship was heavy handed during the campaign. Digital media platforms, including Google, Twitter, YouTube and Facebook, along with the establishment press worked shamelessly as propaganda arms for the Biden campaign. They were determined not to make the "mistake" they made in 2016 when they reported on the damaging emails, released by WikiLeaks, from Hillary Clinton's campaign chairman John Podesta. Although the emails were genuine, papers such as The New York Times routinely refer to the Podesta emails as "disinformation." This, no doubt, pleases its readership, 91 percent of whom identify as Democrats according to the Pew Research Center. But it is another example of journalistic malfeasance.
Following the election of Trump, the media outlets that cater to a Democratic Party readership made amends. The New York Times was one of the principal platforms that amplified Russiagate conspiracies, most of which turned out to be false. At the same time, the paper largely ignored the plight of the disposed working class that supported Trump. When the Russiagate story collapsed, the paper pivoted to focus on race, embodied in the 1619 Project. The root cause of social disintegration -- the neoliberal order, austerity and deindustrialization -- was ignored since naming it would alienate the paper's corporate advertisers and the elites on whom the paper depends for access.
Once the 2020 election started, The New York Times and other mainstream outlets censored and discredited information that could hurt Biden, including a tape of Joe Biden speaking with former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, which appears to be authentic. They gave credibility to any rumor, however spurious, which was unfavorable to Trump. Twitter and Facebook blocked access to a New York Post story about the emails allegedly found on Hunter Biden's discarded laptop.
Twitter locked the New York Post out of its own account for over a week. Glenn Greenwald, whose article on Hunter Biden was censored by his editors at The Intercept, which he helped found, resigned. He released the email exchanges with his editors over his article. Ignoring the textual evidence of censorship, editors and writers at The Intercept engaged in a public campaign of character assassination against Greenwald. This sordid behavior by self-identified progressive journalists is a page out of the Trump playbook and a sad commentary on the collapse of journalistic integrity.
The censorship and manipulation of information was honed and perfected against WikiLeaks. When WikiLeaks tries to release information, it is hit with botnets or distributed denial of service attacks. Malware attacks WikiLeaks' domain and website. The WikiLeaks site is routinely shut down or unable to serve its content to its readers. Attempts by WikiLeaks to hold press conferences see the audio distorted and the visual images corrupted. Links to WikiLeaks events are delayed or cut. Algorithms block the dissemination of WikiLeaks content. Hosting services, including Amazon, removed WikiLeaks from its servers. Julian Assange, after releasing the Iraqi war logs, saw his bank accounts and credit cards frozen. WikiLeaks' PayPal accounts were disabled to cut off donations. The Freedom of the Press Foundation in December 2017 closed down the anonymous funding channel to WikiLeaks which was set up to protect the anonymity of donors. A well-orchestrated smear campaign against Assange was amplified and given credibility by the mass media and filmmakers such as Alex Gibney. Assange and WikiLeaks were first. We are next.
Democratic Senator Chris Murphy told CNN during this campaign that Russian disinformation efforts are "more problematic" than in 2016. He warned that "this time around, the Russians have decided to cultivate U.S. citizens as assets. They are attempting to try to spread their propaganda in the mainstream media."
This will be the official mantra of the Democratic Party, a vicious redbaiting campaign without actual reds, especially as the country spirals out of control. The reason I have a show on Russia-funded RT America is the same reason Vaclav Havel could only be heard on the US-funded Voice of America during the communist control of Czechoslovakia. I did not choose to leave the mainstream media. I was pushed out. And once anyone is pushed out, the ruling elite is relentless about discrediting the few platforms left willing to give them, and the issues they raise, a hearing.
"If the problem is 'American citizens' being cultivated as 'assets' trying to put 'interference' in the mainstream media, the logical next step is to start asking Internet platforms to shut down accounts belonging to any American journalist with the temerity to report material leaked by foreigners (the wrong foreigners, of course – it will continue to be okay to report things like the 'black ledger')," writes Taibbi , who has done some of the best reporting on the emerging censorship. "From Fox or the Daily Caller on the right , to left-leaning outlets like Consortium or the World Socialist Web Site, to writers like me even – we're all now clearly in range of new speech restrictions, even if we stick to long-ago-established factual standards."
Taibbi argues that the precedent for overt censorship took place when the major digital platforms – Facebook, Twitter, Google, Spotify, YouTube – in a coordinated move blacklisted the right-wing talk show host Alex Jones.
"Liberal America cheered," Taibbi told me when I interviewed him for my show, " On Contact ":
They said 'Well this is a noxious figure. This is a great thing. Finally, someone's taking action.' What they didn't realize is that we were trading an old system of speech regulation for a new one without any public discussion. You and I were raised in a system where you got punished for speech if you committed libel or slander or if there was imminent incitement to lawless action, right? That was the standard that the Supreme Court set, but that was done through litigation. There was an open process where you had a chance to rebut charges. That is all gone now.
Now, basically there's a handful of these tech distribution platforms that control how people get their media.
They've been pressured by the Senate, which has called all of their CEOs in, and basically ordered them, 'We need you to come up with a plan to prevent the sowing of discord and spreading of misinformation.' This has finally come into fruition. You see a major reputable news organization like the New York Post -- with a 200-year history -- locked out of its own Twitter account.
The story [Hunter Biden's emails] has not been disproven. It's not disinformation or misinformation. It's been suppressed as it would be suppressed in a Third World country. It's a remarkable historic moment. The danger is that we end up with a one-party informational system. There's going to be approved dialogue and unapproved dialogue that you can only get through certain fringe avenues. That's the problem. We let these companies get this monopolistic share of the distribution system. Now they're exercising that power.
In the Soviet Union the truth was passed, often hand to hand, in underground samizdat documents, clandestine copies of news and literature banned by the state. The truth will endure. It will be heard by those who seek it out. It will expose the mendacity of the powerful, however hard it will be to obtain. Despotisms fear the truth. They know it is a mortal threat. If we remain determined to live in truth, no matter the cost, we have a chance.
[Chris Hedges writes a regular original column for ScheerPost every two weeks. Click here to sign up for email alerts.]
Chris Hedges Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist who was a foreign correspondent for fifteen years for The New York Times, where he served as the Middle East Bureau Chief and Balkan Bureau Chief for the paper. He previously worked overseas for The Dallas Morning News , The Christian Science Monitor , and NPR. He is the host of the Emmy Award-nominated RT America show On Contact. paul easton NOVEMBER 23, 2020 AT 10:28 AMIt seems like the masters are just as deluded as the slaves. But the situation is unsustainable. When many millions of slaves become homeless and hungry that reality will become unavoidable. Who will they blame? Will they attack one another or will they revolt against the system? Soon we will see. Carolyn L Zaremba NOVEMBER 24, 2020 AT 10:30 AM
I share only alternative media since I don't trust "mainstream" media one iota. I post articles from the World Socialist Web Site, Consortium News, the Grayzone, Caitlin Johnstone and others all the time. I am a socialist. I was only banned from posting on FB once, for criticizing Israel. No surprise there. But I suspect FB of shadow banning, i.e., making it look like you've posted an article but making it invisible to others in their news feeds. I first learned of this practice from Craig Murray, another whose articles I post regularly. paul easton NOVEMBER 25, 2020 AT 1:35 AM
That is a chilling thought. I was shadow banned by medium.com a few years ago. It appeared to me that my posts and comments went in, but no one else could see them. At least with them I could tell something was wrong because I had regular conversations with some people. With FB I don't know if you could ever be sure. R Zwarich NOVEMBER 25, 2020 AT 5:37 AM
Mr. Easton is indeed correct. It is VERY chilling, especially if people would imagine what THEY would do, if they had our Enemy's morally depraved motivations, and if they had the control our Enemy has over ALL our communications switches.
There are three basic types of mass communications. One to many. Many to one. And many to many.
The Enemy has complete access to 'one to many' communications, and complete control over anyone's else's access to same. Many to one communications are ineffective for intrinsic reasons. Many to many communications offer myriad methods of cunningly creative control.
If we send out group emails, for example, in simple old-fashioned list-serves, they who control the switches could easily 'filter', to determine who among addressees gets any message, and who doesn't.
I used to write comments in the Boston Globe, the wholly owned plaything of a VERY weird old Billionaire and his proud and beautiful young trophy wife. (Less than half his age, of course). At first I thought the Globe NEVER censored. I could write anything, and it would post. Ahh but then I learned that the Globe is a HEAVY handed censor, but was clever enough to put a 'cookie' in your browser folder to tell their server to let you see your own comments, so you would not even know that no one else could see them. It was 'stealth censorship'.
We should try to remember that these people are morally depraved, in their constant paroxysms of raw Greed and raw Lust. No force exists any longer in our nation to restrain them. Anything we can 'see' that they CAN do, we can pretty much figure they already DO do, or else sooner or later will. Carol Shapiro NOVEMBER 23, 2020 AT 1:44 PM
While I don't agree with you, Chris Hedges, all the time, I believe you are our one. true. journalist. Thankful for your honesty. Insight. Huge intellect. Global experience. I am an "unenrolled" voter -- an extremely disillusioned former Bernie Sanders supporter. Truly, I feel like he would have been our closest attempt to achieving a real "citizen government". What a laughable term that is these days. Bernie never would have had a chance running as a Democrat – absurd. He should have walked out of that convention four years ago and taken his supporters with him. Oh wait- you said that. Never NOVEMBER 23, 2020 AT 2:59 PM
Don't forget that the selective coverage by the NY Times in this campaign didn't start when Biden became the nominee. Up to that time, the Times ran one or two articles on Sanders it seems. Whatever the number, it was miniscule. They almost completely ignored one of the most significant campaigns in modern history, thus helping to ensure it died on the vine. And when they did cover it one or two times, it was always negative.
Thank you, Chris, for your tireless work in defense of our stolen democracy. yuri NOVEMBER 23, 2020 AT 4:37 PM
US liberals more fascist than conservatives–long observed by historians/social philosophers
"amerikans do not converse as Tocqueville wrote, amerikans entertain each other. amerikans do not exchange ideas, they exchange images. the problem w amerikans is not Orwellian–it is huxleyan: amerikans love their oppression: Neil Postman Stephen Morrell NOVEMBER 24, 2020 AT 1:18 AMGlenn Greenwald's points need stressing: (i) some of the most vociferous proponents of online censorship are mainstream and 'alternative' 'journalists' who on repeated occasions have egged on the carriers to shut sites, pages, accounts or postings; (ii) these 'journalists' aren't just serving the narrowest band of oligarchic media empires in history, but also are ivy-league bourgeois brats with no interest at all in exposing the injustices or malfeasance of bourgeois society, unlike many journalists of the past; and (iii) that it's not in the immediate material interests of the carriers to conduct the censorship, especially in the longterm, since it consumes resources and lowers traffic and profits. They'd much rather the government do it and for them to be compensated at taxpayer expense.
To avoid future potential government antitrust measures or nationalisation (heaven forbid!), Zuckerberg and his ilk have been censoring in heavyhanded and hamfisted ways that aren't so 'autonomous' but for the moment at least can be traced along the usual Democrat-controlled thinktank and CIA/FBI lines, which of course also are beyond public scrutiny. Despite the prospects for freedom of reach (and reach is what it's really about) apparently growing dimmer with each senate committee appearance by the carrier oligarchs, ways and means will be found to circumvent their draconian measures. While alternative non-censoring platforms have yet to gain significant traction, it likely won't take much for one to catch on, perhaps sparked by an outrageous event of suppression, that turns Facebook, Twitter, etc, into museum pieces. One might imagine, for instance, Wikileaks-style YouTube, Facebook, Twitter equivalents that act as true carriers, purely machine-based and devoid of human interference, that precludes them becoming the 'moral guardians' that Twitter, Facebook etc, are quickly metamorphising into.
As increasing swathes of the population appear not to be aligning within the bourgeoisie's preset ideological 'tribal' boundaries, there's a certain schadenfreude in seeing the rulers in dread of the truth getting out and spreading uncontrollably. Their tailored counter-narratives simply are too enfeebled and slight to square with the hard reality that's hitting everyone, from the most educated and brainwashed to the least. That ivy-league stenographers are being pressed into the service of censorship gives some indication of the desperation of the rulers. We all know, as do they but can never admit it publicly, that censorship and repression are frank admissions that they've lost all 'arguments' for their very existence.
To an extent, Trump has been responsible for letting the genie out of the bottle, as the first president probably since before Andrew Jackson to have failed, repeatedly, to put lipstick on the racist, capitalist imperial pig. The efforts by the ruling class at censorship and naked suppression of freedom of reach and of access to sources of truthful information will only increase in desperation as their myth-making narratives become ever more unable to rationalise a crisis that's they're beginning to see as intractable and endangering their rule.
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Nov 18, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org
Stephen Laudig , Nov 18 2020 20:03 utc | 8
Governments are "tools" to accomplish things. The totalitarian Han Communist Party runs the PRC in a way that the Democratic/Republican Party does not run the United States. Totalitarians recognize no inherent limit on their 'authority' to act. Non-totalitarians do. A totalitarian government is a better 'tool' to command lock step obedience to a central authority because most of the population at large and ALL of the political population knows what happens should the central command total authority be disobeyed or be seen to be disobeyed.
So in a plague, war maybe, flooding, famine, fires, the totalitarians will be more effective.
So what? In ordinary times I'd rather live under non-totalitarians because incarceration for thought crime is vastly less frequent.
Totalitarianism is a 'good tool' for exceptional matters requiring "uniform and disciplined" response. Under normal times its just another Third Reich.
Ask any Han who wishes to state a non-approved opinion; any Tibetan wishing to display a photo of the Dalai Lama and any Muslim wishing to be orthodox. Why is it that you don't see people illegally entering totalitarian Han Communist China? well except from an even worse place North Korea. While millions want to "be" in the US? People vote with their feet. They flee from the Totalitarians. They flee toward the US. Power to people feet.
psychohistorian , Nov 18 2020 20:53 utc | 19
@ Stephen Laudig | Nov 18 2020 20:03 utc | 8 who wrote about totalitarian
Totalitarian is the definition of the effect of global private finance on the West, is it not?
Totalitarian describes the social contract in the West much more than in China.
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neutral , says: November 18, 2020 at 7:55 am GMT • 8.3 hours agoNov 18, 2020 | www.unz.com
karel , says: November 16, 2020 at 2:38 am GMT • 2.6 days ago
Wielgus , says: November 16, 2020 at 6:47 am GMT • 2.4 days agoYes indeed '
'One may wonder: where was the German Left when Hitler's popularity increased amongst Germany's Working class at a speed that puts Covid-19 to shame?
" The left was very much around and the combined electorate of communists and social democrats exceeded in November 1932 that of the NSDAP. I cannot think of a single plausible explanation for the rise in popularity of NSDA. As always and more probably, there was a multitude of reasons, not easily identified then and now. My guess is that during the economic collapse of Germany the citizens have lost patience with the left wing parties as the communist and socialists did little, or perhaps could do little, to alleviate their hardship. Then there was a novelty feature of the NSDAP and the belief or a hope that nationalism could reduce the foreign interference in the affairs of Germany. Furthermore, the legend of the "Dolchstoss" was steadily gaining in popularity with the increasingly distant armistice of 1918. Feelings that "we were cheated" and dreams that Germany could be great again were also on the rise. Finally, die NSDAP propaganda apparatus was much better at identifying the "enemies" of the working classes and unemployed by pointing out the factual dominance of the Jews in running the state.
@karel hing. Basically, conservatives like von Papen thought the weakening of the Nazis and their inexperience meant that they could be manipulated.karel , says: November 16, 2020 at 1:56 pm GMT • 2.1 days ago
"The factual dominance of the Jews running the state" – they didn't. They had no significant footing in the armed forces or the civil service in Germany. The Nazis called Weimar the Judenrepublik but had it actually been so, they would have encountered more resistance and less cooperation from state elements than they did. In reality, this was a state that in the 1920s thought about deporting Hitler back to Austria (he did not gain actual German citizenship until relatively late) but never did.@Wielgus cillations in support of one or another party are quite common in any system.SolontoCroesus , says: November 16, 2020 at 7:58 pm GMT • 1.8 days agoThe perception that the Jews were running the state was overwhelming, whether you like it or not. Most banks were in Jewish hands as well as large sections of the retail and textile industry. Apparently, almost 80% of all lawyers were Jews. In fact, prior to the putsch in 1933, most Jews could be described as German nationalists. It is paradox that Jews in Czechoslovakia were also leaning towards German nationalism. Czech speaking Jews were more like rare exotic birds. The putsch in 1933 brought them to their senses and those who did not emigrate started to learn Czech.
@Wielgus Jewish intellectual, Kurt Eisner, and after his assassination, two other Jewish leaders, Gustav Landauer and Eugen Levine, assumed positions of major influence in the "Raterepublik" ("Soviet" Republic"). Rosa Luxemburg, who was also assassinated, was a leader of the revolutionary Spartakus- bund, which was one of the predecessors of the German Communist party.
In the following years as well, Jews held major political posts, primarily in the leadership of the democratic and socialist parties. The most prominent Jewish Political figure was Walther Rathenau, who served first as minister for economic affairs and then as foreign minister.
@Wielgus "The factual dominance of the Jews running the state" – they didn't. They had no significant footing in the armed forces or the civil service in Germany.
This is no different to current ZOG regimes now. Just because they are not the rank and file in the military or the government paper pusher does not mean they are not in charge. What they were in charge of was the cultural, financial and academic institutions, when you run these things then you run everything. Luckily for Germany the military was not overrun by the cuckservative types like in the US military is now, there were enough decent types that overthrew the jew in their government.
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Nov 12, 2020 | www.unz.com
Mefobills says: November 11, 2020 at 4:30 pm GMT • 7.2 hours ago 300 Words ↑
Indeed, one can't help but wonder whether the historic American nation would fare better under outright foreign occupation than a hostile elite which considers itself our rulers and treats us with open contempt, if not hatred.
Russia or China would not flood the historic American nation with "third world people" in order to chase after a dollar. A good argument could be made that China or Russia would be a better government for Heartland America than the "international" coastal elites.
The coastal elites are wedded to finance capitalism. This group of people want a thin veneer of Oligarchs (themselves) controlling a mixed race, or brown population in their factories. Finance Capital wants to make illicit gains. Finance capital could care less about improving labor ability of the native population.
The grouping is thus; 1) Coastal Elites/Wall Street/City of London/Private Banking/Atlantacism/Libertarian Free Market Economics aka finance capitalism . (In short, the coastal elites are for an "international world order" with them in charge, with them making their finance nut with usury, rents, and unearned income. Lying and cheating is ok, because only money matters. Their capital is fungible, meaning it can fly anywhere in the world to make gains, and to them labor has legs and is also fungible, to then lower prices – to make gains.)
Land Powers, such as China and Russia are not "international" in their thinking. Although they do some power projection into blue water as a form of defense. They are interested in improving their sovereign population.
The middle of America is land power, and is opposed to Atlantacism, rim theory, blue water navy power projection, importation of third world people, and export of jobs and factories.
The American system of economy of the founders was the first industrial capitalism, and the "credit of the nation" went toward infrastructure, public health, and improving the commons.
The Jew and English finance capitalism method, first combined together in 1694, and has always been at war with heartland America. The parasite is dug in deep.
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Nov 09, 2020 | crookedtimber.org
Hidari 11.08.20 at 8:20 pm
Interesting piece by Beinart about the obvious question that isn't being asked: Why did Trump lose? After all he had the advantages of incumbency, until February the stock market was booming, wages were rising, things were going great.
Answer: because he was not nearly radical enough. Because he was a weak leader who was captured by the Republican elite (not the other way round). Also (rather ironic this) because he was and is a terrible negotiater. He continually caved into the likes of Mitch McConnell, and, well the rest is history.
Question: will 'super Trump' in 4 or 8 years time manage to follow the Eastern European template and create a genuine populist party? (economically social democratic, particularly concentrating on pensioners: extremely hostile to immigration, skeptical of environmental issues, culturally conservative?). If so the future is the Republicans' but it's a big if.
likbez 11.09.20 at 4:20 pm (no link)
@Hidari 11.08.20 at 8:20 pm
...he was a weak leader who was captured by the Republican elite (not the other way round). Also (rather ironic this) because he was and is a terrible negotiator. He continually caved into the likes of Mitch McConnell, and, well the rest is history.
All true. But Biden victory in some ways looks like Catch 22 for neoliberal Dems (Will the Democrats Ever Make Sense of This Week? – New Republic):
In sum, if the results we have hold, Joe Biden will win the election and preside over a divided Congress. A chastened and anxious Democratic caucus will continue to hold the House.
A triumphant Senate Republican caucus will obviously destroy his major legislative agenda. Biden will assuredly turn to policy by executive action, just as Barack Obama did late in his legislatively stymied administration.
When he does, Republicans will do all they can to send those actions to a 6–3 conservative Supreme Court Biden will be unable to pack or meaningfully reform.
In defeating Trump, Democrats will have avoided their worst-case scenario. Instead, they will have won the worst possible Biden victory, a political situation that will be a nightmare all its own.
Trump, with his "national neoliberalism," was an anomaly in its own right. And such things do not last long. So this is a kind of "return to normal" -- return to power of the "internationalist" faction of Oligarchy who is linked to globalization (and constitutes the majority of the US oligarchy), which was unexpectedly defeated in 2016 and since then foght tooth and nail for the return to power. And such "normalization" is the most logical outcome of the 2020 elections and is to be expected.
But while they now have the power, globalists do not have solutions to the country problems, and the crisis of neoliberalism (which started in 2008) will continue, the far-right nationalism will stay and may even gain strength. This suggests that in 2024 is somebody like Tucker Carlson will lead the ticket. And Tucker is a more dangerous opponent to neoliberal Dems than Trump ever been. "Trumpism without Trump" will live, so to speak.
That may spell troubles for the well-being of the PMC (professional and management class) to which we all belong.
I would add that the fact that Biden victory legitimized Russia-gate and abuse of their power by intelligence agencies is also a problem. I suspect that Neo-McCarthyism, in the long run, might backfire.
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Nov 07, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org
William Gruff , Nov 7 2020 13:40 utc | 24
"The seeds of this scheme were planted several months prior to the 2016 election when Hillary Clinton authorized a smear campaign against Trump..." --quoted by our host above.
In other words, this was initiated during the primaries, at which point Trump even being allowed to be a candidate in the general election was inconceivable. How could the Clinton campaign have known that the corporate mass media would be giving Trump hundreds of $millions in free advertising at that point? How could the Clinton campaign have known that the joke candidate could beat out serious career politicians? How could the Clinton campaign have known so early they would be facing off against the Great Orange Ogre in the general?
Obviously the 2016 elections were just as rigged and choreographed (despite backfiring dramatically) as the most recent one, but who could have done the choreography? What organization could get the "Operation Mockingbird" mass media to sing in chorus? What organization that is deeply intertwined with the State Department that Clinton was the head of also has long-running plans like color revolution preparations, proxy wars, and covert actions around the globe that would greatly benefit from a seamlessly smooth transition of imperial figureheads?
That would be the same organization that thinks crickets in Cuba are Soviet brain rays damaging its operatives' soft and fragile minds, so it really is no surprise that they screwed the pooch with their "brilliant plan" in 2016. They only managed to regain control of the imperial figurehead position in 2020 by using banana republic election fraud. Fortunately they have a lot of practice with that kind of work and they have Big Tech and the corporate mass media fully on board to help. It is quite obvious that they would have failed again otherwise.
Basically, we can take some comfort from the gross incompetence that the CIA has had on display for many years now.
Down South , Nov 7 2020 13:54 utc | 29
William Gruff , Nov 7 2020 13:56 utc | 30William Gruff @ 24
Timeline according to Wiki:
Trump was declared the presumptive Republican nominee by Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus on May 3.In April 2016, an attorney for Hillary Clinton's campaign and the DNC hired Fusion GPS to investigate Trump. In June 2016, Fusion GPS subcontracted Steele's firm to compile the dossier.
"The majority of Trump's recent tweets are currently censored. I don't care how misleading or even false they are. That's not for Twitter to arbitrate. People cheering this power-grab by unelected tech officials are authoritarian dupes" --quoted by our host
There is a shorter word for "authoritarian dupes" . It is "fascist" .
"Sure, we'll have fascism in this country, and we'll call it anti-fascism" " --Huey Long
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Nov 07, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org
karlof1 , Nov 6 2020 18:58 utc | 113
Wow! Today's Global Times editorial about the election and its outcome is very perceptive in its entirety making it very hard to determine an excerpt. I decided on the center 4 paragraphs as they're a coherent whole:
"Every society has internal divergences and contradictions. The design of the US system indulges and even encourages the fermentation of contradictions. Mechanisms help maintain the balance between interests and power. For a long time, this performed relatively well, but new challenges are changing the conditions of US mechanisms, and changing relations between the effectiveness of US mechanisms and the difficulties US society faces.
"The fundamental change is that the US has been consuming its accumulated advantages against the backdrop of globalization. Its pattern of interests has been fixated, and the overall competitiveness of the country has been sliding. The welfare it has made for the people cannot match people's demands and expectations. The mechanism that distributes interests solidifies and further erodes social ability of promoting unity.
"In the internet era, identity politics is rising. People can easily feel that their rights are deprived because they are from a certain social class. Maintaining social unity has become an increasingly arduous and sensitive task. Obviously, the US needs political reforms more than many other countries to enhance its ability to promote unity.
"But in the past four years, the Trump administration, incited by the US election system, has pushed the country into a risky path where it enhances division to boost the existing pattern of political interests. There are so many social woes in US society, be it between different races and classes, between new immigrants and old ones, and between different regions, let alone partisan. But now the objective of society has been cast on Trump's reelection. This objective has to a great extent squeezed the room of US society to pursue maximum common interests."
But I really insist reading the entire editorial.
In an op/ed by a professor at the Center for American Studies of Fudan University, we learn what some close observers from outside see as the primary contradictions within the Outlaw US Empire:
"There are two main contradictions in the US. First, contradictions between the whites and ethnic minorities. The advantageous position of the whites continues to decrease and they would lose their dominance over the country in the future. This makes their tolerance and confidence in ethnic minorities decrease as well. The ratio of the population of ethnic minorities is rising. This increases their demand for equality and rights.
"It is normal for ethnic minorities to demand for corresponding political, social, economic and cultural positions, but this will pose a severe challenge to the cultural, religious and racial nature of the US. As the US population continues to lose balance, related conflicts will break out or even become a periodic and escalating crisis.
"Second, contradictions between elites and ordinary people. Supporters of the Democratic Party are mainly demotic elites who benefit from globalization and liberalization of the global economy, and those who support the Republican Party are middle- and lower-class people, and religious conservatives. This is very clear in the county-based electoral maps. Trump-supporting counties that are vast, under populated and economically backward, surround cities and counties that support the Democratic Party, while Democrat-dominated counties and cities use their economic and population advantages to lead the political pattern in some states. The contradictions between elites and ordinary people will not end with the election."
Not stated clearly IMO is that these contradictions are Centrifugal in their affects on the overall society thus impeding attempts to reform the polity and gain control over the forces exerting actual control that are beyond government.
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Nov 07, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org
karlof1 , Nov 6 2020 20:26 utc | 131
The transcript of the Michael Hudson-Paul Jay podcast is now available here . Yes, it's a long read with much being a rehash of his many previous interviews. IMO, his newest most important point is the need for a revamped Constitution:
"Let's get back to fascism because that's very important. Around the time that Roosevelt made that comment [1938], Trotsky analyzed fascism in Germany and Italy, and he said that fascism is what occurred when the socialists don't have a solution to the problems.
"I think we are indeed emerging in that kind of fascism today because you don't have the left or the progressive interests really coming up with a solution to the problems. And that's because the only kind of solution is so radical that it can't be solved within the existing political framework and the existing legal framework. There has to be the equivalent of a revolution. [If] It's not going to be an anti-fascist revolution; then it'll be a fascist revolution. What we're seeing is that kind of a slow revolution....
"Now and all throughout Europe, it was the upper house of government, the House of Lords, or the Senate that tried to block any kind of reform, not only leading to socialism, but that helped capitalism. There had to be a political revolution strengthening the House of Commons relative to the House of Lords. And that occurred in 1909-10 in England. Now, here you're going to have a similar constitutional crisis in order to do the socialist policies that you mentioned. The crisis is not only because there's federalism in the United States, states' rights that are written in the Constitution, to have an economy that can rescue the American industry, and rescue the American working class, you need to rewrite the Constitution.
"But the efforts to make plans for a constitutional convention have all been done by the ultra-right, by the Federalist Society, and by the people that you and I have made fun of for many years. And I don't see any movement on the left to say the situation is so serious that we need a radical rewrite of the Constitution in order to become really a parliamentary democracy that can provide the political context in order to introduce socialist policies ."[My Emphasis]
He's correct. When you have a Bernie Sanders being equated with Leftism, then you have no Left.
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Nov 06, 2020 | crookedtimber.org
Hidari 10.22.20 at 5:32 pm
I'm not going to flog this particular horse to death, because, at this stage, if you are still seriously arguing that Trump is The New Hitler™ then there is no reasoning with you, but one of the innumerable differences between Trump's Republican Party and Hitler's Nazi Party (and Mussolini's Fascist Party etc.) was that the Nazis and Fascists were the 'New Kids on the Block'. In other words they are outsiders trying to 'break in' to the existing structure, usually with the help of massive ( non-state ) violence. And they were led by young, angry men, who bitterly resented the Establishment and simply demanded that they be allowed to lead (cf the fact that European fascists and Nazis invariably came to power after WW1: the view, common at the time, that this was a war when old men had led young men to their deaths, is highly significant here).
The American Republican Party on the other hand, is going on 200 years old, and is led by complacent, tired, wealthy old men. They are the Establishment.
The only way round this problem for those insisting that the United States, one of the oldest and most stable of all the Western Republics/democracies, now stands quivering on the verge of tyranny/civil war, is to claim that Trump is a radical, fundamentally different force in Western politics, that Trumpism has practically no antecedents (apart from Hitler etc.) and that Trump has radically and fundamentally transformed the Republican Party into something radically new.
Which is .obviously not true. There is little that Trump has done that Romney would not have done, most of Romney's supporters are also Trump's, and the amount of violence that Trump has unleashed (and the vast majority of this is state violence not non-state a huge difference between Trump and the Nazis) pales into insignificance when compared to what Bush Sr. did in similar circumstances, let alone LBJ/Nixon.
Far from terrifying the Establishment, Trump is openly ridiculed by it on late night TV (and, increasingly, daytime TV), and his inchoate and half-assed 'revolt' against Republican shibboleths has long since petered out: Trump now governs as a standard Republican, no ifs, ands or buts. You just need to ask yourself: what policy pronouncements has Trump made recently that Romney would not have made? The answer is that there are none. Romney might have managed Covid a bit better. That's it.
In any case, as has been tirelessly pointed out, there is simply no equivalent in the US Constitution for a 'total' Enabling Act of the kind that Hitler used. As Corey also points out, to describe the Nazi coup as 'constitutional' is a very big stretch: Hitler had murdered no small number of his political opponents by the time of a 'vote' which met no one's idea of 'free and fair'.
tl;dr The Republicans do not and will never rebel against the Establishment. They are the Establishment. Those who deny this are essentially arguing that the Republicans will overthrow themselves.
ph 10.23.20 at 7:49 am (no link)
BlueHugh 10.23.20 at 6:20 pm ( 30 )Welcome back, Corey and congrats on the piece.
@24 You're right. The idea that literally a fascist would permit his government, his supporters, family, and himself to be mocked on halloween pumpkins (some of these are great), on SNL, by late-night comedians, on the front page of the press and by a very substantial percentage of the population doesn't say much for his authoritarian credentials.
Re: the OP and New Yorker piece. Plenty of Dems are just as conservative as Republicans depending on the issue. Nor, do the older distinctions of conservative/liberal apply – if they ever did.
Reform act politicians and those after were much of a kind – branding various forms of sexist and elitist capitalism to appeal to a wealthy minority of like-minded bigots. The issues were opportunities to exploit sinecures and alliances, utterly un-related to any sense of the public good.
So, what do we get in 2020? At the end of the final debate we saw exactly the kind of choice we'd expect to see from any Republican and any Democrat of the modern era. Biden offered big government, higher taxes, and better equality of outcome. Trump warned that electing the Democrat would make the country less safe and send the economy over the cliff.
Based on the Frank Luntz independents post-debate response, Corey's sound analysis of the GOP electoral college strengths, and Biden's weakness among African-American males, in particular, my current call is a Trump electoral college victory similar to that in 2016, and a similar loss in the popular vote. Biden didn't do himself any favors tonight by taking a hard stance on getting rid of fossil fuels. Winning Texas, Ohio, and Pennsylvania just took a big hit.
The Luntz independents also wanted to know why the media has suddenly stopped talking about Biden's Burisma email problem – now that actual evidence has surfaced. RUSSIA DID IT AGAIN!!!! didn't get much traction with this particular group.
Biden succeeded in looking like the same polished, lifeless, pol from the past who voters know so well, and who does so little to win their support, especially when he's on the media loves to call Biden's 'A' game. He presented himself as the only professional politician on stage: slippery, defensive, and evasive. In doing so, Biden convinced the independent voters Luntz polled to choose Trump over Biden by a large majority.
From the Luntz group: "Words to describe Trump tonight: • "Controlled" • "Reserved" • "Poised" • "Con artist" • "Surprisingly presidential"
Words to describe Biden tonight: • "Vague" • "Unspecific" • "Elusive" • "Defensive" • "Grandfatherly"
Today's GOP stool consists of the the Plutocrats, the Theocrats, and the Yahoos. Bush the Lesser won by being a Chimera of the three; Trump is a Plutocrat who bought off the Theocrats and made himself King of the Yahoos.
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Nov 06, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org
jinn , Nov 5 2020 13:48 utc | 27
The elites may control who gets nominated but no matter how flawed or repugnant their candidate is or how obvious that the candidate was chosen for them the flocks that follow the candidates act as if they did the choosing.
Trump was given 10 times the free advertising than all the other primary candidates combined and yet his followers think they picked him.
And Biden will go down in history as the candidate who got more popular votes than any other candidate ever has and yet he is about as popular as a hemorrhoid.
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Nov 05, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com
Rome, the USSR and Revolutionary France are all compelling analogies due to the hubristic cluelessness of their fractured elites as the pretensions of stability collapsed around them. Even though Nero didn't actually fiddle while Rome burned and Marie Antoinette didn't gush "Let them eat brioche" when notified that the peasants had no bread (or more accurately, could no longer afford it), these myths are handy encapsulations of the disconnect from reality that infested the elites in the last years before the deluge of non-linear chaos overwhelmed the regimes.
While historians gather evidence of tipping points such as pandemics, ecological damage, invasions, droughts, inflation, etc., the core dynamic is ultimately the loss of social cohesion within the ruling elites and in the social order at large.
As a generality, the permanence of the status quo is taken for granted by elites, who then feel free to squabble amongst themselves over the spoils of wealth and power. Distracted by their own infighting, the elites are blind to the erosion of the foundations of their power.
As coherence in the elites unravels, the ties uniting the elites with the masses unravel as well.
One camp within the elites recognizes the danger and seeks reforms , but the reforms are too little, too late, and in any event, the elites who cling most ardently to the past stability fight the reform movement to a standstill.
As social cohesion unravels, systems that once seemed immutable (i.e. linear ) suddenly display non-linear dynamics in which modest changes that would have made little difference in the past now unleash regime-shattering disorder.
So take your pick, America: what's the closest analogy? A sclerotic Politburo of elders living in the past, an elite fiddling while the nation disintegrates, or an elite so out of touch with reality that it claims inflation is zero while the populace can no longer afford bread?
They all lead to the same destination.
richsob , 1 hour ago
HRH of Aquitaine 2.0 , 1 hour agoI know a lot of history and I think we will go the route of Rome. We will have a slow slide into total failure from a debased currency, an over extended military, tax revolts, unmanageable immigration and an internal war among the elites.
MAOUS , 31 minutes agoMy name is an indirect reference to France and the French Revolution.
When Pelosi was photo'd in front of two massive Sub Zero fridges with gourmet ice cream, that was the equivalent of "let them eat brioche." She is fvucking clueless. A tool that is barely coherent, much like Joe.
People see through it. The greed of the politicians, and their apparatchiks, the bureaucrats, is obvious to anyone willing to look. FFS apparatchiks can retire with six fixure salaries after being a government employee! People are sick to death of their arrogance, their greed, their out-and-out abuse of the taxpayer!
The other analogy, which I think is valid, is to ancient Rome. I was a philosophy major / Latin minor so took quite few courses involving the classes, reading the classics, or translating them. I also spent a semester in Rome, tramping through the Forum and walking underground and overground. In 1997 Rome was a beautiful city, mostly safe.
Anyhow, ancient Rome ended up debasing their currency, literally. Which the US (and other central banks) are doing with excessive money printing.
Excessive taxation drove away the tax base of ancient Rome. The first jingle keys event was there. Why? Taxes were too high. People will work hard if there is a profit incentive and they are able to earn a good return from their labor. Once that incentive was gone, people abandoned their farms and property and left. Where did they go? Away. Away from the tax collectors, which were richly rewarded for any taxes they were able to collect. I suppose at the end, the collection methods became quite brutal. At that point, when it is your money or your life, you throw the tax collector your money and flee with your life. You walk away from land that you love and start over.
Never an easy choice to abandon one's land and home. But that is exactly what happened.
Central bankers and governments, along with the common citizen, would do well to heed historical precedents.
Omega Point , 1 hour agoI see it more like The Godfather Part I & II. We were betrayed by the stupidest simpletons of our own family (citizenry) that sold us out for trinkets, false promises of grandeur and propaganda from Rival Mafia Families who wanted to rub our family out, kill our leader and take over. "I didn't know until today, it was Barzini all along." Yeah, but Fredo was the turn coat that made it all possible. Meet the simpletons of our Family known as your fellow American voter. "A Republic, if you can keep it." We lost it, kiss it goodbye. Say hello to the new Black Hand on the block.
sbin , 1 hour agoOne of the best articles on ZH in a while. The elites are so full of hubris, they behave as if the state of affairs since the post-WWII era has always been the state of affairs throughout history and are immutable. They believe that they are cause of America's dominance, not the individuals who built this country on whose goodwill they are now quickly draining.
I think we're like Rome. Currency debasement, no border security, massively corrupt politicians, most of population on welfare, and games and circuses to distract from the rot.
The elites will soon be surprised how quickly things will decline, just as shocked as the Romans when the Visigoths came through the city walls and looted the Imperial City in 410 AD.
play_arrowRKKA , 1 hour agoThe USSR was very similar with decrepit old party hacks ruining everything.
Unfortunately American exceptional lunatics will try to destroy the world before excepting reality.
Never been a group so corrupt and delusional with so much destructive weaponry.
Dr Strangelove is more appropriate.
Max21c , 2 hours agoIn the summer of 1941, the 4th Panzer Division of Heinz Guderian, one of the most talented German tank generals, broke through to the Belarusian town of Krichev. Parts of the 13th Soviet Army were retreating. Only one gunner, Nikolai Sirotinin, did not retreat - very young, short, thin.
On that day, it was necessary to cover the withdrawal of troops. “There will be two people with a cannon here,” said the battery commander. Nikolai volunteered. The second was the commander himself.
On the morning of July 17, a column of German tanks appeared on the highway.
Nikolai took up a position on the hill right on the field. The cannon was sinking in the high rye, but he could clearly see the highway and the bridge over the river. When the lead tank reached the bridge, Nikolai knocked it out with the first shot. The second shell set fire to the armored personnel carrier that closed the column.
We must stop here. Because it is still not entirely clear why Nikolai was left alone at the cannon. But there are versions. He apparently had just the task - to create a "traffic jam" on the bridge, knocking out the head car of the Nazis. The lieutenant at the bridge and adjusted the fire, and then, disappeared. It is reliably known that the lieutenant was wounded and then he left towards the withdrawing positions. There is an assumption that Nikolai had to move away, having completed the task. But ... he had 60 rounds. And he stayed!
Two tanks tried to move the lead tank off the bridge, but they were also hit. The armored vehicle tried to cross the river not across the bridge. But she got stuck in a swampy shore, where another shell found her. Nikolai shot and shot, knocking out tank after tank ...
Guderian's tanks rested on Nikolai Sirotinin, like the Chinese wall, like the Brest fortress. Already 11 tanks and 6 armored personnel carriers were on fire! For almost two hours of this strange battle, the Germans could not understand where the gun was firing from. And when we reached the position of Nikolai, he had only three shells left. The Germans offered him to surrender. Nikolai responded by firing at them with a carbine.
This last battle was short-lived ...
11 tanks and 7 armored vehicles, 57 soldiers and officers were lost by the Nazis after the battle, where they were blocked by the Russian soldier Nikolai Sirotinin.
The inscription on the monument: "Here at dawn on July 17, 1941 entered into combat with a column of fascist tanks and in a two-hour battle repulsed all enemy attacks, senior artillery sergeant Nikolai Vladimirovich Sirotinin, who gave his life for the freedom and independence of our Motherland."
"After all, he is a Russian soldier, is such admiration necessary?" These words were written down in his diary by Chief Lieutenant of the 4th Panzer Division Henfeld: “July 17, 1941. Sokolnichi, near Krichev. An unknown Russian soldier was buried in the evening. He alone stood at the cannon, shot a convoy of our tanks and infantry for a long time, and died. Everyone was amazed at his courage ... Oberst (Colonel) before the grave said that if all the soldiers of the Fuehrer fought like this Russian soldier, they would have conquered the whole world! Three times they fired volleys from rifles. After all, he is a Russian soldier, is such admiration necessary? "
Ordinary people were ready to defend and die for the USSR. And who is Gorbachev, who destroyed the USSR. A traitor who betrayed everything and everyone. A stupid dilettante who imagines himself a world-class politician. The main drawback of the USSR was that the power was too concentrated in the hands of one person, who was trusted without question. But when people realized where he was leading the country, it was too late.
ZeroTruth , 1 hour agoIt's a mix between Nazi Germany and its criminality and thievery and persecution machinery, and Bolshevist Russia and its criminality and thievery and persecution machinery and many third world banana republics and their criminality and thievery and political persecution machinery.
Face it Washingtonians are evil.
ZeroTruth , 1 hour agoAmericuck in and of its entirety is just a criminal organization. I know a restaraunteur that started his business in the Bay Area selling drugs using a fleet of vehicles that had hidden compartments everywhere. Each vehicle was capable of holding up to half a key of yay and powdered molly already grammed up. Drivers were issued burner phones and given orders via dispatcher.
Last I checked, he had 7 restaurants that did amazing business and those vehicles were still on the road providing the other service. That's just one of the many I know of and it's small time compared to what the US government is doing.
DeeDeeTwo , 2 hours agoAmericuck in and of its entirety is just a criminal organization. I know a restaraunteur that started his business in the Bay Area selling drugs using a fleet of vehicles that had hidden compartments everywhere. Each vehicle was capable of holding up to half a key of yay and powdered molly already grammed up. Drivers were issued burner phones and given orders via dispatcher.
Last I checked, he had 7 restaurants that did amazing business and those vehicles were still on the road providing the other service. That's just one of the many I know of and it's small time compared to what the US government is doing.
TBT or not TBT , 2 hours agoThe elites, Big Tech, Media and Deep State threw the kitchen sink at this election and did not move the needle. Regardless of who is next President, nothing changes. This is a tribute to the stability of the American system. In fact, the pendulum is swinging against the subversives who are becoming increasingly reckless and discredited.
What did Huxley call the future country depicted in Brave New World?
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Nov 05, 2020 | caucus99percent.com
Cassiodorus on Tue, 11/03/2020 - 9:14pm
1) Everyone is totally engaged in a debate over whether or not Donald Trump is a "fascist." Maybe he is. But, as I've pointed out in a previous diary , it's a weird sort of fascism that allows people the same freedom of speech and freedom of political action that they would have if Donald Trump were not President, and which in fact celebrates freedom . And indeed it is true that Donald Trump has shown what William I. Robinson calls "fascist tendencies." Robinson, for his part, projects "21st-century fascism" into the future. But, honestly, if this were 20th-century fascism, the type that actually came to fruition as fascism , you would not be reading this diary right now because it would have been censored out of existence. The state would be busy reimposing Jim Crow, and denying women rights in the manner specified in The Handmaid's Tale . It would have abolished democracy altogether, in a way that would prohibit those yelling the word "fascist" the loudest from voting him out of power. It took Adolf Hitler less than two months to establish a permanent dictatorship; Donald Trump has had four years at the pinnacle of power and does not appear to be even close to having the powers Der Fuhrer had. There is, by the way, a term for the ongoing dictatorship at the heart of our situation, the dictatorship that has persisted before Trump and during Trump and will persist after Trump; it's called "inverted totalitarianism," and it pervades the writings of Sheldon Wolin . Yet we are all obliged to call Trump a "fascist," in a sort of mandatory panic.
Saner voices have seen Donald Trump for what he is: an asshole and a troll. Yeah, let's vote him out of office, because who the f*ck likes being trolled? But those voices do not win the day, because there is nothing grandiose about not wanting to be trolled, nothing earth-shaking about saying "gee, aren't you tired of Trump's trolling of us? Let's get rid of him because he's a pest." There is also, I suppose, the attempts to abolish the Postal Service, privatize the public schools, and destroy the EPA. I put this stuff under "pest" because it's not clear that the Republicans under Biden won't try to do these same things under the radar. ("Under the radar," here, means "out of MSNBC's visual range.") The nice liberals with big egos thus appear immature for not being able to admit their (and indeed our) quotidian motive behind their (and indeed our) hatred of Trump.
2) The nice liberals with big egos are going to " Dump Trump, Then Battle Biden ." But there really is no precedent for the nice liberals with big egos actually taking on the party they've put so much energy into supporting so far, as against those evil Republicans. Is there going to be some point at which the nice liberals with big egos all say "okay, the Republicans are no longer worse, so you all have our permission to battle Biden"? It's easy to be skeptical about promises to do something that has never happened before, and that, given the way the system is set up, won't be likely to happen. The nice liberals with big egos need a contingency plan for when their vows to "battle Biden" do not reach audiences, and when the Biden administration tells us all "what are you going to do, vote Republican?". Such a plan would start, but not end, with the Movement for a People's Party .
3) The nice liberals with big egos still can't admit to the great forfeiture of Democratic Party power that happened under Obama. All branches of the Federal government, 12 governor's seats, and 900+ seats in state legislatures , from (D) to (R). It was the primary event of politics in this century, and it escapes their notice. When confronted with its reality, their explanations are lame to the point of not being credible. Come on, folks -- Obama preferred a party which didn't fight for anything YOU believed in, and all the while you were worshiping the ground upon which he walked. Admit it!
4) The nice liberals with big egos insist upon vast overestimates of the power of the Left in a situation in which the Left really has damned little in the way of any power at all. The Left had a lot of potential power in those two short periods in which Bernie Sanders was running for President. You could hear the conversations opening up -- Medicare for All, College for All, the Green New Deal. Okay, so let's go back to that atmosphere, and really put some enthusiasm into it. Or at the very least let's start with a realistic estimate of the power we have, and of the extent to which we've squandered that power by supporting neoliberals like Dukakis, Clinton, Gore, Kerry, Obama, and Clinton Two.
So there it is. If the nice liberals with big egos want to restore my confidence in them, there's where they can start.
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Nov 01, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org
Down South , Nov 1 2020 7:04 utc | 122
I keep on reading this narrative that there is no difference between Trump and Biden and no matter who you vote for the blob wins. That the effort to unseat Trump and overturn the 2016 election results, to derail his 2020 campaign is all some elaborate game of 52D chess that we are too stupid to understand.
Here is my problem with that narrative.
The political scene in the US is split between two factions 1) the US globalists (Democrats/Establishment Republicans/Deep State/Big Tech/MSM/WallStreet) and on the other side 2) US Nationalists (Trump/the deplorables).
When Trump was campaigning in 2016 he made it clear that he intended to bring back the supply chain to the US. All those manufacturing jobs that were outsourced to third world countries to maximise the profits of the large corporations we're going to be brought back and the way he intended on doing that was to exit free trade agreements that harmed US national interest and introduce protectionist policies (tariffs/ low corporate taxes etc) which would entice/induce/force manufacturers to open factories in the US again.
This horrified the globalists as they have for the past decades been implementing a controlled disintegration of the US
The great "liberalization" of world commerce began with a series of waves through the 1970s, and moved into high gear with the interest rate hikes of Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker in 1980-82, the effects of which both annihilated much of the small and medium sized entrepreneurs, opened the speculative gates into the "Savings and Loan" debacle and also helped cartelize mineral, food, and financial institutions into ever greater behemoths. Volcker himself described this process as the "controlled disintegration of the US economy" upon becoming Fed Chairman in 1978. The raising of interest rates to 20-21% not only shut down the life blood of much of the US economic base, but also threw the third world into greater debt slavery, as nations now had to pay usurious interest on US loans.https://thesaker.is/what-the-great-reset-architects-dont-want-you-to-understand-about-economics/What is the eventual end goal of the globalists ?
false solutions to a crisis of global proportions are being promoted in the form of a "Great Global Reset" which aims at creating a new economic order under the fog of COVID. This emerging "new order", as it is being promoted by Mark Carney, George Soros, Bill Gates and other minions of the City of London is shaped by a devout commitment to depopulation, world government and master-slave systems of social control.https://thesaker.is/one-last-chance-to-revive-americas-forgotten-constitutional-traditions-and-avoid-wwiii/By attempting to tie the new system of "value" to economic practices which are designed to crush humanity's ability to sustain itself in the form of "reducing carbon footprints", "sustainable green energy", cap and trade, carbon taxes and green infrastructure bonds, humanity is being set up to accept a system of governance onto our children and grandchildren which will subject them to a dystopic world of fascism the likes of which even Hitler could not have dreamed.
Exiting NAFTA, implementing protectionist measures, lowering corporate taxes, starting a trade war with China (that is where the majority of the outsourced jobs went) he is trying to undo the controlled disintegration of the US. That is why the globalists hate him so much.
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Oct 20, 2020 | thenewkremlinstooge.wordpress.com
MARK CHAPMAN October 19, 2020 at 11:29 am
CORTES October 19, 2020 at 3:23 pmWell, well – hello, Chrystia Freeland, I'd like you to meet Andrzej Duda, President of Poland. What, your Grampy was a Nazi collaborator, too?? You're kidding me – why, we're like brother and sister!!
"Polish President Andrzej Duda pursues a Russophobic policy and actively supports Ukrainian nationalists, because one of his ancestors was a Nazi collaborator who served the Nazi invaders and took part in the massacres on the territory of Belarus.
Ukrainian publicist Miroslava Berdnik, previously persecuted by the SBU, reported this in her Telegram channel, the correspondent of PolitNavigator reports."
Eye witness account by an American immigrant of reaction in Sevastopol to events in the Maidan in 2014 at
"Auslander" 1.50pm on 19/10/20http://thesaker.is/the-great-reset-our-way/#comments
The sequence of actions involving the "polite men in green" is different from other versions.
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Oct 20, 2020 | www.unz.com
Matthew/Boston , says: October 13, 2020 at 11:51 pm GMT
@GeeBeeMatthew/Boston , says: October 14, 2020 at 12:02 am GMTI agree. I roll my eyes every time. It goes to show how deeply embedded the false narrative of NSDAP is. Many otherwise bright writers use this same example. Use the Bolshevism of the USSR instead.
Invest time in viewing 'The Greatest Story NEVER Told' or 'EUROPA: The Last Battle.' They're both long, but comprehensive.
@Matthew/BostonBolshevism may not a good comparison to the common perception of Nazism as Hitler won over the loyalty of much of the German citizenry where Bolshevism was terror handed down to the population by the tyrannical minority at the top.
I lost all my editing time to a slow connection.
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Oct 07, 2020 | failedevolution.blogspot.com
globinfo freexchange
As we explained previously, what we see now in the United States with Trump, is a counter-attack by the part of the American capital against the globalist faction. The faction that is primarily consisted by the liberal plutocracy. Therefore, as the capitalist class splits, the capitalists around Trump are now taking with them the most conservative part of the American society, as they need electoral power. They have the money and their own media network. Their first big victory was Trump in the US presidency and this explains why the liberal media attack him so hard and so frequently.The COVID-19 pandemic added more chaos in the ongoing civil war between capitalists and (as always), the working class is paying the price for the additional mess.
The DNC establishment fought hard, one more time, to get rid of Bernie Sanders in order to impose its own - fully controllable and fully dedicated to the neoliberal status quo - Joe Biden/Kamala Harris duo. Obviously, this was an attempt by the corporate Democrats to challenge and beat Trump without harming neoliberal order through a Socialist like Sanders in the leadership of the Democratic Party. Still, the DNC establishment couldn't take full control of the whole situation as the most popular progressives, like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, renewed their position in the party through big victories in the 2020 primaries. Furthermore, the progressive army came out stronger through significant additional victories like Cori Bush's.Corporate Democrats' anxiety and fear that they could lose control over the party became quite evident during latest party convention, as they tried hard to "bury" their own progressives while gave plenty of time to neoliberal Republicans and war criminals to speak.
And, actually, this is the main reason that the corporate Democrats want so desperately to beat Trump in November's election.
With a potential Biden victory the corporate Dems will re-establish their position in the party against progressives, as they will be able to play the Trump-scare card for four more years.During that time, they will get all the help they want from the liberal media to bury forever the most popular Socialist policies. Simply by claiming that the Trump nightmare could return in 2024. Therefore, they will demand "unity" from all party members under their own terms, in short, under full restoration of the neoliberal status quo. Under these circumstances, corporate Democrats will have plenty of time to assist the liberal plutocrats to take over directly the party in 2024.
On the contrary, with a potential Trump victory the Trump-scare card will be burned for good and corporate Democrats won't be able to use it as Trump won't be able to have another term in 2024.
In that case, corporate Democrats will receive additional pressure from the progressive wing and progressive voters, as these will demand radical changes inside the party towards popular policies. The liberal capitalist faction will face the serious threat to be left without political power, which by 2024, will be restricted to some moderate Republicans who are dedicated to the neoliberal doctrine. The dream of the liberal plutocrats to take over political power directly will die forever.
And this could be proved decisive for the outcome of the endo-capitalist war between the liberal plutocrats and the Trump-affiliated capitalists.
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Oct 15, 2020 | www.unz.com
Hugo Silva , says: October 13, 2020 at 6:30 pm GMT
@GhaliTRM , says: October 13, 2020 at 7:41 pm GMTAt this point American politics is a dispute among two Jewish factions, Trump is a pawn of the Zionist faction and was targeted for destruction by the Cosmopolitan faction. Whoever wins, we loose!
@Ghali ary. The Israeli/Zionist elites care about their constituents opinions about as much as the elites in any group. ZERO. There's a big club and we ain't in it.The Israeli/Zionist elites wanted war with Iran or slapping them back economically to the middle ages. Hillary was going to leave the Iran deal in place and Trump was going to tear it up.
Trump paid for his re-election by murdering Solemani. Trump felt he couldn't start a war in his first term so offered that up to get their support. He will be re-elected in big part because he solidified his position with them as the anti-Iran candidate.
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Oct 15, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com
Submitted by Nauman Sadiq,
Former Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney released an extraordinary statement on Tuesday, decrying a political scene he said "has moved away from spirited debate to a vile, vituperative, hate-filled morass, that is unbecoming of any free nation." "The world is watching America with abject horror," he added.
Romney tweeted his statement under the title "My thoughts on the current state of our politics." "I have stayed quiet," he said, "with the approach of the election." "But I'm troubled by our politics," the sole Republican to vote to impeach Trump added in his statement.
"The president calls the Democratic vice-presidential candidate 'a monster'. He repeatedly labels the Speaker of the House 'crazy.' He calls for the justice department to put the prior president in jail. He attacks the governor of Michigan on the very day a plot is discovered to kidnap her. Democrats launch blistering attacks of their own, though their presidential nominee refuses to stoop as low as others," Romney, a Utah senator who was the 2012 Republican nominee for president, complained in the statement.
Though superficially trying to appear "fair and balanced" in the didactic sermon patronizingly delivered by the only adult in the room full of political upstarts, Romney's perceptible bias in the polemical diatribe was hard not to be noticed.
It defies explanation if he didn't watch the presidential debate or consciously elided over the sordid episode where the Democratic presidential nominee contemptuously sneered at his political rival with derogatory epithets such as "a clown, a racist and Putin's puppy."
I'm not sure if Biden was high on meth during the debate, as Trump had repeatedly been insinuating, or he lacks basic etiquette to act like a dignified statesman, but only amphetamines could make a person take leave of his senses and insolently yell at the president of the US, "Will you shut up, man," while ironically complaining, "This is so unpresidential."
Though a longtime Republican senator, Mitt Romney's loyalty to the GOP was compromised due to a personal spat with Trump. In the Republican primaries of the 2016 US presidential elections, Romney severely castigated Trump, calling him "a phony and a fraud."
After Trump was elected president, he dangled the carrot of the secretary of state appointment to Romney, invited him to a dinner in a swanky New York restaurant, made him eat his words and fawn all over Trump like a servile toady. But later, he gave one of the most coveted appointments in the US bureaucratic hierarchy to oil executive Rex Tillerson.
Romney felt humiliated to the extent that in Trump's vulnerable moment, after impeachment proceedings were initiated against him in the Senate in February, Romney became the only US senator in the American political history who voted against his own Republican Party president.
https://lockerdome.com/lad/13084989113709670?pubid=ld-dfp-ad-13084989113709670-0&pubo=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.zerohedge.com&rid=www.zerohedge.com&width=890
Though lacking intellect and often ridiculed for frequent spelling errors on his Twitter timeline, such as "unpresidented" and "covfefe," implying he gets his news feed from television talk shows and rarely reads book and articles, Donald Trump is street smart and his anti-globalization agenda and down-to-earth attitude appeal to the American working classes.
Nevertheless, it's quite easy for the neuroscientists on the payroll of the national security establishment to manipulate the minds of such impressionable politicians and lead them by the nose to toe the line of the deep state, particularly on foreign policy matters. No wonder national security shills disparagingly sneer at the president as the "toddler-in-chief."
In 2017, a couple of caricatures went viral on social media. In one of those caricatures, Donald Trump was depicted as a child sitting on a chair and Vladimir Putin was shown whispering something into Trump's ears from behind. In the other, Trump was portrayed sitting in Steve Bannon's lap and the latter was shown mumbling into Trump's ears, "Who is the big boy now?" And Trump was shown replying, "I am the big boy."
The meaning conveyed by those cunningly crafted caricatures was to illustrate that Trump lacks the intelligence to think for himself and that he was being manipulated and played around by Putin and Bannon. Those caricatures must have affronted the vanity of Donald Trump to an extent that after the publication of those caricatures, he became ill-disposed toward Putin and sacked Bannon from his job as the White House Chief Strategist in August 2017, only seven months into the first year of the Trump presidency.
Bannon was the principal ideologue of the American alt-right movement. Though the alt-right agenda of the Trump presidency has been scuttled by the deep state, Trump's views regarding global politics and economics are starkly different from the establishment Democrats and Republicans pursuing neocolonial world order masqueraded as globalization and free trade.
Besides the Trump supporters in the United States, the far-right populist leaders in Europe are also exploiting popular resentment against free trade and globalization. The Brexiteers in the United Kingdom, the Yellow Vest protesters in France and the far-right movements in Germany and across Europe are a manifestation of a paradigm shift in the global economic order in which nationalist and protectionist slogans have replaced the free trade and globalization mantra of the nineties.
Donald Trump withdrawing the United States from multilateral treaties, restructuring trade agreements and initiating a trade war against China are meant to redress, at least cosmetically, the legitimate grievances of the American working classes against the wealth disparity created by laissez-faire capitalism and market fundamentalism.
Michael Crowley reported for the New York Times last month that American allies and former US Officials fear Trump could seek NATO exit in a second term. According to the report, "This summer, Mr. Trump's former national security adviser John R. Bolton published a book that described the president as repeatedly saying he wanted to quit the NATO alliance. Last month, Mr. Bolton speculated to a Spanish newspaper that Mr. Trump might even spring an 'October surprise' shortly before the election by declaring his intention to leave the alliance in a second term."
The report notes, "In a book published this week, Michael S. Schmidt, a New York Times reporter, wrote that Mr. Trump's former chief of staff John F. Kelly, a retired four-star Marine general, told others that 'one of the most difficult tasks he faced with Trump was trying to stop him from pulling out of NATO.' One person who has heard Mr. Kelly speak in private settings confirmed that he had made such remarks."
Crowley adds, "Donald Trump now relies on 'a team of inexperienced bureaucrats' and has grown more confident and assertive, as he has already sacked seasoned national security advisers, including John F. Kelly; Jim Mattis, another retired four-star Marine general and Trump's first defense secretary; and H.R. McMaster, a retired three-star Army general and Trump's former national security adviser."
In fact, the Trump administration announced plans in July to withdraw 12,000 American troops from Germany and sought to cut funding for the Pentagon's European Deterrence Initiative. About half of the troops withdrawn from Germany were re-deployed in Europe, mainly in Italy and Poland, and the rest returned to the US.
Similarly, although full withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan was originally scheduled for April next year, according to terms of peace deal reached with the Taliban on February 29, President Trump hastened the withdrawal process by making an electoral pledge this week that all troops should be "home by Christmas." "We should have the small remaining number of our BRAVE Men and Women serving in Afghanistan home by Christmas," he tweeted last week.
Even the arch-foes of the US in Afghanistan effusively praised President Trump's peace overtures. Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid told CBS News in a phone interview last week, "We hope he will win the election and wind up US military presence in Afghanistan."
The militant group also expressed concern about President Trump's bout with the coronavirus. "When we heard about Trump being COVID-19 positive, we got worried for his health, but it seems he is getting better," another Taliban senior leader confided to reporter Sami Yousafzai.
Moreover, Iran-backed militias recently announced "conditional" cease-fire against the US forces in Iraq on the condition that Washington present a timetable for the withdrawal of its troops. The US-led coalition has already departed from smaller bases across Iraq and promised to reduce its troop presence from 5,200 to 3,000 in the next couple of months, though Iraq's parliament passed a resolution urging the full withdrawal of US troops in January.
There is no denying the fact that the four years of the Trump presidency have been unusually tumultuous in the American political history, but if one takes a cursory look at the list of all the Trump aides who resigned or were otherwise sacked, almost all of them were national security officials.
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In fact, scores of former Republican national security officials recently made their preference public that they would vote in the upcoming US presidential elections for Democrat Joe Biden instead of Republican Donald Trump against party lines.
What does that imply? It is an incontrovertible proof that the latent conflict between the deep state and the elected representatives of the American people has come to a head during the Trump presidency.
Although far from being a vocal critic of the deep state himself, the working-class constituency that Trump represents has had enough with the global domination agenda of the national security establishment. The American electorate wants the US troops returned home, and wants to focus on national economy and redress wealth disparity instead of acting as global police waging "endless wars" thousands of miles away from the US territorial borders.
Addressing a convention of conservatives last year, Trump publicly castigated his own generals, much to the dismay of neoliberal chauvinists upholding American exceptionalism and militarism, by revealing: "I learn more sometimes from soldiers what's going on, than I do from generals. I do. I hate to say it. I tell the generals all the time."
At another occasion, he ruffled more feathers by telling the reporters: "I'm not saying the military's in love with me. The soldiers are. The top people in the Pentagon probably aren't because they want to do nothing but fight wars so all of those wonderful companies that make the bombs and make the planes and make everything else stay happy."
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Oct 15, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com
by Simon Black via Sovereign Man
American diplomat George Messersmith found himself in an awkward situation while attending a luncheon in Kiel, Germany in August of 1933.
As lunch came to a close, the attendees erupted into song with arms outstretched in the Nazi salute.
First they belted out Germany's national anthem, followed by the anthem of the Stormtroopers– the paramilitary "Brownshirts" who violently enforced Germany's new social rules.
Messersmith was the US Consul-General overseeing America's diplomatic ties with Germany, so he politely stood at attention. But he did not salute or sing along.
Germans were required by law to render the Nazi salute, especially during the anthem; Hitler had been awarded supreme executive authority only a few months before, and he made the mandatory salute law of the land.
Foreigners, however, were explicitly exempt from saluting or singing the anthem.
But that didn't help Messersmith.
Even though he was legally excused from making the Nazi salute, angry Brownshirts menacingly glared at him for not participating in their rituals.
Messersmith later wrote in his memoirs that he felt threatened, as if the Brownshirts were ready to attack him.
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"I felt really quite fortunate that the incident took place within doors. . . For if it had been in a street gathering, or in an outdoor demonstration, no questions would have been asked as to who I was, and that I would have been mishandled is almost unquestionable."
Messersmith was one of the few US officials who grasped just how dangerous the Nazis were in 1933. Others had to witness it first hand before they understood.
A similar event unfolded when a US radio host and his family found themselves amidst an impromptu Nazi parade in Berlin.
And in order to avoid Hailing Hitler, they turned their backs to the parade and gazed into a store window.
But several Brownshirts quickly surrounded the family and demanded to know why they did not salute.
The family explained that they were from the US and didn't know the customs in Germany. But the Brownshirts didn't care. The family was assaulted as police officers watched and did nothing to stop the violence.
News of these sorts of incidents quickly made their way overseas, and foreigners read the about Americans traveling in Germany being savagely beaten or threatened for not engaging in Nazi rituals.
But more surprising is that many foreigners actually sided with the Nazis.
Even the daughter of the US Ambassador to Germany defended the Nazis and their Brownshirt enforcers.
She said that news reports of these assaults and beatings were "exaggerated by bitter, close-minded people" who ignored the "thrilling rebirth" Hitler had ushered in for Germany.
Of course, we know in retrospect that these early warning signs were not at all an exaggeration. They were a small preview for what would come next.
Today we are obviously in a different time dealing with totally different circumstances.
But it would be foolish to ignore the early warning signs and pretend as if what's happening now is not a preview for what could come next.
This is perhaps best illustrated by a CNN reporter in Kenosha, Wisconsin back in August who stood in front of burning cars and buildings, with a violent mob all around him, yet declared the protests "fiery but mostly peaceful."
This willful ignorance of the undercurrent coursing its way through the Western world will not save anyone from the destruction it brings.
For example, just this past Monday, "peaceful protesters" in Portland, Oregon celebrated Columbus Day with an "Indigenous People's Day of Rage."
They weren't even pretending to be peaceful. They called it what it is: RAGE. That's literally the name they gave to their own actions.
Hundreds of people dressed in all black, covered their faces, and armed themselves with shields and nightsticks. They marched their way through the city, smashed windows, and forced any witnesses to stop filming and delete photographs.
A man who filmed from his apartment's terrace had lasers shined in his eyes and was doused in some sort of liquid.
The protesters tore down statues of Teddy Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln. They smashed the windows of the Oregon Historical Society building, and unfurled a banner that said "stop honoring racist colonizer murderers."
Police did not even attempt to intervene until the rioters had been on the streets for hours and had already caused havoc and destruction.
(Ironically, much of the mainstream media still refuses to acknowledge that this group 'antifa'– the fascists who call themselves anti-fascists– even exists.)
It's obvious that a small, fringe, ideological minority has started to take control.
They have squashed civil discourse and free speech. Dissent is met with violence and intimidation. And if you dare to speak out, you become a target.
That could mean being "cancelled" by the Twitter mob. Or being accosted in public and forced to raise your fist. Several people have already been killed in protests across the nation.
When people like the former CEO of Twitter are calling for capitalists to be "lined up against the wall and shot," it's time to take the threat seriously.
This is far from the first time in history that a tiny fraction of the population has resorted to violence and extremism to force their agenda on an entire nation.
But you don't have to watch helplessly as the born-again Brownshirts destroy everything you have worked for.
The first step is to recognize that the radical movement will not simply go away on its own. This has been growing for some time, and history tells us that it could become much worse.
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Second, have a rock solid Plan B. This means deciding– in advance, when you're still calm and rational– what steps to take in order to secure your family's safety, your prosperity, and your freedom in a worst case scenario.
After all, you don't want to be thinking about your next move when some antifa thug 'peacefully' hurls a molotov cocktail through your window.
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Oct 01, 2020 | www.theamericanconservative.com
n 1951, six years after the end of World War II, the political philosopher Hannah Arendt published The Origins of Totalitarianism , in an attempt to understand how such radical ideologies of both left and right had seized the minds of so many in the 20th century. Arendt's book used to be a staple in college history and political theory courses. With the end of the Cold War 30 years behind us, who today talks about totalitarianism? Almost no one -- and if they do, it's about Nazism, not communism.
Unsurprisingly, young Americans suffer from profound ignorance of what communism was, and is. The Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, a nonprofit educational and research organization established by the U.S. Congress, carries out an annual survey of Americans to determine their attitudes toward communism, socialism, and Marxism in general. In 2019, the survey found that a startling number of Americans of the post-Cold War generations have favorable views of left-wing radicalism, and only 57 percent of Millennials believe that the Declaration of Independence offers a better guarantee of "freedom and equality" than The Communist Manifesto .
Some émigrés who grew up in Soviet-dominated societies are sounding the alarm about the West's dangerous drift into conditions like they once escaped. They feel it in their bones. Reading Arendt in the shadow of the extraordinary rise of identity-politics leftism and the broader crisis of liberal democracy is to confront a deeply unsettling truth: that these refugees from communism may be right.
What does contemporary America have in common with pre-Nazi Germany and pre-Soviet Russia? Arendt's analysis found a number of social, political, and cultural conditions that tilled the ground for those nations to welcome poisonous ideas.
Loneliness and Social Atomization
Totalitarian movements, said Arendt, are "mass organizations of atomized, isolated individuals." She continues:
What prepares men for totalitarian domination in the non-totalitarian world, is the fact that loneliness, once a borderline experience usually suffered in certain marginal social conditions like old age, has become an everyday experience of the ever-growing masses of our century.
The political theorist wrote those words in the 1950s, a period we look back on as a golden age of community cohesion. Today, loneliness is widely recognized by scientists as a critical social and even medical problem. In the year 2000, Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam published Bowling Alone , an acclaimed study documenting the steep decline of civil society since midcentury and the resulting atomization of America.
Since Putnam's book, we have experienced the rise of social media networks offering a facsimile of "connection." Yet we grow ever lonelier and more isolated. It is no coincidence that Millennials and members of Generation Z register much higher rates of loneliness than older Americans, as well as significantly greater support for socialism. It's as if they aspire to a politics that can replace the community they wish they had.
Sooner or later, loneliness and isolation are bound to have political effects. The masses supporting totalitarian movements, says Arendt, grew "out of the fragments of a highly atomized society whose competitive structure and concomitant loneliness of the individual had been held in check only through membership in a class."
A polity filled with alienated individuals who share little sense of community and purpose, and who lack civic trust, are prime targets for totalitarian ideologies and leaders who promise solidarity and meaning.
Losing Faith in Hierarchies and Institutions
Surveying the political scene in Germany during the 1920s, Arendt noted a "terrifying negative solidarity" among people from diverse classes, united in their belief that all political parties were populated by fools. Likewise, in late imperial Russia, Marxist radicals finally gained traction with the middle class when the Tsarist government failed miserably to deal with a catastrophic 1891-92 famine.
Are we today really so different? According to Gallup, Americans' confidence in their institutions -- political, media, religious, legal, medical, corporate -- is at historic lows across the board. Only the military, the police, and small businesses retain the strong confidence of over 50 percent. Democratic norms are under strain in many industrialized nations, with the support for mainstream parties of left and right in decline.
In Europe of the 1920s, says Arendt, the first indication of the coming totalitarianism was the failure of established parties to attract younger members, and the willingness of the passive masses to consider radical alternatives to discredited establishment parties.
A loss of faith in democratic politics is a sign of a deeper and broader instability. As radical individualism has become more pervasive in our consumerist-driven culture, people have ceased to look outside themselves to religion or other traditional sources of authoritative meaning.
But this imposes a terrible psychological burden on the individual. Many of them may seek deliverance as the alienated masses of pre-totalitarian Germany and Russia did: in the certainties and solidarity offered by totalitarian movements.
The Desire to Transgress and Destroy
The post-World War I generation of writers and artists were marked by their embrace and celebration of anti-cultural philosophies and acts as a way of demonstrating contempt for established hierarchies, institutions, and ways of thinking. Arendt said of some writers who glorified the will to power, "They read not Darwin but the Marquis de Sade."
Her point was that these authors did not avail themselves of respectable intellectual theories to justify their transgressiveness. They immersed themselves in what is basest in human nature and regarded doing so as acts of liberation. Arendt's judgment of the postwar elites who recklessly thumbed their noses at respectability could easily apply to those of our own day who shove aside liberal principles like fair play, race neutrality, free speech, and free association as obstacles to equality. Arendt wrote:
The members of the elite did not object at all to paying a price, the destruction of civilization, for the fun of seeing how those who had been excluded unjustly in the past forced their way into it.
One thinks of the university presidents and news media executives of our time who have abandoned professional standards and old-fashioned liberal values to embrace "antiracism" and other trendy left-wing causes. Some left-wing politicians and other progressive elites either cheered for the George Floyd race riots, or, like New York mayor Bill De Blasio, stood idly by as thuggish mobs looted and burned stores in the name of social justice.
Regarding transgressive sexuality as a social good was not an innovation of the sexual revolution. Like the contemporary West, late imperial Russia was also awash in what historian James Billington called "a preoccupation with sex that is quite without parallel in earlier Russian culture." Among the social and intellectual elite, sexual adventurism, celebrations of perversion, and all manner of sensuality was common. And not just among the elites: the laboring masses, alone in the city, with no church to bind their consciences with guilt, or village gossips to shame them, found comfort in sex.
The end of official censorship after the 1905 uprising opened the floodgates to erotic literature, a prefiguration of our century's technology-driven pornographic revolution. "The sensualism of the age was in a very intimate sense demonic," Billington writes, detailing how the figure of Satan became a Romantic hero for artists and musicians. They admired the diabolic willingness to stop at nothing to satisfy one's desires and to exercise one's will.
Propaganda and the Willingness to Believe Useful Lies
Heda Margolius Kovály, a disillusioned Czech communist whose husband was executed after a 1952 show trial, reflects on the willingness of people to turn their backs on the truth for the sake of an ideological cause: It is not hard for a totalitarian regime to keep people ignorant. Once you relinquish your freedom for the sake of "understood necessity," for Party discipline, for conformity with the regime, for the greatness and glory of the Fatherland, or for any of the substitutes that are so convincingly offered, you cede your claim to the truth. Slowly, drop by drop, your life begins to ooze away just as surely as if you had slashed your wrists; you have voluntarily condemned yourself to helplessness.
You can surrender your moral responsibility to be honest out of misplaced idealism. You can also surrender it by hating others more than you love truth. In pre-totalitarian states, Arendt writes, hating "respectable society" was so narcotic, that elites were willing to accept "monstrous forgeries in historiography" for the sake of striking back at those who, in their view, had "excluded the underprivileged and oppressed from the memory of mankind."
For example, many who didn't really accept Marx's revisionist take on history -- that it is a manifestation of class struggle -- were willing to affirm it because it was a useful tool to punish those they despised. Consider the lavish praise with which elites have welcomed The New York Times 's "1619 Project," a vigorously revisionist attempt to make slavery the central fact of the American founding.
Despite the project's core claim (that the patriots fought the American Revolution to preserve slavery) having been thoroughly debunked, journalism's elite saw fit to award the project's director a Pulitzer Prize for her contribution.
Along those lines, propaganda helps change the world by creating a false impression of the way the world is. Writes Arendt, "The force possessed by totalitarian propaganda lies in its ability to shut the masses off from the real world."
In 2019, Zach Goldberg, a political science PhD student at Georgia Tech, found that over a nine-year period, the rate of news stories using progressive jargon associated with left-wing critical theory and social justice concepts shot into the stratosphere. The mainstream media is framing the general public's understanding of news and events according to what was until very recently a radical ideology confined to left-wing intellectual elites.
A Mania for Ideology
Why are people so willing to believe demonstrable lies? The desperation alienated people have for a story that helps them make sense of their lives and tells them what to do explains it. For a man desperate to believe, totalitarian ideology is more precious than life itself. "He may even be willing to help in his own prosecution and frame his own death sentence if only his status as a member of the movement is not touched," Arendt wrote. Indeed, the files of the 1930s Stalinist show trials are full of false confessions by devout communists who were prepared to die rather than admit that communism was a lie.
Similarly, under the guise of antiracism training, U.S. corporations, institutions, and even churches are frog-marching their employees through courses in which whites and other ideologically disfavored people are compelled to confess their "privilege." Some do, eagerly.
One of contemporary progressivism's commonly used phrases -- the personal is political -- captures the totalitarian spirit, which seeks to infuse all aspects of life with political consciousness. Indeed, the Left today pushes its ideology ever deeper into the private realm, leaving fewer and fewer areas of daily life uncontested. This, warned Arendt, is a sign that a society is ripening for totalitarianism, because that is what totalitarianism essentially is: the politicization of everything.
Early in the Stalin era, N. V. Krylenko, a Soviet commissar (political officer), steamrolled over chess players who wanted to keep politics out of the game.
"We must finish once and for all with the neutrality of chess," he said. "We must condemn once and for all the formula 'chess for the sake of chess,' like the formula 'art for art's sake.' We must organize shockbrigades of chess-players, and begin immediate realization of a Five-Year Plan for chess."
A Society That Values Loyalty More Than Expertise
"Totalitarianism in power invariably replaces all first-rate talents, regardless of their sympathies, with those crackpots and fools whose lack of intellect and creativity is still the best guarantee of their loyalty," wrote Arendt.
All politicians prize loyalty, but few would regard it as the most important quality in government, and even fewer would admit it. But President Donald Trump is a rule-breaker in many ways. He once said, "I value loyalty above everything else -- more than brains, more than drive, and more than energy."
Trump's exaltation of personal loyalty over expertise is discreditable and corrupting. But how can liberals complain? Loyalty to the group or the tribe is at the core of leftist identity politics. This is at the root of "cancel culture," in which transgressors, however minor their infractions, find themselves cast into outer darkness.
Beyond cancel culture, which is reactive, institutions are embedding within their systems ideological tests to weed out dissenters. At universities within the University of California system, for example, teachers who want to apply for tenure-track positions have to affirm their commitment to "equity, diversity, and inclusion" -- and to have demonstrated it, even if it has nothing to do with their field.
De facto loyalty tests to diversity ideology are common in corporate America, and have now found their way into STEM faculties and publications, as well as into medical science.
A Soviet-born U.S. physician told me -- after I agreed not to use his name -- that social justice ideology is forcing physicians like him to ignore their medical training and judgment when it comes to transgender health. He said it is not permissible within his institution to advise gender dysphoric patients against treatments they desire, even when a physician believes it is not in that particular patient's health interest.
Intellectuals Are the Revolutionary Class
In our populist era, politicians and talk-radio polemicists can rile up a crowd by denouncing elites. Nevertheless, in most societies, intellectual and cultural elites determine its long-term direction.
"[T]he key actor in history is not individual genius but rather the network and the new institutions that are created out of those networks," writes sociologist James Davison Hunter. Though a revolutionary idea might emerge from the masses, says Hunter, "it does not gain traction until it is embraced and propagated by elites" working through their "well-developed networks and powerful institutions."
This is why it is critically important to keep an eye on intellectual discourse. Arendt warns that the twentieth-century totalitarian experience shows how a determined and skillful minority can come to rule over an indifferent and disengaged majority. In our time, most people regard the politically correct insanity of campus radicals as not worthy of attention. They mock them as "snowflakes" and "social justice warriors."
This is a serious mistake. In radicalizing the broader class of elites, social justice warriors (SJWs) are playing a similar historic role to the Bolsheviks in prerevolutionary Russia. SJW ranks are full of middle-class, secular, educated young people wracked by guilt and anxiety over their own privilege, alienated from their own traditions, and desperate to identify with something, or someone, to give them a sense of wholeness and purpose.
For them, the ideology of social justice -- as defined not by church teaching but by critical theorists in the academy -- functions as a pseudo-religion. Far from being confined to campuses and dry intellectual journals, SJW ideals are transforming elite institutions and networks of power and influence. They are marching through the institutions of bourgeois society, conquering them, and using them to transform the world. For example, when the LGBT cause was adopted by corporate America, its ultimate victory was assured.
Futuristic Fatalism
To be sure, none of this means that totalitarianism is inevitable. But they do signify that the weaknesses in contemporary American society are consonant with a pre-totalitarian state. Like the imperial Russians, we Americans may well be living in a fog of self-deception about our own country's stability. It only takes a catalyst like war, economic depression, plague, or some other severe and prolonged crisis that brings the legitimacy of the liberal democratic order into question.
As Arendt warned more than half a century ago:
There is a great temptation to explain away the intrinsically incredible by means of liberal rationalizations. In each one of us, there lurks such a liberal, wheedling us with the voice of common sense. The road to totalitarian domination leads through many intermediate stages for which we can find numerous analogues and precedents. . . . What common sense and "normal people" refuse to believe is that everything is possible.
If totalitarianism comes, it will almost certainly not be Stalinism 2.0, with gulags, secret police, and an all-powerful central state. That would not be necessary. The power of surveillance technology, woke capitalism, and fear of losing bourgeois comfort and status will probably be enough to compel conformity by most.
At least at first, it will be a soft totalitarianism, more on the Brave New World model than the Nineteen Eighty-Four one -- but totalitarianism all the same.
A Czech immigrant to the U.S. who works in academia told me that this "is not supposed to be happening here" -- but it is.
"Any time I try to explain current events and their meaning to my friends or acquaintances, I am met with blank stares or downright nonsense," he says. His own young adult children, born in America and indoctrinated into identity-politics ideology by public schooling, think their father is an alarmist kook. Can anyone blame a man like this for concluding that Americans are going to have to learn about the evils of totalitarianism the hard way?
From the book LIVE NOT BY LIES by Rod Dreher, to be published on September 29, 2020 by Sentinel, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. Copyright © 2020 by Rod Dreher.
Eliavy Augustine • 21 hours agoI grew up under a socialist authoritarian state and I recognized it in the US 20 years ago. In the Patriot Act, to be more precise. It was the very same kind of law that I saw enacted in the early 70s back home that turned the tide of the regime to full out repression. You're noticing it just now because authoritarianism became bipartisan, though you have been quite comfortable since your tribe started it.
Feral Finster Eliavy • 13 hours agoThe week after 9/11, I wrote President Bush asking him not to let something like the Patriot Act happen. I never got a reply and wondered ever since if it went astray (it was via email) or if anyone even read it.
You are getting warmer.
I an not a 9/11 Truther, but 9/11 was hella convenient for those who wanted to saw things like the Bill of Rights as an outdated obstacle to Empire.
kenofken Feral Finster • 9 hours agoJust Stop Digging kenofken • 9 hours agoThe Bill of Rights got dumped in the drug war long before that.
a Texas libertarian Just Stop Digging • 8 hours ago<sigh> There are credible arguments to be made against the drug war, for sure, but how exactly did the Bill of Rights get "dumped"? OK I'm willing to concede that the Fourth Amendment got stretched beyond recognition to accommodate no-knock warrants and the like. Which of the rest of the Bill of Rights got dumped by the drug war?
If only liberals actually understood and believed in the 9th and 10th amendments, OTOH, we might be able to restore federal governance to something resembling sanity.
Sean Whitney Just Stop Digging • 7 hours agoWell it is clear those last two of the original amendments have been almost totally forgotten. To speak of them is near treason at this point.
SimpleMachine88 Sean Whitney • 7 hours agoBoth the 9th and 10th Amendments were finally destroyed due to the drug war. The 2nd is collateral damage due to the increased use of home invasion raids by law enforcement see the "firearm enhancements". It can easily be argued that the increased militarization of law enforcement due to the drug war is a violation of the 3rd Amendment. The long sentences due given to people for possessing or selling a plant are a violation of the 8th Amendment. The right to a jury trial has been gutted via voir dire and the refusal of courts to recognize the natural right of all citizens to nullify unjust laws.
I am a liberal in the sense Patrick Henry was a liberal. We should have stuck with the Articles of Confederation.
Just Stop Digging Sean Whitney • 6 hours agoIt can't be easily argued that the drug war runs into the 3rd amendment, that is ridiculous. Nor is the 8th amendment really a great argument, although I do get where you're coming from.
It's obviously completely contemptuous of the idea of enumerated powers like you said before though. Why would you not mention the 4th, 5th, and 6th amendments, which had to be gutted for it, or the ways it runs afoul of the 14th, or basically ignores the precedent set by the 18th and 21st amendments.
Mark Thomason Eliavy • 8 hours agoI too see where you're coming from, though I think the 9th and 10th amendments were already in tatters long before the drug war began. For that blame the now 100 year plus build up of the administrative state (particularly under FDR and LBJ) and the Court's enabling of it through imaginative readings of the Commerce Clause, delegation of powers, etc. Also blame Congress's total dereliction of duty per the above.
Add on the scheme by which the Federal govt takes everyone's money, shuffles it around and then hands it back to the states, but only under the condition that they do what the Federal govt tells them to do. Thus no state actually gets to build/maintain roads, develop housing programs, expand educational access or testing, and essentially anything else without following a million federal edicts.
JonF311 Augustine • 15 hours agoDubya's father had people who read such mail, and who answered it in his name. They seem to have passed on to him some sort of summaries of concerns.
I got from him one such answer.
The son never did that. Never.
E.J. Smith JonF311 • 15 hours agoThe very fact that a website like this exists, and we comment on it, suggests that.. No, we are nit under Totalitarian oppression or even an authoritarian regime. Would Stalin or even Brezhnev have tolerated a TAC critical of the ruling party? How about Hitler, Mussolini or Franco?
GaryH E.J. Smith • 11 hours agoExcellent point. There are, however, concepts such as "controlled opposition" and "soft totalitarianism" as outlined recently in Rod Dreher's piece. The latter concerns me more.
As long as Americans believe that they are getting the carrot they will not notice the slow encroachment of the stick, particulary if it's in the hands of large mega-corporations.
Just Stop Digging JonF311 • 15 hours agoYou, sir, are correct. The totalitarianism rampaging toward us is going to be a paradoxical mix of Sexual Revolution, Cultural Marxism, and Globalist Vampire Capitalism. It will feature elements that seem to have been predicted in Zamyatin's We , Huxley's Brave New World , and Orwell's 1984 . It also has been foretold in Robert Hugh Benson's Lord of the World .
James Just Stop Digging • 6 hours agoI'm sure you are well aware that Rod is not suggesting such a regime is here or coming. He has described how censorship will work / is working in painfully repetitive detail (because obviously people need to hear it over and over again).
Under soft totalitarianism, you will make the wrong response or refuse to affirm or refuse to attend the required re-education workshop and your job and livelihood will be gone. Don't pretend you don't understand Rod's argument.
blej Augustine • 13 hours agoJonf is for the woke soft totalitarianism, a dangerous element in the church, we Orthodox Christian's need to be on guard with Catechumens , and their motives for joining the Church, as well as Cradle liberals who dominate institutions in jurisdictions like GOARCH
Wizard blej • 11 hours agoThe Patriot Act was always bipartisan. Please look at Congressional voting records before posting dumb stuff.
Augustine blej • 10 hours ago • editedMost really bad ideas are.
blej Augustine • 8 hours agoWho introduced and signed it into law again? Dumb stuff...
Augustine blej • 6 hours agoIt had bipartisan support in Congress. Do you understand how the US legislative system works? Presidents don't unilaterally introduce and approve legislation.
Mark Thomason Augustine • 8 hours agoIt wasn't introduced by Bush, but by a nobody Republican in Congress. The act has the paw marks of Republicans through and through. Just 3 Republican congressmen voted against. There's no point hiding behind the bipartisan curtain.
Augustine Mark Thomason • 6 hours agoThere is much yet to be answered for in the Patriot Act origins and how it came to be passed before anyone voting on it had a chance to read it once much less review it with propper staffing.
That Act was sitting on a shelf, like a time bomb, waiting for its chance. I suspect it was part of the preparations for an apocalyptic, dystopian America after a nuclear war.
It was pulled off that shelf because it was what they had on the shelf, it was there so they used it.
kenofken • 21 hours agoAnd voted to renew it again and again.
Mark B. kenofken • 12 hours ago • edited"Can anyone blame a man like this for concluding that Americans are going to have to learn about the evils of totalitarianism the hard way?"
Americans have never learned anything the easy way. They don't learn the hard way either.
"Among the social and intellectual elite, sexual adventurism, celebrations of perversion, and all manner of sensuality was common."
Let no future commisar say that I didn't do my part for the revolution! I stand ready to humbly serve the people in the creation of an appropriate ministry for perversion.
Kasoy • 17 hours agoThose who will have less than five sexual partners a year and do not switch gender in over two years will be chastised for the term of 10 years by legislation.
Kent Kasoy • 15 hours agoWhen you remove God from your life, the inner desire implanted by God to look for the true meaning in life, & the desire to do good instead of evil remain strong. For most people, the "obvious" path is to give meaning to one's life is to follow the feel-good "social justice" road, a form of false humanism (for man & by man alone), ie, social justice without God that tries to create a paradise on earth (same way that communism tried to create a utopia without God).
Many young Americans no longer believe in God's relevance & His authority over their lives. This normally starts with the loss of respect for the authority of parents who represent God in the home (even Jesus was obedient to his mortal parents). The gradual destruction of the "domestic church", the family, in American homes is one of the immediate goals of radical agenda (eg, gender conflicts & confusion, gender id, gender choice, abortion, contraception, women liberation, etc) that results in increasing number of divorce & single-parent homes.
The only way to correct the path to a radical secular future is for people, esp the young, to regain their faith in God. The question is how. Evangelization is one. One can evangelize by words &or by acts. St Franscis of Assisi is often quoted to have said: When you evangelize, sometimes you need to use words. I think Rod is doing both through his books.
richnice1975 Kent • 11 hours agoIf God isn't implanted in a child's mind at a young age, it most likely never will. People, in there 20's, who never went to church are unlikely to ever become Christians. If you don't believe Heaven and Hell exist, why do you need a Savior? Look at the number of young families with young children at Church, and consider how many aren't there. That's the future.
The idea of God doesn't need to be implanted in a chil
