Showing posts with label Fascist Insects. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Fascist Insects. Show all posts
Wednesday, June 29, 2011
Man Badly Beaten on Madrid Subway
In this shocking video, people are on a subway in Madrid, Spain. A man walks down the aisle, then seems to recognize another young man sitting there. The man walking by puts down his backpack, then turns around suddenly kicks the sitting man in the head!
He repeatedly pummels him, often to the head, and lands another couple of hard kicks to the head before he calls it off. The people around clear out while the beating is going on. Then a couple of older men surround the attacker and keep away from the guy he was beating.
It turns out that the attacker was an anti antifascist. He recognized the man he attacked as a fascist who he had seen at a fascist rally a while earlier. The fascist got badly beaten up. He had a big black eye.
Cool! Bash the fash!
Saturday, November 13, 2010
Al Jazeera Releases Photographs of Sri Lankan Genocide Against Tamils in 2010
I am looking for translators to translate this post into German. Email me if you are interested.
The Civil War in Sri Lanka is highly controversial. A good neutral overview is here.
I have always supported the just struggle of the Sri Lankan Tamils for self-determination in Sri Lanka. That doesn't necessarily mean support for the Tamil Tigers, whose tactics were often horrible. But do not the natives have a right to resist settler-colonization, ethnic warfare, ethnic cleansing, extreme, Nazi-like fascist racism and genocide?
Sure they do.
Do we quibble about the just nature of the struggle of the Native Americans, the Black slave revolts, the various anti-colonial wars, the anti-Nazi resistance, the Allies' war against Nazi Orcs in WW2, the Chechens, Kashmiris, Basques, Acehese, East Timorese, South Sudanese, Darfurians, Polisario Front, PKK in Kurdistan, Tibetans, Uighurs, various self-determination struggles in Burma and India, just because we disagree with their tactics?
Of course not.
And the Tamil struggle was just as valid as that of the Native Americans or any of the rest of the above.
Briefly, after Sri Lanka achieved independence, the Buddhist Sinhalese instituted a ferociously racist project against the minority Hindu Tamils that culminated in repeated pogroms. It was like Christallnact from 1947-1983. The Tamils, after decades of petitioning peacefully for change, took up arms in self-defense in 1983. For some time, they achieved great success to the point of having a near-autonomous area in the North.
In the last few years, serious errors on the part of the Tigers, including attacks on all of their Tamil political rivals, combined with huge arms purchases by the Nazi Sri Lankan state, mostly purchased from Tony Blair in the UK, allowed the government to pursue a major offensive against the Tamils.
The area controlled by the Tamils shrunk more and more, until gradually they were cornered in a small area. As the state closed in, they unleashed genocide against the Tigers and the civilians who supported them. Surrendering Tigers were bound and tied and executed in huge numbers. Soldiers and plainclothes death squads in white vans roamed the area, picking up Tamil civilians, often young men. Many disappeared and later turned up dead.
Fleeing civilians were forced back into the Tamil-held area, and then mass-shelled. Overflowing Tamil hospitals were deliberately attacked over and over. Waves of Tamil refugees moving across the land were deliberately attacked from air, land and sea.
The entire Western world and much of the developing imperialist states of the 3rd World such as India stood back and cheered. They could hardly contain their glee at this shocking mass slaughter.
By this Spring, the Tigers were defeated. They have not yet resurrected. Tamil refugees were put in concentration camps, beaten, starved and mass-raped. Gradually, many of them were released. The repression is ongoing.
Though all resistance has stopped, death squads and the Sri Lankan military continue to arrest young Tamil men. The jails are full of Tamils and Tiger fighters wanted on terrorism charges. Tigers who laid down arms and went back to civilian life are constantly hassled by death squads.
The state has moved huge numbers of Sinhalese, Tamil Muslims and other non-Hindu Tamils into the area, where they steal Tamil lands, evict Tamils from their homes, steal their property and usurp their fishing areas. It's like Palestine with Racer's Edge additive poured on.
It's absolutely revolting the way the entire West lined up behind this modern-day Sinhalese Nazi regime, but it goes to show that states have no moral principles, only practical ones. But that's what psychopaths have. Every Western state supported Sri Lanka because most states will support any state, no matter how evil or Nazi, in their fight against separatists. They are all thinking, "There but for the grace of God go I," and "We may be next."
Good background on the crisis from a Left, pro-Tamil POV (the only moral position to take) is in three articles by Ron Ridenour on Counterpunch . Tamilnet has excellent reporting from the Tamil POV.
The Indian Maoists were one of the few large parties in India to support the Tigers. Even the "Marxists" in power in West Bengal supported the Sri Lankan state to the hilt, as did the "Dravidian" parties in the south of India who represent Indian Tamils, among others. Talk about selling out.
I've met some Indian Tamils. Every one I asked said that they supported the Tigers, and there are 10's of millions of Tamils in India.
Monday, October 06, 2008
Migration and Language Policy
In comments on the The Record of Communist Language Policy post, James Schipper notes astutely:
Immigration into a region does indeed threaten a local tongue. This is a long-standing problem in the Basque Country of Spain. In Northern Italy, there are various Italian "dialects" spoken which are actually separate languages. They include Venetian, Emiliano-Romagnolo, Ligurian, Piedmontese and East Lombard and West Lombard .
These languages are part of a Romance branch called Gallo-Italic that is actually closer to Spanish and especially French than it is to Italian! Emiliano and Romagnolo may be separate languages and some of the Lombard lects are quite diverse.
The first four are in good shape despite having no status or rights at all granted by the Italian state, which has been on a mission since Mussolini to wipe out all of the Italian "dialects" are replace them with Standard Italian (which is actually based on the Tuscan dialect, selected in 1860 as the source of Standard Italian).
Truth is that this is unnecessary. Almost all non-elderly Italians speak Standard Italian well, and the vast majority of older folks do too. Visitors to other parts of Italy simply switch to Standard Italian when speaking to residents, and residents used Italian to speak to outsiders.
Anyway, while the first four are in good shape, East and West Lombard are not doing so well. The usual reason cited is a large number of immigrants to the region.
The Northern Italian languages are interesting in that they are spoken in economically vibrant regions - most minority tongues are spoken in the backwards, poorer and rural areas, and this backwardness is part of what keeps them alive.
But it is the very vibrancy of the Northern Italian economy that threatens the local languages due to many immigrants, most of whom probably don't want to learn the local language, and instead fall back on Standard Italian.
The Balearic Islands, where Catalan is spoken, and Corsica, where Corse is spoken, are also threatened by waves of immigrants and in particular vast numbers of tourists.
I didn't know about the Swiss language policy that James describes, but I have always thought that the Swiss were some of the most admirable foreigners out there.
One very important aspect of language policy is migration. The more migration there is within a multilingual state, the more minority languages are threatened. If Russians are free to move move into Latvia, then the Latvian language will be in danger, even if Latvian remains an official language in Latvia.It is sad but true that the only to really be sure of preserving your language is to have an independent state. This is one reason that I support many separatist movements - I assume that this may be necessary in order to preserve a minority tongue. James is correct, though.
We are seeing this in Tibet too. The influx of Chinese in Tibet is the real danger to the Tibetan language. In the capital of Tibet, the Chinese are already the majority. The smaller a people is, the more they have to be able to control immigration if they want to survive as a nation.
Of course, by making its territory rigidly unilingual, the minority can create a linguistic barrier to immigration. If Latvian is the sole language of administration and instruction in Latvia, then Russians will think twice before settling there.
For minority languages there are two basic rules: concentrate yourself in one area and make that area as unilingual as possible. This is really only possible in a federal state in which the provincial borders match the linguistic borders as closely as possible.
In Switzerland, this territorial principle is strictly applied. No French in Zürich and no German in Genève. Of the 26 Swiss cantons, only 4 are not unilingual, but within those four there are internal linguistic borders. As usual the Swiss do it right. They are without doubt the only foreigners that deserve admiration.
Immigration into a region does indeed threaten a local tongue. This is a long-standing problem in the Basque Country of Spain. In Northern Italy, there are various Italian "dialects" spoken which are actually separate languages. They include Venetian, Emiliano-Romagnolo, Ligurian, Piedmontese and East Lombard and West Lombard .
These languages are part of a Romance branch called Gallo-Italic that is actually closer to Spanish and especially French than it is to Italian! Emiliano and Romagnolo may be separate languages and some of the Lombard lects are quite diverse.
The first four are in good shape despite having no status or rights at all granted by the Italian state, which has been on a mission since Mussolini to wipe out all of the Italian "dialects" are replace them with Standard Italian (which is actually based on the Tuscan dialect, selected in 1860 as the source of Standard Italian).
Truth is that this is unnecessary. Almost all non-elderly Italians speak Standard Italian well, and the vast majority of older folks do too. Visitors to other parts of Italy simply switch to Standard Italian when speaking to residents, and residents used Italian to speak to outsiders.
Anyway, while the first four are in good shape, East and West Lombard are not doing so well. The usual reason cited is a large number of immigrants to the region.
The Northern Italian languages are interesting in that they are spoken in economically vibrant regions - most minority tongues are spoken in the backwards, poorer and rural areas, and this backwardness is part of what keeps them alive.
But it is the very vibrancy of the Northern Italian economy that threatens the local languages due to many immigrants, most of whom probably don't want to learn the local language, and instead fall back on Standard Italian.
The Balearic Islands, where Catalan is spoken, and Corsica, where Corse is spoken, are also threatened by waves of immigrants and in particular vast numbers of tourists.
I didn't know about the Swiss language policy that James describes, but I have always thought that the Swiss were some of the most admirable foreigners out there.
The Record of Communist Language Policy
A commenter posting on the Cool Neo-Latin Websites post critiques what he sees as a disconnect in my views:
Also, most linguists are liberal to leftwing types - it's just their nature, and most folks on the Left support language rights. I would gather that even Centrist to conservative (assuming they exist) linguists would still support minority tongues. So in a way this support by linguists is independent of politics.
This is not true at all. No one has supported the preservation of small languages and cultures better than the Left. First of all, the USSR was the first country on Earth to set a standard for a nationalities policy. The policy called for linguistic and cultural autonomy for all USSR nationalities. Grammars, texts, books and alphabets were developed for all sorts of small languages.
It's true that Stalin pretty much turned a lot of this around in the 1930's, but even by the 1950's, the USSR was still very progressive on the language question. Also, all nationalities were given the right to secede.
China also gave all nationalities the right to use their language and cultural autonomy. They also had the right, similar to the USSR, to education in their native language. China's language policy is very progressive by world standards. It's true that they have not been so good with the Tibetans and especially the Uighurs, but the language policy for the Tibetans is still pretty good.
Eastern Europe had a great language policy for minority tongues. You must understand that as internationalists, no one opposes the nationalist oppression of minority tongues more than the Communists. It was only due to decades to internationalism that Czechoslovakia was able to split up with no bloodshed.
The USSR also broke up relatively painlessly. The only modern states that have allowed succession at all have typically been seeped in decades of Communist internationalism. Even Vietnam has an excellent language and nationalities policy.
There was a need for a national language in the USSR and that was Russian. Before, in most of the USSR, there were no schools period. The Soviets brought culture, written language, education, modern medicine and civilization to many backwards groups, and for this, nationalist boneheads condemn them.
You ignore that many of these groups were allowed instruction in their native tongues as a medium of instruction. It is true that everyone had to take Russian every year in school from K-12. This was necessary in order to have a national language.
Due to the progressive Soviet language policy, many minority languages in the USSR were still in superb shape even in 1990 with the breakup of the USSR. 70 years of capitalism in the USSR would have been devastating to minority tongues.
The line you are citing above is from fanatical anti-Communists, typically Baltics. These are Lithuanians, Estonians and Latvians, and most of them are fascists . That's interesting because most of these Baltic Nazis support fascism, and no one has been harder on minority tongues than nationalist regimes, particularly the fascists.
With the fall of the USSR, nationalist regimes took over in most of the new states. In most cases, one nation and culture was promoted over all others (a national consolidation project) and minorities and minority tongues were attacked. This definitely occurred in the very Baltic states that were leading the charge against the horrors of Russification for minority tongues.
In Eastern Europe, a similar thing occurred with the fall of the Communist regimes. In general, nationalist regimes took their place and quickly began attacking minorities and minority tongues. This has been most pronounced in the former Yugoslavia, but has also been quite notable in Romania, Hungary and especially Czechoslovakia. We saw this even in Germany. The Sorbs fared well in East German, less well under unification.
The locally-based economies of the USSR were backwards and non-productive. There was a need to bring the state into the modern era and these small groups had to participate in the national economy. After all, they were getting so many benefits from the state, should they not have to contribute something to the economy rather than run around hunting reindeer all the time?
The language policy of China continues to be very progressive for an Asian nation. Sure Mandarin is emphasized, but you need a national tongue. Most minority languages in China are still in surprisingly good shape. The one area where they have been lax is in the Chinese "dialects".
These are actually separate languages, but due to Chinese nationalism, Chinese nationalists refuse to admit this, and say they are all just Chinese. These are languages such as Min, Cantonese, etc. Actually though, most of them still have lots of speakers.
China and the USSR had shortcomings in language policy where they have deviated from internationalism. Stalin did institute Russification, and his successors were even worse. And the Chinese regime has not been immune to Chinese nationalism. It is nationalism, not Communism, that is deadly to small minority tongues. Anti-Communists, almost always nationalists, ought to put that in their pipes and smoke it.
That's funny 4you support preserving small languages, because most communists do not and prefer centralization and one mass-language for everyone.I respond: First of all, I would like to point out that as a linguist, of course I support minority languages. Most linguists do. I would be hard-pressed to think of one that doesn't. So my support for minority languages comes first from being a linguist, and then, if at all, from being a Leftist.
For instance, the communists in the USSR did much to stamp out local languages by forcing all people living within its boundaries to learn Russian first and foremost in state schools (which they were forced to attend).
They did somewhat try to preserve local languages in the so called "autonomous regions" within the Soviet empire, but still many local languages were lost in the forced shuffle from locally-based economies to the centralized/state-run economy where Russian reigned supreme.
In China a similar situation is taking place...many languages and dialects have been lost and are continuing to be lost as the communists there forcibly centralize everything in sight and institute Mandarin over all else.
Also, most linguists are liberal to leftwing types - it's just their nature, and most folks on the Left support language rights. I would gather that even Centrist to conservative (assuming they exist) linguists would still support minority tongues. So in a way this support by linguists is independent of politics.
This is not true at all. No one has supported the preservation of small languages and cultures better than the Left. First of all, the USSR was the first country on Earth to set a standard for a nationalities policy. The policy called for linguistic and cultural autonomy for all USSR nationalities. Grammars, texts, books and alphabets were developed for all sorts of small languages.
It's true that Stalin pretty much turned a lot of this around in the 1930's, but even by the 1950's, the USSR was still very progressive on the language question. Also, all nationalities were given the right to secede.
China also gave all nationalities the right to use their language and cultural autonomy. They also had the right, similar to the USSR, to education in their native language. China's language policy is very progressive by world standards. It's true that they have not been so good with the Tibetans and especially the Uighurs, but the language policy for the Tibetans is still pretty good.
Eastern Europe had a great language policy for minority tongues. You must understand that as internationalists, no one opposes the nationalist oppression of minority tongues more than the Communists. It was only due to decades to internationalism that Czechoslovakia was able to split up with no bloodshed.
The USSR also broke up relatively painlessly. The only modern states that have allowed succession at all have typically been seeped in decades of Communist internationalism. Even Vietnam has an excellent language and nationalities policy.
There was a need for a national language in the USSR and that was Russian. Before, in most of the USSR, there were no schools period. The Soviets brought culture, written language, education, modern medicine and civilization to many backwards groups, and for this, nationalist boneheads condemn them.
You ignore that many of these groups were allowed instruction in their native tongues as a medium of instruction. It is true that everyone had to take Russian every year in school from K-12. This was necessary in order to have a national language.
Due to the progressive Soviet language policy, many minority languages in the USSR were still in superb shape even in 1990 with the breakup of the USSR. 70 years of capitalism in the USSR would have been devastating to minority tongues.
The line you are citing above is from fanatical anti-Communists, typically Baltics. These are Lithuanians, Estonians and Latvians, and most of them are fascists . That's interesting because most of these Baltic Nazis support fascism, and no one has been harder on minority tongues than nationalist regimes, particularly the fascists.
With the fall of the USSR, nationalist regimes took over in most of the new states. In most cases, one nation and culture was promoted over all others (a national consolidation project) and minorities and minority tongues were attacked. This definitely occurred in the very Baltic states that were leading the charge against the horrors of Russification for minority tongues.
In Eastern Europe, a similar thing occurred with the fall of the Communist regimes. In general, nationalist regimes took their place and quickly began attacking minorities and minority tongues. This has been most pronounced in the former Yugoslavia, but has also been quite notable in Romania, Hungary and especially Czechoslovakia. We saw this even in Germany. The Sorbs fared well in East German, less well under unification.
The locally-based economies of the USSR were backwards and non-productive. There was a need to bring the state into the modern era and these small groups had to participate in the national economy. After all, they were getting so many benefits from the state, should they not have to contribute something to the economy rather than run around hunting reindeer all the time?
The language policy of China continues to be very progressive for an Asian nation. Sure Mandarin is emphasized, but you need a national tongue. Most minority languages in China are still in surprisingly good shape. The one area where they have been lax is in the Chinese "dialects".
These are actually separate languages, but due to Chinese nationalism, Chinese nationalists refuse to admit this, and say they are all just Chinese. These are languages such as Min, Cantonese, etc. Actually though, most of them still have lots of speakers.
China and the USSR had shortcomings in language policy where they have deviated from internationalism. Stalin did institute Russification, and his successors were even worse. And the Chinese regime has not been immune to Chinese nationalism. It is nationalism, not Communism, that is deadly to small minority tongues. Anti-Communists, almost always nationalists, ought to put that in their pipes and smoke it.
Friday, August 29, 2008
Multiculturalism and Socialism: The Odd Couple
The latest death toll figures from Hurricane Katrina can be seen on this website here. The famous Russian neo-Nazi video is on this blog here.
Updated September 2:
In the comments section, Scott, who is a White nationalist, discusses the disconnect between multiculturalism and socialism or social democracy.
Yes, we do allow White nationalists, even anti-Black ones, on the board, but every time a cute Black woman shows up on the board, we force them to kiss her. On the lips. On penalty of banning. None have left yet. Brown sugar, how come you taste so good?
Scott says:
Scott is right. Does the UK count as a multicultural country? If it does, it's growing a nasty White racist - fascist party of reaction to the diversity in the BNP.
Does Venezuela count? If Venezuela counts, I would say that Venezuela is a country riven with violence, tension and class war. There seems to be a racial angle, but in the upper class and upper middle class, it's really more about class than race. Nevertheless, it's clear that the oligarchy is much more light-skinned than the Underclass that supports Chavez.
Is multicultural Russia a social democracy? Maybe so, but it's riven from one end to the other with horrible racism.
Do Communist states like China and Cuba count? Maybe so, but those countries, probably due to the class warfare (in the case of both) and combined class/race warfare (in the case of Cuba) inherent in their societies, needed full, bloody Communist revolutions to institute any kind of socialist system.
Vietnam and Laos are multiethnic countries, but the Lao and the Vietnamese are the overwhelming majority. They also needed Communist revolutions to put in socialism.
I would say Sri Lanka. They have a pretty good social democracy there, and the ruling party is a member of the Socialist International. There's also a horribly vicious civil war going on, because that "socialist" party in power has never done much to help the Tamils.
Socialist parties in Chile, Argentina and Brazil haven't been able to get much done. In Chile and Argentina the problem is probably much more class than race. In Brazil, surely it's both race and class together. The socialists in Ecuador and Bolivia are trying to get something done, but Bolivia is riven with a horrific class/race division and it's almost civil war there.
I don't think that the socialist parties in Nicaragua and Guatemala will be able to get much done. Both nations had Leftist revolutions for decades, in the case of Nicaragua followed by a revolutionary government and more civil war, this time counterrevolutionary. Nicaragua was always more about class than race, but the oligarchy is light-skinned. In Guatemala, the situation is very much about both class and race riven together.
One thing becomes clear in this analysis.
The only way to peacefully vote in a socialist or social democratic government is to have a relatively homogeneous society. Typically a White society. As diversity and multiculturalism increases, even in White European countries, White racist/fascist groups rise up for various reasons and racial violence against minorities becomes common.
In multiethnic or deeply class-riven nations (Note how often the two are conflated!), socialism, social democracy or movements towards them is typically accompanied by either outright civil war, de facto civil war, tremendous open class war in terms of coups, attempted coups, lockout strikes, riots, imperialist interventions, class-based separatist movements, and much violence.
In other places, socialist governments are not able to get much done due to deep class and race-based conflicts and the threat of violence from dominant ethnics and/or classes.
In other places, long civil wars eventually installed Communist regimes in multiethnic countries and ethnic conflict subsided or stopped. Short of installing a Communist regime, multiethnic countries moving towards socialism are likely to experience a lot of internal violence and chaos.
If diversity is so bad for socialism, why do socialists in the West keep pushing it?
Good question.
Note: Readers should carefully read the Commenting Rules before commenting to avoid having their comments edited or deleted and to avoid being banned from the site.
Updated September 2:
In the comments section, Scott, who is a White nationalist, discusses the disconnect between multiculturalism and socialism or social democracy.
Yes, we do allow White nationalists, even anti-Black ones, on the board, but every time a cute Black woman shows up on the board, we force them to kiss her. On the lips. On penalty of banning. None have left yet. Brown sugar, how come you taste so good?
Scott says:
Look at the countries that have the highest index of egalitarianism in the West: Iceland, Norway, Sweden (used to have more). The inhabitants are all pretty closely related to one another. I'll spot my sibling $100 cash.I respond:
It's basically the same thing but in a less dramatic way in such countries, but when other nationalities come in because of the aforementioned ethnostates' welfare system, as seek to take advantage of it, the whole system gets messed up. Find me an ethnically diverse country with a social democracy.
Scott is right. Does the UK count as a multicultural country? If it does, it's growing a nasty White racist - fascist party of reaction to the diversity in the BNP.
Does Venezuela count? If Venezuela counts, I would say that Venezuela is a country riven with violence, tension and class war. There seems to be a racial angle, but in the upper class and upper middle class, it's really more about class than race. Nevertheless, it's clear that the oligarchy is much more light-skinned than the Underclass that supports Chavez.
Is multicultural Russia a social democracy? Maybe so, but it's riven from one end to the other with horrible racism.
Do Communist states like China and Cuba count? Maybe so, but those countries, probably due to the class warfare (in the case of both) and combined class/race warfare (in the case of Cuba) inherent in their societies, needed full, bloody Communist revolutions to institute any kind of socialist system.
Vietnam and Laos are multiethnic countries, but the Lao and the Vietnamese are the overwhelming majority. They also needed Communist revolutions to put in socialism.
I would say Sri Lanka. They have a pretty good social democracy there, and the ruling party is a member of the Socialist International. There's also a horribly vicious civil war going on, because that "socialist" party in power has never done much to help the Tamils.
Socialist parties in Chile, Argentina and Brazil haven't been able to get much done. In Chile and Argentina the problem is probably much more class than race. In Brazil, surely it's both race and class together. The socialists in Ecuador and Bolivia are trying to get something done, but Bolivia is riven with a horrific class/race division and it's almost civil war there.
I don't think that the socialist parties in Nicaragua and Guatemala will be able to get much done. Both nations had Leftist revolutions for decades, in the case of Nicaragua followed by a revolutionary government and more civil war, this time counterrevolutionary. Nicaragua was always more about class than race, but the oligarchy is light-skinned. In Guatemala, the situation is very much about both class and race riven together.
One thing becomes clear in this analysis.
The only way to peacefully vote in a socialist or social democratic government is to have a relatively homogeneous society. Typically a White society. As diversity and multiculturalism increases, even in White European countries, White racist/fascist groups rise up for various reasons and racial violence against minorities becomes common.
In multiethnic or deeply class-riven nations (Note how often the two are conflated!), socialism, social democracy or movements towards them is typically accompanied by either outright civil war, de facto civil war, tremendous open class war in terms of coups, attempted coups, lockout strikes, riots, imperialist interventions, class-based separatist movements, and much violence.
In other places, socialist governments are not able to get much done due to deep class and race-based conflicts and the threat of violence from dominant ethnics and/or classes.
In other places, long civil wars eventually installed Communist regimes in multiethnic countries and ethnic conflict subsided or stopped. Short of installing a Communist regime, multiethnic countries moving towards socialism are likely to experience a lot of internal violence and chaos.
If diversity is so bad for socialism, why do socialists in the West keep pushing it?
Good question.
Note: Readers should carefully read the Commenting Rules before commenting to avoid having their comments edited or deleted and to avoid being banned from the site.
Why White Nationalists Hate Communists
The latest death toll figures from Hurricane Katrina can be seen on this website here. The famous Russian neo-Nazi video is on this blog here.
Updated September 2:
I'm going to use the word White Nationalist for White racist, but it's true - 98% of White nationalists are racists. On the other hand, many WN's are not neo-Nazis. The neo-Nazis are one end of the spectrum and the American Renaissance types are at the other hand. Whatever you say about the Amren guys, they're not Nazis.
I gave WN's the benefit of the doubt and studied them with an open mind for a long time, assuming the null hypothesis that they are not racists, but it's true. Most WN's don't like anyone who isn't White. A lot only like Europeans. There are some who like NE Asians, and some others who like SE Asians too.
I don't think any of them like Arabs or North Africans, Afghans, Pakistanis, or Indians. Some like Iranians, but usually only a few. All WN's really hate Black people. If there is one thing that holds WN's together, it's their hatred of Black people.
I finally realized, too, that a lot of WN's are just not really very nice people, so in that sense, the whole "hater" thing is sort of true.
But I always objected to calling them "haters", because I don't think there is anything wrong with hating per se. I'm a Leftist; we hate all kinds of stuff! But a lot of these White racists really are just mean, nasty people deep down inside.
I think that whole "hater" term was thought up by the anti-racists, and I would bet most of them were Jews, just to make these guys look way more evil than they are.
Truth is that whole huge swaths of societies all down through time have been very racist and therefore "haters". One could argue that American society up until the 1960's was a racist, and therefore a "hater" society. Does that make any sense? If you see pictures or movies of Americans from the pre-1960's era, do they look like horrible, mean, ugly, nasty, cruel, "hater" people? Well, of course not.
Probably all societies up until our modern era have been "hater" societies, since some degree of racism was probably the norm in historical human societies. Tribal societies were typically racist "haters" too, since most were locked in tribal war with, or at least despised, their neighbors. The typical Amerindian word for the tribe next door means something like, "Those no-good scumbag wife-stealing bastards over the hill".
So we ought to quit calling these people "haters", quit calling their groups "hate groups" and quit waging insane, Hollywood and ADL (Jewish) paid-for "wars on hate". The Jews should talk anyway. Israel isn't exactly a hate-free zone. It's more like the land of the KKK version of the Jews. It's a Jewish mirror of the KKK, except instead of being White supremacists, they are Jewish supremacists.
Let's just call these groups what they are - racists. Racists can seem like very nice people, and their societies can be warm, friendly and caring, towards the people they like that is. But they're still racists.
One thing I noticed after a while is that almost all these White nationalists really, really, really hate Communists.
It took me a while to figure this out. I think this is because in the US the civil rights movement was always said to be led by Communists. If you were for civil rights, you were a Commie. Period.
Also, Communists really are fairly egalitarian, and White nationalists, and racists of any kind, hate any form of equality. They are very much into inequality and hierarchy. Fascists also are very much against egalitarianism, are into hierarchy and actually worship inequality, though they do their best to lie and say they don't.
After Communists, White nationalists hate socialists and liberals. So, really, White racists just hate the whole Left. I can't see why any self-respecting leftwinger would want to defend these clowns too much. They're basically our enemies, you know?
Note: Readers should carefully read the Commenting Rules before commenting to avoid having their comments edited or deleted and to avoid being banned from the site.
Updated September 2:
I'm going to use the word White Nationalist for White racist, but it's true - 98% of White nationalists are racists. On the other hand, many WN's are not neo-Nazis. The neo-Nazis are one end of the spectrum and the American Renaissance types are at the other hand. Whatever you say about the Amren guys, they're not Nazis.
I gave WN's the benefit of the doubt and studied them with an open mind for a long time, assuming the null hypothesis that they are not racists, but it's true. Most WN's don't like anyone who isn't White. A lot only like Europeans. There are some who like NE Asians, and some others who like SE Asians too.
I don't think any of them like Arabs or North Africans, Afghans, Pakistanis, or Indians. Some like Iranians, but usually only a few. All WN's really hate Black people. If there is one thing that holds WN's together, it's their hatred of Black people.
I finally realized, too, that a lot of WN's are just not really very nice people, so in that sense, the whole "hater" thing is sort of true.
But I always objected to calling them "haters", because I don't think there is anything wrong with hating per se. I'm a Leftist; we hate all kinds of stuff! But a lot of these White racists really are just mean, nasty people deep down inside.
I think that whole "hater" term was thought up by the anti-racists, and I would bet most of them were Jews, just to make these guys look way more evil than they are.
Truth is that whole huge swaths of societies all down through time have been very racist and therefore "haters". One could argue that American society up until the 1960's was a racist, and therefore a "hater" society. Does that make any sense? If you see pictures or movies of Americans from the pre-1960's era, do they look like horrible, mean, ugly, nasty, cruel, "hater" people? Well, of course not.
Probably all societies up until our modern era have been "hater" societies, since some degree of racism was probably the norm in historical human societies. Tribal societies were typically racist "haters" too, since most were locked in tribal war with, or at least despised, their neighbors. The typical Amerindian word for the tribe next door means something like, "Those no-good scumbag wife-stealing bastards over the hill".
So we ought to quit calling these people "haters", quit calling their groups "hate groups" and quit waging insane, Hollywood and ADL (Jewish) paid-for "wars on hate". The Jews should talk anyway. Israel isn't exactly a hate-free zone. It's more like the land of the KKK version of the Jews. It's a Jewish mirror of the KKK, except instead of being White supremacists, they are Jewish supremacists.
Let's just call these groups what they are - racists. Racists can seem like very nice people, and their societies can be warm, friendly and caring, towards the people they like that is. But they're still racists.
One thing I noticed after a while is that almost all these White nationalists really, really, really hate Communists.
It took me a while to figure this out. I think this is because in the US the civil rights movement was always said to be led by Communists. If you were for civil rights, you were a Commie. Period.
Also, Communists really are fairly egalitarian, and White nationalists, and racists of any kind, hate any form of equality. They are very much into inequality and hierarchy. Fascists also are very much against egalitarianism, are into hierarchy and actually worship inequality, though they do their best to lie and say they don't.
After Communists, White nationalists hate socialists and liberals. So, really, White racists just hate the whole Left. I can't see why any self-respecting leftwinger would want to defend these clowns too much. They're basically our enemies, you know?
Note: Readers should carefully read the Commenting Rules before commenting to avoid having their comments edited or deleted and to avoid being banned from the site.
Tuesday, August 12, 2008
Some Choice: Nazi or PC Nutjob
The latest death toll figures from Hurricane Katrina can be seen on this website here. The famous Russian neo-Nazi video is on this blog here.
Updated August 23:
Boy, the Left has really gotten us into a pickle here, haven't they?
If you are on the Left, support any degree of socialism, or are even a liberal, you are obligated to go along with the whole PC nutjob package: support for the craziest notions of man-hating Western feminism, for White-hating and non-White-worshipping lunatic anti-racism, for the insanity of mass immigration, not to mention illegal immigration of all things, for the idiotic and suicidal notion of Open Borders.
I talk to regular White people all the time. The Western Left has precisely nothing to do with the realities of how most White human beings in the US live their lives. Most of them hate illegal immigration and want cuts in legal immigration. Most of them dislike mass immigration turning the US into a United Nations on every block. Most of them reject White-hatred and non-White-worship.
And fanatical Western feminism is increasingly trivial to the lives of hundreds of millions of non-Western women who labor under the horrors of misogyny and male supremacy vastly worse than what American women endure.
What I have noticed is that Western feminism seems irrelevant to the realities of how heterosexual males and females negotiate sex and relationships in modern times. It is as if Western feminism is broadcasting from some bizarro alternative universe that has nothing to do with the one most of us negotiate on a daily basis.
What I am trying to say is that the Western PC Left, as its constituted, is irrelevant.
It's hostile to men and Whites, and double so to White men. Any White man who buys into the bullshit of the Western Left must be out of his fucking mind.
It says right on the sidebar that I'm heterodox. You got it. For one thing, I'm a race realist. There are differences between the races and even within the races in terms of minor races and even ethnic groups. These differences are observable on a wide variety of metrics. It is irrelevant whether these differences are due to genetics or culture, since both intertwine anyway.
To see a particularly nasty view of race realism, shot through naturally all the way with racism, check out this book by Ricard Fuerle, a PhD in Economics and a patent attorney. The book is called Erectus Walks Among Us. The premise of the books is that Black people are monkeys, or apes, or Homo Erectus, or a much more primitive type of man. I'm almost done reading it. It's pretty entertaining, but I'm warning you, this is toxic stuff.
While most of us don't even want to think about stuff like this, he does marshal an awful lot of data showing that there are significant differences between the races. Philippe Rushton has done something similar lately and has been raked over the coals for it.
I will say right now that Rushton, Fuerle and the rest may be correct in some of what they say: there are more differences in the races than the obvious ones such as skin color. A quick rejoinder to this argument is typically shot from the Left: that in saying so, we are classifying ethnic groups and races in the same way we classify species and subspecies of animals - as having invariable behavior.
Like most Left rejoinders, this is garbage, but many racists sadly do think this way. I'm not much of an artist, but if I was, I would draw a scatterplot for you. That is what differences, particularly behavioral, psychological, intelligence and other such, but also including athletic ability, would look like between the races if you plotted them out on a graph.
On athletic ability, you would find Blacks more likely to plot superior on certain variables. Some Whites and even Asians would be over with the Blacks. Some Blacks would have very poor athletic ability. Racial and ethnic tendencies are only averages, and there will always be all sorts of individuals who will fall outside the stereotypes for their races.
Unless you understand what a scatterplot looks like, or unless you understand averages and statistics, you can't discuss racial differences at all.
Why discuss racial differences at all?
Because, for one, the Right keeps throwing them in our faces.
And because the Left's reaction to any racial or ethnic differences in outcome is wrong. The Left says that all races and ethnic groups are equal, and therefore, any differential outcomes must be the result of racism.
This leads the Left into insane, decades- to centuries-long, never-to-be won wars against racism, sexism, homophobia and whatnot. These things will probably always be with us. The insanity of the Left is the folly that they dream they can eradicate these aspects of human nature.
All you can do is reduce or increase things like that. I am certain that when I die, racism, sexism and homophobia will be alive and well, and the Left will be insanely waging war "to rid them from the Earth".
Scientifically speaking, it is certainly not true that if one race or ethnic group scores worse than another or does worse on any sort of variable, it must be due to racism. Surely there are all sorts of reasons why this might happen. The folly of the Left is its refusal to consider that there may be things other than racism causing this.
Problem is that almost anyone online taking a race realist position is simply a racist. And almost all such folks are Whites who are arguing at least for getting rid of all civil rights and anti-discrimination legislation and and at most for outright White separatism, apartheid, race war, or ethnic cleansing.
Wow. Breathtaking. You mean that if one acknowledges differences between the races on a variety of controversial variables, one must be a racist, a separatist, a fascist or a Nazi? Yes. This is what it means. Any socialist who steps outside of PC idiocy on race will find himself embraced by some other funny socialists. Almost all such persons will be sympathetic towards White racism, White separatism, fascism and Nazism.
Whew. Well, allow me to step out of the box here for a second. This blog will make the outrageous statement that race realism (a recognition that there are non-trivial differences between the races) and anti-racism can go hand and hand. Just because there are average differences between races does not mean we have to turn into a bunch of racist assholes, much less racial separatists.
There are specific, subspecific and racial differences all across the natural world of biology, and none of it necessarily leads to hating this or that brand of organism or critter. For instance, here in California, we have various threatened and endangered species that I know a lot about. We have Tipton Kangaroo Rats and California Red-legged Frogs and Alameda Whipsnakes.
I assure that all of these damned critters act different. I will assure you that a California Red-legged Frog acts a Hell of a lot different than a Foothill Yellow-legged frog, and an Alameda Whipsnake acts a Hell of a lot different than a Pacific Gopher Snake, and a Tipton Kangaroo Rat acts a lot different than a Dusky-Footed Woodrat. I, lover of nature, love all of these critters.
Why be a speciesist, a critter racist, lining up with the Tipton Kangaroo Rats and swearing to drive the California Red-legged Frogs to extinction? I, lover of humans, love all humans. Why should I be a human-critter racist, lining up with the White human critters against this or that non-White human critters? They act different. So? So do all the other critters.
The reason for the Left's opposition to race realism is quite simple. All we have to do is look at the agenda of those big names promoting hardcore race realism. They're all White, and almost all, or all of them are on the Right or the Far Right, and I haven't found one yet who was not a hardcore racist.
Furthermore, every prominent race realist out there supports getting rid of civil rights and anti-discrimination laws. The reason being that if there are average differences between races, people ought to be able to discriminate racially or ethnically against individuals on the basis of those averages.
But average differences mean nothing when it comes to individuals. Individuals are individuals and groups are groups. You can't tally up group stuff and use it to thumbs up or thumbs down on individuals in the group. Forget it. Group differences be damned, one still must treat individuals as individuals.
With such a bunch of ugly creeps running the show, is it any wonder that decent people run away from race realism in droves?
It's really sad that socialists have to choose between fascists and PC airheads. There's got to be more space in the room than that. Come on.
Note: Readers should carefully read the Commenting Rules before commenting to avoid having their comments edited or deleted and to avoid being banned from the site.
Updated August 23:
Boy, the Left has really gotten us into a pickle here, haven't they?
If you are on the Left, support any degree of socialism, or are even a liberal, you are obligated to go along with the whole PC nutjob package: support for the craziest notions of man-hating Western feminism, for White-hating and non-White-worshipping lunatic anti-racism, for the insanity of mass immigration, not to mention illegal immigration of all things, for the idiotic and suicidal notion of Open Borders.
I talk to regular White people all the time. The Western Left has precisely nothing to do with the realities of how most White human beings in the US live their lives. Most of them hate illegal immigration and want cuts in legal immigration. Most of them dislike mass immigration turning the US into a United Nations on every block. Most of them reject White-hatred and non-White-worship.
And fanatical Western feminism is increasingly trivial to the lives of hundreds of millions of non-Western women who labor under the horrors of misogyny and male supremacy vastly worse than what American women endure.
What I have noticed is that Western feminism seems irrelevant to the realities of how heterosexual males and females negotiate sex and relationships in modern times. It is as if Western feminism is broadcasting from some bizarro alternative universe that has nothing to do with the one most of us negotiate on a daily basis.
What I am trying to say is that the Western PC Left, as its constituted, is irrelevant.
It's hostile to men and Whites, and double so to White men. Any White man who buys into the bullshit of the Western Left must be out of his fucking mind.
It says right on the sidebar that I'm heterodox. You got it. For one thing, I'm a race realist. There are differences between the races and even within the races in terms of minor races and even ethnic groups. These differences are observable on a wide variety of metrics. It is irrelevant whether these differences are due to genetics or culture, since both intertwine anyway.
To see a particularly nasty view of race realism, shot through naturally all the way with racism, check out this book by Ricard Fuerle, a PhD in Economics and a patent attorney. The book is called Erectus Walks Among Us. The premise of the books is that Black people are monkeys, or apes, or Homo Erectus, or a much more primitive type of man. I'm almost done reading it. It's pretty entertaining, but I'm warning you, this is toxic stuff.
While most of us don't even want to think about stuff like this, he does marshal an awful lot of data showing that there are significant differences between the races. Philippe Rushton has done something similar lately and has been raked over the coals for it.
I will say right now that Rushton, Fuerle and the rest may be correct in some of what they say: there are more differences in the races than the obvious ones such as skin color. A quick rejoinder to this argument is typically shot from the Left: that in saying so, we are classifying ethnic groups and races in the same way we classify species and subspecies of animals - as having invariable behavior.
Like most Left rejoinders, this is garbage, but many racists sadly do think this way. I'm not much of an artist, but if I was, I would draw a scatterplot for you. That is what differences, particularly behavioral, psychological, intelligence and other such, but also including athletic ability, would look like between the races if you plotted them out on a graph.
On athletic ability, you would find Blacks more likely to plot superior on certain variables. Some Whites and even Asians would be over with the Blacks. Some Blacks would have very poor athletic ability. Racial and ethnic tendencies are only averages, and there will always be all sorts of individuals who will fall outside the stereotypes for their races.
Unless you understand what a scatterplot looks like, or unless you understand averages and statistics, you can't discuss racial differences at all.
Why discuss racial differences at all?
Because, for one, the Right keeps throwing them in our faces.
And because the Left's reaction to any racial or ethnic differences in outcome is wrong. The Left says that all races and ethnic groups are equal, and therefore, any differential outcomes must be the result of racism.
This leads the Left into insane, decades- to centuries-long, never-to-be won wars against racism, sexism, homophobia and whatnot. These things will probably always be with us. The insanity of the Left is the folly that they dream they can eradicate these aspects of human nature.
All you can do is reduce or increase things like that. I am certain that when I die, racism, sexism and homophobia will be alive and well, and the Left will be insanely waging war "to rid them from the Earth".
Scientifically speaking, it is certainly not true that if one race or ethnic group scores worse than another or does worse on any sort of variable, it must be due to racism. Surely there are all sorts of reasons why this might happen. The folly of the Left is its refusal to consider that there may be things other than racism causing this.
Problem is that almost anyone online taking a race realist position is simply a racist. And almost all such folks are Whites who are arguing at least for getting rid of all civil rights and anti-discrimination legislation and and at most for outright White separatism, apartheid, race war, or ethnic cleansing.
Wow. Breathtaking. You mean that if one acknowledges differences between the races on a variety of controversial variables, one must be a racist, a separatist, a fascist or a Nazi? Yes. This is what it means. Any socialist who steps outside of PC idiocy on race will find himself embraced by some other funny socialists. Almost all such persons will be sympathetic towards White racism, White separatism, fascism and Nazism.
Whew. Well, allow me to step out of the box here for a second. This blog will make the outrageous statement that race realism (a recognition that there are non-trivial differences between the races) and anti-racism can go hand and hand. Just because there are average differences between races does not mean we have to turn into a bunch of racist assholes, much less racial separatists.
There are specific, subspecific and racial differences all across the natural world of biology, and none of it necessarily leads to hating this or that brand of organism or critter. For instance, here in California, we have various threatened and endangered species that I know a lot about. We have Tipton Kangaroo Rats and California Red-legged Frogs and Alameda Whipsnakes.
I assure that all of these damned critters act different. I will assure you that a California Red-legged Frog acts a Hell of a lot different than a Foothill Yellow-legged frog, and an Alameda Whipsnake acts a Hell of a lot different than a Pacific Gopher Snake, and a Tipton Kangaroo Rat acts a lot different than a Dusky-Footed Woodrat. I, lover of nature, love all of these critters.
Why be a speciesist, a critter racist, lining up with the Tipton Kangaroo Rats and swearing to drive the California Red-legged Frogs to extinction? I, lover of humans, love all humans. Why should I be a human-critter racist, lining up with the White human critters against this or that non-White human critters? They act different. So? So do all the other critters.
The reason for the Left's opposition to race realism is quite simple. All we have to do is look at the agenda of those big names promoting hardcore race realism. They're all White, and almost all, or all of them are on the Right or the Far Right, and I haven't found one yet who was not a hardcore racist.
Furthermore, every prominent race realist out there supports getting rid of civil rights and anti-discrimination laws. The reason being that if there are average differences between races, people ought to be able to discriminate racially or ethnically against individuals on the basis of those averages.
But average differences mean nothing when it comes to individuals. Individuals are individuals and groups are groups. You can't tally up group stuff and use it to thumbs up or thumbs down on individuals in the group. Forget it. Group differences be damned, one still must treat individuals as individuals.
With such a bunch of ugly creeps running the show, is it any wonder that decent people run away from race realism in droves?
It's really sad that socialists have to choose between fascists and PC airheads. There's got to be more space in the room than that. Come on.
Note: Readers should carefully read the Commenting Rules before commenting to avoid having their comments edited or deleted and to avoid being banned from the site.
Monday, August 11, 2008
McArthurthyist "Academic Bill of Rights" Laws
The latest death toll figures from Hurricane Katrina can be seen on this website here. The famous Russian neo-Nazi video is on this blog here.
Updated August 23:
Here's one in Colorado and the effects it is having. Wow. Professors getting death threats. Professors sleeping with shotguns under their pillows. Students filing complaints against professors and trying to get them fired for political reasons. A list of subjects that university professors are not allowed to discuss (WTH?)
Threats of "quotas" for hiring conservative professors and threats of money cutoffs if quotas are not met. Professors quitting their jobs and living in fear. Whew. Jesus Christ man.
By the way, Jewish Zionist ultra-sleazeballs David Horowitz and Daniel Pipes have been behind a lot of this shit. And US Jews have been behind some of the worst examples of academic censorship and retaliation seen in recent days - the refusal of Yale to hire Juan Cole, and refusal of De Paul University to give the excellent scholar Norman Finkelstein tenure, followed by a monetary settlement and his subsequent resignation.
Note: Readers should carefully read the Commenting Rules before commenting to avoid having their comments edited or deleted and to avoid being banned from the site.
Updated August 23:
Here's one in Colorado and the effects it is having. Wow. Professors getting death threats. Professors sleeping with shotguns under their pillows. Students filing complaints against professors and trying to get them fired for political reasons. A list of subjects that university professors are not allowed to discuss (WTH?)
Threats of "quotas" for hiring conservative professors and threats of money cutoffs if quotas are not met. Professors quitting their jobs and living in fear. Whew. Jesus Christ man.
By the way, Jewish Zionist ultra-sleazeballs David Horowitz and Daniel Pipes have been behind a lot of this shit. And US Jews have been behind some of the worst examples of academic censorship and retaliation seen in recent days - the refusal of Yale to hire Juan Cole, and refusal of De Paul University to give the excellent scholar Norman Finkelstein tenure, followed by a monetary settlement and his subsequent resignation.
Note: Readers should carefully read the Commenting Rules before commenting to avoid having their comments edited or deleted and to avoid being banned from the site.
The 14 Points of Fascism
The latest death toll figures from Hurricane Katrina can be seen on this website here. The famous Russian neo-Nazi video is on this blog here.
Updated August 23:
Excellent article.
I'm usually the last person on Earth to throw the word, "fascist" around promiscuously, but this article lays it out pretty clearly that the Bush Administration is what I would call a pseudo-fascist or quasi-fascist regime (pseudo-fascist is more like it).
This shit has actually been going on since Reagan came in. I'm not usually one to dog on my fellow Whites, but the US movement towards fascism can be laid directly at the feet of US Whites. Not only that, but I think that this whole movement by US Whites is related to racism and their fear of losing their demographic majority.
As Euro-Whites decline to 65% (61% if you don't include Jews, and many White nationalists don't wish to include them) of the population, note that the US Whites have been getting more and more fascist as their majority shrinks ever more.
We went through a similar thing here in California when Whites were on the verge of losing their majority. Now that Whites a definite minority here in the state, the nasty, ugly and reactionary tendency of Whites has faded as a movement, but we still see traces of it in Arnold Schwarzenegger.
For instance, in order to "balance the budget", the CA Republicans have called for cutting Medicaid below its already incredibly low figures. CA's schools are at about 29th in funding, but have the largest teacher-to-student ratio in the US, because CA schools are flooded with students. The reason for this is simple. Whitey is still in just-enough in charge here in California.
Whites look out and see schools full of non-Whites and say, "Fuck you *niggers and Mexicans, we aren't giving you one thin dime." What's sad about this is that California's schools are still full of lots of White kids, especially in certain regions like the Sierra foothills. They're getting screwed too.
In Oakhurst and Coarsegold, where I spend a lot of time, a large percentage of the local poor Whites are on Medicaid. These Whites are getting the shaft by wealthier Whites in the cities, all because these Whites want to "cut off the niggers* and the Mexicans."
Right now, the Legislature is mostly non-White and liberal, and the governor is in the hands of a fake-progressive Republican who was put in by a fraudulent lie of an election. So we have gridlock to the max, but really it's just non-violent race war played out at state government level.
It was amazing that the Republicans managed to scam one of their own into the governor's seat, but here's how the scam worked:
The Republicans deregulated the electricity industry in California, which nearly ruined the economy and pocketbooks of Californians. They pretty much knew this was going to happen, and Schwarzenegger himself attended these meetings and helped to plot this scam.
A pro-business, extremely fake-liberal Democrat, Gray Davis, was in power, and he got screwed by the resulting skyrocketing bills, power outrages and wild profiteering by Enron and the rest. Californians being idiots like most humans, they (mostly White Californians) turned around and blamed Gray Davis for the energy crisis that he had absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with.
He kept appealing to the Bush Administration to shut off the disastrous experiment, but Bush refused. It's true that Davis diddled and fiddled. As a pro-business Democrat, he was determined to craft a solution that benefited the various energy companies that were maxi-profiting from the whole mess.
The "final solution" ended up raising California homeowners' energy rates by three times over the long term. California businesses, especially big businesses, more or less got rate cuts, as you might expect.
Nevertheless, White homeowners and small business owners (at least from my asking around) were still 100% supportive of energy "deregulation"! I tell ya, free market ideology is more insane than religion. If your religion is actually killing you or fucking you over, most even religious nuts will get a bit less religious.
Free market fundamentalism is an odd beast. The more it fucks over Whites, the more they support it. I think it is because free marketeerism in Whites is rooted in racism.
"Free market", "deregulation", "privatization", and all that crap means "less government". US Whites hate government because government takes hard-earned White money in taxes and gives it no-good, worthless, criminal, gangbanging niggers* and Mexicans for various welfare schemes.
This is the only sense I can make of US Whites' lunatic dedication to extreme freemarketeerism. Either that or someone has done a damn fine job of brainwashing.
Anyway, the Republicans then engineered a recall election which was one of the sleaziest elections in California history. Even though the Republican Party is on its last legs here in California, they picked a very popular actor who is especially popular with Hispanics to run for governor. I am convinced that this clown got a majority or close to it of the Hispanic vote.
Hispanics here normally vote pretty liberally, but they are unbelievably uneducated, and vastly less sophisticated politically than even Blacks. Hispanics and even a lot of young, fairly liberal, know-nothing Whites marched off and voted for "The Terminator", who ran as some kind of fake-liberal.
It's true that the state's present economic crisis is partly rooted in the massive invasion of illegal aliens that has turned much of our state into Tijuana Norte. But the California Republican Party and Schwarzenegger are 100% pro-illegal alien all the way. Forget the California Democratic Party. They're long lost to the illegals and their traitor Hispanic-American politicians.
I like to say that here in California, we have two political parties, the California Illegal Alien Republican Party and the California Illegal Alien Democratic Party. There's no political party here in California to represent actual American fucking citizens in this state.
Anyway, check out the article. The author compared Hitler, Mussolini, Franco, Suharto, and Pinochet to come up with his analysis. I'm glad he included Indonesia and Chile.
It would be nice for an intelligent person to look at this list and point out differences (and similarities) between Communism and fascism, but this post is a bit long as is. Maybe another time.
Secular Humanism Magazine is pretty cool, by the way, if you don't mind in-your-face atheism.
*used sardonically.
Note: Readers should carefully read the Commenting Rules before commenting to avoid having their comments edited or deleted and to avoid being banned from the site.
Updated August 23:
Excellent article.
I'm usually the last person on Earth to throw the word, "fascist" around promiscuously, but this article lays it out pretty clearly that the Bush Administration is what I would call a pseudo-fascist or quasi-fascist regime (pseudo-fascist is more like it).
This shit has actually been going on since Reagan came in. I'm not usually one to dog on my fellow Whites, but the US movement towards fascism can be laid directly at the feet of US Whites. Not only that, but I think that this whole movement by US Whites is related to racism and their fear of losing their demographic majority.
As Euro-Whites decline to 65% (61% if you don't include Jews, and many White nationalists don't wish to include them) of the population, note that the US Whites have been getting more and more fascist as their majority shrinks ever more.
We went through a similar thing here in California when Whites were on the verge of losing their majority. Now that Whites a definite minority here in the state, the nasty, ugly and reactionary tendency of Whites has faded as a movement, but we still see traces of it in Arnold Schwarzenegger.
For instance, in order to "balance the budget", the CA Republicans have called for cutting Medicaid below its already incredibly low figures. CA's schools are at about 29th in funding, but have the largest teacher-to-student ratio in the US, because CA schools are flooded with students. The reason for this is simple. Whitey is still in just-enough in charge here in California.
Whites look out and see schools full of non-Whites and say, "Fuck you *niggers and Mexicans, we aren't giving you one thin dime." What's sad about this is that California's schools are still full of lots of White kids, especially in certain regions like the Sierra foothills. They're getting screwed too.
In Oakhurst and Coarsegold, where I spend a lot of time, a large percentage of the local poor Whites are on Medicaid. These Whites are getting the shaft by wealthier Whites in the cities, all because these Whites want to "cut off the niggers* and the Mexicans."
Right now, the Legislature is mostly non-White and liberal, and the governor is in the hands of a fake-progressive Republican who was put in by a fraudulent lie of an election. So we have gridlock to the max, but really it's just non-violent race war played out at state government level.
It was amazing that the Republicans managed to scam one of their own into the governor's seat, but here's how the scam worked:
The Republicans deregulated the electricity industry in California, which nearly ruined the economy and pocketbooks of Californians. They pretty much knew this was going to happen, and Schwarzenegger himself attended these meetings and helped to plot this scam.
A pro-business, extremely fake-liberal Democrat, Gray Davis, was in power, and he got screwed by the resulting skyrocketing bills, power outrages and wild profiteering by Enron and the rest. Californians being idiots like most humans, they (mostly White Californians) turned around and blamed Gray Davis for the energy crisis that he had absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with.
He kept appealing to the Bush Administration to shut off the disastrous experiment, but Bush refused. It's true that Davis diddled and fiddled. As a pro-business Democrat, he was determined to craft a solution that benefited the various energy companies that were maxi-profiting from the whole mess.
The "final solution" ended up raising California homeowners' energy rates by three times over the long term. California businesses, especially big businesses, more or less got rate cuts, as you might expect.
Nevertheless, White homeowners and small business owners (at least from my asking around) were still 100% supportive of energy "deregulation"! I tell ya, free market ideology is more insane than religion. If your religion is actually killing you or fucking you over, most even religious nuts will get a bit less religious.
Free market fundamentalism is an odd beast. The more it fucks over Whites, the more they support it. I think it is because free marketeerism in Whites is rooted in racism.
"Free market", "deregulation", "privatization", and all that crap means "less government". US Whites hate government because government takes hard-earned White money in taxes and gives it no-good, worthless, criminal, gangbanging niggers* and Mexicans for various welfare schemes.
This is the only sense I can make of US Whites' lunatic dedication to extreme freemarketeerism. Either that or someone has done a damn fine job of brainwashing.
Anyway, the Republicans then engineered a recall election which was one of the sleaziest elections in California history. Even though the Republican Party is on its last legs here in California, they picked a very popular actor who is especially popular with Hispanics to run for governor. I am convinced that this clown got a majority or close to it of the Hispanic vote.
Hispanics here normally vote pretty liberally, but they are unbelievably uneducated, and vastly less sophisticated politically than even Blacks. Hispanics and even a lot of young, fairly liberal, know-nothing Whites marched off and voted for "The Terminator", who ran as some kind of fake-liberal.
It's true that the state's present economic crisis is partly rooted in the massive invasion of illegal aliens that has turned much of our state into Tijuana Norte. But the California Republican Party and Schwarzenegger are 100% pro-illegal alien all the way. Forget the California Democratic Party. They're long lost to the illegals and their traitor Hispanic-American politicians.
I like to say that here in California, we have two political parties, the California Illegal Alien Republican Party and the California Illegal Alien Democratic Party. There's no political party here in California to represent actual American fucking citizens in this state.
Anyway, check out the article. The author compared Hitler, Mussolini, Franco, Suharto, and Pinochet to come up with his analysis. I'm glad he included Indonesia and Chile.
It would be nice for an intelligent person to look at this list and point out differences (and similarities) between Communism and fascism, but this post is a bit long as is. Maybe another time.
Secular Humanism Magazine is pretty cool, by the way, if you don't mind in-your-face atheism.
*used sardonically.
Note: Readers should carefully read the Commenting Rules before commenting to avoid having their comments edited or deleted and to avoid being banned from the site.
Sunday, August 10, 2008
Support For South Ossetian Succession
The latest death toll figures from Hurricane Katrina can be seen on this website here. The famous Russian neo-Nazi video is on this blog here.
Updated August 28:
A good progressive principle, but one subject to some exceptions, is the principle of self-determination. This leads naturally to support for most if not all separatist movements. In my case, I do support most, but not all separatist movements.
It's interesting of all the people around the world, that only leftwingers and various seceding nationalities support this principle. It's also interesting that once nations secede and become their own state, suddenly they do not believe in the right to secede anymore! We on the Left have always upheld this basic principle.
The USSR held that all Russian nationalities had the right to secede. Unfortunately, it was not enforced much, but it was this very principle that allowed Gorbachev to permit the various USSR republics the right of secession in 1991. At that time, on at least that one variable, the USSR was the most civilized nation on Earth.
Its civilized nature was a direct result of the progressive principles that were embodied in the USSR by the first Bolsheviks in 1917. Later, Czechoslovakia split up into the Czech Republic and Slovakia. The reason they were able to do this so civilly is, number one, because they are White, and number two, due to the decades of internationalism that had been inculcated into them by Communist rule.
I say that being White is important because I am absolutely convinced that only White nations are capable of breaking up civilly and peacefully without slaughtering each other in the process. In a way, breaking up your country without massacring your countrymen is the ultimate civilized act.
Even Asians, as civilized as they are, would never be able to break up one of their countries without turning it into a mass slaughter. On this metric, they are not that civilized.
What is it about Whites that allows them to break up a country? Is it altruism? Although studies are rare, in the US, Whites have rates of civic participation, volunteerism and donating to charity far above other groups.
Now, it is true that Communist China has not done a good job of living up the progressive principles of self-determination. Clearly, Tibet has a right to go free, and I would argue that East Turkestan does too. And Taiwan is a separate country. Mao never was a true internationalist. He was always a Chinese nationalist first and a Communist second.
Another reason to support secessionism is that the people who hate it most are the fascists. Idiots are always saying that fascism and Communism and fascism and socialism are the same thing. Let us call them on this one at least.
This is a prime difference between fascists and Communists, the Left and the Right. The Left supports self-determination and cultural autonomy for national minorities and the Right has always opposed this, instead choosing to force all national minorities into a single ethnoreligiolinguistic entity.
No one opposes separatist movements more than fascists, and no fascist nation has ever given one national minority an inch of cultural autonomy. Even in China, national minorities have considerable cultural autonomy and have the right to education in their national tongue.
It's true that the USSR's commitment to cultural and linguistic freedom varied throughout the lifetime of the state. Its commitment was highest in the 1920's, wavered seriously in the 1930's when Stalin murdered many leaders of national minorities and never attained earlier depths with the subsequent promotion of Russification by Stalin and his successors.
The Left nowadays is sleazy and unprincipled on the question of national self-determination. Sadly, the entire world Left refused to support the right of self-determination for the peoples of the former Yugoslavia, all because Yugoslavia was a Communist state. Then they all opposed the right of Kosova to break away from Serbia, I guess because Serbia used to be Communist state!
This leads us to the recent fighting in Georgia.
First of all, Georgia is pretty much of a fake state. Sure, there have been Georgians living in that area for a very long time, but the Soviet republic called Georgia included not only Georgians but other nationalities as well. Other minorities included Abkhazians, Adjarians and South Ossetians.
It is possible that the republic of Georgia was seeded with these minorities as a divide and conquer strategy by the early Soviets, who were not perfect on the national question. Seeding Georgia with non-Georgians would make it more difficult for Georgia to secede from the USSR. Similarly, splitting the poor Ossetians between Russia and Georgia was probably another sleazy divide and conquer game.
Anyway, in 1991, this completely fake state called Georgia (really just a republic of the USSR) gained its independence. If we are to support the principle of self-determination, we need to allow national minorities in fake states newly birthed the right to secede.
On what fucking basis were Abkhazia, Adjaria and South Ossetia an inherent part of some entity called "Georgia"? On no basis whatsoever! On what basis is some new fake country one day or one month old entitled to the bullshit and fascist principle of "inviability of borders"? On no basis.
So, when the Georgian state (really just a place with lines on the map with a lot of Georgians living in it, but drawn wider than the Georgian nation) got its independence, Abkhazia, Adjaria and South Ossetia surely had the right say, "Screw this, we want no part of this new state. We're out of here."
Adjaria, a Muslim region in the southwest, seems to have settled its beef without fighting, but Abkhazia and South Ossetia both waged nasty and ugly separatist wars and managed to secede from the new state of Georgia.
South Ossetia apparently wants to marry with North Ossetia and become a state in Russia called Ossetia. I'm not sure what Abkhazia wants to do. I think they may wish to join Russia also. Abkhazia is located in the northwest and populated mostly by Orthodox Christians.
South Ossetia is located in the north-central part of Georgia and is composed mostly of Ossetians. The Ossetians were formerly called the Alans, an ancient kingdom related ethnically and linguistically to Iranians. They speak a language that is close to Iranian and resemble Iranians physically.
Russia is being cynical about this, as befits an imperialist state. While Russia under Putin has fascist tendencies in the nasty repression on national minorities such as the Mari and the people of the Caucasus, Putin is willing, like all sleazy imperialists, do support secessionism when it benefits imperial goals.
Russia has it in for Georgia, lately because Georgia has lined up heavily on the side of the US. There are US and Israeli advisors working with the Georgian military right now, and Russia is terrified by Georgian threats to join NATO.
We need to note that NATO doesn't have much right to exist anymore. NATO was set up to deal with the Soviet threat. That's gone. So why is NATO still there? Apparently to form an imperialist bloc to oppose Russia! The Russians are furious about this, and rightly so. Who can blame them?
Sadly, it is also possible that Russia is using this as a payback to the West for supporting the secession of Kosova. The West, including the US in its extreme cynicism, first of all supported the secession of all of the former states of Yugoslavia (apparently on the cynical grounds that since they were seceding from a Communist nation, therefore the right of self-determination was invoked).
Then, just to stick it to Russia for the most part, the US and most of Europe supported Kosova and Montenegrin independence, just so long as they were pro-West. I supported it too, on the basis of solid principles called the right of self-determination. It is sad that the entire world Left opposed the independence of Kosova. This made Russia furious.
Yet in Abkhazia, in the same sleazy West that championed every micro-state to be cleaved out of the former Yugoslavia, not a single Western state, nor any state anywhere, would support the principled secession of the Abkhazian people from Georgian imperialism.
Does fascist Russia under Putin support the right of self-determination, however limited? Of course not. As a capitalist, and in fact fascist and now imperialist state, Russia clearly has no principles whatsoever. As payback to Kosova secession which hurt their pitiful fascist pan-Slavic feelings, the Russians are now supporting secession in Georgia. Principles? Come now!
This whole conflict is shot through with imperialism all the way. The US is supporting Georgia not out of any principles, because as an imperialist state, the US has zero principles other than profiteering, plunder and subjection of other states and peoples. The US supports secessionism when it benefits imperialist interests, and opposes it when it hinders imperialist interests!
And of course, it never admits this. When it supports secessionism, the US apparently invokes the right of self-determination. When it opposes secessionism, the US invokes the right of inviolability of national borders, as it is doing now in the case of Georgia. Contradictory, no? Sure is!
The sleazy and pro-imperialist US media fails to point out this dissonance, and your average educated American will inconsistently invoke, like a moron, either the right of self-determination of the right of inviolability of borders, depending, as they support the imperial projects that they have been inculcated to support.
This conflict, like all imperialist bullshit wars, boils down to various imperialist nations waging armed conflict over access to markets and natural resources.
As is, oil from Azerbaijan and gas from the Stans goes through Georgia and I believe hooks up with Russian pipelines. The US, Georgia, Israel and Turkey wish to cut Russia out of the deal and cut a new pipeline through Georgia to Turkey. At least some of the oil will then go to Israel and from there, through the Suez and out to the Indian Ocean and various nations in that region, in particular India.
Someone suggested to me that the West is cutting this new pipeline because they are afraid that Russia will cut off the flow of oil to the West. Forget it. They will not do any such thing unless pushed to the wall. The US, Israel, Georgia and probably Turkey are all doing this because they are more or less imperialist states.
This conflict is also shot through with old Cold War "Beware the bear" bullshit. Even after the fall of Communism and the return of capitalism to Russia, US imperialism and anti-Communists everywhere have continued to see Russia through and Cold War and anti-Communist lens. It is as if the fall of the USSR never occurred. Any analysis of the conflict between the US and the West that leaves out this essential element is lacking.
As a socialist, I want to ask the supporters of capitalism on this blog some questions.
Show me how advanced capitalism can exist without imperialism. Prove to me that an advanced capitalist state can exist in the modern world without becoming an imperialist power.
It seems to me that large capitalist states are typically mandated to become imperialist states and from there to engage in conflict, often armed, with other imperialist states for markets and natural resources. If this is so (and I think it is) how then can one support capitalism as it now exists, since it seems to be impossible to have large capitalist states that are not also imperialist?
As you might have guessed, I support the right of South Ossetia to self-determination and to secede from Georgia and the right, however sleazy, of Russia to assist them in this principled endeavor.
This conflict is getting real nasty real quick. Russia is threatening Israel and the US over their support for Georgia and the US has incredibly ordered Russia to withdraw its forces from South Ossetia. And the conflict very quickly seems to have expanded to Abkhazia. We have the potential for a really nasty conflict here.
I would like to point out that the neoconservative scum who now pretty much run this country are first and foremost ferocious imperialists. They are some of the most voracious backers of US imperialism out there. In this endeavor, neoconservatives have been picking fights with Russia for a long time now.
Many Jewish neoconservatives are involved in this imperial conflict with Russia, and unfortunately, in this light, they have supported Chechen independence not out of any decent principles, since neocons have no principles, but just to screw Russia.
The fact that elements of imperialism have supported the Chechen separatists rouses Russian nationalism and paranoia and makes Russia all the less likely to give the Chechens and other Caucasian peoples the independence they deserve.
It's not known why the neocons have such a beef with Russia, but they also backed the Russian Jewish oligarchs in their fleecing of Russia. There seems to be an old beef between Jewish nationalists and Russia.
We can see the outlines of this conflict in the campaign to "free the Soviet Jews", which was one of the original catalysts for the formation of the Jewish neocons back in the 1970's. There may also be a "screw the Russians" mindset dating from the hostile history of Russians and Jews in Russia, a history replete with pogroms of Jews.
Note: Readers should carefully read the Commenting Rules before commenting to avoid having their comments edited or deleted and to avoid being banned from the site.
Updated August 28:
A good progressive principle, but one subject to some exceptions, is the principle of self-determination. This leads naturally to support for most if not all separatist movements. In my case, I do support most, but not all separatist movements.
It's interesting of all the people around the world, that only leftwingers and various seceding nationalities support this principle. It's also interesting that once nations secede and become their own state, suddenly they do not believe in the right to secede anymore! We on the Left have always upheld this basic principle.
The USSR held that all Russian nationalities had the right to secede. Unfortunately, it was not enforced much, but it was this very principle that allowed Gorbachev to permit the various USSR republics the right of secession in 1991. At that time, on at least that one variable, the USSR was the most civilized nation on Earth.
Its civilized nature was a direct result of the progressive principles that were embodied in the USSR by the first Bolsheviks in 1917. Later, Czechoslovakia split up into the Czech Republic and Slovakia. The reason they were able to do this so civilly is, number one, because they are White, and number two, due to the decades of internationalism that had been inculcated into them by Communist rule.
I say that being White is important because I am absolutely convinced that only White nations are capable of breaking up civilly and peacefully without slaughtering each other in the process. In a way, breaking up your country without massacring your countrymen is the ultimate civilized act.
Even Asians, as civilized as they are, would never be able to break up one of their countries without turning it into a mass slaughter. On this metric, they are not that civilized.
What is it about Whites that allows them to break up a country? Is it altruism? Although studies are rare, in the US, Whites have rates of civic participation, volunteerism and donating to charity far above other groups.
Now, it is true that Communist China has not done a good job of living up the progressive principles of self-determination. Clearly, Tibet has a right to go free, and I would argue that East Turkestan does too. And Taiwan is a separate country. Mao never was a true internationalist. He was always a Chinese nationalist first and a Communist second.
Another reason to support secessionism is that the people who hate it most are the fascists. Idiots are always saying that fascism and Communism and fascism and socialism are the same thing. Let us call them on this one at least.
This is a prime difference between fascists and Communists, the Left and the Right. The Left supports self-determination and cultural autonomy for national minorities and the Right has always opposed this, instead choosing to force all national minorities into a single ethnoreligiolinguistic entity.
No one opposes separatist movements more than fascists, and no fascist nation has ever given one national minority an inch of cultural autonomy. Even in China, national minorities have considerable cultural autonomy and have the right to education in their national tongue.
It's true that the USSR's commitment to cultural and linguistic freedom varied throughout the lifetime of the state. Its commitment was highest in the 1920's, wavered seriously in the 1930's when Stalin murdered many leaders of national minorities and never attained earlier depths with the subsequent promotion of Russification by Stalin and his successors.
The Left nowadays is sleazy and unprincipled on the question of national self-determination. Sadly, the entire world Left refused to support the right of self-determination for the peoples of the former Yugoslavia, all because Yugoslavia was a Communist state. Then they all opposed the right of Kosova to break away from Serbia, I guess because Serbia used to be Communist state!
This leads us to the recent fighting in Georgia.
First of all, Georgia is pretty much of a fake state. Sure, there have been Georgians living in that area for a very long time, but the Soviet republic called Georgia included not only Georgians but other nationalities as well. Other minorities included Abkhazians, Adjarians and South Ossetians.
It is possible that the republic of Georgia was seeded with these minorities as a divide and conquer strategy by the early Soviets, who were not perfect on the national question. Seeding Georgia with non-Georgians would make it more difficult for Georgia to secede from the USSR. Similarly, splitting the poor Ossetians between Russia and Georgia was probably another sleazy divide and conquer game.
Anyway, in 1991, this completely fake state called Georgia (really just a republic of the USSR) gained its independence. If we are to support the principle of self-determination, we need to allow national minorities in fake states newly birthed the right to secede.
On what fucking basis were Abkhazia, Adjaria and South Ossetia an inherent part of some entity called "Georgia"? On no basis whatsoever! On what basis is some new fake country one day or one month old entitled to the bullshit and fascist principle of "inviability of borders"? On no basis.
So, when the Georgian state (really just a place with lines on the map with a lot of Georgians living in it, but drawn wider than the Georgian nation) got its independence, Abkhazia, Adjaria and South Ossetia surely had the right say, "Screw this, we want no part of this new state. We're out of here."
Adjaria, a Muslim region in the southwest, seems to have settled its beef without fighting, but Abkhazia and South Ossetia both waged nasty and ugly separatist wars and managed to secede from the new state of Georgia.
South Ossetia apparently wants to marry with North Ossetia and become a state in Russia called Ossetia. I'm not sure what Abkhazia wants to do. I think they may wish to join Russia also. Abkhazia is located in the northwest and populated mostly by Orthodox Christians.
South Ossetia is located in the north-central part of Georgia and is composed mostly of Ossetians. The Ossetians were formerly called the Alans, an ancient kingdom related ethnically and linguistically to Iranians. They speak a language that is close to Iranian and resemble Iranians physically.
Russia is being cynical about this, as befits an imperialist state. While Russia under Putin has fascist tendencies in the nasty repression on national minorities such as the Mari and the people of the Caucasus, Putin is willing, like all sleazy imperialists, do support secessionism when it benefits imperial goals.
Russia has it in for Georgia, lately because Georgia has lined up heavily on the side of the US. There are US and Israeli advisors working with the Georgian military right now, and Russia is terrified by Georgian threats to join NATO.
We need to note that NATO doesn't have much right to exist anymore. NATO was set up to deal with the Soviet threat. That's gone. So why is NATO still there? Apparently to form an imperialist bloc to oppose Russia! The Russians are furious about this, and rightly so. Who can blame them?
Sadly, it is also possible that Russia is using this as a payback to the West for supporting the secession of Kosova. The West, including the US in its extreme cynicism, first of all supported the secession of all of the former states of Yugoslavia (apparently on the cynical grounds that since they were seceding from a Communist nation, therefore the right of self-determination was invoked).
Then, just to stick it to Russia for the most part, the US and most of Europe supported Kosova and Montenegrin independence, just so long as they were pro-West. I supported it too, on the basis of solid principles called the right of self-determination. It is sad that the entire world Left opposed the independence of Kosova. This made Russia furious.
Yet in Abkhazia, in the same sleazy West that championed every micro-state to be cleaved out of the former Yugoslavia, not a single Western state, nor any state anywhere, would support the principled secession of the Abkhazian people from Georgian imperialism.
Does fascist Russia under Putin support the right of self-determination, however limited? Of course not. As a capitalist, and in fact fascist and now imperialist state, Russia clearly has no principles whatsoever. As payback to Kosova secession which hurt their pitiful fascist pan-Slavic feelings, the Russians are now supporting secession in Georgia. Principles? Come now!
This whole conflict is shot through with imperialism all the way. The US is supporting Georgia not out of any principles, because as an imperialist state, the US has zero principles other than profiteering, plunder and subjection of other states and peoples. The US supports secessionism when it benefits imperialist interests, and opposes it when it hinders imperialist interests!
And of course, it never admits this. When it supports secessionism, the US apparently invokes the right of self-determination. When it opposes secessionism, the US invokes the right of inviolability of national borders, as it is doing now in the case of Georgia. Contradictory, no? Sure is!
The sleazy and pro-imperialist US media fails to point out this dissonance, and your average educated American will inconsistently invoke, like a moron, either the right of self-determination of the right of inviolability of borders, depending, as they support the imperial projects that they have been inculcated to support.
This conflict, like all imperialist bullshit wars, boils down to various imperialist nations waging armed conflict over access to markets and natural resources.
As is, oil from Azerbaijan and gas from the Stans goes through Georgia and I believe hooks up with Russian pipelines. The US, Georgia, Israel and Turkey wish to cut Russia out of the deal and cut a new pipeline through Georgia to Turkey. At least some of the oil will then go to Israel and from there, through the Suez and out to the Indian Ocean and various nations in that region, in particular India.
Someone suggested to me that the West is cutting this new pipeline because they are afraid that Russia will cut off the flow of oil to the West. Forget it. They will not do any such thing unless pushed to the wall. The US, Israel, Georgia and probably Turkey are all doing this because they are more or less imperialist states.
This conflict is also shot through with old Cold War "Beware the bear" bullshit. Even after the fall of Communism and the return of capitalism to Russia, US imperialism and anti-Communists everywhere have continued to see Russia through and Cold War and anti-Communist lens. It is as if the fall of the USSR never occurred. Any analysis of the conflict between the US and the West that leaves out this essential element is lacking.
As a socialist, I want to ask the supporters of capitalism on this blog some questions.
Show me how advanced capitalism can exist without imperialism. Prove to me that an advanced capitalist state can exist in the modern world without becoming an imperialist power.
It seems to me that large capitalist states are typically mandated to become imperialist states and from there to engage in conflict, often armed, with other imperialist states for markets and natural resources. If this is so (and I think it is) how then can one support capitalism as it now exists, since it seems to be impossible to have large capitalist states that are not also imperialist?
As you might have guessed, I support the right of South Ossetia to self-determination and to secede from Georgia and the right, however sleazy, of Russia to assist them in this principled endeavor.
This conflict is getting real nasty real quick. Russia is threatening Israel and the US over their support for Georgia and the US has incredibly ordered Russia to withdraw its forces from South Ossetia. And the conflict very quickly seems to have expanded to Abkhazia. We have the potential for a really nasty conflict here.
I would like to point out that the neoconservative scum who now pretty much run this country are first and foremost ferocious imperialists. They are some of the most voracious backers of US imperialism out there. In this endeavor, neoconservatives have been picking fights with Russia for a long time now.
Many Jewish neoconservatives are involved in this imperial conflict with Russia, and unfortunately, in this light, they have supported Chechen independence not out of any decent principles, since neocons have no principles, but just to screw Russia.
The fact that elements of imperialism have supported the Chechen separatists rouses Russian nationalism and paranoia and makes Russia all the less likely to give the Chechens and other Caucasian peoples the independence they deserve.
It's not known why the neocons have such a beef with Russia, but they also backed the Russian Jewish oligarchs in their fleecing of Russia. There seems to be an old beef between Jewish nationalists and Russia.
We can see the outlines of this conflict in the campaign to "free the Soviet Jews", which was one of the original catalysts for the formation of the Jewish neocons back in the 1970's. There may also be a "screw the Russians" mindset dating from the hostile history of Russians and Jews in Russia, a history replete with pogroms of Jews.
Note: Readers should carefully read the Commenting Rules before commenting to avoid having their comments edited or deleted and to avoid being banned from the site.
Monday, August 04, 2008
Goodbye and Good Riddance
Updated August 23:
A traitor is dead. Goodbye and good riddance.
A notorious serial liar, fascist, Nazi sympathizer and novelist has died. He was lionized in the West for his lying novels and his lies where he claimed that 60 million, or 110 million, or however many, humans were murdered in his country. In reality, the state did kill some people in his country, but the number of those killed in peacetime was 1.6 million, not 60-110 million as he lied, I mean wrote.
Furthermore, the death rate was three times higher under the Czarist regime he so loved and championed his whole life than under the revolutionaries who replaced them.
He supported fascism his whole life, championing the Spanish Francoist Falangist fascists in Spain in the Spanish Civil War and later all through their rule. In 1975, as anti-fascist and pro-democracy demonstrations rocked Spain, the novelist traveled to Spain to shill for Spanish fascism.
Truth is, he never met a fascist he did not like.
He opposed the democratic revolution that overthrew the Portuguese fascist Salazar dictatorship in 1974, and advocated that the US military invade Portugal to restore the fascists to power. After the North Vietnamese conquered South Vietnam and reunited the country in 1975, he urged the US to attack Vietnam again. He opposed the liberation from colonialism of Portugal's colonies.
He gave speeches saying that North Vietnam was hiding tens of thousands of US servicemen as slave labor prisoners. These lies served as the basis for the crazy POW-MIA movement and the Rambo movies. Any American journalist arguing for peace between the USSR and the US was condemned as a traitor in the novelist's speeches.
He also lied about the military prowess of the USSR and urged a massive US buildup to counteract it. He said that the Soviets had a 5-7 times advantage in conventional weapons and nuclear weapons that were 2-5 times more powerful than those of the US. After the fall of the USSR, the novelist advocated a return to Czarism under the wing of the Russian Orthodox Church.
Most such people in his country were hardcore anti-Semites, and he was apparently no exception. He blamed Jews for the supposed deaths of 110 million people in his land and wrote an anti-Semitic book called Two Hundred Years Together on the history of his people and the Jews of his land. Due to Jewish pressure, that book has not yet been published in English in the US, but if you're lucky you can get it in Russian.
After World War 2, he came back to his native land, the USSR, and wrote polemics. These polemics resulted in his conviction as a counterrevolutionary for distributing anti-Soviet propaganda. His writings said that the war with Nazi Germany could have been avoided if the USSR had reached a compromise with the Germans.
He also said that the USSR and Stalin were worse than Nazi Germany and Hitler due to the sufferings of the Soviet people during the war. His detractors accused him of being a Nazi sympathizer. In 1946, for those writings, he was tried, convicted and sent to a labor camp for the crime of treason.
Now he's dead, but at least he can't write anymore lies.
I would like to post another side to his infamous archipelago. His gulags were obviously not a paradise, and 300,000 political prisoners, not 60-110 million, did indeed die there. 50% died during World War 2, mostly due to medicine shortages that were effecting the entire land at this time.
For instance, during the late 1940's in the USSR, some people were unemployed and wanted a job. They could not get one, so some of them would try to get arrested. They would walk up to the (evil, murderous Jewish NKVD that killed millions in an instant and for no reason) and asked to be arrested.
The NKVD, at that time being mostly fairly principled folks who would not arrest people just because they walk up to them and demand to get arrested, would not arrest them, and informed them that they would not arrest them unless they had committed a crime. The people who wanted to get arrested said they just wanted to work, so they were sent to work in the gulag in the Far East.
They were undoubtedly sent to one of the highest level gulags, which were really no more than huge zones with fences and guards around them. Inside were cities, towns, fields and factories.
Actually, there was all kinds of people out there - prisoners, yes, but also just workers. Prisoners and workers hung out together and had relationships and children with each other. It was not the mass murder system that the liars like the recently deceased novelist make it out to be.
How could this be if everyone hated the horrible mass murdering terror machine? For better or for worse, at the time of the gulags, a lot of Soviet citizens supported the repression because for various reasons they opposed those who opposed Stalin.
Out in the gulags in the 1950's, they all even went on strike one time - guards, prisoners, and workers together, after Khrushchev killed Beria, supposedly the most evil NKVD mass murderer of them all. Apparently Mr. Beria was quite well liked in the gulags, by guards, prisoners and workers all, for being a fair-minded man. Why they felt this way, I have no idea.
There were four or more levels in the gulag, and not all of them were harsh. Some of those levels were more exile or penal colonies than anything else. As you can see from the anecdote above, some of the "gulags" were not uniformly miserable places.
However, it is true that in 1939, 1 million Poles were deported to the gulags after the invasion of Poland. There were reasons for that, since this occurred during the Soviet occupation of Poland in the context of a hellaciously murderous war between the USSR and Germany, but it doesn't seem like it was the right thing to do.
The novelist lied when he said that 110 million people were murdered in his land. The number is 1.6 million and breaks down as follows:
Executions of political prisoners: 900,000
Deaths during dekulakization in Ukraine: 390,000
Deaths of political prisoners in labor camps: 300,000
I'm not including the "Holodomor" crap because the famine was not intentional, nor was it limited to the Ukraine.
Executions of political prisoners and deaths during population transfers during WW2 are not included. It was a terrible time, with a tremendous amount killings of civilians and fighters on all sides by all forces.
I'm also not including criminals who were executed or deaths of criminals in labor camps. Most of them were rapists, robbers and murderers. Of the 1.2 million deaths in the gulag, 900,000 were such criminals.
On the other hand, I would like to point out that some of the gulags were pretty horrible places, lots of people were punished there who had done little wrong, and punishments for infractions while in the camps were also very harsh and cruel.
I think most people nowadays do not wish to live in a secret police state like Stalin's that executes dissidents and throws them into often-Hellish labor camps. So I think that Communists should not execute political prisoners and ought not to operate gulags. Remaining Communist states often adhere to this rule.
Cuba's prisons are not very harsh on a Latin American scale, and no one has been executed for a political crime in a very long time. In Vietnam and Laos, things are similar. North Korea is still an extremely harsh and cruel police state, and in many ways, so is China. For one thing, China probably executes 20,000 prisoners, mostly or all common criminals, a year.
Note: Readers should carefully read the Commenting Rules before commenting to avoid having their comments edited or deleted and to avoid being banned from the site.
A traitor is dead. Goodbye and good riddance.
A notorious serial liar, fascist, Nazi sympathizer and novelist has died. He was lionized in the West for his lying novels and his lies where he claimed that 60 million, or 110 million, or however many, humans were murdered in his country. In reality, the state did kill some people in his country, but the number of those killed in peacetime was 1.6 million, not 60-110 million as he lied, I mean wrote.
Furthermore, the death rate was three times higher under the Czarist regime he so loved and championed his whole life than under the revolutionaries who replaced them.
He supported fascism his whole life, championing the Spanish Francoist Falangist fascists in Spain in the Spanish Civil War and later all through their rule. In 1975, as anti-fascist and pro-democracy demonstrations rocked Spain, the novelist traveled to Spain to shill for Spanish fascism.
Truth is, he never met a fascist he did not like.
He opposed the democratic revolution that overthrew the Portuguese fascist Salazar dictatorship in 1974, and advocated that the US military invade Portugal to restore the fascists to power. After the North Vietnamese conquered South Vietnam and reunited the country in 1975, he urged the US to attack Vietnam again. He opposed the liberation from colonialism of Portugal's colonies.
He gave speeches saying that North Vietnam was hiding tens of thousands of US servicemen as slave labor prisoners. These lies served as the basis for the crazy POW-MIA movement and the Rambo movies. Any American journalist arguing for peace between the USSR and the US was condemned as a traitor in the novelist's speeches.
He also lied about the military prowess of the USSR and urged a massive US buildup to counteract it. He said that the Soviets had a 5-7 times advantage in conventional weapons and nuclear weapons that were 2-5 times more powerful than those of the US. After the fall of the USSR, the novelist advocated a return to Czarism under the wing of the Russian Orthodox Church.
Most such people in his country were hardcore anti-Semites, and he was apparently no exception. He blamed Jews for the supposed deaths of 110 million people in his land and wrote an anti-Semitic book called Two Hundred Years Together on the history of his people and the Jews of his land. Due to Jewish pressure, that book has not yet been published in English in the US, but if you're lucky you can get it in Russian.
After World War 2, he came back to his native land, the USSR, and wrote polemics. These polemics resulted in his conviction as a counterrevolutionary for distributing anti-Soviet propaganda. His writings said that the war with Nazi Germany could have been avoided if the USSR had reached a compromise with the Germans.
He also said that the USSR and Stalin were worse than Nazi Germany and Hitler due to the sufferings of the Soviet people during the war. His detractors accused him of being a Nazi sympathizer. In 1946, for those writings, he was tried, convicted and sent to a labor camp for the crime of treason.
Now he's dead, but at least he can't write anymore lies.
I would like to post another side to his infamous archipelago. His gulags were obviously not a paradise, and 300,000 political prisoners, not 60-110 million, did indeed die there. 50% died during World War 2, mostly due to medicine shortages that were effecting the entire land at this time.
For instance, during the late 1940's in the USSR, some people were unemployed and wanted a job. They could not get one, so some of them would try to get arrested. They would walk up to the (evil, murderous Jewish NKVD that killed millions in an instant and for no reason) and asked to be arrested.
The NKVD, at that time being mostly fairly principled folks who would not arrest people just because they walk up to them and demand to get arrested, would not arrest them, and informed them that they would not arrest them unless they had committed a crime. The people who wanted to get arrested said they just wanted to work, so they were sent to work in the gulag in the Far East.
They were undoubtedly sent to one of the highest level gulags, which were really no more than huge zones with fences and guards around them. Inside were cities, towns, fields and factories.
Actually, there was all kinds of people out there - prisoners, yes, but also just workers. Prisoners and workers hung out together and had relationships and children with each other. It was not the mass murder system that the liars like the recently deceased novelist make it out to be.
How could this be if everyone hated the horrible mass murdering terror machine? For better or for worse, at the time of the gulags, a lot of Soviet citizens supported the repression because for various reasons they opposed those who opposed Stalin.
Out in the gulags in the 1950's, they all even went on strike one time - guards, prisoners, and workers together, after Khrushchev killed Beria, supposedly the most evil NKVD mass murderer of them all. Apparently Mr. Beria was quite well liked in the gulags, by guards, prisoners and workers all, for being a fair-minded man. Why they felt this way, I have no idea.
There were four or more levels in the gulag, and not all of them were harsh. Some of those levels were more exile or penal colonies than anything else. As you can see from the anecdote above, some of the "gulags" were not uniformly miserable places.
However, it is true that in 1939, 1 million Poles were deported to the gulags after the invasion of Poland. There were reasons for that, since this occurred during the Soviet occupation of Poland in the context of a hellaciously murderous war between the USSR and Germany, but it doesn't seem like it was the right thing to do.
The novelist lied when he said that 110 million people were murdered in his land. The number is 1.6 million and breaks down as follows:
Executions of political prisoners: 900,000
Deaths during dekulakization in Ukraine: 390,000
Deaths of political prisoners in labor camps: 300,000
I'm not including the "Holodomor" crap because the famine was not intentional, nor was it limited to the Ukraine.
Executions of political prisoners and deaths during population transfers during WW2 are not included. It was a terrible time, with a tremendous amount killings of civilians and fighters on all sides by all forces.
I'm also not including criminals who were executed or deaths of criminals in labor camps. Most of them were rapists, robbers and murderers. Of the 1.2 million deaths in the gulag, 900,000 were such criminals.
On the other hand, I would like to point out that some of the gulags were pretty horrible places, lots of people were punished there who had done little wrong, and punishments for infractions while in the camps were also very harsh and cruel.
I think most people nowadays do not wish to live in a secret police state like Stalin's that executes dissidents and throws them into often-Hellish labor camps. So I think that Communists should not execute political prisoners and ought not to operate gulags. Remaining Communist states often adhere to this rule.
Cuba's prisons are not very harsh on a Latin American scale, and no one has been executed for a political crime in a very long time. In Vietnam and Laos, things are similar. North Korea is still an extremely harsh and cruel police state, and in many ways, so is China. For one thing, China probably executes 20,000 prisoners, mostly or all common criminals, a year.
Note: Readers should carefully read the Commenting Rules before commenting to avoid having their comments edited or deleted and to avoid being banned from the site.
Monday, June 09, 2008
Manuel Marulanda
Great photo of Manuel Marulanda (seated) from the early days.
The more classic view that people are a lot more familiar with - the veteran revolutionary and guerrilla. In the background are uniformed FARC troops.I've already been over on this blog why the Colombian revolutionaries really have no alternative but to fight. When they tried to lay down their weapons, they were slaughtered like flies. As long as there is no open space for peaceful dissent in Colombia, armed struggle will be a sensible option.
Via a couple of articles out of People's Movement Support Group, we now learn a lot more about Sure Shot - Manuel Marulanda. The essential moment in the Colombian struggle and the one that actually gave rise to the FARC 16 years later was the assassination of Jorge Eliécer Gaitán, the presidential candidate that the people had pinned their hopes on.
Colombia has always been ruled by two ruling class parties - the Liberals and the Conservatives. Although they hated each other, there was never much difference between the two. Gaitán was a new kind of Liberal - a leftwing populist that was actually going to work for the people and not the oligarchy for once.
Even his own Liberal party condemned him, and he was quickly assassinated by unknown parties. The killing set off La Violencia, a conflict between the Conservatives and Liberals that killed 200,000 people in a small country over the next 16 years. The peasants in the countryside split off to form militias to slaughter each other.
The Conservatives represented the older oligarchy, and the Liberals represented some nouveau riche up and coming members of the oligarchy who wanted in. However, the Liberals were joined by many peasants and Communists. The two parties finally signed a peace treaty in 1963 and decided to declare war on the Communists.
Pedro Antonio Marín Marín, later Manuel Marulanda, was born into a poor peasant family around 1930. At age 13, he was forced to leave home to find work. Great system! At some time after 1948, Marín was attacked in his home by a Conservative militia. This led him to join the Liberals. He took the name Manuel Marulanda after an Afro-Colombian union leader who was tortured to death in 1953.
In the late 1950's, he joined forces with Jacobo Arenas to form a Marxist guerrilla group modeled on the Fidelistas fighting in the mountains of Cuba. It was as a guerrilla that he earned the name Tiro Fijo or Sure Shot.
The Colombian ruling class and US imperialism are overjoyed that Marulanda died. He died at age 77 in the arms of his lover, surrounded by his guerrilla comrades. The imperialists and their lackeys have made up a lie that he was killed by a bomb from a Colombian jet. This is not true.
It is little known that there is a fierce guerrilla war raging in Colombia. You don't read about much in the news, but the FARC, while conducting an orderly retreat under a severe offensive, is counterattacking against the Colombian military, and there are many small battles taking place every week.
The FARC is quite popular in Colombia, especially amongst the rural poor. If you go out into some areas of the countryside, all adults that you see will be members of the FARC. The peasant farmer in the countryside with his cows will have a sidearm. The woman cooking in her kitchen cooks food for guerrillas.
This is the FARC's rural militia, and it numbers up to 200,000-300,000. This is much more than the 15-20,000 full-time soldiers of the FARC. These peasants have been part of the FARC's support base for decades. That's just the way it is in a lot of places. FARC has had a much harder time organizing in the cities, but they do have urban militias.
The kidnappings that the US media screams about all the time are usually just arrests for not paying revolutionary taxes. Every Colombian with an income of over $1 million/year (that's a lot of people) has to pay revolutionary taxes every year (usually 10%). Most wealthy Colombians just do it. They drive out 25-50 miles from the city they live and pay the guerrillas. Then they are free for another year.
Some wealthy Colombians have not been paying taxes lately, so they have been arrested by the FARC for tax evasion. They will be released when they pay their taxes. So it's not really the "kidnapping and ransom payments" scenario that the media wants you to believe.
The FARC is even very popular across the border in Ecuador, especially in the rural areas. The notion that this group has no support is a lie propagated by its enemies.
Another lie is that these guerrillas live in luxury because they are narco-traffickers. They do tax drug crops in their regions of control, including cocaine. However, all of the money goes towards the war. No FARC guerrillas or leaders live in luxury.
Note: Readers should carefully read the Commenting Rules before commenting to avoid having their comments edited or deleted and to avoid being banned from the site.
Saturday, June 07, 2008
The Russian Character Again
It's always a bit difficult to touch on national characters, especially nowadays in PC times, but as long as one avoids biological racism and instead sees national character as cultural and shaped by history, geography and whatnot, it certainly is a valid endeavor.
The very notion that examinations of national character (national culture, really) is "racist" is one of the most sickening notions that has warped out of the anti-racism of the 1960's. In inventing the most un-progressive notion of Identity Politics (essentially ethnic nationalism of one sort or another, and automatically a precursor to some sort of fascism, thus) the Left in the 1960's opened the barn door for this kettle of worms.
Nowadays, rightwing nationalists probably scream racism as much as leftwingers do. If anyone criticizes their crappy and reactionary culture (note the long Left tradition of cultural critique here), the Right, and increasingly, even the Insane Left, screams racism.
This is sad more than anything else.
Every single progressive achievement in the history of mankind has come about through often-ferocious critique of existing reactionary culture. As soon as we mark off every culture, no matter how stupid, insane, backwards, reactionary or horrible, as equally valuable (another mad Left endeavor - the equality of all cultures), we've basically wiped out any chance to change that culture.
In this way the Left has actually jumped into bed with the worst of the cultural conservatives and reactionaries.
I don't really see much hope for change in any of this as long as the Left continues on this idiot phobia about "racism". Culture isn't race. Culture is culture, and it's mutable, often in a brief period of time, as the Maoists showed us. There's nothing essential or biological about culture.
Here at Robert Lindsay, we love to bash any old culture we feel like bashing. In this case, we are taking on the Russians. It's not really a bash - it's more an explication, but the cultural fetishists and Russian nationalists may well take umbrage.
We already looked at the Russian character in a previous post.
Let's expand on this a bit by looking at National Bolsheviks. Now, these guys, and other Third Positionists and "let's move beyond Right and Left" folks, do come around to the blog from time to time. I'm all ears, but everyone like this is pushing some kind of racism, usually some kind of White nationalism.
They are socialists, I'll grant em that, and US White nationalism is so useless and harmless, I'm almost tempted to ally with most any socialist out there, even these guys.
But let's take a look at the National Bolshevik Party in Russia. I read their platform, and I just cannot support them. They are absurdly anti-Semitic, they support the horrible war in Chechnya (!) and they apparently believe that Russia should conquer all of Europe and incorporate it into Russia.
This is actually an old Russian nationalist dream that goes back to 1850 or so - it has a pretty complicated philosophy behind it. Reader James Hajduk refers to it as "Russian messianism".
It has to do with the rivalry and even hatred that Russians feel towards the West. This refers to the conflict with Orthodoxy vs Roman Christianity, and contempt for Western science (recall that Dostoevsky wished to do away with mathematics because it came from the West), materialism, shallowness, violence and inequality.
You can see this loud and clear in both Tolstoy and Dostoevsky - Tolstoy rejects almost everything but spirituality. There is a strain of asceticism, contempt for materialism and the pleasures of the flesh, and a strong spirituality running through it. The West may be wealthier but the Russian is more pure, more connected to the Earth, more spiritual and especially he has suffered more.
There is a rejection of the Western tradition that knowledge can be gained through the senses. Similar to the early Gnostics, these Russians felt that the body and the senses were corrupt, tainted and liable to distortion, and hence could not be trusted to reveal the truth.
What could reveal the truth? Only spirituality in the form of Orthodox Christianity. This contempt for the body and the pleasures of this Earth led some leading thinkers such as Tolstoy to even reject sex. This never caught on with Russian peasants, who merely rejected marriage while embracing sex with gusto.
All of these things, especially the suffering, combine to make Russia superior to the West. Therefore Europe needs to be conquered and put under Russian rule to cure the West of its evil. In a way, I think Stalin may have been trying to do this in Eastern Europe.
All of these strains of Russian character were actually present in the USSR too, but most don't realize it. In fact, in order to understand Bolshevism, one must first understand the Russian character. There is also a strong "rejection of everything" and near-nihilism or outright nihilism to this type of thought.
This strain of thinking was very popular in a group of Russian thinkers in the 1850's known as Slavophiles. Some of these intellectuals, known as narodniks, went out to peasant villages to live with the peasants, but were unfortunately rejected by the peasants. There was a big conflict during this time between the Slavophiles and another group called Westernizers.
"Russia" is a complex concept. European, Asian, Roman (Moscow as the Third Rome), Orthodox Christian, atheist and nihilist elements all blend, and different Russians stress different elements. Often, they stress mutually contradictory elements at the same time, such that we see such peculiarities as the Orthodox atheist, the spiritual nihilist, etc.
The Soviet Union, despite the difference in ideology from Tsarist Russia, often pursued similar geopolitical goals.
Note: Readers should carefully read the Commenting Rules before commenting to avoid having their comments edited or deleted and to avoid being banned from the site.
The very notion that examinations of national character (national culture, really) is "racist" is one of the most sickening notions that has warped out of the anti-racism of the 1960's. In inventing the most un-progressive notion of Identity Politics (essentially ethnic nationalism of one sort or another, and automatically a precursor to some sort of fascism, thus) the Left in the 1960's opened the barn door for this kettle of worms.
Nowadays, rightwing nationalists probably scream racism as much as leftwingers do. If anyone criticizes their crappy and reactionary culture (note the long Left tradition of cultural critique here), the Right, and increasingly, even the Insane Left, screams racism.
This is sad more than anything else.
Every single progressive achievement in the history of mankind has come about through often-ferocious critique of existing reactionary culture. As soon as we mark off every culture, no matter how stupid, insane, backwards, reactionary or horrible, as equally valuable (another mad Left endeavor - the equality of all cultures), we've basically wiped out any chance to change that culture.
In this way the Left has actually jumped into bed with the worst of the cultural conservatives and reactionaries.
I don't really see much hope for change in any of this as long as the Left continues on this idiot phobia about "racism". Culture isn't race. Culture is culture, and it's mutable, often in a brief period of time, as the Maoists showed us. There's nothing essential or biological about culture.
Here at Robert Lindsay, we love to bash any old culture we feel like bashing. In this case, we are taking on the Russians. It's not really a bash - it's more an explication, but the cultural fetishists and Russian nationalists may well take umbrage.
We already looked at the Russian character in a previous post.
Let's expand on this a bit by looking at National Bolsheviks. Now, these guys, and other Third Positionists and "let's move beyond Right and Left" folks, do come around to the blog from time to time. I'm all ears, but everyone like this is pushing some kind of racism, usually some kind of White nationalism.
They are socialists, I'll grant em that, and US White nationalism is so useless and harmless, I'm almost tempted to ally with most any socialist out there, even these guys.
But let's take a look at the National Bolshevik Party in Russia. I read their platform, and I just cannot support them. They are absurdly anti-Semitic, they support the horrible war in Chechnya (!) and they apparently believe that Russia should conquer all of Europe and incorporate it into Russia.
This is actually an old Russian nationalist dream that goes back to 1850 or so - it has a pretty complicated philosophy behind it. Reader James Hajduk refers to it as "Russian messianism".
It has to do with the rivalry and even hatred that Russians feel towards the West. This refers to the conflict with Orthodoxy vs Roman Christianity, and contempt for Western science (recall that Dostoevsky wished to do away with mathematics because it came from the West), materialism, shallowness, violence and inequality.
You can see this loud and clear in both Tolstoy and Dostoevsky - Tolstoy rejects almost everything but spirituality. There is a strain of asceticism, contempt for materialism and the pleasures of the flesh, and a strong spirituality running through it. The West may be wealthier but the Russian is more pure, more connected to the Earth, more spiritual and especially he has suffered more.
There is a rejection of the Western tradition that knowledge can be gained through the senses. Similar to the early Gnostics, these Russians felt that the body and the senses were corrupt, tainted and liable to distortion, and hence could not be trusted to reveal the truth.
What could reveal the truth? Only spirituality in the form of Orthodox Christianity. This contempt for the body and the pleasures of this Earth led some leading thinkers such as Tolstoy to even reject sex. This never caught on with Russian peasants, who merely rejected marriage while embracing sex with gusto.
All of these things, especially the suffering, combine to make Russia superior to the West. Therefore Europe needs to be conquered and put under Russian rule to cure the West of its evil. In a way, I think Stalin may have been trying to do this in Eastern Europe.
All of these strains of Russian character were actually present in the USSR too, but most don't realize it. In fact, in order to understand Bolshevism, one must first understand the Russian character. There is also a strong "rejection of everything" and near-nihilism or outright nihilism to this type of thought.
This strain of thinking was very popular in a group of Russian thinkers in the 1850's known as Slavophiles. Some of these intellectuals, known as narodniks, went out to peasant villages to live with the peasants, but were unfortunately rejected by the peasants. There was a big conflict during this time between the Slavophiles and another group called Westernizers.
"Russia" is a complex concept. European, Asian, Roman (Moscow as the Third Rome), Orthodox Christian, atheist and nihilist elements all blend, and different Russians stress different elements. Often, they stress mutually contradictory elements at the same time, such that we see such peculiarities as the Orthodox atheist, the spiritual nihilist, etc.
The Soviet Union, despite the difference in ideology from Tsarist Russia, often pursued similar geopolitical goals.
Notes
1. I incorporated some of my email conversation with perceptive reader James Hajduk in writing this post.Note: Readers should carefully read the Commenting Rules before commenting to avoid having their comments edited or deleted and to avoid being banned from the site.
Giovanni Gentile on Fascism
Gentile is one of my favorite rightwing intellectuals, not because I agree with him of course, but because he is a true intellectual, and I respect that even in my ideological enemies.
Beats fake intellectual clowns like Jonah Goldberg any day of the weak. The fascists were not liars peddling bullshit and crap like so many of today's rightwing intellectuals. Classic fascist doctrine held a lot of important truths and was not dishonest at all. Instead of being a pile of crap and lies, it merely peddled repugnant truths.
The Doctrine of Fascism, by Gentile (supposedly by Mussolini himself, but Gentile actually wrote it) from 1932, is the clearest evocation of Mussolini-type fascism, which was different in important ways from the biological racism of the Nazis. Let's take a look at some excerpts from this seminal essay. In particular, we will note how Mussolini's fascism differs from Marxism, because the two are often confused.
Mussolini came to power after the "March on Rome" in 1922, and was appointed Prime Minister by King Victor Emmanuel.
In 1932 Mussolini wrote (with the help of Giovanni Gentile) an entry for the Italian Encyclopedia on the definition of fascism.
Let us now examine Leo Strauss, the father of the neocons. A woman named Shadia Drury has done an excellent job of explicating his work. Strauss operated very much in a Mussolini fascist tradition.
Two Drury articles are here - the first, by Drury herself - Saving America: Leo Strauss and the Neoconservatives - is an analysis of Strauss and the Straussians. The second is an interview with Drury - Noble Lies and Perpetual War.
I have read this material are recommend it highly. It's a bit hard to get through, but it's not Marx. If you read it carefully and really think about what you are reading, you may finally figure out what these neocons are really all about.
Drury notes some other authors who ply the same waters as Strauss - in particular Alexandre Kojève and Carl Schmitt. All of these have influenced the neocons. The unmistakable conclusion is that the neocons are fascists.
Astute reader James Hajduk sees Gentile as a "rightwing Hegelian". I agree with that odd analysis.
Gentile follows, in blockquotes, followed by my analysis.
In 1921, Italy was semi-feudal. Peasants were rising up all over the land against the landlords who held almost all the land. The peasants worked on the land as farm laborers or rented land in debt bondage in a semi-feudal system. There was a Left revolution in the rural areas all over Italy.
This is when Italy started to go fascist, as the landed oligarchy in the countryside mobilized working class men as an army to attack the rural peasantry. The upshot was Mussolini's March on Rome the next year - 1922. Italian fascism needed a crisis, and they got one in 1921.
Note the use of working class, especially thuggish, young male, working class elements to attack the their brothers, the peasants. In the same way, Salvadoran fascism in recent years made use of young working class men as an army for the oligarchy - they constituted a significant portion of the death squads.
Further, the elite fears it will lead to a loss of power and money on their part. By denying the obvious existence of class struggle, fascism actually cements ruling class rule forever. It allows class struggle on the part of the elite, of course, but denies it on the part of the workers.
The business class is allowed a good profit, but Italian fascism may ask that they produce for the state instead. Producing for the state usually produces high profits for business in all varieties of fascism.
Varieties of fascism similar to Italian fascism sprang up all over Europe in the 1920's and 1930's and were often very powerful. Note that conservatism is also generally opposed to the notion of progress of man. Man is man, he is the same as he will ever be, and all attempts at moving forwards are "social engineering" designed to upset the "natural order of things".
Conservatism often tosses in the notion that this "natural order of things" is ordained by whatever Deity is worshiped by the people.
The "natural order of things" usually means something like a few rich people owning just about everything and most everyone else having hardly even anything, but both conservatism and fascism regard this as "normal" and attempts to change this natural order as unnatural, doomed to failure and against human nature itself.
The people create the state and run it. The state is run by the people themselves for their interests and is subordinate to them. The state and society are separate. This is the root structure of all Western liberal democracy, and it is in opposition to fascism and also to Russian thinking, where the state and society have always been one.
Fascism is Phoenix-like - a society used and abused for foreigners, fallen into decadence, enslavement and weakness, will rise again, Phoenix-like, from the ashes of its own abasement, mining the glory of the nation's past (in Mussolini's case, there were constant evocations of reclaiming the ancient glory that was Rome) to once again rise in the tradition of the elders to the greatness that is the destiny of the people of that nation.
There is an ethnic (or at least national) supremacism here, no matter how much folks try to say Mussolini was not racist.
Note: Readers should carefully read the Commenting Rules before commenting to avoid having their comments edited or deleted and to avoid being banned from the site.
Beats fake intellectual clowns like Jonah Goldberg any day of the weak. The fascists were not liars peddling bullshit and crap like so many of today's rightwing intellectuals. Classic fascist doctrine held a lot of important truths and was not dishonest at all. Instead of being a pile of crap and lies, it merely peddled repugnant truths.
The Doctrine of Fascism, by Gentile (supposedly by Mussolini himself, but Gentile actually wrote it) from 1932, is the clearest evocation of Mussolini-type fascism, which was different in important ways from the biological racism of the Nazis. Let's take a look at some excerpts from this seminal essay. In particular, we will note how Mussolini's fascism differs from Marxism, because the two are often confused.
Mussolini came to power after the "March on Rome" in 1922, and was appointed Prime Minister by King Victor Emmanuel.
In 1932 Mussolini wrote (with the help of Giovanni Gentile) an entry for the Italian Encyclopedia on the definition of fascism.
Let us now examine Leo Strauss, the father of the neocons. A woman named Shadia Drury has done an excellent job of explicating his work. Strauss operated very much in a Mussolini fascist tradition.
Two Drury articles are here - the first, by Drury herself - Saving America: Leo Strauss and the Neoconservatives - is an analysis of Strauss and the Straussians. The second is an interview with Drury - Noble Lies and Perpetual War.
I have read this material are recommend it highly. It's a bit hard to get through, but it's not Marx. If you read it carefully and really think about what you are reading, you may finally figure out what these neocons are really all about.
Drury notes some other authors who ply the same waters as Strauss - in particular Alexandre Kojève and Carl Schmitt. All of these have influenced the neocons. The unmistakable conclusion is that the neocons are fascists.
Astute reader James Hajduk sees Gentile as a "rightwing Hegelian". I agree with that odd analysis.
Gentile follows, in blockquotes, followed by my analysis.
Fascism, the more it considers and observes the future and the development of humanity quite apart from political considerations of the moment, believes neither in the possibility nor the utility of perpetual peace. It thus repudiates the doctrine of Pacifism -- born of a renunciation of the struggle and an act of cowardice in the face of sacrifice.This is very Straussian. These guys believe in war for the sake of war and for no other reason. When man does not go to war, he becomes soft, decadent, depraved, cosmopolitan, and...democratic. He sits in cafes and becomes effete, devotes himself to pleasure, and develops a fear of death to the extent that he will hardly fight for anything anymore.
War alone brings up to its highest tension all human energy and puts the stamp of nobility upon the peoples who have courage to meet it. All other trials are substitutes, which never really put men into the position where they have to make the great decision -- the alternative of life or death....
...The Fascist accepts life and loves it, knowing nothing of and despising suicide: he rather conceives of life as duty and struggle and conquest, but above all for others -- those who are at hand and those who are far distant, contemporaries, and those who will come after...This is very "organic" blood-and-soil type stuff here.
...Fascism [is] the complete opposite of…Marxian Socialism, the materialist conception of history of human civilization can be explained simply through the conflict of interests among the various social groups and by the change and development in the means and instruments of production....More organic blood-and-soil type stuff here.
Fascism, now and always, believes in holiness and in heroism; that is to say, in actions influenced by no economic motive, direct or indirect.
And if the economic conception of history be denied, according to which theory men are no more than puppets, carried to and fro by the waves of chance, while the real directing forces are quite out of their control, it follows that the existence of an unchangeable and unchanging class-war is also denied - the natural progeny of the economic conception of history.Fascism actually arises when there is a severe crisis in capitalism such that the workers or the Left is about to seize power. As a last-ditch effort to save their power and money, the elite resorts to fascism. It's not ideal, but it's better than the alternative.
And above all Fascism denies that class-war can be the preponderant force in the transformation of society....
In 1921, Italy was semi-feudal. Peasants were rising up all over the land against the landlords who held almost all the land. The peasants worked on the land as farm laborers or rented land in debt bondage in a semi-feudal system. There was a Left revolution in the rural areas all over Italy.
This is when Italy started to go fascist, as the landed oligarchy in the countryside mobilized working class men as an army to attack the rural peasantry. The upshot was Mussolini's March on Rome the next year - 1922. Italian fascism needed a crisis, and they got one in 1921.
Note the use of working class, especially thuggish, young male, working class elements to attack the their brothers, the peasants. In the same way, Salvadoran fascism in recent years made use of young working class men as an army for the oligarchy - they constituted a significant portion of the death squads.
After Socialism, Fascism combats the whole complex system of democratic ideology, and repudiates it, whether in its theoretical premises or in its practical application.Fascism at its core is simply elitist. That is all there is to it. It opposes democracy because they think that the masses are asses. Rule by the common man is the ultimate horror, not because he doesn't know what he is doing and will be persuaded to harm himself, but because this will lead to the pleasure society and the softening of men.
Fascism denies that the majority, by the simple fact that it is a majority, can direct human society; it denies that numbers alone can govern by means of a periodical consultation, and it affirms the immutable, beneficial, and fruitful inequality of mankind, which can never be permanently leveled through the mere operation of a mechanical process such as universal suffrage....
Further, the elite fears it will lead to a loss of power and money on their part. By denying the obvious existence of class struggle, fascism actually cements ruling class rule forever. It allows class struggle on the part of the elite, of course, but denies it on the part of the workers.
The business class is allowed a good profit, but Italian fascism may ask that they produce for the state instead. Producing for the state usually produces high profits for business in all varieties of fascism.
...Fascism denies, in democracy, the absurd conventional untruth of political equality dressed out in the garb of collective irresponsibility, and the myth of "happiness" and indefinite progress....Fascism is actually opposed to the notion of the progress of men. Things are cemented and in some ways are timeless. We are the same as we were 100 or 1000 or 2000 years ago. Class relations, male and female roles, etc., are cemented forever in the name of tradition. Liberalism and even science is regarded with contempt.
Varieties of fascism similar to Italian fascism sprang up all over Europe in the 1920's and 1930's and were often very powerful. Note that conservatism is also generally opposed to the notion of progress of man. Man is man, he is the same as he will ever be, and all attempts at moving forwards are "social engineering" designed to upset the "natural order of things".
Conservatism often tosses in the notion that this "natural order of things" is ordained by whatever Deity is worshiped by the people.
The "natural order of things" usually means something like a few rich people owning just about everything and most everyone else having hardly even anything, but both conservatism and fascism regard this as "normal" and attempts to change this natural order as unnatural, doomed to failure and against human nature itself.
...Given that the nineteenth century was the century of Socialism, of Liberalism, and of Democracy, it does not necessarily follow that the twentieth century must also be a century of Socialism, Liberalism and Democracy: political doctrines pass, but humanity remains, and it may rather be expected that this will be a century of authority...a century of Fascism.However, this collectivism preserves profits. It collectivizes workers and owners as one coherent mass with "mutual interests". This is quite the opposite of Marxism.
For if the nineteenth century was a century of individualism it may be expected that this will be the century of collectivism and hence the century of the State....
The foundation of Fascism is the conception of the State, its character, its duty, and its aim. Fascism conceives of the State as an absolute, in comparison with which all individuals or groups are relative, only to be conceived of in their relation to the State.It is true, from its foundations in the Dark Ages, when society continued to exist without the state, liberal society has always seen the people as being first and then the state.
The conception of the Liberal State is not that of a directing force, guiding the play and development, both material and spiritual, of a collective body, but merely a force limited to the function of recording results: on the other hand, the Fascist State is itself conscious and has itself a will and a personality -- thus it may be called the "ethic" State....
The people create the state and run it. The state is run by the people themselves for their interests and is subordinate to them. The state and society are separate. This is the root structure of all Western liberal democracy, and it is in opposition to fascism and also to Russian thinking, where the state and society have always been one.
...The Fascist State organizes the nation, but leaves a sufficient margin of liberty to the individual; the latter is deprived of all useless and possibly harmful freedom, but retains what is essential; the deciding power in this question cannot be the individual, but the State alone....This is classic stuff here. All fascism is imperialistic and expansionistic, because this is the natural and normal tendency of the tribe or nation as state. Fascism takes different ethnicities and molds them into one in the form of the state.
...For Fascism, the growth of empire, that is to say the expansion of the nation, is an essential manifestation of vitality, and its opposite a sign of decadence. Peoples which are rising, or rising again after a period of decadence, are always imperialist; and renunciation is a sign of decay and of death.
Fascism is the doctrine best adapted to represent the tendencies and the aspirations of a people, like the people of Italy, who are rising again after many centuries of abasement and foreign servitude.
But empire demands discipline, the coordination of all forces and a deeply felt sense of duty and sacrifice: this fact explains many aspects of the practical working of the regime, the character of many forces in the State, and the necessarily severe measures which must be taken against those who would oppose this spontaneous and inevitable movement of Italy in the twentieth century, and would oppose it by recalling the outworn ideology of the nineteenth century - repudiated wheresoever there has been the courage to undertake great experiments of social and political transformation; for never before has the nation stood more in need of authority, of direction and order.
If every age has its own characteristic doctrine, there are a thousand signs which point to Fascism as the characteristic doctrine of our time. For if a doctrine must be a living thing, this is proved by the fact that Fascism has created a living faith; and that this faith is very powerful in the minds of men is demonstrated by those who have suffered and died for it.
Fascism is Phoenix-like - a society used and abused for foreigners, fallen into decadence, enslavement and weakness, will rise again, Phoenix-like, from the ashes of its own abasement, mining the glory of the nation's past (in Mussolini's case, there were constant evocations of reclaiming the ancient glory that was Rome) to once again rise in the tradition of the elders to the greatness that is the destiny of the people of that nation.
There is an ethnic (or at least national) supremacism here, no matter how much folks try to say Mussolini was not racist.
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