Platypus interview on The Destiny of Civilization

The destiny of civilization: An interview with Michael Hudson
On July 15, 2022, Platypus Affiliated Society member D. L. Jacobs interviewed Michael Hudson to discuss his new book, The Destiny of Civilization: Finance Capitalism, Industrial Capitalism or Socialism (2022). An edited transcript follows.

D. L. Jacobs: Can tell us about your background regarding Marxism and how you came to political economy?
Michael Hudson: Well, I grew up in a Marxist household. My father was a political prisoner, one of the Minneapolis 17.1 Minneapolis was the only city in the world that was a Trotskyist city, and my parents worked with Trotsky in Mexico. So, I grew up not having any intention of going into economics. I wanted to be a musician, and when I was 21, I began writing a history of the connection between music, art, drama theory, and the Renaissance in the 19th century. But then I went to New York and went to work on Wall Street just to get a job. I met the translator of Marx’s Theories of Surplus Value, Terence McCarthy, who convinced me that economics was more interesting than anything else that was happening. He became my mentor, I took a PhD in economics, and that’s it.

DLJ: You begin The Destiny of Civilization by talking about how it was the historical task of both industrial capitalism and classical political economy to emancipate the economy from feudal rentiership. How was classical political economy revolutionary?

MH: Marx said that the role of industrial capitalism was to cut costs of production in order to compete with industrial capitalists in other countries. There are two ways of reducing the costs if you are a capitalist. One is to simply lower wages, but if you lower wages, you don’t get high productivity labor. The Americans, by the 19th century, realized that the higher the wage was, the higher the labor productivity, because productive labor was well-educated. well-fed, healthy labor. The idea of capitalism was, number one, to reduce the costs of production that were unnecessary. Namely, what did labor have to pay just to live that wasn’t really necessary. The biggest cost of labor was land rent — this paid for high food prices if there was agricultural protectionism, as in London, England until 1846 — and housing rent. The idea was that socialism would replace all landlords as rent recipients by either taxing away the land rent or nationalizing the land.

The state would be the landlord and that would be its source of fiscal funding. It didn’t have to tax labor, but would tax landlords. The other way that capitalism would reduce labor’s living costs was working to prevent monopolies, to prevent all forms of economic rent. That was revolutionary because feudalism was based on a hereditary landlord class: the heirs of the warlords, the Normans, who had conquered France, England, and the rest of the earth. The monopolies that had been privatized and created were largely by governments running into war debts. The bank of England was a monopoly created with £1.2 million to be paid and government debt. Many British trading companies and monopolies, like The South Sea Company of the South Sea Bubble, were created this way in order to finance their war debts.

Capitalism wanted to get rid of all of the economic overhead and to be a more efficient society. Instead of having private monopolies produce basic needs like health care, it will have public health care. Instead of monopolies providing communications, transportation, or telephone services, the government would have these basic needs provided either freely or subsidized so that labor wouldn’t require a high salary from its industrial employers to pay for its own education, health care, or the other basic needs. In the late-19th century, everybody thought that industrial capitalism was evolving into socialism of one kind or another: not only Marx, but a proliferation of socialists and books on socialism, e.g., John Stuart Mill, Christian socialists, libertarian socialists. The question was, what kind of socialism would everyone take? That made capitalism revolutionary, until the point that World War I broke out and changed the whole direction.

DLJ: You begin Chapter 5 of Destiny with, “[t]he 19th century’s fight to tax away land rents, nearly succeeded, but lost momentum after World War I.”2 Can you elaborate on this?

MH: In the late 1890’s, the rentiers began to fight back. In academia the real-estate interests and the banks got together and denied that there was any such thing as economic rent. Capitalism is revolutionary, because it wanted to bring market prices in line with the actual cost of production; economic rent was the excess of price over the intrinsic cost value. The idea was that economic rent was a free lunch. and that because it was an empty price, it was a price without a corresponding cost-value. In the U.S., John Bates Clark was saying, there’s no such thing as economic rent. The landlord actually provides a public service in deciding who to rent to and the banks provide a public service in deciding to whom they will make loans. Everybody deserves whatever they can make. This concept underlies today’s Gross National Product (GNP) accounting. If you look at America’s GNP accounting, you have a rent and interest included as a profit — not only interest, but bank penalties and fees.

A few years ago, I called up the Commerce Department that makes the national income and product accounts, and I said, “where do bank and credit card companies’ penalties and late fees occur?” I’d read that banks make even more money on late fees and penalties than they do on the enormous interest charges on their credit cards. And they said, “that’s financial services.” I asked, “how is that a financial service?” And they said, “that’s what banks do: they provide the service, and what they charged was the value of the service.” That’s not what the classical economists would have said. They would have said that what banks charge is an economic rent for the service, and this should be a subtraction from the national income and product accounts, not in addition to it.

I’m working with Dirk Bezemer and others on an article where we calculate how much of the GNP, the reported product, is actually overhead. In other words, what is Gross Domestic Product (GDP) without the FIRE sector (finance, insurance and real estate)? A strict classical economist would say, let’s take out the monopolist rent. How much of American industry’s reported profits, e.g., in healthcare, are really monopoly rent? The idea of industrial development today is to carve out a monopoly where there’s no competition and get super profits. This is a concept that has been dropped, really, ever since World War One, about a century ago. There’s no distinction between productive and unproductive labor, between wealth and overhead. John Bates Clark said that if somebody’s wealthy, they earned the wealth; there’s no such thing as unearned wealth. Today wealth is mainly achieved by asset-price inflation; by capital gains. You won’t find a single wealthy family that made money simply by saving up what they earned. They make money by increasing the price of their stocks and bonds and real estate holdings, not by saving up their earnings. Yet, capital gains, i.e., asset-price inflation, are left out of the statistics of almost every country. So it is very hard to explain how wealth is achieved, and yet that was the purpose of economics in the 19th century and centuries before. But suddenly the idea of wealth has been suppressed as sex was in the day of Sigmund Freud.

DLJ: In Destiny and your articles, you note how the classical conception of the free market has been inverted.3 I.e., it used to be freedom from rentiership, and now it is the freedom of rents. You made reference to GDP, and this goes back to Adam Smith and Ricardo’s distinction of productive and unproductive labor, or net revenue and gross revenue. But Smith also described the government officials as unproductive in that sense, and you can find it in Smith’s translators and Marx.4 In Destiny, you bring up Simon Patten talking about the “fourth factor of production.”5 How does that fourth factor relate to what Smith and Ricardo talk about regarding value? They would say the government officials are not productive labor, yet you’re discussing how they reduce costs by providing public infrastructure.

MH: From Antiquity up through Adam Smith’s time, the main government expense was war, e.g., ancient Rome. Almost all of the public budget was war-making and police, which Smith sees as the same thing. Government had not begun to provide many public needs by the late-19th century. Things that change there were basically from 1815 when the Napoleonic Wars ended outbreak of war in 1914. They call, that was almost a people. Call it a war free Century, despite the Crimean War, and the Civil War, but basically, there wasn’t a World War at that time. Increasingly more of the government budget was spent on public utilities as they were introducing the new industrial, transportation, and health technology.

After the Civil War, American students interested in economics mainly went to Germany to study, and they came back to the U.S. with an idea of Bismarckian state socialism. The chair of the first business school at Wharton School of Economics at the University of Pennsylvania was Simon Patten, who said that land, labor, and capital all receive the respective forms of income, but there is a fourth factor of production: public infrastructure. Public infrastructure differs in that it’s not trying to make a profit or an economic rent. It sells at less than the cost of production, because it’s trying to subsidize the economy, and its productivity should be measured in principle by the degree to which it lowers the economy’s overall cost of production by providing subsidized or free public services.

That concept is antithetical to Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, who began privatizing these public utilities. The difference is that a privatized, public utility is going to use borrowed money usually — so you have interest charges — and it must make a profit — so you have profits added on the price. In fact, public utilities are natural monopolies, which is why they’re public in the first place. You have economic rent added on, along with other privatized costs that have to be covered. Government doesn’t have to cover the cost: that’s what the taxes are for. If the taxes are a public collection of rent, a rent tax, they’re not only preventing economic rent and lowering the whole economies close to production, but they’re funding public infrastructure to further lower the cost of production. That’s what helped the U.S. undersell Europe, especially England, and become the leading industrial power — by staying out of WWI, except to act as a creditor — emerging from WWI as by far the world’s major intergovernmental predator, to such an extent that it brought on the Great Depression and WWII to resolve the reparations and inter-allied debt problem from WWI.

DLJ: You mentioned Bismarck, and I think of the famous painting of the Battle of Sedan6 where he’s sitting with Louis Bonaparte, the other Bonaparte — to use this language in Europe at the time. Right after the 1848 revolutions, Louis Bonaparte invested in railroads and a lot of investment in Paris, and Marx refers to this as “Imperialist Socialism.”7 The state is stepping in but doing so in order to quell the class struggle. How do you see that then related to this question of government intervention? On the one hand we could say yes, lowering the cost, but on the other hand, isn’t it preserving the conditions that are giving rise to capitalist exploitation and production?

MH: The question is who’s going to control the state? Is the state going to be run by leaders who are engaged in long-term planning as to how to make the economy more productive and raise living standards, or is the state going to be taken over by a financial oligarchy that wants to increase the cost and deindustrialize?

Already 2,500 years ago, Aristotle said that many economies and constitutions that are thought of as being democracies are really oligarchies. That certainly is the case today. Oligarchies call themselves democracies. President Biden says, the world is dividing into two right now: democracy versus autocracy. The autocracy is in the U.S. That’s the oligarchy. Democracy is a confusing word. Political democracy has not been effective in checking economic oligarchy, because, as Aristotle said, democracies tend to evolve into oligarchies and they make themselves into hereditary aristocracies.

The only counter example in early history of what America calls autocracy or Karl Wittfogel called “Oriental Despotism” was the Near-East take off. Every Near-East, Mesopotamian, Egyptian ruler would begin their reign with a debt cancellation, a clean slate. They would free the indentured servants, cancel the debts, and return land that was forfeited to the former holders to prevent an oligarchy developing. Civilization in the 3rd–1st centuries BC — all non-Western cultures, going all the way to India and China — try to prevent a mercantile and financial oligarchy from developing.

The West didn’t do that. They had no tradition of royal clean slates, and when they did have their own revolutions in Greece, you had the so-called tyrants. I.e., reformers, who overthrew the closed aristocracy, canceled the debts and redistributed the land. They did just exactly what the Near East did and they catalyzed democracy in Greece. There was infrastructure spending in ancient Greece in the 7th and 6th centuries BC. By the 3rd and 2nd century BC the Greeks were saying that when the oligarchy had taken over, a reformer was someone seeking tyranny. That’s when tyranny took on a bad connotation, like “socialism” today.

The same thing happened in Rome. Rome began with kings trying to make Rome grow in a mosquito-laden, hilly area near the Tiber River. Rome began by offering land rights to fugitives fleeing debt bondage, and the neighboring towns of central Italy. The kings were overthrown in 509 BC, the oligarchy took over, and there were five centuries of revolts by the Romans: the secession of the plebs in the 490s BC, the second secession after 450, and then the many fights. The oligarchy accused any reformers urging alleviation, urging more equal distribution of “seeking kingship.” because there can’t be any state strong enough to check their ability to impose land rent and other forms of economic rent.

When President Biden juxtaposes democracy to autocracy, he wants America to fight against any country — Russia, China — that does not privatize its public domain like Thatcher and Reagan were doing. Biden defines an autocracy as a country that does not privatize and make a free market for the rentiers to take over. The ideal of American neoliberalism is what the Americans did to Russia under Boris Yeltsin: take all of the public assets, the nickel mines, oil, gas, and the land and give it to the managers to register in their own name. The result was that Russia lost more of its population as a result of neoliberal privatization than it had lost during WWII, as President Putin likes to say. This is the whole framework of Destiny, where I am trying to clarify, what is democracy, and what is autocracy, and what is socialism?

DLJ: You write that this is something Western civilization has never dealt with8 — even the political economy has shown it to be unproductive. Marx frequently makes reference to the debtor and creditor struggles in ancient Rome and he usually quotes Simone de Sismondi, who will say that whereas the ancient proletariat lived at the expense of society, modern society lives at the expense of the proletariat.9 Likewise, Smith in Wealth of Nations says that the modern representative institutions were unknown in ancient Rome.10 While there have been examples of debt cancellations today, wouldn’t one say that they also had a different organization of society, when a king would cancel debts in ancient traditional societies? To some degree, yes, we can do it today, but there are different institutions, and the bourgeois revolution might complicate the cancellation of debts, at least, creating a kind of political problem unknown in ancient Greece.

MH: They’re different kinds of debts, and canceling them requires different kinds of institutions. E.g., what’s most in the news these days is student loan debt and that it could be canceled by just an act of President Biden, which he won’t do, because he’s the person that sponsored the bankruptcy law.11 That law made it impossible to cancel student debts by bankruptcy laws. It could be done by a congressional law. The government has all sorts of regulatory agencies to handle corporate debt write-downs. Corporate write-downs in bankruptcy proceedings are a normal course, taking place almost continually, and we’re going to see that again. There are real estate debts.

When the junk mortgage frauds peaked in 2008, President Obama ran by promising to write-down the junk mortgage debts to the actual market value of the homes bought by the victims of bank fraud and to bring the mortgage payments in line with the current rent. As soon as he was elected, Obama invited the bankers to the White House and said, “don’t worry. I’m the only guy standing between you and the pitchforks. That was just to get elected. I’m on your side.” He proceeded to evict seven or eight million American families.

Not only did Obama not write-down the debts, but he started quantitative easing that has given nine trillion dollars to support the real estate market, the stock market, and the bond market, so that the banks and the wealthy rentier 10% of the American economy would not lose any money.

The result was that American home ownership rates have fallen from 69% and plunged into the 50s. America is being turned from a middle-class home ownership economy into a landlord economy. We’re regressing back towards the 19th century, including its legacy of feudalism. That’s what we’re moving toward, as official government policy. We still have a strong government, but the role of the government is now to enforce the debts, not to write them down, and the most serious debts in the news are actually international debts. And of course, international debts cannot be settled by one nation. What is the vehicle to cancel the debts of global South countries like Argentina, that is now in yet another crisis with the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The Argentinian crisis, Sri Lanka — all this will characterize the Global South by this fall as a result of rising energy prices for oil and gas, rising food prices, and capital flight to the U.S. as it raises its interest rate.

If countries have to pay more for food and energy, how can they afford to pay their foreign debts? It’s necessary to have a new international organization to sponsor this. That’s what both President Putin and President Xi have said: we’re going to create a BRICS12 bank as an alternative to the World Bank and the IMF and this will have to accompany a new world court. We are going to provide a different philosophy of operations for this bank: the principle is that no country should be obliged to lower its living standards, bankrupt itself, and privatize its public domain in order to pay foreign debts. If a country can’t pay its debt, it’s a bad loan, and just as individuals and corporations are allowed to declare bankruptcy, countries should be able to declare bankruptcy.

These are mainly dollarized debts. Even though they’re not owed to the U.S., they’re often owed to their own oligarchies. Most dollar debts in Brazil are owned by Brazilians. Most dollar debts of Argentina are owned by wealthy Argentines because no one else is going to take a risk that they won’t pay. But the Brazilians say, we run the presidency, the central banks, and most of all, we run the police: if someone wants to cancel the debts, we’ll just kill them.

Violence has always been hand-and-hand with a high finance ever since Rome, through the Spanish, English, and French empires. The advocates of debt cancellation, from Catiline to Julius Caesar, were assassinated. There were five centuries of assassinations of Roman senators and reformers wanting to alleviate the debt. The U.S. is engaged in similar practices today. So you are right to put the debt in the political context. What is the vehicle to oversee debt cancellation, when in almost every Western economy, the oligarchies — often creditor oligarchies — have taken control of the government, as in the U.S. via election funding and dominating policy. This is unique in Western Civilization.

There’s always been empires consolidated by extortion of colonies. Today, we don’t say that America is involved in colonialism; we say America is a leader of globalization, which is a euphemism for colonialism, specifically, financial colonialism that indebts other countries, using that as a lever to privatize their public domain, utilities, national resources, and their commanding heights.

DLJ: Returning to the 1890s, this is the period leading up to 1914, which is, as you put it, the turning point for the dollar creditocracy: the 1890s as the imperialist era, in the Second International and going into the Third International. I was thinking about Lenin’s view of the growth of finance and of how you had banks that were taking over different companies, that were maybe even competing with each other and/or different sectors. He saw this as an opportunity for socialism. In your text, you mention how finance capitalism has diverted from socialism, or inhibited or blocked that opportunity.13 I was thinking of Lenin’s famous line, “[w]ithout big banks socialism would be impossible.”14 This doesn’t mean that J. P. Morgan and Bank of America are socialist, but rather that they created the institutional apparatus that could be the transformation into a socialized society.

MH: In terms of how economies allocated their resources and how they were planned, this forward-planning was coordinated largely by banks, often in conjunction with the government. This occurred most clearly in Germany where the German government worked with the Reichsbahn and heavy industry, especially in the military field, to build warships and armaments. The idea was state capitalism in Germany: a three-way linkage between government, industry, and finance. In the U.S., these were separated: finance took the form of the mother of trusts. The Wall Street banks would create a steel trust, a copper trust, and they would integrate all the different companies in the field to create a monopoly. In this case they were the former planners trying to create monopolies, but there was the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890 and Teddy Roosevelt coming on as a trust-buster. Roosevelt tried to prevent finance acting as a promoter of the rentier class, as the monopoly class, to prevent industrial capitalism from being turned into monopoly capitalism. All of this momentum ended in the wake of WWI.

But there was this question of what kind of socialism are we going to have? What kind of government are we going to have? Are we going to have a government that is in charge of steering prosperity and raising living standards or a government by the 1%, the elite, who will impoverished societies? Two things happened in 1913 in the U.S.: first, income tax that only fell on the wealthiest 1% of Americans, mainly on monopoly rent and real estate. The other event of 1913, at the very end of the year, was the Federal Reserve was created to replace the Treasury and to take over the Treasury’s function, shift financial policy, moving away from Washington to Wall Street, and other financial centers, such as Philadelphia and Boston. This was the explicit aim.

The National Monetary Commission published a series after the 1906–07 crash: a wonderful set of volumes about reviewing the global financial situation all over the world. David Kinley wrote a book on the U.S Treasury, showing that essentially the Treasury was performing all of the functions that we now think of as part of the Federal Reserve. The Federal Reserve has 12 districts, the Treasury had sub-Treasuries all over the country that were in charge of local development. All of this was privatized under the leadership of J.P. Morgan, who organized the Fed and sponsored President Wilson, who also got the country into war. The Democrats were, from the very beginning, the party of the rentiers, the anti-Labor party, as they are today. They were the sponsors of Wall Street as opposed to the Republicans, who until the 1970s and 80s, had represented industrial capitalism protecting itself from the rentiers.

Looking at the turn of the 20th century, you see the different roads that could have been taken, and you realize that there were many alternatives and that there’s nothing natural in the way that today’s economy is structured. Economists say this is the result of Darwinian struggle for existence, and that’s what the free market is, and there is no alternative as Thatcher said. But there were plenty of alternatives back in the 1890s, when the world seemed to be moving towards socialism of one form or another, especially the Marxian socialism dominated by the wage-earning class which was going to be democratic socialism.

Instead we have oligarchic socialism in the U.S. and oligarchic state capitalism really isn’t state capitalism. Think of America’s policy as state neo-feudalism, because the purpose of the state is to protect the rents of finance, real-estate, oil, mining, and natural resources. The idea of the Biden Administration — really of both the Republican and Democratic Parties — is that since America has moved its industry and manufacturing to Asia in order to lower the wages here, how can Americans continue to get high-living standards, if it doesn’t produce raw materials or manufacturers? How can it be a post-industrial society, getting rich on economic rents and interest on and profits paid by foreign countries? How can America get rich by being a parasite? That was a problem that the Roman Empire had, and we know what happened to the Roman Empire. It was a problem that the British Empire had, and we know what happened to that: it can’t be done.

This attempt to make America into a post-industrial society means a rent-seeking, neo-feudal society, treating the rest of the world as a colony under globalization. How can that work? Well, It’s not working. Biden’s war, the NATO war, against Russia in the Ukraine is the catalyst dividing the world into two. That’s why Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said that the Ukraine war is part of a process that will go on for at least two decades, because it takes time for the world to split away into a neo-feudal West and a productive, basically socialistic Asia, or industrial capitalist and socialist Asia, and Eurasia, along with much of the global South.

DLJ: You have an interesting history about Georgists, socialists, and the debates between them regarding the rent question, or the emphasis on capital and labor. Is the neo-feudalism or the new rentiership of the West bound up with a failure of socialism in some way? I.e., you discuss the manner in which mainstream socialists forgot the rent question or subordinated it to capital and labor.15

MH: Henry George was one of the first investigative reporters that exposed the inequity of rent-seekers. His first book was a wonderful exposé of how the railroads got land grants in order to develop the land, using the land grants to become highly exploitative landlords throughout the western states. This was impoverishing the farmers by siphoning farm income off in the form of land rent and railroad charges. George became popular in the large cities that were largely Irish — New York, and Boston — by writing a wonderful book on the Irish land question. His writings inspired a generation of journalists in the 1870s–90s, such as Ida B. Wells and Upton Sinclair. Many of these reformers had originally been supporters of George. When there was a New York City election, the socialists and the labor parties selected George to run as mayor, as a celebrity-candidate, because he had written Progress and Poverty (1879). It’s not a very good book, but it was very popular at the time.

George said he could only run if he could get rid of everything that the socialists had wanted; everything that the working-class had wanted. He said, “I have a panacea, it’ll solve everything: just tax the land. You don’t need control of landlords, you don’t need to make them have decent housing. All you need is land-rent.” The socialists said, “There’s much more to the economy than taxing the landlord; there’s a labor problem. There’s a financial problem. The banks seem to be running everything.” George said, “the enemy is big government.” The socialists replied, “you need a strong enough government to check the landlords, who are the strongest class in New York City which is largely a rental city?” So, George formed his own political party, expelling any socialists and he defended the banks.

Many bankers supported him because he called for the banks to remain in private hands. He said, “I can’t figure out a way to tax a bank interest, like you can tax land-rent.” He was criticized for that, the party didn’t go anywhere, and he ended up expelling his strongest supporters, who had joined him thinking that taxing the land was part of an overall social restructuring. The word panacea, sort of developed specifically because it went hand-in-hand with the name of the Georgists. George’s followers became libertarians and anti-socialist.

Followers of George and the socialists went all around the U.S., having debates, most of which were transcribed and published by Charles H. Kerr & Co., the socialist collective that published Marx’s Capital in English. The common theme of the debate was that society is going to go in one direction or another: either socialist or middle-class. The problem is that taxing the land rent doesn’t solve the labor problem. It doesn’t solve the tension between wage-earners and employers as to working conditions that they have. It doesn’t have anything to do with economic planning. George had actually become libertarian and anti-socialist, and his followers became so anti-socialist that in Europe they were the among the earliest supporters of the Nazis. In the U.S. they were noted Nazi sympathizers. Many of the leading Georgists were known for their anti-Semitism. When I went to the Henry George School Library in New York, I was amazed at all the anti-semitic books in their library. I knew a number of teachers there, and they said that because the school was supporting Germany early in WWII, most of the attendants were FBI agents. The head of the School told me that the number two guy at the Henry George School was part of the Nazi intelligence operation in the U.S. before escaping back to Germany.

I realized that a government strong enough to check the landlords has to be a socialist government. You can’t say, I’m a libertarian, I’m against strong government, and then hope that the landlords are going to end up being taxed. That’s an oxymoron.

DLJ: You write:
[i]t always should be borne in mind that solving the problem of finance capitalism and the rentier legacy of feudalism would still leave the class conflict of industrial capitalism in place. Freeing the economy from rentier overhead charges would not solve the problem of exploitation of labor by its employers. But taking the intermediate step of creating a classical economy free of rentier claims is a precondition before the labor/capital conflict can become the focal point of political reform, having finally freed capitalism from the rentier legacy of feudalism.16

It seems the socialists should have paid heed to this question of rentiership and that this was an opportunity missed at the turn of the 20th century. You’re saying that today financialization is a more immediate barrier rather than subordinating finance to the capital-labor relationship.

MH: This shows the role of personalities in history. The Georgists were so anti-socialist that the socialists left the rent issue to followers of George. That’s why it was Marxists and socialists who wrote about finance capitalism, whereas most of the society treated finance as if it were part of the industrial system, not extraneous to the industrial system.

So you’re right. The socialists after WWI didn’t focus highly on finance, but things changed quite a bit after WWII. The CIA put money into supporting progressive literary and cultural figures as leaders of the socialist movement, focussing on what the CIA called, “the mighty Wurlitzer,” to control public opinion concerning the socialist parties. This results in the British Labour Party having Tony Blair, who was to the Right of Thatcher, who identified Blair as her greatest legacy, in privatizing Britain’s railroads. The social democratic parties in Europe jumped on the neoliberal bandwagon largely because of the U.S. meddling in foreign politics, which pushed neoliberals and socialists to stop talking about economic issues.

In the U.S., there is identity politics, but the one kind of identity you don’t have is the identity of wage earners. That’s been stripped away from the socialist parties of the United States and Europe, and so the socialist parties are no longer socialist. The irony is that what people thought of as being a socialist in a sense of a more efficient economy, free of bad statism and free of war — the Republicans in the U.S. and the nationalists in France and Germany are against the war in Ukraine, the NATO War. The socialists, Bernie Sanders and AOC, voted for giving money to Ukraine. So the word socialism has changed quite a bit into the opposite. Almost the whole economic vocabulary that is used today is the opposite of what it meant a century ago, and that’s what my book, J is For Junk Economics is all about.17 That’s what I talk about when I’m in China.

DLJ: Do you see China as realizing the ideals of classical political economy better than the West? That might be a provocative statement because, for a lot of Americans, China means communism, and so it would mean the opposite of Adam Smith — at least that’s what we’ve been taught since the 20th century by something like the Adam Smith Institute, a neoliberal think-tank.

MH: The Adam Smith Institute hates everything that Adam Smith stood for. That’s why it’s called the Adam Smith Institute: to confuse people! Smith wanted to tax land-rent. The Adam Smith Institute wants to glorify the landlords, privatize public housing, and create a rentier and financial utopia for the 1%. There’s a reason why the economics curriculum in the U.S. no longer has the history of economic thought, because if you study the history of economic thought, which they taught when I was in school 60 years ago, you would know that when people talk about Adam Smith and free markets, it’s the exact opposite of the kind of free market that Smith talked about. What Marx described was capitalism. That’s why he called his book Capital, not Socialism.

What the Chinese government is trying to follow has been called a “state-capitalist society” or a “communist society”: the focus is on productive labor and productive investment. The most important feature of China is that it kept the banking sector and money creation in the public domain. In the West, commercial banks create credit against assets that are already in place. Mortgage loans are made against real estate in place. Corporate takeover loans are made to corporations in place. Government control of money, as it was in Germany in the late 19th century, created new means of production, especially public infrastructure.

China does not have its banks make loans for corporate takeovers, or for mergers and acquisitions. China makes them increase the means of production. In that sense they are following the industrial capitalist policy that evolves naturally into socialism, which is why they call themselves a socialist economy, and rightly so, because they’re not running the economy on behalf of the 1%. Obviously, by letting a hundred flowers bloom, they realized that the state cannot act as the Stalinist state did as a central planner. They need innovation, they need individual innovators to create market opportunities and new products and that’s been best done by letting market forces take place. But when somebody achieves such a hyper-billionaire level, as did Jack Ma with his phone payments company, they coordinate the private wealth that is created to serve the long-term public interest. That’s why there is a strong state.

The Communist Party of China is delegated to administer economic democracy, something that political democracy has not been able to do in the Western countries. You need a state to act as the agent of social planning, so that it’s not the banks and the rentier sector that does it, as occurred in the U.S. and Western Europe. Europe. China is doing what most of the world was doing before Western civilization took off and in an oligarchic form.

DLJ: Do you think the U.S. could do that? In many ways, China’s extraordinary growth, especially post-Deng Xiaoping reform era has presupposed the U.S.’s current account deficit; these “twin deficits” where the U.S. is this large importer from China. I’m thinking to what degree there’s also a mutual character to it as well. Maybe that has been in crisis. When Trump came to office – I’m not saying whether or not he was correct – he was expressing to some degree a process of deindustrialization in the U.S. that has turned the U.S. into a consumer nation without having any production. When I think of two nations having industrial production, I also think back to the end of the 19th century, what Karl Kautsky called the fall of the Manchester School: once one country begins to have state intervention, it encourages other nations to have state intervention. How do you see this working out, besides the more violent past? What do you think would be a more positive way of this working out?

MH: Technologically, of course, the U.S. could redevelop; it has developed before. But it can’t do so, because politically it’s controlled by the anti-labor party. Both Democrats and Republicans are controlled by the rentier interests that seek to increase corporate profits by looking around the world for the cheapest labor, which is not in the U.S.

An even more serious problem is that the rulings in the Supreme Court have turned America into a failed state, e.g., how the Supreme Court ruled that the existing anti-pollution laws, the environmental protection laws by the EPA were unconstitutional, because the government has no power over the states. Or when they say “we on the Supreme Court know that the Constitution was written by slave owners who wanted state power to be in the states, not the federal government, because they feared that if there were a federal government and the northern population wanted to abolish slavery, we could abolish it. Every state gets to go their own way.”

America is an evolved slave-owning state, even though there’s no more slavery, the fight against federal power has been adopted by rentier class. It’s literally a neo-feudalism class. If you cannot have the government, either Congress or the president impose basic environmental, social, educational, or any other social regulation, and if everything is deregulated state-by-state, you have a dissolution of the government and a paralysis. The U.S. now is in a state of political paralysis locking itself into the current status quo, which means that the U.S. cannot have any kind of an industrial recovery, because that requires a federal policy to check the overhead of the banking system, the real estate sector, and the insurance sector. You can’t have a Supreme Court that would prevent any kind of a public health system, a single-payer public health system, and yet 18% of America’s GDP is for medical care. America has priced its labor and its industry out of world markets by having to pay so much debt service, so much insurance for medical care, home insurance, and real estate rents. As long as this revenue is paid out in the form of rent, you’re not going to develop.

DLJ: It almost sounds like you’re pointing to the need for a political revolution. If the potential for development in the U.S. is checked by a rentier class, it is an infringement upon the people, from the perspective of classical bourgeois political theory.

MH: If other countries in the past had a problem like the U.S. now has with the Supreme Court, they would have had a revolution. A European prime minister would invite the court into the office and say, “I’m sorry but I’ve got to make a choice: either you resign or I’m going to have to either execute you or let the mob outside come in and lynch you.” Wouldn’t you rather resign? It would be settled by some kind of revolt like you’re seeing with the Yellow Vests in France or like you saw in the 1848 Revolutions throughout Europe. That’s not likely in America because there’s no real consciousness that there is an alternative.

There’s no group in America, no political party, that is offering an alternative to the current political and economic system in America. The fact that you have two parties in America that are really the same party, means that there’s no room for a new party to come and, as it would in Europe, get represented in Congress. In Europe, you can have any number of parties, and they would be represented in Parliament in proportion to their votes. A third party would be kept off the ballots in the U.S., and that’s why Bernie Sanders and others decided not to run as a third party; there’s no way we can meet the court challenges by the Republicans and the Democrats together. Sanders had to pretend to run as a Democrat. But we’ve seen that the Democrats don’t want any part of anything progressive. There’s an illusion that somehow the Democrats can be progressive because they have people who can’t find any alternative, who are running as a Democrat. Whereas in Europe, they are running as nationalists, as third parties, e.g., Alternative für Deutschland.

I just don’t see the political development in the U.S. that would be a precondition for an economic restructuring to get back on the pre-WWI track. There was anti-monopoly legislation that would be hard to impose. Biden talks as if he’s against monopolies. but he’s supporting the monopolies, e.g., for Pfizer with regard to the vaccines: the government does the research and gives it to Pfizer who makes huge monopoly rents protected by the Biden Administration. Large companies are able to buy control of the politicians by paying for their election contributions under the Citizen’s United Supreme Court ruling, and they do. They control the mainstream media. People just don’t have an idea that there is an economic alternative, which would not be the socialism that is represented by people who call themselves socialist, but are actually enable neoliberals.

DLJ: I’m trying to think about Destiny and its purpose. How could it raise consciousness in the U.S.? You mentioned going back to pre-WWI conditions. In the Communist Manifesto (1848) Marx and Engels speak of reactionary reformers who want to turn back the wheel.18 I.e., for Marx and Engels, it was always a question of how opportunities develop out of the present, rather than trying to clean the slate. The financialization in the United States, for them, poses the question of developing this neo-feudalism into socialism. In other words, we can’t go back to pre-1914. How does one find the opportunities in the present to even point towards alternatives within the U.S.?

MH: I have not found an alternative for the U.S., and so I can’t come up with a panacea. I remember Max Schachtman gave a speech in the late 1960s, where he asked, “what’s happened to all my old socialist friends? What happened to the socialists?” He said, they all went out West; they all withdrew. They thought, “we can just have community development,” and there were all sorts of ideas and utopian communities founded throughout the U.S.. There were French followers of Saint Simon attempting to make utopian communities, followers of Henry George, making utopian land-tax communities. They’re all middle-class bourgeois communities today. All the socialist communities were all very artsy: they’ve all become arts and crafts centers today. The last thing they want is a land tax that prevents their housing prices from going up.

I don’t see how things can be fixed in the U.S., which is why I’ve spent most of my time analyzing what’s happening in Asia and working primarily with countries from Asia and elsewhere, which seems to be where most of the flexibility and innovation resides. My idea is that if people see that what Asia is doing is quite simply what America could be doing and isn’t, it would be the only way to show them that there is an alternative. You can’t just draw an alternative and apply it as an idealistic application. You have to show that it’s working somewhere. I’m trying to explain why China was able to make its economy grow and raise the living, educational, and health standards for its population, and that the West hasn’t. And that is the path on which the West would have to develop, but it has not been able to check oligarchies.

Non-Western countries are able to do that, and that’s what the fight of global South reform is going to be by this fall when the grace of the debt crisis, really is the trigger for a restructure.

DLJ: Economies are interdependent. I.e., it would still be a question of the Chinese working class and the American working class building bonds across nations.

MH: The Democratic Party has produced such an anti-Asian, hate-filled racism, that I don’t think that can be. The Democratic Party has done everything it could to spur an ethnic war between the black and Asian populations. You see that here in New York by the attacks on the subways, on the street, mainly by blacks against Asians. The Democratic Party, by pushing this ethnic identity, has pushed ethnic hatred.

That’s why the Democrats are surprised that the Hispanics and Asians are moving towards the Republicans. The Hispanics and Asians realize that the Democrats have a race-hatred policy, much like the Nazis. I don’t believe that any political progress can be made in the U.S. until the Democratic Party, certainly the current leadership, is swept away. There cannot be any progress in America today led by the Democratic Party, which is today the ideologically Right-wing party that has turned what should be an economic problem into an ethnic and non-economic problem. It’s like the old industrial capitalist was supposed to have said, “if I can get half the working class fighting against the rest of the working class, then we have won.” That’s the Democratic Party. They asked, “how do we do it?” We divide the working class into ethnicities, ethnic identity, gender identity.

DLJ: You can have the working class cancel each other.

MH: Yes.

_Image by Elias from Pixabay_

Footnotes

1. Carlos Hudson. See Michael Hudson, “Dad’s Many Proverbs” (June 17, 2017), available online at https://michael-hudson.com/2017/06/dads-many-proverbs/;.
2. Michael Hudson, The Destiny of Civilization: Finance Capitalism, Industrial Capitalism or Socialism (Glashütte: ISLET-Verlag, 2022), 85.
3. Hudson, Destiny, 165: “Reversing the tradition of classical value, price and rent theory, neoliberal economics teaches that all income is earned, and that all forms of economic rent are not merely transfer payments but contribute to output, as measured by neoliberal formulations and redefinition of Gross Domestic Product (GDP). This inversion of classical logic is so far-reaching and censorial that it has influenced Chinese and Russian planning as well as that in the Western economies.”
4. See Karl Marx, “Theories of Productive and Unproductive Labor,” in Theories of Surplus Values (1863), available online at https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1863/theories-surplus-value/ch04.htm;.
5. Hudson, Destiny, 120: “China has invested in a vast public infrastructure network to facilitate its industrial production by minimizing the cost of living and doing business. This has saved employers from having to pay higher wages for labor to afford privatized education, health care, transportation and other essential services. These basic needs are provided by public infrastructure, which Simon Patten called a ‘fourth factor of production.’”
6. Wilhelm Camphausen, “Napoleon III and Bismarck, on the morning after the Battle of Sedan” (1878).
7. Karl Marx, “The French Crédit Mobilier,” The People’s Paper 214, June 7, 1856, available in Marx and Engels Collected Works, vol. 15, and online at http://marxengels.public-archive.net/en/ME0978en.html;.
8. Hudson, Destiny, 270: “These redistributive and fiscal principles are the basis of modern socialism but not of Western economies. Ever since classical Greece and Rome stopped the Near Eastern practice of Clean Slates, Western economies have not been able to save themselves from polarizing between creditors and debtors, landlords and tenants, patrons and clients. Today, the neoliberal reaction against social democracy has ensured such polarization, first by letting debts grow faster than the ability to be paid and hence concentrating wealth in the hands of creditors, and second by advocating that basic public utilities be privatized and run by financial managers, not provided as a human right.”
9. Karl Marx, Preface to the Second Edition (1869), in The Eighteenth Brumair of Louis Bonaparte (1852), available online at https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1852/18th-brumaire/preface.htm;: “Lastly, I hope that my work . . . will contribute toward eliminating the school-taught phrase now current, particularly in Germany, of so-called Caesarism. In this superficial historical analogy the main point is forgotten, namely, that in ancient Rome the class struggle took place only within a privileged minority, between the free rich and the free poor, while the great productive mass of the population, the slaves, formed the purely passive pedestal for these combatants. People forget Sismondi’s significant saying: The Roman proletariat lived at the expense of society, while modern society lives at the expense of the proletariat. With so complete a difference between the material, economic conditions of the ancient and the modern class struggles, the political figures produced by them can likewise have no more in common with one another than the Archbishop of Canterbury has with the High Priest Samuel.”
10. Adam Smith, “Book IV: On the Advantages which Europe has derived from the Discovery of America, and from that of a Passage to the East Indies by the Cape of Good Hope,” in Wealth of Nations (1776), available online at https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/smith-adam/works/wealth-of-nations/book04/ch07c-2.htm;: “The idea of representation was unknown in ancient times. When the people of one state were admitted to the right of citizenship in another, they had no other means of exercising that right but by coming in a body to vote and deliberate with the people of that other state. The admission of the greater part of the inhabitants of Italy to the privileges of Roman citizens completely ruined the Roman republic. It was no longer possible to distinguish between who was and who was not a Roman citizen. No tribe could know its own members. A rabble of any kind could be introduced into the assemblies of the people, could drive out the real citizens, and decide upon the affairs of the republic as if they themselves had been such. But though America were to send fifty or sixty new representatives to Parliament, the doorkeeper of the House of Commons could not find any great difficulty in distinguishing between who was and who was not a member. Though the Roman constitution, therefore, was necessarily ruined by the union of Rome with the allied states of Italy, there is not the least probability that the British constitution would be hurt by the union of Great Britain with her colonies. That constitution, on the contrary, would be completed by it, and seems to be imperfect without it. The assembly which deliberates and decides concerning the affairs of every part of the empire, in order to be properly informed, ought certainly to have representatives from every part of it That this union, however, could be easily effectuated, or that difficulties and great difficulties might not occur in the execution, I do not pretend. I have yet heard of none, however, which appear insurmountable. The principal perhaps arise, not from the nature of things, but from the prejudices and opinions of the people both on this and on the other side of the Atlantic.”
11. Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005.
12. Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa.
13. Hudson, Destiny, 42: “Finance capitalism aims to avoid what Marx and indeed the majority of his contemporaries expected: that industrial capitalism would evolve towards socialism, peacefully or otherwise. By finding its main source of exploitation to be rent-seeking, not only from land and natural resources but increasingly from privatizing public investment in infrastructure and creating new monopolies, finance capitalism renders economies high cost. That prevents industrialists from underselling competitors in less rent-and- debt-strapped economies…That is why it seemed a century ago that the destiny of industrial capitalism was to evolve into socialism. Public education, health care, roads and basic infrastructure and pensions were coming to be provided by government at subsidized administered prices or freely. Industrial capital backed this policy as a means of shifting as many ‘external’ costs as possible onto the public sector. But that is not the way matters have turned out. And today’s victorious finance capitalism, centered in the United States, is trying to prevent its takeover of industrial economies from being rolled back. That means preventing such a rollback from occurring in other countries. It also requires overcoming other countries’ resistance to finance capital’s takeover of their economies.”
14. V. I. Lenin, Can the Bolsheviks Retain State Power? (October 1, 1917), available online at https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/oct/01.htm;: “Capitalism has created an accounting apparatus in the shape of the banks, syndicates, postal service, consumers’ societies, and office employees’ unions. Without big banks socialism would be impossible. The big banks are the ‘state apparatus’ which we need to bring about socialism, and which we take ready-made from capitalism; our task here is merely to lop off what capitalistically mutilates this excellent apparatus, to make it even bigger, even more democratic, even more comprehensive. Quantity will be transformed into quality. A single State Bank, the biggest of the big, with branches in every rural district, in every factory, will constitute as much as nine-tenths of the socialist apparatus. This will be country wide book-keeping, country-wide accounting of the production and distribution of goods, this will be, so to speak, some thing in the nature of the skeleton of socialist society. We can ‘lay hold of’ and ‘set in motion’ this ‘state apparatus’ (which is not fully a state apparatus under capitalism, but which will be so with us, under socialism) at one stroke, by a single decree, because the actual work of book-keeping, control, registering, accounting and counting is performed by employees, the majority of whom themselves lead a proletarian or semi-proletarian existence.”
15. Hudson, Destiny, 162: “One of the most fateful byproducts of George’s defense of capital was to so repel socialists that they left the issue of land taxation to his followers — and in so doing, socialists drifted away from rent theory. The socialist mainstream treated classical land and rentier problems as subordinated to problems between labor and industrial capital.”
16. Hudson, Destiny, 103–04.
17. Michael Hudson, J is For Junk Economics: A Guide to Reality in an Age of Deception (Glashütte: ISLET-Verlag, 2017).
18. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels “Part 1: Bourgeois and Proletarians,” in The Communist Manifesto (1848), available online at https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch01.htm.;

While we react with fear to the resurgence of fascist, Nazi or Japanese imperial groups, we fail to see that it was not these ideologies that provoked World War, but the alliance of rulers ready for the worst. The same configuration is about to be repeated with other groups. In a few months, if we do not react now, a Third World War may be possible.

The Second World War can serve as a lesson to us. It did not appear in a serene sky. It was not a battle of the Good guys against the Bad guys. It was just triggered by an unforeseen gathering of forces capable of destroying everything.

After the economic crisis of 1929, the whole world was convinced, and rightly so, that the capitalism of that time was over. The Soviet Union alone offered an alternative, Bolshevism. Soon the United States came up with a second alternative, the structural reforms of the New Deal, and then Italy promoted a third alternative, fascism. The great Anglo-Saxon capitalists chose to support a new regime, close to fascism, Nazism. They thought that Germany would attack the USSR, thus preserving their interests threatened by both Bolshevik collectivisations and US economic reforms. However, nothing worked out as planned, since Italy, Germany and Japan formed the Axis with their own logic and the war was not started against the Soviets, but against the great fortunes that prepared it.

In the collective imagination, we do not hold responsible the great Anglo-Saxon capitalists who supported Nazism at its beginning. On the contrary, we remember the British and American people as having participated in the victory.

From this experience we must learn that the most skilful plans can escape their promoters. Peace was threatened by the alliance of three very different regimes, Fascism, Nazism and Hakkō ichiu. None of the international relations scholars and other geopoliticians of the time foresaw this union. All of them, without exception, were wrong.

What these three ideologies had in common was that they wanted to change the world order without regard to the human consequences of their actions. This does not mean that their opponents were democratic and peaceful, far from it, but only that they refrained from exterminating entire peoples.

Let’s not mistake the adversary. We must be very vigilant, not to a particular type of political regime, but to the fact that states governed by men capable of the worst ever unite. The current danger is neither fascism, nor Nazism, nor Hakkō ichiu, three ideologies marked by their time and which do not correspond to anything today. What we must protect ourselves from, above all, is a global alliance between ideologies capable of the worst.

This is exactly what is about to happen: the current leaders of the US State Department, the government in Kiev and the next government in Tel Aviv have no limits. The union of the "Straussians", the Ukrainian "integral" nationalists and the Israeli "revisionist Zionists" can, without any qualms, plunge the world into a Third World War. Fortunately, the CIA does not share their ideas, the government in Kiev is constrained by Russian military intervention, and the Israeli Prime Minister’s coalition has not yet formed its government.

Professor Leo Strauss (1899-1973). Although he wrote extensively on natural law and Jewish philosophy, he left nothing about his political conceptions, which he reserved for certain of his students. Numerous testimonies have made his "oral" thought known to us.

The U.S. "Straussians”

This small group of about a hundred people controls the foreign policy of the United States, including the Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, his deputy, Victoria Nuland, and the National Security Advisor, Jacob Sullivan.

It is in line with the thinking of the Jewish philosopher Leo Strauss "Russia declares war on the Straussians” for whom democracies showed their weaknesses during the 1930s. The only way to ensure that the next anti-Semitic regime does not massacre them is for the Jews to set up their own dictatorship; to be on the side of the hammer and not of the nail.

The "Straussians" have already shown what they are capable of by organizing the 9/11 attacks and by launching various wars to destroy the "wider Middle East".

It is amazing that, despite the controversies that tore the US ruling class apart during the Bush Jr. administration, most of today’s politicians are unaware of who the Straussians are.

The poet Dmytro Dontsov (1883-1973). He created a mythology that inspired millions of Ukrainians to fight the Russians. A secret agent of the Second and Third German Reichs, he participated in the supervision of the extermination of Jews and Gypsies in Europe as administrator of the Reinhard Heydrich Institute, before being whitewashed by the Anglo-Saxon secret services.

The Ukrainian "integral nationalists”

This is a group comprising hundreds of thousands of people, perhaps millions. It originated in the First World War, but solidified during the interwar period, the Second World War and the Cold War “Who are the Ukrainian integral nationalists ?”.

They identify with the poet and criminal against humanity Dmytro Dontsov. They see themselves as Vikings ready to fight the last battle against evil, that is, according to them, against Russian civilization.

The term "integral nationalist" should not be misleading. Dontsov chose it in reference to the thought of the Frenchman Charles Maurras. Dontsov was never a patriot, nor a nationalist in the classical sense. He never defended either the Ukrainian people or the Ukrainian land. On the contrary.

The Ukrainian "integral nationalists" have, since 1919, shown what they are capable of. They have murdered more than 4 million of their fellow citizens, including 1.6 million Jews. Since 2014, they have waged a civil war that has cost the lives of about 20,000 of their fellow citizens. They also, in 1921, amputated their land from Galicia and Volhynia to pay in advance the Polish army against the USSR.

They made an alliance with the Straussians, in 2000, during a big congress in Washington, where the Straussian Paul Wolfowitz was the guest of honor.
It is very dangerous to claim, as NATO does, that the "integral nationalists" are marginal in Ukraine. Certainly, in the spirit of this organization, it is only a question of discrediting Russia’s discourse and mobilizing for Ukraine. But these people are now murdering, without trial, those of their fellow citizens who find themselves in Russian culture.

It is particularly dangerous to participate in the delirium of the "integral nationalists" as the Bundestag has just done by adopting a resolution on the "Holodomor", i.e. the "genocide by hunger". The famine of 1932-33 was by no means caused by the Soviets in general, nor by Joseph Stalin in particular. It affected many other regions of the USSR than Ukraine. It is a climatic catastrophe. Moreover, in Ukraine itself, it did not affect the cities, but only the countryside because the Soviets decided to manage this shortage by feeding the workers rather than the peasants. To give credence to the myth of a planned genocide is to encourage anti-Russian hatred as the Nazis once encouraged anti-Jewish hatred.

Vladimir Jabotinsky (1880-1940), founder of the Jewish Legion, then of the Irgun. He called for Israel to extend over the entire British Mandate territory, i.e. over the current State of Israel, the Palestinian Territories and the Kingdom of Jordan.

Israeli "revisionist Zionists”

The "revisionist Zionists" represent about 2 million Israelis. They have managed to form a parliamentary majority by uniting several political parties behind Benjamin Netanyahu.
They claim to be inspired by the Ukrainian Vladimir Jabotinsky, the man who claimed that Palestine is "a land without a people, for a people without a land". In other words, Palestinian Arabs do not exist. They have no rights and must be expelled from their homes.

In September 1921, Jabotinsky formed a secret alliance with the Ukrainian "integral nationalist" anti-Semites, the first link in the developing Axis. This union aroused the indignation of the entire Jewish diaspora and Jabotinsky was expelled from the World Zionist Organization. In October 1937, Jabotinsky formed a new alliance with the anti-Semites of Marshal Rydz-Smigly, number 2 in Poland behind Józef Piłsudski. He was again rejected by the Jewish diaspora.

At the very beginning of World War II, Jabotinsky chose Bension Netanyahu, Benjamin’s father, as his private secretary.

It is appalling that, 75 years after the establishment of the State of Israel, most people continue to lump together different, and often opposing, views solely on the basis of the religion of those who profess them.

Revisionist Zionism" is the opposite of the Zionism of Nahum Goldman and the World Jewish Congress. It has no concern for the Jewish people and has therefore not hesitated to form alliances with anti-Semitic armed forces.

The "revisionist Zionists", including Menahem Beguin and Ariel Sharon, have shown what they are capable of with the Nakba; the forced expulsion of the majority of the Arab population of Palestine in 1948. It is this crime, whose memory haunts both Arabs and Israelis, that makes peace in Palestine impossible to this day.

Benjamin Netanyahu formed an alliance with the Straussians in 2003 at a large closed-door congress in Jerusalem «Sommet historique pour sceller l’Alliance des guerriers de Dieu». Since the election of Volodymyr Zelensky, of whom he has become a personal friend, Netanyahu has also renewed Jabotinsky’s alliance with the "integral nationalists".

The Axis is constituted.

The common ideology of the new Axis

Just as Italian Fascism, German Nazism, and Japanese Hakkō ichiu had little to do with each other, so did the Straussians, the "integral nationalists," and the "revisionist Zionists" think differently and pursue distinct goals. Only the Nazis were so anti-Semitic as to seek to kill an entire people. The fascists despised the Jews, but did not seek to exterminate them. The Japanese never engaged in this hatred and even protected the Jews in their own country and in the territories they occupied. In the same way, today if the "integral nationalists" are obsessively against Russian culture and wish to kill all Russians, men, women and children, the Straussians despise them without wishing to exterminate them, and the "revisionist Zionists" pursue other objectives.

Each of these three isolated groups represents a danger to specific populations, but all three together threaten all of humanity. They share a cult of violence and power. They have shown that they can engage in wars of extermination. All three consider that their time has come. However, not only do they have to overcome their internal oppositions, but their axis is still uncertain. For example, the Straussians have just warned the "revisionist Zionists" about the possible expansion of Jewish settlements in the Palestinian territories.

After the Second World War, modern international law was established with the idea of countering "war propaganda" United Nations General Assembly Resolution 110 of November 3, 1947 and Resolution 381 of November 17, 1950 “Condemnation of propaganda against peace”. International legislators, i.e. sovereign states, soon agreed that war could only be fought against by ensuring the "free flow of ideas" resolution 819 of 11 December 1954 “Strengthening of peace through the removal of barriers to free exchange of ideas".

In recent years, however, we have witnessed an extraordinary backsliding that deprives us of the thoughts of others, exposes us to war propaganda, and ultimately leads us to a global conflict.
This phenomenon began with the private censorship on social networks of the incumbent president of the United States, and continued with the public censorship of Russian media in the West. Now the thoughts of others are no longer seen as a tool to prevent wars, but as a poison that threatens us.

Western states are setting up bodies to "rectify" information that they consider falsified (Fake News)“The West renounces freedom of expression”, by Thierry Meyssan. NATO is considering the creation of a unit, called Information Ramstein, which will be responsible for censoring not Russian information sources, but Russian ideas within the 30 member states of the Atlantic Alliance "A ’Ministry of Truth’ soon to be created within NATO".

This is a complete reversal of the values of the Atlantic Alliance, which was founded in the wake of the Atlantic Charter, which incorporated President Franklin Roosevelt’s "four freedoms". The first of these freedoms was the freedom of expression.

However, before the invention of the Internet, when the United States and the Soviet Union had just guaranteed the "free circulation of ideas" with the Helsinki Agreements, the United Nations and more particularly its agency in this field, UNESCO, were worried about "information imperialism". The technical superiority of the West allowed them to impose their view of the facts on developing countries.

In 1976, during the Nairobi conference, the UN raised the question of the functioning of the media with regard to "the strengthening of peace and international understanding, the promotion of human rights and the fight against racism, apartheid and incitement to war.

Former Irish Foreign Minister and Nobel Peace Prize winner Seán MacBride formed a 16-member commission at Unesco. It included the Frenchman Hubert Beuve-Mery (founder of Le Monde), the Colombian Gabriel García Márquez (Nobel Prize for Literature) and the Canadian Marshall McLuhan (communication theorist). The United States was represented by Elie Abel, then dean of the Columbia University School of Journalism, and Russia by the director of the Tass agency, Sergei Losev. Only the fifth and final part of the report (Communication Tomorrow) was the subject of a general debate. The MacBride commission discussed the draft of the other parts, but could not question their final wording. In any event, its report, issued in 1978, seemed to be a consensus.

In fact, by pointing out that the same facts can be perceived differently and by opening up the question of the means of the media of the North and those of the South, he was opening a Pandora’s box. At the same time, Unesco was confronted with the propaganda of the South African apartheid regime and the propaganda of Israel, which denies Muslim and Christian cultures. In the end, the United States and the United Kingdom ended the debate by withdrawing from Unesco. We know today that the British Empire had ensured its intellectual domination by creating news agencies. Whitehall closed the Information Research Department (IRD) just before the MacBride report was published "Britain’s secret propaganda war, Paul Lashmar & James Oliver, Sutton". But the war against Syria has shown that the whole system has been reconstituted in another form “The fabrication of the myth of the "Syrian revolution" by the United States. Westerners continue to falsify information at its source.

In forty years, the media landscape has been transformed: the emergence of international television news channels, websites and social networks. At the same time, there has been a huge concentration of media in the hands of a few owners. However, none of the problems listed in 1978 have changed. On the contrary, with the unipolar world, they have become worse.

The journalistic profession today consists of either writing agency reports or contextualizing the news for the media. News agencies are factual and unsourced, while the media offer commentary and analysis by referring to news agencies. Contextualization requires a great deal of historical, economic and other knowledge, which today’s journalists are largely lacking. The immediacy of radio and television does not give them the time to read books and even less to consult archives, except during in-depth investigations. Commentary and analysis have thus become considerably impoverished.

The dominant ideology in the West, which tends to become "global", has become a religion without God. There are now only two camps: that of the Good and that of the apostates. Truth is determined by a consensus among the elites, while the people reject it. Any criticism is considered blasphemous. There is no more room for debate and therefore for democracy.

The alternative press has become just as poor because it relies on the same data as the international media: news agency reports. It is indeed enough to control AFP, AP and Reuters to impose a vision of the facts on us. You can season it according to this or that tendency, Republican or Democrat, conservative or progressive, etc., but it will always be the same dish.

Since the September 11 attacks, those who challenge the official version of events have been called "conspiracy theorists ». Since the election of Donald Trump, those who contest the data of press agencies are accused of distorting reality and imagining Fake News. Journalists, after refraining from relaying the thoughts of "conspiracists", i.e. dissidents, try to correct Fake News with Checked News.

Yet, at the same time, belief in the versions of the mainstream media has collapsed. In the United States, the Gallup Institute has been measuring trust in the print media since 1973 and in the broadcast media since 1993. Trust in newspapers has fallen from 51 percent to 16 percent, and trust in radio and television has fallen from 46 percent to 11 percent.
The only solution is to increase the number of news agencies, i.e. the sources of information. Not to make them numerous, but diverse. Only then will we realize that the way an event is reported determines the way we think about it.

For example, today the three news agencies mentioned above present the conflict in Ukraine as a "Russian invasion". They claim that Moscow has not been able to take Kiev and overthrow President Zelenky, but commits war crimes every day. This is one way of looking at it. We don’t have the means to publish dispatches all the time, but we publish a weekly identical bulletin. Our criterion is different. We refer to "International Law" and not to Western "rules". Therefore, we describe the same conflict as the application of the Security Council resolution 2202 and the "responsibility to protect" the oppressed populations since 2014. The events are the same, but for some the way they tell them leads to think that the Russians are wrong, while ours leads to think that the Russian position is legal. To tell the truth, there is another difference: we interpret the facts over time. For us and for the Security Council, there has been a civil war in Ukraine for eight years with 20,000 deaths, the three major agencies pretend to ignore it. For us, the "integral nationalists" have a long criminal history, having cost the lives of 4 million of their fellow citizens, the Western agencies also pretend to ignore it “Who are the Ukrainian integral nationalists?”.

This difference can be applied to all subjects. For example, the major news agencies tell us that the West has imposed sanctions to punish Russia for invading Ukraine. We do not read events in this way. Once again, referring to "International Law" and not to Western "rules", we note that the decisions of the Anglo-Saxons and the European Union violate the UN Charter. These are not "sanctions", since there has been no judgment, but economic weapons to wage war against Russia, just as castles were besieged in the past to starve those who had taken refuge there.

Each difference in the interpretation of events provokes another. For example, when we point out that the Western pseudo-sanctions have not been endorsed by the Security Council, we are told that this is quite normal since Russia has a veto right in the Council. This is to forget why the UN was organized the way it was. Its purpose is not to say what is right, but to prevent wars. This is precisely what allowed the Council to adopt resolution 2202 to resolve the civil war in Ukraine. However, the West, despite the commitment of Germany and France, did not apply it, forcing Russia to intervene.

We could go on endlessly with this double reading. The important thing to remember is that the presentation of the facts radically changes the way they are perceived. To conclude, I invite you to found news agencies that describe the facts in their own way and not in the way of our leaders. It is in this way and not by glossing over biased information that we will regain our lucidity.

The German agent, thinker of Ukrainian “integral nationalism” and criminal against humanity, Dmytro Dontsov (Metipol 1883, Montreal 1973).

Like most Western political analysts and commentators, I was unaware of the existence of Ukrainian neo-Nazis until 2014. When the president-elect was overthrown, I was living in Syria at the time and thought they were violent groupings that had burst onto the public scene to assist pro-European elements. However, since the Russian military intervention, I have gradually discovered a lot of documents and information on this political movement which, in 2021, represented one third of the Ukrainian armed forces. This article presents a synthesis of it.

At the very beginning of this story, that is to say before the First World War, Ukraine was a large plain which had always been tossed between German and Russian influences. At the time, it was not an independent state, but a province of the tsarist empire. It was populated by Germans, Bulgarians, Greeks, Poles, Rumanians, Russians, Czechs, Tatars and a very large Jewish minority supposedly descended from the ancient Khazar people.

A young poet, Dmytro Dontsov, was fascinated by the avant-garde artistic movements, believing that they would help his country to escape from its social backwardness. Since the Tsarist Empire had been immobile since the death of Catherine the Great, while the German Empire was the scientific center of the West, Dontsov chose Berlin over Moscow.

When the Great War broke out, he became an agent of the German secret service. He emigrated to Switzerland, where he published, on behalf of his masters, the Bulletin of the Nationalities of Russia in several languages, calling for the uprising of the ethnic minorities of the Tsarist Empire in order to bring about its defeat. This model was chosen by the Western secret services to organize the "Forum of Free Peoples of Russia" this summer in Prague [1].

In 1917, the Bolshevik revolution turned the tables. Dontsov’s friends supported the Russian revolution, but he remained pro-German. In the anarchy that followed, Ukraine was divided de facto by three different regimes: the nationalists of Symon Petliura (who imposed themselves in the area held today by the Zelensky administration), the anarchists of Nestor Makhno (who organized themselves in Novorosssia, the land that had been developed by Prince Potemkin and that had never known serfdom), and the Bolsheviks (especially in the Donbass). The war cry of Petliura’s followers was "Death to the Jews and Bolsheviks". They perpetrated numerous murderous pogroms.

Dmytro Dontsov returned to Ukraine before the German defeat and became the protégé of Symon Petliura. He participated briefly in the Paris peace conference but, for some unknown reason, did not remain in his delegation. In Ukraine, he helped Petliura to ally with Poland to crush the anarchists and Bolsheviks. After the capture of Kiev by the Bolsheviks, Petliura and Dontsov negotiated the Treaty of Warsaw (April 22, 1920): the Polish army undertook to push back the Bolsheviks and to liberate Ukraine in exchange for Galicia and Volhynia (exactly as the Zelensky administration is negotiating today the entry of Poland into the war against the same lands [2]). This new war was a fiasco.

Vladimir Jabotinsky, born in Odessa, thinker of "revisionist Zionism". For him Israel was "a land without a people, for a People without a land">.

To strengthen his side, Petliura secretly negotiated with the founder of the Jewish battalions in the British army (the "Jewish Legion") and now administrator of the World Zionist Organization (WZO), Vladimir Jabotinsky. In September 1921, the two men agreed to unite against the Bolsheviks in exchange for Petliura’s commitment to forbid his troops to continue their pogroms. The Jewish Legion was to become the "Jewish Gendarmerie. However, despite his efforts, Petliura did not succeed in pacifying his troops, especially as his close collaborator Dontsov was still encouraging the massacre of Jews. Finally, when the agreement was revealed, the World Zionist Organization rebelled against the Petliura regime. On January 17, 1923, the WZO set up a commission to investigate Jabotinsky’s activities. Jabotinsky refused to come and explain himself and resigned from his position.

Simon Petliura took over northern Ukraine. Protector of the "integral nationalists", he sacrificed Galicia and Volhynia to fight the Russians.

Petliura fled to Poland and then to France, where he was murdered by a Jewish anarchist from Bessarabia (now Transnistria). During the trial, the latter assumed his crime and pleaded to have avenged the hundreds of thousands of Jews murdered by the troops of Petliura and Dontsov. The trial had a great impact. The court acquitted the murderer. The League against Pogroms, later Licra (International League against Racism and Anti-Semitism), was founded on this occasion.
Not only were the nationalists defeated, but the anarchists as well. Everywhere the Bolsheviks triumphed and chose, not without debate, to join the Soviet Union.

Dmytro Dontsov published literary magazines that fascinated the youth. He continued to promote a Central Europe dominated by Germany and became closer to Nazism as it rose. He soon referred to his doctrine as Ukrainian "integral nationalism ". In doing so, he referred to the French poet, Charles Maurras. Indeed, the logic of both men was initially identical: they sought in their own culture the means to affirm a modern nationalism. However, Maurras was a Germanophobe, while Dontsov was a Germanophile. The expression "integral nationalism" is still claimed today by Dontov’s followers, who, after the fall of the Third Reich, are careful to refute the term "Nazism" with which the Russians describe it, not without reason.

According to him, "Ukrainian nationalism" is characterized by:
"the affirmation of the will to live, power, expansion" (it promotes "The right of strong races to organize peoples and nations to strengthen the existing culture and civilization")
"the desire to fight and the awareness of its extremity" (he praises the "creative violence of the initiative minority").

Its qualities are:
"fanaticism" ;
" immorality".

Finally, turning his back on his past, Dontsov became an unconditional admirer of the Führer, Adolf Hitler. His followers had founded, in 1929, the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) around Colonel Yevhen Konovalets. Konovalets called Dontsov "the spiritual dictator of the youth of Galicia". However, a quarrel arose between Dontsov and another intellectual about his extremism that led to war against all, when Konovalets was suddenly murdered. The OUN (financed by the German secret service) then split in two. The "integral nationalists" reserved for themselves the OUN-B, named after Dontsov’s favorite disciple, Stepan Bandera.

In 1932-33, the Bolshevik political commissars, who were mostly Jewish, levied a tax on crops, as in other regions of the Soviet Union. Combined with significant and unpredictable climatic hazards, this policy caused a huge famine in several regions of the USSR, including the Ukraine. It is known as "Holodomor". Contrary to what the nationalist historian Lev Dobrianski says, it was not a plan for the extermination of Ukrainians by the Russians, since other Soviet regions suffered, but an inadequate management of public resources in times of climate change. Lev Dobrianski’s daughter, Paula Dobrianski, became one of President George W. Bush’s aides. She led a merciless struggle to have historians who did not adhere to her father’s propaganda excluded from Western universities [3].

In 1934, Bandera organized, as a member of the Nazi secret service and head of the OUN-B, the assassination of the Polish Minister of the Interior, Bronisław Pieracki.

From 1939, members of the OUN-B, forming a military organization, the UPA, were trained in Germany by the German army, and then still in Germany, but by their Japanese allies. Stepan Bandera offered Dmytro Dontsov to become the leader of their organization, but the intellectual refused, preferring to play the role of a leader rather than an operational commander.

The "integral nationalists" admired the invasion of Poland, in application of the German-Soviet pact. As Henry Kissinger, who could not be suspected of pro-Sovietism, demonstrated, it was not a question of the USSR annexing Poland, but of neutralizing part of it in order to prepare for the confrontation with the Reich. On the contrary, for Chancellor Hitler, it was a question of beginning the conquest of a "vital space" in Central Europe.

From the beginning of the Second World War, under the guidance of Dmytro Dontsov, the OUN-B fought alongside the Nazi armies against the Jews and the Soviets.

The collaboration between the Ukrainian "integral nationalists" and the Nazis continued with constant massacres of the majority of the Ukrainian population, accused of being Jews or Communists, until the "liberation" of Ukraine by the Third Reich in the summer of 1941 to the cry of "Slava Ukraїni!" (Glory to Ukraine), the war cry used today by the Zelensky administration and the US Democrats. At that time, the "integral nationalists" proclaimed "independence" from the Soviet Union in the presence of Nazi representatives and Greek Orthodox clergy, not in Kiev, but in Lviv, on the model of the Hlinka Guard in Slovakia and the Ustasha in Croatia. They formed a government under the leadership of Providnyk (guide) Stepan Bandera, whose friend Yaroslav Stetsko was Prime Minister. Their support in Ukraine is estimated at 1.5 million people. That is, the "integral nationalists" have always been in the minority.

Celebration of independent Ukraine with Nazi dignitaries. Behind the speakers, the three portraits displayed are those of Stepan Bandera, Adolf Hitler and Yevhen Konovalets.

The Nazis were divided between the Reich Commissioner for the Ukraine, Erich Koch, for whom the Ukrainians were subhuman, and the Minister for the Occupied Eastern Territories, Alfred Rosenberg, for whom the "integral nationalists" were true allies. Finally, on July 5, 1941, Bandera was deported to Berlin and placed under Ehrenhaft (honorable captivity), i.e., under house arrest as a high-ranking official. However, after the members of OUN-B murdered the leaders of the rival faction, OUN-M, the Nazis sanctioned Stepan Bandera and his organization on September 13, 1941. 48 of their leaders were deported to a prison camp in Auschwitz (which was not yet an extermination camp, but only a prison). The OUN-B was reorganized under German command. At that time all Ukrainian nationalists took the following oath: "Faithful son of my Fatherland, I voluntarily join the ranks of the Ukrainian Liberation Army, and with joy I swear that I will faithfully fight Bolshevism for the honor of the people. This fight we are waging together with Germany and its allies against a common enemy. With loyalty and unconditional submission I believe in Adolf Hitler as the leader and supreme commander of the Liberation Army. At any time I am prepared to give my life for the truth.

The oath of loyalty to Führer Adolf Hitler by members of the OUN.

The Nazis announced that many bodies had been discovered in the prisons, victims of "Bolshevik Jews. So the "integral nationalists" celebrated their "independence" by murdering more than 30,000 Jews and actively participating in the roundup of Jews from Kiev to Babi Yar, where 33,771 of them were shot in two days, on September 29 and 30, 1941, by the Einsatzgruppen of SS Reinhard Heydrich.

In this tumult, Dmytro Dontsov disappeared. In reality, he had gone to Prague and placed himself at the service of the architect of the Final Solution, Reinhard Heydrich, who had just been appointed vice-governor of Bohemia-Moravia. Heydrich organized the Wannsee Conference, which planned the "Final Solution of the Jewish and Gypsy Questions" [4]. He then created the Reinard Heydrich Institute in Prague to coordinate the systematic extermination of all these populations in Europe. The Ukrainian Dontsov, who now lived in Prague in great luxury, immediately became its administrator. He was one of the main architects of the largest massacre in history. Heydrich was assassinated in June 1942, but Dontsov retained his functions and privileges.

Reinhard Heydrich speaking at Prague Castle. He was in charge of managing Bohemia-Moravia. However, his real function was to coordinate the "final solution" of Jewish and Gypsy questions. Dmytro Dontsov joined his team in 1942 and oversaw massacres across Europe until the fall of the Reich. Prague Castle was the scene of the meeting of the European Political Community against Russia last October.

Stepan Bandera and his deputy Yaroslav Stetsko were placed under house arrest at the headquarters of the General Inspectorate of Concentration Camps in Oranienburg-Sachsenhausen (30 km from Berlin). They wrote letters to their supporters and to the Reich leadership in complete freedom and were not deprived of anything. In September 1944, as the Reich army retreated and Bandera’s followers began to rebel against it, the two leaders were released by the Nazis and reinstated in their previous positions. Bandera and Stetsko resumed the armed struggle, among the Nazis, against the Jews and the Bolsheviks.

Centuria Integral Nationalist Order Ceremony. According to George Washington University, by 2021 it had already penetrated the main NATO armies.

But it was already too late. The Reich collapsed. The Anglo-Saxons got Dontsov, Bandera and Stetsko. The theorist of integral nationalism was transferred to Canada, while the two practitioners of mass murder were transferred to Germany. MI6 and the OSS (predecessor of the CIA) rewrote their biographies, making their Nazi involvement and responsibility for the "Final Solution" disappear.

Stepan Bandera during his exile, celebrating the memory of Yevhen Konovalets.

Bandera and Stetsko were installed in Munich to organize the Anglo-Saxon stay-behind networks in the Soviet Union. From 1950 onwards, they had an important radio station, Radio Free Europe, which they shared with the Muslim Brotherhood of Said Ramadan (the father of Tariq Ramadan). The radio station was sponsored by the National Committee for a Free Europe, a CIA offshoot of which its director Alan Dulles was a member, as well as future president Dwight Eisenhower, newspaper magnate Henry Luce and film director Cecil B. DeMilles. Psychological warfare specialist and future patron of the Straussians, Charles D. Jackson, was chairman.

Vladimir Jabotinsky, for his part, after living in Palestine, took refuge in New York. He was joined by Benzion Netanyahu (the father of the current Israeli Prime Minister). The two men wrote the doctrinal texts of "revisionist Zionism" and the Jewish Encyclopedia.

Bandera and Stetsko moved around a lot. They organized sabotage operations throughout the Soviet Union, particularly in the Ukraine, and parachuted leaflets. For this purpose, they created the Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations (ABN), which brought together their Central European counterparts [5]. The British double agent, Kim Philby, informed the Soviets in advance about the actions of the Bandera. Bandera met with Dontsov in Canada and asked him to take the lead in the struggle. Once again, the intellectual refused, preferring to devote himself to his writing. He then drifted into a mystical delirium inspired by Viking myths. He announced the final battle of the Ukrainian knights against the Russian dragon. As for Bandera, he allied himself with the Chinese leader Chiang Kai-shek whom he met in 1958. But he was assassinated the following year by the KGB in Munich.

Funeral of Criminal Against Humanity, Stepan Bandera.

Chiang Kai-Shek and Yaroslav Stetsko at the founding of the World Anti-Communist League.

Yaroslav Stetsko continued the struggle through Radio Free Europe and the ABN. He went to the United States to testify before Senator Joseph MacCarthy’s Commission on Un-American Activities. In 1967, he and Chiang Kai-shek founded the World Anti-Communist League [6]. The League included many pro-US dictators from around the world and two schools of torture, in Panama and Taiwan. Klaus Barbie, who assassinated Jean Moulin in France and Che Guevara in Bolivia, was a member. In 1983, Stetsko was received at the White House by President Ronald Reagan and participated, along with Vice President George Bush Sr., in Lev Dobrianski’s "Captive Nations" (i.e., peoples occupied by the Soviets) ceremonies. He finally died in 1986.

But the story does not end there. His wife, Slava Stetsko, took over the leadership of these organizations. She too travelled the world to support any fight against the "communists", or rather, if we refer to Dontsov’s writings, against the Russians and the Chinese. When the USSR was dissolved, Mrs. Stetsko simply changed the title of the League to the World League for Freedom and Democracy, a name it still has today. She then devoted herself to regaining a foothold in Ukraine.

Slava Stetsko ran in the first elections of the independent Ukraine in 1994. She was elected to the Verkhovna Rada, but having been stripped of her nationality by the Soviets, she could not sit. However, she brought the Ukrainian president, Leonid Kuchma, to the CIA offices in Munich and dictated parts of the new constitution to him. Even today, Article 16 of the new constitution states: "Preserving the genetic heritage of the Ukrainian people is the responsibility of the state. Thus, Nazi racial discrimination is still proclaimed by modern Ukraine as in the worst moments of World War II.

Slava Stetsko opening the 2002 session of the Verkhovna Rada.

Slava Stetsko was re-elected at the next two sessions. She solemnly presided over the opening sessions on March 19, 1998 and on May 14, 2002.

In 2000, Lev Dobriansky organized a large symposium in Washington with many Ukrainian officials. He invited Straussian Paul Wolfowitz (a former collaborator of Charles D. Jackson). During this meeting, the "integral nationalists" put themselves at the service of the Straussians to destroy Russia [7].

Dmitro Yarosh when founding the Anti-Imperialist Front against Russia with the jihadists. He is now special adviser to the head of the Ukrainian armies.

On May 8, 2007, in Ternopol, on the initiative of the CIA, the "integral nationalists" of the Ukrainian People’s Self-Defense and Islamists created an anti-Russian "Anti-Imperialist Front" under the joint chairmanship of the Emir of Itchkeria, Dokka Umarov, and Dmytro Yarosh (the current special adviser to the head of the Ukrainian army). The meeting was attended by organizations from Lithuania, Poland, Ukraine and Russia, including Islamist separatists from Crimea, Adygea, Dagestan, Ingushetia, Kabardino-Balkaria, Karachaevo-Cherkessia, Ossetia and Chechnya. Dokka Umarov, who was unable to go there due to international sanctions, had his contribution read out. In retrospect, the Crimean Tatars are unable to explain their presence at this meeting, if not their past service to the CIA against the Soviets.

The pro-US president, Viktor Yushchenko, created a Dmytro Dontsov Institute, following the "Orange Revolution". Yushchenko is an example of Anglo-Saxon whitewashing. He has always claimed to have no connection with the mainstream nationalists, but his father, Andrei, was a guard in a Nazi extermination camp [8]. The Dmytro Dontsov Institute would be closed in 2010, and then reopened after the 2014 coup.

President Viktor Yushchenko, shortly before the end of his term of office, elevated the criminal against humanity Stepan Bandera to the title of "Hero of the Nation".

In 2011, the mainstream nationalists succeeded in passing a law banning the commemoration of the end of World War II because it was won by the Soviets and lost by the Banderists. But President Viktor Yanukovych refused to enact it. Enraged, the "integral nationalists" attacked the procession of Red Army veterans, beating up old men. Two years later, the cities of Lviv and Ivano-Frankivsk abolished the Victory Day ceremonies and banned all manifestations of joy.

In 2014, Ukrainians in Crimea and Donbass refused to recognize the coup government. Crimea, which had declared itself independent before the rest of Ukraine, reaffirmed its independence a second time and joined the Russian Federation. The Donbass sought a compromise. The "Ukrainian nationalists," led by President Petro Poroshenko, stopped providing public services there and bombed its population. In eight years, they murdered at least 16,000 of their fellow citizens in general indifference.

It was also from the 2014 coup that the full nationalist militias were incorporated into the Ukrainian Armed Forces. In their internal regulations, they enjoin each fighter to read the works of Dmytro Dontsov, including his master book, Націоналізм (Nationalism).

In April 2015, the Verkhovna Rada declared members of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) "independence fighters." The law was enacted, in December 2018, by President Poroshenko. Former Waffen SS were retrospectively entitled to a pension and all sorts of benefits. The same law criminalized any claim that OUN militants and UPA fighters collaborated with the Nazis and practiced ethnic cleansing of Jews and Poles. Published in Ukraine, this article would send me to jail for writing it and you for reading it.

Inauguration of a commemorative plaque of the Criminal Against Humanity Dmytro Dontsov on the facade of the state news agency Ukrinform. During the ceremony, the general director of Ukrinform assured that Dontsov had founded, in 1918, the first Ukrainian press agency, UTA, of which Ukrinform is the successor.

On July 1, 2021, President Volodymyr Zelenski enacted the Law "On Indigenous Peoples of Ukraine" which places them under the protection of Human Rights. By default, citizens of Russian origin can no longer invoke them in court.

In February 2022, the "full nationalist" militias, which made up one-third of the country’s armed forces, planned a coordinated invasion of Crimea and the Donbass. They were stopped by the Russian military operation to implement UN Security Council Resolution 2202 to end the suffering of the people of Donbass.

Canadian Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland demonstrates her support for President Zelensky with members of the Canadian branch of the OUN. Today, Ms. Freeland is a candidate for the General Secretariat of NATO.

In March 2022, Israeli Prime Minister Nafatali Bennett, breaking with the "revisionist Zionism" of Benjamin Netanyahu (the son of Jabotinsky’s secretary), suggested to President Volodymyr Zelensky that he should agree with Russian demands and denazify his country [8]. Emboldened by this unexpected support, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov dared to mention the case of the Jewish Ukrainian president, saying: "The Jewish people in their wisdom have said that the most ardent anti-Semites are usually Jews. Every family has its black sheep, as they say." This was too much for the Israelis, who always worry when someone tries to divide them. His counterpart at the time, Yair Lapid, recalled that the Jews themselves never organized the Holocaust of which they were victims. Caught between its conscience and its alliances, the Hebrew state repeated its support for Ukraine, but refused to send it any weapons. In the end, the General Staff decided and the Minister of Defense, Benny Gantz, closed any possibility of support to the successors of the mass murderers of Jews.

Ukrainians are the only nationalists who are not fighting for their people or their land, but for one idea: to annihilate the Jews and the Russians.

Main sources:
– Ukrainian Nationalism in the age of extremes. An intllectual biography of Dmytro Dontsov, Trevor Erlacher, Harvard University Press (2021).
– Stepan Bandera, The Life and Afterlife of a Ukrainian Nationalist. Fascism, Genocide, and Cult, Grzegorz Rossoliński-Liebe, Ibidem (2014).

Thierry Meyssan

Translation
Roger Lagassé

titre documents joints

Selon le rapport de l’IERES de l’Université George Washington (2021), l’Ordre Centuria a déjà pénétré les armées en Allemagne, au Canada, en France, en Pologne, au Royaume-Uni et aux États-Unis
(MPEG4 - 11.3 Mb)

Propaganda makes you stupid. We know that the Ukrainian integral nationalists have committed abominable massacres, especially during the Second World War. But we don’t know what they have been doing on our doorstep for the last thirty years, including the civil war they have been waging for the last eight years. Our own stupidity allows us to endure the war cries of our political leaders on the side of these criminals.

Voltaire Network | Paris (France) | 27 October 2022

Slava Stetsko, the widow of Nazi Prime Minister Yaroslav Stetsko, opened the 1998 and 2002 sessions of the Verkhovna Rada.

When war comes, governments always believe that they must boost the morale of their people by showering them with propaganda. The stakes are so high, life and death, that debates get tougher and extremist positions become popular. This is exactly what we are witnessing, or rather how we are being transformed. In this game, the ideas defended by some and others have nothing to do with their ideological presuppositions, but with their proximity to power

In the etymological sense, propaganda is just the art of convincing, of propagating ideas. But in modern times, it is an art that aims at reconstructing reality in order to denigrate the adversary and magnify one’s own troops.

Contrary to a widespread idea in the West, it was not the Nazis or the Soviets who invented it, but the British and the Americans during the First World War 1.

Today, Nato coordinates efforts in this area from its Strategic Communication Centre in Riga, Latvia 2. It identifies the points on which it wants to act and organizes international programs to carry them out.

For example, NATO has identified Israel as a weak point: while former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was a personal friend of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, his successor, Naftali Bennett, recognized the validity of Russian policy. He even advised the return of Crimea and Donbass and, above all, the denazification of Ukraine. The current Prime Minister, Yair Lapid, is more hesitant. He does not want to support the fundamentalist nationalists who massacred a million Jews shortly before and during the Second World War. But he also wants to stay on good terms with the West.

To bring Israel back into line, Nato is trying to persuade Tel Aviv that in case of a Russian victory, Israel would lose its position in the Middle East 3. To this end, it is spreading the lie that Iran is Russia’s military ally as widely as possible. The international press is constantly claiming that Russian drones are Iranian on the battlefield, and soon the medium-range missiles will be too. Yet Moscow knows how to manufacture these weapons and has never asked Tehran for them. Russia and Iran have repeatedly denied these allegations. But Western politicians, relying on the press and not on mere reflection, have already imposed sanctions on Iranian arms dealers. Soon Yair Lapid, son of the president of the Yad Vashem memorial, will be surrounded and forced to side with the criminals.

The British, on the other hand, traditionally excel in activating networked media and enlisting artists. MI6 relies on a group of 150 news agencies working within the PR Network 4. They convince all these companies to take up their imputations and slogans.

The founder of Ukrainian integral nationalism, Dmytro Dontsov, had an obsessive hatred of Jews and Gypsies. During the World War, he left Ukraine to become a director of the Reinhard Heydrich Institute. It was this institution, based in Czechoslovakia, that was responsible for planning the extermination of all Jews and Gypsies at the Wannsee Conference. He ended his days peacefully in the United States.

They are the ones who successively convinced you that President Vladimir Putin was dying, then that he had gone mad, or that he was facing strong opposition at home and that he would be overthrown by a coup. Their work continues today with cross interviews with soldiers in Ukraine. You hear Ukrainian soldiers say they are nationalists and Russian soldiers say they are afraid but must defend Russia. You hear that Ukrainians are not Nazis and that Russians, living under a dictatorship, are forced to fight. In reality, most Ukrainian soldiers are not "nationalists" in the sense of defenders of their homeland, but "integral nationalists" in the sense of two poets, Charles Maurras and Dmytro Dontsov 5. This is not the same thing at all.

It was only in 1925 that Pope Pius XI condemned "integral nationalism". At that time Dontsov had already written his Націоналізм (Nationalism) (1921). Maurras and Dontsov defined the nation as a tradition and thought their nationalism against others (Maurras against Germans and Dontsov against Russians). Both abhorred the French Revolution, the principles of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity and denounced Jews and Freemasons relentlessly. They consider religion as useful for the organization of society, but seem agnostic. These positions lead Maurras to become a Petainist and Dontsov a Hitlerian. The latter will sink into a varègue (Swedish Viking) mystical delirium. The next pope, Pius XII, repealed the condemnation of his predecessor, just before the war broke out. At the liberation, Maurras was condemned for intelligence with the enemy (he was a Germanophobe), but Dontsov was recuperated by the Anglo-Saxon secret services and exiled to Canada, then to the USA.

As for the Russian soldiers we see interviewed on our TV news, they do not tell us that they are forced to fight, but, unlike the integral nationalists, they are not fanatics. For them, war, even when defending their own, is always a horror. It is because we are repeatedly told that Russia is a dictatorship that we understand something else. We do not accept that Russia is a democracy because, for us, a democracy cannot be an authoritarian regime. Yet, for example, the Second French Republic (1848-1852) was both a democracy and an authoritarian regime.

We are easy to convince because we know nothing about Ukrainian history and culture. The most we know is that Novorossia was ruled by a French aristocrat, Armand-Emmanuel du Plessis de Richelieu, a personal friend of Tsar Alexander I. He continued the work of the Prince of Ukraine. He continued the work of Prince Grigori Potemkin who wanted to build this region on the model of Athens and Rome, which explains why today Novorossia is still of Russian culture (and not Ukrainian) without ever having known serfdom.

The Bibi Yar memorial in Kiev. 33 771 Jewish Ukrainians were shot in two days, on September 29 and 30, 1941, by the Ukrainian Waffen SS and Reinhard Heydrich’s Einsatzgruppen. This massacre was celebrated as a victory by the mainstream nationalists. Today, the Ukrainian government has named the main avenue leading to it after the integral nationalist Stepan Bandera, "in honor" of the greatest criminal in its history.

A few months after his election, on May 6, 1995, Leonid Kushma, the second president of the new Ukraine, went to Munich to meet with Slava Stetsko, the widow of the Ukrainian Nazi prime minister. He agreed to the introduction of an explicit reference to Nazism in the new constitution: "preserving the genetic heritage of the Ukrainian people is the responsibility of the state" (sic).

We are unaware of the atrocities in Ukraine of the interwar period and the Second World War, and have a vague idea of the violence of the USSR. We ignore that the theoretician Dontsov and his disciple Stepan Bandera did not hesitate to massacre all those who did not correspond to their "integral nationalism", first the Jews in this Khazar country, then the Russians and the Communists, the anarchists of Nestor Makhno, and many others. The "integral nationalists", who had become admirers of the Führer and deeply racist, returned to the forefront with the dissolution of the USSR 6. On May 6, 1995, President Leonid Kuchma went to Munich (to the CIA offices) to meet with the leader of the integral nationalists, Steva Stesko, the widow of the Nazi prime minister. She had just been elected to the Verkhovna Rada (Parliament), but had not been able to take her seat because she had been stripped of her Ukrainian citizenship. A month later, Ukraine adopted its current constitution, which states in its Article 16 that "preserving the genetic heritage of the Ukrainian people is the responsibility of the state" (sic). Subsequently, the same Steva Stetsko twice opened the session of the Rada, concluding her speeches with the war cry of the integral nationalists: "Glory to Ukraine!

Modern Ukraine has patiently built its Nazi regime. After proclaiming the "genetic heritage of the Ukrainian people", it enacted various laws. The first one grants the benefit of human rights by the state only to Ukrainians, not to foreigners. The second defines who the majority of Ukrainians are, and the third (enacted by President Zelensky) who the minorities are. The trick is that no law speaks about Russian speakers. Therefore, by default, the courts do not recognize them the benefit of human rights.

Since 2014, a civil war has pitted the integral nationalists against the Russian-speaking populations, mainly those of Crimea and Donbass. 20,000 deaths later, the Russian Federation, applying its "responsibility to protect," launched a special military operation to implement Security Council Resolution 2202 (Minsk Agreements) and end the martyrdom of Russian speakers.

President Zelensky and his friend, Benjamin Netanyahu. The latter is now making support for Ukraine his main election campaign theme. Netanyahu is the son of the private secretary of Zeev Jabotinsky, a Ukrainian figure who allied with the mainstream nationalists against the Bolsheviks. He tried to put the Ukrainian Jewish community at the service of these anti-Semites, but was unanimously denounced within the World Zionist Organization, of which he became a director.

Nato propaganda tells us about the real sufferings of the Ukrainians, but it does not mention the eight years of torture, murder and massacres that preceded it. It talks about "our common values with Ukrainian democracy", but what values do we share with the integral nationalists and where is the democracy in Ukraine?

We do not have to choose between one or the other, but only to defend peace and therefore the Minsk Agreements and resolution 2202.

War drives us crazy. There is a reversal of values. The most extremist triumph. Some of our ministers speak of "stifling Russia" (sic). We do not see that we are supporting the very ideas we believe we are fighting against.

Peter Aaby at the Symposium about Scientific Freedom, Copenhagen, 9 March 2019.

Lecture: "WHO is the brain in the system - The sound of silence? A case study of how public health vaccinology deals with fundamental contradictions of current policy."

Anthropologist, Dr Peter Aaby is credited for the discovery of non-specific effects of vaccines, leading the World Health Organization, WHO, to change its measles vaccine programme in the early 1990s.
For almost 40 years, he has run the Bandim Health Project, a health and demographic surveillance system site that he established in Guinea-Bissau in 1978.

This lecture is part of the Symposium about Scientific Freedom and the inauguration of the Institute for Scientific Freedom, which took place in Copenhagen, Denmark, 9 March 2019.

World renowned Danish scientist Peter C Gøtzsche is the founder of the institute. The Institute’s primary area of focus is healthcare and the institute has three main visions:

• All science should strive to be free from financial conflicts of interest.
• All science should be published as soon as possible, and made freely accessible.
• All scientific data, including study protocols, should be freely accessible, allowing others to do their own analyses.

In the first part of this essay, I gave my interpretation of the background of the current confrontation in Korea. I argued that, while the past is the mother of the present, it has several fathers. What I remember is not necessarily what you remember; so, in this sense, the present also shapes or reshapes the past.

A nuclear test detonation carried out in Nevada on April 18, 1953.

In my experience as a policy planner, I found that only by taking note of the perception of events as they are differently held by the participants could one understand or deal with present actions and ideas. I have tried to sketch out views of the past as we, the North Koreans and the South Koreans, differently view them in Part 1 of this essay.

Now I want to undertake a refinement of the record I have laid out. I want first to show how our perception, the interpretation we place on the events that swirl past us, adds a new and formative element to them. Whether consciously or not, we tend to put events into a pattern. So the pattern itself becomes part of the problem we face in trying to understand events. Staking out a path – an interpretation or a theory of what random bits and pieces mean or how they will be interpreted and acted upon by others — is a complex and contentious task.

Getting it wrong can lead us astray or even be very dangerous. So the interpreter, the strategist, must always be tested to see if his interpretation makes sense and the path he lays out is the one we want to travel. I will make this explicit below.

My experience in what was certainly the most dangerous situation America ever experienced, the Cuban Missile Crisis, led me to believe that at least in a crisis how we think about events and what we remember of the past often determines our actions and may be the deciding difference between life and death. So here I will begin with the mindset that underlay American policy for the last half century.

Anyone who reads the press or watches TV is beset with countless scraps of information. In my experience in government service, the deluge of information was almost paralyzing. Some of my colleagues joked that the way to defeat our adversaries was to give them access to what passed over our desks every day. It would immobilize them as it sometimes immobilized us.

How to separate from the flow the merely interesting from the important and how to relate one event to others were demanding tasks. Making them useful has been undertaken by strategists time after time over the last several thousand years. Machiavelli is the best known among us, but he was far from the first. [I have dealt with these issues in detail in Neighbors and Strangers: The Fundamentals of Foreign Affairs (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997).]

Theory of Deterrence

The latest and arguably the most persuasive recent attempt to develop a sort of framework or matrix to bring some sense of order and some ability to understand events has been the theory of deterrence. While “just a theory,” it set American policy toward the Soviet Union in the Cold War. It was developed to understand and deal with the Soviet Union in the Cold War, but it will determine much of what America tries to do with North Korea today.

President John F. Kennedy addressing the nation regarding the October 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.

To simplify and summarize, Cold War strategists led by such men as Henry Kissinger, Thomas Schelling and Bernard Brodie believed that ultimately relationships among nations were mathematical. Deterrence thus meant gathering the elements that could be added up by both sides. If country “A” had overwhelming power, country “B” would be deterred in its own interest from actions that were detrimental to them. Failure to “do the sums” correctly in the “game of nations” was to “misplay.”

Emotion and even politics had no role; in the real world. It was realpolitik that governed. Put another way, the weak would add up their capabilities and would necessarily give way to the strong to avoid being destroyed.

The great Greek historian Thucydides long ago set the tone: “Right, as the world goes,” he wrote, “is only in question between equals in power; the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.” Only by acting in this mindset would the national interests, the real interests, of each country be preserved and peace among nations be achieved.

Deterrence worked reasonably well up to and including the Cuban Missile Crisis. But during that crisis, as some of the theory’s critics had long held, a potentially fatal flaw became evident.

The flaw is that “national interest” – what can be added up or quantified as the assets and what gives it its strength — is not necessarily always coincident with “interest of government.” That is, governments may not always be guided by a rational calculation of national interest. There are times when leaders cannot afford, even if they precisely add up the figures, to act according to such slow-moving impulses as national interest. They may be subject to quite different and more urgent impulses. They may be emotional or otherwise be irrational, fearful of their lives or worried that they would lose their positions, or they may be driven by public opinion or by the different calculations of such other centers of power as the military. Being guided by the abstract calculation of national interest may then be impossible.

Let me illustrate this from my experience in the Cuban Missile Crisis, then in a war game the Department of Defense (DOD) organized to reexamine the Missile Crisis and finally in a meeting in Moscow with my Russian counterparts.

In the Missile Crisis, both President Kennedy (certainly) and Chairman Khrushchev (probably) were under almost unbearable pressure not only in trying to figure out how to deal with the events but also from the warnings, importuning and urging of their colleagues, rivals, supporters and from their military commanders. Whether either leader was in danger of overthrow of his regime or assassination is still unknown, but both were at least potentially at risk because the stakes were, literally, the fate of the world and opinions on how to deal with the possibility of ruinous war were strongly held.

Obviously, the loss to both of their nations in the event of a nuclear exchange would have been catastrophic so the national interest of both was clear: it was to avoid war. But how to avoid it was disputatious. And it was not nations that were making decisions; it was the leaders, and their interests were only in part coincident with national interest.

We were lucky that at least Kennedy realized this dilemma and took steps to protect himself. What he did is not well understood so I will briefly summarize the main points. First, he identified General Lyman Lemnitzer, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS), as the main hawk. Lemnitzer was pushing him toward a nuclear war and had shown his hand by presenting a “black” plan (“Operation Northwoods”) to be carried out by the JCS to trigger war with Cuba.

[Curiously, “Operation Northwoods” is hardly known even today. It was described by the eminent scholar on intelligence James Bamford in Body of Secrets (New York: Doubleday, 2001), 82 ff, as the “launching [of] a secret and bloody war of terrorism against their own country in order to trick the American public into supporting an-ill-conceived war they intended to launch against Cuba.” Provocations were to be manufactured: hijacking of aircraft, murders and the explosion of the rocket that was carrying astronaut John Glenn into space. Lemnitzer lied to Congress, denying the plan’s existence, and had many of documents destroyed. Although he was dismissed as chairman of the JCS by Kennedy, the organization he formed within the JCS continued to plan covert actions. It would have been surprising if Kennedy did not worry about a possible attempt on his government.]

Fearing a Coup d’Etat

Apparently realizing that the plan could easily have been turned into a coup d’état, Kennedy removed Lemnitzer as far from Washington as he could (to Europe to be the NATO commander). Kennedy also assembled a group of elder statesmen, most of whom had served under the Eisenhower and Truman administrations in positions senior to the current military commanders and were identified as conservatives — far from Kennedy’s image as a liberal.

President John F. Kennedy meeting with Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev on June 3, 1961, in Vienna. (State Department photo)

Ostensibly, he sought their advice, but in practice what he sought was their approval of his decisions. He also was careful to instruct the public in his speech on the Monday, the first public acknowledgement of the crisis, that he was firmly in control and was determined to protect American interests.

Then, in the solution to the crisis, removing the American missiles from Turkey, he pretended that their removal was not a price he had to pay to end the crisis. Thus, in several ways, he neutralized potential critics, at least during the crucial time of the Crisis. But, not long afterwards, he was assassinated by persons, forces, or interests about whom and whose motivation there is still much controversy. At minimum, we know that powerful people, including Lemnitzer, thought Kennedy had sold out national interest in pursuit of the interest of his administration.

At the same time in Moscow, Mr. Khrushchev probably risked his life by accepting the humiliation imposed on his regime by the forced withdrawal of Russian missiles from Cuba. Apparently, for of course we do not know, he felt less immediate danger than Kennedy because the Soviet system had always distrusted and guarded against its military commanders. A Lemnitzer there would probably have been “disappeared,” not just sent into a polite exile. And hovering beside each of the senior officers of the Soviet army was a political commissar who was responsible to the civilian administration – that is, to the Communist Party leadership – for the officer’s every move, every contact, almost every thought. The military did what the civil leadership told it to do.

I presume Khrushchev believed that he had his colleagues with him, but that cannot have been very reassuring given the record of the Politburo. And, when he died, Khrushchev or at least his reputation paid a price: he was refused the supreme accolade of Soviet leadership; he was not buried with other Soviet heroes in the Kremlin Wall. That we know; what we cannot know is whether or not he thought he was, or actually was, in danger of being overthrown.

What is clear is that he was strong enough – and faced with no blatant or destructive action by America – that he was able to surmount the “interest of government” to protect “national interest.” In short, he was not backed into a corner.

Were it not for the strength and bravery of both men, we might not have survived the Missile Crisis. Obviously, we cannot always be so served. Sometimes, we are apt to be dependent on weaker, more timorous and less steady men. This is not an abstract issue, and it has come back to haunt us in the Korean confrontation as it surely will in other confrontations. Understanding it may be a matter of our survival. That was not just my view but was also was even then the nagging worry of the DOD.

Thus, in the aftermath of the crisis, the DOD sought reassurance that deterrence had worked and would continue to work. That is, it sought to test the theory that leaders would add up the sums and be governed by what they found rather than by political, emotional or other criteria.

A Nuclear War Game

To this end, the DOD commissioned the conflict strategist Thomas Schelling to design and run a politico-military war game to push the experience of the Missile Crisis to the extreme, that is to find out what the Russians would they do if they were dealt a severe, painful and humiliating nuclear blow?

A scene from “Dr. Strangelove,” in which the bomber pilot (played by actor Slim Pickens) rides a nuclear bomb to its target in the Soviet Union.

Schelling’s game pitted two small teams of senior, fully-briefed U.S. government officers against one another in the Pentagon. Red Team represented the USSR and Blue Team the U.S. Each was provided with all the information Khrushchev would have had. Shortly after assembling, we were told that Blue team destroyed a Red Team city with a nuclear weapon. What would Red Team do?

Since it was far weaker than the United States, by the deterrence theory it would cave in and not retaliate.

To Schelling’s exasperation, the game proved the opposite. It showed that action only in part depended on a rational calculation of national interest but rather in circumstances of crisis, would be governed by the political imperatives faced by the government. I have discussed this in detail elsewhere, but in brief, the members of Red Team, who were among the most experienced and gifted men from the State Department, the White House, the CIA and the DOD, chaired by the very conservative admiral who was Chief of Naval Operations, decided unanimously that Red Team had no option but to go to general war as fast and as powerfully as it could.

Shelling stopped the game, saying that we had “misplayed” and that if we were right he would have to give up the theory of deterrence. We laid out the reasons for our decision.

That decision was taken on two grounds: the first was that acquiescence was not politically possible. No government, Russian or American or other, could accept the humiliation of the loss of a city and survive the fury of those who felt betrayed. Even if at ruinous cost, it would strike back. This is a lesson apparently still unlearned.

Indeed, it could cause the death of each person reading this essay if applied in real life in a nuclear first strike as I will shortly make clear in discussing the Korean crisis.

The second basis for the decision was that, despite Kissinger, Schelling and other “limited nuclear war” advocates, there is no such thing as limited nuclear war in the real world. A nuclear strike would inevitably lead to retaliation, nuclear if possible, and that retaliation would lead to counter-retaliation.

In the war game, Red Team realized that if Mr. Khrushchev were to retaliate for America’s destruction of Baku by incinerating St. Louis, it would have posed a challenge, regardless of who was at fault or what the odds of success were, that Kennedy could not have ducked. He would certainly have been overthrown and almost certainly assassinated if he had not responded. He almost certainly would have destroyed a second Russian city.

Tit-for-tat had no stopping point. Each response would lead to the next and quickly to general war. So Red Team went immediately to the best of its bad options: hitting back immediately with everything it had: in short, we opted for general war.

Fortunately that scenario was not tested. In the real Cuban Missile Crisis, no city was incinerated. Neither Kennedy nor Khrushchev was pushed beyond “calculation.” But it was a very close call. My own hunch, from having been one of the 25 or so civilians closely involved in the real-life crisis, is that Kennedy and his team could not have held firm much longer than the Thursday or Friday of that terrible week.

The implications are clear – and terrifying – but neither Shelling nor other Cold Warriors have accepted them. We are still today approaching the conflict in Korea with the mindset that our war game showed was fatally flawed.

The last test of the result of the war game came when I lectured on strategic planning and participated in a seminar on the Missile Crisis with the members of the then principal advisory group to the Politburo, the Institute of World Economy and International Affairs of the Soviet Academy of Sciences. In a word, my opposite numbers there agreed with the analysis I have just laid out: Khrushchev could not have accepted an American nuclear attack. He would have responded even though he realized that the overwhelming advantage – the “numbers” – were against him.

They also agreed that in practical terms there was no such thing as limited nuclear war. A “limited” nuclear strike would be, inevitably, the first step in a general war.

Lacking Wise Leaders

I will speculate below on how the actual events of the Cuban Missile Crisis and the result of the war game might apply to the current conflict in Korea. Here let me anticipate by saying that we have no reason to believe that the men who will decide the issue are of the caliber of Kennedy and Khrushchev.

President Donald Trump, speaking in Warsaw, Poland, on July 6, 2017. (Screen shot from Whitehouse.gov)

Both Kennedy and Khrushchev were strong, pragmatic, experienced and well supported men. In today’s conflict between the United States and North Korea, neither Donald Trump nor Kim Jong Un evince similar attributes. Some critics even question their sanity. But, they will make the decisions, so I focus on them, their motivations and their capacities. I begin with Mr. Trump.

I have never met Mr. Trump and our backgrounds are very different so I am driven to two, admittedly incomplete and questionable, ways of understanding him. The first of these is his own description of his thought process and way of acting. The three characteristics that seem to me most germane to foreign affairs and particularly to the confrontation in Korea are these:

–On November 12, 2015, Mr. Trump declared, “I love war.” In fact, as the record showed, he went to considerable trouble to deny himself the pleasures of going into harm’s way during the Vietnam War. And, now, should he decide to take America to war, he would not put his own life in danger.

In my time in Washington, such “war-lovers from afar“ were often referred to as “chicken-hawks.” They loved to talk about war and to urge others to get into it, but, like Mr. Trump, they never volunteered for action and never, in their pronouncements, dwelt on the horror of actual combat. For them war was another TV episode where the good guys got a bit dusted up but always won.

Mr. Trump presumably meant by the word “war” something very different from real war since he explained, “I’m good at war. I’ve had a lot of wars on my own. I’m really good at war. I love war, in a certain way but only when we win.”

For Mr. Trump, as his actions show, every business deal was a sort of war. He conducted it as what military strategists call a zero-sum game: the winner took all and the loser got nothing. There was little or no negotiation. “Attack” was the operational mode and his opponent would be driven to defeat by the threat of financial ruin. This was the “certain way” he called his many “wars on my own.”

The record bears him out. He overwhelmed rivals with lawsuits against which they had to defend themselves at ruinous cost, convinced them that if they did not acquiesce he would destroy them and was unrelenting. He was very good at it. He made his fortune in this form of “war.” He seems to believe that he can apply his experience in business to international affairs. But nations are not so likely to go out of business as the rivals he met in real estate transactions and some of them are armed with nuclear weapons.

–On several occasions, Mr. Trump set out his understanding of the role of nuclear weapons. In 2015, as a candidate, he was quoted as saying, “For me, nuclear is just the power, the devastation is very important to me.” But I find no evidence that he realizes what “devastation” really means. It is one thing to drive a business rival into bankruptcy and quite another to oversee the burning to death of hundreds of thousands or millions of people and relegating still more to homelessness and starvation in a ruined environment.

One supposes that he is aware of what happened in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but they are misleading. Modern nuclear weapons are far more powerful: a one megaton weapon, for example, is about 50 times as powerful as the weapon that destroyed Hiroshima. Those of us who dealt with the threat of nuclear war in the Cuban Missile Crisis were aware of the effects of such “standard” weapons.

I see no evidence that Mr. Trump knows what a nuclear war would actually do. Indeed, he is quoted as saying, “what is the point of having nuclear weapons if you don’t use them?” He will find advisers who will tell him that they must be used. The ghost of General Lemnitzer hovers near the Oval Office.

Proud of Unpredictability

–Mr. Trump prides himself on unpredictability. Unpredictability was his business strategy. As he told an interviewer from CBS on January 1, 2016, “You want to be unpredictable … And somebody recently said — I made a great business deal. And the person on the other side was interviewed by a newspaper. And how did Trump do this? And they said, he`s so unpredictable. And I didn`t know if he meant it positively or negative. It turned out he meant it positively.”

Graphic for “The Celebrity Apprentice” when it was starring Donald Trump.

Another time Trump said on TV “I want to be unpredictable.” The record shows his use of the ploy, but perhaps it is more than just a ploy. Perhaps it is a manifestation of his personality, so I want to probe its meaning.

Years ago, I was informed that the CIA maintained a staff of psychoanalysts to profile foreign leaders. If the office still exists, the doctors presumably do not practice their arts on American officials, and certainly not on the President. As part of their professional code, psychiatrists are not supposed to diagnose anyone they have not personally examined, and I doubt that anyone will be able to get Mr. Trump to lie down on the coach.

But, as psychiatrists Peter Kramer and Sally Satel have pointed out, Mr. Trump has shown himself to be “impulsive, erratic, belligerent and vengeful” so “many experts believe that Mr. Trump has a narcissistic personality disorder.” Reacting to having such a leader with his hand on the nuclear trigger, Maryland Congressman Jamie Raskin introduced a bill to establish an “Oversight Commission on Presidential Capacity” (H.R. 1987) as authorized by the 25th Amendment to the Constitution. It has not been acted upon and it allows the President latitude to “pardon” himself.

Since his actions and the efforts of others do not offer much insight, I suggest his actions lend themselves to a perhaps instructive analogy, the game of “chicken.”

–In “chicken,” two drivers aim their speeding cars at one another. The one who flinches, turns aside, or (as Secretary of State Dean Rusk put it to me during the Cuban Missile Crisis) “blinks,” is the chicken. The winner is the driver who convinces the loser that he is irrational, deaf to all appeals and blind to danger. He cannot get out of the way.

In Mr. Trump’s strategy of war, the irrational man wins because he cannot be reached with any warning, argument or advice. Knowing this, the other man loses precisely because he is rational. Three things follow from this analogy. They seem evident in Mr. Trump’s approach to the issues or war or peace:

The first is that irrationality, ironically becomes a rational strategy. If one can convince his opponents that he is cannot be reasoned with, he wins. This has worked for years in business for Mr. Trump. I see no reason to believe that he will give it up.

The second is that the driver of the car does not need information or advice. They are irrelevant or even detrimental to his strategy. So, we see that Mr. Trump pays no attention to the professionals who man the 16 agencies set up by previous administrations to provide information or intelligence.

One example where his professed plan of action flies in the face of the intelligence appreciation is Iran. As the former deputy director of the CIA David Cohen found “disconcerting,” Mr. Trump has repeatedly said that Iran was not abiding by the terms of the Iranian-American deal on nuclear weapons before “finding the intelligence to back it up.” But that is inherent in Trump’s strategy of confrontation. He surely knows – but does not care — that the entire intelligence community holds that Iran has abided by the deal.

In Trump’s mind, intelligence analysts are “back seat drivers” and should keep quiet. By questioning his blindness, they suggest to the driver of the other car that Mr. Trump might swerve aside. Thus, they threaten to destroy the irrationality that is the essence of his strategy.

And, third, what Mr. Trump, the “driver” of the car in the “chicken” confrontation, does need is absolute loyalty. Those who sit beside him must never question how he is driving. Any hint of their trying to dissuade his actions threatens to destroy his strategy. So, as we see almost daily, at any hint of disagreement, he pushes his copilots out of the car. Indeed, at least one hardly even got into the “car” before being pushed out the door.

His actions both in business and in the presidency illustrate these points. He takes pride in irrational actions, shifting from one position to another, even its opposite, on what appears to be a whim. He disdains advice even from the intelligence services and also from presumably loyal members of his inner circle. What he demands is absolute loyalty.

Finally, it seems to me that Mr. Trump has understood, far better than most of us, that the public likes to be entertained. It is bored by consistency. It doesn’t pay much attention to explanation or analysis. And as the financially successful record of the TV industry and the sorry record of the book publishing industry show, the public wants entertainment. Mr. Trump caters to popular taste: every episode is new; every remark, simple; every threat, dramatic; and, perhaps most powerfully of all, he echoes angers, disappointments, hurts, desires that many of his supporters also feel.

This mode of operation worked for Trump in the business world. His image of ruthlessness, determination and even irrationality caused some of the biggest potential rivals to get out of his way and many others to accept his terms rather than risk a collision. It is not Trump or his mode of operation that has changed but the context in which he operates. Citibank with which he clashed did not have nuclear weapons; North Korea does. So how does Kim Jong Un measure up?

Measuring Kim Jong Un

Kim Jong Un is the third generation of the North Korean leadership. That position is almost beyond the comprehension of modern Westerners. Ruling dynasties went out of fashion in the First World War. But perhaps consideration of “dynasty” can be made to yield useful insights. One who tried to learn what dynastic succession could tell us was the great medieval North African philosopher of history, Ibn Khaldun.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

Observing Berber and Arab societies, Ibn Khaldun found that the first dynasty, sweeping in from the desert, was made up of men who were rough and vigorous; their sons still remembered times of struggle and retained their hardihood, but the third generation grew use to ease and settled into luxury. Its leaders kept power by relying on outside forces. The fourth generation lost it all.

The fit to Korea is far from exact, but it is provocative. Kim Il-sung was a guerrilla warrior, not unlike the warring tribal leaders with whom Ibn Khaldun dealt. Sweeping in from Siberia he took power (admittedly with Soviet help), ruled for nearly half a century and established the dynasty; in the second generation, his son Kim Jong-Il came seamlessly to power on his death in 1994. While he shared little of his father’s war-like experiences, he seems to have been a hard man, as Ibn Khaldun expected. But he gives just a hint of the growth of the enjoyment of the new environment. The luxury he enjoyed was exactly what Ibn Khaldun would have predicted. He took as his mistress a beautiful dancer. From this union came Kim Jong Un, the personification of the third dynasty.

Young Kim Jong Un grew up in what was, in Korean terms, the lap of luxury and as a child was allowed to play the child’s game of soldiers. His soldiers, however, were not toys; they were real. There is no certain information, but it is believed that he was made a senior officer in the North Korean army when he was just a child. When he was 12 years old, his father sent him to a private school in Switzerland. Being provided with a personal chef to cook Korean dishes as well as a tutor and a driver/bodyguard, he does not seem to have really been “in” Europe.

He was taken out of the Swiss school when he was 15 and put into a public school in Korea. Those few who knew him have commented that he was intensely patriotic. At his father’s choice, although he was not the elder son, he was singled out as the successor, the man of the third generation.

Despite this unusual background he seems remarkably like an ordinary American schoolboy: he loved sports, particularly basketball, spent a lot of time watching movies and was an indifferent student. This is just about all know about his background. He did not emerge in public until about the time his father was dying.

In 2009, he is thought to have married a beautiful young women who has been variously described as a singer in a popular music group, a cheerleader in a sports event and a doctoral candidate in a Korean university. When his father finally died in 2011, the 32-year-old Kim Jong-un became North Korea’s leader. But on assuming power, he showed himself a more ruthless, determined and absolute ruler than Ibn Khaldun would have predicted.

Almost immediately, he purged his father’s top general among other senior officials, and allegedly he ordered or tolerated the murder of his elder brother whom he must have seen as a potential rival. More generally, he proved himself skillful in organizing the bitter memories of the Korean War among his people to support his regime.

To explain in part the inconsistency of what he did and what was expected of the third generation, I suggest that that he must have constantly had before him lesson of Saddam Husain who lacked nuclear weapons, could not defend himself and was hanged. Watching these events as a young man, Kim Jong Un must have been convinced that he could not afford to give himself up to luxury. As his opponents charge, he may have many vices but sloth is not one of them.

Policy Options

From this sketchy background of the two men whose hands are on the nuclear trigger, I turn to what their choices are. That is, what is the range of policies they must be considering or enacting to accomplish what they say are their objectives.

A map of the Korean Peninsula showing the 38th Parallel where the DMZ was established in 1953. (Wikipedia)

As I understand his objectives, the ruler of North Korea is determined to protect his regime (and of course his own life) and believes he can do so only if he has the capacity to deliver a blow sufficiently painful to any attacker that would deter him.

As Siegfried Hecker, the former director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory who has visited North Korea seven times and toured its nuclear facilities, has written (Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 7 August 2017), Kim Jong Un “is determined to develop an effective deterrent to keep the United States out.” His answer is a missile-carried nuclear weapon.

Contrariwise, President Trump’s announced objective (which in general echoes that of previous administrations) is to get the North Korean government to stop its development of both nuclear weapons and missiles. He has, theoretically, a range of policies to effect his objective.

Taking back my former role as a policy planner, I would divide the possible courses of American action, the cost of each and its likelihood of being accomplished as follows:

–The first possible policy is what could be called “bluster and threat without armed action.” This is what President Trump is doing today. His outbursts apparently go over well with his loyal supporters but his words have not apparently at least so far affected Kim Jong Un.

However his words have delivered the worst possible result: it has increased North Korean fear of U.S. invasion, has increased Kim Jong Un’s determination to develop a deliverable nuclear weapons capability and has probably stoked the war fever of the Koreans.

Thomas Schelling, with whom I disagreed on other issues, got this one right. As he wrote in The Strategy of Conflict, “madmen, like small children, can often not be controlled by threats” and “if he is not to react like a trapped lion, [an opponent] must be left some tolerable recourse. We have come to realize that a threat of all-out retaliation gives the enemy every incentive, in the event he should choose not to heed the threat, to initiate his transgression with an all-out strike on us; it eliminates lesser courses of action and forces him to choose between extremes.”

In making that choice, Kim Jong Un hears President Trump. threatening “fire and fury, the likes of which this world has never seen before.” (Kim responded with the threat to bomb America’s air base on Guam island “to teach the U.S. a severe lesson.”)

Mr. Trump said America was “locked and loaded” and its “patience is over.” And, in addition to remarks on the internet and to audiences all over America, he authorized a simulated war exercise (known as Foal Eagle 2017) by some 300,000 troops armed with live ammunition in and around South Korea which, of course, the government of the North regarded as provocative. But the U.S. did not alert its troops in South Korea nor its aircraft on Guam nor its ships at sea that an outbreak of hostilities was imminent. In short, the threat appeared all talk but no action.

Sen. John McCain, a man with some experience in combat, commented that President Trump’s recent fiery rhetoric on North Korea would only ratchet up the heat for a possible confrontation but nothing else.

As the conservative political commentator Anthony Cordesman wrote on August 5, 2017, “One would hope that the North Korean ‘crisis’ is moving away from bluster and counter bluster … [since] gross overreaction and issuing empty threats discredits the U.S. in terms of allies support and is not a meaningful bargaining tool in dealing with fellow blusterers like Kim Jong Un.”

Conclusion: the likelihood of this line of action accomplishing the stated objective of American policy is near zero, but the costs are twofold: first, the threat of intervention forces the North Korean government to accelerate its acquisition of the very weapons America wishes it to relinquish and serves to keep its armed forces on alert lest the Americans convert threat to attack or stumble into war; the second cost is that such a policy undercuts the image Americans wish to project as the upholders of peace and stability even if not always of democracy and independence.

The Limited Strike Option

–The second possible policy would be to attack selected targets, including members of North Korea’s government, with Special Forces and/or drones. Employment of such tactics even in less organized societies, such as Somalia, Libya, Iraq and Afghanistan, have created chaos but have not produced what their advocates predicted.

Near the ceasefire line between North and South Korea, President Barack Obama uses binoculars to view the DMZ from Camp Bonifas, March 25, 2012. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

North Korea is a regimented state with a high level of “security” comparable to China. In the 1960s, I once was ordered to find out what the CIA might be able to do with this or a similar option to slow down Chinese nuclear development. The CIA was then sending agents into China from secret bases on Quemoy and Matsu. I asked what they found out. The responsible CIA officer replied that he did not know because none ever returned. That experience would probably be repeated in Korea.

Conclusion: the likelihood of such action accomplishing the stated objective of American policy is near zero, but the cost could be catastrophic: An American attack, even if denied and covert, almost certainly would trigger a North Korean response that might provoke an American counterstroke that could escalate to nuclear war.

–The third possible policy would be to encourage North Korea’s neighbors to attempt to coerce it to disarm and/or to scale back its military policy. Such a policy could aim to get China to control the North Koreans and possibly then encourage or allow Japan and/or South Korea to acquire nuclear weapons and so, themselves, pose a threat to North Korea and indirectly to Chinese interests.

Mr. Trump has several times called on the Chinese to effect the American policy on North Korea and has expressed his disappointment that they have not done so. When their own interests were at stake, the Chinese did impose sanctions and cut back on the import of Korean coal, iron ore and seafood. But China can hardly be expected to lend itself to be a tool of American policy. It too has memories of the Korean War and of attempts to weaken or overthrow it. Today, it also sees the U.S. as its rival in the Pacific. So, it is unlikely that Mr. Trump’s saying that “they do Nothing for us with North Korea, just talk. We will no longer allow this to continue” — will win Chinese support.

If not the Chinese, what about the Japanese? As I have pointed out in Part 1 of this essay, Japan is tarred by the nearly half century of its brutal regime in Korea. Korean “comfort women,” sexual slaves, are still seeking compensation for the misery inflicted on them and their plight is standard fare in Korean media.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who has been pushing for Japanese rearmament and is known for his hard line on North Korea, is not a good choice to convince North Korea to cooperate with America. Encouraging militarism in Japan will raise bitter memories all over East Asia.

Moreover, were Japan to rearm itself with nuclear weapons or were South Korea to be given them, as Mr. Cordesman thinks Mr. Trump may feel forced to do, the overall and long-range objectives of the United States would be severely damaged: the “cure would be worse than the malady.”

We don’t need more nuclear weapons powers; the political history of South Korea gives little assurance of a “responsible” nuclear policy; and there is no reason to believe that a nuclear-armed South Korea or a nuclear-armed Japan would be more successful than a nuclear-armed America.

Worse, if South Korea and Japan were to develop or acquire nuclear weapons, such action might set off a scramble by other nations to acquire them. The world was already deadly dangerous when only two states had nuclear weapons; the danger of use by design or accident was multiplied when five more states acquired them and if the number keeps on growing accidental or deliberate use will become almost inevitable.

To spread weapons further is against America’s national interest although some of President Trump’s advisers apparently discount the danger and believe enhanced nuclear power at home and selective spread aboard is to the interest both of the nation and of his administration.

Conclusion: the likelihood of getting others to successfully accomplish American objectives vis-à-vis North Korea is near zero. Faced with nuclear-armed South Korea and Japan, North Korea would logically accelerate rather than cut back its weapons program. China has its own policies and is unlikely to serve as an American proxy. Moreover, the costs of giving South Korea and Japan nuclear weapons is potentially enormous.

The Nuclear Option

–The fourth theoretical policy option would be an American or American-led “coalition” attack on North Korea similar to our two attacks on Iraq and our attack on Afghanistan. America could hit the country with almost any level of destruction it chose from total annihilation to targeted demolition. Knowing that they could not prevent attacks, the North Koreans have adopted a policy that sounds very like America’s Cold War strategy against the Soviet Union, mutual assured destruction or MAD. What would this amount to in the Korean conflict?

North Korean missile launch on March 6, 2017.

The cost of war to North Korea would be almost unimaginable. If nuclear weapons were used, much of North Korea would be rendered unlivable for a generation or more. General Douglas MacArthur had wanted to use the nuclear bomb during the first Korean War in the early 1950s, but even with only conventional weapons used in that conflict, the Koreans suffered casualties, reportedly, of about one in each three persons.

If the U.S. used nuclear weapons this time, millions, perhaps as many as 8 million to 12 million, would be killed and many of the rest of the 26 million inhabitants would be wounded or afflicted with radiation sickness. Once initiated, the attack would have done this damage in minutes or hours. So how would the North Koreans respond?

Their government would order them to retaliate. That is what they are constantly being trained to do. As the Korean War demonstrated, the North Koreans are determined fighters. It would be foolish to expect them to surrender.

The North Korean army is said to be the fourth largest in the world, roughly 1 million men, and is backed up by an active reserve about 5-6 times that many from a potential enrollment of about 10 million. This force is equipped with perhaps 10,000 tanks and self-propelled cannon.

The numbers are impressive but, as in chess, it is position that counts in war. The North is believed to have about 12,000 cannon and roughly 2,300 rockets within range of Seoul, the capital of South Korea. Seoul has a population of somewhat more than 10 million people and, in the event of an American attack on North Korea, the North Koreans have said they would obliterate it.

As David Wood wrote on April 18, 2017, “In a matter of minutes, these heavy, low-tech weapons could begin the destruction of the South Korean capital with blizzards of glass shards, collapsed buildings and massive casualties that would decimate this vibrant U.S. ally and send shock waves through the global economy.”

In addition to the South Koreans who would suffer and die, there are about 30,000 US troops in the armistice zone. They, and the hundreds of thousands of dependents, supporters and families of the troops living in Seoul, are hostages to U.S. policy. They also would suffer terrible casualties.

Could the North Koreans carry out such massive counterstrikes? There seems little or no doubt that they could, even if they were subjected to massive first strikes even with nuclear weapons. The North Koreans learned from the first Korean War to use mobile, hard to detect or target, launchers and to go underground to prepared firing points.

Probably many of the North Korean weapons would be destroyed, but there are so many that the surviving pieces could inflict massive casualties. Almost incredible photos, from North Korean television, published in The Sun on April 26, 2017, showed demonstration by hundreds of North Korean artillery pieces and rocket launchers firing into the sea. In the event of war, they would be firing into Seoul.

Then there are the missiles. Japan generally and U.S. bases in Japan and on the island of Guam are within the range of North Korean mid-range rockets. And Alaska and the U.S. West Coast are either already or soon will be within range. Would North Korea use them as a counterstrike? On August 7, as Business Insider reported, “North Korea issued a stark warning to the US: If you attack us, we will retaliate with nuclear weapons.”

Judging from my experience in the Cuban Missile Crisis, I am sure that we would have done so. It is unlikely that Kim Jong Un would do less than John F. Kennedy.

Losing Los Angeles

If in reply to an American attack, the North Koreans struck the United States what would be the result? Loren Thompson speculated in the August 30, 2017 issue of Forbes on “What a Single North Korean Nuclear Warhead Could Do To Los Angeles.” He picked Los Angeles because it is or soon will be in range of North Korean missiles and would be an obvious choice against which to threaten retaliation. With a population of more than 13 million, it is the second largest city in America.

Illustration by Chesley Bonestell of nuclear bombs detonating over New York City, entitled “Hiroshima U.S.A.” Colliers, Aug. 5, 1950.

As I write this, North Korea appears to have demonstrated a somewhat less powerful thermonuclear weapon, about seven times the power of the bomb that obliterated Hiroshima, but Thompson speculates on the result of Los Angeles being hit by a bomb that North Korea presumably will soon have, about 33 times as powerful as the Hiroshima bomb.

Hit by it, all structures, no matter how securely built with reinforced concrete, within a radius of half a mile from ground zero “would be either totally destroyed or rendered permanently unusable.” The enormous pressure created by the fireball would heavily damage the adjoining circle of 2½ to 3 miles. Virtually all civic facilities (electrical grids, water mains, transport facilities, etc.) would be rendered inoperative and civil services (fire departments, police, hospitals, schools) would be destroyed or severely damaged.

A cloud of radioactive materials would be spread over a far larger area. And perhaps as many as a million people would have been burned to death immediately with many more grievously wounded and unable to get help. And that would be only in the first hours or days. In the following days, the wounded, often suffering from burns, hungry, thirsty, terrified and desperate, would limp out of the core area into the suburbs and surrounding towns, overwhelming their facilities.

Los Angeles would be only one target. North Korea would have nothing to lose by using all of its missiles and bombs. Some might go astray or malfunction, but some might hit San Francisco, Seattle, perhaps Denver and more remotely St. Louis, Dallas and perhaps Chicago. If one reached New York, the damage would be far greater than in Los Angeles.

Conclusion: As Steven Bannon, President Trump’s former “Chief Strategist” is quoted as saying, “There’s no military solution [to North Korea’s nuclear threats], forget it. Until somebody solves the part of the equation that shows me that ten million people in Seoul don’t die in the first 30 minutes from conventional weapons, I don’t know what you’re talking about, there’s no military solution here, they got us.”

That may explain why he was fired. And retired Lt. General James Clapper, who as the former Director of National Intelligence was not in danger of losing his job, told CNN, we must “accept the fact that they are a nuclear power.”

An attack on North Korea, while almost certainly devastating to North Korea, would be prohibitively expensive for America. Moreover, while it would temporarily prevent North Korea from posing a nuclear threat, it would create another area of chaos, like those created in Iraq, Libya, Somalia and Afghanistan. Attacking North Korea is not a rational policy choice.

Trying to Talk

–The remaining policy option is negotiation. What would be negotiable and what not? What would be the modalities? What would constitute success and what would be the result of failure? How could a result be made believable and how could it be enforced?

U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres (left) addresses the Security Council ministerial-level meeting on the nuclear weapon and ballistic missile programs of North Korea. At right is U.S. Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson, Behind Tillerson is U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley. (UN Photo/Eskinder Debebe)

I think we must begin by recognizing that it would be irrational for North Korea to give up missiles and nuclear weapons. Despite the horror with which I view nuclear weapons, they are very attractive to small nations. They level the playing field. A Texas saying from my youth sums it up: Mr. Colt’s invention of the cowboy’s pistol “made all men equal.” The nuclear weapon is pistol writ large. It is the ultimate defense.

For Kim Yong Un to give up his nuclear weapons, while we keep ours and have announced that we intend to overthrow his regime, would be tantamount to his committing suicide. He may be evil, as many believe, but there is no reason to believe that he is a fool.

Could not America offer in the course of negotiations a series of graduated steps in which over time a slow-down and ultimate elimination of missiles and nuclear weapons could be traded for ending of sanctions and increased aid? The answer, I think, is “yes, but.” The “but” is that Kim Yong Un would almost certainly insist on three things: the first is that he would not give up all his weapons and so would insist that North Korea be recognized as a nuclear power; the second is that he not be humiliated in the negotiated cut; and the third is that some formula be worked out to guarantee the deal. I have dealt with the first two issues above; I turn now to the third, how to guarantee the agreement.

The Bush administration invasion of Iraq in 2001 showed that America could create excuses to void any commitment it might make and provide excuses for any action it wished to take. The current push by the Trump administration to renege on the treaty made with Iran and written into American law by the Senate must convince the North Koreans that a treaty with America is just a scrap of paper. He must be convinced that America cannot be trusted.

But, if China and Russia were prepared to guarantee the deal and Japan and South Korea acquiesced to it and also gave up their option to manufacture or otherwise acquire nuclear weapons, that could be the first step in a phased series of steps that might be productive. At the same time, America would have to give up its ineffective sanctions, stop such provocative acts as the massive war game on the frontier and the barrage of threats and undertake a sort of Marshall Plan to lift North Korea out of poverty and hunger.

Conclusion: I am convinced that it will not be possible in the foreseeable future to get Kim Jong Un or any conceivable successor to give up deliverable nuclear weapons. Thus, there can be no “success,” as described in current policy statements by the Trump administration. But, arrangements can be created – by enlisting China and Russia as partners in negotiations and by renouncing threats and such damaging (and ineffective) policies as sanctions – to gradually create an atmosphere in which North Korea can be accepted as a partner in the nuclear “club.”

Failure to move in this direction will leave us, at best, in the limbo of fear and the possibility of stumbling into war. This is obviously a gambit that may fail. What is clear, however, is that none of the alternatives has worked or is likely to work. To embark on this path will require a degree of statesmanship, which we may not have.

How to Do It

If the United States government should decide to try this option, I think the following steps will have to be taken to start negotiations:

First, the U.S. government must accept the fact that North Korea is a nuclear power;

Second, it must commit itself formally and irrevocably to a no-first-strike policy. That was the policy envisaged by the Founding Fathers when they denied the chief executive the power to initiate aggressive war;

Third, it must remove sanctions on North Korea and begin to offer in a phased pattern aid to mitigate the current (and potentially future) famines caused by droughts and crop failures; helping North Korea to move toward prosperity, and reducing fear; and

Fourth, stop issuing threats and drop the unproductive and provocative war games on the DMZ.

Will, or even can, any American administration move in this direction? I think the answer will depend in large part on the education of the government leaders and the public among both of whom the level of ignorance of the real costs of war, especially nuclear war, is politically crippling.

As I have suggested, Mr. Trump has shown no comprehension of the costs of war in a nuclear context. Nor has the general public. The pictures of children on Guam being told not to look at the flash of the fireball reminds one of the ridiculous advice to school children in America in the Cold War to take refuge under their desks.

The reality of a modern war must be explained and taught. I do not know if Korean children are so taught, but their parents or grandparents knew it firsthand. This generation of Americans has never seen war up-close in America although some of their fathers saw it in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan. Unfortunately, memories fade and Americans today do not want to be informed of the danger of a new war. Escapism is one of the great dangers we face.

In the American tradition, the President is the nation’s teacher. We must insist he perform that task or we could pay the supreme price of falling off the edge into the dark void of nuclear war.

William R. Polk is a veteran foreign policy consultant, author and professor who taught Middle Eastern studies at Harvard. President John F. Kennedy appointed Polk to the State Department’s Policy Planning Council where he served during the Cuban Missile Crisis. His books include: Violent Politics: Insurgency and Terrorism; Understanding Iraq; Understanding Iran; Personal History: Living in Interesting Times; Distant Thunder: Reflections on the Dangers of Our Times; and Humpty Dumpty: The Fate of Regime Change.

When Putin in his ideological salvo that preceded the actual war in Ukraine placed the blame for the existence of the Ukraine within its current borders on Lenin, Stalin and Khrushchev, he not only opened up the Pandora’s box of borders,  but led to the renewed discussion of the creation of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in December 1922. (Putin’s blaming of the three Soviet leaders was as follows: Lenin for ignoring the Russian majority population in the Donbass and thus “giving” the Donbass to Ukraine; Stalin for “giving” the eastern part of Poland after World War II to Ukraine, and Khrushchev who “for whatever reasons” decided in 1954 to transfer the Crimea to the Ukraine.)

There is often very little understanding among many, especially young, people about the ideology behind the creation of the Soviet Union. In an otherwise good article recently published in the “National Interest”, Mark Katz rejects Putin’s critique of Lenin by arguing that “instead of blaming Lenin, Putin should draw lessons from Lenin’s realization that a more accommodative approach toward Ukrainian nationalism would better serve Russia’s long-term interests”.

This point however shows  marked lack of understanding by Katz of the forces that led to the creation of the Soviet Union, in addition to imputing Lenin to have been concerned with “Russia’s [sic!] long-term interest” - a statement that only people unfamiliar with Lenin’s ideology and writings could make. But let us go back to the creation of the Soviet Union. The most important person behind the  creation of the Union was Stalin, not Lenin. Stalin, as is well known was the People’s Commissar for Nationalities,  and was, within the Bolshevik leadership the person in charge of nationality questions, including obviously the creation of a new Union composed of ethnically-based republics. (At the creation there were six republics: RSFSR, Ukraine, Byelorussia, and the Transcaucasian Federation  composed of Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan.)  Here is what Stalin said about the creation of the Union:

Finally, there is a third group of facts, which also call for union and which are associated with the structure of the Soviet regime, with the class nature of the Soviet regime. The Soviet regime is so constructed that, being international in its intrinsic nature, it in every way fosters the idea of union among the masses and itself impels them to take the path of union. Whereas capital, private property and exploitation disunite people, split them into mutually hostile camps, examples of which are provided by Great Britain, France and even small multi-national states like Poland and Yugoslavia with their irreconcilable internal national contradictions which corrode the very foundations of these states** whereas, I say, over there, in the West, where capitalist democracy reigns and where the states are based on private property, the very basis of the state fosters national bickering, conflicts and struggle, here, in the world of Soviets, where the regime is based not on capital but on labour, where the regime is based not on private property, but on collective property, where the regime is based not on the exploitation of man by man, but on the struggle against such exploitation, here, on the contrary, the very nature of the regime fosters among the laboring masses a natural striving towards union in a single socialist family. (my emphasis)

Very similar statements are repeated in several publications, speeches and interviews that Stalin gave at that time. The links are here and I would suggest that people read at least some of them. For my purpose here, the key thing to understand is that the ideology behind the creation of the Union was not whether that Union, with the Ukraine defined one way or another, would be more or less stable at Katz implies, but that the Union is simply the reflection of the end of national and class contradictions that come with the socialist revolution. It is thus a “natural” striving  of peoples liberated from under the rule of capital, and the most important point it is therefore open for all other parts of the world that, sooner or later, may also become free. The USSR was envisaged not as a finished state, but as an open-ended state that would grow as socialism spreads to the extent of including within it all European, and perhaps even all countries in the world.

To make this union more attractive, the open-endedness was not only in accepting the new countries, but in allowing those that are included to leave. Thus “the character of the union should be voluntary, exclusively voluntary, and every national republic should retain the right to secede from the Union. Thus, the voluntary principle must be made the basis of the Treaty on the Formation of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics”. Here the point is made by Stalin, but Lenin, as is well-known, insisted on that double open-endedness even more.

Consequently, it is not the political stability of what then constituted the USSR that was of paramount importance to its Bolshevik founding fathers but its openness. This is a point on which Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin and the entire leadership were in full agreement. The new federated Soviet Union was not the end- formation, but the beginning-formation. The Bolsheviks expected the success of the revolution in Germany, Austria and Hungary any time. Thus they expected that these new Soviet republics (as they indeed called themselves) would ultimately join them in a federated state even if they were defeated for now. It is notable that the USSR has no geographical denomination in its name. When the United States of America were created (in  a somewhat similar fashion like the USSR) the founding fathers did include a geographical limit in its name. Not so the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

 It is then fully understandable that Mao Zedong proposed in 1949 to Stalin that China join the USSR (Stalin, after some reflection, rejected the idea). It was a “normal” view entertained by many communists world-wide. When the communist revolution won in Yugoslavia, many people there thought that the next step would be the accession to the Soviet Union. I recall my father’s friends in 1960s in their conversations talking of believing in the 1940s that Yugoslavia would immediately apply to become another republic of the USSR.  

Perhaps for today’s generations that know very little about the communist ideology and the forces that led to the creation of the USSR, this may be difficult to grasp, but it would help to think by analogy: if instead of the USSR they think of the European Union. The EU is a similar supra-national and ideological creation, and it is at present thought “natural” in many parts of Europe to believe that countries will ultimately “accede” to that Union. It was likewise thought “natural” among the communists that, as individual countries became free, they would “accede” to the Soviet Union.

One can think of at least two other historical precedents when ideological homogeneity was thought sufficient to trump over all other allegiances including national. The first precedent is the Christian empire that was thought  indissoluble and one. The emperor in Constantinople was thus shocked when the Pope decided to bestow the crown on Charlemagne and create yet the second Christian emperor. It was thought inconceivable that Christians would have two different empires since they were all just that: Christians. Another example is Islam where too, at the origin, it was believed that all Muslims, anywhere in the world, would be united into a single political union, the khalifate. That too rather quickly evaporated. But as in the case of communism and the Soviet Union, it is important to understand the ideological motives of the founders and not to ascribe to them the goals that seem reasonable to us now, but that they simply did not have at the time.

The data are now almost definitive and, as you probably already know, it was a historical triumph for the right-wing parties, and in particular for the "Fratelli d'Italia" coalition led by Giorgia Meloni. 

The triumph of the right may make people outside Italy worried, but there is no reason. Elections in the West are now mainly for show. The Italian government has almost zero power, it is all in the hands of the European Commission, in turn controlled by the global powers. To say nothing about the pervasive corruption that affects the West as a whole. No decision can be taken without satisfying the various lobbies and mafias engaged in the feeding frenzy on what is left of the Italian economy. 

In any case, the left-wing parties in power up to now have made such strongly right-wing choices that I doubt that the "real" right can be more rightish than them! 

So, don't worry too much about who is the theoretical leader of the Italian government. Ms. Meloni is, in my opinion, not a bad person, but she can't do much more than rubber-stamp decisions taken elsewhere. Changes are going to come, but not as a result of elections. Right now, it is difficult to divine what's going to happen in the difficult winter that's coming, but something is going to happen. Something big.

Incidentally, the left played the game hard by using the "Putin card," that is, telling Italians not to vote for Putin's friends. Instead, Italians flocked to vote exactly for them. I leave to you the task of interpreting this interesting fact. 

"Do not vote for Putin's friends." La Repubblica, Sep 23, 2022

Beginning in 1949, the German Jewish philosopher Leo Strauss taught at the University of Chicago. He soon formed a small group of Jewish disciples from among his students. He taught them orally, which was quite different from his writings. According to him, the democracies had shown their inability to protect the Jews from the Nazi final solution. To prevent this tragedy from happening again and the hammer from falling on them, his disciples had to be on the other side of the handle.

He advised them to build their own dictatorship.

Organizing his followers, Leo Strauss called them his "hoplites" (soldiers of Sparta). He trained them to disrupt the classes of some of his fellow teachers.

Several of the members of this sect have held very high positions in the United States and Israel. The operation and ideology of this grouping were the subject of controversy after the attacks of September 11, 2001. An abundant literature has opposed the supporters and opponents of the philosopher. However, the facts are indisputable [1].

Anti-Semitic authors have wrongly lumped together Straussians, Jewish communities in the Diaspora and the State of Israel. However, the ideology of Leo Strauss was never discussed in the Jewish world before 9/11. From a sociological point of view, it is a sectarian phenomenon, not at all representative of Jewish culture. However, in 2003, Benjamin Netanyahu’s "revisionist Zionists" made a pact with the US Straussians, in the presence of other Israeli leaders [2]. This alliance was never made public.

One of the characteristics of this group is that they are ready for anything. For example, they wanted to return Iraq to the stone age. This is indeed what they did. For them, all sacrifices are possible, including for themselves, as long as they remain the first; not the best, the first [3]!

Paul Wolfowitz

In 1992, an advisor to the Secretary of Defense, the Straussian Paul Wolfowitz, wrote the Defense Planning Guidance. It was the first official US document reflecting the thinking of Leo Strauss [[4](#nb4 "The 1976 report of the "B Team" accusing the USSR of wanting to dominate (...)")]. Wolfowitz was introduced to Strauss’ thought by the American philosopher Allan Bloom (a friend of the Frenchman Raymond Aron), but he himself only briefly knew the master at the end of his teaching in Chicago. However, the US ambassador to the UN, Jeane Kirkpatrick, recognized him as "one of the great Straussian figures" [5].

In the context of the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Wolfowitz developed a strategy to maintain US hegemony over the entire rest of the world.

The Defense Planning Guidance should have remained confidential, but the New York Times revealed its main lines and published extracts [6]. Three days later, the Washington Post revealed further details [7]. In the end, the original text was never made public, but a version edited by the Secretary of Defense (and future Vice President), Dick Cheney, was circulated.

It is known that the original document was based on a series of meetings in which two other people, all three Straussian, participated: Andrew Marshall, the Pentagon’s "thinker" (who was replaced three years after his death by Arthur Cebrowski), Albert Wohlstetter, the thinker of the atomic deterrence strategy, and his son-in-law Richard Perle, the future director of the Defense Policy Board. The Defense Planning Guidance was written by a student of Wohlstetter, Zalmay Khalilzad (future ambassador to the UN).

The document speaks of a new "world order [...] ultimately supported by the United States", in which the sole superpower would only have temporary alliances, depending on the conflict. The UN and even NATO would be increasingly sidelined. More broadly, the Wolfowitz Doctrine theorizes the need for the United States to block the emergence of any potential competitor to U.S. hegemony, especially "advanced industrial nations" such as Germany and Japan. Particularly targeted is the European Union: "While the United States supports the European integration project, we must be careful to prevent the emergence of a purely European security system that would undermine NATO, and particularly its integrated military command structure. The Europeans will thus be asked to include in the Maastricht Treaty a clause subordinating their defense policy to that of NATO, while the Pentagon report recommends the integration of the new Central and Eastern European states into the European Union, while giving them the benefit of a military agreement with the United States that would protect them against a possible Russian attack [8].

For thirty years, this document has been patiently implemented.
– The Maastricht Treaty includes a paragraph 4 in Title V, Article J4, which stipulates: "The policy of the Union within the meaning of this Article shall not prejudice the specific character of the security and defence policy of certain Member States and shall respect the obligations of certain Member States under the North Atlantic Treaty and be compatible with the common security and defence policy established within that framework. These provisions have been included in the various texts up to Article 42 of the Treaty on European Union.
– The former Warsaw Pact member states have almost all joined the European Union. This decision was a choice imposed by Washington and announced by Secretary of State James Baker just before the European Council meeting that endorsed it.

In 2000, Paul Wolfowitz was, together with Zbignew Brzezinki, the main speaker at a large Ukrainian-US symposium in Washington, organized by Ukrainian "integral nationalists" who had taken refuge in the USA. There he pledged to support independent Ukraine, to provoke Russia to go to war with it, and ultimately to finance the destruction of the resurgent rival of the USA [9].

These commitments were implemented with the passage of the Ukraine Democracy Defense Lend-Lease Act of 2022 on April 28, 2022 [10]. Ukraine is now exempt from all arms control procedures, including end-use certificates. Very expensive weapons are leased by the USA to the EU to defend Ukraine. When the war is over, the Europeans will have to pay for what they have consumed. And the bill will be heavy.

Victoria Nuland and Anthony Blinken in John Kerry’s office

Although the European elites have benefited from their alliance with the United States so far, they should not be surprised that the United States is now trying to destroy them under the Defense Planning Guidance. They have already seen what Washington was capable of after the 9/11 attacks: Paul Wolfowitz forbade countries that had expressed reservations about the war, such as Germany and France, to conclude contracts for the reconstruction of Iraq [11].

At present, the rise in the price of energy sources and their increasing scarcity threaten not only the heating and transportation of individuals, but above all the survival of all their industries. If this phenomenon continues, it is the economy of the European Union as a whole that will suddenly collapse, taking its population back at least a century.

This phenomenon is difficult to analyze because the prices and availability of energy sources vary according to many factors.

First, prices depend on supply and demand. As a result, they have risen with the overall economic recovery from the end of the Covid-19 epidemic.

Second, energy sources are the main targets of speculators. Even more so than currencies. The world price of oil can be multiplied by 2.5 just by the effect of speculation.

So far, everything is usual and known. But the Western sanctions against Russia, following its application of the Minsk II Agreement, for which it was the guarantor before the Security Council, have broken the world market. From now on, there is no longer a global price, but different prices according to the countries of the sellers and the customers. There are still prices quoted on the stock exchange in Wall Street and the City, but they bear no relation to those in Beijing and New Delhi.

Above all, oil and gas, which were abundant in the European Union, are starting to run out, while globally they are still in overabundance.

All our reference points have been turned upside down. Our statistical tools, designed for the global market, are not at all adapted to the current period. We can therefore only make assumptions, without any means of verifying them. This situation allows many people to talk nonsense with an air of authority; in fact, we are all evolving at a guessing pace.

One of the current factors is the reflux of dollars which were used for trade and speculation and which are no longer usable for these transactions in certain countries. This mostly virtual currency is leaving Russia and its allies to go to or return to the countries where it is still used. This is a gigantic phenomenon that the Federal Reserve and the US military have always wanted to avoid, but which the Straussians in the Biden administration (Secretary of State Antony Blinken and his deputy Victoria Nuland) have deliberately provoked.

Wrongly convinced that Russia has invaded Ukraine and is trying to annex it, the Europeans forbid themselves to trade with Moscow. In practice, they still consume Russian gas, but they are convinced that Gazprom will cut off their gas supply. For example, their press announced that the Russian company was closing the Nord Stream pipeline, although it had announced a three-day technical interruption. Normally, gas pipeline deliveries are interrupted for maintenance for two days every two months. Here, Gazprom was hampered in its maintenance by the Western blockade, which prevented the return of the turbines it had sent for repair to Canada. However, the population understood that the evil Russians had cut off their gas on the eve of winter.

The European propaganda aims to prepare public opinion for a definitive closure of the gas pipeline and to put the responsibility on Russia.

In this case, the leaders of the Union are simply implementing the directives of the Straussians. In doing so, they are scuttling European industry to the detriment of their citizens. Already some energy-intensive factories have reduced their production or even closed.

The process of decrepitude of the European Union will continue as long as no one dares to oppose it. To everyone’s surprise, a first pro-Russian demonstration was held on September 3 in Prague. The police admitted to 70,000 people (for a country of 10 million), but there were probably many more. Political commentators despise them and consider them "Putin’s useful idiots". But these insults do not mask the unease of European elites.

Energy experts consider power cuts throughout the Union inevitable. Only Hungary, which has previously obtained exemptions, could escape the rules of the single energy market. Those who can produce electricity will have to share it with those who cannot. It doesn’t matter whether this inability is the result of bad luck or short-sightedness.

Brussels should start with voltage reductions, then cut off at night, and finally during the day. Individuals will have difficulties to maintain elevators, to heat their homes in winter, to cook if they use electric plates and, those who use trains, buses or electric cars, should have difficulties to move. Energy-intensive businesses, such as blast furnaces, are expected to close. Infrastructures are expected to become impassable, such as long tunnels that can no longer be ventilated. Above all, electronic installations designed for continuous operation will not be able to withstand repeated interruptions. This will be the case, for example, for antennas that are essential for cell phone networks, which will be thrown away after three months of this treatment.

In third world countries where electricity is scarce, battery powered leds are used for lighting and UPS to power low consumption machines, such as computers or televisions. But these materials are currently not available in the EU.

The EU’s GDP has already fallen by almost 1%. Will this recession continue as the Straussians plan, or will the citizens of the Union interrupt it, as part of the Czech people are trying to do?

The Straussians will go all the way. They have taken advantage of the decadence of the United States to take over the real power. Since a junkie, never elected, can use official planes galore to do business all over the world [12], they have quietly moved into the shadow of President Biden and are governing in his place. European leaders, on the other hand, are either blind or too committed to stop, acknowledge their thirty years of mistakes and turn back.

What to remember:

• The Straussians are a fanatical sect ready to do anything to maintain the supremacy of the United States over the world. They imagined the wars that have plagued the world for the past thirty years and the one in Ukraine today.
• They persuaded the European Union that Moscow wanted to annex first Ukraine and then all of Central Europe. With that, they convinced Brussels to stop all trade with Russia.
• The energy crisis that is beginning is leading the European Union towards electricity and power cuts that will wreak havoc on the way of life of its citizens and on its economy.

Syndicates trend to the extreme over time because, as their wares become worthless or evolve to become common fare inside the market, the syndicate must handle more and more exotic forms of commerce, in order to capitalize upon their real value.

When Prohibition ended in 1933, the extant bootleg networks did not simply say, ‘Well done everyone. We can all go home now.’ To the contrary, they escalated their game. The value of a syndicate after all resides not in its illicit product, but rather in the strength and reach of the syndicate itself.

Several years ago my firm had the good fortune to be engaged to survey regions of North Carolina and Virginia for candidate locations where a major sporting goods manufacturer might consider locating their regional operations. The optimization models had all been run, and as is common in this type of discrete optimization, the degrees of freedom on the answer were very forgiving in terms of geography. This simply meant that the company could locate really anywhere they wanted within reason – and further then base their location selection upon subjective and qualitative factors, not hard heuristic-academic math. Most academics fail to grasp the fact that this is how the preponderance of real life, business, and science works. One must actually go there, immerse themself in the subject and observe for a period of time – not simply sit in a cubicle running mildly inductive Bayesian statistics, before attempting to drive home a conclusion. We have long ago lost the ethic to go there, poke it with a stick, and keenly observe. This as much an outcome of our pseudo-intellectual cultural push, as it is a form of syndicated action in itself. But that is the subject of another article entirely.

Skepticism is unrelenting, disciplined, incremental, and critical path foolishness.
It is the eye of neutrality, inside the mercenary tempest of curious passion.

I did not know. I went and looked. Everything else was vanity.

Now of course this style of community selection we execute on behalf of a client, involves balancing decision factors which include community demographic strength, existence of similar industry players, existence of a strong base of freight and rail carriers whose nodes are economically leveraged, the availability of higher and technical education, available and negotiated tiered state incentives, Right to Work laws, community lifestyle, along with the overall positive impact the new entity will have on the local community and its true rate of unemployment (not the fake ‘economic’ statistic).

Foremost in this decision process however, is an assessment as to the makeup and feel of the local populace. What are the people in the community like? What does the working class value? Who are their dependents? How many people will show up to interview for a new job opening and how often will the average successful applicant turnover in that type of position? Such evaluations can only be ascertained by having an experienced professional actually go there and gain a feel for the community. I was fortunate that, in this instance that professional was me.

When 400 people showed up to interview for the first ten job openings at the site which we ultimately elected to implement, I got a lump in my throat – taking the impact to heart. The community was starved of such development. Finally, more opportunity lay in store for young persons than simply a challenging career in crystal meth.

Consolidation and extraction of earnings to elite paper-trading cronies and The Party’s socialist taxmasters, requires no business or governance skills at all. This is not ‘capitalism’, nor is it democracy. These are simply the unethical, nay diabolical actions of detached, hidden, and unaccountable Royalty. A syndicate itself, and nothing more.

The despair of a nation subject to such unethical Archons, is both palpable and measurable in terms of innocent lives.

Accordingly, I took 7 days to travel through the region and gain a feel for several candidate communities the team had identified. In order to protect the confidential nature of the expansion strategy my team had just developed for this client, I elected to tour the countryside under the auspices of ‘looking for good places to fly fish’. Although unlike my grandfather who taught me to tie flies and fly fish, I did not bear the rough-hewn hands of a fly fisherman. I was hoping to recapture that past hobby nonetheless. This constituted disinformation of course, in that while it was indeed true, it was not the ‘whole truth’. The whole truth in fact, was that I had been bound by a non-disclosure agreement with the client, from surrendering the whole truth in the first place.

Bootlegging’s Legacy

It was during this journey that I bore the good fortune of staying at an Inn in Saluda, North Carolina called The Orchard Inn. Originally built by the Brotherhood of Clerks for Southern Railway in 1926, the farm-house style lodging named ‘The Mountain Home of Southern Railway Clerks’ was purportedly created as a “summer getaway for railroad employees and their families.” Although lacking actual accommodation for ‘families’ at the time, the lodge was also a convenient staging point around and respite from alcohol and spirits Prohibition laws which had been enacted under the Volstead Act in January of 1919.1 Both the Inn’s location along a famous Bootlegging Highway (Hwy 176 from South Carolina and into North Carolina, along which resides the infamous ‘dead-man’s curve’) and the fact that the lowest level of the lodge consisted of a series of garage doors to conceal and protect bootleg vehicles overnight, were no accident. The Inn is now reputed to be haunted, and possibly even circumstantially connected with several murders in the area, ‘back in the day’.

The Clerks’ Inn is now this elegant mountain retreat called The Orchard Inn (depicted by the color sketch at the top of this article), and is on the National Register of Historic Places.2 The proprietors of the Inn were gracious enough to stay up late with my curious self, and expound upon the entire history of the Inn, replete with old black and white photos of the lodge as it had transitioned through the last nine decades. The night air was cool and of low humidity, making our time on the outside wrap around deck rather enjoyable. My stay at the Inn was both a wonderful and informative experience. The community of Saluda itself ranked highly on our list of final candidates for my client’s regional operations and offices.

Daniel Okrent, in his book ‘Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition’, outlines that once Prohibition was repealed in 1933, very few bootleggers were actually released from prison. In fact, most of these mafia, syndicate, and graft network members were imprisoned for trafficking more than simply booze.3 In the end, the bootlegging networks themselves became the further genesis of mafia and finally drug dealing networks of today. You see, it was never about the ‘product’ in the first place. It is always indeed about the syndicate.

The paradox and point of this article resides in the following principle. The value of a syndicate is never in the product they hawk. The value of the syndicate resides in the strength, reach, and bribed benefactors of the syndicate itself. Once its product becomes accepted or moot, then the syndicate must graduate to even more extreme goods, more extreme forms, and even more extremist agenda. In actuality, they could care less about the people or causes they exploit for gain in this masquerade. Their ’causes’ are simply prima facie. After all, they are there to develop and groom the basis of power for their mafia, their party, their agency.

The syndicate soon realizes that it must escalate from alcohol to drugs, from tax evasion to money laundering, from faith to proscription, from freedom to fanaticism, from registration to control to embargo, from administration of standards to cartel activity, from mercy to profiting from trauma, from pharmaceuticals to removal of human rights, from profit to extraction, from choice to compulsion, from billionaire to trillionaire, from strip clubs to child pornography and sex trafficking, or from equal rights for all, to the moral supremacy of anyone who promotes aberrant behavior – no matter how harmful may be their difference of choice.

The syndicate is performing a puppeteer act for your amazement. They could care less about any of the causes or victims they adorn as badge-of-honor. That is why any form of extremism, the next shocking thing, will always suffice.

This is what a syndicate does after all, it escalates to the extreme as a reaction in keeping with its need to wrest and maintain power from out of the hands of a constitutionally represented populace. Such pretense constitutes our current state as a nation. As an ethical skeptic, I oppose rule by mafia, syndicate, cathedral, cabal, cartel, and finally and especially, The Party.

There was a dream which was America. This is not it. This is …not …it.

This is what passes for an important issue to the Trudeau government in Canada which has been one of the leading nations in persecuting its unvaccinated citizens:

I did like how all of the trained (and masked/virtue signalling) Liberal monkeys around her applauded her announcement after she finished speaking, even going so far as to shake her potentially SARS-CoV-2 hand! On the upside, it's nice to know that Canada and Canadians have nothing to worry about; under the Trudeau regime, all of the nation's problems, with the notable exception of its treatment of vaginas and vulvas, have been solved.

Since Canada's Liberal Party bases its philosophy on total inclusion (except for unvaccinated Canadians who are deemed unworthy of using the nation's airlines and rail infrastructure as passengers because they are either misogynistic or racist according to Justin Trudeau) I very quickly noted that MP Pam Damoff made three key omissions. While she celebrates vaginas and vulvas, she seems to have completely forgotten about clitori, uteri and ovaries who are now feeling inferior because they don't have their own special day.

As an aside, here is further information on Ms. Damoff and her role in leading Canada:

...and, as an MP, here is what she is costing Canadian taxpayers:

Member of the House of Commons - $189,500

Parliamentary Secretary - $18,400

...as well as this:

Certainly, Canadian taxpayers are getting their money's worth from Ms. Damoff and her vagina/vulva.

In closing and just in case those Canadians who have an X and Y chromosome can assure themselves of one thing; from the tone of Ms. Damoff's speech, a special celebration day for vas deferens and scrotums is pretty much a non-starter. Sorry about that.

For some reason, this word comes to mind and I can't really explain why:

Interrupting his series of articles on the war in Ukraine, Thierry Meyssan delivers some thoughts on the evolution of the human dimension of war. The end of industrial capitalism and the globalization of exchanges do not only transform our societies and our ways of thinking, but the meaning of all our activities, including wars.

The atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were not part of any military strategy. Japan had already intended to surrender. The United States just wanted them not to surrender to the Soviets who were beginning to pour into Manchuria, but to themselves.

Since the end of World War II 77 years ago, Europeans (except for the former Yugoslavs) have known peace on their soil. They have forgotten this distant memory and discover war with horror in Ukraine. The Africans of the Great Lakes, the ex-Yugoslavs and the Muslims from Afghanistan to Libya, passing through the Horn of Africa, look at them with disgust: for many decades, the Europeans ignored their sufferings and accused them of being responsible for the misfortunes they were suffering.

The war in Ukraine started with Nazism according to some, eight years ago according to others, but it is only two months old in the consciousness of Westerners. They see some of the suffering it causes, but they do not yet perceive all its dimensions. Above all, they misinterpret it according to the experience of their great-grandparents and not according to their own experience.

Wars are only a succession of crimes

– As soon as it starts, war forbids nuances. It forces everyone to position themselves in one of the two camps. The two jaws of the beast immediately crush those who do not comply.
– The ban on nuances forces everyone to rewrite events. There are only "good guys", us, and "bad guys", those on the other side. War propaganda is so powerful that after a while, no one can distinguish the facts from the way they are described. We are all in the dark and no one knows how to turn on the light.
– War causes suffering and death without distinction. It doesn’t matter to which side you belong. It doesn’t matter if you are guilty or innocent. One suffers and dies not only from the blows of those on the other side, but also collaterally from those on one’s own side. War is not only suffering and death, but also injustice, which is much more difficult to bear.
– None of the rules of civilized nations remain. Many give in to madness and no longer behave like humans. There is no longer any authority to make people face the consequences of their actions. Most people can no longer be counted on. Man has become a wolf for man.

Something fascinating is happening. If some people turn into cruel beasts, others become luminous and their eyes enlighten us.

I spent a decade on the battlefields and never went home. Although I now flee from suffering and death, I am still irresistibly drawn to those looks. That is why I hate war and yet I miss it. Because in this tangle of horrors there is always a sublime form of humanity.

The wars of the 21st century

I would now like to offer you some thoughts that do not commit you to this or that conflict, and even less to this or that side. I will just lift a veil and invite you to look at what it hides. What I am about to say may shock you, but we can only find peace by accepting reality.

Wars are changing. I am not talking about weapons and military strategies, but about the reasons for conflicts, about their human dimension. Just as the transition from industrial capitalism to financial globalization is transforming our societies and pulverizing the principles that organized them, so this evolution is changing wars. The problem is that we are already incapable of adapting our societies to this structural change and therefore even less capable of thinking about the evolution of war.

– War always seeks to solve the problems that politics has failed to solve. It does not happen when we are ready for it, but when we have eliminated all other solutions.

This is exactly what is happening today. The US Straussians have inexorably cornered Russia in Ukraine, leaving it no option but to go to war. If the Allies insist on pushing her back, they will provoke a World War.

The periods between two eras, when human relationships must be rethought, are conducive to this kind of disaster. Some people continue to reason according to principles that have proven their effectiveness, but are no longer adapted to the world. They are nevertheless advancing and can provoke wars without wanting to.

On the night of May 9, 1945, the US air force bombed Tokyo. In one night more than 100,000 people were killed and more than 1 million were left homeless. It was the largest massacre of civilians in history.

– If, in peacetime, we distinguish between civilians and soldiers, this way of reasoning no longer makes sense in modern warfare. Democracies have swept away the organization of societies into castes or orders. Everyone can become a combatant. Mass mobilizations and total wars have blurred the lines. From now on, civilians are in charge of the military. They are no longer innocent victims, but have become the first responsible for the general misfortune of which the military are only the executors.

In the Western Middle Ages, war was the business of the nobles and of them alone. In no case did the population participate. The Catholic Church had enacted laws of war to limit the impact of conflicts on civilians. All this does not correspond anymore to what we live and is not based on anything.

The equality between men and women has also reversed the paradigms. Not only are soldiers now women, but they can be civilian commanders too. Fanaticism is no longer the exclusive domain of the so-called stronger sex. Some women are more dangerous and cruel than some men.

We are not aware of these changes. In any case, we do not draw any conclusions from them. This leads to bizarre positions such as the refusal of Westerners to repatriate the families of jihadists they have let go to the battlefields and to judge them. Everyone knows that many of these women are far more fanatical than their husbands were. Everyone knows that they represent a much greater danger. But nobody says so. They prefer to pay Kurdish mercenaries to keep them and their children in camps, as far away as possible.

Only the Russians have repatriated the children, who were already contaminated by this ideology. They entrusted them to their grandparents, hoping that the latter would be able to love and care for them.

For the past two months, we have been receiving Ukrainian civilians fleeing the fighting. They are only women and children who suffer. So we do not take any precautions. However, a third of these children have been trained in the summer camps of the Banderites. There they learned the handling of weapons and the admiration of the criminal against humanity Stepan Bandera.

Diabolic methods of propaganda and perception management are at work now that have no precedent. This is war waged in a new way — against domestic populations as well as those declared as enemies.

The news reports come in daily from Moscow, Kiev and the Western capitals: how many dead since Russia began its intervention in Ukraine on Feb. 24, how many injured, how many hungry or cold, how many displaced. We do not know the true count of casualties and the extent of the suffering and ought not pretend we do: This is the reality of war, each side having its version of unfolding events.

My inclination is to add the deaths in Ukraine these past two weeks to the 14,000 dead and the 1.5 million displaced since 2014, when the regime in Kiev began shelling its own citizens in the eastern provinces — this because the people of Donetsk and Lugansk rejected the U.S.­–cultivated coup that deposed their elected president. This simple math gives us a better idea of how many Ukrainians are worthy of our mourning.

As we mourn, it is time to consider the wider consequences of this conflict, for Ukrainians are not alone among its victims. Who else has suffered? What else has been damaged? This war is of a kind humanity has never before known. What are its costs?

Among paying-attention people it is increasingly plain that Washington’s intent in provoking Moscow’s intervention is, and probably has been from the first, to instigate a long-running conflict that bogs down Russian forces and leaves Ukrainians to wage an insurgency that cannot possibly succeed.

Is there another way to explain the many billions of dollars’ worth of weapons and matériel the U.S. and its European allies now pour into Ukraine? If the Ukrainians cannot win — a universally acknowledged reality — what is the purpose here?

Whether this strategy goes as Washington wants, or if Russian forces get their work done and withdraw to avoid a classic quagmire, remains to be seen. But as Dave DeCamp noted in Antiwar.comlast Friday, there is no sign whatsoever that the Biden administration plans any further diplomatic contacts with the Kremlin.

The implication here should be evident. The U.S. strategy effectively requires the destruction of Ukraine in the service of America’s imperial ambitions. If this thought seems extreme, brief reference to the fates of Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria will provide all the compelling context one may need.

Brzezinski’s Plan in 1979

Jan. 1, 1987: Mujahideen in Kunar, Afghanistan. (erwinlux, Flickr, CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons)

To an extent I find surprising given it calamitous consequences, Zbigniew Brzezinski’s plan in 1979 to arm the Afghan mujahideen against the Soviets remains the more or less unaltered template.

President Jimmy Carter’s national security adviser saw nothing wrong with getting into bed with what became Al–Qaeda. Now it is the Nazis militias that infest Ukraine’s National Guard that the U.S. arms and trains.

If the record is anything to go by, this conflict could well destroy what remains of Ukraine as a nation. In the worst outcome, little will remain of its social fabric, its public spaces, its roads, bridges, schools, municipal institutions. This destruction has already begun.

Here is what I do not want Americans to miss: We are destroying ourselves and what hope we may have to restore ourselves to decency as we watch the regime governing us destroy another nation in our name. This destruction, too, has already begun.

Many people of many different ages have remarked in recent days that they cannot recall in their lifetimes a more pervasive, suffocating barrage of propaganda than what has engulfed us since the months that preceded Russia’s intervention. In my case it has come to supersede the worst of what I remember from the Cold War decades.

You asked for a robust anti-war movement in America, you got demonstrations calling for World War 3. https://t.co/Gjk3TuUcen

— Caitlin Johnstone ⏳ (@caitoz) March 7, 2022

In January 2021, NATO published the final draft of a lengthy study it called Cognitive Warfare. Its intent is to explore the potential for manipulating minds—those of others, our own—beyond anything heretofore even attempted. “The brain will be the battlefield of the 21st century,” the document asserts. “Humans are the contested domain. Cognitive warfare’s objective is to make everyone a weapon.”

In a subsection headed “The vulnerabilities of the human brain,” the report has this to say:

“In particular, the brain:

• is unable to distinct [sic] whether information is right or wrong:
• is led to believe statements or messages it has already heard as true, even though these may be false;
• accepts statements as true, if backed by evidence, with no regards to [sic] the authenticity of that evidence.“

And this, which I find especially fiendish:

“At the political and strategic level, it would be wrong to underestimate the impact of emotions…. Emotions—hope, fear, humiliation—shape the world and international relations with the echo-chamber effect of social media.“

No, we’re not in Kansas anymore. Cognitive Warfare is a window onto diabolic methods of propaganda and perception management that have no precedent. This is war waged in a new way — against domestic populations as well as those declared as enemies.

And we have just had a taste of what it will be like as these techniques, well-grounded in cutting-edge science, are elaborated. Yet more disturbing to me than the cold prose of the report is the astonishing extent to which it proves out. Cognitive warfare, whether or not the NATO report is now the propagandists’ handbook, works, and it is working now on most Americans.

(NATO)

This is what I mean when I say we, too, are the victims of this war.

Last week the conductor of the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra, Valery Gergiev, was sacked for refusing to condemn Vladimir Putin. The same thing then happened to Anna Netrebko. The Metropolitan Opera in New York fired its star soprano for the same reason: She preferred to say nothing about the Russian president.

There is no bottom to this. Last Friday Lindsey Graham, the South Carolina Senator, openly called for Putin’s assassination. Michael McFaul, briefly Barack Obama’s ambassador to Russia and the king of nitwittery, asserts that all Russians who don’t openly protest Russia’s intervention in Ukraine are to be punished for it. In the idiotic file, the International Federation of Felines has barred imports of Russian cats.

Here is the entry on this list of preposterous assertions that got me out of my chair in a rage last Thursday: The International Paralympic Committee banned Russian and Belarusian athletes—why the Belarusians, for heaven’s sake?—from the winter Paralympics that commenced the following day in Beijing. We’re now down to persecuting people whose hearts and souls are abler than their limbs?

The committee made it plain it acted in response to international pressure. I wonder whose that might be.

What Has Become of Us

U.S. military assistance arriving in Ukraine, Feb, 10. (U.S. Embassy Kyiv Ukraine)

Look at what has become of us. Most Americans seem to approve of these things, or at least are unstirred to object. We have lost all sense of decency, of ordinary morality, of proportion. Can anyone listen to the din of the past couple of weeks without wondering if we have made of ourselves a nation of grotesques?

It is common to observe that in war the enemy is always dehumanized. We are now face to face with another reality: Those who dehumanize others dehumanize themselves more profoundly.

“Rational argument can be conducted with some prospect of success only so long as the emotionality of a given situation does not exceed a certain critical degree. If the affective temperature rises above this level, the possibility of reason’s having any effect ceases and its place is taken by slogans and chimerical wish fantasies. That is to say, a sort of collective possession results which rapidly develops into a psychic epidemic.”

That is a snippet from a book by C.G. Jung, The Undiscovered Self, that a friend just sent. When our feelings get the better of us, we can no longer think or talk usefully to one another: This is the Swiss psychoanalyst’s point in simple terms.

The other day PBS Newshour ran an interview with one Artem Semenikhin, in which the small-town mayor was lionized for standing up to Russian soldiers. In the background, as the ever-alert Alan MacLeod points out, was a portrait of Stepan Bandera, the savage Russophobe, anti–Semite, and leader of Ukrainian Nazis.

PBS Newshour interviews the Mayor of Konotop, Artem Semenikhin, presenting him as a hero for killing Russian invaders.
However, despite his Zoom blur effect, you can clearly still see that behind him is a portrait of Nazi leader and Holocaust perpetrator Stepan Bandera.
pic.twitter.com/KNwCuFeCkO
— Alan MacLeod (@AlanRMacLeod) March 4, 2022

What did PBS do about this careless oversight? It blurred the Bandera portrait and broadcast the interview with its Ukrainian hero. American journalism at its zenith.

It strikes me as the perfect metaphor for what has happened to our reasoning faculties — or, better put, what we have allowed to be done to them. Factual realities that lie beyond dispute, if inconvenient, are blurred out of the movie we think we’re watching.

It is the same with any genuine understanding of the Russian intervention. I have four words for what we need to read this crisis: history, chronology, context, and responsibility. Since none of these serves our cognitive warriors’ purpose, we are invited to blot them out. And once again: With dreadful fidelity to those actively manipulating our perceptions, we do so.

Context, the worst of us assert, is some idea those awful Russians came up with. We take no interest whatsoever in how the world may look from anyone else’s perspective. Who in hell, please tell me, thinks this is a good way to live?

I have rendered a pencil-sketch of a nation falling apart as it takes another one apart. A nation this far into one of Jung’s “collective possessions” cannot possibly do well. As is always the case (a thought that came to me as I studied the Japanese nationalists of the 1930s), the victimizers are victims, too.

If we are to find our way out of this funhouse, we will have to do one thing before any other: We will have to learn to speak in a clear, new language so that we can name things as they are instead of blurring them as PBS did that Bandera portrait.

And we must start with one word. Unless we can learn to call America an empire, we will stumble in the funhouse dark until it becomes so unfun we can no longer bear our own self-deceptions.

I see in here a virtue in this large, complicated moment. Between Russia’s intervention in Ukraine, which I count regrettable but necessary, and the joint statement Putin made with Chinese President Xi Jinping on Feb. 4, we are all called upon either to recognize the United States for what it has become, an empire violently defending itself against history itself, or accept our fate among the victims of this empire.

Clarity: It is always a fine thing, whatever the difficulties it brings.

The following is adapted from a speech delivered on February 15, 2017, at a Hillsdale College National Leadership Seminar in Phoenix, Arizona.

Vladimir Putin is a powerful ideological symbol and a highly effective ideological litmus test. He is a hero to populist conservatives around the world and anathema to progressives. I don’t want to compare him to our own president, but if you know enough about what a given American thinks of Putin, you can probably tell what he thinks of Donald Trump.

Let me stress at the outset that this is not going to be a talk about what to think about Putin, which is something you are all capable of making up your minds on, but rather how to think about him. And on this, there is one basic truth to remember, although it is often forgotten. Our globalist leaders may have deprecated sovereignty since the end of the Cold War, but that does not mean it has ceased for an instant to be the primary subject of politics.

Vladimir Vladimirovich is not the president of a feminist NGO. He is not a transgender-rights activist. He is not an ombudsman appointed by the United Nations to make and deliver slide shows about green energy. He is the elected leader of Russia—a rugged, relatively poor, militarily powerful country that in recent years has been frequently humiliated, robbed, and misled. His job has been to protect his country’s prerogatives and its sovereignty in an international system that seeks to erode sovereignty in general and views Russia’s sovereignty in particular as a threat.

By American standards, Putin’s respect for the democratic process has been fitful at best. He has cracked down on peaceful demonstrations. Political opponents have been arrested and jailed throughout his rule. Some have even been murdered—Anna Politkovskaya, the crusading Chechnya correspondent shot in her apartment building in Moscow in 2006; Alexander Litvinenko, the spy poisoned with polonium-210 in London months later; the activist Boris Nemtsov, shot on a bridge in Moscow in early 2015. While the evidence connecting Putin’s own circle to the killings is circumstantial, it merits scrutiny.

Yet if we were to use traditional measures for understanding leaders, which involve the defense of borders and national flourishing, Putin would count as the pre-eminent statesman of our time. On the world stage, who can vie with him? Only perhaps Recep Tayyip Erdoğan of Turkey.

When Putin took power in the winter of 1999-2000, his country was defenseless. It was bankrupt. It was being carved up by its new kleptocratic elites, in collusion with its old imperial rivals, the Americans. Putin changed that. In the first decade of this century, he did what Kemal Atatürk had done in Turkey in the 1920s. Out of a crumbling empire, he rescued a nation-state, and gave it coherence and purpose. He disciplined his country’s plutocrats. He restored its military strength. And he refused, with ever blunter rhetoric, to accept for Russia a subservient role in an American-run world system drawn up by foreign politicians and business leaders. His voters credit him with having saved his country.

***

Why are American intellectuals such ideologues when they talk about the “international system”? Probably because American intellectuals devised that system, and because they assume there can never be legitimate historic reasons why a politician would arise in opposition to it. They denied such reasons for the rise of Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines. They do the same with Donald Trump. And they have done it with Putin. They assume he rose out of the KGB with the sole purpose of embodying an evil for our righteous leaders to stamp out.

Putin did not come out of nowhere. Russian people not only tolerate him, they revere him. You can get a better idea of why he has ruled for 17 years if you remember that, within a few years of Communism’s fall, average life expectancy in Russia had fallen below that of Bangladesh. That is an ignominy that falls on Boris Yeltsin. Yeltsin’s reckless opportunism made him an indispensable foe of Communism in the late 1980s. But it made him an inadequate founding father for a modern state. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, whose writings about Communism give him some claim to be considered the greatest man of the twentieth century, believed the post-Communist leaders had made the country even worse. In the year 2000 Solzhenitsyn wrote: “As a result of the Yeltsin era, all the fundamental sectors of our political, economic, cultural, and moral life have been destroyed or looted. Will we continue looting and destroying Russia until nothing is left?” That was the year Putin came to power. He was the answer to Solzhenitsyn’s question.

There are two things Putin did that cemented the loyalty of Solzhenitsyn and other Russians—he restrained the billionaires who were looting the country, and he restored Russia’s standing abroad. Let us take them in turn.

Russia retains elements of a kleptocracy based on oligarchic control of natural resources. But we must remember that Putin inherited that kleptocracy. He did not found it. The transfer of Russia’s natural resources into the hands of KGB-connected Communists, who called themselves businessmen, was a tragic moment for Russia. It was also a shameful one for the West. Western political scientists provided the theft with ideological cover, presenting it as a “transition to capitalism.” Western corporations, including banks, provided the financing.

Let me stress the point. The oligarchs who turned Russia into an armed plutocracy within half a decade of the downfall in 1991 of Communism called themselves capitalists. But they were mostly men who had been groomed as the next generation of Communist nomenklatura­—people like Boris Berezovsky, Vladimir Gusinsky, and Mikhail Khodorkovsky. They were the people who understood the scope and nature of state assets, and they controlled the privatization programs. They had access to Western financing and they were willing to use violence and intimidation. So they took power just as they had planned to back when they were in Communist cadre school—but now as owners, not as bureaucrats. Since the state had owned everything under Communism, this was quite a payout. Yeltsin’s reign was built on these billionaires’ fortunes, and vice-versa.

Khodorkovsky has recently become a symbol of Putin’s misrule, because Putin jailed him for ten years. Khodorkovsky’s trial certainly didn’t meet Western standards. But Khodorkovsky’s was among the most obscene privatizations of all. In his recent biography of Putin, Steven Lee Myers, the former Moscow correspondent for the New York Times, calculates that Khodorkovsky and fellow investors paid $150 million in the 1990s for the main production unit of the oil company Yukos, which came to be valued at about $20 billion by 2004. In other words, they acquired a share of the essential commodity of Russia—its oil—for less than one percent of its value. Putin came to call these people “state-appointed billionaires.” He saw them as a conduit for looting Russia, and sought to restore to the country what had been stolen from it. He also saw that Russia needed to reclaim control of its vast reserves of oil and gas, on which much of Europe depended, because that was the only geopolitical lever it had left.

The other thing Putin did was restore the country’s position abroad. He arrived in power a decade after his country had suffered a Vietnam-like defeat in Afghanistan. Following that defeat, it had failed to halt a bloody Islamist uprising in Chechnya. And worst of all, it had been humiliated by the United States and NATO in the Serbian war of 1999, when the Clinton administration backed a nationalist and Islamist independence movement in Kosovo. This was the last war in which the United States would fight on the same side as Osama Bin Laden, and the U.S. used the opportunity to show Russia its lowly place in the international order, treating it as a nuisance and an afterthought. Putin became president a half a year after Yeltsin was maneuvered into allowing the dismemberment of Russia’s ally, Serbia, and as he entered office Putin said: “We will not tolerate any humiliation to the national pride of Russians, or any threat to the integrity of the country.”

The degradation of Russia’s position represented by the Serbian War is what Putin was alluding to when he famously described the collapse of the Soviet Union as “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century.” This statement is often misunderstood or mischaracterized: he did not mean by it any desire to return to Communism. But when Putin said he’d restore Russia’s strength, he meant it. He beat back the military advance of Islamist armies in Chechnya and Dagestan, and he took a hard line on terrorism—including a decision not to negotiate with hostage-takers, even in secret.

***

One theme runs through Russian foreign policy, and has for much of its history. There is no country, with the exception of Israel, that has a more dangerous frontier with the Islamic world. You would think that this would be the primary lens through which to view Russian conduct—a good place for the West to begin in trying to explain Russian behavior that, at first glance, does not have an obvious rationale. Yet agitation against Putin in the West has not focused on that at all. It has not focused on Russia’s intervention against ISIS in the war in Syria, or even on Russia’s harboring Edward Snowden, the fugitive leaker of U.S. intelligence secrets.

The two episodes of concerted outrage about Putin among Western progressives have both involved issues trivial to the world, but vital to the world of progressivism. The first came in 2014, when the Winter Olympics, which were to be held in Sochi, presented an opportunity to damage Russia economically. Most world leaders attended the games happily, from Mark Rutte (Netherlands) and Enrico Letta (Italy) to Xi Jinping (China) and Shinzo Abe (Japan). But three leaders—David Cameron of Britain, François Hollande of France, and Barack Obama of the United States—sent progressives in their respective countries into a frenzy over a short list of domestic causes. First, there was the jailed oil tycoon, Khodorkovsky; Putin released him before the Olympics began. Second, there were the young women who called themselves Pussy Riot, performance artists who were jailed for violating Russia’s blasphemy laws when they disrupted a religious service with obscene chants about God (translations were almost never shown on Western television); Putin also released them prior to the Olympics. Third, there was Russia’s Article 6.21, which was oddly described in the American press as a law against “so-called gay propaganda.” A more accurate translation of what the law forbids is promoting “non-traditional sexual relations to children.” Now, some Americans might wish that Russia took religion or homosexuality less seriously and still be struck by the fact that these are very local issues. There is something unbalanced about turning them into diplomatic incidents and issuing all kinds of threats because of them.

The second campaign against Putin has been the attempt by the outgoing Obama administration to cast doubt on the legitimacy of last November’s presidential election by implying that the Russian government somehow “hacked” it. This is an extraordinary episode in the history of manufacturing opinion. I certainly will not claim any independent expertise in cyber-espionage. But anyone who has read the public documentation on which the claims rest will find only speculation, arguments from authority, and attempts to make repetition do the work of logic.

In mid-December, the New York Times ran an article entitled “How Moscow Aimed a Perfect Weapon at the U.S. Election.” Most of the assertions in the piece came from unnamed administration sources and employees of CrowdStrike, the cybersecurity firm hired by the Democrats to investigate a hacked computer at the Democratic National Committee. They quote those who served on the DNC’s secret anti-hacking committee, including the party chairwoman, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, and the party lawyer, Michael Sussmann. Then a National Intelligence Council report that the government released in January showed the heart of the case: more than half of the report was devoted to complaints about the bias of RT, the Russian government’s international television network.

Again, we do not know what the intelligence agencies know. But there is no publicly available evidence to justify Arizona Senator John McCain’s calling what the Russians did “an act of war.” If there were, the discussion of the evidence would have continued into the Trump administration, rather than simply evaporating once it ceased to be useful as a political tool.

There were two other imaginary Putin scandals that proved to be nothing. In November, the Washington Post ran a blacklist of news organizations that had published “fake news” in the service of Putin, but the list turned out to have been compiled largely by a fly-by-night political activist group called PropOrNot, which had placed certain outlets on the list only because their views coincided with those of RT on given issues. Then in December, the Obama administration claimed to have found Russian computer code it melodramatically called “Grizzly Steppe” in the Vermont electrical grid. This made front-page headlines. But it was a mistake. The so-called Russian code could be bought commercially, and it was found, according to one journalist, “in a single laptop that was not connected to the electric grid.”

Democrats have gone to extraordinary lengths to discredit Putin. Why? There really is such a thing as a Zeitgeist or spirit of the times. A given issue will become a passion for all mankind, and certain men will stand as symbols of it. Half a century ago, for instance, the Zeitgeist was about colonial liberation. Think of Martin Luther King, traveling to Norway to collect his Nobel Peace Prize, stopping on the way in London to give a talk about South African apartheid. What did that have to do with him? Practically: Nothing. Symbolically: Everything. It was an opportunity to talk about the moral question of the day.

We have a different Zeitgeist today. Today it is sovereignty and self-determination that are driving passions in the West. The reason for this has a great deal to do with the way the Cold War conflict between the United States and Russia ended. In the 1980s, the two countries were great powers, yes; but at the same time they were constrained. The alliances they led were fractious. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, their fates diverged. The United States was offered the chance to lay out the rules of the world system, and accepted the offer with a vengeance. Russia was offered the role of submitting to that system.

Just how irreconcilable those roles are is seen in Russia’s conflict with Ukraine two years ago. According to the official United States account, Russia invaded its neighbor after a glorious revolution threw out a plutocracy. Russia then annexed Ukrainian naval bases in the Crimea. According to the Russian view, Ukraine’s democratically elected government was overthrown by an armed uprising backed by the United States. To prevent a hostile NATO from establishing its own naval base in the Black Sea, by this account, Russia had to take Crimea, which in any case is historically Russian territory. Both of these accounts are perfectly correct. It is just that one word can mean something different to Americans than it does to Russians. For instance, we say the Russians don’t believe in democracy. But as the great journalist and historian Walter Laqueur put it, “Most Russians have come to believe that democracy is what happened in their country between 1990 and 2000, and they do not want any more of it.”

The point with which I would like to conclude is this: we will get nowhere if we assume that Putin sees the world as we do. One of the more independent thinkers about Russia in Washington, D.C., is the Reaganite California congressman Dana Rohrabacher. I recall seeing him scolded at a dinner in Washington a few years ago. A fellow guest told him he should be ashamed, because Reagan would have idealistically stood up to Putin on human rights. Rohrabacher disagreed. Reagan’s gift as a foreign policy thinker, he said, was not his idealism. It was his ability to set priorities, to see what constituted the biggest threat. Today’s biggest threat to the U.S. isn’t Vladimir Putin.

So why are people thinking about Putin as much as they do? Because he has become a symbol of national self-determination. Populist conservatives see him the way progressives once saw Fidel Castro, as the one person who says he won’t submit to the world that surrounds him. You didn’t have to be a Communist to appreciate the way Castro, whatever his excesses, was carving out a space of autonomy for his country.

In the same way, Putin’s conduct is bound to win sympathy even from some of Russia’s enemies, the ones who feel the international system is not delivering for them. Generally, if you like that system, you will consider Vladimir Putin a menace. If you don’t like it, you will have some sympathy for him. Putin has become a symbol of national sovereignty in its battle with globalism. That turns out to be the big battle of our times. As our last election shows, that’s true even here.

Eugyppius is the pseudonymous author of Eugyppius: A Plague Chronicle, the foremost publication on all things Covid and beyond where he masterfully details what not one single well-funded, well-staffed, well-networked mainstream outlet was able to get right about the last 2 years of unprecedented change. This has probably been my favorite interview so far and it’s made me much more interested in interviewing other pseudonymous writers in the future, and as you read along you’ll see why. There’s maybe something about pseudonymity that frees individuals from the everyday incentives we face to conform and seek status, things you’re bound to do or at least consider when you’re visible since, if you do conform publicly, you’ll get good-boy points from the internet in the form of likes and retweets and followers, and, if you don’t conform, you’ll present a legible attack surface for other status-hungry conformists—nothing signals obedience and ostensible decency like bashing deviations from popular opinion! At any rate, pseudonymity allows the open-airing of truth and that’s exactly what we get here, and if you’re truly concerned with the truth and it’s expression as much as I am, Over the last 6 years or so I’ve seen a kind of (as of yet) unidentified sclerosis creep into widely used online infrastructure; the internet as I knew it became less responsive to my questions and interests, more prone to elevating mainstream sources to satisfy query inputs, less likely to guide me to the individuals actually concerned with whatever problems I was facing. The usual channels for learning more about niche experiences like Google and YouTube became virtually useless, and I began to spend more of my time looking to people on Twitter or rustic web forums for answers, most of whom were anonymous like yourself. But this phenomenon seemed intuitively backward—random internet denizens were somehow producing more insightful commentary on pretty much every matter than highly credentialed experts and capital-heavy institutions. My question to you is: how is this possible? You’ve basically been more right about covid than any mainstream news source I’ve seen, and there is a significant trend online of part-time sleuths predicting world events or describing complex subjects with higher-fidelity than “persons of authority.” But what makes anons and everyday people so much better here than our ostensible betters?

Thanks for your kind words about my work. It's an interesting question, and one I've written about now and then. One of the main things, is that these curated, establishment discourses promoted by the algorithms and sustained by mainstream media organs, are always trying to do something in addition to being right. They're trying to sell advertisements at the very least, but most of them are also running interference for progressive political programs, and striving to manage public opinion. This is also broadly true of academics and most of the experts who are brought to your attention on news programs.

Twitter anons aren't trying to do any of that, so we can speak a lot more freely and grasp problems much more directly than they can. This isn't to say that we're not political, but for me (and I suspect for most others in this sphere), the political commitments are secondary to the empirical project, and arise from it. To that comes the fact that the barriers to entry are a lot lower for us, and competition is much more ruthless. So we cast a wider net for ideas and promote the good ones much more relentlessly.

In addition to just being right, I'm often impressed with how much more agile and sophisticated all of the anons I interact with are, than the participants in expert, establishment discourses. The Twitter blue checks come across as very slack-jawed and narrow-minded by comparison. All the signs of a confident, dynamic discourse are with us – the sly, ironic humour; the openness to critique; resilience in the face of censorship and algorithmic deboosting; the inordinate interest we attract from adversaries.

I want to focus for a second on the progressive political program you’ve mentioned: there’s a trend of revolutionary posturing sweeping through authority and status-minting institutions in the West that’s come with a deeply polarizing affect; shifting, ultimatum-laden demands for (leftwing) ideological commitment have torn apart families, friendships, workplaces, universities, and entire cities in the US have even suffered millions in damage from those demands being taken to their extreme. Social trust has eroded and centers of power have become addled. A number of theories have been advanced to explain what we’re seeing, a few being that unprecedented consensus-generation (virality) from the rise of social media has an over-socializing quality that inspires shock, incredulity, and disgust at dissent; that the rise of secularism has left a God-sized hole that needed filling; that the decline of hobbies has seen the means for deriving positive approval change from doing something and signaling what we’ve done to believing something and signaling our beliefs; and that progressivism is a form of memetic warfare seeded by non-western state actors, which I’m more inclined to believe these days considering that Covid hysteria seems like part of the same thing, with China producing videos of collapsing bystanders at the start of the pandemic to seemingly bait western powers into overreaction. What do you attribute to the rise of the ideology we’re seeing?

All these are very good explanations for the rise of wokery, and they clearly all play a part. Not just social media, but the expansion of the technological apparatus in general, has had a destabilising effect on western culture. We are all of us increasingly withdrawn from natural conditions, we spend most of our time in artificial environments. Our experience of the world is mediated by technology, and so we see corresponding cultural and social tendencies to deny our biological essence. This is important, because most of leftist wokery is about overcoming our animal and physical natures – whether it is denying sex differences, the influence of genes on behaviour, unequally distributed cognitive capacity, and so on.

Beyond that, I think there's another component of social media that we understand only imperfectly, and that is the degree to which it is used deliberately to influence our ideas and behaviour. Social media platforms want universal participation and an advertiser-friendly experience, and they have coincided with the rise of a woke ideology that is pathologically inclusive and that seeks to suppress certain human emotions (hate, anger) which are not conducive to consumption. You propose that "progressivism" might be "a form of memetic warfare seeded by non-western state actors," and I think theories in this direction should be taken very seriously, especially if we expand the idea a little, to include also western actors in the major technological enterprises like Google. These people are notoriously pozzed, they have amassed a wealth of data on all of our habits and how we respond to content on their platforms. The result is a massive and increasingly sophisticated effort to manipulate the opinions and beliefs of billions of people across the globe. There is a good chance that the trangender craze arises from algorithmic manipulation, and I really, really want someone to explore the extent to which big tech was involved in pushing lockdowns and containment policies. A lot of these ideas seem to have first emerged in Bay Area tech circles.

It looks pretty bleak, but one reason for hope is that progressive wokery is at root a disease of affluence. It is not a normal, self-sustaining cultural tradition, and sooner or later it will end, whenever the money runs out, if not before.

Has wokery affected your personal life living in Germany? Various political polls here in the US have seen self-censorship and cancellation become the new norm where unorthodox thinking was once the rule and where personal views simply didn’t matter, and just anecdotally a startling number of people I know have experienced both a compulsion to lie publicly about personal views to maintain social-standing and livelihoods, and the loss of relationships and opportunities when non-mainstream views have been discovered or aired. What has your experience been so far here and what differences do you see between European and US manifestations of wokeness?

This is an interesting question, because the answer is that wokery has affected my life here in Germany far, far less than it did when I was living in the United States. This is not to say that there is no wokery in Germany, but it's far more limited, particularly in the south. One theory would be that we're just behind America, perhaps by 20 years or so, and in some ways this seems plausible. For example, the primary woke-adjacent political concerns are classic feminist issues of the kind that would strike an American as quaint, such as equal career opportunities for women, and (huge in Germany right now) gender-neutral language. But it's more than that too, I think. There is the fact that Germany has its own quite separate original historical sin, namely the Holocaust, and so aggressive woke doctrines about white oppressor classes are superfluous here. To some unknown degree, and in a way I can't even articulate all that well, I would also posit that wokery and the English language are closely related, and that as a political religion, wokery has trouble operating outside the Anglophone world. Thus wokery is more current in Scandinavia than Germany, and actually quite crazy in Scandinavian schools (where the language of instruction is generally English); it's worse in the north than in the south, it's worse in cities than in the countryside, it's promoted primarily by our very Anglo-centric mass media. Finally, Germany (and Europe in general) is much more racially homogeneous than the United States, so wokery beyond feminist topics lacks an organic constituency; and I don't teach students anymore, and students and the student-focussed administration were, in my prior life as a professor in the US, the main way that wokery made itself felt in my everyday routine.

When it comes to feminism and equality among the sexes, I don't really obfuscate my views. This irritates some people, but surprisingly fewer than you'd think. There just isn't any of the toxic hysteria here, that there is in America, the UK and Canada. On some topics (including Corona) I do obfuscate my views, because I'm not in a position to change anything.

Can you go a bit further into the English language being conducive to wokeism? This is probably one of the most interesting perspectives where meme-development and propagation is concerned but I’ve only had cursory exposure to ideas related, like for example I’ve heard that German with all its precision and granularity is the language most hospitable to philosophy, so I’m wondering if there’s more there: Do certain languages act as hedges against certain ideas or as fecund ground for their development and spread?

Well, these are just half-formed intuitions, but I’m happy to expand. Just observationally, wokery in German is almost always accompanied by a deluge of English vocabulary, and again is associated with those regions and social sectors closest to the Anglophone world. Why might that be?

There is in the strictest sense what you’re alluding to, the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis - the idea that languages or linguistic categories determine or guide thought. While I’m sceptical of the work I’ve read in this area, a few small points do come to mind. One is that the gender deconstructionists will probably have a harder time in languages with grammatical gender. When everything, from inanimate objects to animals to abstract ideas, has gendered articles and pronouns, special pronoun tricks become more challenging and less plausible. And staying with pronouns for a moment, I think the deeper goal of leftist word games like this is to introduce grammatical awkwardness, and to make plain speech difficult. Different languages offer different paths to achieving this. Thus, parallel to pronoun insanity in English, German leftists have engaged in a long-running (and equally absurd) attempt to introduce gender-neutral speaking habits, which is substantially more difficult and awkward in German than English. Wokery isn’t all about word games, of course, so this can’t be a full explanation, but it’s maybe a start, and perhaps there are deeper and less obvious ways in which language works here too.

But I also think wokery is native to and embedded in a tradition of critical theory, which has its deepest roots in postmodern critical theory. The earliest layers here (Frankfurt School) were obviously German, but the more direct foundations are French writers like Foucault and Baudrillard, and then English-language theorists like Judith Butler and the lamentable Kimberlé Crenshaw and so on. It’s hard to disentangle all the cause and effect going on here. On the one hand, these are arguments embedded in what you might call a broader intellectual operating system that, despite pervasive translation, exists only incompletely and without much cultural resonance outside the English language. On the other hand, these woke theorists are appealing to the interests of certain constituencies or political factions that, for historical and demographic reasons, don’t really exist outside of America and perhaps the UK. Intersectionality, for example, has something to do with the fact that affirmative action in the United States brought a lot of black women into white-collar jobs and universities, but very few black men. Black women thus needed a theoretical construct to maintain their position atop the victim hierarchy. These are social constellations that don’t exist outside the post-colonial Anglophone world. Which raises another point, the fact that wokery has a clear post-colonial political role, which will resonate far less in countries outside the Anglosphere that don’t have a very significant colonising past.

A final point would probably be that the Anglosphere has this tradition of often private residential universities, which I think are crucial for fostering a certain kind of leftist activism. Here my thoughts are even less well-formed than about English as the native language of wokeness, but in continental Europe, the university system is overwhelmingly public, with comparatively much smaller administrations, less well-defined campuses, relatively few student services, and so on. It’s much harder for schools to incubate these extremist left-wing cultures of permanent racial offence and protest. This isn’t to say there’s no leftist activism at European Unis - there is no end of it - but it’s generally much more integrated with the world beyond the university and the broader political environment, which mitigates certain kinds of extremism (but not others).

This is all reminding me of something I’ve wondered in the past 24 hours: One facet of the language angle of wokeism is that it maybe signals the acme of what Fukuyama considered a core feature of liberal democracies: the sort of simulation of war, the impulse for conquest acted out as upward advancement in academic, governmental, or private sector bureaucracies, now expressed as conquest over the language governing the procedures of our bureaucracies. Now new procedures with a new language are used by individuals unwilling or unable to play competence games to seize new territory in the academic landscape, by governments to seize new powers over the will of their people, by corporations to seize new standards for themselves beyond those of safety and quality or, for platforms, new standards beyond adherence to laws that may have constrained them to protection of privacy and the guarantee of freedom of expression. A new form of soft-power has been realized in the West which can bludgeon seemingly anyone into submission or achieve previously inaccessible goals. Countries like the United States and Canada seem smug in its deployment, confident that nothing can overcome its ability to guilt, shame, dehumanize, or transform the order of the world. But the incident happening now between Russia and Ukraine has maybe shown another way, an old way which may have defied Pax Americana, a way that shouts loudly that strength and ambition don’t need to be bound by procedural norms or obfuscated by compassionate misdirection! For the first time perhaps since the end of the Cold War the genteel cornerstone of liberalism—the idea that governance by procedure (and now by changes to procedural language) can exist without challenge—has proven itself assailable. How do you view US hegemony in light of the Russian invasion of Ukraine and what are your predictions for the state of the world order if liberal democracy loses face?

(Eugyppius here takes a brief break before answering. I harassed him a lot, the interview was too 🔥🔥🔥 to stop now)

In a way, I‘m almost grateful my answer comes at such delay, after the West imposed its unprecedented sanctions regime on Russia. This extends even to the withdrawal of American television news operations; the western propaganda of CNN will no longer be broadcast to Russians, and this is supposed to punish them somehow. If this continues for very long, it will lead to the development of a Russo-Chinese financial, industrial, perhaps even metacultural sphere, a multipolar world and an alternative to the West. On the one hand, I think this is the result of a lot of undirected, systemic processes premised on corporate virtue signalling and pandering to blue check outrage mob on Twitter. It helps to remember that a lot of the people making these decisions are incredibly parochial; they live in bubbles where everybody has the same views, and this leads to strange extremism, like these Munich doctors refusing to treat Russian patients. On the other hand, though, in a broader metaphorical or even spiritual sense, perhaps it means the abandonment of western universalist claims. A world in which the West has to develop a particularist conception of itself as something other than these abstract platitudes about democracy and freedom and so on, could only be an improvement on what we have right now.

In the near term, of course, I think the humiliation of the West is very dangerous. Not only the political leadership, but also many of the urban upper middle-class sub-elites, live in a state of profound isolation from reality, including geopolitical reality. While I think the nature of the post-political West is to prefer cultural and economic assimilation to military solutions, they also have a lot of munitions and they command substantial armies, and it‘s conceivable they misjudge the situation and do something really stupid, like escalate to direct military confrontation with Russia.

Despite all that we’re seeing happen in the world now, are we gonna make it?

Yes, I think we will make it. I’m not sure any of us will live long enough to see the end of this period of decline, and I’m even more pessimistic that anything can be done to reverse it. But beyond that, there are are reasons for optimism: Firstly, as things unravel, and the globalist vampire squid loses its monolithic hold, there will be more opportunities for some of us, here and there, to create alternative communities or even small-scale political orders that provide some relief from the decline and allow us to realise some of our vision. Secondly, it is the broader globalist machine that is artificial and requires enormous effort and resources to stay running. We represent nothing but older, more traditional, much more stable ways of living and conceiving of the world, which are rooted in our nature and biology and can‘t really be abolished. We can‘t ever be defeated, just sidelined for a time, and the corollary to this is that our enemies can never win, they can just dominate for a time.

To find more from Eugyppius follow him on Twitter and subscribe to his Substack today!

Watch Yevhen Karas the leader of Ukraine's neo-Nazi terror gang C14's speech from Kiev earlier this month. Straight from the horses' mouth, he dispels the many narratives pushed by the left, the mainstream media and the State Department.

He claims:

• Ukraine is being armed as pawns of the West because "we have fun killing"
• "We have started a war"
• "We have the most Javelins on the European continent"
• The European family has already collapsed
• Maidan would've been a "gay parade" if not for Nazi influence

C14 was started as the youth wing of the Svoboda party, founded by Oleh Tyahnybok, pictured here with Biden in April 2014.

C14 signed an agreement with Kiev's city government to patrol its streets in early 2018. Months later it began a campaign of pogroms against Romani camps.

The "14" in C14 refers to 14 words coined by American neo-Nazi David Lane "We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children."

The neo-Nazi Svoboda party was co-founded by Oleh Tahnybok & Andriy Parubiy, who served as the Chairman of Ukraine's parliament (2016-2019) and was welcomed at the US senate by Biden's foreign policy man Michael Carpenter.

Russia has launched military operations inside Ukraine. This has been called an invasion by western mainstream media (MSM), the politicians loyal to the trans-Atlantic alliance, the EU and NATO.

Currently it appears that there have been clashes in Eastern Ukraine, around Kharkiv in the north and Odessa in the south. However, it isn’t clear that the fighting is anywhere near as extensive as reported by the western MSM.

Russia has certainly targeted air bases and military infrastructure with air-strikes. At this stage, Russia’s intentions appear to be reasonably straightforward. Russia has reiterated that it has no intention of occupying the Ukraine.

Speaking on 24th February President Vladimir Putin outlined the objectives of Russia’s so-called “special military operation:”

[W]ith NATO’s eastward expansion the situation for Russia has been becoming worse and more dangerous by the year. [. . .] Any further expansion of the North Atlantic alliance’s infrastructure or the ongoing efforts to gain a military foothold of the Ukrainian territory are unacceptable for us. [. . .] [T]he leading NATO countries are supporting the far-right nationalists and neo-Nazis in Ukraine, those who will never forgive the people of Crimea and Sevastopol for freely making a choice to reunite with Russia. They will undoubtedly try to bring war to Crimea just as they have done in Donbas. [. . . ] The purpose of this operation is to protect people who, for eight years now, have been facing humiliation and genocide perpetrated by the Kyiv regime. To this end, we will seek to demilitarise and denazify Ukraine, as well as bring to trial those who perpetrated numerous bloody crimes against civilians, including against citizens of the Russian Federation. It is not our plan to occupy the Ukrainian territory. We do not intend to impose anything on anyone by force.

From what little is known in the West, which has seen a remarkable lack of reporting from inside the country, as of 4th March 2022 Russian forces have seemingly engaged in operations in the DPR and LPR, in territory north of the Crimea, are close to surrounding the northern cities of Kharkiv and Kyiv and have moved north-west from Odessa to secure territory along the border between the Odessa oblast and Moldova.

Claimed Russian incursion 04-03-2022

This military action by Russia is part of a much larger geopolitical, economic and globalist picture. We will explore this in detail in Part 2.

The conflict is rapidly evolving and there is no way to accurately predict what will happen. The risks couldn’t be higher. By the time you read this, the situation on the ground may be radically different.

NATO’s rejection of Ukrainian calls to attempt to establish a no-fly zone has perhaps assuaged fears of the conflict spreading beyond Ukrainian borders in the immediate to short term. Vladimir Putin stated that Russia would view this as an act of war. Jens Stoltenberg, Secretary General of NATO, said:

We are not part of this conflict, and we have a responsibility to ensure it does not escalate and spread beyond Ukraine because that would be even more devastating and more dangerous, with even more human suffering [. . .] NATO is not seeking a war with Russia.

In this two part series we will first explore some of the modern historical influences in Ukraine leading up to the Russian attack. In Part 2 we will consider the wider implications within the context of a globalist transformation of the international rules-based order (IRBO).

It is left to us to explore the evidence, The western MSM is a partner of western governments and serves as nothing but its propaganda machine. The eastern MSM’s objectives are identical but, from a western perspective, it sells the official, alternative narrative.

Necessarily, in trying to discern reality, we have to rely upon both the western and eastern aligned MSM to some extent. Contrasting their depiction of events may be helpful but neither are trustworthy and we should treat both of these imposters the same.

Ukrainian Recent Modern History

Ukraine is an ancient land with a rich history. However, the boundaries of the nation state we recognise today first emerged with the Ukrainian Peoples Republic (1917 – 1920). Civil war with the West Ukrainian People’s Republic (Eastern Galicia) saw a brief period where the south eastern Ukraine broke away.

The anarchist free territory of Makhnovshchina (Makhnovia 1918 – 1921) was established. Defended by the Black Army of Nestor Makhno, in 1918 he wrote a public letter to the people and announced:

Together we will destroy the slave system in order to bring ourselves and our comrades onto the path of the new system. We organize it on the basis of a free society, the content of which will allow the entire population, not exploiting the labor of others, to build their entire social and social life in their own communities, completely freely and independently of the state and its officials

Liberation by the Black Army was liberation in the true sense of the word. When a town or city was won, they would post notices that read:

This army does not serve any political party, any power, any dictatorship. [. . .] It strives to protect the freedom of action, the free life of the workers, against all exploitation and domination. The Makhnovist Army does not, therefore, represent any authority. It will not subject anyone to any obligation whatsoever. Its role is confined to defending the freedom of the workers. The freedom of the peasants and the workers belong to themselves, and should not suffer any restriction.

Despite functioning perfectly well without any government, in relative peace and enjoying a busy catallaxy, the regional powers were utterly opposed to Makhnovia and the Bolshevik Red Army crushed it in 1921. With government back in control, what followed was the inevitable violence and destruction.

The Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic (UkrSSR) Was formed in 1922. Due to the Soviets agricultural policies (collectivism) between 1931 – 1934 more than 5.5 million people starved to death in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR – Soviet Union). This entirely government-made famine was at its worse during 1932 and 1933, particularly in Ukraine. An estimated 4 million people perished during the Holodomor.

In June 1941 the German Army opened up the eastern front with Operation Barbarossa. Their invasion of the USSR created suffering on an unimaginable scale. Losses of such magnitude are difficult to quantify but Germany lost approximately 5.5 million troops and nearly 2 million civilians, Polish civilian losses were similar.

The Soviet Union lost between 25 – 35 million soldiers and civilians. Nearly 14% of the entire population. In Ukraine an estimated 4 Million people were killed.

Following WWII, in 1945 the UkrSSR became one of the founding members of the United Nations. In 1954 its territory expanded when then USSR President Nikita Khrushchev ceded the Crimea to the UkrSSR.

Nestor Machno

The Crimea had become Russian territory in 1783 when the Ottoman Empire, who were decisively defeated by Russian Tsarist forces at the 1774 Battle of Kozludzha, lost the peninsula to Imperial Russia (1721 – 1917). In 1944 the Tartar, Armenian, Bulgarian, and Greek populations were forcibly deported by Stalin and further Russian settlement was encouraged.

Up to 1945 the Crimea was an independent republic of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR). With the forced relocation of the Tartar population the Crimea became an RSFSR oblast (region). By 1954, approximately 75% of the then 1.1 million people living in the Crimea were ethnic Russians and 25% Ukrainian.

In January 1991, in anticipation of the forthcoming Ukrainian independence referendum, approximately 93% of Crimean voters chose to retain Crimean independence. With an 80% turnout, this represented 74% of the electorate. This was subsequently recognised by the UkrSSR Rada who, on the 12th February 1991, passed a law establishing Crimea as an autonymous republic within the borders of the Ukraine.

In December 1991 the Ukraine wide referendum declared Ukrainian sovereignty. The lowest turnout of 65% was in the Crimea where 54%, just 35% of the Crimean population, supported Ukrainian independence.

In March 1994, as political turmoil between the Kyiv and Simferopol (Crimean capital) governments became increasingly heated, another referendum again saw the people of Crimea overwhelmingly choose further independence from Kyiv and closer ties to Russia. Tensions between Kyiv and Simferopol rumbled on for the remainder of the 20th century and into the first two decades of the 21st.

The ethnic mix in Crimea has changed as many Tartars returned after the dissolution of the USSR. Approximately 68% are ethinc Russian, 16% Ukrainian, 13% Crimean Tartars with the remaining 3% comprised of Belarusians, Armenians and Jews. The population has grown to an estimated 2.4 million.

Map of Ukraine between 1654 and 2013

The Ukrainian Neo-Nazis

In 2010 then Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko honoured one of the WWII leaders of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), Stepan Bandera. Yushchenko declared Bandera to be a “Hero of Ukraine.”

In 1922, the modern Ukrainian oblasts of Lviv and Volhyn were part of the Second Polish Republic. Consequently, during the 1920’s and 30’s, a Ukrainian nationalist movement emerged in eastern Poland. They formed the Ukrainian Military Organization (UVO) who waged a terrorist campaign in the region.

Between 1929 and 1934 the UVO gradually transitioned to become the foundation of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN). Following the outbreak of WWII the OUN split into the OUN-M, under the leadership of Andriy Melnyk, and OUN-B under Stepan Bandera.

The OUN

Stepan Bandera was a Nazi collaborator, ultra-nationalist and rabid antisemite. In 1941, working with the Nazi death squads (Einsatzgruppen) Bandera embarked on coordinating a series of pogroms, starting in the city of Lvov, massacring 4000 Jews in a few horrific days. A death threat pamphlet, authorised by Bandera prior to the slaughter, read “we will lay your heads at Hitler’s feet.”

Bandera’s OUN-B hoped to create and ethnically pure Ukraine. Poles, Jews and the Russians were their targets for extinction.

The northern and particularly the western Ukrainian oblasts welcomed the Nazis as liberators from Soviet rule. Many ethnic Ukrainians joined the German “liberators.” Military units such as the 14th SS-Volunteer Division (Galician) and the Nachtigall and Roland Battalion were largely formed from followers of the OUN and UPA (more on them shortly).

An estimated 1 million Jewish Ukrainians, alongside Poles and Ukrainian Russians, were systematically murdered during the years of the Holocaust. On just two days in September 1941 at the Babi Yar ravine in Kyiv, approximately 34,000 Jewish men, women and children were put to death.

Though arrested by the Germans in July 1941, after declaring Ukrainian statehood and pledging to support the 4th Reich, Bandera continued to inspire his Banderite followers. The OUN-B formed the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA). Between 1941 and 1945 it systematically tortured and massacred an estimated 100,000 Poles in the western oblasts of modern day Ukraine.

CIA documents released in 2007 revealed that, after the war, Bandera worked with British intelligence, running agents inside the UkrSSR. The relationship between the western powers and the Ukrainian far-right has continued ever since.

The UPA

The CIA didn’t work directly with Bandera but instead worked with other members of the OUN and its splinter organisations. Eventually, while collaborating with West German intelligence (the BND), which was heavily infiltrated by the KGB (the foreign intelligence service of the USSR), Bandera was assassinated by the Soviets in 1959.

Following the USSR’s victory in Ukraine in 1944, the OUN continued to resist, most notably in the Eastern Galician oblasts of modern Ukraine. They fought a guerilla war until the mid 1950’s. Ironically Bandera was neither the most prominent nor powerful of the OUN leaders. However, his assassination made him a martyr for Ukrainian nationalists and a symbol for their neo-Nazi ideology.

In 1991 Oleh Tyahnybok was one of the founding members of Svoboda, the Social-National Party of Ukraine (SNPU). He urged the Ukrainian ultranationalists (ultras) to rid the country of Jews and Russians. In 1998 there was sufficient popular support for Tyahnybok to be elected to the Ukraian Parliament (the Verkhovna Rada) where he served as a member of the Peoples Movement of Ukraine faction. Following his re-election in 2002 he became Svoboda leader in 2004.

Svobodo and Tyahnybok inspired others neo-Nazis such as Dmitro Yarosh who co-founded Trizub (Trident) in 1994, becoming its leader in 2005. In 2013 Yarosh became the assistant-consultant to the deputy leader of the opposition in the Verkhovna Rada (Rada), Valentyn Nalyvaichenko. This coincided with Yorosh’ elevation to the leadership of the ultra neo-Nazi Right Sector, with Trizub at its core.

Nalyvaichenko had previously served in Washington from 2001 – 2005, first as Consul advisor and then as director of the Consular service in the Ukrainian embassy. He was the head of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) between 2006-2010 and was appointed to that position again in 2014.

Oleh Tyahnybok

The other founder of Trizub was Andriy Parubiy. Between 1998 and 2004 he was a prominent figure in the paramilitary wing of Svoboda, the Patriots of the Ukraine. Parubiy’s political career included his appointment to Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine in 2014 and he was elected Chairman of the Rada (speaker) in 2016.

Many in the EU were outraged when Viktor Yushchenko officially recognised Bandera. It was Parubiy who appealed to them to support the move.

Perhaps Yushchenko was considering his future political prospects and was garnering support. The neo-Nazis are a powerful force in Ukrainian politics as epitomised by the comments of Bandera’s namesake and grandson who, on hearing the news of his grandfathers deification, reportedly said:

[T]he president acted wisely, he could have done it earlier, but that would have been perceived as an attempt to win votes.

This in no way suggest that the majority of the Ukrainian people or its government are fascists. Politically, despite some relatively minor electoral successes, the Ukrainian far-right remains on the electoral fringes of Ukrainian politics.

Ukrainian electoral history shows that traditional socialism and democratic-socialism, rather than national-socialism, is the dominant political ideology on the whole. Nonetheless it is disingenuous to pretend that Ukrainian ultra-nationalism doesn’t have significant popular support. Especially in the western oblasts.

The neo-Nazis’ political influence in Ukraine exceeds their electoral reach due to the significant support they receive from the NATO aligned, western hegemony. The Ukraine only became a truly independent state in 1991 following the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Ethnically, politically and culturally it is a nation of two halves.

The predominantly Russian speaking populations in the southern and eastern oblasts have consistently voted for socialists or communist candidates and have staunchly advocated maintaining a close relationship with Russia. On the grand chessboard of geopolitics both sides have been exploited by the foreign great powers.

Russia’s current military action in the Ukraine is born out of that international, political struggle. The western MSM and its political class are wholly complicit in precipitating the current crisis.

In Part 2 we will explore this in depth. First we must look to the circumstances leading up to and surrounding the civil unrest of the Euromaidan coup, the alleged anexation of Crimea and the subsequent war in the Donbas.

Right Sector & Svoboda Flags

The Euromaiden Coup

In 2004 presidential elections saw the western backed Viktor Yushchenko vie for head of state against the Russian backed Victor Yanukovich. The election was extremely close and illustrated the deep division in Ukrainian society. Yanukovich was initially announced the winner by a narrow margin.

However, amidst widespread and credible allegation of electoral fraud, Yushchenko supporters wouldn’t accept the result. On the 22nd November 2004 they began to amass in the central Maidan square in Kyiv, waving orange banners and demanding a re-run of the election.

The entirely peaceful protesters maintained their vigil for a month, electoral reforms were made and the re-run election saw Yushchenko duly elected. He failed to make the promised economic reforms and the Ukraine elected Yanukovich in 2010. Despite a protest to the Supreme Administrative Court by his opponent Yulia Tymoshenko, Yanukovich took office.

The 2010 presidential election was deemed to be free and fair by international observers. The parliamentary elections in 2012 consolidated the political authority of Yanukovich’s Party of Regions as they increased their seats to 185. Indicating the ongoing divisions in Ukrainian society, the 2012 election also saw Svoboda, under Tyahnybok, increase it seats to 37, making it the 4th largest party in the Rada.

2010 Election Results

At the time of the Euromaiden coup in 2013/14 Yanukovich was the democratically elected leader of the Ukraine. This is a crucial fact to retain as we move on to discuss the subsequent events that have, in part, led to the current Russian military action.

Following the 2012 elections, the Yanukovich government approved the draft of the European Union–Ukraine Association Agreement. In response Russia heaped pressure on the Ukrainian government warning of a breech of their existing agreement signed in 1997. As Ukraine’s largest creditor and trade partner, Yanukovich wavered on signing the trade element of the deal called the Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Area (DCFTA.)

The Ukrainians had reason to question the EU’s offered DCFTA deal. Their existing main trade agreements were with the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) and it wasn’t clear how they would be compensated by the EU for the loss of this trade. Concerned about a potential dramatic fall in industrial productivity, Deputy Prime Minister Yuriy Boiko announced a halt to negotiations until the issue could be clarified with the EU.

Caught between the economic and financial might of the EU and Russia, and with rising unrest at home, Yanukovitch tried to negotiate a package of debt restructuring and, with Russian approval, offered a tri-party agreement between the EU, Ukraine and Russia. The EU declined the deal and the IMF refused to restructure Ukraine’s debt obligations.

Numerous statements from Party of Regions representatives, including Yanokovich and Boika, insisted that the deal was not dead, negotiations were ongoing and they intended to sign the deal. However Reuters and many other western media outlets completely ignored EU and IMF intransigence and instead cast Yanukovich as the villain, claiming he had “vetoed” EU attempts to save the deal. In reality, as later admitted by the MSM, it was the EU who shut the door.

In November 2013 the pro-EU demonstrations started to build in Independence (Maidan) Square in Kyiv. Initially the protests were peaceful, as they were in 2004 during the orange “colour” revolution.

The western MSM then threw their weight behind the protests and were joined in their Maidan reports by a newly created gaggle of Ukrainian media outlets. Between 21st – 24th November 2013 Espreso.tv, Spilno.tv and hromadske.tv all took to the airwaves, instantly becoming an online phenomenon among Ukrainian audiences.

Peaceful Pro-EU Protests

Again the western MSM and segments of the new Ukrainian media continued to stoke resentment towards Ukraine’s democratically elected government and Yanukovich in particular. Claiming that the world was witnessing “the birth of a nation” instead of a coup.

The protests gathered strength as more and more Ukrainians joined. Hostility towards Yanukovich was increasing but they remained overwhelmingly peaceful. This changed in late November 2013.

On 30th November the special riot police of the Ukraine (the Berkut) were accused, by the western MSM and Ukrainian pro-EU media, of attacking the protestors. The pro-EU/NATO MSM were present in their droves in the early hours of the morning (03:00hrs) to film and report the event. Their arrival in such numbers at this unsocial hour was highly unusual. Yet, none of them accurately reported what happened.

A single, cohesive narrative was formed blaming Yanukovitch and the Ukrainian government for the violence. Western governments, especially those who are members of the NATO driven Five Eyes intelligence alliance and the EU, have largely maintained this propaganda to this day.

While it is true that elements within the Ukrainian government colluded with Svoboda and the Right Sector to cause the violence, Yanukovich and the leadership of the Party of Regions were not controlling them. These far-right elements were acting autonomously with the support of western governments, notably the Neocon hawks in the US and other globalists (see Part 2).

Video footage shows that the Right Sector and other ultras, armed with batons and projectiles, were already in position when the Berkut arrived. They attacked the riot police who responded by beating all protestors. This was admitted by Ihor Mazur, a Ukrainian National Assembly – Ukrainian People’s Self-Defence (UNA-UNSO) combat commander, who said the Right Sector started the confrontation before retreating.

Putin’s expressed concern about the “denazifying” the Ukraine has been ridiculed by the western MSM. The political establishement has joined in. In an emotional statement on U.S. TV, Michael McFaul, former U.S. ambassador to Russia said “there are no Nazis in Ukraine.”

Arseniy Yatsenyuk, who later became Ukrainian Prime Minister (2014 – 2016), was among the leaders of the Maidan who had advanced knowledge of the planned Berkut dispersal of the protesters. Others included Andriy Parubiy who, according to witness testimony, was overheard discussing the planned Berkut action before it occurred. Yet neither he, Yatsenyuk nor any of the other Maidan leaders, including Oleh Tyahnybok, warned the protestors. They were content to watch the violence ensue.

In the days and weeks that followed, the violence escalated as the protestors, who wrongly believed that the Berkut started the bloodshed, gathered ijn increasing numbers. On 1st December they erected barricades, blocking access to government buildings, occupied Kyiv city hall and clashed with the Berkut on a number of occasions. Video analysis clearly shows that Right Sector agitators were again instrumental in the violence.

Still from footage clearly show Right Sector activists leading the violence

On the 2nd December Oleh Tyahnybok openly called for revolution:

I congratulate all of those who are fighting for our cause, for the idea, themselves and their children. We have our first victories, and that is precisely because we have started these protests all over Ukraine. This is a real pressure on the criminal regime, which has crossed all lines and must go away! [. . .] We all here would like to appeal to all military officers, generals, soldiers and law enforcers [. . .]: choose our side, do not follow criminal orders and join the Ukrainian revolution.

The Right Sector were clearly gearing up for significant violence. Speaking in January 2014 a right sector coordinator Andrei Tarasenko, referring to the Berkut, reportedly said:

If they attack and try to carry out a bloody crackdown, I think there will be a massacre. [. . .] Guerilla warfare will begin in Ukraine.

The sporadic violence continued throughout January and into February. Moves and countermoves progressed until, on the 16th February, the protesters abandoned their occupation of Kyiv city hall in exchange for a government guarantees to release all arrested protestors and to provide amnesty from prosecution to all other demonstrators.

On the 19th February the Yanukovich government and the protestors declared a truce. With the death toll among police and protesters already standing at 26, the Yanukovich government and all opposition parties, including Svoboda, seemingly supported the truce. Yanukovich again offered the role of interim Prime Minister to Arseniy Yatsenyuk.

The response from the US administration was accusatory. Then U.S. President Barrack Obama said:

We’re going to be watching closely. [. . .] We hold the Ukrainian government primarily responsible.

The truce lasted a matter of hours before a horrific explosion of violence. Approximately 60 people, both police and protestors, were massacred by snipers positioned around Maidan square. The BBC, along with nearly every other western MSM outlet, without any investigation at all, announced:

At least 21 protesters have been killed by security forces in Kyiv. [. . .] The White House said it was “outraged by the images of Ukrainian security forces firing automatic weapons on their own people”

Other than accurately reporting the comments of the White House, this was disinformation. There was no basis for the allegation that the Ukrainian security services had opened fire on the protesters. The BBC were among a united western media front deliberately misleading their readers and audiences. In 2019 the MSM were still peddling the legend rather than the reality.

In response to the slaughter on the 21st February 2014, the EU and Russia brokered an agreement to settle the political crisis in the Ukraine. The plan was to establish a National Unity government in the next ten days, pending new presidential elections by the end of the year, with a full investigation into the shootings to commence as soon as possible. Constitutional reform, rebalancing power sharing between the presidential office and parliament was also agreed.

The leader of the Right Sector Dmitro Yarosh rejected the deal and threatened to seize parliament and the presidential palace by force. He said:

We have to state the obvious fact that the criminal regime had not yet realized [. . .] the gravity of its evil doing.

He added:

The Right Sector announces an action to force regime guards to peace.

Dmitro Yarosh

The disgusting duplicity of this statement would soon become apparent. Yarosh may have been concerned that the far-right would return to the fringes of Ukrainian politics if the deal stood. A poll in early Februrary suggested that a majority of Ukrainians were opposed to the Maidan protests.

The next day, as security forces withdrew from Maidan square, the protesters, lead by Parubiy and Yarosh among others, seized the Verkhovna Rada and the presidential offices. Yanukovich fled to the eastern city of Kharkiv from where he gave a televised address vowing to hold on to the presidency.

Arseniy Yatsenyuk was immediately sworn in as the interim prime minister. When the Party of Regions distanced themselves from Yanikovich and a warrant was issued for his arrest, Yanukovich escaped over the border to Russia with Russian assistance.

The events that transpired between November 2013 and February 2014 undoubtedly constituted a coup d’etat. This is not to suggest that there was anything inherently undemocratic about the protests. However the nature of those protests was twisted by the actions of a western backed Ukrainian far-right.

Ironically the right of protest is rapidly being eroded in the West. Recent events in Canada show that western governments have no commitment to democracy. Their public veneration of democracy is simply a banner of convenience. Across the western world, the rights that underpin democratic society are simply being cast aside as they install dictatorships.

Article 108 of the Ukrainian Constitution (the 1996 and 2004 versions do not differ in this respect) is clear with regards to how a president can be removed. Article 111 outlines the impeachment process.

Under the Ukrainian constitution a sitting president can only be removed for treason or some other crime. In their decision to remove Yanukovich the Maidan faction in the Rada stated they had done so because Yanukovich was “unable to carry out his duties.” This was a constitutional nonsense.

However, regardless of the given reason, 338 of the 450 Rada delegates are required for impeachment. The Maidan contingent only achieved 328, falling 10 votes short of the constitutional requirement. The new Maidan government started their rule by ignoring the Ukrainian constitution.

Yanukovich was the democratically elected president and he was ousted from power by force. The protestors did not represent the views of the entire Ukrainian population and opposition to the coup, in the southern and eastern oblasts, was significant.

That being said, the vast majority of Maidan protesters were not far-right thugs but rather ordinary people who believed that EU membership would improve their living standards and life opportunities. The opposition to the government was genuine and it was not a fascist coup as some have suggested.

Equally, there were elements within the ranks of the protestors who were neo-Nazis and they exploited the situation for their own essentially racist, political and military ambitions. In Part 2 we will consider the international network that supported them and continues to support them to this day.

There are no Nazis in the Ukraine apparently

The Role of The Far Right In the Euromaidan Coup

A University of Ottawa case study analysed reports and video footage of the events and revealed the role of the western backed Sovboda and Right Sector activists in both the violence that erupted and the shootings. It also strongly suggested considerable collusion from some units within the Ukrainian security services, the subsequent Maidan government and the judiciary:

The analysis showed that all major far-right organizations in Ukraine, participated in the Euromaidan. Their common goal was more or less a national revolution which would overthrow the pro-Russian Yanukovych government and forge the Ukrainian nation. [. . .] videos and livestreams of protests often showed that there are large numbers of Svoboda flags representing a significant proportion of the flags in many protest actions. [. . .] [T]he role of the far right in violent attacks and other cases
of political violence during the Euromaidan was much more significant than their numerical presence among protesters.

Svoboda, as a political movement, distanced itself from the violence but video evidence clearly shows that activists under its banner were often the instigators. The BBC interviewed members of the Svoboda affiliated C14, a neo-Nazi youth movement. Conducted in March 2014, it revealed the ideology of its members. A young C14 activist said:

National Socialist themes are popular among some of us. The idea of one nation. [. . .] I want there to be one nation, one people, one country. A clean country, not like under Hitler, but in our way, a little bit like that. Those who like Russia, let them move to Russia. Ukraine will be just for Ukrainians.

While eager to publicly maintain a distinction between themselves and the Nazis, the leader of C14, Yevhen Karas, clearly espoused the fascist rhetoric most of us loathe. Referring to Russia, but also to the EU, he said that the objective of the movement was to “totally ruin the chains that connect our country to the imperial power from the past.” Denying that he was a Nazi and describing himself as a Ukrainian nationalist, Karas added:

Some ethnic groups have control [of] many business structures, some economic, some political forces. [. . .] Russians and Jews and Poles.

Can you guess which one is Yevhen Karas?

The Right Sector and Svoboda used false-flag killings to enrage the wider protest movements. The first three Maidan protestors killed were murdered on January 22nd. Their deaths were blamed upon the Berkut but court papers show that the initial, local investigations suggested they were killed by members of UNA-UNSO.

The larger, official government investigation would go on to maintain allegations of Berkut responsibility. However, on 24th February 2014 Svoboda member Oleh Makhnitskyi was appointed as Prosecutor General and it was he who led the initial “investigation” into the Maidan square violence.

On the day of the massacre the protestors, the Berkut and other Ukrainian security forces, were facing each other in the streets. Therefore, the official story, parroted by the Western MSM, alleges that the protestors and Berkut officers were shot on a horizontal trajectory in an exchange of fire.

The 3D modelling supporting this conclusion was provided to the Ukrainian court by SITU, a New York based firm who undertake investigations based upon architectural analysis. They say of themselves:

Our practice is purposefully collaborative, engaging in work with NGOs, universities, think tanks and individuals

SITU are funded by tax exempt philanthropic foundations and the EU. These foundations and government agencies, alongside NGO’s and other key individuals within foreign governments, have been extremely influential in both the Euromaidan coup and the Donbas War that followed. SITU provided an apparently fictitious 3D model, the purpose of which was to promote a fake official narrative.

Forensic evidence and witness testimony presented at the subsequent trial showed than the slain were shot either from the side or from an elevated position in territory held by the Maidan. Bullet holes revealed that the Hotel Ukraine received heavy fire from the Berkut and the Omega unit of the internal security services.

They were shooting over the protesters heads towards the Hotel and other elevated positions. This matches forensic analysis and shows that the Hotel Ukraine, the Bank Arkada, the Conservatory Building and other locations in Maidan hands provided the firing position for the snipers who carried out the massacre.

The deception of the western MSM is difficult to stomach as they were effectively covering up for mass murderers. For example, in one BBC Newsnight report a paramedic was quoted as saying their were six dead people who had been shot by snipers. In fact, she was pointing towards the Bank Arkada and warning of snipers on the roof.

It is fair to say that the Maidan trial judges and leading investigators had little interest in finding the truth. The Ottawa University Report describes some of the apparently unfathomable decisions they made:

In January 2015, a forensic ballistic examination conducted upon the request of prosecution concluded that bullets extracted from killed protesters did not match the bullet samples from any Kalashnikov assault rifle which members of the Berkut special police force were then armed. The findings of this computer-based ballistic examination and results of the other 40 ballistic examinations were reversed in a couple of ballistic examinations conducted manually in the very end of the investigation. Such unexplained reversals which contradicted other evidence, such as testimonies of wounded protesters and results of forensic medical examinations, suggested that the findings of the new examinations of bullets were unreliable and likely falsified.

This falsification of evidence was perpetrated to cover up the fact that the Right Sector and aligned groups carried out a false-flag operation to deliberately wreak havoc and blame their political opponents. They murdered both protesters, including some of their own, and Berkut officers to seize disproportionate political and military power in the aftermath. Their leaders would then go on to cast themselves as heroes of the Revolution of Dignity: an obscene oxymoron.

Andriy Parubiy (L) with Justin Trudeau (R)

Andriy Parubiy, the overall commander of the Maidan Self-Defence companies, and Dmytro Yarosh, in command of the Right Sector company, were among the Maidan leadership who guided the movements of otherwise peaceful protesters into the kill-zone. Maidan Self-Defence company commanders testified that Parubiy had ordered to start “a bloodshed” during this “peaceful march” on February 18th 2014. Parubiy and Yarosh established the military council of the Maidan Self-Defence and Right Sector on 21st February, the day after the worst of the killings in Kyiv.

Ivan Bubenchyk admitted in two separetae TV interviews in 2014 and 2016 that he had shot Berkut officers from the Conservatory. This placed him as a member of the special Maidan company under the command of Volodymyr Parasiuk who had taken up positions in the building.

With regard to the primary location of the sniper positions, the Ottawa study notes:

Svoboda stated that its activists took the Hotel Ukraine under their control and guard on January 25, 2014. [. . .] Numerous videos showed that inside the hotel remained under control of the protesters [. . .] This is consistent with the hotel CCTV recordings and statements of the Maidan Self-Defence unit commander and hotel staff saying that the police never entered the hotel [. . .] Videos also showed that a Svoboda deputy and the Maidan protesters guarded the Hotel Ukraine before, during, and after groups of covert shooters killing protesters from this hotel.

The evidence clearly shows that the snipers, under the control of the Svoboda, the Right Sector and its affiliate organisations were responsible for the slaughter. Much of this evidence emerged in the trial but it failed to reach any conclusion as it petered out in a sorry mess of claim and counter-claim. Eventually 5 former Berkut officers were allegedly exchanged in a prisoner swap deal with Russia.

This lent some fuel to an alternative theory of a “third force” of Russian backed insurgents shooting the protesters. This notion had been pushed repeatedly by the close associate of Yarosh, and twice head of the SBU, Valentyn Nalyvaichenko.

There is little to no evidence supporting this theory which stands in stark contrast to the wealth of evidence pointing toward far-right culpability. Such an operation would have made little sense from a Russian perspective, whose interests were not served by the fall of the Yanukovich government.

The most likely explanation was summed up in the Canadian research paper:

[. . .] Various evidence has indicated a cover-up of the far-right-linked Maidan “snipers” and falsification of the official investigation of the Maidan massacre. [. . .] the lack of any investigations [. . .] fits the pattern of the cover-up and falsification of the Maidan massacre investigation from the top of the Ukrainian government. [. . .] The far-right organizations activists did not have significant positions in the national governments and the law enforcement agencies of Ukraine prior to the Euromaidan. Several of them after the Euromaidan occupied senior government positions. This is another indirect evidence of the involvement of the far-right organizations in the violent overthrow of the Yanukovych government in alliance with elements of oligarchic parties. Svoboda had four ministers from the first post-Yanukovych government and a member of Svoboda was appointed the Prosecutor General, and his office investigated the Maidan massacre.

The Annexation of the Crimea

While the protests in Kyiv had some popular support from northern and western Ukrainian oblasts, once again the nation was split along both political, linguistic and ethnic lines. The southern and eastern oblasts were largely, though not entirely, opposed to the Euromaidan.

After the Euromaidan coup the Russian speaking residents of the Donbas (Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts), Russian speakers in the Odessa oblast and the largely ethnic Russian Republic of Crimea, stepped up their Anti-Maidan protests. Their primary concern was to prevent the far-right elements, within the Ukrainian government and military, from attacking them. They had clear historical reason to fear the neo-Nazis.

Oblasts in Ukraine

Russia had strategic interests in these oblasts which we will explore in Part 2. However, in late February 2014 clashes between pro-Russian and pro-Kyiv protesters, outside of the Crimean Rada in Simferopol, became increasingly violent. The pro-Russian contingent were openly calling for Russia to intervene militarily. Simultaneously Russia mobilised troops on its south western border.

Just as the Maidan protests were infiltrated by the far-right, used as agent-provocateurs and false-flag terrorists, so the anti-Maidan protestors were almost certainly infiltrated and supported by Russian agents who agitated the situation. The Russian naval base in Sevastopol had a significant Federal Security Bureau (FSB) presence attached to it.

In 2009, in response to demands from Valentyn Nalyvaichenko, during his first stint as head of the SBU, that all Russian agents leave Crimea, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Andrey Nesterenko said:

All subdivisions and services of the Black Sea Fleet are staying in Ukraine

The use of neo-Nazis in the Euromaidan protests does not imply that the majority of protesters were either fascists or agents of foreign powers. Nor does the undoubted the presence of Russian agents in the anti-Maidan movement mean that their protests were illegitimate of didn’t have popular support.

If we simply accept the simplistic narrative of goodies and baddies foisted upon us by a moribund MSM, we will never understand the global forces that have led to the current military action in Ukraine. Nor will we appreciate its wider implications.

From January 2014 militia groups calling themselves the Crimean Self-Defence Force (SDF) started to emerge from the youth wing of the Russia Unity Party led by Sergey Aksyonov. Undoubtedly Russian backed, on the 27th February men wearing plain green uniforms with no insignia seized the Rada of the Crimea. The same day the newly appointed prime minister of Crimea, Sergei Akasyenov, made a public statement asking for Russian assistance:

Understanding my responsibility for the life and security of citizens, I appeal to the president of Russia Vladimir Putin for assistance in guaranteeing peace and calmness on the territory of the autonomous republic of Crimea.

Valentyn Nalyvaichenko

The lack of identification on Russian troops, who worked alongside local pro-Russian militias, cuased considerable confusion for the western media. It was pretty obvious they were Russian. They carried Russian standard military equipment and weaponry and fanned out from Sevastopol in Russian registered vehicles.

There was no invasion of Crimea as such. Under the terms of the 2010 Kharkiv Pact between Ukraine and Russia, which permitting the Sevastopol Naval base until 2042, Russia could maintain 25,000 troops on the peninsula. At the time of the operation only 16,000 were deployed.

However, in leaving the confines of the base they effectively breeched the agreement. Putin finally admitted that Russian troops were involved in April 2014. During the operation they seized key targets, such as the airport and border crossings, without a shooting anyone.

In total there were six deaths during the alleged “annexation.” Two pro-Russian protesters and one pro-Ukrainian protester died in violent clashes between the groups and two Russian soldiers and one member of the SDF were allegedly killed by Ukrainian forces and in a separate operation to break up a suspected terrorist cell.

The Russian’s military task was made easier by the fact that they were welcomed by the Crimean majority. Appointed Knight Commanders of the Order of St George and St Michael are among those who allege the referendum was held at gun point.

Quite why Russia needed to do this, given that the people of Crimea had repeatedly and consistently attempted to maintain closer ties, if not reunification, with Russia, is a mystery. Only by the select few and those who believe in western MSM fairy tales can fathom it.

The entire western political establishment and its MSM claim, ad nauseam, that Russia “annexed” the Crimea. They insist that Russia breached international law in doing so. This is a gross misrepresentation of international law and a deliberate deception. It is disinformation.

Under International Law “annexation” can be described as:

The acquisition of legal sovereignty by one state over the territory of another, usually by occupation or conquest. Annexation is now generally considered illegal in international law, even when it results from a legitimate use of force (e.g. in self‐defence). It may subsequently become legal, however, by means of recognition by other states.

Crimea was an independent republic with its own government who called for protection from Russia in the face of a neo-Nazis threat which, as we shall see, definitely constituted a danger to the population. At no point did Russia acquire any sovereignty by anything other than the lawful, democratic will of the people of the Crimea.

On the 10th March the Crimean parliament sent invitations to the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) to observe the vote. Swiss Foreign Minister Didier Burkhalter stated that the OSCE declined and claimed that the referendum was unconstitutional.

The United Nations, which has become little more than an extension of the western International Rules Based Order, also claimed that the referendum was unconstitutional. Yet the Euromaidan coup, which was violent, largely orchestrated by western backed neo-Nazis and genuinely unconstitutional, is apparently a shining example of democracy. The UN’s position is both partisan and absurd.

On March 16th, a little more than two weeks after securing Crimea from fascist attacks, another referendum was held and once again the people voted for re-unification with Russia. Based upon the 83% turnout, the 97% vote for reunification meant more than 80% of the Ukrainian population, necessarily including many Ukrainians and Tartars, elected to rejoin the Russian Federation.

A team of 135 international observers from 23 different countries, counting members of the European parliament among them, found the referendum to be free and fair. The UN’s protected opinion is non-binding and, with international recognition, Crimea is now a lawful republic of the Russian Federation. Or at least it would be if International Law actually meant anything beyond might is right.

On 21st March the Russian Federal Assembly ratifed the reunification treaty with the Republic of Crimea making it de facto republic of the Russian Federation. The republic was subsequently recognised by Afghanistan, Bolivia, North Korea, Cuba, Kyrgyzstan, Nicaragua, Syria, Sudan and Zimbabwe. There was no unlawful annexation by Russia and every claim that there was is entirely false.

Russian troops, or not? Maybe, maybe not. Who knew?

Reason To Be Fearful

Outside of Crimea Russian protection was less comprehensive. When the Right Sector tried to attack a pro-Russian presidential candidate in a hotel in Odessa, Russian special forces escorted him to safety. Sadly, others were less fortunate. This attack was just one among many as the Maidan politicians in Kyiv, like Andriy Parubiy, sought to suppress the growing anti-Maidan protests in the Donbas and Odessa.

On May 2nd 2014 the Maidan government in Kyiv ordered that local oblast legislatures retake government buildings that were occupied by anti-Maidan protestors. In response they were each permitted to pay for militias of up to 200 men, many of whom were sent from other oblasts. These militias were dominated by the Right Sector but also included local criminal gangs seeking to exploit the chaos.

In the city of Odessa, anti-Maidan protesters had constructed a command centre encampment on Kulikovo Field near the Trade Unions Building. Under the command of Parubiy, the National Security and Defence Council in Kyiv organised the deployment of Right Sector activists into the local Maidan militias under the guise of attending a football match.

Andriy Parubiy distributing equipment to Nikolai Volkov

On May 2nd 2014 the streets of Odessa saw pitched battles between the anti-Maidan and pro-Maidan activists and militias. The violence was escalating and the security forces were, at best, unable to cope but some also appeared to collaborate with the Right Sector. Overwhelmed, many of the anti-Maidan protesters, sought refuge in the Trade Unions Building.

Video footage analysis unequivocally shows that the the massacre that ensued was again led by Parubiy’s Right Sector. At least an estimated 40 people were either burned alive, died of smoke inhalation or jumped to their deaths from the Building. The Right Sector torched the building (go to 01:15:46) knowing anti-Maidan activists were trapped inside.

Volkov – Odessa – 02/05/2014

Witness testimony records other murders committed in and around the building. The disgusting beatings to death of those who briefly survived the plunge from the inferno, were accompanied with cries of “Colorado Beetle,” used by the Right Sector to suggest the victims were subhuman and should be crushed underfoot.

Another, practically identical slaughter was carried out in Mariupol just a few days later. The news of which was met with gloating jubilation in Kyiv.

Parubiy visited Odessa, meeting with local militia checkpoints and handing out equipment. This included a filmed meeting with Nikolai Volkov from the Right Sector. Parubiy was known to have distributed bullet proof vests. Volkov was later filmed shooting at the Trade Unions Building while wearing one. He was clearly among the leaders of the attack. His role has been confirmed through both video footage and witness testimony.

Andriy Parubiy is a common link between the Maidan, Odessa and Mariupol massacres. Parubiy’s Maidan Self-Defence companies were quickly incorporated into the Asov Battalion (regiments) of the Ukrainian National Guard and other “specialist” Ukrainian military units. They would go on to play a major role in the 8 year-long war in the Donbas.

The people of the Crimea not only had historical reasons to fear attacks from neo-Nazis, they represented a clear and present danger to their lives. The words “fascist” or “Nazi” are used so frequently today that they have practically lost their meaning in the minds of many in the west.

The Right Sector, and the paramilitary arm of Svoboda, are not merely conservatives or people the western, liberal intelligentsia disagree with. They are full-blown neo-Nazis and their beliefs are driven by hate and an unshakeable supremacist ideology. They have received and continue to receive the unwavering support of NATO aligned governments and, in turn, these governments serve a globalist network of public-private partnerships.

It is this wider geopolitical context that we will explore in Part 2. Without this analysis, we cannot appreciate forces the that have led to the Russian “special military operations” in the Ukraine. One thing is certain, if we unquestioningly believe either the western or eastern MSM, we will never grasp the bigger picture.

“In allowing all political parties and organisations full and complete freedom to propagate their ideas, the Makhnovist Insurgent Army wishes to inform all the parties that any attempt to prepare, organise and impose a political authority on the working masses will not be permitted by the revolutionary insurgents,

such an act having nothing in common with freedom of ideas.”

[ Revolutionary Military Council of the Makhnovist Insurgent Black Army – November 1919 ]

Please Note: The PDF will be available following publication of Part 2

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Every useful or pleasing claim about the war, no matter how unverified or subsequently debunked, rapidly spreads, while dissenters are vilified as traitors or Kremlin agents.

Glenn Greenwald
Feb 27

WASHINGTON, DC - DECEMBER 1: (L-R) Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY), vice-chair of the select committee investigating the January 6 attack on the Capitol, and Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) listen during a committee meeting on Capitol Hill on December 1, 2021 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

In the weeks leading up to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, those warning of the possible dangers of U.S. involvement were assured that such concerns were baseless. The prevailing line insisted that nobody in Washington is even considering let alone advocating that the U.S. become militarily involved in a conflict with Russia. That the concern was based not on the belief that the U.S. would actively seek such a war, but rather on the oft-unintended consequences of being swamped with war propaganda and the high levels of tribalism, jingoism and emotionalism that accompany it, was ignored. It did not matter how many wars one could point to in history that began unintentionally, with unchecked, dangerous tensions spiraling out of control. Anyone warning of this obviously dangerous possibility was met with the “straw man” cliché: you are arguing against a position that literally nobody in D.C. is defending.

Less than a week into this war, that can no longer be said. One of the media's most beloved members of Congress, Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL), on Friday explicitly and emphatically urged that the U.S. military be deployed to Ukraine to establish a “no-fly zone” — i.e., American soldiers would order Russia not to enter Ukrainian airspace and would directly attack any Russian jets or other military units which disobeyed. That would, by definition and design, immediately ensure that the two countries with by far the planet's largest nuclear stockpiles would be fighting one another, all over Ukraine.

Kinzinger's fantasy that Russia would instantly obey U.S. orders due to rational calculations is directly at odds with all the prevailing narratives about Putin having now become an irrational madman who has taken leave of his senses — not just metaphorically but medically — and is prepared to risk everything for conquest and legacy. This was not the first time such a deranged proposal has been raised; days before Kinzinger unveiled his plan, a reporter asked Pentagon spokesman John Kirby why Biden has thus far refused this confrontational posture. The Brookings Institution's Ben Wittes on Sunday demanded: “Regime change: Russia.” The President of the Council on Foreign Relations, Richard Haass, celebrated that “now the conversation has shifted to include the possibility of desired regime change in Russia.”

Having the U.S. risk global nuclear annihilation over Ukraine is an indescribably insane view, as one realizes upon a few seconds of sober reflection. We had a reminder of that Sunday morning when “Putin ordered his nuclear forces on high alert, reminding the world he has the power to use weapons of mass destruction, after complaining about the West’s response to his invasion of Ukraine” — but it is completely unsurprising that it is already being suggested.

There is a reason I devoted the first fifteen minutes of my live video broadcast on Thursday about Ukraine not to the history that led us here and the substance of the conflict (I discussed that in the second half), but instead to the climate that arises whenever a new war erupts, instantly creating propaganda-driven, dissent-free consensus. There is no propaganda as potent or powerful as war propaganda. It seems that one must have lived through it at least once, as an engaged adult, to understand how it functions, how it manipulates and distorts, and how one can resist being consumed by it.

As I examined in the first part of that video discussion, war propaganda stimulates the most powerful aspects of our psyche, our subconscious, our instinctive drives. It causes us, by design, to abandon reason. It provokes a surge in tribalism, jingoism, moral righteousness and emotionalism: all powerful drives embedded through millennia of evolution. The more unity that emerges in support of an overarching moral narrative, the more difficult it becomes for anyone to critically evaluate it. The more closed the propaganda system is — either because any dissent from it is excluded by brute censorship or so effectively demonized through accusations of treason and disloyalty — the more difficult it is for anyone, all of us, even to recognize one is in the middle of it.

When critical faculties are deliberately turned off based on a belief that absolute moral certainty has been attained, the parts of our brain armed with the capacity of reason are disabled. That is why the leading anti-Russia hawks such as former Obama Ambassador Michael McFaul and others are demanding that no “Putin propagandists” (meaning anyone who diverges from his views of the conflict) even be permitted a platform, and why many are angry that Facebook has not gone far enough by banning many Russian media outlets from advertising or being monetized. Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA), using the now-standard tactic of government officials dictating to social media companies which content they should and should not allow, announced on Saturday: “I'm concerned about Russian disinformation spreading online, so today I wrote to the CEOs of major tech companies to ask them to restrict the spread of Russian propaganda.” Suppressing any divergent views or at least conditioning the population to ignore them as treasonous is how propagandistic systems remain strong.

It is genuinely hard to overstate how overwhelming the unity and consensus in U.S. political and media circles is. It is as close to a unanimous and dissent-free discourse as anything in memory, certainly since the days following 9/11. Marco Rubio sounds exactly like Bernie Sanders, and Lindsay Graham has no even minimal divergence from Nancy Pelosi. Every word broadcast on CNN or printed in The New York Times about the conflict perfectly aligns with the CIA and Pentagon's messaging. And U.S. public opinion has consequently undergone a radical and rapid change; while recent polling had shown large majorities of Americans opposed to any major U.S. role in Ukraine, a new Gallup poll released on Friday found that “52% of Americans see the conflict between Russia and Ukraine as a critical threat to U.S. vital interests” with almost no partisan division (56% of Republicans and 61% of Democrats), while “85% of Americans now view [Russia] unfavorably while 15% have a positive opinion of it.”

The purpose of these points, and indeed of this article, is not to persuade anyone that they have formed moral, geopolitical and strategic views about Russia and Ukraine that are inaccurate. It is, instead, to highlight what a radically closed and homogenized information system most Americans are consuming. No matter how convinced one is of the righteousness of one's views on any topic, there should still be a wariness about how easily that righteousness can be exploited to ensure that no dissent is considered or even heard, an awareness of how often such overwhelming societal consensus is manipulated to lead one to believe untrue claims and embrace horribly misguided responses.

To believe that this is a conflict of pure Good versus pure Evil, that Putin bears all blame for the conflict and the U.S., the West, and Ukraine bear none, and that the only way to understand this conflict is through the prism of war criminality and aggression only takes one so far. Such beliefs have limited utility in deciding optimal U.S. behavior and sorting truth from fiction even if they are entirely correct — just as the belief that 9/11 was a moral atrocity and Saddam (or Gaddafi or Assad) was a barbaric tyrant only took one so far. Even with those moral convictions firmly in place, there are still a wide range of vital geopolitical and factual questions that must be considered and freely debated, including:

1. The severe dangers of unintended escalation with greater U.S. involvement and confrontation toward Russia;

2. The mammoth instability and risks that would be created by collapsing the Russian economy and/or forcing Putin from power, leaving the world's largest or second-largest nuclear stockpile to a very uncertain fate;

3. The ongoing validity of Obama's long-standing view of Ukraine (echoed by Trump), which persisted even after Moscow annexed Crimea in 2014 following a referendum, that Ukraine is of vital interest only to Russia and not the U.S., and the U.S. should never risk war with Russia over it;

4. The bizarre way in which it has become completely taboo and laughable to suggest that NATO expansion to the Russian border and threats to offer Ukraine membership is deeply and genuinely threatening not just to Putin but all Russians, even though that warning has emanated for years from top U.S. officials such as Biden's current CIA Director William Burns as well as scholars across the political spectrum, including the right-wing realist John Mearsheimer and the leftist Noam Chomsky.

5. The clearly valid questions regarding actual U.S intentions concerning Ukraine: i.e., that a noble, selfless and benevolent American desire to protect a fledgling democracy against a despotic aggressor may not be the predominant goal. Perhaps it is instead to revitalize support for American imperialism and intervention, as well as faith in and gratitude for the U.S. security and military state (the Eurasia Group's Ian Bremmer suggested this week that this is the principal outcome in the West of the current conflict). Or the goal may be the re-elevation of Russia as a vital and grave threat to the U.S. (the above polling data suggests this is already happening) that will feed weapons purchases and defense and intelligence budgets for years to come. Or one might see a desire to harm Russia, as vengeance for the perception that Putin helped defeat Hillary Clinton and elected Donald Trump (that the U.S. is using Ukraine to “fight Russia over there” was explicitly stated by Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA)).

   Or perhaps the goal is not to “save and protect” Ukraine at all, but to sacrifice it by turning that country into a new Afghanistan, where the U.S. arms a Ukrainian insurgency to ensure that Russia remains stuck in Ukraine fighting and destroying it for years (this scenario was very compellingly laid out in one of the best analyses of the Russia/Ukraine conflict, by Niccolo Soldo, which I cannot recommend highly enough).

   Jeff Rogg, historian of U.S. intelligence and an assistant professor in the Department of Intelligence and Security Studies at the Citadel, wrote in The LA Times this week that the CIA has already been training, funding and arming a Ukrainian insurgency, speculating that the model may be the CIA's backing of the Mujahideen insurgency in Afghanistan that morphed into Al Qaeda, with the goal being “to weaken Russia over the course of a long insurgency that will undoubtedly cost as many Ukrainian lives as Russian lives, if not more."

Again, no matter how certain one is about their moral conclusions about this war, these are urgent questions that are not resolved or even necessarily informed by the moral and emotional investment in a particular narrative. Yet when one is trapped inside a system of a complete consensus upheld by a ceaseless wave of reinforcing propaganda, and when any questioning or dissent at all is tantamount to treason or “siding with the enemy,” there is no space for such discussions to occur, especially within our minds. When one is coerced — through emotional tactics and societal inventive — to adhere only to one script, nothing that is outside of that script can be entertained. And that is all by design.

Besides 9/11 and the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq, Americans have been subjected to numerous spates of war propaganda, including in 2011 when then-President Obama finally agreed to order the U.S. to participate in a France/UK-led NATO regime change operation in Libya, as well as throughout the Obama and early Trump years when the CIA was fighting a clandestine and ultimately failed regime change war in Syria, on the same side as Al-Qaeda, to overthrow Bashar al-Assad. In both instances, government/media disinformation and emotional manipulation were pervasive, as it is in every war. But those episodes were not even in the same universe of intensity and ubiquity as what is happening now and what happened after 9/11 — and that matters a great deal for understanding why so many are vulnerable to the machinations of war propaganda without even realizing they are affected by it.

One realization I had for the first time during Russiagate was that history may endlessly repeat itself, but those who have not lived through any such history or paid attention to it previously will not know about it and thus remain most susceptible to revisionism or other tactics of deceit. When Russiagate was first unveiled as a major 2016 campaign theme — through a Clinton campaign commercial filled with dark and sinister music and innuendo masquerading as “questions” about the relationship between Trump and the Kremlin — I had assumed when writing about it for the first time that most Americans, especially those on the left taught to believe that McCarthyism was one of the darkest moments for civil liberties, would instantly understand how aggressively the CIA and FBI disseminate disinformation, how servile corporate media outlets are to those security state agencies, how neocons are always found at the center of such manipulative tactics, and how potent this sort of propaganda is. The common theme is creating a foreign villain said to be of unparalleled evil or at least evil not seen since Hitler, then accusing one's political adversaries of being enthralled by or captive to them. We have witnessed countless identical cycles throughout U.S history.

But I also quickly realized that millions of Americans — either due to age or previous political indifference — began paying attention to politics for the first time in 2016 due to fear of Trump, and thus knew little to nothing about anything that preceded it. Such people had no defenses against the propaganda narrative and deceitful tactics because, for them, it was all new. They had never experienced it before and thus had no concept of who they were applauding and how such official government/media disinformation campaigns are constructed. Each generation is thus easily programmed and exploited by the same propaganda systems, no matter how discredited they were previously.

Although such episodes are common, one has to travel back to the period of 2001-03, following the 9/11 attack on U.S. soil, and through the invasion of Iraq, in order to find an event that competes with the current moment in terms of emotional intensity and lockstep messaging throughout the West. Comparing that historical episode to now is striking, because the narrative themes deployed then are identical to those now; the very same people who led the construction of that narrative and accompanying rhetorical tactics are the ones playing a similar role now; and the reaction that these themes trigger are virtually indistinguishable.

Many who lived through the enduring trauma and mass rage of 9/11 as an adult need no reminder of what it was like and what it consisted of. But millions of Americans now focused on Ukraine did not live through that. And for many who did, they have, with the passage of two decades, revised or now misremember many of the important details of what took place. It is thus worthwhile to recall the broad strokes of what we were conditioned to believe to see how closely it tracks the consensus framework now.

Both the 9/11 attack and the invasion of Iraq were cast as clear Manichean battles: one of absolute Good fighting absolute Evil. That framework was largely justified through its companion prism: the subsequent War on Terror and specific wars (in Iraq and Afghanistan) represented the forces of freedom and democracy (the U.S. and its allies) defending itself against despotism and mad, primitive barbarism. We were attacked not because of decades of intervention and aggression in their part of the world but because they hated us for our freedom. That was all one needed to know: it was a war between enlightened democrats and psychotic savages.

As a result, no nuance was permitted. How can there be room for nuance or even questioning when such clear moral lines emerge? A binary framework was thus imposed: “Either you are with us or you are with the terrorists,” decreed President George W. Bush in his speech to the Joint Session of Congress on September 20, 2001. Anyone questioning or disputing any part of the narrative or any of the U.S. policies championed in its name stood automatically accused of treason or being on the side of The Terrorists. David Frum, fresh off his job as a White House speechwriter penning Bush's war speeches, in which Bush proclaimed the U.S. was facing an “Axis of Evil,” published a 2003 article in National Review about right-wing opponents of the invasion of Iraq, aptly titled: “Unpatriotic Conservatives.” Go look how cheaply and easily people were accused of being on the side of The Terrorists or traitors for the slightest deviation from the dominant narrative.

David Frum, National Review, Mar. 25, 2003

Like all effective propaganda, the consensus assertions about 9/11 and Iraq had a touchstone to the truth. Indeed, some of the fundamental moral claims were true. The civilian-targeting 9/11 attack was a moral atrocity, and the Taliban and Saddam really were barbaric despots (including when the U.S. had previously supported and funded them). But those moral claims only took one so far: specifically, they did not take one very far at all. Many who enthusiastically embraced those moral propositions ended up also embracing numerous falsehoods emanating from the U.S. Government and loyal media outlets, as well as supporting countless responses that were both morally unjustified and strategically unwise. Polls at the start of the Iraq War showed large majorities in favor of and believing outright falsehoods (such as that Saddam helped personally plan the 9/11 attack), while polls years later revealed a “huge majority” which now views the invasion as a mistake. Similarly, it is now commonplace to hear once-unquestioned policies — from mass NSA spying, to lawless detention, to empowering the CIA to torture, to placing blind faith in claims from intelligence agencies — be declared major mistakes by those who most vocally cheerlead those positions in the early years of the War on Terror.

In other words, correctly apprehending key moral dimensions to the conflict provided no immunity against being propagandized and misled. If anything, the contrary was true: it was precisely that moral zeal that enabled so many people to get so carried away, to be so vulnerable to having their (often-valid) emotions of rage and moral revulsion misdirected into believing falsehoods and cheering for moral atrocities in the name of vengeance or righteous justice. That moral righteousness crowded out the capacity to reason and think critically and unified huge numbers of Americans into herd behavior and group-think that led them to many conclusions which, two decades later, they recognize as wrong.

It should not be difficult, even for those who did not live through those events but who can now look back at what happened, to see the overwhelming similarities between then and now. The role of bin Laden and Saddam — as unhinged, mentally unwell, unrepentant mass murderers and despots, the personification of pure evil — is now occupied by Putin. “Putin is evil. Every American watching what’s happening in Ukraine should know that,” instructed Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY), daughter of the author of the virtually identical 9/11 and Iraq morality scripts. Conversely, the U.S. and its allies are the blame-free, morally upright spreaders of freedom, defenders of democracy and faithfully adhering to a rules-based international order.

This exact framework remains in place; only the parties have changed. Now, anyone questioning this narrative in whole or in part, or disputing any of the factual claims being made by the West, or questioning the wisdom or justice of the role the U.S. is playing, is instantly deemed not “on the side of the terrorists" but "on the side of Russia”: either for corrupt monetary reasons or long-hidden and hard-to-explain ideological sympathy for the Kremlin. “There is no excuse for praising or appeasing Putin,” announced Rep. Cheney, by which — like her father before her and McFaul now — she means anyone deviating in any way from the full panoply of U.S. assertions and responses. Wyoming's vintage neocon also instantly applied this accusatory treason matrix to former President Trump, arguing that he “aids our enemies” and his “interests don’t seem to align with the interests of the United States of America."

Tim Dickinson, Rolling Stone, Feb. 24, 2022

Everyone watching this week-long mauling of dissenters understood the messaging and incentives: either get on board or stay silent lest you be similarly vilified. And that, in turn, meant there were fewer and fewer people willing to publicly question prevailing narratives, which made it in turn far more difficult for anyone else to separate themselves from unified group-think.

One instrument of propaganda that did not exist in 2003 but most certainly does now is social media, and it is hard to overstate how much it is exacerbating all of these pathologies of propaganda. The endless flood of morally righteous messaging, the hunting down of and subsequent mass-attacks on heretics, the barrage of pleasing-but-false stories of bravery and treachery, leave one close to helpless to sort truth from fiction, emotionally manipulative fairy tales from critically scrutinized confirmation. It is hardly novel to observe that social media fosters group-think and in-group dynamics more than virtually any other prior innovation, and it is unsurprising that it has intensified all of these processes.

Another new factor separating the aftermath of 9/11 from the current moment is Russiagate. Starting in mid-2016, the Washington political and media class was obsessed with convincing Americans to view Russia as a grave threat to them and their lives. They created a climate in Washington in which any attempts to forge better relations with the Kremlin or even to open dialogue with Russian diplomats and even just ordinary Russian nationals was depicted as inherently suspect if not criminal. All of that primed American political culture to burst with contempt and rage toward Russia, and once they invaded Ukraine, virtually no effort was needed to direct that long-brewing hostility into an uncontrolled quest for vengeance and destruction.

That is why it is anything but surprising that incredibly dangerous proposals like the one by Rep. Kizinger for deployment of the U.S. military to Ukraine have emerged so quickly. This orgy in high dudgeon of war propaganda, moral righteousness, and a constant flow of disinformation produces a form of collective hysteria and moral panic. In his 1931 novel Brave New World, Aldous Huxley perfectly described what happens to humans and our reasoning process when we are subsumed by crowd sentiments and dynamics:

Groups are capable of being as moral and intelligent as the individuals who form them; a crowd is chaotic, has no purpose of its own and is capable of anything except intelligent action and realistic thinking. Assembled in a crowd, people lose their powers of reasoning and their capacity for moral choice. Their suggestibility is increased to the point where they cease to have any judgment or will of their own. They become very ex­citable, they lose all sense of individual or collective responsibility, they are subject to sudden accesses of rage, enthusiasm and panic. In a word, a man in a crowd behaves as though he had swallowed a large dose of some powerful intoxicant. He is a victim of what I have called "herd-poisoning." Like alcohol, herd-poison is an active, extraverted drug. The crowd-intoxicated individual escapes from responsibility, in­telligence and morality into a kind of frantic, animal mindlessness.

We have seen similar outbreaks many times over the last couple of decades, but nothing produces it more assuredly than war sentiments and the tribal loyalties that accompany them. And nothing exacerbates it like the day-long doom scrolling through Twitter, Facebook and Instagram which so much of the world is currently doing. Social media platforms, by design, enable one to block out all unpleasant information or dissident voices and only feed off content and claims that validate what they wish to believe.

Kinzinger's call for a US-imposed no-fly zone is far from the only unhinged assertion or claim spewing forth from the U.S. opinion-shaping class. We are also witnessing a radical increase in familiar authoritarian proposals coming from U.S. politicians. Two other members of Congress who are most beloved by the media, Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA) and Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-AZ), suggested that all Russians should be immediately deported from the U.S., including Russian students studying at American universities. The rationale is similar to the one that drove FDR's notorious World War II internment of all people of Japanese descent — citizens or immigrants — in camps: namely, in times of war, all people who come from the villain or enemy country deserve punishment or should be regarded as suspect. A Washington Post columnist, Henry Olsen, proposed banning all Russia athletes from entering the U.S.: “No Russian NHL, football, or tennis players so long as the war and claims on Ukrainian territory exist.”

Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT), long a vocal advocate of requiring congressional approval for the deployment by the president of military forces to war zones, argued on Friday that Biden's troop movements to Eastern Europe constitute war decisions that constitutionally necessitate Congressional approval. “President Biden’s unilateral deployment of our Armed Forces to the European theater, where we now know they are in imminent hostilities, triggers the War Powers Act, necessitating that the President report to Congress within 48 hours,” he said. Sen. Lee added: “The Constitution requires that Congress must vote to authorize any use of our Armed Forces in conflict.”

For this simple and basic invocation of Constitutional principles, Lee was widely vilified as a traitor and Russian agent. “Are you running for Senator of Moscow? Because that’s where you belong,” one Democratic Congressional candidate, the self-declared socialist and leftist Joey Palimeno (D-GA), rhetorically asked. Now-perennial independent candidate Evan McMullin, formerly a CIA operative in Syria, dubbed Lee “Moscow Mike” for having raised this constitutional point, claiming he did so not out of conviction but “to distract from the fact that he traveled to Russia and brazenly appeased Vladimir Putin for his own political gain.”

Other than calling Lee a paid Russian agent and traitor, the primary response was the invocation of Bush/Cheney's broad Article II executive power theories to insist that the president has the unfettered right to order troop deployments except to an active war zone — as if the possibility of engaging Russian forces was not a primary motive for these deployments. Indeed, the Pentagon itself said the troop deployments were to ensure the troops “will be ready if called upon to participate in the NATO Response Force” and that “some of those U.S. personnel may also be called upon to participate in any unilateral actions the U.S. may undertake." Even if one disagrees with Lee's broad view of the War Powers Act and the need for Congress to approve any decisions by the president that may embroil the country in a dangerous war, that Lee is a Kremlin agent and a traitor to his country merely for advocating a role for Congress in these highly consequential decisions reflects how intolerant and dissent-prohibiting the climate has already become.

Disinformation and utter hoaxes are now being aggressively spread as well. Both Rep. Kinzinger and Rep. Swalwell ratified and spread the story of the so-called "Ghost of Kyiv,” a Ukrainian fighter pilot said to have single-handedly shot down six Russian planes. Tales and memes commemorating his heroism viralized on social media, ultimately ratified by these members of Congress and other prominent voices. The problem? It is a complete hoax and scam, concocted through a combination of deep fake videos based on images from a popular video game. Yet to date, few who have spread this fraud have retracted it, while censorship-happy Big Tech corporations have permitted most of these fraudulent posts to remain without a disinformation label on it. We are absolutely at the point — even as demands escalate for systematic censorship by Big Tech of any so-called “pro-Russian” voices — where disinformation and fake news are considered noble provided they advance a pro-Ukrainian narrative.

Western media outlets have also fully embraced their role as war propagandists. They affirm any story provided it advances pro-Ukrainian propaganda without having the slightest idea whether it is true. A charming and inspiring story about a small group of Ukrainian soldiers guarding an installation in a Black Sea island went wildly viral on Saturday and ultimately was affirmed as truth by multiple major Western news outlets. A Russian warship demanded they surrender and, instead, they responded by replying: “fuck you, Russian warship,” their heroic last words before dying while fighting. Ukraine said “it will posthumously honor a group of Ukrainian border guards who were killed defending a tiny island in the Black Sea during a multi-pronged Russian invasion.” Yet there is no evidence at all that they died; the Russian government claims they surrendered, and the Ukrainian military subsequently acknowledged the same possibility.

Obviously, neither the Russian nor Ukrainian versions should be accepted as true without evidence, but the original, pleasing Ukrainian version should not either. The same is true of:

• the equally inspiring story that the Ukrainian military shot down two Russian Il-76s transport planes (no evidence);

• a Russian tank purposely and randomly ran over a civilian car (the video suggests a possible accident and, more importantly, subsequent news accounts acknowledged: “it wasn’t immediately clear if the armored vehicle was Russian or Ukrainian hardware, or when this crash took place”);

• a mega-viral thread from a member of the EU Parliament claiming Russian oligarchs and Putin were screaming at each other in a bunker in desperation (pronounced “likely disinfo” by the US-intel-friendly and vehemently anti-Russia site Bellingcat);

• a gratifying story that Turkey told Ukraine that it informed Russia it was barred from using Turkish straits to enter the Black Sea (Turkey denied telling this to President Zelensky and said they could not and would not do that, then on Sunday said they had determined these events constitute a “war” such that they may have the power them to ban both Ukraine and Russia, but had not yet decided to so);

• a thrilling photo of Zelensky in body armor on the front lines against Russia (it was from months ago), and,

• claims that Russia targeted a civilian apartment building with a missile (it appears at least possible that the missile was a misguided Ukrainian air defense weapon).

But we are way past the point where anyone cares about what is or is not factually true, including corporate outlets. Any war propaganda — videos, photos, unverified social media posts — that is designed to tug on Western heartstrings for Ukrainians or appear to cast them as brave and noble resistance fighters, or Russians as barbaric but failing mass murderers, gets mindlessly spread all over without the slightest concern for whether it is true. To be on social media or to read coverage from Western news outlets is to place yourself into a relentless vortex of single-minded, dissent-free war propaganda. Indeed, some of the above-referenced stories may turn out to be true, but spreading them before there is any evidence of them is beyond reckless, especially for media outlets whose role is supposed to be the opposite of propagandists.

None of this means the views you may have formed about the war in Ukraine are right or wrong. It is of course possible that the Western consensus is the overwhelmingly accurate one and that the moral framework that has been embraced is the correct prism for understanding this conflict. All sides in war wield propaganda, and that certainly includes the Russians and their allies as well. This article is not intended to urge the adoption of one viewpoint or the other.

It is, instead, intended to urge the recognition of what the effects of being immersed in one-sided, intense and highly emotionalized war propaganda are — effects on your thinking, your reasoning, your willingness to endorse claims or support policies, your comfort with having dissent either banished or inherently legitimized. Precisely because this propaganda has been cultivated over centuries to so powerfully and adeptly manipulate our most visceral reactions, it is something to be resisted even if — perhaps especially if — it is coming from the side or viewpoint you support.

I recently resigned from my position as full tenured professor at the University of Toronto. I am now professor emeritus, and before I turned sixty. Emeritus is generally a designation reserved for superannuated faculty, albeit those who had served their term with some distinction. I had envisioned teaching and researching at the U of T, full time, until they had to haul my skeleton out of my office. I loved my job. And my students, undergraduates and graduates alike, were positively predisposed toward me. But that career path was not meant to be. There were many reasons, including the fact that I can now teach many more people and with less interference online. But here’s a few more:

First, my qualified and supremely trained heterosexual white male graduate students (and I’ve had many others, by the way) face a negligible chance of being offered university research positions, despite stellar scientific dossiers. This is partly because of Diversity, Inclusivity and Equity mandates (my preferred acronym: DIE). These have been imposed universally in academia, despite the fact that university hiring committees had already done everything reasonable for all the years of my career, and then some, to ensure that no qualified “minority” candidates were ever overlooked. My students are also partly unacceptable precisely because they are my students. I am academic persona non grata, because of my unacceptable philosophical positions. And this isn’t just some inconvenience. These facts rendered my job morally untenable. How can I accept prospective researchers and train them in good conscience knowing their employment prospects to be minimal?

Second reason: This is one of many issues of appalling ideology currently demolishing the universities and, downstream, the general culture. Not least because there simply is not enough qualified BIPOC people in the pipeline to meet diversity targets quickly enough (BIPOC: black, indigenous and people of colour, for those of you not in the knowing woke). This has been common knowledge among any remotely truthful academic who has served on a hiring committee for the last three decades. This means we’re out to produce a generation of researchers utterly unqualified for the job. And we’ve seen what that means already in the horrible grievance studies “disciplines.” That, combined with the death of objective testing, has compromised the universities so badly that it can hardly be overstated. And what happens in the universities eventually colours everything. As we have discovered.

All my craven colleagues must craft DIE statements to obtain a research grant. They all lie (excepting the minority of true believers) and they teach their students to do the same. And they do it constantly, with various rationalizations and justifications, further corrupting what is already a stunningly corrupt enterprise. Some of my colleagues even allow themselves to undergo so-called anti-bias training, conducted by supremely unqualified Human Resources personnel, lecturing inanely and blithely and in an accusatory manner about theoretically all-pervasive racist/sexist/heterosexist attitudes. Such training is now often a precondition to occupy a faculty position on a hiring committee.

Need I point out that implicit attitudes cannot — by the definitions generated by those who have made them a central point of our culture — be transformed by short-term explicit training? Assuming that those biases exist in the manner claimed, and that is a very weak claim, and I’m speaking scientifically here. The Implicit Association test — the much-vaunted IAT, which purports to objectively diagnose implicit bias (that’s automatic racism and the like) is by no means powerful enough — valid and reliable enough — to do what it purports to do. Two of the original designers of that test, Anthony Greenwald and Brian Nosek, have said as much, publicly. The third, Professor Mahzarin Banaji of Harvard, remains recalcitrant. Much of this can be attributed to her overtly leftist political agenda, as well as to her embeddedness within a sub-discipline of psychology, social psychology, so corrupt that it denied the existence of left-wing authoritarianism for six decades after World War II. The same social psychologists, broadly speaking, also casually regard conservatism (in the guise of “system justification”) as a form of psychopathology.

Banaji’s continued countenancing of the misuse of her research instrument, combined with the status of her position at Harvard, is a prime reason we still suffer under the DIE yoke, with its baleful effect on what was once the closest we had ever come to truly meritorious selection. There are good reasons to suppose that DIE-motivated eradication of objective testing, such as the GRE for graduate school admission, will have deleterious effects on the ability of students so selected to master such topics as the statistics all social sciences (and medicine, for that matter) rely upon completely for their validity.

Furthermore, the accrediting boards for graduate clinical psychology training programs in Canada are now planning to refuse to accredit university clinical programs unless they have a “social justice” orientation. That, combined with some recent legislative changes in Canada, claiming to outlaw so-called “conversion therapy” (but really making it exceedingly risky for clinicians to do anything ever but agree always and about everything with their clients) have likely doomed the practice of clinical psychology, which always depended entirely on trust and privacy. Similar moves are afoot in other professional disciplines, such as medicine and law. And if you don’t think that psychologists, lawyers and other professionals are anything but terrified of their now woke governing professional colleges, much to everyone’s extreme detriment, you simply don’t understand how far this has all gone.

Just exactly what am I supposed to do when I meet a graduate student or young professor, hired on DIE grounds? Manifest instant skepticism regarding their professional ability? What a slap in the face to a truly meritorious young outsider. And perhaps that’s the point. The DIE ideology is not friend to peace and tolerance. It is absolutely and completely the enemy of competence and justice.

And for those of you who think that I am overstating the case, or that this is something limited in some trivial sense to the universities, consider some other examples: This report from Hollywood, cliched hotbed of “liberal” sentiment, for example, indicates just how far this has gone. In 2020, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (the Oscar people) embarked on a five-year plan (does that ring any historical bells?) “to diversify our organization and expand our definition of the best,” They did so in an attempt which included developing “new representation and inclusion standards for Oscars,” to, hypothetically, “better reflect the diversity of the movie-going audience.” What fruit has this initiative, offspring of the DIE ideology, borne? According to a recent article, penned by Peter Kiefer and Peter Savodnik, but posted on former NY Times’ journalist Bari Weiss’s Common Sense website (and Weiss left the Times, because of the intrusion of radical left ideology into that newspaper, just as Tara Henley did recently, vis a vis the CBC): “We spoke to more than 25 writers, directors, and producers — all of whom identify as liberal, and all of whom described a pervasive fear of running afoul of the new dogma. … How to survive the revolution? By becoming its most ardent supporter. … Suddenly, every conversation with every agent or head of content started with: Is anyone BIPOC attached to this?”

And this is everywhere — and if you don’t see it, your head is either in the sand or shoved somewhere far more unmentionable. CBS, for example, has literally mandated that every writers’ room be at least 40 per cent BIPOC in 2021 (50 per cent in 2022).

We are now at the point where race, ethnicity, “gender,” or sexual preference is first, accepted as the fundamental characteristic defining each person (just as the radical leftists were hoping) and second, is now treated as the most important qualification for study, research and employment.

Need I point out that this is insane ? Even the benighted New York Times has its doubts. A headline from August 11, 2021: Are Workplace Diversity Programs Doing More Harm than Good? In a word, yes. How can accusing your employees of racism etc. sufficient to require re-training (particularly in relationship to those who are working in good faith to overcome whatever bias they might still, in these modern, liberal times, manifest) be anything other than insulting, annoying, invasive, high-handed, moralizing, inappropriate, ill-considered, counterproductive, and otherwise unjustifiable?

And if you think DIE is bad, wait until you get a load of Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) scores . Purporting to assess corporate moral responsibility, these scores, which can dramatically affect an enterprise’s financial viability, are nothing less than the equivalent of China’s damnable social credit system, applied to the entrepreneurial and financial world. CEOs: what in the world is wrong with you? Can’t you see that the ideologues who push such appalling nonsense are driven by an agenda that is not only absolutely antithetical to your free-market enterprise, as such, but precisely targeted at the freedoms that made your success possible? Can’t you see that by going along, sheep-like (just as the professors are doing; just as the artists and writers are doing) that you are generating a veritable fifth column within your businesses? Are you really so blind, cowed and cowardly? With all your so-called privilege?

And it’s not just the universities. And the professional colleges. And Hollywood. And the corporate world. Diversity, Inclusivity and Equity — that radical leftist Trinity — is destroying us. Wondering about the divisiveness that is currently besetting us? Look no farther than DIE. Wondering — more specifically — about the attractiveness of Trump? Look no farther than DIE. When does the left go too far? When they worship at the altar of DIE, and insist that the rest of us, who mostly want to be left alone, do so as well. Enough already. Enough. Enough.

Finally, do you know that Vladimir Putin himself is capitalizing on this woke madness? Anna Mahjar-Barducci at MEMRI.org covered his recent speech. I quote from the article’s translation: “The advocates of so-called ‘social progress’ believe they are introducing humanity to some kind of a new and better consciousness. Godspeed, hoist the flags, as we say, go right ahead. The only thing that I want to say now is that their prescriptions are not new at all. It may come as a surprise to some people, but Russia has been there already. After the 1917 revolution, the Bolsheviks, relying on the dogmas of Marx and Engels, also said that they would change existing ways and customs, and not just political and economic ones, but the very notion of human morality and the foundations of a healthy society. The destruction of age-old values, religion, and relations between people, up to and including the total rejection of family (we had that, too), encouragement to inform on loved ones — all this was proclaimed progress and, by the way, was widely supported around the world back then and was quite fashionable, same as today. By the way, the Bolsheviks were absolutely intolerant of opinions other than theirs.

“This, I believe, should call to mind some of what we are witnessing now. Looking at what is happening in a number of Western countries, we are amazed to see the domestic practices — which we, fortunately, have left, I hope — in the distant past. The fight for equality and against discrimination has turned into aggressive dogmatism bordering on absurdity, when the works of the great authors of the past — such as Shakespeare — are no longer taught at schools or universities, because their ideas are believed to be backward. The classics are declared backward and ignorant of the importance of gender or race. In Hollywood, memos are distributed about proper storytelling and how many characters of what color or gender should be in a movie. This is even worse than the agitprop department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.”

This, from the head of the former totalitarian enterprise, against whom we fought a five decades’ long Cold War, risking the entire planet (in a very real manner). This, from the head of a country riven in a literally genocidal manner by ideas that Putin himself attributes to the progressives in the West, to the generally accepting audience of his once-burned (once (!)) twice-shy listeners.

And all of you going along with the DIE activists, whatever your reasons: this is on you. Professors. Cowering cravenly in pretence and silence. Teaching your students to dissimulate and lie. To get along. As the walls crumble. For shame. CEOs: signalling a virtue you don’t possess and shouldn’t want to please a minority who literally live their lives by displeasure. You’re evil capitalists, after all, and should be proud of it. At the moment, I can’t tell if you’re more reprehensibly timid even than the professors. Why the hell don’t you banish the human resource DIE upstarts back to the more-appropriately-named Personnel departments, stop them from interfering with the psyches of you and your employees, and be done with it? Musicians, artists, writers: stop bending your sacred and meritorious art to the demands of the propagandists before you fatally betray the spirit of your own intuition. Stop censoring your thought. Stop saying you will hire for your orchestral and theatrical productions for any reason other than talent and excellence. That’s all you have. That’s all any of us have.

He who sows the wind will reap the whirlwind. And the wind is rising.