Articles by Jeff Nyquist

Nobody now disputed that what occurred was a monstrous crime, but – committed by whom? Who is guilty? How did it happen that nobody saw this sooner? You will not find the guilty. One lot will insist that they knew nothing; another, that they were afraid; others still, that they believed.
Vladmir Bukovsky[i]

General Laura Richardson, with four stars, runs the U.S. Southern Command. Last week she said that the United States Government had asked several Latin American nations – including Venezuela and Cuba – to donate their Russian-made military equipment to Ukraine. The Pentagon has, according to Richardson, offered to give U.S military equipment in exchange for Russian-made equipment “if those countries want to donate to Ukraine.” The nine countries in Latin America are, “Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Cuba, Ecuador, Mexico, Nicaragua, Peru, and Venezuela.”

Would you give U.S. weapons to communist allies of Russia and China, like Cuba or Venezuela? We know that Russian weapons stink, especially the hand-me-down weapons given to the Latin American countries. And look at this list of nine countries buying weapons from Russia. Why would a self-respecting country buy such weapons in the first place? Is there not a political signifier here? By their weapons ye shall know them?

General Richardson, of course, knows that Russia and China are moving into Latin America with great determination: “This region is so rich in resources,” she explained, “rare earth minerals, lithium. The lithium triangle is in this region. There are a lot of things this region has to offer…. I think they are there to undermine the United States, they’re there to undermine democracies, and they all mean business…. And, quite honestly, with all of the disinformation and the Russia Today Español, Sputnik Mundo – [with] over 30 million followers … this is very concerning.”[ii]

So General Richardson is in something of a ticklish position. On the one hand, her Commander-in-Chief wants to swap weapons with communist Cuba and Venezuela – to help Ukraine. On the other hand, these and other countries have Russian weapons because they have been slowly and quietly aligning themselves with Russia and/or China. Richardson is giving us these subtle data points. At least she seems to understand the danger from Russia and China.

Given General Richardson’s overall report, American policy does not make sense. If we are going to thwart Russia’s moves in Eastern Europe, why offer to give Russia’s allies – in Cuba and Venezuela – weapons we will not even give to the Ukrainians? Is this not baffling? Are we so stupid that we are forgetting who is against us worldwide? As a stage magician might say, “Watch this trick as my fingers never leave my hands!” Even a senile magician, pulling a rabbit out of his hat, may smile and bow to the crowd. But the trick is at our own expense. Why not give the superior American weapons directly to Ukraine? If such weapons are impractical in the hands of Ukrainians, why would Cuba and Venezuela want them? If you analyze this story, these are the kind of questions you end up with.  

And now our economy stands at the edge of an abyss. Should Ukraine fall our allies in Europe might be swallowed in the aftermath. South America is gone. Africa is mostly gone. Central America is mostly gone. Think of “the sequence” we have experienced during the last three years: First, there was the pandemic, then a summer of riots, then the Biden coup, the 1/6 provocation at the Capitol, the censorship of conservative voices on social media, illegal vaccine mandates, a massive enlargement of the Federal deficit, and the invasion of Ukraine by Russia along with a Russia-China military alliance.

None of this looks coincidental. These events did not just happen, at random. They were, quite clearly, part of a “sequence.” Yet our best leaders seem entirely oblvious. None but military commanders like General Richardson will tell us that China and Russia are allied, that they are forming a larger bloc of countries in Latin America to strangle our economy, destroy the dollar, and more. On top of all this, there are those who suspect that we have been subjected to a massive biological attack, using our own National Institutes of Health and CDC as attack vectors.

One only has to review the War Room/Daily Clout Pfizer Documents Analysis Volunteers’ Reports to get the sense of an enemy closing in for the kill.[iii]  In terms of the Pfizer vaccine, we have evidence of fraud and coverup. Pfizer’s own documents show that the vaccine was neither safe nor effective. Many questions follow from this. Why, then, did government officials recommend the vaccine for young children (when the vaccine was not initially tested on young children)? Given that the vaccine was dangerous, especially to persons with auto immune illnesses or other health vulnerabilities, why would the government or schools or large corporations, implement vaccine mandates? Why discriminate against people with health conditions? Why did the FDA fail to mention the danger of heart damage to vaccinated teens? All these questions are asked in the Analysis Volunteer Reports.

The push to inject the entire population of the First World with an experimental drug is not merely a scandal. It is evidence of something more far-reaching. Perhaps, indeed, it is an attack on the people of the United States and Europe engineered by Chinese agents and companies. There is a case to be made that communist China has infiltrated and corrupted our health science bureaucracy which is responsible for defending us from biological attack. They have aligned their pharmaceutical companies with America’s. They have offered their services on the cheap to draw our Big Pharma producers into partnerships – to harvest our medical and biological technologies. To what end? To mount a biological attack? To fulfill the mandate of Chinese General Chi Haotian? He called for killing 100 – 200 million Americans in a biological attack. He spoke about it more than twenty years ago.

This is not a conspiracy theory. This is a question – a serious question. And we need serious answers. The longer we do not receive the answers, the more danger we are likely to be in; for if the pandemic response was honest – involving mistakes made in good faith – there should be no coverup. There should be no evidence of collusion with Red China. It is when we see people hiding the truth, covering up for their actions, hiding Chinese involvement, that we must fear the worst.  

That Pfizer sought to cover up a flood-tide of adverse events is now documented. The truth was supposed to be kept secret until the year 2096. What honest process seeks refuge in such a prolonged darkness? The thesis of the War Room/Daily Clout team is that scientific fraud has taken place, on a massive scale. The report reads: “The clinical data of the Covid-19 vaccines is corrupt and fraudulent. Attempting to conceal data for 75 years is another form of fraud as well.”[iv]

What we have here is a “trust the science” meme. But I fear that the operative word is “trust,” and all the “science” is false advertising. It is only people using science as a justification for destructive policies – for sabotage, for poison injected into the arms of children and pregnant women. And it is a bubble that is going to burst, like the bubble of manmade global warming “science.” I do not trust the “science” because I can see the not-so-hidden agenda of the people involved. In the case of the mRNA “vaccines,” millions of people have been used as lab rats, jabbed with something that was not properly tested, that was made with Chinese inputs. And what we know about the Pfizer shots is probably true of the Moderna and AstraZeneca shots. Why would the leaders of the West expose hundreds of millions of people to such a risk?

Let us not make excuses for anyone. Scientists should be accountable for their work when people begin to die from it. Furthermore, scientists are people who happen to be as subject to bribery and blackmail and ideological manipulation as anyone else. Thus do they croak, like frogs, their chorus, “Trust the science!” Which simply translates, “Trust us.” But they are as corrupt as the dishonest, ideology-driven society they serve.

“An opposing concept comes in with Bacon’s ‘knowledge is power,’” wrote Richard M. Weaver in 1948. “If the aim of knowledge is domination, it is hardly to be supposed that the possessors of knowledge will be indifferent to their [own] importance. On the contrary, they begin to swell; they seek triumphs in the material world (knowledge being meanwhile necessarily degraded to skills) which inflate their egotism and self-consideration.”[v]

The egotism of the scientist (so-called) also aligns with profits. And if they have collaborated with the communist Chinese, there are business relationships to be considered. It is only natural that guilty men will hide their guilty deeds. “Nothing can be done,” wrote Weaver, “until we have decided whether we are primarily interested in truth.”[vi] In fact, the scientist who is interested in money or accolades, is no longer in the business of finding scientific truth. Science for him has become a license to offer short-cuts to truth; that is, dangerous solutions in exchange for fame and fortune. Weaver presciently wrote, “Having become incapable of knowing, he becomes incapable of working, in the sense that all work is a bringing of the ideal from potentiality into actuality. We perceive this simply when his egotism prevents realization that he is an obligated creature, bound to rational employment.”[vii]

Fauci was hardly an Apostle of Truth. He was caught contradicting himself on more than one occasion. If you watch him carefully you will see that he is an obvious egotist. Remember him preening on CNN? And what is it when a doctor says it is okay to give an experimental drug to pregnant women and children? An experimental drug should never be given to children! Right? This is especially true when the risk to children from COVID was negligible in the first place. When Fauci used his position to give the green light to vaccinate people, to coerce people by threatening their jobs, he crossed a line.

The entire policy of mass vaccination in the middle of a pandemic was insane on its face. The virus mutated to an entirely different strain by the time the vaccine came out. It was absurd that anyone took these shots. It was monumental stupidity to trust government bureaucrats and corrupt elected officials and a corrupt science in bed with our Chinese communist enemies.

I think what we have is a treason problem. I think our society has been penetrated by a secular religion that is hostile to the stated values of our society. That secular religion was once called communism, though that name has been removed from the label. As Vladimir Bukovsky wrote in an unpublished work many years ago, “The communists are indeed masters of propaganda. Seizing all mass communications into their hands and having done away with the opposition, it is not too hard to manipulate a headless population, destroying all that is human in people. The secret of their success, however, is that they combine propaganda with terrorism and organization.”

Is this not what has been unfolding?

Links and Notes

[i] From an unpublished manuscript that is soon to be published.

[ii] https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/US-Asks-LATAM-Countries-to-Donate-Russian-Weapons-to-Ukraine-20230120-0008.html

[iii] https://www.amazon.com/DailyClout-Documents-Analysis-Volunteers-Reports-ebook/dp/B0BSK6LV5D

[iv] Ibid, (Kindle) p. 674.

[v] Richard M. Weaver, Ideas Have Consequences (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1948), p. 72.

[vi] Ibid, p 73.

[vii] Ibid.

Check out Jeff’s Amazon books https://www.amazon.com/Fool-His-Enemy-Toward-Metaphysics/dp/B08DSX8TKX?asin=B08DSX8TKX&revisionId=&format=4&depth=1 […]

It was while I was going over these stories that I realized for the first time just how important a part of the communist movement in America the teachers were. They touched practically every phase of Party work. They were not used only as teachers in Party education, where they gave their services free of charge, but in the summer they traveled and visited Party figures in other countries. Most of them were an idealistic, selfless lot who manned the front committees and were the backbone of the Party’s strength in the labor Party and later in the Progressive Party. Even in the inner Party apparatus they performed invaluable services.
Bella Dodd[i]

Brazil is falling to the communists. America is only a few steps behind. Here is the process: You capture the public schools. You capture the colleges. You indoctrinate and capture the elite. At the same time, you infiltrate the seminaries and corrupt the churches. You take over the tax-exempt foundations. You enter the intelligence community, the government, and the media. You get control of the money spigot. You make and break careers. You finance false fronts. You shape the larger culture. You conquer society itself. There is one thing you must be careful of, however. When your tyranny becomes effective, and society collapses under your destructive policies, and freedom evaporates, the masses will come after you with their guns (if they have any). Perhaps they will come after you with their bare hands. So, it is advisable that you misdirect the masses. You must get them to blame someone else for your crimes. Even more to the point, if you decide to devastate society with a biological attack, you must convince your victims that someone else was behind it. You must maintain your innocence to the end, even as you are taking over the world in plain view.     

Ask yourself why nobody frets over communism’s advance to power in Brazil. How has this happened?  Nobody sounds the alarm? NOBODY!? That Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was a friend of Fidel Castro, and a comrade in the communist movement, is well known. Yet nobody mentions this. And nobody finds it curious that Russian President Vladimir Putin supports Lula da Silva, and supports the “little rocket man” in North Korea, and is close friends with President Xi of the Chinese Communist Party, and supports the communist regimes Cuba and Nicaragua. President Putin has even given military support to the communist regime in Venezuela.[ii]  Does Putin sound like a good Christian boy, or a communist who pretends to be a Christian? There is a red elephant in the room, and everyone fails to see it. What? Are you seeing elephants? Only anticommunist dinosaurs see communists “under the bed.” But I am not pointing under the bed. I am pointing to Mexico, Cuba, Venezuela, Colombia, Bolivia, Chile and now Brazil. These are places that can be seen from the moon! But then, our deluded pundits and politicos do not want to notice vast regions that are falling to communism – in the Western Hemisphere. So, it bears repeating: Brazil is falling to the communists. America is only a few steps behind.

Yes, the Kremlin has pulled the wool over everyone’s eyes, making us think that the communist bloc split apart decades ago and ceased to exist with the fall of the Soviet Union. The best alibi is when nobody thinks you exist. But even so, in communism’s war against humanity, somebody must be blamed for the bad things that are beginning to happen – the pandemic, the war in Ukraine, the food shortages, the energy shortages, the economic collapse, etc. The global movement that put Lula da Silva in power in Brazil, that put Joseph Biden in the White House, that unleashed COVID-19 on the world using Big Pharma as its cat’s paw – needs patsies aplenty, and scapegoats, and dupes, and false narratives galore.

The key to redirecting blame for all the bad that is coming is found in something called ideology – a thing that evolves over time as it disorients and misdirects. Ideology is a political formula that does not require much study. The masses are drawn to ideology because it is easy to understand. The manipulators of humanity see ideology as a weapon. As Mao Zedong once said, “Marxism-Leninism is better than a machine gun.” The bullets in this machine gun are lies. They are fired in a steady stream against those targeted for conquest. The first target is the anticommunist, the person who resists communism, who recognizes its formations and themes – who understands communist subterfuge and misdirection.

The relationship between communism and ideology is not easy to understand. Exoteric communism is a changing set of outward dogmas and causes, linked together beneath the surface by esoteric communist practice; that is to say, by what Lenin called “the scientific management of human affairs” in the Machiavellian sense. Therefore, Chinese communism emphasizes its Chinese characteristics even as Venezuelan communism is “Bolivarian.” The communist practitioner conforms to the “laws” of history – of time and place. If he must pretend to be a liberal or a nationalist or a Christian to advance the Revolution, then he pretends. But underneath, he remains what he is. Esoteric Marxism is about global conquest through the inversion of all symbols and existing principles, as modeled by Karl Marx. Marxism in this sense is not a dogma, said Lenin. It is a living and evolving system for destroying everything. Marx’s favorite quote, in this regard, was from Goethe’s Faust, where Mephistopheles says, “Everything that exists deserves to perish.” The full quote is,

I am the spirit that negates.And rightly so, for all that comes to beDeserves to perish wretchedly;‘Twere better nothing would begin.Thus everything found in your terms, sin,Destruction, evil represent –That is my proper element.

Here is the anti-metaphysics, the anti-religion, the anti-philosophy of esoteric communism. Under Lenin’s guidance and Stalin’s helmsmanship, the communists built up a global system of power aiming at the destruction of the Old Order – an order based on ancient principles carried forward from generation to generation, through religious traditions and philosophic explanations. Only a small number of thinkers have noticed the true face – the wicked esoteric face – of communism. It is only by understanding esoteric communism that a person sees the real meaning of exoteric communism (which consists of flexible ideologic themes which may or may not self-advertise as “communist”). Unlike the Western ideologue, who stupidly believes in his ideology, the esoteric Marxist does not believe his own ideology. In fact, as Robert Payne tells us in his biography of Marx, the Founding Father of Marxism laughed at those who believed in “that class shit.”[iii] In his malevolence, Marx had developed intellectual weapons for destroying mankind. As Lenin realized, these weapons could be improved upon.

Of course, Marx was not the first to fashion intellectual weapons. Such weapons have been continually fashioned throughout history. And they continue to be fashioned today. The general rule, in fashioning an ideology (i.e., a political weapon) is to envision your enemy. Ideology, therefore, always demonizes someone.  For example, Nazi ideology demonizes the Jews while the communists (who call their ideology a “science”) demonize the bourgeoisie. Cultural Marxism (which is the latest and most refined version of Marxism’s exoteric iteration) demonizes white males. At the same time, on the right, conspiracy ideology demonizes a hidden cabal of actors who have allegedly controlled history since the dawn of time. Stalin, in his turn, more modestly spoke of a series of conspiracies involving Trotskyites, saboteurs, spies, and wreckers (around which Stalin built the narrative of his famous show trials).

To demonize is to generate hatred – an important feature of ideologies. Julien Benda, in his famous book La Trahison des Clercs, said that our age is the “age of the intellectual organization of political hatreds.” And the biggest hatred that now appears, ominously, is hatred of the West, especially in the form of anti-Americanism. This hatred has been fostered with such success, that many Westerners (especially Americans of white European extraction) hate themselves. Consider the example of Critical Race Theory, which says that all white people are racist. We should not be surprised to learn that Critical Race Theory is fashionable in American universities, and is even taught within the U.S. military. We know from the history of antisemitism the phenomenon of self-hating Jews (who have succumbed to their enemy’s propaganda). Now we have the phenomenon of self-hating Americans and Europeans. All of this is helpful to the communists, especially since their objective is to destroy Western civilization (which, as Mephistopheles said, “deserves to perish wretchedly”).

In the war of ideas, which is fought all around us, we are continuously attacked by those who would subdue us with their intellectual weapons. One of these weapons consists in the argument that we do indeed deserve to perish, as Mephistopheles said, “wretchedly.” Stalin famously boiled this down to a simple sentence: “If our enemies accuse us of crimes, then we blame them for the crimes.” In other words, communism teaches its acolytes to “blame the victim” of communism’s atrocities. That America is the chief intended victim should be obvious. Thus, we find the following themes continuously pounded home: the CIA killed Kennedy; America bombed and invaded Cambodia; Bush lied and people died; America is “destroying the planet,” etc. All of these slogans, spread far and wide by the communists and their dupes, are distortions of reality that blame the intended target for everything bad that has ever happened. The sad fact is, many Americans believe one or all of these ideologically-loaded slogans.

As an aside, a reader recently objected to my suggestion that all ideologies are inevitably untrue. He had probably looked up the dictionary definition of ideology, where it is described innocuously as “a system of ideas and ideals, especially one which forms the basis of economic or political theory and policy.” This definition is problematic because theory, policy and ideals are items too distinct to be subsumed under such a referent (which yet remains undefined by this supposed definition). These items can never be reconciled in a “system.” After studying hundreds of ideologues over a period of many years, Eric Voegelin realized that all ideologues were system-builders. But truth cannot be encapsulated in a “system.” In fact, all systems falsify the truth because life itself is a process of questing for the truth. It is a process by which we discover ideas and learn their meaning by direct experience. What a system pretends to be, inevitably, is a final and decisive answer of some kind – a shortcut that removes the very reason for living (i.e., discovery). Mortal man does not know the full truth. He therefore cannot devise a system of truth that is true. Here is an intellectual impertinence, a usurpation, an impersonation of God by man. Furthermore, could anything be more disastrous for a man than abandoning his quest for truth in favor of a formula that pretends to be the truth? This counterfeit would cheat a man of his very life; for Voegelin implies that once you have adopted an ideology you are no longer in life. By adopting an ideology, a human being becomes the stuffed thing of an intellectual taxidermist.[iv]

What about ideologies that claim to be “scientific”? Are they not searching for the truth? Here one must distinguish a real quest from a fraudulent one. When ideologists talk of class theory or race theory, or conspiracy theory, or global warming theory, they are lying. A theory is suggestive of a scientific approach, but ideologists have no real interest in science or methods leading to the truth. Remember that they must establish their system as truth, with all its answers. The word theory, therefore, coming out of their mouths, is the biggest lie of all. It is bluff pseudo-science. All incidents, all documents, etc., are taken out of context by these “theorists” who regularly misuse language to pile one fallacy upon another. Their objective is to persuade the reader that their “system” is the truth.

The most alluring ideology posing as “theory” – for most Americans – is “conspiracy theory.” Many patriots, who would save their country, are caught up in false notions of a history-spanning and all-encompassing conspiracy that regularly diverts their attention from flesh-and-blood enemies who are running circles around them. More than other ideologists, the ideologists who believe in THE ONE GRAND OMNIPOTENT CABAL, are always boxing with shadows. But when have they ever landed a blow? As ideology, conspiracy theory uses the wrong methodologies, mixing fact with metaphor – mistaking paranoia for a sensory organ. The research that is presented by conspiracy theorists knows nothing of the “falsifiability Principle,” expounded by Karl Popper in his book, The Logic of Scientific Discovery. Smugly using a figure of speech as the subject of their sentences, conspiracy theorists follow the same failed practice as President George W. Bush in his “War on Terror.” They would prosecute a “War on Conspiracy” with a similarly futile outcome.

The most striking example of bad methodology in a conspiracy ideologist can be found in Anthony Sutton’s book, America’s Secret Establishment: An Introduction to the Order of Skull and Bones. “Now in scientific methodology,” wrote Sutton, “a hypothesis can be proven. It cannot be disproven.”[v] In other words, Sutton refused to accept the falsifiability principle. Perhaps he unconsciously realized that his work would have crumbled into dust once his many omissions – factual and contextual – were brought to light. It was convenient then, that his “theory” could not be questioned but only affirmed. One ought to ask, then: what kind of theorist could Sutton’s have been? Here is why I have never taken Anthony Sutton’s work seriously.

Another kind of conspiracy “theory” attaches to the ideology of antisemitism – the crudest ideology of all (and sometimes referred to as “the stupid man’s Marxism”). For example, conspiracist antisemitism believes that Jewish black magicians rule the world through the masonic lodges and the banks. What happens, indeed, when you show an antisemite that his beloved conspiracy theory, based on The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, was plagiarized from Maurice Joly’s book, The Dialogue in Hell Between Machiavelli and Montesquieu? Does the antisemite say, “Oops I goofed”? Does he do as Anthony Sutton did, and offer a perverted scientific methodology? Being simpler, the antisemite’s reaction is more earthy. Even if he is shown a copy of Joly’s book, he will say that the book itself is part of the larger deception. He will say to your face that you have been duped by the Jews.  And if you persist in arguing against his hobby horse, you will eventually find yourself denounced as an agent of the Zionist conspiracy.[vi]

Those who have adopted an ideology usually seem sincere in their beliefs. But this sincerity is not at all innocent. “Ideologies, whether Positivist, or Marxist, or National Socialist, indulge in constructions that are not intellectually tenable,” wrote the political philosopher Eric Voegelin. “That raises the question of why people who otherwise are not quite stupid, and who have the secondary virtues of being quite honest in their daily affairs, indulge in intellectual dishonesty as soon as they touch science.”[vii]

Intellectual dishonesty in this case, noted Voegelin, arises from the ideologist’s “persistent state of alienation.” To better understand what alienation means in this context, it is worth remembering that psychiatrists were once called “alienists.” That is to say, alienation is the root cause of madness (provided the patient’s symptoms owe nothing to a disease of the brain). In ancient and medieval times alienation signified estrangement from God or the divine ground of being (i.e., ultimate reality). Secular modernity uses the word alienation differently, referring to estrangement from society. Thus, modernity has adopted a peculiar view; for if God is the ultimate reality, and if insanity is estrangement from God, then reconciling a crazy person to a Godless society must also be crazy. On the other hand, if God does not exist, and reality is “other people,” then we have assuredlly come closer to validating Jean-Paul Sartre’s idea that “Hell is other people.” For any fool can see that our socially mediated secular reality is turning into Hell.[viii]

We should not be afraid, at this late hour, to call things by their proper names. So here is the bottom line: The modern world is gradually going to hell as it goes insane, and ideology is a symptom of that insanity. We should not be surprised, therefore, that our institutions are weighed down, more and more, by more and more ideological baggage, making us crazier and crazier. All around us people are offering false narratives, fake news, and facts out of context. When Tucker Carlson presented supposed evidence that “the CIA” was behind John F. Kennedy’s assassination we ought to ask whether all three letters in CIA were directly or indirectly involved? Was the C on the grassy knoll, the I in the book depository building? Where, then, was A positioned? This is not serious, of course, and neither is blaming an entire organization, made up of thousands of patriotic individuals, for murdering the President of the United States. But the purpose is clear, even if Carlson cannot see it. To reproduce Soviet KGB themes on FOX NEWS, without realizing what you have done, is a kind of madness.

Naturally, the worst kind of insanity is what we are seeing in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, in threats of nuclear war, and in China’s threats to invade Taiwan. This is the blood-soaked kind of insanity which will reach the shores of America one day. But for the present, the dominant political insanity in America takes the form of an all-encompassing political clown show – with spectacular pratfalls involving senile or orange-haired Bozos, special counsels, impeachments, fake news, and action-packed politics-as-sports & entertainment. It is great fun until you realize that the joke is always on us.

And what, pray tell, is wrong with clowns? The late Brazilian philosopher, Olavo de Carvalho, once said, “Never trust uncultured people.” A clown, in this context, is an uncultured person who has risen – inexplicably – to high office. Olavo understood that uncultured people are bound to fall in line with the first silly thing that captivates their otherwise flagging attention. A political clown is the first to believe in a conspiracy theory or false narrative that eventually promises to bring him into alignment with his country’s enemies. The thing about political clowns is their readiness to side against you and even themselves at the drop of a hat. A clown’s allegiance is always up for grabs. He will vote a communist into the White House because she smiles sweetly, talks about God, and pretends to be a conservative.

What makes for a clown is a readiness to over-simplify, to avoid anything serious, to say what is true without knowing anything at all. How can a serious thought exist out of nothing? And what is between a clown’s ears? Very little to nothing. Clowns are incurious and uncultured folks who know very little history or philosophy, and therefore have no context for judging politics. Yet they are loaded to the gills with judgments and certainties. This is a problem that generally afflicts our political discourse today, on the right and left.  

Ideology and Strategy

From the standpoint of global strategy, ideology has great importance; for an enemy sees your ideological stupidities better than you do, and he will play games based on these stupidities. Our friends and colleagues, sharing many of our preconceptions, add to the problem by joining with us in an intellectual phalanx of error, which Irving Janis called “groupthink.” Janis defined groupthink as “a deterioration of mental efficiency, reality testing, and moral judgment that results from in-group pressures.”[ix] Human beings tend to be stuck in their own respective echo chambers, constantly seeking reassurance, blotting out anyone who disagrees. Of course, when you are dealing with an enemy this sort of thing is very dangerous.

The Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union and its successor state have been studying America and Western Europe for the past century. They are well acquainted with our wishful thinking and our various misconceptions. In fact, they would like to foster as many misconceptions in us as they can; for good strategists make their own opportunities. Agents of influence, carrying out the instructions of Moscow Center, are meant to operate in the shadows; yet the most important shadows in which they operate are produced in minds beclouded by ignorance and ideology. In fact, Russian and Chinese agents of influence have used our own ideological preconceptions against us at every turn. For example, our economic conservatives and libertarians have always said that “communism does not work.” So the communists condescended to flatter them in the late 1980s, turning openly to capitalism. In this way the communists made inroads into the libertarian right. After 1991, when Russia pretended to become a Christian conservative country, paleoconservatives were romanced. Given the proprietary vanity which ideologists feel with regard to their ideas, who is so firm that he cannot be seduced? Ideological agreement can be a form of flattery, and flattery is an agent-recruiter’s most important tool.        

This leads us to consider the great success that Communism Incognito has had, behind the scenes, in American and European politics since 1991. The grandiose deception strategy adopted by the communist bloc in 1960,[x] which was predicated on organizing a false liberalization in Russia as well as market-oriented reforms in both Russia and China, appeared absurdly ambitious and optimistic on its face. To properly grasp the strategy’s ingenuity, one must see its psychological depth. The communists had done well insofar as they knew their enemy. They knew that the West wanted to be fooled. Especially, the West wanted to believe that the threat of nuclear world war was a thing of the past. Thus, the communist and post-communist theater productions of 1989-94 was a smash hit. Those who were paying attention could see the transparently sloppy stagecraft, especially in Czechoslovakia and Romania; yet, the whole thing came off easily; except that the communists had deceived themselves about the unpopularity of their own system. Here, they might have known their enemy but not themselves (for this is always the hardest thing of all). Where it came to the reactions of the West, the strategists in Moscow were masterful. Where it came to the reactions of Poles and Ukrainians and certain other peoples, they blundered badly. But that is a story for another time.

What made the deception work was in the strategist’s understanding of what the West wanted to believe ideologically, and, in fact, psychologically needed to believe. The collapse of the Soviet Union served to validate liberalism, market hedonism, and democratism. All doubts regarding these ideologies were instantly removed by the collapse of the Soviet Union. If the West had been blinded by its ideological assumptions before 1991, the West was blind and deaf and stupid ever afterward; for the West had won a great and painless victory. Heaven help anyone who came along to say otherwise.

The Advance of COmmunisM

In 1958 the American lawyer Robert Morris, who had worked as counsel to the Senate subcommittee on internal security, warned about the infiltration of the communists. “My friends tell me I take these things too seriously,” Morris wrote. “But what I see is an encirclement that has its goal my own five children.” Morris then said there was a connection between the advance of communism abroad and its advance within our country. “Whether it is the Congo, Laos or Berlin, these are mere stepping stones, in Khrushchev’s eye, to the real target, the United States. We are the only obstacle to his goal of world dominion. If we fail, our whole civilization is lost.”[xi]

Morris’s book, which chronicles his legal and intelligence battles against communism in the 1930s, 40s, and 50s, is long forgotten now; yet it was a brilliant little history, full of shocking details and unpalatable truth-telling. Morris wrote, “The treachery, the credulity, the ineptitude and the complacency, seem so fantastic. And beholding them, it is no wonder we are losing.”[xii] Morris wrote those words in 1958. Indeed, what would he say now that Brazil is falling to Fidel’s friend, Lula? Of course, despite his many disappointments Morris was not inclined to give up. He said our inability to defeat communism had to do with human weakness, and that these weaknesses could be overcome. He wrote, “perhaps we can effect a stirring reversal.” So far, the most striking moves against communism have occurred in places like Poland, the Baltic States, Georgia and Ukraine. In fact, Ukraine is the only country in Europe that presently bans its Communist Party. (Hungary and Moldova had bans at one time.) In 2015 the Ukrainians legally prohibited communist symbols and barred the Communist Party from participating in elections. Of course, Moscow did not take this lying down.

With the war in Ukraine and the communist takeover in Brazil, we can see America’s peril with greater clarity. The government of the United States, under President Joseph Biden, supports the rise to power in Brazil of a convicted criminal, friend of Fidel Castro, and communist conspirator – Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. In fact, the U.S. Secretary of State has threatened the Brazilian military should it block Lula’s presidency. Here is a bit of that insanity we were discussing earlier; for President Bolsonaro, who is routinely vilified by American Democrats and leftists, is a pro-American politician. He is friendly to American values, while Lula da Silva hates the United States, being friendly to Cuba and China and Russia. In 2019 Bolsonaro offered the United States the possibility of having military bases on Brazilian soil to counter the Russian threat emerging out of Venezuela.[xiii] But this never materialized, and the Biden Administration’s concerns about Russian infiltration of the Western Hemisphere are not anywhere visible. In fact, the Biden Administration will do nothing to prevent Russian military units from deploying to Nicaragua (as announced last year).

We can only understand what is happening in terms of profound ideological changes that have taken place within in the United States since the supposed end of the Cold War. Socialism is becoming acceptable in the United States for the first time. This would have been inconceivable fifty years ago. Consider how Washington reacted when a communist came to power in a South American country 53 years ago, when Chile elected Salvador Allende as their president. The CIA bunglingly pressured reluctant Chilean generals to overthrow Allende.[xiv] Now U.S. policy has swung to the opposite position – welcoming communists into power throughout Latin America, threatening those who might oppose communism with force of arms.

This is tragic for millions in Brazil who know their country will be looted by Lula and his communist gangster friends. Millions in Brazil are in the streets, protesting for their deliverance. But President Biden is one of those clowns discussed earlier, who does not know on what side his bread is buttered. – Or does he? At this late hour nobody should be naïve. A time of troubles is beginning for Brazil. The leading institutions of the country no longer belong to the Brazilian people.

In his farewell address, before leaving Brazil, President Bolsonaro said “violence will return to Brazil.” Then he predicted, amid mixed signals, what lay in store:

[They will] stop the economic wheel from spinning and there will be no money for public services. It won’t happen like the pandemic, when you received your full paycheck. With no economy there will be no resources. Everyone will suffer. But I am sure, it won’t take long. Brazil will come back to normal, to prosperity, to order and progress, to respect, love for our flag. Brazil won’t succumb.

Sadly, these hopeful words ring hollow in the wake of what is happening in Brazil. Hundreds are being arrested, including anticommunist journalists. I understand why Bolsonaro fled his country, since nobody wants to be tortured in a communist jail. But was not Bolsonaro like the captain of a ship? Was he not obliged, in some sense, to go down with that ship – to fight to the end? I cannot judge a man for saving his own life. But then, I think of the millions he left behind – the 1,700 Brazilian patriots arrested. The only hope Brazil had was in Bolsonaro. Now the Brazilian people will have to do what the Ukrainian people did; that is, distrust their leaders and mock them – to the point of settling on a comedian as president; for if one must have clowns, then have a real one. It is a choice that has proven satisfactory in Ukraine.

And what does the vile American press have to say about the Brazilian patriots? The vile American media slanders the Brazilian patriots as “right wing extremists.” Earlier in his farewell speech, Bolsonaro said that peace required guns and that peace required war preparations. But then, tearfully, he turned everything upside down, telling his followers, “Always seek peace, harmony – not just talk about it. How important this is, in this quick journey here on earth, to live in peace.” As a blubbering subtext, we can here someone mumbling –

This is the way the world endsThis is the way the world endsThis is the way the world endsNot with a bang but a wimper.

Links and Notes

[i] Bella Dodd, School of Darkness (Kindle Edition), p. 263 at 46 percent. Dodd was a Communist Party lawyer who had worked for communist control of the leading teachers’ unions, which captured the education system in the state of New York by 1939. For further details the takeover of America’s schools in New York and New Jersey: Robert Morris, No Wonder We Are Losing (New York, The Bookmailer, 1958).

[ii] https://dialogo-americas.com/articles/russia-venezuela-military-partnership-a-threat-to-latin-america/#.Y8GWdHbMK3A

[iii] https://www.amazon.com/Marx-Biography-Robert-PAYNE/dp/B0006D7CAW/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1ZYTPFZRHV0QA&keywords=Marx+by+Robert+Payne&qid=1673635095&sprefix=marx+by+robert+payne%2Caps%2C109&sr=8-1

[iv] In France, during the eighteenth century, the term ideology was first used to describe the scientific study of ideas. But through common usage, during the turbulence of the French Revolution, it became what it is today; that is, a byword for various political belief systems. Napoleon Bonaparte was astute enough to realize that ideology represented something negative; for he used the word ideology as term of abuse, depicting his opponents as “ideologues.” The correctness of this usage was also recognized by Karl Marx, who knew exactly what he was doing when he concocted his own ideological system – disguised as philosophy (i.e., dialectical materialism). Unlike Marx, who said ideologies were mere byproducts of “material life conditions,” Eric Voegelin suggested that ideologies were the result of man’s spiritual estrangement from the “divine ground” of being. The key point is that ideologists do not begin with God and advance to an ordered understanding. They begin estranged from the “divine ground of being,” and invent their own truth – which is hardly propitious.

[v] Anthony C. Sutton, America’s Secret Establishment: An Introduction to the Order of Skull & Bones (Oregon: TrineDay LLC, 2002), p. 2.

[vi] Conspiracy theorists who believe I am an agent of the conspiracy, however, need to explain my relative poverty and underemployment over the past thirty years. If I am somehow supporting Doctor Evil and his crew, why didn’t they get me on Fox News? – or, at least, a better book deal!

[vii] Eric Voegelin, Autobiographical Reflections (USA: Louisiana State University Press, 1989), p. 45.

[viii]

[ix] https://www.the-philosophy.com/sartre-hell-is-other-people https://ethicsunwrapped.utexas.edu/glossary/groupthink#:~:text=According%20to%20psychologist%20Irving%20Janis,the%20group’s%20competence%20and%20morality.

[x] See KGB Major Anatoliy Golitsyn, New Lies for Old (New York: Dodd & Mead, 1984).

[xi] Morris, p. 213.

[xii] Ibid, p. 216.

[xiii] https://apnews.com/article/44fab22af15b45b2846778e9c922adeb

[xiv] The Chilean generals refused to do the CIA’s bidding, but overthrew Allende on their own initiative when he violated the Constitution by attempting to raise his own troops.

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Suppose the plan is to process millions of people and at some future date trigger those minds at one time? Would we suddenly have a world of saints or a world of armed maniacs shooting at one another from bell towers?
John A. Keel[i]

One can detect signs of a suicidal impulse; one feels at times that the modern world is calling for madder music and for stronger wine, is craving some delirium which will take it completely away from reality. One is made to think of Kierkegaard’s figure of spectators in the theater, who applaud the announcement and repeated announcement that the building is on fire.
Richard M. Weaver[ii]

It is January 2023. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine continues, with support flowing in from communist China and North Korea. On the brink of acquiring nuclear weapons, Iran also supports Russia. It is no surprise, therefore, that Cuba and Venezuela are hoping for a Russian victory in Ukraine, along with the old/new President of Brazil, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who ambiguously supports “peace” in Eastern Europe – if only to mask his commitment to the Russia-China bloc.[iii]

Countries keep falling, one after the other, as the creeping red frontier advances. Within the U.S. Establishment everyone has eyes, but nobody sees. Everyone has ears, but nobody hears. Everyone has a brain, but nobody knows how to think. The government is sleepwalking toward an abyss. What passes for sight, and sound, and thought, is a muddled hash of unanalyzed “data.” On the right and the left, only a few glimmers of independent thought remain – bypassed by the surrounding wave of mental extinctions.

In his book, The Demon in Democracy, Polish statesman and philosopher Ryszard Legutko explained that he had encountered a curious affinity between communism and liberal democracy. Legutko realized this, back in the 1970s, the first time he “managed to get out of communist Poland to travel in the so-called West.” Legutko wrote:

To my unpleasant surprise, I discovered that many of my friends who consciously classified themselves as devoted supporters of liberal democracy – of a multiparty system, human rights, pluralism, and everything that every liberal democrat proudly listed as his acts of faith – displayed extraordinary meekness and empathy toward communism.[iv]

Legutko had imagined that Western liberals would have a visceral dislike of communism. He was surprised to find they were anti-anticommunist. During the post-Watergate era, the people who were most frequently condemned by liberals were anticommunists. That is somewhat funny, since one of the biggest liberal heroes – John F. Kennedy – was stridently anticommunist. But who dares to remember such an inconvenient fact? After Kennedy’s assassination, liberal anticommunism steadily declined. Today, liberal democrats are inclined to lump conservative anticommunists with antisemites, fascists, and Nazis. Stranger still, as the left continued down the path of anti-anticommunism after the fall of the Soviet Union, conservatives also began to evolve away from the old anticommunist way of thinking – either moving further left, or further right.

We heard so much about the “collapse of communism” back in 1991. But nobody (except a solitary KGB defector)[v] said anything at the time, or later, about the collapse of anticommunism. The collapse of anticommunism, first among liberals and then among conservatives, opened the door to a scissors strategy which might well lead to a follow-on convergence strategy – along the lines of a “red-brown” alliance. You only had to push liberals further left and conservatives further right, bringing them closer to a common revolutionary/authoritarian model. The key to this strategy of Western destruction was to enlarge the sphere of the radical left and the radical right, eliminating the tepid middle ground.

Once the Soviet Union pulled down the hammer and sickle flag, new political thinking could be promoted in the West. People who were then on the right and the left may have credited themselves as champions of freedom, but now that the burden of anti-Sovietism and anticommunism was lifted from their shoulders, they were free to gather power to themselves, without concern for the mechanisms that preserved liberty (or the principles they once espoused). The left could move further left, taking all institutions with them. Libertarians were free to reminisce about the Confederacy while praising Putin’s economic policies. The conservative right, feeling more and more alienated, would drift further into a paleo void that was, to put it mildly, full of shadows. Was the whole ideological transformation of the West, which began as the Cold War ended, a process shaped and intentionally unleashed by Moscow? The key to this question was that every side – and every shade of opinion – had to eschew genuine anticommunism (that is, an anticommunism that knew how communism worked, and how it could shapeshift by appropriating non-communist symbols and ideals). The key insight that everyone missed in 1989-1991 was that communism did not die. Instead, it went underground and put on a disguise, only to pop up on all sides, wearing several different masks (i.e., environmentalism, globalism, free trade, and conspiracism). All the new ideological innovations displaced anticommunism – which was thought to have no relevance and certainly no appeal.[vi]

According to Legutko, anti-anticommunism “was almost immediately recognized as an important component of the new political orthodoxy that was taking shape [after the fall of the Soviet Union]. Those who were anticommunists were [said to be] a threat to liberal democracy….”[vii] For many years, of course, our free institutions were held together by fear of the Soviet Union. In retrospect we can see how clever it was to remove that fear. Once removed, the hollowness of the West became apparent. Our political traditions, which traced back through Britain to Greece and Rome, were not on a solid footing because we had forgotten about Polybius. This general forgetfulness regarding the principles of “mixed government” meant that nobody understood the importance of constitutional checks and balances. It is difficult to find a politician or a political commentator, who has read Polybius’ commentary on the Roman constitution which, in fact, inspired our own constitution. They do not know the origins of the liberty they enjoy. And, not understanding anything of importance, many have shown themselves ready to toss whatever stands in the way of their ambitions. Only a few voices, on the right and the left, seem to understand this instinctually. It seems, rather, that players from both ends of the political spectrum crave a cudgel with which to persecute their political opponents.

What the former communist agent, Whittaker Chambers, once said about liberalism is now true of many right-wingers; for the ever mutating communist bloc, artfully depicting its Russian Federation structures as nationalist and Christian, has made full use of rightwing solicitudes, “and sometimes flatter them to their faces, [but] in private they treat them with that same sneering contempt that the strong and predatory almost invariably feel for victims who volunteer to help in their own victimization.”[viii]

A Plan for Civil War?

Igor Nikolaevich Panarin, born in 1958, graduated from the Higher Military School of Telecommunications of the KGB and the Division of Psychology of the Lenin Military-Political Academy (with a gold medal). In the 1990s he did strategic forecasting for Boris Yeltsin and headed the Analytical Division of the Central Election Commission of Russia. In 1998 Panarin allegedly used data from classified sources to assess American society. After careful consideration, he forecast the “probable” breakup and conquest of the United States. If his prognostications are correct, North America will eventually look something like this:

In 2008, when a global financial crisis was approaching, Panarin suggested the U.S. might break up by 2010. Notice, from the map above, that China gets the Western states while Alaska goes to Russia. According to the GRU defector Stanislav Lunev, at the end of the Cold War China and Russia negotiated a division of spoils that would occur at the conclusion of a future world war in which Chinese manpower and Russian missile-power would combine into an irresistible military combination. Lunev’s map is different, yet more believable; for Lunev does not include Japan or the European Union, or Mexico or Canada in the division of spoils. After all, if the United States actually collapsed, all these countries would find themselves in a subservient position to Moscow and Beijing. Why would these minor powers be entitled to chunks of America? But Panarin, who was then making a public presentation, had to pander. “Look,” he was cynically saying, “you will get a piece of the pie. We won’t leave you out. Don’t worry.”

Of special notice is the length of time during which Panarin’s study of a future civil war in America has been ongoing. According to Daniele Scalea, writing in Eurasia,[ix] Panarin’s study of America’s collapse into civil war was not completed in 1998. The study was a continuing project, as if Russian strategists were interested in the subject for reasons other than momentary curiosity. This, of course, makes Panarin’s study sound like an adjunct to somebody’s military planning. One might ask whether Russian and Chinese agents are presently at work, promoting American disunity, infiltrating the America left and right, using information warfare (for example, through things like the QAnon operation, through the open border policies of corrupt Democratic politicians, through the summer riots of 2020 and rising concerns about voter fraud).

Ironically, we are already awash in claims – from the right and the left – that Russia and/or China are manipulating our internal politics. So, ask yourself: What if Russia and China are playing divide and conquer ping-pong with our divided electorate? What if various American factions are being manipulated by the country they think will be their future indispensable partner? (For example, what if the right is being manipulated by Russia and the left by China?) Here is a hypothesis worth entertaining.

Some might argue that America is committing suicide without outside interference. But there is interference, and it is coming from the outside. We know that Antifa was connected to China. We know that Russia played some kind of game with us during the 2016 election. Consider the fact that America’s enemies are patient, but they are not infinitely patient. A slow and organic process might require a “good hard push” from behind. Beijing and Moscow would be remiss if they failed to take advantage. If America has become neurotic to the point of suicidal tendencies, why not exacerbate the situation? So, China and Russia do not mind if they are seen dabbling in our politics. The Russians want liberals to think conservatives are Russian puppets. The Chinese do not mind if everyone knows they have bought our “liberal” President. Do you see how this works?

At the same time, Americans are presently confused about their enemies, ideologically disoriented, and locked into various conspiracy narratives about America’s military-industrial complex, the CIA, the bankers, the Satanic baby-eaters, and the little grey molesters from Zeta Reticuli. The Dealey Lama is still under Dealey Plaza, orchestrating JFK’s firing squad. Or as QAnon used to say, “Where we go one we go all” – yes! – to the madhouse. People are now so paranoid, so distrustful, that they are open to anything – will believe in anything, however absurd. Given these circumstances, it would be child’s play for Russia and China to use information warfare to trigger a civil war between these sad disoriented people.

In an interview on RT in November 2008, Panarin made a rather remarkable admission which makes the whole civil war scenario even more alarming. Panarin said that he began writing his theory on America’s breakup in 1990, when the USSR was still intact (before the Russian and Chinese generals were meeting secretly and making agreements about the division of North America, according to Col. Lunev). It follows that Panarin’s U.S. civil war scenario was being worked on for at least eighteen years by the time of his RT interview, regardless of political changes in Russia (i.e., suggesting continuity between Soviet and Russian policy).

In the RT interview, Panarin noted the differing historical and cultural situations of America’s regions. Undoubtedly, like Ukraine, America is not a real country. It is something that can and should be eliminated and absorbed. Various states, he said, “have different levels of economic significance.” Logically, the interests of north and south are not the same. The interests of east and west are also not the same. In this 2008 interview, Panarin suggested that a “huge crisis may develop in the fall of 2009.” Panarin’s analysis is akin to Marx’s “crisis of capitalism” which, in Marxist theory, summons revolutionary forces into existence. Here is an event long anticipated by Soviet military theorists. What Panarin has done, in some sense, is recast the future collapse of capitalism as “the breakup of America,” changing out communist rhetoric about “revolution” for a divide-and-conquer narrative about civil war.   

The old Soviet idea about the start of World War III was that capitalism would collapse and America’s wicked “military-industrial complex” would be wiped away in short order. The American “imperialists,” seeing their inevitable doom, would naturally lash out against the socialist bloc, launching a desperate nuclear salvo. Stopping this from happening, the glorious Soviet military would launch preventive nuclear strikes to stop “the aggressor.” Given the changes that were planned in the Soviet Union, this way of talking about a future world war had to be revised at some point. Panarin appears to be the man charged with the revision. We may suspect, in this context, that Panarin was tasked in 1990 with updating the rationale for invading and occupying North America. Instead of a Leninist revolutionary rationale, which was not likely to occur, Panarin envisioned a more realistic civil war scenario.

“[Eventually] the United States will be divided into six separate states,” said Panarin, organized under five foreign power bases: New York and Washington will be under London, the rest being divided between Mexico, Canada, China and Russia. “I believe that Alaska should return to Russia,” said Panarin, “and there is a very good manager, Roman Abramovich, who is been really successful at managing Chukotka [Autonomous Okrug], so I believe he will manage with ruling Alaska as well.”

What will trigger the Second American Civil War? “The dollar is not backed by gold,” noted Panarin, “and there are too many dollars.” A situation of economic collapse, leading directly to political collapse and internal warfare, is inevitable. Panarin further stated that Russia could put its currency on the gold standard and thereby become the reserve currency for Eurasia. (It may not be a coincidence that Russia has since backed its currency with gold. In fact, it is believed that Russia and China have been conspiring for many years to create a new gold-backed currency to replace the dollar worldwide.)[x]

 If we are to understand the current political situation, we need to keep Panarin’s scenario in mind. We should also look unfavorably on anyone who would divide the United States ideologically while looking to Russia as an ally. In fact, there are factions on the American right who have flirted with the so-called Russian “philosopher,” Alexander Dugin, who falsely styles himself a “Traditionalist.” I would like to close this essay with a warning to these folks by quoting from a genuine Traditionalist named Charles Upton, who wrote a brilliant book titled Dugin Against Dugin:

Man is not a function of politics; politics is a function of man. To alienate man from himself by claiming [as Dugin does] that he is a function of, a creature of, something less than himself – namely, ‘violence and legitimate power’ in the human world – is neither to liberate him nor to assign him to his true place and function in the Hierarchy of Being; it is to denature him, deconstruct him, crush him.[xi]

Notes and Links

[i] John A. Keel, Why UFOs: Operation Trojan Horse (USA: Manor Books, 1976). A more extended series of quotes from the book, dealing with UFOs and psychological warfare, is worth a footnote for the full context. Keel wrote, “The real truth is that the UFO cultists have been played for suckers for years, not by the government, but by the phenomenon.” (p. 276). Before continuing with Keel’s full argument, which is deeply nuanced and may have been calculated in its naivete, we need to consider Keel’s early career; especially, his admission that he served in the U.S. Army, during the Korean War, on the staff of the American Forces Network, located in Frankfurt, Germany. This will come into play later, as we unravel Keel’s larger argument concerning “Operation Trojan Horse.” What we have in Keel’s pulp nonfiction is a narrative nested inside other narratives, tending to a super-narrative (i.e., a cosmology). Keel offers his readers an explanation for religion, a philosophy of history that merges with demonology, and a political science of the occult which curiously mirrors Machiavelli’s famous comments regarding “spirits of the air” in The Discourses. Keel’s book is, curiously, much too sophisticated for its own genre. Given all this, what are we to think when a former Army propagandist writes, “The real truth is….”? He tells us that “Operation Trojan Horse” is the Plan of non-material demonic entities he calls “ultraterrestrials,” validated under the subheading, “UFOs and things that go bump in the night.” (p. 219) Instead of attributing “the phenomenon’s” message to human agency, to CIA or KGB spooks, Keel attributes the UFO message to real spooks. If this were all he wrote, Keel’s hints and asides would not be as intriguing as they are. In fact, he could not resist showing us more than his thesis required, explaining that the earliest UFO stories were cribbed from “fiction in cheap men’s magazines.” (As if demons would read, or pay close attention, to pulp science fiction.) If pagan and Christian poets down the centuries honored their muses’ creativity, it is strange indeed that Keel’s ultraterrestrials would plagiarize from rubbish. And then there is the clear political message at work behind the UFO phenomenon. Here we see all humanity cast suddenly as “one,” coinciding with John Lennon’s song and Vladimir Lenin’s ultimate agenda. What we see, in the literature of ET belief, is anti-capitalist, anti-government pap. When such ideas become widely accepted, who benefits? The main enemy of that government, of course. In terms of psychological warfare, revolutionary socialism is the obvious beneficiary of most ET narratives. While Keel hints at a coming revolution, which he depicts as sinister and destructive, we nonetheless find that he is, after all, a U.S. Army psychological warfare guy – a defender of order on the margins (but only on the margins). Confirming all this, he wrote, “Situations have been engineered by the phenomenon to make the UFO cultists suspicious of the government and even of one another. The in-fighting between the various groups deserves special study by itself.” Keel added, “Let’s not underestimate the skill of our intelligence organizations.” (p. 277) Clearly, he noted, U.S. intelligence has been coping with the situation all along. Oddly, Keel then refers to the rumor that he himself is a CIA agent. What follows is not a denial or an admission. He quotes the famous UFO contactee Howard Menger, who praised the CIA as playing an essential role in defending us from “these people on the outside trying to get in and conquer us.” Then Keel introduces another narrative: “It is probable that some small group within the U.S. first began to suspect the truth about UFOs during World War II. There is curious evidence that Adolf Hitler and his inner circle had some knowledge of the ultraterrestrials and may have even made an effort to communicate with them.” (p. 278) Here we get into a very curious area, where world history meets up with dark forces indeed. Keel then wrote, “No responsible government could really attempt to explain this bizarre situation to the general public. Our military establishment has therefore been forced to follow a simpler policy, denying the reality of the phenomenon without trying to explain it. If flying saucers are a cosmic hoax, then it follows naturally that many of man’s basic beliefs may be based on similar hoaxes. No government is willing to expose these beliefs or become involved in the terrible controversies that would result from such exposure.” (p. 279) Here Keel cracks open an enormous can of worms. Yet, following the government’s pattern, he dismisses the whole thing, debunks the extraterrestrial hypothesis in favor of a scientized demonology. If Keel was a military intelligence operative, this would have been his mission. During the Cold War we entered an era of unprecedented psychological warfare in which a New Religion, then advancing under the banner of Marxism-Leninism, was trying to establish its legitimacy worldwide. All existing religions were targets of the New Religion’s attack. Furthermore, being atheistic, replacing gods with spacemen would be the perfect narrative by which the new religion could unite humanity. However, the arrogance of the atheist who plays God may suffer an unexpected check from the Real Thing; for the cosmos and man’s soul was already ordered, and possessed a sense What if, in the midst of this attack, the transcendental realm did not appreciate the presumption? Would the attempt to be God result in objective consequences of the strangest kind? Of course, it is true that special psychological operations using scientific techniques can create and unravel belief systems very quickly, what if the originator(s) of the belief system exist outside physical reality and, in real time, are fighting back? After 1945, some of our intelligence analysts would have understood the threat posed by rumors of “aliens landing on earth,” especially if this phenomenon eventually devolved into “abductions” in remote areas, use of mind control drugs against unsuspecting civilians, and hypnosis. A former U.S. intelligence operative once told me, “The alien abduction phenomenon was created by Soviet intelligence as a form of false flag recruitment.” Oddly, this testimony was indirectly confirmed by Annie Jacobsen’s work on Area 51. Against howls of derision, she cited a high-level source that Stalin’s agents, operating from an airfield in Mexico, had faked at least one UFO crash in New Mexico. Even more bizarre, this claim is indirectly supported in Jacques Vallee and Paola Harris’s recent book, Trinity: The Best-Kept Secret, about a New Mexico UFO crash where a panel was taken off the object before the U.S. Army carted it away. Subjected to testing, that panel was found to be of terrestrial manufacture and was made using the metric system. Naturally, the UFO phenomenon can be traced back through many centuries; and Vallee among others lean away from the extraterrestrial hypothesis. Yet, the Third Reich, or various intelligence services after 1945, could use the phenomenon for “piggy-backing.” Keel skirts this possibility in the following passage: “Having been trained in psychological warfare during my stint as a propaganda writer for the U.S. Army, I have been particularly … concerned over the obvious hoaxes and manipulations apparently designed to foster both belief and disbelief in the reality of flying saucers. I have tried objectively to weigh all of the factors, pro and con, throughout my investigations and in this book. Frankly, I have gone through periods when I was absolutely convinced that those Trojan horses were, indeed, following a careful plan designed ultimately to conquer the human race from within. The physical Trojan horse concept seemed alarmingly valid to me for a long time.” (p. 282). Keel then explained that he turned away from this hypothesis, seeing an undefinable cosmic pattern connecting humanity to “another world.” The phenomenon is much too complicated to explain as the result of psychological warfare. Yet, whoever would engage in such warfare must know something about it, must exploit what they know, and must eventually confront – however reluctantly – what Freud called “the muck of the occult.”

[ii] Richard M. Weaver, Ideas Have Consequences (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962), p. 185.

[iii] On the eve of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Cuba announced its plans to “deepen ties with Russia.” Cuba to deepen ties with Russia as Ukraine tensions mount | Reuters. The Cubans have been openly appreciative of the support given to them by their “comrades” in Russia. Just google “Cuba thanks Russia” and you will have a full plate of reading.

[iv] Ryszard Legutko, The Demon in Democracy: Totalitarian Temptations in Free Societies (Kindle Edition), p. 1.

[v] Major Anatoliy Golitsyn.

[vi] Anyone who tried to argue for the relevance of anticommunism to the present situation was, like Diana West, attacked from the right.

[vii] Ibid, p. 2.

[viii] Whittaker Chambers, Witness (Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing, Inc., 2002 – 50th Anniversary Edition), p. 202.

[ix] Panarin and the disintegration of the USA :: Daniele Scalea :: Eurasia (archive.org)

[x] Russia, China may be preparing new gold-backed currency, but expert assures US dollar ‘safest’ currency today | Fox Business

[xi] Charles Uptson, Dugin Against Dugin: A Traditionalist Critique of the Fourth Political Theory (USA: Reviviscimus, 2018), p. 288.

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Unless either the philosophers become kings … or those who now are called kings and rulers become philosophers … there will be no rest from evil … nor, I believe, for the human race either. And not until that happens, will this politeia of ours have a measure of growth and see the light of the sun.
Socrates [i]

Are we ruled by wise men or fools? Which country has a philosopher as head of state? France, perhaps? When French President Emmanuel Macron conducted an eight-hour “Great Debate of Ideas” with dozens of academics, people were left wondering. Should we take him seriously? Or is Emmanuel Macron merely an intellectual posing as a philosopher? Rather than striking a pose, a philosopher is concerned with deeper truths while the politician shaves the truth for the sake of political expediency. As Machiavelli might say, deceit is the politician’s obligation if he hopes to succeed. This is how ambitious politicians become slaves to untruth – like the criminal who cannot stop adding to his crimes because a turn toward honesty would prove fatal. In brief, the politician who serves expediency might imagine himself to be powerful and free. Yet he becomes trapped by his own expedient lies.

Diogenes the Cynic, a famous Greek philosopher who lived in a large clay pot, was once noticed by Alexander the Great examining a pile of human bones. Alexander’s curiosity being aroused, he asked what the philosopher was doing. “I am searching for the bones of your father,” he allegedly replied, “but I cannot distinguish them from those of a slave.”

Xenophon tells the story of Euthydemus, an Athenian youth who fancied himself the best educated of his generation because he had acquired a great many books that would teach him how to be a successful politician.[ii] Socrates sat down with the youth and inquired about his ambition. “I want to be a politician and administrator,” admitted Euthydemus. Socrates said this was commendable and praised Euthydemus for studying “the art of kingship.” Then Socrates asked, “But have you satisfied yourself whether it is possible to become good at these things without being morally good?” Socrates admonished the youth that ignorance of moral goodness signifies enslavement (i.e., to vice).   

In Ambrose Bierce’s Devil’s Dictionary we find the following definition of the word EMANCIPATION: “A bondman’s change from the tyranny of another to the despotism of himself.” Bierce then set down four lines of poetry by “G.J.”

He was a slave: at word he went and came;His iron collar cut him to the bone.Then Liberty erased his owner’s name,Tightened the rivets and inscribed his own.

At the beginning of his Politics, Aristotle says there are pairings of persons and things that need each other. His first example was the pairing of male and female, necessary for the survival of the human race. Aristotle then suggested another natural pairing – that of rulers and ruled. Aristotle explained that those who can use their intelligence to look ahead are by nature rulers and masters, “while that which has the bodily strength to do the actual work is by nature a slave, one of those who is ruled. Thus there is a common interest in uniting master and slave.”[iii]

Of course, this formulation makes a poor impression on today’s liberals and socialists, whose demagoguery consists in flattering the masses. They prefer to speak in terms of “democracy,” which promises liberty and equality for all. Aristotle’s ”pairing” of rulers and ruled is something no democratic politician would care to expound upon. He would prefer to say that “the people” are the rulers. Indeed, we think of ourselves as self-governing and free. But this is not exactly true. As Aristotle was a reasonable man, he would have admitted that the “slaves” created by a political pairing of rulers and ruled might enjoy many freedoms in practice; and these freedoms might even be respected for generations. Yet all these “free men” are not helmsmen on the Ship of State, or captains. The Ship of State is not theirs to command. So, what are they? The masses of today are either passengers on that Ship of State, or members of the ship’s crew. Following our analogy further, because the sea is dangerous and emergencies are inevitable, the captain of a ship must always have absolute authority over passengers and crew. Otherwise, he is no captain at all.

Where, indeed, does a captain get his authority from? Is moral goodness necessary to his office? Is it the case that any “empty suit” will suffice? Looking at a professional politician like President Joe Biden, who governs America as the ultimate empty suit, can anyone honestly say he has the wherewithal to be a captain? Or is he a slave of corruption, obligated to let the Ship of State sink in the next storm? Can we imagine him accepting the same responsibility for his actions as the captain of a real ship? Would he go down with his ship? Or is he a human placeholder, standing in the shoes of George Washington without any of Washington’s virtues? Looking at the Republican side, do we see any prospective captains? There are those who believe that Donald Trump is a proper captain, yet his opponents clearly regard him as a “Captain Bligh.”[iv] Such was the mutiny that erupted during Trump’s presidency, which proved to be a political booby prize.   

It is my suspicion (and only a suspicion) that our Ship of State has no captain, and no real crew. Watching things unfold, I suspect that our Ship of State has been hijacked. Whoever is at the helm, whatever course they claim to be sailing, is not to be trusted. The man who is impersonating the captain is obviously taking direction from somebody else. I doubt he knows where the ship is going. It may be that a monster of the deep, with a strange hypnotic power, has taken charge of the ship. I am thinking of a many-headed serpent called Ideology. Emblazoned on each of its heads is an ism – egalitarianism, Marxism, liberalism, feminism, conspiracism, etc.

Since nearly everyone is hypnotized by this many-headed serpent, nobody is free to act. All are enslaved by the prevailing ideological lies. How, indeed, do we defeat this many-headed serpent? Every attempt to break the spell of one “ism” traps us in another. The serpent’s coils continue to tighten around us. There appears to be no escape. It seems we are slaves of one political gospel or another. The most sinister development, however, is that our favored political gospels prevent the pairing of captain and crew. Our political system is largely dysfunctional because every man is captain over himself. Every man is now a king. Gilbert and Sullivan’s Gondoliers explains this situation in terms of a fable:

There lived a King, as I’ve been told,In the wonder-working days of old,When hearts were twice as good as gold,And twenty times as mellow….

He wished all men as rich as he(And he was rich as rich could be),So to the top of every treePromoted everybody….

Lord Chancellors were cheap as sprats,And Bishops in their shovel hatsWere plentiful as tabby cats –In point of fact, too many.Ambassadors cropped up like hay,Prime Ministers and such as theyGrew like asparagus in May,And Dukes were three a penny.On every side Field-Marshals gleamed,Small beer were Lords-Lieutenant deemed,With Admirals the ocean teemedAll round his wide dominions.

And Party Leaders you might meetIn twos and threes in every streetMaintaining, with no little heat,Their various opinions.

That King, although no one deniesHis heart was of abnormal size,Yet he’d have acted otherwiseIf he had been acuter.The end is easily foretold,When every blessed thing you holdIs made of silver, or of gold,You long for simple pewter.When you have nothing else to wearBut cloth of gold you cease to care –Up goes the price of shoddy.

CHORUS

When every one is somebodeeThen no one’s anybody!

Welcome to the topsy-turvy world of democratic egalitarianism. If everyone is responsible for the Ship of State, then nobody is responsible. As noted earlier, I suspect the ship has no captain at all. It has either been hijacked by bandits or it is adrift. How can we get out of this situation? It cannot be fixed so long as the pairing of captain and crew has been disrupted by Ideology. This is the monster that must be defeated first. Surely, with the next storm, our ship will come to grief. Poisoned by Ideology’s hallucinogen, we look upon the horizon and see only a Promised Utopia. Sadly, it is a rocky shore on which our Ship of State must crash.

Looking back at the last several centuries, we might ask why this is happening? Why is Ideology afflicting us? Monsters of the deep are mysterious creatures who dwell in darkness. One such monster was described long ago by the ancient Egyptians. They called it the Apep – a chaos demon in the form of a serpent who constantly battled the sun god, Ra. Here is a very old representation of a battle that is waged through eternity between light and darkness, good and evil, truth and falsehood. What we are experiencing today is an iteration of this battle. Our chaos demon is called Ideology. It has injected mankind with a blinding agent which has disrupted those images and structures on which the human soul depends.

In his poem, “The Waste Land,” T.S. Eliot penned the following lines:

What are the roots that clutch, what branches growOut of this stony rubbish? Son of man,You cannot say, or guess, for you know onlyA heap of broken images, where the sun beats,And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief….

Here is the rocky shore we are headed to. Eliot is writing about spiritual desertification and its consequences. He wrote the poem after suffering from a nervous breakdown in the aftermath of the First World War. The poem itself partakes of the dryness it depicts. (In other words, Eliot is writing what he knows.) And there is nothing fertile in this dryness. Nothing can take root in it. There is drought, dust, red rock without water, cracked mouths, dry bones, and “dry sterile thunder without rain.” In his poetry Eliot falls back on dryness again and again because dryness is akin to emptiness, and his contemporaries were, as he famously noted elsewhere, “hollow.” Eliot’s key phrase, which tells us what this poem signifies, is his reference to a “heap of broken images.” These images are quite clearly the treasures of the mind and soul. The interpretation follows that something has caused a desert to form in man’s soul. And all those images, on which spiritual meaning depend, lie broken. Among these are Aristotle’s pairings – man and woman, ruler and ruled, God and the Universe. [v]

Eric Voegelin once described the twentieth century in terms of an oppressive flood of ideological nonsense. Men were, he said, “hemmed in, if not oppressed, from all sides….” After World War I, society was bombarded with “language symbols that pretend to be concepts but in fact are unanalyzed … topics.”[vi] Here is a realm of “idols” dressed up as science that are, in fact, pseudo-science; from the “scientific socialism” of Karl Marx to the National Socialism of Adolf Hitler. Today we have the dogma of anthropogenic global warming fastened on socialist arguments for reducing the human race from 8 billion to 500 million people. All these pseudo-sciences, argued Voegelin, have been designed to justify killing people for the fun of it. Voegelin explained, “What the fun is, I did not quite understand … but in the intervening years the ample exploration of revolutionary consciousness has cast some light on this matter. The fun consists in gaining a pseudo-identity through asserting one’s power, optimally by killing somebody….” This pseudo-identity, he added, “serves as a substitute for a self that has been lost.”[vii]

Forgive me for quoting these passages at intervals, but I find them so very precise – so directly on target. You will not find a better general explanation of revolutionary consciousness than this. To recapitulate: The madness of Ideology endangers our Ship of State by disrupting the pairing of captain and crew. It has even sought to deny the pairing of male and female. The damage here is far-reaching and involves the whole of society as well as the individual.

Thomas Carlyle, reacting to the Revolutions of 1848, wrote his Latter-Day Pamphlets to expose the fallacies of the revolutionary mind. Here he used the metaphor of a sailing ship headed to Cape Horn. He wrote:

Unanimity of voting, – that will do nothing for us…. Your ship cannot double Cape Horn by its excellent plans of voting. The ship may vote this and that, above decks and below, in the most harmonious and exquisitely constitutional manner: the ship, to get round Cape Horn, will find a set of conditions already … fixed with adamantine rigor by the ancient Elemental Powers, who are entirely careless how you vote. If you can … ascertain these conditions, and valiantly conform to them, you will get round the Cape: if you cannot, the ruffian Winds will blow you ever back again; the inexorable Icebergs, dumb privy councilors from Chaos, will nudge you with most chaotic ‘admonition’; you will be flung half frozen on the Patagonian cliffs, or admonished into shivers by your iceberg councilors, and sent sheer down to Davy Jones, and will never get round Cape Horn at all!”[viii]

As we watch the news, some of us wonder about election fraud. But our problem is larger. What if, as H.L. Mencken suggested, democracy is the system where “the people get what they want, and they get it good and hard”? Aside from this, our republic was not constituted as a democracy. Voting is only one check in a system of checks and balances that is now breaking down. In the Sea of Time, wrote Carlyle, what is needed is a Captain who discerns what the true regulations of the Universe are “and can faithfully and steadfastly follow these.” Only men who see the truth and stand by it are going to matter. Whatever stands in the way of the truth, stands in the way of national recovery. Falsehood, in this context, is man’s “enemy of enemies.” Those who do not adhere to truth, who cannot read the Divine Message or see the eternal regulation of the Universe face destruction and shipwreck “for every affair.”

In Federalist No. 2, John Jay wrote, “Nothing is more certain than the indispensable necessity of Government, and it is equally undeniable, that whenever and however it is instituted, the people must cede to it some of their natural rights, in order to vest it with requisite powers.” And herein lies our dilemma. We have the Founders’ Constitution today, on paper. But the men who are ostensibly in charge are no longer upholding that piece of paper. And now, after the pandemic, we see that our Government is a Ship of Fools, adrift in a dangerous sea. War has broken out in Europe. The waves are getting larger and larger. The wind is picking up.

How do we survive the coming storm? To be part of the solution we must stop being part of the problem. This means we must stop believing in ideological lies. We must set aside conspiracy theories that never quite name the conspirators; for everything imprecise and vague, in this regard, is worthless. And we must take care not to attribute all mankind’s ills to some ethnic group, like the Jews; or to some cult which has somehow gained mastery over all other cults. Falsehood is not going to save us. We must have the truth.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

Links and Notes

[i] Plato, The Republic, 473c-d. (As translated in Eric Voegelin’s book on Plato.)

[ii] Xenophon, Conversations of Socrates (London: Penguin Classics, 1990), pp. 178-190. These are the pages which cover Socrates’s interactions with Euthydemus.

[iii] Aristotle, The Politics, 1252a24. Translation by T.A. Sinclair.

[iv] William Bligh was with Captain Cook’s third voyage to the Pacific Ocean when Cook was killed in July 1776. Bligh played an essential role in getting the expedition back to England (in August 1780). In 1787, Lieutenant Bligh took command of the His Majesty’s Armored Transport Vessel (HMAV) Bounty, which famously mutinied against Bligh after loading up with breadfruit trees in Tahiti. Three movies were made of the mutiny. Bligh was played, in succession, by Charles Laughton (Mutiny on the Bounty, 1935), Trevor Howard (Mutiny on the Bounty, 1962), and Anthony Hopkins (The Bounty, 1984). Only Hopkin’s portrayal of Bligh was sympathetic, partaking of that same mid-1980s nostalgia for great men found in Roland Huntford’s Last Place on Earth, turned into a seven-part miniseries on the 1910-11 race for the pole between Captain Robert F. Scott and Roald Amundsen. In the miniseries Scott was depicted as a dangerously conceited man, out of touch with reality, fully empowered to march his polar party into oblivion. (The party died of scurvy, exhaustion and the cold.) At the same time Amundsen was depicted as a realist, as a man who could admit his mistakes, whose expedition safely and swiftly arrived at the South Pole and departed. The irony is, of course, that Scott is more celebrated as a hero, and Amundsen is depicted as a villain because he kept his men alive by eating the expedition’s sled dogs on the return trip.  

[v] Aristotle believed God and the Universe were eternal; however, Aristotle suggested that God imparts motion to the universe. Without motion, the Universe would have no meaning, no direction, no from or to. In other words, the motion imparted to matter by God grants form and order to what would otherwise be a lifeless waste land of formless substance. Creation, therefore, is the coming together of form and substance, mind and matter. The physicist Viktor Kulish has suggested that the physical universe is manifested and sustained, moment to moment, by God.  

[vi] Voegelin, Autobiographical Reflections (USA: Louisiana University Press, 1989), p. 93.

[vii] Ibid, pp. 46-47.

[viii] Thomas Carlyle, Latter-Day Pamphlets (Kindle), p. 249.

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My Interview With Trevor

cALL fROM A Brazilian friend

Conversations….

JRN: DO YOU THINK THE ELECTION IN BRAZIL WAS STOLEN FROM BOLSONARO?

EC: So the cheating in Brazil was very obvious, poorly done. They do not even pretend to follow the Constitution. The Supreme Court of Brazil is a disgrace. Lula is a criminal. It is hard to count the number of crimes he has committed. Just like the dictators of South America of the 1950s and 60s, we are looking to the military to fix the situation. Probably they will do that. But I do not know when or how. I do not know if they are going to allow Lula to become president.

JRN: DOES THE RIGHT IN BRAZIL UNDERSTAND WHO THE ENEMY IS?

EC: Biden is aligned with the communists. Yet everyone is having a reality shock with the invasion of Ukraine. Everyone is turned around. As Daniel Pipes said, the left had a more appropriate reaction to the Russian invasion than the right. The influence of the Russian disinformation in Brazil was tremendous. Even students of Olavo de Carvalho [the philosopher] were saying that Ukraine was a Nazi power. A lot of his students were parroting the Russian disinformation. It looks like they did not learn anything from his debate with Alexander Dugin [the Putin ideologist].

JRN: HAS THE ANTI-COMMUNIST PUSH IN BRAZIL FAILED. IS BRAZIL DOOMED TO FOLLOW THE PATH OF VENEZUELA AND THE REST OF THE CONTINENT?

EC: Right wing people still complain that things did not go well, but Bolsonaro has had to put up with a lot of attacks, verbal and otherwise. He was even stabbed and almost died. Bolsonaro’s situation was way more delicate than that of Trump who had the biggest part of the Republican Party behind him. Bolsonaro did not have this. So his was an administration under siege without a TV channel, without a media, without a party. Everyone there was working for the communists and globalists.

JRN: WHAT IS THE CURRENT STATE OF BRAZIL’S CULTURE?

EC: The perversion from the Lula era, in the youth, is disgusting. The Brazilian youth that studied at the universities, and was into social media, TV, and public education system, now act like gangsters and the girls act like prostitutes. This new generation thinks that is normal. The perversion those guys did in Brazil was serious. Then comes Bolsonaro as an anthropological counterpoint. His image has strength. I used to say that Brazilians are not Christians or atheists. They are now in a desperate phase, asking themselves: “what’s better to fix our problems?” Let’s find law and principles and religions later, because we need to eat today. This attitude does not exactly fit with Bolsonaro, who is a contrarian. Olavo was also against the tide. People who were into laughs and recreation and leisure would not like these contrarians….

CALL FROM Bogotá COLOMBIA

JRN: WHAT IS GOING ON IN COLOMBIA?

AJ: Total chaos. Now they are trying to pass a law to get all these criminals to be the saviors of democracy. They are making criminals into police, and the enemies run the show now. Some people get it, but others don’t know what to think or do. They’ve subverted the military leadership. This has been going on for a long time. The patriots in the military have been kicked out. It is just like what Obama and Biden have done to the U.S. military. So now the criminals are not criminals anymore. Now they want to implement a 100,000-man army made up of criminals. It is surreal. So, every day the guerrillas and terrorists kill soldiers. They are taking over the economy. Colombia is contemplating shutting down its oil production so that it can import from Venezuela. Before, Colombia was self-sufficient. Here the green agenda is being used to make Colombia dependent on a communist country, so there is no going back. Now Colombia is a narco state. The most powerful narco state in the world. All the pop stars and musicians have to participate in supporting it. Small businesses are shutting down. The wealthy are leaving the country. It is the same process as in Venezuela – Colombian style.

JRN: IS THERE A CHINESE PRESENCE IN COLOMBIA NOW?

AJ: China is here everywhere. They work from their Chinatowns, but they are here. Our politicians are now Maoists, linked with the globalists. I do not know what is going to happen. The U.S. dollar is so high here that people cannot afford things anymore.

JRN: IS THERE POLITICAL OPPRESSION AGAINST PEOPLE WHO OPPOSE SOCIALISM?

AJ: Oh yeah, big time. They are doing it through the media now. Some people are getting shot. Some are getting arrested for stupid things. If they can say you are racist, they will arrest you. If you say something that goes against the grain.

JRN: THEY HAVE HATE CRIME LAWS IN COLOMBIA?

AJ: They are trying to implement a politically correct agenda. The vice president is black, so you have to be careful what you say about him. The media will go after you. And the crime is terrible. They have guys on motorcycles who rob you at intersections. If you don’t give them your valuables they just kill you. These Venezuelan gang members are hard-core criminals.

JRN: VENEZUELANS ARE DOING ROBBERIES IN COLOMBIA?

AJ: Oh yeah. Bolivarian troops are everywhere. They flew them to Mexico, along with criminals from the jails in Venezuela. Trump has mentioned that. I assume the FBI and CIA knows this. It’s terrible.

JRN: AND YET WE LEAVE THE BORDER OPEN.

AJ: It is open to criminals from many countries. There are even scumbags coming to America from Africa. The worst criminals in the world are flooding into the United States. These people are evil. So, I don’t know. I know an ex-Soviet and a guy from Chile, and they had recently said to me, “Chile is a different country now. They are destroying it.”

JRN: SO WHAT DO YOU SAY TO PEOPLE WHO WANT HOPE?

AJ: My hope is in confronting reality. But now I have lost most of my friends. People want to live their lives and ignore this.

JRN: I SEE THE SAME THING HERE IN THE STATES.

AJ: A lot of people do not instinctively understand how Russia and communism work. I listen to Jordan Peterson and he understands some things, but he does not see the game that is going on. It’s like Trevor Loudon says, we are living in the last stage of the global communist revolution. People get stuck on the agenda. But no, it’s not about the agenda. It’s about the Revolution. Here in Colombia they say President Gustavo Petro is incompetent. No. He knows exactly what the game is. And he knows exactly what to do. People say, “Socialism doesn’t work.” Of course it works! It’s supposed to make you poor. They destroy countries. That’s what communists do. Few people understand this….

JRN: IS AN ECONOMIC COLLAPSE COMING TO COLOMBIA AS IT CAME TO VENEZUELA?

A.J: Yes. Some want to fight. But the government is going after businesses, the same as in Venezuela.

JRN: SO PEOPLE WITHOUT MONEY HAVE NO WHEREWITHAL TO RESIST?

AJ: People here are going to starve. They are taxing basic foods. Like, for example, even junk food, is being taxed. So a lot of people are going without. They are taxing basic things too.

JRN: ARE THEY TRYING TO LOWER THE NUMBER OF PEOPLE?

AJ: Food scarcity will eventually come, and they will get control by deciding who eats. They have stopped importing fertilizer from Russia, Belarus and China.

JRN: YES. THE COMMUNISTS KNOW THAT CONTROLLING THE FOOD MEANS CONTROLLING THE PEOPLE.

AJ: Now, for example, they implement a lot of things as in the United States. You cannot say anything against gays or transgenders. It’s insane.

JRN: HAVE YOU BEEN FOLLOWING EVENTS IN NEIGHBORING BRAZIL?

AJ: Oh yeah. It is the most incredible revolution. The demonstrations are all over Brazil. People are aware of the end-game in Brazil. They know that if Lula comes to power it is over for Brazil. We need leaders who will stand up to the communists.

JRN: WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THE VACCINES? HOW HAS THAT PLAYED OUT IN SOUTH AMERICA?

AJ: I talk to doctors in many countries down here. The doctors are afraid to talk openly. They get punished. People do not want to confront such a reality. This is how the communists are getting ahead of the game.

JRN: WHAT TOTALITARIANS DO IS SO EVIL AND CRAZY, NOBODY WANTS TO BELIEVE IT IS REAL.

AJ: Exactly. You saw those videos about Bonhoeffer on stupidity.

JRN: MY LATEST ARTICLE LINKED TO BONHOEFFER’S “THEORY OF STUPIDITY.”

AJ: The elite in the West have become criminals in their mentality. It is their stupidity which leads them to a thoughtless life. They are also trying to make us dumb by taking meat away, by killing off cattle and chickens, etc. There was a study in Germany showing that meat-eating increases your brain efficiency. In the past mental health issues were rare. Now, to be mentally impaired is more the thing. Seed oils are horrendous. They destroy the microbiome. They cause swelling and other problems. It takes two to four years for your body to get rid of those things. Those oils are everywhere now. You have to be choosy about what you eat. Coconut and olive oil are good. Seed oils are poison.

JRN: HOW DO WE FIGHT THIS?

AJ: People want optimism. They want to turn off the alarm and go back to sleep. They took over academia so nobody could question them. It’s insane. I never had fun in school. I knew they were lying to me. Now I understand how they do it. Once they grab you, they will get you scholarships to get you to the top, to create one more influential comrade for the Revolution. You get status and a good living. That’s not what I wanted. I liked fishing, so that’s what took me out of academia. Some days at the university I got so frustrated I would just go fishing….

El Salvadoran President Bukele fights MS-13: Has he turned against the communist gangs?

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Jeff’s Latest Book: A compilation of essays […]

People get into this condition [i.e., ignorance] through their own fault, by the slackness of their lives; i.e., they make themselves unjust or licentious by behaving dishonestly or spending their time in drinking and other forms of dissipation; for in every sphere of conduct people develop qualities corresponding to the activities they pursue.”
Aristotle [i]

Plato and Aristotle were philosophers of Classical antiquity. Those who can read these ancient philosophers in the original Greek are better able to understand the fundamentals of art and science. To understand Plato and Aristotle is to hold a decisive intellectual advantage in all forms of discourse. The value of the ancients is hard to explain to the desiccated modern mind – which is often unable to place facts in their proper context. Modern life is very busy, very distracted. Modern man is trapped in the news cycle, unable to synthesize or unify his knowledge. The ancient science of seeing, weighing, and ordering has largely been lost to us. A modern thinker with access to the ancients, however, is like a man looking down from the top of a mountain. Those who know nothing of the ancients, having journalistic predilections, are only looking down from the foothills. It never occurs to them that there is a mountain to climb. Unlike his journalistic critics, Brazilian philosopher Olavo de Carvalho is someone who climbed that mountain.  

Olavo learned Greek. He studied Aristotle and Plato. When I met Olavo in person, several years ago, his originality, his skill as a thinker, was apparent from our first conversation. His insights were clarifying. His polemics were full of fun. His mind was always searching for answers. In future centuries his name will be remembered while the “well-foddered, famous wise ones”[ii] of our time will be forgotten. And now, after his book on Machiavelli was translated into English, and reviewed on this site a year ago under the title “Olavo’s Machiavelli,”[iii] another of Olavo’s books has been translated – Aristotle in a New Perspective: Introduction to the Theory of the Four Discourses. It is a book that contributes to our understanding of Aristotle’s theory of discourse as a process that brings unity out of diversity, informing all of Aristotle’s “logical, physical, metaphysical, and ethical speculations … [as] the unmistakable hallmark of his style of thinking.”

It is Olavo’s thesis that Aristotle’s poetics, rhetoric, dialectics, and analytics do not form four separate sciences; rather, these four subjects form what Olavo calls “a nesting doll,” or what others might call a system for understanding intellectual culture, placing reason and imagination in proper context, leading us to the pinnacle of philosophical reflection, the crown of culture, which is knowledge about knowledge. In Aristotle’s four discourses Olavo has also found a schema for tracking the evolution of culture through four stages corresponding to the four types of discourse: Poetics, Rhetoric, dialectic, and analytics.

For readers unfamiliar with Aristotle, a brief biographical note is in order. Aristotle was born in the Greek town of Stagira, in ancient Macedonia. His father was court physician to Macedonia’s king. The year of Aristotle’s birth was 384 BC, fifteen years after the death of the famous philosopher Socrates, who was tried and sentenced to drink a deadly concoction of hemlock because he had allegedly corrupted the youth of Athens, and for introducing strange gods to the city. Aristotle was the student of Plato, one of the youth Socrates had supposedly corrupted (though it may be argued that Plato corrupted Socrates by depicting him other than he was).[iv] When Aristotle was eighteen, he was sent to study at Plato’s Academy in Athens where he remained for twenty years, becoming a teacher of rhetoric and dialogue. When Plato died, and Aristotle was not given directorship of the Academy, he left Athens to do other work, including to serve as tutor to Alexander (later, Alexander the Great), son of King Philip II of Macedon. Aristotle returned to Athens in the wake of King Philip’s victory over Thebes and Athens at the Battle of Chaeronea (338 BC). In 335 BC Aristotle set up his own school in Athens, the Lyceum, which rivaled Plato’s Academy. Aristotle’s philosophy differed from his master, Plato. He did not credit Plato’s theory of forms, neither did he like communistic aspects of Plato’s political philosophizing. When Alexander the Great died and the Athenians turned against Macedon, Aristotle was charged with impiety (due to his association with Alexander’s court). Rather than drinking the hemlock as Socrates had done, Aristotle fled Athens, “lest the Athenians sin twice against philosophy.” In the centuries that followed, Aristotle became the single most influential philosopher in history. His reputation came under attack in the seventeenth century, with early modern thinkers sometimes counting him as the enemy. 

In the ongoing battle of ideas, Olavo saw the importance of Aristotle because Aristotle held the keys to many subjects – from ethics and politics to poetry and rhetoric. Some readers may wonder what the value of an ancient philosopher might be when modernity has surpassed antiquity in its knowledge; yet, looking at the erosion of our discourse, and the nonsense that passes for “science” on every side, modernity has clearly taken a wrong turn. We have lost the very language of noble reasoning because we have taken too many shortcuts, piling error upon error (even as we call it “science”). Instead of a meditative ascent toward Noesis or philosophizing, modern academic science has been descending into trivial speculations that tell us more and more about less and less. As Ellis Sandoz put it, “reason is the ‘something’ in man that experiences shame in the recognition of his ignorance or that resists … the deformation of his own existence and that of other men by destructive forces in the social field.”[v] Man must address his ignorance or suffer deformation through false knowledge. Man must also seek a proper context to form the categories of his thought. To start with something small and work one’s way up to the brain of a gnat is to “gnatify” one’s mind and soul. Great questions must always be kept in view. Or, as Aristotle wrote at the beginning of his Metaphysics, “Art arises when … one universal judgment about a class of objects is produced.” To remain enmeshed in trivia is to have no universal point of departure; that is, to make oneself stupid.

If we become lost in trivia, we run the risk of intellectual demoralization. This tendency, so characteristic of our time, has led many to eschew intelligence in favor of plausible and convenient stupidities. In this context it was Dietrich Bonhoeffer who famously discovered that stupidity is more dangerous than malice. Olavo made this discovery as well, famously opposing the intellectual demoralization and stupidity of his country, writing a bestselling book titled, o minimo que voce precisa saber para nao ser um idiota – which translates, “The least you need to know not to be an idiot.” In this book he touched on one particular type of idiot – the “useful idiot”:

The communist mentality … is so ignorant of freedom of thought, subjugates intelligence so heavily to party command, that it manages the subject’s ideology not by the intentions and values he professes, but by the simple hypothetical and ofttimes paranoid conjecture of the political or public benefit that [communist] parties … may derive from their words, albeit opportunistically….[vi]

Here is a glimpse at the stupidity of our time. It is the most dangerous stupidity in the history of the world. Olavo stood against the arrogant laziness and total lack of curiosity which made this stupidity into an almost irresistible power; a power that promises death and destruction even as these words are being written. Olavo believed, with Aristotle, that the remedy for dangerous stupidity was to be found in a higher truth – in the divine Nous or Ground out of which our existence has emerged. It was Aristotle who warned us “not to follow those who advise us to have human thoughts, since we are only men … but on the contrary, to … do our utmost to live in accordance with what is highest in us.”[vii] Eric Voegelin, a philosopher who shared Olavo’s appreciation for Aristotle, wrote:

The Classic, especially the Aristotelian, unrest is distinctly joyful because the [philosophic] questioning has direction; the unrest is experienced as the beginning of the theophanic event in which the nous reveals itself as the divine ordering force in … the cosmos at large; it is an invitation to pursue its meaning into the actualization of noetic consciousness.[viii]

Philosophy shows us that man is more than a mortal being. He is an unfinished being, as Voegelin noted, “moving from the imperfection of death in this life to the perfection of life in death.” Man participates in the divine through his thoughts – which may coincide with the divine mind by adhering to truth instead of embracing lies. It is lies, indeed, that deform man’s existence. As our thoughts form into discourse, we had best bring that discourse to truth.

All discourse, noted Olavo, is “the passing from one proposition to another.” Olavo then added, “The formal unity of any discourse depends on its propositional unity, that is, the arrangement of the various parts with a view towards obtaining the desired conclusions.” First, you have the premise and its presuppositions; then, you have the logical or analogically connected components of the argument, giving propositional unity to the whole; then, you must bring about a change in the opinion of those who listen to this argument (usually, by the striking nature of the argument); and then, of course, you have an acknowledgement of the argument’s credibility. Thus, discourse is a passage from the believed to the believable.

What we have, in today’s discourse, however, does not pass from the believed to the believable. It is, rather, a passage from nonsense to nonsense, leaving infected idiots in its wake. And this was borne out in the criticism Olavo’s work received from so-called “experts.” It was, of course, foolish for idiotas to match wits with Olavo on Aristotle; for Olavo knew Aristotle while his critics were clearly ignorant pretenders. The resulting black comedy, included in the English translation of Olavo’s book, is a joy to read. As one who understood the teachings of Aristotle, and had benefitted from those teachings, Olavo skewered his critics.  

Originally, Olavo’s essay on Aristotle was sent for publication to the Editorial Committee of Science Today magazine, run by the Brazilian Society for the Progress of Science. Olavo reported, “When almost a year had passed without response, I felt at liberty to publish the article in a book. At the start of October 1994, I received the first impeccably rendered copies from the printers. That same day … I found an envelope on my doorstep … returning the originals with a rejection letter saying that, as the paper was on education in odontology … I would be better served placing it in a specialist publication.”

Odontology, of course, is the scientific study of diseases of the teeth. Puzzled by this bizarre explanation for the magazine’s rejection, Olavo wrote back to the Editorial Board, “neither I nor Aristotle ever suspected this hidden inclination towards dentistry in our speculations….” He offered that the Editorial Board had not read his essay on Aristotle, somehow mistaking it for an essay on dentistry. Low and behold, the Editorial Board responded to Olavo by saying their reference to “odontology” had been a typing error. They assured Olavo that experts had studied his essay and found it wanting. As proof they sent a two-and-a-half page handwritten “critical assessment” of Olavo’s essay. But it was even more dismaying than the “odontology” reference. The expert “critical assessment” contained, by Olavo’s count, three serious errors of historical inaccuracy, five errors deriving from a lack of familiarity with Aristotle’s works, eight crucial errors of interpretation of Aristotle’s writings, three fallacious arguments, two reversals of Olavo’s intended meaning, three spelling errors, and two other problems.

Olavo wrote, “the above is reason to bury one’s face in one’s hands, and wonder aloud: What in the Lord’s name is happening in this country?”

Olavo’s critique of the Editorial Committee’s “critical assessment” is a veritable Dunciad directed at those whose pretense to knowledge was a comedy of errors. How could Brazil’s leading society for the advancement of science send him such a shameful admission of ignorance and fraud? Ominously, 1990s Brazil was afflicted by that same slovenliness Spanish philosopher Jose Ortega y Gassett attributed to Spanish university life shortly before the Spanish Civil War.

At this juncture it is useful to refer to Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s “Theory of Stupidity,” composed on the tenth anniversary of Hitler’s accession to power:

Stupidity is a more dangerous enemy of the good than malice. One may protest against evil; it can be exposed and, if need be, prevented by use of force. Evil always carries within itself the germ of its own subversion in that it leaves behind in human beings at least a sense of unease. Against stupidity we are defenseless. Neither protests nor the use of force accomplish anything here; reasons fall on deaf ears; facts that contradict one’s prejudgment simply need not be believed – in such moments the stupid person even becomes critical – and when facts are irrefutable they are just pushed aside as inconsequential, as incidental. In all this the stupid person, in contrast to the malicious one, is utterly self-satisfied and, being easily irritated, becomes dangerous by going on the attack. For that reason, greater caution is called for than with a malicious person. Never again will we try to persuade the stupid person with reasons, for it is senseless and dangerous.[ix]

Aristotle said that “every wicked man is in ignorance as to what he ought to do … and it is because of error … that men become unjust and, in a word, wicked.” Stupidity, in this sense, is responsible for the greatest evils of history. Aristotle explained in his writings on ethics that ignorance is not an acceptable excuse. Wanton stupidity resulting from wanton ignorance is a choice. Aristotle wrote, “People get into this condition through their own fault, by the slackness of their lives….” When Aristotle lists the circumstances necessary to committing a crime, he concludes, “Now nobody in his right mind could be ignorant of all these circumstances.”[x] Aristotle further asks the ultimate question, regarding the ignorant man’s culpability, “how can he fail to know himself?”

In his “Theory of Stupidity” Bonhoeffer said that people sometimes “allow themselves” to become stupid. They do so, it seems, because they want to belong to a crowd or a mob; for stupidity is characteristic of ochlocracy (rule by the mob). “Upon closer examination,” wrote Bonhoeffer, “it becomes apparent that every strong upsurge of power in the public sphere, be it of a political or of a religious nature, infects a large part of humankind with stupidity.”

The implications go to the heart of Olavo’s work. What Olavo was confronted with in Brazil, what Bonhoeffer was confronted with in Nazi Germany, was human beings who set aside their own humanity out of slovenliness. And this is a definite choice; for man is, as Aristotle showed, the “rational animal.” Yet here we have rational animals refusing rationality out of laziness. Thus, in the last analysis, humans are not human by mere biology. Having the gift of language, and the gift of the human mind, becoming a homo sapiens is nonetheless a disposition: to think or not to think. To be physically human, without deciding to think, is to prefer subhuman status and all that goes with it: abject servility, self-degradation, and moral decrepitude.

Bonhoeffer wrote:

It would even seem that this is virtually a sociological-psychological law. The power of the one needs the stupidity of the other. The process at work here is not that … intellect, suddenly atrophies or fails. Instead, it seems that under the overwhelming impact of rising power, humans are deprived of their inner independence, and, more or less consciously, give up establishing an autonomous position toward the emerging circumstances. The fact that the stupid person is often stubborn must not blind us to the fact that he is not independent. In conversation with him, one virtually feels that one is dealing not at all with a person, but with slogans, catchwords and the like that have taken possession of him.

How do we avoid being stupid? How do we affirm our humanity? Olavo’s theory of Aristotle’s four discourses can help us discover the good. With reason in one hand and the good in another, we may also aspire to wisdom and that precarious thing called freedom. Philosophia – φιλοσοφία – signifies “love of wisdom.” Philosophical methods include poetics (depicting the good through imagination), rhetoric (persuading others of what is good), dialectic (finding the good through dialogue), and analytics (confirming the good through syllogism).

A little philosophy goes a long way.

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My latest interview with Man in America

Here is a link to my recent interview with Dr. Li-Meng Yan: https://www.americaoutloud.com/what-is-behind-strategic-deception-from-russia-communist-china-alliance/

Links and Notes

[i] Aristotle translated by J.A.K. Thomson, The Nicomachean Ethics (New York: Penguin Book, 1982), p. 123.

[ii] Nietzsche’s description of popular, well-paid intellectuals.

[iii] https://jrnyquist.blog/2021/12/04/olavos-machiavelli/

[iv] I believe that Plato’s Socratic dialogues have corrupted our image of Socrates. This.  is apparent where Plato underscores the intellectual superiority of Socrates over and above his sincerity, leaving us with “Socratic irony.” In an essay titled “Reconsidering Socratic Irony,” Melissa Lane wrote, “That Socrates is ironic is something that many people who know little else about Socrates believe. If this belief is rooted in ancient texts, they are likely to be thinking of Plato’s and Aristotle’s portraits of Socrates rather than those of Aristophanes and Xenophon….” Lane goes on to say that “neither Xenophon nor Aristophanes ever uses about Socrates the Greek word eirôneia, which is the only Greek term (sometimes) translatable as ‘irony.’ By contrast, Plato and Aristotle both use this word and its cognates about Socrates … and this has played a key part in the formation of the tradition of ‘Socratic irony.’” Lane quotes Aristotle’s text, which shows that by using the word eirôneia Aristotle (at least) did not mean “irony” in the modern sense. Aristotle wrote: “The way self-deprecating people [eirônes] understate themselves makes their character appear more attractive, since they seem to do it from a desire to avoid pompousness, and not for the sake of profit; most of all it is things that bring repute that these people too disclaim, as indeed Socrates used to do.” (From the Nicomachean Ethics, 1127b23-26, Rowe and Broadie translation.) Please note: Lane’s study shows that a nuanced misreading of the Greek language has here colored our understanding of Plato’s Socratic dialogues. We should also remember that Socrates was so poor that he often walked about barefooted. Socrates had to take care that his disagreeable questions were not interpreted as insults. This is what explains his self-deprecatory approach. The polite forms of address used by Socrates could hardly have been ironic. His interlocutors were not generally stupid and would have been insulted by irony. Socrates therefore relied on formally friendly and complimentary forms of address if only to demonstrate his respect and good intentions. Modern readers have difficulty seeing Socrates as he was. They see him as a great man rather than the poor son of a stonemason with a shrewish wife. Did Socrates’ wife take her husband to be “ironic”? For Socrates’ sake, we should hope not, for it would not have turned out well for him. And a man beaten down at home is going to carry his demeanor with him into the street. Socrates is, in fact, a humble and sincere man. He has no reason to brag about anything. Irony would have been insolence coming out of his mouth, and insolence belongs to arrogance (which is nowhere in evidence with this man). The philologist Eleanor Dickey discovered that in Plato’s dialogues Socrates was, in fact, using friendly terms of address to better obtain a hearing from his interlocutors. This approach was not patronizing. Socrates was not engaged in ironic put-downs. This is not to deny moments of irony in the dialogues of Socrates, as we find in his praise for Euthyphro and Hippias (who are, in fact, intellectual clowns). Lanes asked if Socrates’ praise for these smug individuals is truly ironical, however. She argues that Socrates was not ridiculing them; rather, he was attempting to draw a confession from them that would prove instructive to the other listeners. The outstanding characteristic of Socrates, then, was his sincerity in pursuing the truth. He never spoke cynically but always argued according to reason. It is, in fact, our cynicism that makes Socrates appear “ironic.” For those interested in Lane’s essay, see The Cambridge Companion to Socrates, pp. 239-41.

[v] Ellis Sandoz, The Voegelin Revolution: A biographical Introduction (New York: Routledge Taylor & Francis Group, 2017), p. 211.

[vi] Olavo de Carvalho trans by google, The least you need to know not to be an idiot (Rio de Janeiro & Sau Paulo: Editoro Record, 2015), p. 589.

[vii] Ibid, p. 213, Aristotle paraphrased from Sandoz.

[viii] Ibid.

[ix] http://southsidemessenger.com/bonhoeffer-on-stupidity-entire-quote/

[x] Aristotle translated by J.A.K. Thomson, The Nicomachean Ethics (New York: Penguin Book, 1982), p. 114. […]

The nominalism of a dogma that has separated from experience … has become the dominant form of the West because it was, beginning with the eighteenth century, adopted as the intellectual form of ideologizing.
Eric Voegelin [i]

The practical result of nominalist philosophy is to banish the reality which is perceived by the intellect and to posit as reality that which is perceived by the senses. With this change in the affirmation of what is real, the whole orientation of culture takes a turn….
Richard Weaver [ii]

Psychopathic individuals generally stay away from social organizations characterized by reason and ethical discipline.”
Andrew M. Lobaczewski

To paraphrase Richard Weaver, this is another essay about the dissolution of the West. It is an account of dissolution not based on analogy but on psychiatry and philosophy. It argues that we have given in to the defective thinking of defective people in an Age of Ideology; that is, an age of political lying. The result is an ochlocracy[iii] cut into two warring halves.[iv] 

Consumers do not like to hear about the dissolution of the West. They would rather read about “the end of history” by someone like Francis Fukuyama, or the victory of their favored candidate at the polls. Anyone who writes about “the dissolution of the West” is taken for a pessimist – and what good is a pessimist? Nothing is possible for pessimists. What is always desired, in “democratic” politics, is an optimistic point of view. Unfortunately, this anesthetic signifies blindness to reality. Of course, optimism is useful. It greases the wheels of a doomed machine. It keeps the money flowing through a system of investment and return.

But those who draw hope from the continued functioning of the economic system are mistaken. The economic system depends on spiritual and cultural structures that are now dysfunctional. Because of this, the system is headed for collapse. Because of this, America is less and less the land of the free and the home of the brave. Consider some of the more striking developments of recent years: (1) According to our Supreme Court, marriage is no longer the union of male and female; (2) the life of a newborn baby is no longer sacred; (3) nobody is serious about thwarting our country’s enemies, foreign or domestic.

We could make a longer list of bad signs and dire symptoms. Yet, the three listed items are enough to show that our institutions are collapsing into a kind of collective madness. Optimism, under these conditions, is simply an affirmation of madness. Being gaslit by the upbeat bombast of Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh, made this madness (for many years) into entertainment. We should have realized that political optimism as entertainment is dangerous. A healthier form of entertainment, in line with reality, would have been a sweaty sock jammed into Sean Hannity’s mouth, stopping it mid-sentence. Yes, Sean. Reagan won the Cold War. Now suck on this sweaty sock.

An opinion leader should not be so vulgar as to congratulate himself on his own decadence, shallowness, and gullibility. Yet this is what our “conservative” opinion-leaders have done, again and again, for the past thirty years. And what has this optimism wrought? The incapable John Fetterman of Pennsylvania is headed for the United States Senate. Joseph Biden is in the White House. Russia has invaded its neighbor and there is war in Europe. Where is all that bouncy optimism now? – what has this foul self-deception brought forth? – what cure has this anesthetic wrought?

Consider the following: Climate fanatics intend to shut down our oil refineries. Even now they are shutting down our coal production. In effect, the U.S. Government is itching to implement a “sustainable” climate agenda where we all sit in the dark and freeze (e.g., see Germany). Meanwhile, our military men and woman are compelled to take an injection that neither prevents nor stops the spread of a disease – an injection that was not properly tested for safety. Yet the U.S. Government maintains that the vaccines are safe. In this matter, if you question the government, you are de-platformed on social media. Powerful forces oppose any official investigation of the vaccines. If you are a medical professional, you can lose your medical license for calling the vaccines into question – like Dr. Peter McCullough, who lost his. If you are in the U.S. military, and you refuse the vaccine, your career may come to an end. The United States Government, the Pentagon, and our highest medical authorities, supposedly had an ethical obligation to follow the Nuremberg Code on human experimentation. But now they believe in no such obligation. The first point of the Nuremberg code says that the “voluntary consent of the human subject is absolutely essential” and that patients “should be so situated as to be able to exercise free power of choice, without the intervention of any element of force, fraud, deceit, duress, overreaching, or other ulterior forms of constraint or coercion; and should have sufficient knowledge … to make an … enlightened decision.” As everyone in the world knows, the experimental COVID vaccines were pushed on the citizenry with all the above: “fraud, deceit, duress, and overreaching….” There is no question that this has been ongoing, and that this is totalitarianism. So then, what happened to “morning in America”? What was the significance of all that optimism about “winning” the Cold War?

A free society, with the rule of law, encourages debate and discussion. But our system no longer encourages debate and discussion. And now there are three questions we are forbidden to ask: (1) Is Climate Change real or is it economic sabotage? (2) If the vaccines are safe and effective, why are people reporting deaths and injuries? And (3) If we want fair and free elections, why do we refuse to require in-person voting with voter I.D.?

Not long ago we were free to question anything and everything. But suddenly, somehow, the rules were changed. We are now obliged to blacklist people, to ruin their careers – to demonize as we demonetize them. After all, anyone who disagrees with the official narrative is a public menace if not a public enemy. People who raise these questions are made voiceless and invisible. We are told to denigrate them. And this is done in the name of science, public health, and democracy.

You would think this totalitarian turn would have already resulted in civil war or a general uprising of the people. But no. Resistance has been spotty, especially in the U.S. military. Our institutions and the people in them are marked by materialism and careerism, voyeurism and sense of detachment. But more than that, modern society has been taken over by “pathocracy,” defined by psychiatrist Andrew M. Lobaczewski as a mode of government arising out of a period of spiritual crisis, characterized by an “intensification of hysteria,” a degeneration of reason along with the disintegration of social structures. Lobaczewski wrote, “Every society worldwide contains individuals whose dreams of power arise very early…. They are generally discriminated against in some way by society….” These dreams of power “represent overcompensation for the feeling of humiliation….” Those who take the lead in originating pathocracy are generally schizoids; that is, persons characterized by emotional aloofness and solitary habits.[v] A rising tide of schizoid thought, according to Lobaczewski, owes much to a historical epoch dominated by fixed religious and political doctrines. “Such a historical period is always characterized by an impoverished psychological world view, so that a schizoidally impoverished psychological world view does not stand out as odd during such times and is accepted as legal tender.”[vi]

This helps to explain, in part, what has been happening to us. We have given in to defective thinking by defective people. And those defective people are running our institutions. Lobaczewski described schizoids as “doctrinaire individuals” who “manifest a certain contempt with regard to moralists … preaching the need to rediscover lost human values….” Fanatical schizoid spellbinders, propounding new ideologies out of their own defective thought patterns, typically attract characteropathic personalities as followers. These transform the abnormal ideas of the schizoid into political action. Lobaczewski explained that “this process tends to intensify with time….” Eventually, paranoid individuals become active in the new “movement.” And, toward the end of the process, “an individual with frontal [lobe] characteropathy[vii] and the highest degree of pathological egotism can easily take over the leadership.”[viii]

Schizoidal doctrines advanced by spellbinders gain traction because of their novelty. They also gain traction because the new doctrines are constructed for neurotics and hysterics and psychopaths (who are becoming more and more numerous). By pretending to alleviate the prevailing societal alienation through the promise of political empowerment, the ideology of the schizoid draws a political mob into its orbit. Abnormal and alienated people, wrote Lobaczewski, will imbed themselves “in some human organization, wherein they become zealots for some ideology, religious bigots, materialists, or adherents of an ideology with satanic features.”[ix]

Of course, schizoid “thinkers” are typically dismissed as cranks or eccentrics. Nevertheless, their ideas readily infect people who suffer from a personality disorder. The schizoid thinker charts a path to success when he is persistent, fanatical, and egotistic. According to Lobaczewski, “Karl Marx is the best-known figure of that kind. Frostig, a psychiatrist of the old school, included Engels and others into a category he called ‘bearded schizoidal fanatics.’” Such people, he added, were very active during the second half of the nineteenth century. Lobaczewski remarked that those who gravitate toward a Marxist pattern of thought exemplify “a schizoidal apprehension of reality.” The same can be said of the leading anti-Semitic writers and “thinkers” who inspired Hitler and the Nazi movement. Relying on an “oversimplified pattern of ideas, devoid of psychological color and based on easily available data,” the schizoid’s writings “are particularly attractive” to neurotics and psychopaths.  

Of course, Schizodia is not the only factor responsible for today’s political evils. It is merely one of the originating factors. Furthermore, we need not use the language of psychiatry to describe the people who originated totalitarian ideologies. There are other ways of characterizing them (that do not entail the use of psychologizing epithets). Eric Voegelin, for example, described such people (including Karl Marx), in terms of spiritual sickness (as opposed to psychiatric disease). Voegelin preferred to see Lobaczewski’s “schizoids” as morally responsible persons engaged in dishonest and self-aggrandizing behavior. He therefore described Marx as a “swindler” and his followers as criminals who “kill people for fun,” rather than as patients in need of treatment or compassion. In practice, all Marxist regimes have engaged in killing. As Voegelin explained, “[their] faith and willingness to sacrifice the people … can only end with the horrors of physical destruction – that we know from the Hitler case.”[x]

Why do ideological movements sacrifice people for power? Because ideology is about power. Consequently, ideology has nothing to do with the truth (as truth and power are often at cross-purposes). Ideology, said Voegelin, “is a phenomenon of intellectual dishonesty….” Even those who adopt ideologies are not honest because, noted Voegelin, “anybody who is willing to read the literature [of ideologies] knows that they are not tenable, and why.”[xi]

While Lobaczewski discusses political evil in terms of the physiological abnormalities of the psychopath, Voegelin begins by asking why so many normal people embrace ideology and its attending evils. Intellectual dishonesty in political matters is not merely the result of partisanship, he explained. Rather, ideology goes much deeper than partisanship. This is because modern society is soaked in ideology and overrun by ideologists who are constantly fighting each other. Therefore, modern society is loaded with political lies. Just one example should suffice. The very word “democracy” is a lie in the mouth of most people; for they do not know what democracy is, or what it signifies morally; and they have never lived under one. Consequently, the word democracy, on their lips, is a sinister significator. Because of this kind of usage, much of our political talk today is gibberish. We talk in words that purport to mean something when they mean nothing. Voegelin wrote, “I summarized the problem in the formula that there are intellectual situations where everybody is so wrong that it is enough to maintain the opposite in order to be at least partially right.”[xii]

Since all ideologies are inherently dishonest, and nearly everyone is corrupted by this dishonesty, society has largely lost touch with political reality. Everything having been reduced to a false narrative of one kind or another, and everyone being hypnotized to accept these false narratives, we arrive at a situation in which intellectual dishonesty has been normalized. Once dishonesty is normalized, the psychopaths that Lobaczewski warned about come to the fore. Politics becomes their playground. And this is where the situation turns bloody. According to Voegelin:

What the fun is [in killing people], I did not quite understand at the time, but in the intervening years the ample exploration of revolutionary consciousness has cast some light on this matter. The fun consists in gaining a pseudo-identity through asserting one’s power, optimally by killing somebody – a pseudo-identity that serves as a substitute for the human self that has been lost.” [xiii]

Voegelin then cited the work of Albert Camus, who explored “the murderous equanimity of the intellectuals who have lost their self and try to regain it by becoming pimps for this or that murderous totalitarian power….” According to Voegelin, “If anything is characteristic of ideologies and ideological thinkers, it is the destruction of language, sometimes on the level of intellectual jargon of a high level of complication, sometimes on the vulgarian level.” In discussing this problem in connection with Karl Marx and Friedrich Hegel, Voegelin stated that Marx was a criminal who lusted for human blood: “In my uncivilized manner as a man who does not like to murder people for the purpose of supplying intellectuals with fun, I flatly state that Marx was consciously an intellectual swindler for the purpose of maintaining an ideology that would permit him to support violent action against human beings with a show of moral indignation.”[xiv]

Here is where Voegelin’s philosophical discourse comes together with Lobaczewski’s psychiatric diagnoses. Voegelin explicitly stated that a “mental disturbance lies behind” Marx’s revolutionary writings and activities; but more than that, noted Voegelin, this mental disturbance has a spiritual component insofar as Marx’s swindle flatly refuses “to enter into the etiological argument of Aristotle – that is, on the problem that man does not exist out of himself but out of the divine ground of all reality.” Marx knew that “the central problem of a philosophy of man” was man’s relation to divinity. By denying the existence of God, Marx sought “to destroy man’s humanity by making him a ‘socialist man’….”[xv]

In other words, Marx sought to dehumanize humanity. His formula was to justify murder in the name of revolution – because some people think murder is fun. His justification, from first to last, is brilliant nonsense. It does not matter if Marx’s followers do not understand this. According to Voegelin, Marx’s followers today are not intelligent or educated enough to understand Marx’s method or his underlying objective. Voegelin noted, “When we advance beyond Marx to the ideological epigones of the late nineteenth and of the twentieth century, we are already far below the intellectual level that formed the background even of Marx.” Such are creatures of ochlocracy (i.e., mob rule). They hate people who have actual knowledge, or people who care about the truth. They are not interested in debate. Their social environment, noted Voegelin, “is dominated by persons who cannot even be called intellectual crooks because their level of consciousness is much too low to be aware of their objective crookedness, but who must rather be characterized as functional illiterates with a strong desire for personal aggrandizement.”[xvi]

It appears that Lobaczewski and Voegelin accurately described the makers of our modern political world. The crisis of modernity, for both the psychiatrist and the political philosopher, stems from people who are morally and/or intellectually defective. To reconcile the psychiatric with the philosophical, let me suggest that madness is a kind of evil while evil is a kind of madness. “Pathological acceptance of schizoidal writings or declarations by other deviants often brutalizes the author’s concepts and promotes ideas of force and revolutionary means,” wrote Lobaczewski, “The passage of time and bitter experience has unfortunately not prevented this characteristic misunderstanding born of schizoid nineteenth-century creativity, with Marx’s works at the fore, from affecting people and depriving them of their common sense.”[xvii]

What begins with the schizoid’s ideology ends with the police state of the psychopath – who kills because killing is fun. By way of example, Voegelin wrote, “The phenomenon of Hitler is not exhausted by his person. His success must be understood in the context of an intellectually and morally ruined society in which personalities who otherwise would be grotesque, marginal figures can come to public power because they superbly represent the people who admire them.” [xviii]

And this is how we must understand John Fetterman as senator, and so many of our other politicians. As a rule, these are the grotesque representatives of an intellectually and morally ruined society. According to Voegelin, the elevation of grotesque figures into high office is a symptom of “internal destruction.” Regarding Hitler and the Germans, Voegelin explained: “This internal destruction of a society was not finished with the Allied victory over the German armies in World War II but still goes on. I should say that the contemporary destruction of German intellectual life, and especially the destruction of the universities, is the aftermath of the destruction that brought Hitler to power and of the destruction worked under his regime.” Voegelin added, “There is yet no end in sight so far as the disintegration of society is concerned, and consequences that may surprise are possible.”

Undoubtedly, a process of internal destruction continues (not only in Germany). And those who trace their ideological lineage to Karl Marx are not the only offenders. Every ideology offends insofar as you cannot fight one lie with another; for lies are interchangeable, and may be substituted one for the other, advancing the process of internal destruction. Truth is what we need. But then, the truth requires honest people, non-ideological people, whose language has not been corrupted by feel-good slogans and nominalist dogmas.

Part of the answer is found in opposing the prevailing lies, half-truths, and corrupt language. To oppose evil policies, you have to use clear language. Clarity is the key. Clarity is the enemy of the obfuscating psychopath who wants to transform politics into a game of “killing for fun.” The psychopath in politics, like the psychopath in daily life, can be recognized by the following: (1) behaviors that conflict with social norms; (2) disregarding or violating the rights of others; (3) inability to distinguish right from wrong; (4) difficulty with showing [authentic] remorse or empathy; (5) tendency to lie often; (6) manipulating and hurting others; (7) recurring problems with the law; (8) general disregard toward safety and responsibility; (9) regular displays of anger and arrogance.[xix] The reader is left to connect the dots that link, for example, LGBTQ advocacy to abortion; that link abortion to the mandating of unsafe vaccines; that link unsafe vaccines to global warming “science”; that link global warming “science” to socialist revolution; that link socialist revolution to the end of America.

There are reasons that our society is in decline, that our government is dishonest, that our institutions are failing. Whatever psychiatric or philosophical forces are at work behind this decline, no countervailing domestic forces have appeared that can stop our ideologists What we have today is what Voegelin called “a massive social force of aggressive, intellectual dishonesty that penetrates the academic world, as well as other sectors of society….”[xx] Yet there is more to it than that. What is now developing out of the ruin of the Republic – as with all ruined Republics – is an ochlocracy (i.e., mob rule). Only in our case, two antagonistic ochlocracies are emerging simultaneously. The first of these is animated by a grotesque and functionally illiterate pseudo-Marxism, while the other originates from people whose “thinking” has been formed by television, and who seek political salvation from a reality TV character. Which of these ochlocracies will take the prize? Both are incapable of taking anything but a booby prize.

Anyone who studies the present situation is bound to conclude that we are no longer living under a Republic; for republican history is full of brilliant orators, brave champions, and men of steadfast principle; men like Marcus Furius Camillus, Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus, Quintus Fabius Maximus, etc. When America was a republic, we had the likeness of George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, and John Quincy Adams. Even in the Civil War, when America had devolved into two republics, we had such figures as Robert E. Lee, Thomas Jackson, Abraham Lincoln and Ulysses S. Grant. What comparable figures do we have today? By all appearances, we live in a political wasteland of mediocrities and clowns.

Heroes cannot emerge under ochlocracy because the mob follows the logic of its characteropathic leaders. As Lobaczewski observed, these leaders mimic sincerity. “[I]t is second nature for them to play a role and hide behind the mask of normal people.”[xxi] They gravitate toward movements that preach “revolution and war against that unfair world so foreign to them.” Even a counterrevolutionary movement can serve the psychopath’s inward craving to “kill for fun.” The resulting descent into darkness, noted Lobaczewski, is due to a “mysterious disease” that rages inside the political system. Government of the psychopaths, by the psychopaths, and for the psychopaths, advances “by revolutionary means in the name of freedom, the welfare of people, and social justice….” What happens in the end, however, is that “the common man is blamed for not having been born a psychopath, and is considered good for nothing except hard work, fighting and dying to protect a system of government he can neither sufficiently comprehend nor ever consider to be his own.”[xxii]

Psychopaths can readily hijack ochlocratic formations. Their ruthless egotism empowers them to sweep away the hero, the problem-solver, and the statesman. Solutions are not needed under ochlocratic pathocracy, since the collapse of society and civil war is desired by the leaders for its own sake. It is war that gives the psychopath free reign. A brilliant leader with real solutions has no chance under ochlocratic pathocracy. The representative of truth is rejected under conditions of ideological war because ochlocratic formations only respond to ideologic cues (i.e., lies). Constructive thoughts that give rise to heroic action are not wanted by structures that favor and reward psychological deviants. The logic of such formations is the logic of destruction, of murder, and the fanatical maintenance of false narratives. 

Inevitably, ochlocracy will burn itself out. Somebody will emerge from the rubble to rebuild the country. With bitter lessons learned and a renewed appetite for wisdom, normal life can begin again. This is what we should be working for. In the meanwhile, be careful out there.   

Links and Notes

[i] Eric Voegelin, Autobiographical Reflections (USA: Louisiana State University Press, 1989), p. 113.

[ii] Richard M. Weaver, Ideas Have Consequences (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1948), p. 3.

[iii] Ochlocracy: noun – government by a mob; mob rule.

[iv] Weaver, p. 1.

[v] Andrew M. Lobaczewski, Political Ponerology: A Science on the Natura of Evil Adjusted for Political Purposes (Kindle, Red Pill Press), Loc 3085.

[vi] Ibid, Loc 3100.

[vii] Tiffany W. Chow, M.D., notes: “The orbitofrontal syndrome is the most well known [pathology of this type] and consists of major antisocial behaviors such as disinhibition, emotional lability, and impulsivity. In some cases, changes are severe enough to lead to new onset of criminality.” https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5786154/ 

[viii] Lobaczewski, Loc. 3164.

[ix] Ibid.

[x] Eric Voegelin, Autobiographical Reflections (USA: Louisiana State University Press, 1989), p. 117.

[xi] Ibid, p. 45.

[xii] Ibid, p. 46.

[xiii] Ibid, pp. 46-47.

[xiv] Ibid, p. 48.

[xv] Ibid, p. 49.

[xvi] Ibid.

[xvii] Lobaczewski, loc 3140.

[xviii] Eric Voegelin, Autobiographical Reflections (USA: Louisiana State University Press, 1989), p. 18.

[xix] https://www.healthline.com/health/psychopath#signs

[xx] Voegelin, p. 119.

[xxi] Lobaczewski, Loc 3178.

[xxii] Ibid, Loc 3194.

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Also see, on Amazon, Jeff’s book, The Fool and His Enemy
https://www.amazon.com/Fool-His-Enemy-Toward-Metaphysics/dp/B08DSX8TKX […]

In reality, the main emphasis of the KGB is not in the area of intelligence at all. According to my opinion … only about 15 percent of time, money, and manpower is spent on espionage as such. The other 85 percent is [engaged in] a slow process which we call … ideological subversion or active measures…. What it basically means is, to change the perception of reality of every American to such an extent, that despite the abundance of information, no one is able to come to sensible conclusions in the interest of defending themselves….
Yuri Bezmenov [i]

…the great majority of Americans could be said to represent a refutation on a large scale of the Cartesian principle, ‘Cogito ergo sum’; they ‘do not think and are.’ Better yet, in many cases they are dangerous individuals and in several instances their primitivism goes way beyond the Slavic primitivism of ‘homo sovieticus.’
Julius Evola [ii]

Anti-Americanism includes more than hatred of the American elite. It includes hatred of the American people as a whole. The reason for paying attention to enemies – to the superior minds in an enemy camp – is to know ourselves through the eyes of that enemy. Having an enemy, or a friend, is an unappreciated spiritual gift. We always have something to learn about ourselves from friends and enemies; from those who hate us, and those who love us; for hatred will always find our faults, as love will find our virtues. In America’s case there is a particularly dangerous fault crying out for correction. That fault is the superficiality of our intellectual culture, particularly our strategic culture.

Revolver News recently published a lecture given by a Finnish intelligence colonel on how Russians think.[iii] The first comment on the video, below the margin, was from Dave B, who wrote: “Maybe we could do articles on why NATO and the West think the way they do. I guess to everyone’s surprise Russia called your bluff.” This comment, from an American right-winger, is just as baffling as Kari’s lecture (but for different reasons). In fact, Russia did not call the West’s bluff as Dave B suggested because the West was not bluffing. Rather, it was the other way around. For those who recall, Russia warned of dire consequences if NATO sent weapons to Ukraine. Russia even hinted at nuclear war. Yet the West has sent weapons anyway (because of its cultural programming). Against every expectation, despite itself, despite being infiltrated by its enemies, the West now opposes Russia in Ukraine. This reaction has occurred because of a longstanding anti-leftist prejudice built into the Russian strategy of subversion, described in detail by KGB defector Yuri Bezmenov. The idealistic leftist, said Bezmenov, is useful in demoralizing his society. But as the communist takeover progresses to its final stage, his usefulness wanes – so much so that the leftist is the first to be executed by the Marxist-Leninists. Experience long ago taught Moscow that non-communist leftists are, ultimately, Moscow’s most bitter potential enemies. And so, as Russia has stumbled in Ukraine while trying to reassemble the USSR, we see the political left rallying to Ukraine. Meanwhile, the rising pro-Russian narrative is coming from the right. How do we explain this? How would the KGB defector Bezmenov explain it? Here is what he said:

My KGB instructors specifically made the point: Never bother with leftists. Forget about these political prostitutes. Aim higher. This was my instruction. Try to get into large circulation, establishment, conservative media. Reach filthy rich movie makers, intellectuals, so-called academic circles. [Find] cynical egocentric people who can look into your eyes with an angelic expression and tell you a lie. These are the most recruitable people. People who lack moral principles; who are either too greedy or suffer from self-importance. They feel that they matter a lot. [iv]

Is it possible that these same people, who “matter a lot,” are the influencers of Dave B and his cohort? When we think of “large circulation, establishment, conservative media,” who comes to mind? Would Tucker Carlson, chatting with Tulsi Gabbard about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, fit Bezmenov’s description? Of course, Dave B would probably never agree that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is an invasion. Imitating the Russian style of enforced speech, Dave would probably call it a “special operation,” dismissing Ukraine as an instrument of the “New World Order” conspiracy. In terms of rightwing ideology, Dave B probably believes the Ukrainian people deserve to be absorbed into Russia. Even if lamentable, their enslavement is certainly acceptable. Ask Tucker Carlson. It is none of our business, anyway. We are merely the only country in the world able to check Russian and Chinese (i.e., communist bloc) military aggression. But the rightwing message is – “we really shouldn’t interfere with the restoration of the USSR.” Therefore, say goodbye to Europe. There is no occasion, here or anywhere, to enhance our own security by joining with other nations. As every isolationist knows, having allies is a burden that adds nothing to our security.[v] Right? And then there is the question of sensitivity to Russia’s needs. If Russia has eleven time zones, why not let them have twelve, or twenty-three! Let them have Mexico if they want, or Canada. What business is it of ours?  

Of course, it is our business. The West’s strategic position is rapidly eroding away. Saudi Arabia is joining the BRICS alliance. South America has almost entirely fallen to the communist bloc. Most of Africa, and its mineral storehouse, has fallen. Therefore, Dave B and the anti-Ukrainians appear to be cheer-leading for the absorption of Europe by the bloc, starting with Ukraine. Does anyone remember Gorbachev’s idea of the “one common European home,” which Putin also advocates as a transcontinental union from Lisbon to Vladivostok?[vi] In that event, Europe would suffer the fate of South America and Africa; for Russia is a crypto-communist country, masking its true ideology and intentions. Russia is clearly aligned with the world’s other communist powers, North Korea, China, and Cuba. Russia is supporting communist countries and movements in Africa and Latin America. Pick up any newspaper and read. Russian troops are authorized to enter communist Nicaragua.[vii] Russia troops are already in communist Venezuela.[viii] But hey, what business is it of ours? Let them encircle America. Let them cut us off. Let them bribe our leaders, infiltrate our government. We don’t deserve to live.

Seriously? Why would a patriotic American willfully substitute deceptive Russian language for plain English, preferring the term “special operation” to the word invasion? Forgive me, but it is like Evola said about Americans, “they do not think and [yet they] are.” But, for how much longer? 

On the Revolver site, in response to Dave B’s comment we find the following addenda: “The globalist lackeys deserve our utmost contempt.” And then, “Utmost contempt coupled with ACTION against them.” A more sensible comment from Jason Ledd, who wrote, “Both sides, left and right, are being played by same group. Klaus Schwab already bragged that Putin works for the globalists and was trained in his global leaders’ school. Like all other leaders, Putin is just another puppet who decides nothing but is told what to do, like Biden, Trump, Trudeau, a.k.a., Castro, Merkel, Boris [Johnson], Horse Face in New Zealand, and the rest. All the world is a stage with actors.”

Jason Ledd is closer to the truth, but still off target. You cannot defeat an enemy with imprecise formulations of this kind. To prevail strategically, you must discern the true relations between people and objects. By inverting the rank order of the players, Jason has taken Klaus Schwab’s ego-aggrandizing statements at face value. Never, never, never, take a fool’s statements at face value. And Klaus Schwab is a fool. A Russian head of state is never going to take orders from a private citizen in Switzerland. Why would he? Putin was trained by the KGB to manipulate foreigners, not to be manipulated by them. It is too ridiculous. Of all the people Putin could bow down to, why bow down to a mountebank like Klaus Schwab? The idea is risible.

Rather than being Putin’s boss, Schwab is almost certainly one of Moscow’s intelligence assets. While Schwab was being interviewed some months ago, viewers could see a bust of Vladimir Lenin behind him, on his bookshelf. Unless we assume that Schwab is a witless buffoon who does things without good reason, we ought to take this signaling of his allegiance into account. Schwab is clearly in the socialist camp. Consider, if you will, his praise for Merkel, Trudeau, and Putin. Are we incapable of seeing the common denominator that links all these characters together? All three have advanced the cause of socialism in their respective countries. The “former” East German communist, Merkel, kept Germany on a path of energy subservience to the Kremlin. At the same time, the supposed son of Castro, as Canadian Prime Minister, is moving Canada closer and closer to the Cuban socialist model. And granting direction to the whole, Putin is attempting to bring back the USSR by conquering Ukraine and allying with communist China. One either sees the connections here, or one is blind.

Communism did not disappear in 1991. It merely changed its formation, its outward appearances, its tactics, and its strategic direction. Having transformed itself, communism also became a word nobody was allowed to pronounce (except in an obituary). And yet, we hear communist code words all around us – in universities, in government, in entertainment. We hear these code words on the left and the right. We hear resentment toward the rich, distrust of the market, opposition to Ukraine’s war of independence from Moscow. Figures like Douglas Macgregor and Tulsi Gabbard and Tucker Carlson denounce America as an imperialist power. They warn that America is bankrupting itself by supporting Ukraine. Such are the lies of the hour. So far, this year, the federal government plans to spend 7.76 trillion. Of that amount, Ukraine has supposedly received $68 billion in aid – less than one percent of all U.S. federal spending. This miniscule sum, they say, is bankrupting us. And once again, with Evola I am forced to conclude, they “do not think and [yet they] are.” But, for how much longer?

The American inability to think, on the most fundamental level, limits and defines us. We no longer seem to register anything that contradicts the slogans of the hour. And so, when Dave B watched Putin’s mobilization speech a month ago, he missed Putin’s most memorable line: “I am not bluffing,” said the Russian dictator.[ix] From first to last, despite Dave B’s claim, NATO simply supported Ukraine while Russia huffed and puffed and bluffed. Over the weekend Russia’s Ambassador to the United States, Anatoly Antonov, said during an interview with Rossiya-24 TV, that America had crossed every one of Russia’s red lines.[x] So why isn’t Washington a smoking hole in the ground? After all, Russia promised. In consequence there are many disappointed readers at Revolver News.

Am I being too hard on the likes of Dave B & company? They are not, after all, the end-all and be-all of American thought. They are merely representative, perhaps derivative, of a broken educational system. In fact, those higher up on the intellectual ladder have made more serious blunders. Returning to the lecture of Finnish intelligence officer, Col. M.J. Kari, we find the error of all errors – front and center. Kari wanted to know why Russians think so differently. He said, “when I started writing my Ph.D. here at the University, I discovered the theory of strategic culture, [and] that theory opened up how to rationalize and think about why Russians do things differently than we do.” According to Kari, the theory of strategic culture is an American export. It came out of the Vietnam War. Analysts from the United States wanted to know how a superpower like America could lose a war against a small communist country like North Vietnam. The key to the theory of strategic culture, said Kari, is that “everything is not … a zero-sum game.”

“Everything is not…” a proper way to introduce a subject! To peel back this obfuscation is to open a can of worms – wriggly and squirmy, and full of mischief! Here, again, is the scandal of those who “do not think and are.” We must admit, of course, that everything is not a zero-sum game because everything is not one thing. All verbal trickery aside, zero-sum games exist. And strategic culture, in delivering either victory or defeat, is all about zero-sum games. To be perfectly clear, if one side wins the other side loses. For example, in war and in politics, in military conflicts and elections. Yet the liberal capitalist mindset prefers win-win solutions that eschew the logic of the zero-sum game. This is the kind of thinking America is locked into. All solutions tend to be economic solutions. Man is here reduced to a homo economicus. Taking economics to be primary over all other human activities, the liberal mindset defers to the free market. Everything, therefore, is subject to negotiation and trade. All differences can be ameliorated through economic transactions. Let market forces rule and war should disappear. War is therefore seen as the opposite of the market. By creeping inference, war is then judged as immoral, irrational. It is the negation of material values (which are regarded as ultimate values). Here is the liberal utopia, in a nutshell. All will be friends under capitalism. Trade brings nations closer, after all. Enter Francis Fukuyama….

Whatever truth there is in such views, the whole history of war has been omitted. Liberal ideology sees war as a kind of scandal. And here is the problem: Human beings do not exist as liberal abstractions. Every man belongs to a family, speaks the language of that family, bears the thoughts of that language, carries the history and fables of that language. Even if he does not recognize his tribal nature, he is nonetheless tribal. Even for the liberal or the socialist who opposes “nationalism,” a fundamental irony remains. The abstractions of liberalism and socialism come wrapped in tribal identities. Thus, Mao was the founder of “communism with Chinese characteristics.” Stalin was a communist who fought the “Great Patriotic War.” Even the most fanatical internationalists have bent the knee to nationalism, to tribal identity; so much so that leftist politics today is identity politics.

Taking the Pax Americana for granted, Western liberals and businessman have forgotten on which side their bread is buttered. Therefore, they have opened their countries’ respective borders to mass immigration by alien tribes. These tribes provided business with cheap labor. At the same time, allowing their own domestic work force to suffer attrition through legalized abortion, they stupidly disorganized their own national states – undoing liberalism. Add to this another sin: Western liberals and businessmen have spent trillions building up enemy economies in China, Russia, Vietnam, etc. Thinking only in economic terms, they have said to themselves that “a rising tide lifts all boats.” Imagining that conflict originates in economic disparity, they have sought to bring equality to all and sundry. What they have engendered, however, is a war of all against all. They have made love to their own downfall. And now they are about to crash down, hard.

Again, I will admit, of course, that economic considerations have their place. It would be unreasonable to say otherwise. But when all is said and done, economics should not have first place. Our highest values are transcendental, not material. Money has no value excepting what we assign to it. It is a tool, a means to an end. The idea that everyone lives for the sake of money is one of those absurdities akin to saying that we live to eat. Rather, we eat to live. And when it comes to what we die for, nobody has yet hoisted a flag made up of dollar bills. Iwo Jima and Normandy beach were not stormed by soldiers of fortune. Killing for money is morally repugnant. There must always be something more to it. More frequently, wars are fought over principles of right and wrong. Does some territory justly belong to this tribe or to that one? Do certain people hold sovereignty or not? Have agreements been violated? Has one side broken its word? Is there a question of honor at stake?

– And what is honor?

“Honor, n., 1. Esteem due or paid to worth; high estimation; manifestation of respect or reverence; hence, fame; credit; good name; reputation. A prophet is not without honor, save in his own country. Matt, xiii. 57. 2. That to which esteem is paid; distinguished position. I have given thee … both riches, and honor. 1 Kings iii. 12. 3. A token of esteem paid to worth; as: a. A mark of respect, as a title of dignity confirmed. b. Obs. A bow; a curtsy. c. A ceremonial sign of consideration; as, civil honors. “Funderal honors.” Dryden. d. pl. Social courtesies rendered by a host; as, to the honors of the table. 4. a A title applied to the holders of certain honorable civil offices; as, His Honor the Mayor….

“5. a that which rightfully attracts esteem, respect, or consideration, as dignity, courage, fidelity; esp. excellence of character; high moral worth; nobleness; specif. in men, integrity; uprightness; trustworthiness; in women, purity; chastity. From the conception of virtue that of honor is chiefly distinguished as connoting the virtues especially associated with rank, station or profession; thus, “military honor” denotes courage and fidelity, “business honor” denotes honesty and trustworthiness. Honor thus carries with it the notion of social obligation, and in societies having a caste organization, as in feudal societies, it often implies primarily a strict observance of caste obligation and in particular the obligation not to bring disgrace upon persons of the same caste. Doubtless its association with feudal militarism developed the conception that a lapse from honor is to be atoned only by death or by duel….” [xi]

Here is where the American emphasis on economics falls flat. There is this thing which stands far above money. It is the root of more than money, more than kingdoms and republics. It is the root of all sovereignty. And yes, that thing is honor. Always and forever, honor. How paltry a thing money is, next to this. Anyone with real sensibility need not be reminded how disgusting it is to crawl on one’s knees toward money, covering ones cravenness from head to toe with the mock-slogan of “peace.” Even a villain like Hitler was not so base as to commence his wars of aggression for the sake of money, though his enemies failed to prepare their defenses out of concern for money (i.e., see, esp., the U.K. governments under Stanley Baldwin and Neville Chamberlin).

When the British conquered Quebec and India during the Seven Years’ War, the driving motive was not profit. It was national honor. Imperialism has its economic side, to be sure; but anti-capitalist propaganda has made too much of this. Imperialism, argued Joseph Schumpeter, is essentially profitless.[xii] Imperialism was, in the case of nineteenth century Europe, a playground for the increasingly idle warrior aristocracies of Europe. When economic logic, as in America, got the upper hand in Europe, war became an export carried into Africa and Asia by the second and third sons or cousins who – for want of primogeniture – carried their traditions abroad. Winston Churchill was one of these. An argument should then be advanced that imperialism was not, as Lenin claimed, the last gasp of capitalism. Rather, it was the last gasp of European feudalism.

There is an important set of distinctions our leaders and our masses fail to make note of today. Warriors are not tradesmen. There is the thought process of the warrior and the thought process of the merchant. When the latter becomes dominant, the former loses social standing. Jacob Burckhardt observed this development in ancient Phoenicia. Ultimately, the Phoenicians did not care who was militarily dominant if business could be conducted as usual. This attitude was anything but “noble,” since the focus was on money rather than on honor. Those city states that harbored such convictions inevitably lost their independence if not their existence. Such city states, animated by the thought process of the merchant, would find themselves at the mercy of enemies who cared more for honor than money. And if, as it sometimes happened, these enemies lost the virtue of justice, the society’s extinction followed inevitably. In the case of Carthage, itself a Phoenician colony, the end came nearly half a century after the departure of Hannibal to the court of Antiochus the Great. Against the more noble traditions of Rome, the total destruction of Carthage was advocated by Marcus Porcius Cato the Elder, who ended his speeches by saying, “Furthermore, I consider that Carthage must be destroyed.”

As a veteran of the Second Punic War, Cato had visited Carthage. He found this famous money-loving city, having given up its army and navy, prospering as never before. So successful was Carthage, that the city had easily paid its war indemnity. Defeat had been a lucky stroke, it seemed. Carthage was now Rome’s protected ally in good standing. How baffling it was to the Roman farmer, who enjoyed few luxuries while his defeated enemy enjoyed so many. Look what these enterprising Carthaginians had made of their defeat in the Second Punic War! Cato was shocked and asked himself if this great wealth could be turned against Rome. It was a question laced with envy. The answer, of course, was that Carthage had no motive for war. Wealth and comfort had become the city’s dream – from which the Carthaginians would not awaken in time. Instead, Carthage would follow its native (i.e., Phoenician) predisposition to the end, neglecting its own defenses until Roman jealousy was camped outside its walls – legions, siege equipment, and a blockading fleet. Polybius tells us that his friend, Scipio Africanus the Younger, wept openly for Carthage when he was ordered to destroy that magnificent city. The last of the truly noble Romans, the last hope for restraint and reform under the Republic, was not free to make the generous peace of his namesake.[xiii]

Such was the fate of Carthage, a city that valued money above honor. Such also was the fate of Rome once she had tasted too much plunder, sinking disgracefully into subjection under a series of vicious Caesars. It is worth asking, then, whether this same disease has not come to America; for America, in many respects, has come to resemble Carthage. This resemblance has been exhaustively commented on by the Russian propagandist, Alexander Dugin.

And so, returning to our Finnish intelligence expert, Col. Kari, we see the intellectual disgrace, as W.H. Auden poetized, that “stares from every human face.” In his lecture, Col. Kari stepped on the very first intellectual land mine he might have stepped on. He unthinkingly absorbed American economism as a point of departure for judging the Russians. Turning to the primacy of economics, Kari’s entire lecture tumbles into the abyss of rotten American pragmatism.  

The strategic misunderstandings attaching to American economism have not, so far, led to a “Carthaginian peace” for America. But that is the direction in which Americans are headed. It took Carthage more than half a century to get there. We may take a little longer. Our Carthaginian moment did not arise out of defeat in a war. It arose out of supposed victory in the Cold War. This occasioned our infamous “peace dividend.” Fattened with prosperity, a country like the United States might limp along for one hundred years before succumbing. (On the other hand, our flabby economism could get us nuked tomorrow). In terms of dangers now pressing in on us, the majority of Americans – educated and uneducated — have embraced strategic error, strategic misconception, strategic absurdity. All of these are daily paraded in front of us by policymakers and respected pundits from both sides of the aisle. Each half of America’s erroneous strategic culture forms a perfect whole. In terms of our smartest intellectuals, better is worse. One example should suffice: the libertarian economist and former Russian advisor to Putin, Andrei Illarionov, falsely predicted there would be no Russian invasion of Ukraine last February. He assured everyone that Putin would not invade, because Putin was neither insane nor stupid. After all, only an insane or stupid leader would start a big war.

Illarionov’s analysis was focused on economic motivations, omitting every consideration of honor. Consequently, his prediction was wrong. In a radio interview with Frank Gaffney of Secure Freedom Radio, we hear Illarionov reiterate his prediction: “I keep saying, there will be no big war from the Russian side against Ukraine.”[xiv] In an article published on February 15 of this year, Illarionov and Michael Waller saw Putin’s invasion threat as an economic maneuver, noting, “For the price of fuel for the mobilization, setting aside the Russian military’s fixed costs, Putin was able to leverage Biden [into scaring everyone] to tank Ukraine’s struggling economy in weeks.” Illarionov and Waller also assured readers that there would be no World War III. How did Illarionov and Waller know all this? Because U.S. intelligence is always wrong, Putin did not conceal his troop movements, concentrating troops on a border does not mean they are poised to invade, deployment maps of Russian troops concentrations are propaganda, no real international alarm has been raised, etc. One might have said, in response, that even a broken watch is right twice a day, large troops movements cannot be concealed, concentrating troops on a border is exactly what is meant by “poised to invade,” and deployment maps – if read properly – show exactly what kind of maneuver is in the offing. But, of course, Illarionov is an economist, not a military strategist.

Let us give discredit where discredit is due. On his side, Mr. Putin is not an economist. His interest in Ukraine is anything but financial. It is worth noting that Illarionov is a Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank. Here is an almost ironic juxtaposition of the name “Cato,” masking the Institute’s witless abjuration of Roman antiquity. Of course, the Cato Institute was not named after Cato the Elder, but after a series of British essays penned under the name of “Cato,” written in the early eighteenth century by radical Whig writers, John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon. These writers were defenders of liberty against political corruption and tyranny. Yet they were not without considerations of honor. Cato letter no. 1, for example, was titled, “Reasons to prove that we are in no Danger of losing Gibraltar.” The author, Mr. Thomas Gordon, berates those “who go about coffee-houses to drop … stupid and villainous reasons for giving” Gibraltar up. He wrote, “I defy those, who for vile ends, or to make good vile bargains, would gladly have it surrendered….” The pilfering of these writers by the Cato Institute is doubly ironic, since the Cato Institute was founded by Ed Crane, Murray Rothbard and Charles Koch. These were precisely the sort of men who would have haunted coffee houses in the early nineteenth century, offering “vile bargains” to surrender Gibraltar.

The following question should be asked the libertarians, leading to a proper judgment of their ideology: “And where comes this marvelous free market, Mr. Laissez-Faire? Out of which dream cloud does it drop? Mr. Laissez-Faire stares blankly at the camera…. He cannot grasp that the free market is not free. He cannot understand something above and beyond supply and demand. He does not know that liberal institutions need illiberal supports. He cannot grasp that blood is above money, that consumer values are not ultimate values because they cannot stand alone. In order for markets to be possible one must look higher, to the warrior who protects markets, and who sheds his blood in the struggle of empires. On hearing all of this Mr. Laissez-Faire grins slyly, rolls his eyes and says, ‘My blood is too valuable to spill. That is why I am for the volunteer army.’ And then he adds, ‘My money, somebody else’s blood.’”[xv]

Such an idea could not be further from the thinking of America’s Founders. Consider the fate of those who signed the Declaration of Independence. Did they imagine great wealth coming to them out of that declaration? Of the 56 men who signed the Declaration, five were captured by the British and tortured before they died. Twelve had their homes plundered and burned. Nine died from wounds or the hardships of war.[xvi] Therefore, we should remember, that America was not orignally this rotten pragmatist thing it has become – where everyone looks to be paid.

Having tasted of peace and prosperity for many decades, considerations of honor have apparently faded from America’s national character. Not altogether, of course, but to an alarming degree. It is probably an understatement to say that Americans were annoyed by the interruption of their domestic life at the end of 1941, when Pearl Harbor was bombed. After Japan surrendered in 1945, Richard Weaver wrote, “The war of unlimited objectives which the democracies waged at the end may, in fact, be explained by the rage they felt over having their comfort disrupted and the contingent nature of their world exposed.”[xvii] Weaver, of course, was a champion of chivalry over and against economism. He distrusted American prosperity, and thought it was “an egregious mistake” to suppose that “unconditional surrender” was a means “of doing away with all war.” He darkly suspected such thinking indicated unfitness for future wars.

Economics has its place, as I have said before. I can quote Ludwig von Mises with the best of them. But economics should never be the primary lens through which we view strategy. And that is where our strategic culture has gone wrong. Therefore, our generals have come to think and talk like businessmen. These are the folks who refuse to see strategy as a zero-sum game. The business of America, after all, is business; and the businessmen have taught us all that everyone can win. Social interactions need not include zero-sum games. But the old-fashioned strategist, thinking on Carl von Clausewitz’s writings, recalls that war “is a duel on a tremendous scale.” And duels are fought for honor, not for money. Surveying the landscape of politics and war, the soldier knows that destruction is also a power; that killing and leveling can remove players from the game – which follows the inevitable logic of a zero-sum equation. Those who are strategically eliminated from history are the losers. Those who take control of man’s destiny are the winners. Those who vindicate their honor, who show their virtue, who attain sovereign power, rule over the rest.

There is one more point to be made. Col. Kari’s false American key to the “theory of strategic culture,” which we have been examining, contradicts the only clear definition of the political we have ever had; namely, that “The specific political distinction to which political [i.e., strategic] actions and motives can be reduced is that between friend and enemy.”[xviii] As Carl Schmitt explained, “Each participant is in a position to judge whether the adversary intends to negate his opponent’s way of life and therefore must be repulsed or fought in order to preserve one’s own form of existence.”[xix]

In respect of this: Imagine our American strategic theorists, attempting to understand their defeat in the Vietnam War as a failure to see the win-win possibilities of peace. Enter, Henry Kissinger. Enter, Richard Nixon and all the American presidents who sat down to do business with the mass murderers of the Chinese Communist Party. Fast forward. It is 2022. China is now militarily opposing us. China is talking war. Did our win-win theory of “strategic culture” play a role in building China into a military superpower?

Why are we such cowards before the truth that we must continually lie to ourselves about all this? Going into business with our enemies was not a path to peace. It was an evasion. And the reason for that evasion is not far to find. Naturally, we do not want to accept the inevitability of war. We would rather slander the warrior spirit and turn everything into a business proposition. And one of our slanders is that war is stupid. Another slander is that war is insane. What should we say, then? – That hurricanes are stupid? That Earthquakes are mentally ill? God save us from our own demented reasoning! War is not insane. Even nuclear war is not insane. Why? Because somebody might know how to win such a war by destroying all the other side’s weapons. In that case, the winner says to the loser, “Your society must surrender – or we shall start bombing cities tomorrow.” To say there will be no survivors in such a war is to misunderstand how future nuclear wars may be rationally strategized. As Soviet military theorist Makhmut Al. Gareev wrote, “The assertion that nuclear war will not be a continuation of politics is completely fallacious.”[xx] Another Soviet theorist, A.S. Milovidov wrote, “There is profound error and harm in the disoriented claims of bourgeois ideologues that there will be no victor in a thermonuclear war.” According to Milovidov, opposition to thermonuclear war is a subjective ideal characteristic of anti-war movements in the bourgeois world. “It expresses mere protest against nuclear war.”[xxi]

America and the West have nuclear-armed enemies. We cannot close our eyes and wish them away. “The political is the most extreme antagonism,” wrote Carl Schmitt, “and every concrete antagonism becomes that much more political the closer it approaches the most extreme point, that of the friend-enemy grouping.” Think hard, now about the muted Leninist messaging of Russia’s political leaders, their preference for communist China, for communist Cuba, for communist Nicaragua, for communist North Korea, etc. The explanation for the ongoing revival of communist power is not cultural. It goes deeper than that. This is taking place within the spiritual and intellectual vacuum of our materialist economism (i.e., our rotten pragmatism). You can accept whatever excuses for the Russian invasion of Ukraine you please. Russia is not a continuation of the Roman Empire, as Col. Kari thoughtlessly suggested in his lecture. Russia is not responsible for protecting the other Slavic peoples (who would rather see Russia minding its own business). And Russia is not genetically or historically programmed to perpetuate the Mongol Empire. Cultural myth may be piled upon myth, but Putin is no Tsar enforcing his divine right. The statues that went up in Ukrainian towns taken by Russian troops were Lenin statues. And there is a system in Russia, derived from the old Soviet system, trying to revive the old USSR. Thankfully, due to the Ukrainian people, this attempted revival is failing.   

Leaving Col. Kari and his American-derived theories of Russian motivation in our rearview mirror, let us remember one thing: An enemy is an enemy, no matter how sympathetic you want to make him. You can parade him about as a partner, as someone to “do business with,” but in the end he will show his colors. He will assail your strategic position. The choice will be, defend or surrender. Give up one country after another or stop the aggressor before he becomes too strong to stop.

It is tiring, indeed, to recite all the nonsense that is now passing for strategic insight. Most Americans are, as Yuri Bezmenov explained, unable to come to “sensible conclusions” about national defense. We always accept some lie or other, throwing us off the truth. Evola’s insult against the “great majority” of Americans was, perhaps, a little unfair. What “great majority” can be said to “think” in any country? Of course, there is this stereotype about Americans. And who holds to such stereotypes more than the Russians? The late Vladimir Bukovsky, before his death, told me that he could not live in America. The people there, he complained, were too stupid. They rarely think for themselves or cultivate good conversation, he added. Better to live in an uncomfortable country like the United Kingdom, where people are more intelligent. Yet another Russian, who also left America for Europe, once told me that “America is simply a prairie”; that is, an empty geographic space filled with primitives and a few surviving bison.

I am a bit worried these Russians have a point. Adding injury to insult, Evola wrote of Americans, “even in minor matters, whether it be prohibitionism or the feminist, pacifist, or environmental propaganda, we always find the same spirit, the same leveling and standardizing will and the petulant intrusion of the collective and the social dimension in the individual sphere.” This old enemy of America stuck his weapon in deeper, “Nothing is further from the truth than the claim that the American soul is ‘open-minded’ and unbiased; on the contrary, it is ridden with countless taboos of which people are sometimes not aware.”[xxii]

What better way to learn about oneself than from an enemy? But in defense of my countrymen I might ask, which nations are open-minded? The Russians? The Arabs? The French?! Why shouldn’t a common people share a common mode of thought? The only problem now, as I see it, is that the American point of view is against America. That is what troubles me. On the left, we are ready to destroy our country to save the planet. On the right, Putin is our savior against the New World Order. Is anyone thinking of how to preserve the United States?

I fear we have come to believe in our enemy’s arguments – adopting these arguments, adding to them. Surely, in war, a fool is more dangerous than an enemy; for an enemy may sometimes preserve you out of fear for himself; but a fool will sink the ship and all hands without knowing what he does. Worse even than the fools who abound on every side are those who parade about as professional patriots: tingling with ambition, wrapped in Old Glory, always laying traps for themselves.

With so much emptiness, and anxiety, and foolishness, it is no wonder that America finds itself at the mercy of its enemy’s slogans. Here the dying land reaches for its Golden Calf, its political god, as “the supplication of a dead man’s hand under the twinkle of a fading star.”[xxiii] For the hand that moves the system now, is pale with death. Its image is graven even as its worshippers are pagans who falsely suppose themselves otherwise. Of course, as Evola said, they do not think. Being manipulated by enemies is the fate of such people. Filled with blind self-righteousness, they end up as the Devil’s rag babies.

Links and Notes

[i] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yErKTVdETpw – See 1:08 minute mark.

[ii] Julius Evola translated by Guido Stucco, Revolt of Against the Modern World (Rochester Vermont: Inner Traditions International, 1995), p. 355.

[iii] https://www.revolver.news/2022/10/finnish-intelligence-colonel-on-how-russians-think-english-subtitles/

[iv] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yErKTVdETpw – see 57 minute mark.

[v] Luke 12:48 says, “Everyone to whom much was given, of him much will be required, and from him to whom they entrusted much, they will demand the more.”

[vi] https://besacenter.org/economic-space-lisbon-vladivostok/

[vii] https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/6/10/nicaragua-authorises-deployment-of-russian-military-forces#:~:text=The%20government%20of%20Nicaraguan%20President%20Daniel%20Ortega%20has,purposes%20of%20training%2C%20law%20enforcement%20or%20emergency%20response.

[viii] https://search.yahoo.com/yhs/search/?hspart=pty&hsimp=yhs-browser_wavebrowser&param2=0e778b5c-300e-440c-92cd-113367052234&param3=wav~US~appfocus1~&param4=d-cp12919082543-lp0-hh6-obem-wav-vuentp%3Aon-igcGiJhiXGjncIQ-ab35-w64-brwsr –

[ix] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SQDOV7KsdUo

[x] https://tass.com/politics/1525591

[xi] From Webster’s New International Dictionary, 1943.

[xii] https://cdn.mises.org/Imperialism%20and%20Social%20Classes_2.pdf

[xiii] Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus the Elder, main architect of Rome’s victory in the Second Punic (i.e., Hannibalic) War, negotiated generous peace terms with Hannibal and the Carthaginian Senate. This was resented by Cato and many others who thought Carthage should have been razed to the ground.

[xiv] https://securefreedomradio.podbean.com/e/with-andrei-illarionov/

[xv] J.R. Nyquist, Origins of the Fourth World War (Chula Vista CA: Black Forest Press, 1999), p. 162.

[xvi] https://teacherscollegesj.org/what-happened-to-signers-of-declaration-of-independence/

[xvii] Richard Weaver, Ideas Have Consequences (Kindle Edition), p. 121.

[xviii] Carl Schmitt translated by George Schwab, The Concept of the Political (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007), p. 26.

[xix] Ibid, p. 27.

[xx] Makhmut Al. Gareev, M.V. Frunze – Military Theorist, p. 24.

[xxi] Milovidev as quoted by Joseph D. Douglass and Amoretta M. Hoeber in their book, The Soviet Strategy for Nuclear War (Hoover Institution Press, 1979), p. 7.

[xxii] Evola, p. 354.

[xxiii] See the poem by T.S. Eliot, “The Hollow Men,” Section III.

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