Musk's Nazi Salute

 

Heil General Public? Heil Republican voters?

About Elon Musk’s “Roman salute.”

Obviously, given the fact that in the popular mind “Nazi” is currently a synonym for pure evil, and Nazism is solely about obtaining power, the last thing a real Nazi would do is anything that would formally associate them with the Nazis of history. The last thing an actual Nazi would do is to give a Nazi salute in public.

Instead, Nazis would insist publicly that they are the anti-Nazis, and our protection against the Nazis. Just as the historical Nazis of Weimar Germany snuck into power by presenting themselves as the strongest protection against those horrible Bolsheviks.

The real Nazis would call themselves something like “Antifascists”—“Antifa,’ perhaps, for short.

The fact that Musk made a gesture that looked alarmingly like a Nazi salute obviously without thinking what it might look like to some is a testament that the man does not have a Nazi thought in his head. 

If it was a dog whistle to Nazis, pay attention to which dogs are barking.

History Begins to Rhyme

 

The original "black  bloc."

Is the US--and the world--going Fascist? The parallels are uncanny.

The Nazis wedged themselves into power in Germany largely because the establishment was distracted with fear of the Bolsheviks. Similarly, the modern left misdirects attention to a mostly fictional threat of insurrection from “white supremacists.” And throws their support behind Antifa and BLM.

In general, law enforcement and the judiciary—the establishment--are playing favourites instead of following the rules, going soft on Antifa or Black Lives Matter or Hunter Biden, throwing the book at rightist groups like the Proud Boys, or Donald Trump. This resembles the favoritism shown in Weimar Germany towards the Nazis, allowed to rule the streets, while Bolsheviks and other socialists were dealt with harshly.

The reaction by so many in government to the invasion of the capitol building by a mob on January 6 even looks strikingly like the Nazis’ exploitation of the Reichstag fire. Whether or not it was a “false flag” operation.

Old Joe Biden looks like a reassuring but easily controlled figurehead. This is a strategy the Nazis found effective in their last run: Hindenberg, Petain. Not sure why this should be a Nazi strategy in particular, but it has been. Perhaps nostalgia is a part of the Nazi appeal. Similarly, they resurrected the aged Peron for an encore in Argentina. 

The censorship and blacklisting of dissenting views is now blatant. 

The last US election looks fixed.

We see emerging a seamless coalition between government and big corporations, eliminating the free market. This is more or less the definition of Fascism in economic terms.

We also, if it needs to be said, see an ongoing holocaust, unrestricted abortion. I suspect it is guilt over this that is fueling the whole move to Fascism. But racism and discrimination is also being aggressively fomented against another targeted minority, straight “cisgender” white males. Who are accused of all the same things the Jews were accused of in the 1930s. There is even growing antisemitism.

And so it goes.

The last time it touched down, this all happened mostly in three medium-strength powers. Nevertheless, it took a lot to end it then. 

This time, it looks much stronger. Both China and the US look as though they are moving to Fascism. 

Are we all doomed? It took many years of struggle to achieve freedom and democracy. It may not be so easy to ever get it back if it is lost.

It may take another war, worse than the last. Just because both the US and China are Nazi, does not mean they will ally. Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia were virtually the same system, but fought to the death. In earlier years, Mussolini stood against Hitler’s annexation of Austria. There is no honour among Nazis. To the contrary, the logic of their beliefs will compel them to sooner or later fight one another. Nazism requires a hated enemy.

I have also seen the theory that, with the rise of a middle class, liberal democracy becomes inevitable. We have seen evidence in East Asia over the past few decades: once the GDP per capita hits about $10,000 US per annum, the system morphs into something more liberal. A prosperous middle class has the resources to resist an oppressive government, and the desire to do so. This theory, if correct, suggests that any movement to Nazism is temporary, pulling against the tide of history. It might work for a time, given the crisis and economic chaos produced by COVID; as it worked for a time in Germany and Italy under the strain of the Great Depression. But once prosperity returns, it cannot hold on. No government exists for long without at least the tacit consent of the governed. All it takes is for the common soldiers and the police to stop following orders…

But what if the concentration of power in a few big tech firms is killing the middle class? Many have actually been saying just this. A few on top, and everyone else on GAI? Now the existence of independent merchants or service providers or business owners of any kind seems dependent on the mercies of Amazon, Google, PayPal, or a few others. Amazon can refuse to carry your products or your storefront; Google can delete you from search results; PayPal can refuse to process payments...

Yet I think the inherent logic of the Internet is decentralizing. We have allowed power to be concentrated in a few silos so that people can put locks on the door, but this is artificial. Once America Online was the only visual interface to the Internet, and held close to a monopoly. Where are they now? MicroSoft used to have a near-monopoly on the Internet and even personal computing with the dominant browser and the dominant operating system. Now both monopolies got busted, by the market itself and the evolving technology. The tech companies will keep trying to build their silos—Apple’s introduction of the concept of apps was a blatant example. 

But this is like whack-a-mole. The monopolies work for a little while, until the public realizes their options. Because of the nature of the beast, putting a printing press in every home, a video camera in every pocket, it is not going to be possible over the long term to control and restrict the flow of either information or commerce. Trying to do so is going to require ever more extreme measures.

And that is perhaps what we are seeing now. Those holding power now are paranoid, and are acting as though they are desperate. CNN, the New York Times, Twitter, publishing companies, seem actually to be acting in ways that destroy their own brands. The online investment firm Robin Hood just did the same. Desperation could explain the overreaction to the capitol invasion, and the seemingly childish attempt to impeach Trump after leaving office. Or AOC claiming Ted Cruz is trying to murder her. It looks hysterical.

It could get very messy; but I suspect we are seeing the mad thrashing of a dying beast.

Auf Wiedersehen, Mein Herr Trump

 

I was watching videos of Liza Minelli singing the title song from Cabaret; Christopher Isherwood had come up in a work connection. Then it occurred to me to also recap “Tomorrow Belongs to Me.”

We are, after all, living through a similar time. The analogies with the Weimar Republic are overwhelming.

First a period of libertinage; “there is no right and wrong.” Then some organized group emerging, and asserting power for the sake of power.

My sister observes, “beautiful, if you’re not Jewish.”

The two songs are not just ominous for Jews. Most of the people the Nazis outright murdered were not Jewish; and this does not include the tally from the war, not just of combatants but of civilians. Millions died in places like Leningrad or Silesia of starvation. Millions were seized as slave labour. And, had the Nazis won that war, uncounted millions more would have died. The Germans themselves suffered as much as anyone; those young people we hear singing might all be dead within ten years.

But that’s what makes the songs so powerful: because we know how it all turned out. We know where Elsie and Sally’s attitude to life is going to lead, and we know where the young Nazis’ dream led. True beauty is not pretty or pleasant. It must include the sublime. High art must always have an element of sheer terror.

Compare Cohen’s “Dance Me to the End of Love.” The reference is to the bands the Nazis had playing as they herded people into the gas chambers.

What makes the cherry blossoms so beautiful is knowing that in a week they will all have rotted.

But I digress. The poignancy is especially powerful now because we are now seeing the Nazis rise; in America, a far more consequential nation than Germany in 1933. And not only in America, either.

The parallels are astounding, and everyone is sleepwalking through it all.

No, it is not that Trump is Hitler. He is more Churchillian, conservative, gruff, passionately hated by many for his bombast, with many public vices. Hitler, by contrast, was a radical, an obscure figure, the opposite of a conservative, and had no visible vices. Incorruptible, vegetarian, apparently celibate. He was not hated so much as not taken seriously. Who could be seriously frightened by a little Austrian tramp with a moustache like Charlie Chaplin?

Biden is not Hitler either: he is a Hindenberg, or a Petain, a doddering old figurehead behind whose reassuring familiarity the consequential business of conquering and controlling the government apparatus can be done without interference.

Not, I suspect, by Kamala Harris. She not as Hitler either. She is too corrupt to be dangerous. She is perhaps a Goering or a von Papen, someone prepared to hire out her reputation to Hitler’s cause, for some emolument or chance for graft. Biden can be handled, and she can be bought.

By whom? 

The Hitler will emerge from relative obscurity; he usually does. As Hitler did. Probably someone no one saw coming, some faceless bureaucrat with no particular record like Putin, or some lower-ranking officer like Gaddhafi. Someone obscure enough that no one thought to defend against them. He or she is probably already in position and pulling strings. Someone engineered the nomination for Biden. Something has been going on behind the scenes in the FBI. Jeffrey Epstein didn’t kill himself.

Antifa and BLM are, of course, the military wing, the stormtroopers, sowing the discord in the streets. Germans in 1933 figured that the way to stop the chaos was to vote for their political masters. Many Americans in 2020 seem to be making the same calculation, and backing the Democrats to stop the rioting. The instincts of the average man seem always to run to appeasement.

We live in interesting times.

The Words of the Prophet

Leonard Cohen was a true prophet, and foresaw the current social collapse in the US back in 1992. He sang about it in “The Future.”

“Give me absolute control
Over every living soul
And lie beside me, baby
That's an order.”
Over every living soul And lie beside me, baby That's an order.”

Here, he is speaking from the Nazi/postmodern viewpoint. Seen already in the Weimar Republic's sexual license

“Give me crack and anal sex
Take the only tree that's left
And stuff it up the hole
In your culture.”

It sounds like a plea for ecological awareness, right? Wrong. He seems to be saying instead that a preoccupation with trees shows a deficit in the culture. The environmental movement, the glorification of the “natural,” has dangerous moral implications. It suggests we ought to act on pure impulse, like animals. Animals kill and eat one another. The Nazis were great environmentalists.

“Give me back the Berlin wall
Give me Stalin and St. Paul
I've seen the future, brother
It is murder”

Why would he want the Berlin Wall? The point is the clear distinction between good and evil, Stalin and St. Paul, the free world and the evil empire. It is an image of choosing sides. It is vital to preserve the distinction between right and wrong, or murder breaks loose.

Cohen betrays on which side of the Berlin Wall he stands, with Stalin or with St. Paul, with the phrase “I’ve seen the future.” It was famously applied to the early Soviet Union, by Lincoln Steffens in 1919: “I’ve seen the future, and it works.” Cohen clearly differs: it is murder.

"Won’t be nothing… you can measure any more.
The blizzard, the blizzard of the world
Has crossed the threshold
And it has overturned
The order of the soul"

This is the essence of the problem: the order of the soul has been overturned. The blizzard is an image of disorder. There is nothing we can measure any more, when we dispense with truth or right and wrong. These are the measures of all things.

You don't know me from the wind
You never will, you never did
I'm the little Jew
Who wrote the Bibl

Getting explicit, surely; we have lost touch with the Bible and our Judeo-Christian roots.

There'll be the breaking of the ancient western code
Your private life will suddenly explode
There'll be phantoms
There'll be fires on the road
And the white man dancing

Isn't this a remarkably clear image of what is happening now? Nothing in your past is private any longer; anything can be dug up with a Google search. And has been, on anyone targeted for political reasons. We see news photos of "white" people kneeling before "blacks." We see black-clad phantoms setting fires in the streets.


Was this visionary, or was it all so predictable?

Destroy another fetus now
We don't like children anyhow
I've seen the future, baby
It is murder

This is not the only or the first time Cohen has sung against abortion. He seemed to see it, as I do, as a key issue.

When they said (they said) repent (repent), repent (repent)
I wonder what they meant

And this, improbable and difficult as it seems, is the only solution: repentance. Cohen repeats the chorus relentlessly.

Cohen did; but can we hope for this for the world as a whole?

The Gathering Storm

Self-actualization: Mussolini's face on the Fascist Party headquarters, surrounded by the word "Si"--"Yes." 

Is there anything more pernicious, more sinister, than the popular interpretation of Godwin’s Law: that if you compare anyone or anything else to Hitler or the Nazis, you have lost the argument? It is the perfect way to usher in the next Hitler; it almost looks calculated. 

The idea that Hitler and Nazism was a unique phenomenon is obviously wrong. We have seen the same script acted again and again: Stalin and the Holomodor, Mao and the Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution, Pol Pot and the Killing Fields, Rwanda, Bosnia, the Armenian genocide under the Young Turks.

Rather than being a one-off, that we managed with brave determination to purge from the Earth, the philosophy we call Nazism has actually been steadily gaining adherents and influence over the years, without significant interruptions. Marcuse was big in the 1960s; same philosophy. Nazism is the doctrine we now usually call “postmodernism.” You can trace it back through “modernism” to Darwin and Nietzsche. I am only too familiar with it from graduate school. Even then, in the 1970s, it was pervasive. I remember checking myself at one point and thinking—“wait a minute. Isn’t that just what Mussolini said?” And then brushing off the thought. Couldn’t be. Fascism was something uniquely horrible, right?

It is at base simply the doctrine that there is no truth, no right or wrong, and all that matters is the imposition of one’s will. Nazism and Fascism never had any more to them than that. And, Nietzsche advised us, this is what is left when you turn away from God.

This necessarily proceeds to mass murder: you will want to murder anyone you think might be able to murder you.

We see the stormtroopers in the streets of the USA today, calling themselves “Antifa” or “Black Lives Matter.” We see how easily they bend the majority to their will, just as the brownshirts and blackshirts did. The majority seems to be on their side.

How will it end? If you accept the premise that a foetus is a human being, we already have a Holocaust underway, far worse than Hitler’s. Nazism did immense havoc when it took government in a second-tier power, Germany. It is already in power in China. What will happen if it takes power in the USA?

Will it be in power if Biden is voted in? We do not know who is behind him; might it be a situation like that of the aged Hindenberg, or Petain--a reassuringly familiar old face, a trembling hand easy to guide? Why did the Democratic Party establishment so suddenly and solidly unite behind him, when other candidates still looked viable?

It is Trump, of course, that everyone is casting as Hitler. They did the same with Churchill.

Can it be stopped? Perhaps only by God. Perhaps that is what the pandemic is for. It is, at least, exposing what has been hiding in dark corners.

Ernst Zundel

Ernst Zundel

A few years ago, everyone in Canada new Ernst Zundel. He was our leading “neo-Nazi.” He was regularly in and out of prison for denying the Holocaust. 

Zundel’s profession was graphic design. A Jewish friend of mine had some dealings with him, or perhaps some dealings with someone who had some dealings. And he reported something that made us both uneasy. Zundel had turned down a job from someone who asked him to doctor a photo of some factory to hide evidence of pollution. Because it was unethical.

He was a man of principle.

My friend assumed that Hitler must have been a man of principle too. But if so, how can we be sure that our principles are right, and theirs are wrong? Had Hitler won the war, would we look on Churchill as the monster?

I find that conclusion not just morally unacceptable, but logically. You cannot fudge morality; as Kant demonstrated, it is indisputable. It is the one indisputable thing: do unto others, as it is most commonly put.

Hitler had no principles. Hitler and the Nazis were all and only about the urge for power and the law of the jungle. Scholars and historians still argue about just what the Nazi program was; even the Nazis did not know. Were they socialists, as they claimed, “radical moderates,” or were they on the right? William L. Shirer, who was there, observed that Hitler said different things to different audiences. He said whatever he thought they wanted to hear. There was no principle involved but power, and whatever achieved power. The triumph of the will.

Zundel was the polar opposite. And the same has to be true of anyone claiming to be a neo-Nazi today. It is not what anyone wants to hear. They have to be doing it on principle, if perhaps misguided principle, because it only does them harm personally and ensures no one will ever consent to giving them any position of power. A modern neo-Nazi is the opposite of a Nazi.

Accordingly, all our measures against neo-Nazis are misdirected. We are targeting the wrong people. We are only persecuting people of unshakeable principle, the very people least likely to ever become real Nazis. Zundel was no doubt right: he was simply asking questions.

Indeed, the application of the hate laws to his case was obviously illegitimate. The charge was that, by expressing doubt that the Holocaust actually happened, he was fomenting hatred against an identifiable group. Isn’t that the opposite of what he was doing? He was denying an accusation against Germans that could inspire hatred. For comparison, would it really be a hate crime against Christians to deny that the Jews killed Christ? Why is sauce for the goose here poison for the gander?

The real Nazis, if they are real Nazis, are certain to instead call themselves “Antifa.” It is the properly cynical power play. And they will want to prevent people from asking questions.

Friend Xerxes reports approvingly, “In Rwanda, it is now a crime to deny the genocide. It is illegal to deny the Holomodor in Ukraine. Sixteen European countries have laws prohibiting denial of the Holocaust.”

This was the law that sent Zundel to prison in Canada, then in Germany. And there is an obvious problem here. Consider this: it is illegal in France to deny the Armenian genocide. It is illegal in Turkey to say it happened.

We cannot trust governments to legislate truth. Governments are the ones who commit the genocides. Then they try, with such laws, to scapegoat the common people. The only guarantee of truth is free discussion.

Bookburning in Portland

Reportedly, "black bloc" protesters in Portland are now burning Bibles.

It illustrates what this is really all about. Those who are out protesting are actually protesting any restraints on their own actions. Police are hateful because their existence implies a need to obey laws. Bibles are hateful because their existence implies a need to restrain your impulses in order to act morally.

Rioting itself is an acting out of the insistence to be able to spontaneously indulge desires at any time.

A Time for Choosing

Black is the new brown: Stormtroopers enforcing early cancel culture.

Have you ever wondered how you would have behaved had you lived in Weimar Germany, as the Nazis rose to power? Would you have been one of the true believers, falling into line? Or would you have fought at any cost for human decency?

No need to wonder. You are there.

The parallels between Weimar Germany in its death throes and the USA today are obvious. The only difference is the name the Nazis use. Now they call themselves, disingenuously enough, “Antifa” or “Black Lives Matter.”

But the critical elements are the same:

1. The Nazis/Antifa believe that power is the only issue and the only goal. There is no truth but power; there is no morality but power. There are no common values to appeal to. This has long been explicit in postmodernism, and was bound to lead here. Hitler made it plain in Mein Kampf: the objective of the state or the movement or the individual is to get whatever advantage it can for itself. One large arm of Antifa enshrines it in their name: BAMN, “By Any Means Necessary.”

2. Since everything is about power, it is all only a matter of who gets to be on top. There is no equality; there is no fairness. There is no question of compromise, dialogue, or shared interests. Black lives matter. All lives do not matter. Say so, and you may get shot.

3. The action has moved into the streets; it is now moved, inevitably, to a test of strength and resolve. In this atmosphere of chaos, the general populace will immediately crave order, and will gravitate to whichever faction looks stronger in hopes of getting it. We are seeing this everywhere. This is how you make good Germans. This is the strategy we can expect from most people, allowing the worst to take command. For now, BLM and Antifa look stronger. It may be that a strong man on the right may emerge, instead of Antifa or BLM taking over. It makes no difference: it would be a choice between Hitler and Stalin. In fact, the situation automatically favours whichever side is least principled, and the worst will rise to the top, whichever side it is.

4. As in Weimar Germany, it has become a matter of race and of searching for scapegoats. Hitler fixed on the Jews and the Freemasons, and so forth. BLM and Antifa and their acolytes have fixed on “whites,” Republicans, and so forth. The selection is more or less automatic: if the only value is power, you target whomever you suspect of being powerful or potentially rivals for power for elimination. Similarly dire consequences for the targeted are only too likely.

5. As in Weimar Germany, we see the authorities tacitly favouring one side in the battle in the streets. The bias in favour of power that infects the streets has already infected the elite. In both Weimar Germany and contemporary America, it had its main power base in the universities and in the bureaucracy. Those sophisticated sorts who had read Nietzsche and considered themselves supermen; those sophisticates who have read the French postmodernists and consider themselves much cleverer than the common rabble who believe in morality.

6. In Weimar Germany, the authorities generally looked the other way when Nazis acted illegally. When Hitler attempted a putsch, he got a comfortable prison term with writing materials. We see this today in the grossly preferential treatment of leftists both in the popular culture and in the law courts. Witness the prosecution of General Flynn, how figures on the right are not permitted to speak. This may in part be explained by the influence of the postmodern assumptions on the bureaucratic and academic class that feeds the bureaucracy at all levels.

7. Any authorities who are not themselves Nazis seem paralyzed. “The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity,” as Yeats described the 1930s. This is ordinary human denial in the face of evil. We do not want to accept the presence of evil, because we know we are ourselves sometimes guilty. Given an essentially unprincipled new movement, one which has embraced evil. this allows them free rein, as it did at Munich. We watch Mitt Romney march with Black Lives Matter. Everybody, even right-wing commentators, is giving them far too much credit.

And so it goes.

Except that the Nazism of the 1930s infected only one power, and only one of the great powers. Hitler appeared and rose when Germany was intrinsically weak, militarily and economically. Even so, thanks to appeasement, he got shockingly far.

Imagine what the Nazis could do if they arose in the world’s most powerful country, or even in a number of countries simultaneously.

Last time, the primary scapegoats were the Jews, only about 6% of the German population. This time, it is “white males,” 30% of the US population. Not to mention the ongoing holocaust of the unborn—and the certainty that white women will be next. Last time it was Freemasons, only a fraction of the German population, surely. This time it is Republicans, essentially half the population.

The Nazis may have bitten off more than they can chew, leading to their rapid collapse. Let us hope so. Because, if not, the potential for carnage and general destruction is exponentially higher.

Which side are you on?

Albuquerque Video

https://twitter.com/i/status/1272992074321793029

The Devil Makes Them Do It

Recent reports on CNN are astounding as examples of blatant lying. They illustrate what happens when someone commits to a vice. Not only do they lie: their lies tend to become the very opposite of the truth, and they become preoccupied with accusing others of exactly what they are doing.

The topic is this tweet by Donald Trump:

The tweet was never actually shown by CNN, but was introduced by Don Lemon as “this crazy conspiracy theory.” “Conspiracy theory” seems to have become the stock cliché by which it is referred to in the mainstream media.

But in what sense can it be so described? Antifa is a known conspiracy, not a theory. The question is only about the significance of the actions of one individual. By definition, one cannot have a conspiracy of one.

Stelter: “he takes in this BS and poisoned information.”

Stelter: “This all started from a right-wing blog called Conservative Treehouse, which traffics in hyperpartisan, often-times made-up information.”

The Conservative Treehouse piece is here.

No evidence is advanced that Conservative Treehouse has ever made up information. Even had they, this is a perfect example of the ad hominem fallacy. If it is true, it does not matter where the story originated.

Stelter: “there was a post, from SOMEONE, making up this claim anonymously…”

Stelter is perhaps being slippery in not being clear what “this claim” means. The only clear claim made in the Trump tweet is that the protester fell harder than he was pushed. Something anyone can judge for themselves by watching the video.

And the author of “this claim,” whatever else is being referred to, is “anonymous” only in the sense that the site’s editorials, like those of most newspapers, are anonymous. The post was by “Sundance,” who appears to be the site’s owner or editor. He writes the site’s mission statement. I expect any competent and honest journalist could track down his legal name, if they wanted to. They might also find that George Orwell was not a real name; nor Mark Twain.

And his claims are heavily documented, not “made up.” Including tweet threads from the man himself, showing a strong left-wing and anti-police bias, eyewitness testimony, and a statement by the mayor of Buffalo identifying him as a known provocateur.

Specific claims made in the Treehouse article, although not made by Trump: “professional activist, agitator and Antifa provocateur.”

The one item that might be questionable, given the evidence presented, is that he was a member of Antifa. Given the nature of that organization, any such claim can probably rarely be either proven or disproven. They are a loose association of other groups. Let’s rely on CNN’s own definition: “"[t]he term [antifa] is used to define a broad group of people whose political beliefs lean toward the left -- often the far left -- but do not conform with the Democratic Party platform.” By their own definition, then, it seems profoundly disingenuous of them to claim there is any serious doubt that calling Gugino a member of Antifa was a fair observation.

By contrast, CNN, Stelter, and Lemon do not document their claim that the Trump tweet was false in any way. They seem to have just made it up. They are blaming Trump for doing exactly what they are doing, while they are doing it.

“One America News repeated THE LIE from Conservative Treehouse…"

Here is the One America News coverage:

Stelter inadvertently admits that neither Trump nor OANN actually even said the man was a member of Antifa--only that he could be. “It’s always with a shroud of mystery,” he explains. He suggests they failed to make the claim only so that it could not be disproven. In other words, he is blaming them for NOT making a claim he says is false.

Their supposed motive is of course ridiculous. If Stelter can disprove the claim, he can disprove it equally well whether or not anyone has made it.

Stelter concludes “but this is clearly a kooky theory with no evidence to back it up.”

Lemon then says, “Some people are connecting this to Russian trolls. Now why is that?”

That’s remarkable: the idea that Gugino, the old protester, fell harder than he was pushed, they describe as a conspiracy theory without evidence. Even though it’s all on video, and everyone has seen it. Yet their only source for a claim that some unspecified “this” is all a Russian conspiracy is “some people.”

Stelter does give one additional piece of evidence: apparently the talking head who covered the story for OANN had worked for Sputnik News in the past—and Sputnik News is run by the Russian government.

This is again pure ad hominem, and doubly irrelevant since the OANN reporter was only reporting on the story in Conservative Treehouse, just as CNN is doing now. Interestingly, Stelter offers no evidence that Sputnik News has ever reported on the story—an obvious bit of journalism he ought to have done before claiming any special Russian interest in the matter.

Having worked for Sputnik probably says nothing about the ideological interests of any journalist in any case. RT, the Russian government TV/video service, hosts the widest conceivable range of ideological voices.

Stelter: “this is looney tunes stuff; this is crazy maddening stuff.” "It’s a form of poison…going straight to the president’s brain.”

“Maddening” instead of “mad” may be a Freudian slip here.

Lemon: “it’s really shameful.”

Interestingly, he looks down at this point. Run the video for yourself and see. Just as someone would do if they were themselves ashamed. This seems to me further evidence that he is projecting. He feels ashamed at the lies he is telling, so he expresses it as an accusation towards someone else.

He can’t look the viewer in the eye.

Lemon: “even when you present to them all the evidence, and the fact-check, they don’t care.”

Neither Lemon nor Stelter has offered much if any evidence or facts for their claims in the segment. Conservative Treehouse had offered a lot of evidence; they have just ignored it.

Lemon: “they don’t care, because they want to believe it.” This sounds like a bit of self-revelation; and it indeed expresses the common idea on the left. Everyone simply “chooses their narrative,” believes what they want to believe. He is projecting the same motive onto Trump and his supporters.

“… and then the president has this fixation on scary words and terms, right?”

Let’s look at the scary terms Lemon and Stelter have just used to prejudice viewers against Trump and his tweet: looney, crazy, poison, poisoned, BS, conspiracy, shameful, maddening, trolls, Russians, kooky, lie, made up.

What scary terms is Trump accused of using?

Lemon offers “unmasking.”

Significantly, there is nothing intrinsically scary about “unmasking.” Just the reverse: “masking” suggests something sinister, something to hide; “unmasking” is the opposite of that. Trump is simply using the accepted term. If it seems bad to the general public, it can only be because what it describes is that bad. If it is frightening to Lemon and Stelter, the reason would seem to be that they are aware of having something to hide.

And they are accusing Trump of exactly what Lemon and Stelter have been doing all through the interview: merely throwing out scary words and terms.

Then Lemon cites “defund the police.”

Perhaps Trump has used the term. But it comes from the left, not from Trump.

Stelter then says “Antifa,” perhaps to suggest that it too is a scary term Trump is promoting.

But that term is crafted to sound as unscary as possible: “anti-fascist.” Who isn’t against fascism?

If it has come to sound scary, like “unmasking,” this can only be because of the actual activities engaged in.

Stelter: “researchers say” Antifa is involved in the disturbances only in small numbers in large cities. He cites NPR.

Yet this is not a contradiction of anything said on the right, much less by Trump. It is spectacularly unlikely that you would find anyone on the right claiming Antifa has wide support. The assertion has been that small numbers of Antifa provocateurs have been trying to turn the protests towards violence.

And, of course, it is improbable that any researchers have accurate numbers. Mark Bray, an Antifa apologist, writes at their Wikipedia entry that “members hide their political activities from law enforcement and the far right." So if, as seems likely, researchers rely on either police reports or depositions from those arrested, their figures are worthless. What other sources might they have?

Lemon suggest the current alarm about Antifa resembles past hysterias on the right: a past obsession with “The New Black Panthers.” Odd; I follow the news pretty closely, and the organization name barely rings a bell. A Google search suggests they were active circa 2000-2013. I now remember charges of voter intimidation during elections.

But I do remember quite recent obsessions with “Russian collusion,” “The Proud Boys,” “white supremacists,” “the alt-right,” “the Koch brothers,” “Russian bots.” All, it seems, on the left. Continuing a longer and storied tradition that includes and included “rich capitalists,” “the Trilateral Commission,” “the Skull and Bones Society,” “Wall Street,” “Big Oil,” Blackwater,” “the Jews,” “the kulaks,” “the military-industrial complex,” and on and on.

Lemon ends with the sage advice that one must not seek simple solutions; that real people and real life are more complicated than that.

If anyone is listening, however, that looks like a Freudian admission that there might be more than one side to the claim of “police brutality” in Buffalo that has been the subject of this very segment.

Given that Lemon, Stelter, Anderson Cooper, and just about everyone in the old legacy media is in lockstep on this, all openly denying easily seen facts, all even using the same stock term “conspiracy theory” about the tweet, it might itself suggest a conspiracy: on the left.

I don’t think so. I think this is an example of how evil manifests an independent will and intelligence, once an individual commits to it. The way, in alcoholism, the bottle comes to command the man. The easiest way to think of it is to call it the Devil.

Who the Devil is Behind the Riots?

NYC Draft Riots, 1863.

The current mad rioting across the US seems to demonstrate the reality of the Devil. It looks as though it is organized; yet it cannot be easily accounted for by any human agency. Therefore, the hypothesis that there is some independent malicious spiritual consciousness interfering in affairs. 

There are reports of mysterious pallets of bricks left in prominent public places for mob use; of masked men with umbrellas smashing windows to encourage looting. There is a mysterious gap in the original video that triggered the protests…

The nominal cause for all the unrest is that apparent murder of George Floyd, captured on video. It is supposedly Black Lives Matter, or the black community more generally, demanding justice.

But justice was already apparently being served. The policeman seen killing Floyd had already been arrested and charged with murder. Moreover, the violent protests that we are now seeing are probably ending more black lives, devastating black neighbourhoods, reinforcing police presumptions that black people are violent and lawless, and suggesting to the public the need for more police and greater police powers. If the black community is doing this as a community, they are working against their own interests.

This is itself a hallmark of Satan’s work; that his followers work to their own destruction. But we also see videos online of blacks loudly protesting the looting and violence. And many if not most of the rioters have white skin.

A more plausible explanation is that the rioting, whatever happened to spark it, is driven by general frustration at the long lockdown, desperation at loss of employment, a feeling that the experts and the government have messed up and behaved callously during the epidemic. Yet if this is the impetus, the rioting and looting are again counterproductive. They are perfectly calculated to cause a new outbreak of the virus, forcing us all back into lockdown for longer. And justifying the government in not trusting the people to make their own decisions.

Some of the news media are apparently blaming it all on “white supremacists.” It might indeed fit their agenda, by discrediting blacks. But this presumes a massive, coordinated false flag operation, involving moving large numbers of people into places where they do not live, and having them all chant and spray-paint only slogans they disagree with—an improbable conspiracy theory, and certainly vastly beyond the capabilities of any existing “white supremacist” organization to pull off all across the country on a day’s notice. At least as any kind of organized group, they number only a couple of thousand at most, and these riots are breaking out in cities all over the country.

Some, including the governor of Minnesota, suggest foreign provocateurs are behind it all. This sounds reasonable to some, no doubt, because of current tensions with China. But as with white supremacists, the numbers of foreign agents and resources likely available seems beyond the realm of possibility. As a general principle, I doubt foreign intelligence services really account for much. By their nature, they amount to a group of bureaucrats operating without supervision. What happens when you put together a large group of bureaucrats and remove any supervision?

Nothing.

If individual agents or cells ever do get up to anything, the secrecy generally means they end up operating at cross-purposes, most often for their own narrow self-interests.

And “provocateurs” can only ever be a partial explanation. People must have a predisposition to be “provoked.”

Some, of course, blame the police for it all—it is all, including the killing of George Floyd, an assertion of police bullying. If they only kept the police away from the protesters, similarly, all would be well. Police themselves have not been helping this perception—at one point, they arrested a black CNN crew member on camera.

Yet policemen and police chiefs across the country quickly condemned the original killing. If some policemen have an attitude problem, it does not seem to be an organized or coordinated thing.

The likeliest explanation seems to be that Antifa are behind this. If Antifa is, as claimed, an anti-fascist organization, this would again be counter-productive. Chaos in the streets is a demand for Fascism. But I think it is clear that Antifa is not now, and has never been, an anti-Fascist organization. Rather, it is a Fascist organization seeking power.

If Antifa is behind the curtain, this too would involve moving people in large numbers into neighbourhoods where they do not live—Antifa’s membership is white and middle class. But they at least seem large enough, wealthy enough, and organized enough to make this possible.

It would not be surprising, either, if Antifa were getting funding from some foreign power.

Perhaps the upshot of these riots needs to be a concerted investigation by the FBI into Antifa.

Are the Winds in Canada Shifting?

Seems like I scored a clear miss on my reading of the recent Canadian leaders’ debate. I thought Jagmeet Singh did not do what he needed to do. But it seems to be the consensus among the pundits that Singh was “the winner.”

Mainstream media left-wing bias? But Steve Paikin had a pollster reporting the same, based on overnight polling. It seems it was I who was blinded by ideological bias.

I agree that Singh scored for being likeable. I just did not think that mattered, because for likeability he was ideologically up against Elizabeth May, who is more so. So that, I thought, was not going to sway votes.

The pollster says it has.

Partisans of Scheer need not panic, however. This should be good news for them. Singh pulls votes from the Liberals, for the most part. A more even split between them lets the Tories take more ridings. Singh would have a lot of ground to make up before he actually challenged for power.

But buoyed by my wrong call here, let me make another.

I have a vague sense that we have come to an inflection point in the campaign, and in Canadian politics. Possibly even a watershed.

I mean the recent video of Antifa members harassing an elderly woman with a walker who was trying to attend a Bernier event in Hamilton. They blocked her way; they loudly chanted “Nazi scum! Off our streets!” 

Note that the clip featured here is from RT, Russian TV. It is getting international attention.

It may have pulled the claimed moral high ground out from under the forces of “progressivism” in the public mind. The absurdity of the charge was too apparent. It was too apparent who was the bully, and who the bullied. Mainstream media reports have tried to obscure it, but the video itself was too vivid.

Someone was then able to ID one of the Antifa members in the video, and outed the man behind the mask on YouTube. He turned out to be a recent (2015) Syrian immigrant. Who, we are then shown, has a history of rioting. 

https://www.facebook.com/rick.boswick/videos/2667612919944522/

The optics could not have been better for Bernier’s cause: a recent immigrant from Syria, of all places, declaring exclusive ownership of the streets of Canada, showing hatred towards a native-born Canadian simply exercising her democratic franchise. And a little old disabled lady, at that.

“They hate us, they are violent, they lack all humane instincts, and they plan to take over.” That’s the visual message.

His family runs a restaurant on Queen West. More bad optics, violating the popular meme of destitute Syrian refugees. Looks like they were economic migrants after all.

Said restaurant was soon identified, as it bore the suspect’s family name, and some online called for a boycott.

Within days, the family announced the restaurant’s closing. They said the hostility they were getting on social media was apparently too much.

Doxxing is immoral. The family, as opposed to the individual, may bear no blame.

On the other hand: the perp was wearing a mask. Like the masks once worn by the KKK, almost demands a public unmasking.

And was this deliberate doxxing? Or was the matter simply self-evident by the restaurant’s name?

It was the family’s decision to close the restaurant. Nobody else made them do this, and so nobody else may deserve any blame for it. Obviously, they had suffered some very bad publicity, very likely to harm their business. Welcome to the free market.

Some were calling for a boycott. Okay: the left has made boycotting businesses for the slightest of reasons standard practice. It is something right-wingers have long just had to live through.

Did they get death threats? Any prominent figure on the right has been getting death threats for years.

The message the closing of the restaurant conveyed seems to be that the left has a glass jaw.

I think some people on the right now smell blood. And some on the left are smelling their own.

Predator may suddenly be prey, and prey may now need to be reckoned with. They, these despicable “right-wingers,” may be really angry, it seems, and not inclined to just take it anymore. It’s no longer going to be just fun for the left.

It’s probably nothing, as Kate McMillan would say.

But I attended a local all-candidates rally a couple of weeks ago, I think the day after the video surfaced, and then another just last night. The same set of candidates. At the first, the other parties tried to hammer the PPC to death, with their verbal bicycle locks, for their stand on immigration and on climate change. I noted pushback from some in the audience then. I thought I detected surprise in the candidates. Their expected applause lines were suddenly drawing flak. They seemed to pull back for the rest of the night.

Politicians are always brave at attacking nonexistent or absent enemies. But they are not going to oppose anyone real to their face. They might have a vote.

Last night, nobody took a jab at the PPC. The unkindest cut was just the Liberal saying he had no idea how they planned to finance their promises. That seemed a backhanded compliment. It was as if suddenly they were understood as an otherwise appealing electoral option.

Aside from the Liberal, none of the other candidates, all further to the left, even referred to the PPC or their stands on the issues. It was as though they were afraid to test those waters; afraid that if they made their disagreement plain, it might lose them support.

Meantime, Andrew Scheer just announced a new tougher stand on turning away refugees at the border. His pollsters may have told him something. Until now, he has been triangulating to the left.

It is all unrepresentative, anecdotal, and mostly just my sense of smell. Which has recently been proven unreliable.

Make of it what you will.

Wars and Rumours of War

Aunty Fascist.

I think it is indisputable that we, in Europe, America, and Oceania, “the West,” or “Western civilization,” are now in a state of cold civil war. Normal discourse is being shut down, and this must lead to violence. To an extent, violence has already started, with gangs like Antifa in the streets.

I also think there is no question who is the aggressor in this war: the “left.” It is the left that has been trying to shut down civil discourse; this is demonstrable. They are shouting down, censoring, passing “hate speech” laws, banning, boycotting, and unfriending.

Not all wars are contests of good against evil. But in the normal course of things, contrary to popular belief, most are. If both parties are of good heart, things can almost certainly be worked out without violence. A war that is simply a “misunderstanding” is improbable.

When this is the case, when it is good against evil, it is generally the party of evil who begins the war. It is not that starting a war is evil in itself, as is often claimed, but that it is the side with a losing argument who will want to shut down debate and resort to force. As a desperation measure, because otherwise they will lose the debate.

And it is usually the party of evil, or the party that begins the war, who loses it. That is, given that the parties are reasonably equally matched--this rule cannot apply if, for example, the British Empire invades Easter Island with a dozen ships of the line.

It sounds crazy, but it makes sense. First, there is the logic of the ordeal or duel: the assumption behind these practices was that the human conscience would strengthen the arm and aim of one who knew they were in the right. Second, the side that lacks justification is going to war as a desperation measure; because they know they will lose the argument. As they go to war in desperation, they may well go to war against the odds.

The obvious historical example is the Second World War. Granted that Stalin was as bad, overall, as Hitler, I think there is no room to dispute that right was on the side of the Western Allies against the Nazis. And I think the argument is compelling that Hitler, and Japan, went to war with little chance of winning from the outset. It is as though in a fit of suicidal rage they just wanted to take down as many people with them as possible.

I think, contrary to much opinion, that the same was true of the First World War. Germany was morally in the wrong, advancing an ideology of social Darwinism, Germany and Austria were the aggressors, first declaring war, and Germany and Austria lost.

American Civil War: begun by the South by firing on Fort Sumter. They were obviously morally in the wrong, to the extent that they were fighting to preserve slavery, they started a war that, in terms of relative economic and military strength, they had little chance to win, and they lost the war they had begun.

Franco-Prussian War: France declared war on Prussia for no good reason but grandeur and to check German power. France lost.

Punic Wars: who started them is unclear; but the Carthaginians practiced child sacrifice, and so were clearly in the moral wrong as a civilization. And they lost.

The left, I think on this basis, is doomed to lose this current civil war. And I believe, as I have said before, that the real underlying issue is abortion, and the supposed right to unrestricted sex. It is only a matter of how much blood they can spill in the effort.

Once they lose, I think we can expect the world to return to a healthy course and reconstruct.

Biden 2020 with Corrective Lenses

Showing again his narcissistic colours, Joe Biden has just announced his candidacy for US president, by basing it on a lie. He says he feels called to action to stop Trump, because he has openly endorsed white supremacy, the Ku Klux Klan, and Neo-Nazism. His evidence is what Trump said about Charlottesville: that “there were some very fine people on both sides.”

Trump’s words were surely meant in good heart, to encourage reconciliation. But when he said them, he also explicitly excluded and condemned Neo-Nazis and white nationalists. As well as the Antifa activists who had come to crack heads. As he should have. The same violent people Biden now unreservedly extolls.

Biden is demonstrating classic narcissistic behavior: truth has no value to him. All that matters is what furthers his interests. And he will say it with all apparent sincerity. He is gaslighting the electorate.

I doubt Biden is going to be the Democratic nominee. His current high ride in the polls is surely based mainly on name recognition. Having been VP for eight years, it has also not been his role to speak out independently on any issues. He has served only as a reassuring grey presence at Obama’s side. He has not run for office since. Accordingly, few in the public have a strong sense of his views; he is just a smiling, friendly face at this point.

As soon as he engages with other candidates, and marks out his own positions, he is sure to alienate some of his current support.

And, of course, he has a closet jammed full of high-proof ammunition for opposition researchers. It is a surprise to me that his history of pawing and groping has not already torpedoed his candidacy. It seems the left has turned away from their previous zeal on this brief now that they have belatedly realized that it can make Democrats look bad more easily than Republicans. But even aside from this, Biden has an easily documented history of public lying, and some of his past positions on issues are now considered disqualifying to those on the left. Surely his Democratic opponents will use these against him.

More broadly, Biden is the classic wheeling and dealing, gladhanding politician. The rise of Trump on the right, and Sanders on the left, of Obama before them, of Corbyn in England and Macron in France, of Zelensky in Poland, and on and on, are obvious signs that the public is fed up with such politicians and such politics. The cynical game becomes too clear in an era of social media and constant coverage.

Even Kamala Harris, whom I had picked as an early favourite for the Dem nom, seems to have already run afoul of this new mood. Bernie Sanders came out in favour of giving the vote to convicted felons. Harris tagged along by saying the “conversation should be held.” Now Harris is facing big backlash; Sanders isn’t. What’s the difference?

The issue is not the issue. People sense that Sanders is saying what he believes. People sense that Harris is saying whatever she thinks will get her to the nomination.

The same dynamic seems to have already killed Elizabeth Warren, and vaulted Pete Buttigieg to the first tier. For his fifteen minutes; it will not last. Any more than did Betomania before it.

Marx and the Marks

A Nazi image of the traditional "greedy capitalist."

Why is cultural Marxism a thing? Objectively, it seems mad. Marx was effectively disproved by 1917, the time of the Bolshevik Revolution. It was supposed, after all, to be an uprising by an impoverished and oppressed proletariat. Instead, it was the intellectuals, and it still is. In a country that had almost no proletariat; and this is now generally true in the West. Nothing since 1917 has done anything to restore anyone else's faith in Marx's notions. Yet the intellectuals generally, especially in the Humanities and Social Sciences at just about every university across the developed world, still all enforce this crackpot theory as a sort of orthodox dogma.

There are several reasons. One is that you actually need an ideology in education; without a goal, you cannot meaningfully do anything. When they cast out theology as the queen of the sciences, in favour of “scientific” materialism, the non-science subjects needed some new ideology that justified them in scientific terms. Marxism and Freudianism, pseudo-sciences working with the same subject matter, seemed to fit the bill.

But there is another reason.

Any profession is a cartel in restraint of trade; and Adam Smith's wisdom holds here. Whenever two or more men engaged in the same trade meet and talk, for any reason, even purely socially, the conversation will inevitably turn to how to improve their own position at the expense of the general public.

In creating and assigning special rights to professions, we are enabling and encouraging this. Our only protection against it is the naive confidence that people in the professions are moral paragons, who will naturally put the general interest above their own.

Every profession has a vested interest in failing to do what they are supposed to be there to do. Try the thought experiment: suppose some psychiatrist found a simple, inexpensive way to cure all mental illness. It might be in his own interest to publicize it; if he were an independent entrepreneur; but it certainly would not be in the interests of the profession. They would all swiftly be out of work: out of a job and a career they have invested hugely in, and that gives them immense rewards and prestige. How confident can we be that given the chance, this or any profession would wheel into action to destroy itself?

Dentistry stands apart as one profession that genuinely seems to act to reduce the problems dentists face. But this, I think, is due to the peculiar circumstances of that profession. Most dentists hate their job. The problem is that everyone hates to go to the dentist. This has to wear you down after a while. The suicide rate among dentists is high. So they are driven to justify themselves; and not that upset at perhaps being required to switch profession.

But look at lawyers. It is in that trade's vested interests to have more and more laws, and to make them harder and harder to understand. Then there is more and more need to hire lawyers. And so we have lawyers gravitating to government, where they pass more and more laws. And so we have the problem of legalese, odd lawyerly language designed so that non-lawyers cannot read it.

Look at government bureaucrats. It is in their vested interests, similarly, to have more and more regulations, and make them more difficult to understand. And so we have reams more, year by year, proposed and implemented by bureaucrats.

It is in the vested interest of academics to make their fields sound more difficult than they are. Just read and try to make sense out of the standard academic paper.

It is in the vested interest of teachers not to teach efficiently. I have dealt with this in detail elsewhere. Since we have allowed teachers to organize as a self-regulating profession, the cost of schools has shot up, while student results on standardized tests have flatlined or declined.

Since we have allowed journalists to organize as a profession, the quality of the media has declined in most folk's estimation—as demonstrated by falling readerships and viewerships.

Professionalizing a field is a lousy idea, and ought to be avoided whenever possible.

It is all predictable. In fact, it is all there in the New Testament. The professions are the people Jesus called “scribes and Pharisees”; scribe and Pharisee were the two learned professions of his day. They are the villains of the piece.

Already then, before, and ever since, the learned professions, scribes, priests, physicians, lawyers, clerks, and so on, have held all real power in society. The nominal rulers, kings and nobles and Roman procurators, got to live in great comfort and to go about hunting or doing whatever they like, but they were not the ones directly exercising power over others. Those were their estate agents, their clerks, their chancellors, their rent collectors and bailiffs, their tax collectors, their gamekeepers. The professionals. Such positions naturally attract the power-hungry: the bullies and the abusers.

It is no different in a democracy. The nominal rulers, the general public, vote once every four years, to appoint the highest ranks of the managers. But the bureaucrats and the professions are the ones exercising all real power over others daily.

The true value of Marxism to this class is that it distracts attention from the actual state of affairs. It sets up a cartoon villain, “the greedy capitalists,” or “the corporations,” and assigns to them all the supposed power and all the blame for anything wrong. “The Jews” works too, or used to, until Hitler overplayed his hand. “Americans” still works in most parts of the world. And “straight white men.” All these groups are conveniently identified by Marxists with the imaginary “greedy capitalists.”

By pointing fingers elsewhere, we are encouraged to overlook the power held by the professions, or how it might be abused. They can represent themselves as the great defenders of the poor and ordinary folks against their oppressors. And demand more power for this imaginary fight. Great con job, and it has worked for millennia.

It has always worked better in Europe than in America, of course. Better in Europe, because Europeans have a longer and deeper tradition of always deferring to their “betters.” The American working class is not so prepared to let others think or speak for them. Bunch of rednecks!

Fortunately, with the growth of the Internet, the power of the professions is probably declining. Much of what they once held as a private preserve—knowledge--is now readily available. Better access to media is shining light into dark corners. The recent taping of an inquisition at Wilfrid Laurier University is a case of this. We are starting to see the little men pulling the levers behind the curtain, and are not inclined to be awed.

We are also beginning to see what looks like a crackup. We witness the professions—broadly, “the left”--become extreme and violent, as they no longer seem to be able to get and do what they want. It begins to look hysterical; or like a tantrum. Let's all scream at the sky, shall we? Antifa, for example, seems to be composed of professionals on their days off wearing masks. They are making it all too clear now that they are not in any kind of solidarity with the rest of us.

White Privilege

Evidence of white privilege on display at Auschwitz

The dogma of “white privilege” seems to have fixed now hard as cement on the left. It can be used, of course, to justify any sort of discrimination against someone with white skin.

Are we all aware that this tactic has been used before, many times?

It is, in fact, the alibi for most historical genocides. They are usually represented as a matter of “getting our own back,” of evening the score for supposed past harm or discrimination. This almost has to be so, for some such alibi is needed to quiet the human conscience. No massacre is ever presented as unprovoked.

Here are a few notes on the Jews from a Nazi party monthly for propagandists, circa 1936:

“There are still Jewish lackeys today who attempt to disrupt our storm attack on the Jewish world rulers, trying to stop us or even cause us to fall. The following hints show how one can reply to these arguments by our opponents, or even turn their arguments against them.”

Note the Nazi claim that the Jews ruled the world. Just as “whites” are claimed to today. This is what the Protocols of the Elders of Zion were all about: the supposed Jewish hegemony. The system had been rigged in their favour, and to oppress poor ordinary Germans.

“Even if a few hundred Jewish families in Germany really did have to go hungry, what is that against the many millions of German families that the Jew murdered over the course of centuries through wars, revolutions, and civil strife, not to mention those ruined through usury and fraud.”

Reparations were due. Yeah. What about slavery? What about European colonialism? You know the drill. “White” people are responsible for all of history’s wars, not to mention raping the world through capitalism, through “usury and fraud.”

(Quotes from Kurt Hilmar Eitzen, “Zehn Knüppel wider die Judenknechte,” Unser Wille und Weg 6, 1936, pp. 309-310).

Alfred Rosenberg, Nazi chief of ideology, wrote,

“It is almost a miracle that absolutely nothing has happened to Jews in Germany, but rather that only gradually the rights they stole from the Germans in politics and culture have been restored.”

Nothing sinister here. Just poor exploited Aryans finally getting their own back.

The same dynamic gave us the Rwanda genocide of the 1990s. The Tutsis had been dominant in Rwandan politics before and during the colonial period. And so, the Rwandan Patriotic Front spread the notion that the Tutsis were oppressors.

In the end, when they came to power, 70 percent of the Tutsis in Rwanda were massacred.

The same claim of “getting our own back,” if not “reverse racism” specifically, is of course always behind the Communist genocides: in the Soviet Union, in China, in Cambodia. Collectively, these are probably the worst the world has ever seen. The bourgeois have, according to Marxist doctrine, been exploiting the workers. And so they ought to all be put to death. Just evening the score.

This is the road down which we travel. This is the ideology Antifa is attempting to enforce by violence in the streets.

Don’t pretend it isn’t.

Wild in the Streets

Antifa member fights "Fascist." 

I used to follow Warren Kinsella’s blog. He has recently tweeted something remarkably dumb, or sinister:

“’Antifa’ is short for anti-fascist. The only ones who should oppose antifa are fascists.”

There is an exact historical parallel:

“The Fascists are anti-Bolshevik. Nobody should oppose them except Bolsheviks.”

And that is exactly how Hitler and Mussolini got into power.

First they came for the Communists. But I was not Communist...

Whether he knows it or is just naive, Kinsella’s advice serves Fascist objectives perfectly.

Is he that naive? Does he really believe that simply saying something is so makes it so?

Yes, I think. I think this comes from a chain of prior assumptions, common on the left.

1. There is no objective reality

2. We each, therefore, have the right to “construct” our own reality.

It follows from this that, if I say a thing is so, it is so. It is my reality.

So if I say I am “anti-Fascist,” I am necessarily “anti-Fascist.” This cannot be questioned.

If you question it, this is an act of aggression against me. You are violating my rights to define myself. Similarly, if I say I am a woman, this cannot be questioned. If you will not use the pronoun I specify, you are committing an act of aggression against me.

This immediately means that free speech is no longer possible. Anything said can count as an “aggression.” Now to say something upsetting to someone is just as troublesome as punching them in the nose. And it is up to the listener to decide: there can be no objective standard for this. If I say I feel offended, the case is made. You have committed a violation of my rights.

We are all criminals now. Anyone can be declared an enemy of the people. Perhaps, for example, a disliked minority. Hearing Jews speak in their own behalf offends me. Or hearing straight white males.

But that is only the beginning of our problem. It is necessarily true that, if we each get to invent our own reality, these realities will quickly and regularly come into conflict. In your mind, you are a woman. In my mind, you are a man. If I refer to you as “he,” I am aggressing on your reality. But, equally, if you require me to refer to you as “she,” you are aggressing on my reality.

So whose rights prevail?

You might say, relying on that old distinction we used when we believed in an objective reality, that your rights end where my body begins. But that does not work when there is no agreed reality. That would include bodies, or selves. I could choose to say your body is not separate; it is just a “clump of tissues.” And it is in my way. I could choose to believe that your body is not there, or you are not. I could decide to believe you are not human in the same sense I am.

The only option left at this point is “might makes right”; and this point is inherent and inevitable in the initial premise. Whoever has power, in sum, gets to do whatever they want to whoever does not have power.

This is what we now see on the streets of America.

One side defines itself as “Anti-Fascist.” This justifies any action whatsoever against “Fascists.” But this side also reserves to itself the absolute right to declare who is Fascist and who is not.

Along with “Fascist,” you see the term “white supremacist” a lot recently. Its common usage is interesting, because in fact, there is probably no group anywhere in the US today who would call themselves “white supremacist.” At most, they would say that are “white nationalists.” Perhaps one or two small bodies, granted, would accept the term “Fascist” or “National Socialist.”

If they are not objectively correct, if they are lying, you would need to make the argument. You would have to demonstrate from things they say that they are in fact calling for the legislated superiority of people with pale skin.

Nobody seems to be doing this. Why?

Because whether or not they are objectively telling the truth is irrelevant. There is no truth. In my reality, they are white supremacists. Case closed. Lock and load.

But wait. If there is no objective truth, don’t they have the same right you do to define their own reality? If I say I am a woman, I am a woman. So if they say they are not white supremacists, they are not white supremacists, right?

Of course not, you fool. White supremacists have no rights.

In other words, might makes right. Each one of us is now, by this logic, in a struggle to the death to impose our will on everyone else. By any means necessary: by violence, by fake news (as if there were some objective standard!), by shouting opponents down, by falsely characterising their views, whatever.

And here we are.

So far, the right has been handicapped by feeling itself bound by all the old rules. This has given the left an immense tactical advantage. One thinks of poor Chamberlain and Daladier at Munich—naively thinking that everyone wanted peace, compromise was possible, and treaties meant something.

But where must this inevitably lead?

Hush, Hush, Sweet Charlottesville

Robert E. Lee, in what is now Charlottesvilles "Emancipation Park"

The recent atrocity in Charlottesville, Virginia, is a useful lesson for American Conservatives in what it is like to be a Muslim these days.

We often complain that Muslims should speak out more loudly against Islamic terrorism. Now Conservatives are in the same position: have we spoken out loudly enough against the killer who drove his car into a crowd of Antifa protestors?

Yet if we do condemn, we are buying in to an offensive, bigoted premise: that these Islamist terrorists, that this driver, have something to do with us and with what we believe. That we bear responsibility, more than more than Baptists or Democrats do. It is a perfect Catch-22. Either way, we are scapegoated.

At the same time, it seems to herd us unwilling into accepting and endorsing a claim that the other side, which we oppose, holds some moral high ground. The truth is, Muslims really do believe, with cause, that modern Western culture is morally depraved. Similarly, those of us on the right believe that the current resort to public violence began on the left, and so the left must take responsibility, indeed, primary responsibility, for this. We believe that racism is a general problem on the left, and vanishingly rare on the right. We believe that the left is morally depraved on matters such as abortion. Why must we feed this monster?

Nevertheless, we must not remain innocent bystanders. Let me get my condemnations in:

I condemn the city of Charlottesville, in the first place, for planning to remove the statue of Robert E. Lee. This provoked the entire affair, and it was an unprovoked act of aggression against the heritage of an identifiable group among its citizens. It was founded on anti-white prejudice.

I condemn the views of some of the groups that organized the protest against this, if the reports are true that some of them were racist. I read that participants included the KKK. As a Catholic, I obviously oppose the traditional views of the KKK. As a Christian, I necessarily condemn all racism. We must use caution here, however, because it has become standard practice on the left to declare any group on the right “racist.” So we never know when we are being fed false information.

I condemn equally the well-known racist groups on the other side, such as “Black Lives Matter.”

I support the right of all such groups to hold a public demonstration. This is an issue of freedom of speech and of assembly. That said, public demonstrations are generally not helpful or useful in a functioning democracy. And there is no justification for a riot.

I condemn in stronger terms holding “counter-demonstrations.” This looks like an attempt to interfere with another’s free speech. If and when held, such counter-demonstrations must be kept far away from the original demonstration they seek to “counter.”

I condemn, therefore, if the charges are true, the “stand-down” of the Charlottesville police, allowing the two groups to clash. This is exactly the factor that led to the rise of the Nazis in Germany: the police and authorities would not interfere, allowing the stronger gang to work their will.

I condemn the driver of the car, who is, so far as we can see from the available evidence, a murderer. He should be prosecuted for this, as should anyone else who did likewise. I oppose the death penalty, but life in prison seems just.

I condemn those who try to make all the other “right-wing” protestors, who in all probability are entirely innocent of this crime, collectively guilty because they presumably share roughly the same political views as the perpetrator. This is simple bigotry and prejudice.

I condemn those who try to use this to scapegoat. The mayor of Charlottesville, for example, blamed it all on Donald Trump. This ought to be actionable as slander.

I condemn those who have condemned Trump for condemning the apparent hatred on “many sides.” This was the only honourable line to take, in the circumstances.

This was not like a “terrorist” incident, in which violence is unleashed on unsuspecting civilians going about their lives. This was a clash of two opposing sides. That is a different moral equation. Although it does not make escalation okay.

Trump the Fascist

Stronger together.

More public insanity: here is a web-based comic arguing straight up that Donald Trump is a Fascist.

On what grounds?

1. “Extreme Nationalism.” Nationalism is disturbing. It violates basic morality: we are all brothers. And Trump is a nationalist. But nationalism in the modern world is mostly associated with the left; its current extreme being Juche in North Korea. In Canada and most other countries, especially throughout the Third World, it is the left which has been for protectionism and against free trade.

So voting in Trump was not a clear move towards greater nationalism. After all, Bernie Sanders also ran on trade protectionism, and so, this campaign, did Hillary Clinton.

The slogan “America First,” moreover, hardly counts as “extreme” in terms of nationalism. Did anyone claim Fascism over the UK’s 1968 “I’m Backing Britain” campaign, pushed by the Labour government? How about the Canadian NDP slogan “Close the 49th Parallel”?

Why is is Fascism if Trump does it, but not if the left does it? Why is the alarm being sounded only now?

2. “Disdain for human rights.” The evidence offered is that many will lose health insurance coverage under the new American Health Care Act. Perhaps true, not not an issue of human rights. Health insurance for all may be a desirable outcome, but it certainly is not a human right. One cannot have a human right to something that might be unaffordable, or might not exist.

And, not incidentally, the Nazis had universal health care. Clearly nothing to do with Fascism.

Has Trump actually shown any disregard for human rights? Say, the right to bear arms? The right to life? The right to freedom of conscience? Of religion? Freedom of speech? The right to freedom of association? In fact, all of these traditional human rights have recently been under assault, and under assault from the left. Trump has fairly aggressively supported them. On these grounds, Trump was the anti-Fascist candidate.

3. “Scapegoating foreigners.” This the Nazis generally did not do, at least not conspicuously: they instead blamed “enemies within,” especially the Jews, who were German citizens. Immigration was not the issue. In fact, the Nazis in Germany fairly aggressively recruited foreigners to their SS battalions, and they did not seem too aggressive about scapegoating Japanese or Italians. But scapegoating is always wrong, whether the victims are citizens or foreigners; and they certainly did scapegoat.

Trump could be accused of scapegoating the Chinese, seven Middle Eastern Muslim nations, and Mexicans. It is scapegoating if China and Mexico are not really responsible for the loss of US jobs, if illegal Mexican immigrants are not really a criminal element, and if Muslims from those seven nations are not a particular threat for terrorism. But all of these contentions are not merely debatable: they are reasonable on the face of it.

As for the loss of US jobs to China and Mexico, this is something the left has been claiming for decades. So, again, why is the alarm being raised only now? As for illegal immigrants from Mexico being a criminal element, this is self-evidently true: they entered the country illegally. It is therefore also perfectly sensible to expect them to disregard other laws. As for Muslim immigrants from those seven countries being a security threat, it seems only common sense.

Internationally, it is the left that has tended to blame foreigners for problems. See “post-colonial studies.” In Canada, to the left, and in most Third World countries, everything is America’s fault.

At home, it is true, although they complain about jobs lost to Chinese and Mexicans, the American left, like the Nazis, seems to prefer to blame internal enemies. They scapegoat whites, men, straights, Christians, “capitalists,” “corporations,” “the one percent,” and so forth. Some may recall the fuss about Bush Sr., the Trilateral Commission, and the Skull and Bones Society. Conspiracy theories abound on the left.

In sum, the left seem to be the masters at scapegoating. Trump has only, at most, stolen a few of their moves. Why is it okay when they are doing it, and only Fascism if Trump does? Indeed, I think Trump was voted in by a lot of people wanting to end all the scapegoating.

Graffitto on Trump International Hotel, Washington D.C.

4. “Undermining the free press.” The evidence offered is quotations from Trump criticizing the press. It would be a chilling sort of totalitarianism indeed if one were not permitted to criticize the press. Pravda would love that. Trump’s approach to the press has been a call for a wider range of viewpoints, for letting in the bloggers instead of restricting things to the established media. That is a demand for more freedom of the press, not less.

It has also been common on the left since at least the time of Jefferson to complain about the press. Chomsky made that his chief argument in “Manufacturing Consent.” Why is it okay when the left does it, and the alarm is raised only when someone on the right does the same?

5. “Cronyism and corruption.” The web comic cites Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner serving as unpaid advisors. So I guess to avoid Fascism, the voters should have chosen his opponent, whose main original credential for public life was claimed service as an unpaid advisor to her husband, the president? Doesn’t that seem like a double standard? How about Bobby Kennedy, who served as a highly-paid, not unpaid, advisor to his brother, the president? How about Eleanor Roosevelt?

Again, it is only a problem when the right does it.

Cronyism and corruption are bad things. But Trump seems no more guilty of it than his predecessors, even if this is faint praise. One of the important reasons that Clinton lost and Trump won was a widespread perception that the Clintons were corrupt, and the DNC was rife with cronyism. Not to mention the mainstream media.

So they must be the Fascists, and Trump the anti-fascist candidate, then?

6. “Rampant sexism.” This is pretty dubious, since the very term “sexism” did not appear until the feminism of the 1960s. On that ground, can the Fascists be determined to be either sexist or anti-sexist? Or was it simply an issue that did not exist in their time? As far as I can see, Fascists had no consistent policy or ideology concerning women as a sex. At some times and places, they seem to have urged women to concentrate on motherhood, at others to enter the professions or workforce, depending on their perception of the national need. And as far as the modern “fascists” are concerned, there seems to be no issue of sexism. Margaret Thatcher, Marine Le Pen, Ivanka Trump—weren’t they just complaining about her being given a position of authority?--Sarah Palin, and so forth.

The evidence used by the comic that Trump is “rampant” in his “sexism” is public comments, about Rosie O’Donnell, for example, or Megan Kelly, and his secretly taped, not for public consumption comments about women letting you do anything if you are a celebrity.

In the past election, this perhaps unfortunate choice of words compares to an opponent whose husband is credibly charged with multiple cases of sexual exploitation of women, including allegations of violent rape. Again, why is it all okay so long as the left does it?

Women's march, Washington

Trump has shown himself not to be a gentleman, in traditional terms. But it was feminism who led the charge against good manners. Isn’t a woman who is perfectly prepared to let a man “grab her pussy” fully liberated? Isn’t her drive for power just what feminism called for? Wasn’t it feminism which demanded women be treated just like men, without the traditional deference? So if you can insult men, why can you not insult women? How is that equality?

Trump is giving feminists just what they say they want, but now they say they don’t want it.

And, again, he is doing nothing the left has not been doing all along. Nothing he has said about O’Donnell or Kelly is worse than things people have said about women like Anita Bryant, Sarah Palin, Michelle Bachmann, the Bush daughters, Joe Clark’s daughter, and Ivanka Trump for generations. Trump, again, is just taking a page from the left’s playbook. A Fascist playbook, they now inform us.

The larger problem here is that if we do not really know what Fascism is, how do we know we are against it? How do we know why we are against it? Are we against it? Or are we actually promoting it?

I think the author of this comic, and the left generally, deserve great credit here for ignoring Godwin’s Law. Nothing could be more perfectly calculated to reintroduce Fascism than a rule that one is not to discuss what Fascism is in polite company. What we do not recognize, we cannot defend against. In the meantime, the main effect of a rule not to compare anyone else to the Fascists is to protect the Communists, who were as bad or worse. Which is to say, it protects Fascists from criticism.

What is Fascism? I think George Orwell was right; he said both sides were Fascists in the Spanish Civil War. Not just Franco’s forces. Otherwise, Fascism is just a name. Fascism is totalitarian government that does not respect human rights. More fundamentally, Fascism is government that violates Kant’s first principle of morality: it treats human persons as means, not ends. The individual exists for the good of the state, culture, or party, not the state, culture, or party for the good of the individuals.

A lot of the opposition to Trump now—for example, Antifa—are fairly openly communist, or at a minimum sympathetic to communist regimes. In other words, they are the Fascists. They do not oppose totalitarianism; they want to be the totalitarians. Trump is in their way. 

Perhaps to a lesser extent, Hillary Clinton's core values are plainly Fascist. Just look at the title of her campaign book: "Stronger Together." This is the essential Fascist collective idea--as symbolized by the Fasces itself. Her earlier boot title, "It Takes a Village," says more or less the same thing: the individual belongs to the collective. So too with "identity politics" generally, the stock and trade of the left. Identity politics is race-based politics. One is a race or a "gender," or a class, not an individual human.

Trump was the anti-totalitarian candidate. Clinton was the totalitarian. The modern left is always in favour of more government, and the modern right wants less government. Who was it who coined the phrase “the personal is political”? A fascist charter. Fascism is all politics all the time. Everything is the struggle for power. Trump, on the other hand, in one of his very first executive orders, required that for any new government regulation, two regulations must be rescinded.

As to human rights, the big three are, according to the Declaration of Independence, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. On the right to life, the left has been opposed, and Trump has supported it. On the right to liberty, in the sense of exercising one’s free will, the left has usually been against it, banning smoking, requiring seat belts, banning large soft drinks, regulating what can be put in school lunches, opposing school choice, setting up complex environmental restrictions, and so forth, regulation upon regulation, restriction on restriction. Trump has broadly been for deregulation and freedom of choice. On the pursuit of happiness, it is harder to say. If more and more exotic sex makes you happy, I guess the left is your pal. If religion makes you happy, Trump was your candidate.

I think the framers of the Constitution thought it was more about religion. After all, freedom of religion is the first right cited in the Bill of Rights. Advantage Trump. It has been under growing attack by the left of late.

After that, and still in the First Amendment, the Constitution cites freedom of speech. And here we have what may have been the core issue on which Trump was elected. He was elected in rebellion against speech codes and requirements to be “politically correct,” entirely imposed by the left. This was the tendency Orwell identified as “Newspeak” in 1984, the classic analysis of Fascism.

Shall we move on now to the Second Amendment? Perhaps best not...

Fascism is also, of course, anti-democratic. So which side has been violently protesting the results of the last election, and demanding they not be honoured? Forcible suppression of opposition? Which side is shouting down speakers on campuses, or rioting to prevent them from speaking? Or simply, in debate, relying on ad hominem attacks or refusing to entertain some topics?

This has been entirely a leftist tactic. Let’s hope Trump does not take it up as well.

Hilter’s Nazis and Mussolini’s Fascists called themselves socialists. But unlike the communist fascists, their idea was not direct state ownership of industry, but cooperation—one might say collusion-- between industry and government, to meet state aims.

So, on control of industry and commerce: who wants more regulation of the economy? Who is more wedded to the idea of corporate welfare, to giving some businesses special advantages through government subsidy, loans, and tax breaks? The Democratic Party. It is the left that is corporatist, in the Fascist sense. Trump and the Republicans generally want deregulation, a flat tax, the end of the Export-Import Bank, a free market, and so forth.

The darkest irony in the web comic is the parting question: “What, I wonder, will seem normal to the children of America in the next four years?” Because, over the past four years and more, we have indeed seen obvious evils normalized, without that much or widespread protest. What about abortion? Back in the nineties, Bill Clinton found it prudent to say he wanted abortion to be “safe, legal, and rare.” Now it is so normalized that the head of the DNC has said nobody can run for the Democrats who does not endorse unrestricted abortion. The victims are obviously far more innocent than the victims of the Nazi Shoah, there are far more of them, the ideology is far more widespread and has been generally accepted for far longer. The Nazis have nothing on us there.

Of course, you will argue that the unborn, the fetus if you like, is not human.

Indeed. That is just how the Nazis justified killing Jews.

Similarly, the scapegoating of “straight white males” is chillingly similar in almost every way to the way the Nazis scapegoated Jews. The “patriarchy” is the new Elders of Zion.

What about same-sex marriage? By itself, perhaps not an important issue. But in 1996, the Defense of Marriage Act passed both houses of Congress with veto-proof majorities, defining marriage as between a man and a woman. When he was elected in 2008, Obama insisted that marriage could only be between a man and a woman. Now, in 2016, it is illegal even to refuse to participate in a gay marriage for reasons of conscience.

When the ERA—the proposed amendment to the US constitution enshrining the idea that men and women were to be equal before the law—was passed by Congress in 1971, it was ultimately rejected by the states. One of the centrepiece arguments of the opposition was that, taken literally, it would require public washrooms to be open to either sex. This “slippery slope” argument was of course rejected as hysterical nonsense, reductio ad absurdum, by supporters.

Yet, now, in 2017, not only has the legal equality of men and women nevertheless been mysteriously tread into the Constitution without the amendment, but it indeed now is argued by its supporters to require that washrooms be open to either sex.

Back before 9-11—I mean right up to the month or two before—I kept receiving emails from lefties demanding that the US invade Afghanistan, to defend women’s rights. Since the Eighties I have been hearing people on the left objecting to the US alliance with Saudi Arabia, on the grounds that the Muslims were not respectful towards women’s rights—wearing the hijab, genital mutilation, and so forth. It cannot have been much more than a year or two ago that I was still hearing this constant anti-Muslim drumbeat.

Now, as of the Women’s march on Washington this spring, it has all been reversed. It is Fascist to object to hijabs, or any aspect of Islam. It is “Islamophobia.” It is Fascism to refer to anyone’s “barbaric cultural practices.” Muslim activists, even convicted terrorists, are leaders of the feminist movement.

So the basic argument that we must be careful that intrinsically immoral or morally objectionable things not be normalized is a good one. People tend to follow the crowd instead of listening to their own consciences, and this is how Fascism happens.

It is just that it has already been happening for some time, in obvious and dramatic fashion. We have always been at war with Eastasia.

And Trump may be a flawed fellow, but he is with us now because enough people made exactly the decision called for by the comic.