Interesting analysis. Would have been more interesting if our host also discussed those who supported ISIS and the "opposition" in the (ongoing) Syrian civil war:
"So modern Liberalism does not understand organised political violence and can never deal with it."
I really think this is not true and if we look, we'll find ample evidence against this assertion.
The basic truth is that western liberal societies are deeply, deeply hypocritical and prize their status above else, like the aristocrats of old. Kenneth Galbraith, in one of his documentary posited that the rich and privileged would rathe bring the world down than to loose their status.
The prima facie evidence of the fact that liberalism understands political violence is the militarization of police forces. By and large, the Yellow Vests movement in France was peaceful. The violence was inflicted by the police forces, which were extremely peeved especially when confronted by firefighters... Or look how NYPD (which has a budget bigger than many national armies) dealt with the Occupy Movement in the end: with extreme prejudice and extreme violence. Liberalism understands very well and uses when it chooses political violence with gusto.
As David Graeber described in one of his books, the threat of violence (the iron fist) is behind and undergirths the functioning of western societies (the velvet glove).
Personal violence in response to a threat to status or interest was absolutely part of the ethos of the old aristocracy. It's only when guns became advanced enough that more expensive arms, armor, training, etc. really didn't mean anything that they gave up on it.
The aristocrats certainly were not adverse to violence, but it tended to be between aristocrats. There was a whole set of rules as to who could challenge whom and who had to reapond.
The last thing anyone wanted was the Duke Of Buggeringham's eldest son and heir to get beat over the head by an uppity peasant.
Not only dueling, but aristocrats were also expected to actively go into battle. One reason England became a bit more meritocratic than the rest of Europe was that so much of the aristocracy killed itself off in the War of the Roses.
For some reason the reply function isn't working reliably. This is @ Gerrard White:
My comment, which for some reason failed to save, was:
"Well, Kagame, like many exiled Tutsi, fought with the (Tutsi),resistance to the Obote regime and was a close Museveni follower. He wound up us Museveni's Chief of military intelligence I believe, so he was hardly "in the camps." He was sent on a staff course in the US just before the war, but then so were many others African officers, and indeed they were trained in many countries. There's a persistent myth in parts of Africa that Kagame is some kind of US puppet: it's enough to go to Rwanda to be convince otherwise."
I do know Rwanda a little, and I have never been somewhere where there was more overt fear of the government, and of saying the wrong thing. You could argue that it's mainly Kagame--the man is a psycho- but there's also an argument that someone like him was bound to come out on top. A lot of the second half of your comment, I agree with. I use Kagame as a masterclass example of telling whitey what he wants to hear, and doing your own sweet thing.
That so-called "terrorist attack" was an obvious Mossad false flag, part of the vast global terror operations under the false flag of 'islamic terrorism'. Hear directly from these mossad whistleblowers how they do it https://swprs.org/ari-ben-menashe-on-israeli-black-operations/…
And by the way, ISIS has been fully and completely initiated, organized, funded, armed equipped by the United States corporate-capitalist ruling class and their tyranical allies in the Gulf countries and Israel. Evidence in the links above.
The zionist and western corporate-capitalist billionaire ruling class push religious-tribalist hatred as one of their primary weapons in their class war against us, to divide the 99% along religious-ethnic lines, to make sure we hate and fight each other and not them, as well as in order to make you view the indiginous people of the middle east as violent savages (zionist hollywood is an expert in that cultural propaganda, and of course their false flag terror network also serves this aim) and to make you cheer for their mass-slaughter, torture, dispossesion, abuse, expulsion, land-theft, horrific violence, attacks & erasing of the local people in palestine.
You can now understand exactly why zionist billionaires do what's described here
The biggest trick in the arsenal of the western/zionist billionaire ruling class against humanity is the intense promotion of religious-sectarian-tribalist division, fear and hatred of "those evil monstrous enemies of the nation who are coming to hurt you becasue they are evil and they hate you, but don't you worry, we, the patriotic billionaires, are here to protect you from those evil monster scary enemies because we really really love and care about you".
That's exactly why they are paying the hundreds of thousands of zionist propagandists and influencers on social media who constantly hammer into your head nonstop posts which tell you "you need to hate these evil people. These are your enemies. Direct your anger at them".
Vile NAZI ZIONIST propagandists who constantly hammer into your head which religion/ethnicity you need to fear and hate, constantly nonstop push for tribalism and sectarianism and pitting the 99% against each other, to the benefit of no one but the nazi zionist billionaire ruling class.
Here is exactly how they play this trick on you (please read this carefully so that you recognize their propaganda tricks and don't fall for it next time they make a post telling you "you need to hate these evil barbaric scary people. These are your enemies. Direct all your anger at them")
Here is a shocking example of the Nazi apartheid practices that the zionist billionaires employ against the local people in palestine, for the reasons explained above (These horrors were inflicted on tne indigenous people of rhe middle east long before the 7th of october coordinated operation. Since then the genocidal attacks against the indigenous children, elderly, women and men of west asia by the billionaire's invading zionist colony have become much much worse)
PS. I am speaking from experience. I was born and grew up in israel and was a devout zionist for the first half of my life. I know exactly how these Zionist Nazis think. I wrote about it (as well as other things) in a post on my page if there's an interest to learn more.
Most people don't understand that Israeli government's violence torture cruelty abuse and fispossesion against Palestinians is not only in order to terrorize and traumatize the indigenous people of the west asia but also for the purpose of OPPRESSING ORDINARY ISRAELI JEWS. The violence by the supremacist Israeli terrorist state (guided by the zionist billionaire ruling class in cahoots with the global militarized empire of western corporate-capitalist biillionaires) against Palestinians is designed to make the Palestinians feel deep resentment against the colonialist dispossesing Israeli supremacist state and its citicens, and thus be a boogyman enemy that the billionaire rulers of Israel pretend to protect Israeli Jews from. This way the israeli billionaire ruling class control and severely economically oppress and get rich off of the Israeli Jewish working class. By making the indigenlus people of west asia in a scary boogyman enemy with which to frjghten ordinary israeli, the israeli billionaire ruling class ensure the ordinary israelis will not rebel against them and will stay docile and subaervient to them (becasue they pretend to be the ones who will protect ordinary israelos from tne scary boogyman palestinian "enemy". That's exactly why they do everything in theor power to male sure that there is as much tribalist division, violemce and hoatility as possible. The very survival of the israeli billionaoie ruling class depends on the religious-ethnic hostility and violence never stopping. Read the proof of this, based on mainstream (including Israeli) sources at https://www.pdrboston.org/israel-s-government-attacks-jews-to
It shows that the Israeli ruling class of billionaires and generals and politicians, and the earlier leaders of the movement to create a Jewish state in Palestine, have had, from the days of the Holocaust to the present, utter contempt for the welfare of ordinary Jews. These leaders have not only betrayed the Jews they claim to defend against anti-Semitism, sabotaged rescue efforts of Jews during the Holocaust and now carry out ethnic cleansing of non-Jews (Palestinians) solely in order to make Palestinians serve as a bogeyman enemy with which to frighten Jews into submission to the Jewish billionaires who oppress and exploit them. The real conflict regarding Israel/Palestine is not between anti-Semites versus those opposed to anti-Semitism; it is between the vast majority of ordinary people--Jews and non-Jews alike--who want society to be based on equality and mutual aid, versus privileged and powerful ruling elites (Jewish and non-Jewish both) who want to strength their power over ordinary people with Orwellian wars of social control that pit people against each other along religious/ethnic lines.
The Zionist ruling class from the outset have had an anti-Jewish anti-working class goal. During the Holocaust they betrayed ordinary Jews by opposing efforts to rescue them from the Nazis because those rescue efforts didn't advance the goal of creating the Jewish state they wanted more than saving Jewish lives. Read the proof of this based on mainstream including Jewish sources at https://johnspritzler.substack.com/p/why-really-zionist-leaders-have-always?r=1iggn .
Israel for decades has funded Hamas and worked to keep it in power (still today!) to make the bogeyman enemy maximally frightening. Read the proof of this based on mainstream sources at https://www.pdrboston.org/israel-funds-hamas-keeps-it-in-power .
Hamas is also controlled by billionaires and oppresses ordinary Palestinians in Gaza as shown at https://johnspritzler.substack.com/p/hamas-leaders-are-billionaires-who?r=1iggn . Hamas got votes not because Palestinians want an Islamic theocracy but because Hamas was less corrupt than the alternative Palestine Authority (which is paid by the zionist/western billionaire ruling class to police and prevent ordinary palestinians from rebelling against the genocidal invading colonizing murderers, theives and abusers) and pretended to be fighting Israel militantly.
So maybe relevant, I don't know. Taking a personal perspective, when I was younger most of my pals recognised me as a nice guy (and still do!), but very occasionally I surprised them by exibiting pretty extreme physical violence - mainly against some a**hole who required putting in their place. Their surprise was I think a feature of our respective upbringings - mine was characterised by a lot more aggro and violence than theirs and my reaction to events - normal and indeed essential to me - was seen by them as completely off the wall. And my upbringing was benign in comparison to most people in the world.
Anyway, the point of me telling this tale is that IMHO if you import very large numbers of young boys and men into your society from cultures where violence and lawlessness is a way of existence - often war zones - then these so-called refugees are going to cause civilised societies some degree of problems. Indeed they will probably have deep seated pyschological issues that remain unaddressed - because to do so is defined as racism these days. This can all be exacerbated by other differences - culture, religion, language and skin colour. We do not accept these days that FIFO should be our mantra, but that we should celebrate these "cultural differences", even when they create chaos with our "garden" societies. Diversity is our strength, or so we must think.
Now that we have done all this, and starting from here, it is difficult to map out a solution to this problem. And part of this difficulty is even accepting that it might be a problem. Indeed, we are told the problem is "us". Now even having posted this many may think that I am some sort of racist. Not so. I am very liberal in the old fashioned meaning of the word, live and let live is my motto, and MLK is a hero. But modern society seems not to allow for legitimate dissent to be expressed if it goes against the establishment narrative. Witness the official action taken against Germany's AFD.
Anyway, IMO if you tolerate or even promote bad behaviour then you get more of it. I learnt that from a young age. So as I said, live and let live, but don't cross the line. That is my mantra. But alas not the way our woke western societies operate, and to the disadvantage therefore of the vast majority of people - who are like my pals - nice people who cannot understand that bad people do bad things and take advantage of weakness.
[Though oddly the Establishment does seem to recognise the evil Putin as a bad guy who, along with his horde of sub-human "orcs", needs to be defeated. Funny old world.]
And yet, the French government serves a loyal poodle to the United States in Syria and elsewhere, which seeks to topple the Syrian government and which protects ISIS.
European governments almost uniformly follow the US lead in its War On Russia.
"Its employment, though is quite rational, and the involvement of even adolescents has nothing to do with marginalisation or lack of opportunity: drug dealing is simply much better paid than moving cartons in a supermarket. "
Isn't that "lack of opportunity", though? Or strictly speaking, lack of desired opportunity, but I think that is what people usually mean by that anyway. It seems like a rational economic motive that your Liberals should have no trouble understanding.
I'd also note that the "society is to blame" discourse is hardly unique to Liberals. Dostoyevsky was hardly a liberal, but he often fell into this kind of thinking, sometimes in the same breath as when he condemned it. I think it's simply the belief, encountered in many cultures and ideological traditions, that people are good by nature (whatever is meant by good, whether it is rationality or piety or some other thing), and if acting badly, do so because they themselves must have been mistreated in some way.
No "society" is not to blame, whatever "society" means, but one has to see that without "the west" neither Al Quaida nor ISIS would exist.
I have yet to see where an example of an international terror cell which just pops up full of hatred against "the west" out of the void without any previous Intervention by western powers.
I wonder if "Liberalism" is, in the sense that you're describing, really all that different from IS or the Nazis.
It may be true that, in theory, Liberalism has a more elaborate theory about how the universe operates (or "ought to operate") but it is often, if not, increasingly, invariably, detached from the reality, not only as an actual explanation but also as the basis of "real" motive for specific actions. The "real" motives, in fact, are often a mishmash of short term motives, cynical political calculations, and even downright inertia. Thus the idea behind "rules based order," or a batch of makeshift case-by-case justifications that vaguely appeal to some big principles, but really are incoherent on the whole, rather than real "rules" with some appearance of permanence. So are "big ideas" behind Liberalism, as it operates in practice, any different from the combination of mystical (and fictitious) nationalism/racialism mixed with racist pseudoscience of the Nazis or the incoherent appeal to the alleged principles of "original Islamic teachings" by the Islamic fundamentalism? I mean, it's not like they were open to alternate interpretations and "heterodox" intellectual arguments--I don't know about racialist pseudoscience, but certainly the history of Romantic nationalism and, especially, intellectual history of Islam, is full of them, all of which were bluntly rejected by the ideologues: how often do modern day Liberals seriously consider alternate arguments based, even on classical Liberal principles, rather than shout them down as manifestations of some evil thoughtcrime?
I suppose this is part of the point, but with a caveat that the pseudo-intellectualism of the Liberals adds more to the paradox: the Nazis and Islamic Fundamenatlists make no pretense of intellectualism and don't try to think and rationalise or justify their actions--they have just the enemies and they fight and repress. But we have seen this before, too, in form of another "religion," necessarily born in the West: the (late) Medieval Catholicism. It might be my ignorance, but I don't know of any comparable attempt (along with the effort to justify this) in the Far East, Middle East, or even in the Orthodox Europe. They all let mystical and religious be unexplained and were content with the separation. This has been offered (can't remember who exactly) as an explanation for why "science" emerged in the West, while the Rest were content with technology (Joseph Needham famously wrote about medieval and ancient Chinese "science," but, really, he only wrote about "technology," of which there were indeed plenty and impressive, but they were not weaved into a systematic explanation of the universe that people took seriously. In the West, a comparable development took place only during early to middle Middle Ages, when technological innovations were plentiful, but no corresponding "universalizing" intellectual development)--thus we call it the Dark Ages...
"The difference is that the Nazis—a group of not especially bright or talented individuals with a banally terrifying view of the world—managed to take control of a major country with resources and an Army"
Actually Nazi leaders had above average to very high IQ (half over 130), as was shown by the Nuremberg trial tests. To put into perspective, JFK had 119. I don't think it makes sense to bind intelligence to a particular political ideology.
As per US intervention in the Tutsi-Hutu wars, picking out Kagamé from the camps when he was an impressionable youngster
It appears the liberal minded US administrative/governing layer, ok class, has long had no qualms about violence and a relatively acute comprehension of it's usefulness
If you think the current iteration in a 'PMC identity' is distinct from the US governing class long practiced in war, one could say since scrambling up the beaches from their brit ships
You are mistaken
Your essays look acute, but lack any appreciation for class structures, and a tendency to attack easy targets, such as these poor misguided ideologues – the classical phrase is what ? ‘over educated and undertalented’ - trying to synthesise and update the age old US traits into a winning fashion for electoral success
To procure for themselves as secure a status and function as that of the CPC in China
There is also another aspect which you would perhaps describe as liberal but I wouldn't. And that is that humans are inherently cooperating or social animals, and for that reason has very few violent instincts towards eachother. In fact, we shun away, as a rule, from violence as a part of our genetic setup. Even most soldiers in a battle don't shoot at all, and the majority of those who do shoot in the air. To aim at another human is repulsive and we get highly nervous about it when we have to.
According to sociologist Randall Collins there are only two situations when humans can do violence towards other humans:
- when there is a chain of command, and the one who gives the order doesn't have to face violence him/herself but those who do will have to face punishment if not,
- what Collins calls "forward panic" – that is, when a confrontation has been building up for some time and one of the parties suddenly collapses; the other party can then often not control his/her behaviour but excercises much more violence than really needed.
This is described in a highly readable book simply called Violence.
Even professional criminals, for example hitmen, get nervous from violence and have to invent tricks to carry it through, according to Collins (or rather the criminals he has interviewed). For example never think about the victim but ony of his/her own weapon as a king of artisanal tool, or of course get through a mind training to conceive the victim as a non-human.
So there is nothing liberal about the incredulity of IS violence, it is only too human. We can't understand humans who under influence of perverse ideologies or thought-constructs deny their pro-social genetical setup, it is too far from our everyday experience.
PS. Of course our incompetent rulers should know better. They should have an information system, perhaps through the universities, or at least some carriers that don't make a profit from tilting the answers. The military does, from representing the persons observed as more violent than they actually are, perhaps others do from representing them as less.
But the problem is an old one, as described in 1837 by Hans Christian Andersen: The emperor's new clothes. I suppose everyone will look for the information he likes best, and discard all other, whatever the information carrier.
Kagamé was not born in the camps, he went there forced into exile when 4 years old - I did not say he stayed, he went to Langley
The rest is history - no global citizen he
I disagree 360 degrees as the Euros say with your statement 'it's enough to go...'
The hand of the American is visible in every aspect - one example : they chickened out of the renaming or the maintaining the names of the streets, they wanted to 'turn the page' to usher in a new etc etc - they came up with the brilliant idea of the grid….7th and
Which US democrat needs to win an election with 99% of the vote? But it’s not that hard
His deal with the Army has held his nebula of companies and their’s carve up most the country
As for security where does the new Customs registration or coding of every item sold come from – to be recorded and presented on tax returns- this is indigenous ?
Rwanda is both killing field and testing ground –dry runs for the US to apply elsewhere, if not upon themselves
I was going to comment on your Syria comment at NC, but there’s no point in picking on you, people say plenty much more stupid stuff
Tried to reply to my own post, but the page won't respond, so further thoughts on the line: "The actual results of this strategy were scarcely encouraging, but because the theory was right, the results were assumed not to matter."
Further to this, I was just reading an interview by Grant Williams with David Dredge. Dredge refers to a Paul Tudor Jones phrase: "sharp world. It’s this sort of fantasy land where all the simplified mathematics and models, we pretend like they work and the regulators impose the sharp world regulation on the institutions and the institutions go and tell the capital owners that were following modern portfolio theory, capital asset pricing models, and everybody behaves like, “Well, that’s good enough.” The High X Nobel Prize lecture, the pretense of knowledge, we just carry on acting like this precision of wrongness is okay and everybody seems to be in on it, except maybe me." But there's also the reference to the George Costanza line: "It’s not a lie if you believe it..." It's the PMC in finance, and same same.
As always, an extremely thought-provoking essay. It'll take me awhile to process it in its various applications. One line that has been recurring to thought is this: "The actual results of this strategy were scarcely encouraging, but because the theory was right, the results were assumed not to matter."
I found this both entirely true and entirely depressing. I was raised, and perhaps everyone is, in a mind-set (a "theory" if you like) in which this is the default setting. It's a bedrock form of faith. No matter what the cultural or ideological or whatever environment, breaking out of it is a process of loss of faith, which entails all the stages of grief and fear and then some, and yet still we revert as if by mental muscle memory. This would apply to all sides of all points of view or methods of living in the world. Since we cannot live without some level of faith, even if it is only that life will continue and I'm prepared to stay in it, loss of faith is deeply undermining. And people will kill, literally and figuratively, to hang onto it. Which doesn't bode well for our species. On the other hand, how the hell have we survived this long? If it's only because we have, up to now, been able to escape each other, as surviving groups if not as individuals, then, again, it doesn't bode well.
That we have a rational side as well as the side dependent on a measure of faith, is a positive. Perhaps the balance between the two has always been precarious.
Not sure if this will make sense to anyone else, but it's up here FWIW.
You appear to adopt a more realistic attitude towards Kagamé and Tutsi initiated Genocide on the lower class Hutu, both in Burindi and in Rwanda
You neglect to mention that this is mrely the lastest in a constant cycle of class war, at least in Rwanda, the only exceptional element being that the Tursi are now supported and controlled by the US rather than being manipulated by the previous colonial power, with a view to speading war into the the DRC, to destabilse and steal precious minerals
Interesting analysis. Would have been more interesting if our host also discussed those who supported ISIS and the "opposition" in the (ongoing) Syrian civil war:
1-IDF chief finally acknowledges that Israel supplied weapons to Syrian rebels (https://www.timesofisrael.com/idf-chief-acknowledges-long-claimed-weapons-supply-to-syrian-rebels/ )
2-"The red line and the rat Line" (https://www.syriaresources.com/the-red-line-and-the-rat-line/ )
3-""Seven countries in five years" (https://www.salon.com/2007/10/12/wesley_clark/ )
4-"Rethinking the Middle East" (https://www.jstor.org/stable/20045312 )
One can also ask oneself why the Russians are in Syria. IMO Syria, Iran and Ukraine are all part of the same play wherein ISIS is a puppet.
Ishmael Zechariah.
"So modern Liberalism does not understand organised political violence and can never deal with it."
I really think this is not true and if we look, we'll find ample evidence against this assertion.
The basic truth is that western liberal societies are deeply, deeply hypocritical and prize their status above else, like the aristocrats of old. Kenneth Galbraith, in one of his documentary posited that the rich and privileged would rathe bring the world down than to loose their status.
The prima facie evidence of the fact that liberalism understands political violence is the militarization of police forces. By and large, the Yellow Vests movement in France was peaceful. The violence was inflicted by the police forces, which were extremely peeved especially when confronted by firefighters... Or look how NYPD (which has a budget bigger than many national armies) dealt with the Occupy Movement in the end: with extreme prejudice and extreme violence. Liberalism understands very well and uses when it chooses political violence with gusto.
As David Graeber described in one of his books, the threat of violence (the iron fist) is behind and undergirths the functioning of western societies (the velvet glove).
Of course. Like the aristocrats of old, the PMC do not like to personally get their hands dirty.
"Liberalism" is simply "PMC think" with the PMC as hegemonic class.
Personal violence in response to a threat to status or interest was absolutely part of the ethos of the old aristocracy. It's only when guns became advanced enough that more expensive arms, armor, training, etc. really didn't mean anything that they gave up on it.
The aristocrats certainly were not adverse to violence, but it tended to be between aristocrats. There was a whole set of rules as to who could challenge whom and who had to reapond.
The last thing anyone wanted was the Duke Of Buggeringham's eldest son and heir to get beat over the head by an uppity peasant.
Not only dueling, but aristocrats were also expected to actively go into battle. One reason England became a bit more meritocratic than the rest of Europe was that so much of the aristocracy killed itself off in the War of the Roses.
Uh, I would think the threat of violence under-girds the functioning of about any society.
Not quite true. Check the Dawn of Everything: A new History of Humanity.
For some reason the reply function isn't working reliably. This is @ Gerrard White:
My comment, which for some reason failed to save, was:
"Well, Kagame, like many exiled Tutsi, fought with the (Tutsi),resistance to the Obote regime and was a close Museveni follower. He wound up us Museveni's Chief of military intelligence I believe, so he was hardly "in the camps." He was sent on a staff course in the US just before the war, but then so were many others African officers, and indeed they were trained in many countries. There's a persistent myth in parts of Africa that Kagame is some kind of US puppet: it's enough to go to Rwanda to be convince otherwise."
I do know Rwanda a little, and I have never been somewhere where there was more overt fear of the government, and of saying the wrong thing. You could argue that it's mainly Kagame--the man is a psycho- but there's also an argument that someone like him was bound to come out on top. A lot of the second half of your comment, I agree with. I use Kagame as a masterclass example of telling whitey what he wants to hear, and doing your own sweet thing.
That so-called "terrorist attack" was an obvious Mossad false flag, part of the vast global terror operations under the false flag of 'islamic terrorism'. Hear directly from these mossad whistleblowers how they do it https://swprs.org/ari-ben-menashe-on-israeli-black-operations/…
And https://swprs.org/mossad-whistleblower-victor-ostrovsky-1994/…
And here https://www.pdrboston.org/israel-funds-hamas-keeps-it-in-power
More evidence here https://swprs.org/why-israel-created-hamas/…
and here https://off-guardian.org/2024/03/01/fake-terrorism-and-the-genocide-agenda/
And here https://www.globalresearch.ca/isis-is-a-us-israeli-creation-top-ten-indications/5518627
And here https://rumble.com/v22ku8u-false-flags-the-secret-history-of-al-qaeda-full-documentary.html
Regarding specifically this false flag event, see here https://corbettreport.com/the-paris-terror-attacks-an-open-source-investigation/
And by the way, ISIS has been fully and completely initiated, organized, funded, armed equipped by the United States corporate-capitalist ruling class and their tyranical allies in the Gulf countries and Israel. Evidence in the links above.
The zionist and western corporate-capitalist billionaire ruling class push religious-tribalist hatred as one of their primary weapons in their class war against us, to divide the 99% along religious-ethnic lines, to make sure we hate and fight each other and not them, as well as in order to make you view the indiginous people of the middle east as violent savages (zionist hollywood is an expert in that cultural propaganda, and of course their false flag terror network also serves this aim) and to make you cheer for their mass-slaughter, torture, dispossesion, abuse, expulsion, land-theft, horrific violence, attacks & erasing of the local people in palestine.
You can now understand exactly why zionist billionaires do what's described here
https://www.pdrboston.org/israeli-leaders-hamas-need-each-oth
And yet more evidence that zionism does NOT make jews safe but is in fact an attack on non-wealthy Jews (by the billionaire zionist ruling class) https://www.pdrboston.org/evidence-israeli-leaders-want-dead-jews
The biggest trick in the arsenal of the western/zionist billionaire ruling class against humanity is the intense promotion of religious-sectarian-tribalist division, fear and hatred of "those evil monstrous enemies of the nation who are coming to hurt you becasue they are evil and they hate you, but don't you worry, we, the patriotic billionaires, are here to protect you from those evil monster scary enemies because we really really love and care about you".
That's exactly why they are paying the hundreds of thousands of zionist propagandists and influencers on social media who constantly hammer into your head nonstop posts which tell you "you need to hate these evil people. These are your enemies. Direct your anger at them".
Vile NAZI ZIONIST propagandists who constantly hammer into your head which religion/ethnicity you need to fear and hate, constantly nonstop push for tribalism and sectarianism and pitting the 99% against each other, to the benefit of no one but the nazi zionist billionaire ruling class.
Here is exactly how they play this trick on you (please read this carefully so that you recognize their propaganda tricks and don't fall for it next time they make a post telling you "you need to hate these evil barbaric scary people. These are your enemies. Direct all your anger at them")
https://www.pdrboston.org/oppressors-need-bogeyman-enemies
Here is a shocking example of the Nazi apartheid practices that the zionist billionaires employ against the local people in palestine, for the reasons explained above (These horrors were inflicted on tne indigenous people of rhe middle east long before the 7th of october coordinated operation. Since then the genocidal attacks against the indigenous children, elderly, women and men of west asia by the billionaire's invading zionist colony have become much much worse)
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3psMGQE0iW4
PS. I am speaking from experience. I was born and grew up in israel and was a devout zionist for the first half of my life. I know exactly how these Zionist Nazis think. I wrote about it (as well as other things) in a post on my page if there's an interest to learn more.
Most people don't understand that Israeli government's violence torture cruelty abuse and fispossesion against Palestinians is not only in order to terrorize and traumatize the indigenous people of the west asia but also for the purpose of OPPRESSING ORDINARY ISRAELI JEWS. The violence by the supremacist Israeli terrorist state (guided by the zionist billionaire ruling class in cahoots with the global militarized empire of western corporate-capitalist biillionaires) against Palestinians is designed to make the Palestinians feel deep resentment against the colonialist dispossesing Israeli supremacist state and its citicens, and thus be a boogyman enemy that the billionaire rulers of Israel pretend to protect Israeli Jews from. This way the israeli billionaire ruling class control and severely economically oppress and get rich off of the Israeli Jewish working class. By making the indigenlus people of west asia in a scary boogyman enemy with which to frjghten ordinary israeli, the israeli billionaire ruling class ensure the ordinary israelis will not rebel against them and will stay docile and subaervient to them (becasue they pretend to be the ones who will protect ordinary israelos from tne scary boogyman palestinian "enemy". That's exactly why they do everything in theor power to male sure that there is as much tribalist division, violemce and hoatility as possible. The very survival of the israeli billionaoie ruling class depends on the religious-ethnic hostility and violence never stopping. Read the proof of this, based on mainstream (including Israeli) sources at https://www.pdrboston.org/israel-s-government-attacks-jews-to
It shows that the Israeli ruling class of billionaires and generals and politicians, and the earlier leaders of the movement to create a Jewish state in Palestine, have had, from the days of the Holocaust to the present, utter contempt for the welfare of ordinary Jews. These leaders have not only betrayed the Jews they claim to defend against anti-Semitism, sabotaged rescue efforts of Jews during the Holocaust and now carry out ethnic cleansing of non-Jews (Palestinians) solely in order to make Palestinians serve as a bogeyman enemy with which to frighten Jews into submission to the Jewish billionaires who oppress and exploit them. The real conflict regarding Israel/Palestine is not between anti-Semites versus those opposed to anti-Semitism; it is between the vast majority of ordinary people--Jews and non-Jews alike--who want society to be based on equality and mutual aid, versus privileged and powerful ruling elites (Jewish and non-Jewish both) who want to strength their power over ordinary people with Orwellian wars of social control that pit people against each other along religious/ethnic lines.
The Zionist ruling class from the outset have had an anti-Jewish anti-working class goal. During the Holocaust they betrayed ordinary Jews by opposing efforts to rescue them from the Nazis because those rescue efforts didn't advance the goal of creating the Jewish state they wanted more than saving Jewish lives. Read the proof of this based on mainstream including Jewish sources at https://johnspritzler.substack.com/p/why-really-zionist-leaders-have-always?r=1iggn .
Israel for decades has funded Hamas and worked to keep it in power (still today!) to make the bogeyman enemy maximally frightening. Read the proof of this based on mainstream sources at https://www.pdrboston.org/israel-funds-hamas-keeps-it-in-power .
Hamas is also controlled by billionaires and oppresses ordinary Palestinians in Gaza as shown at https://johnspritzler.substack.com/p/hamas-leaders-are-billionaires-who?r=1iggn . Hamas got votes not because Palestinians want an Islamic theocracy but because Hamas was less corrupt than the alternative Palestine Authority (which is paid by the zionist/western billionaire ruling class to police and prevent ordinary palestinians from rebelling against the genocidal invading colonizing murderers, theives and abusers) and pretended to be fighting Israel militantly.
So maybe relevant, I don't know. Taking a personal perspective, when I was younger most of my pals recognised me as a nice guy (and still do!), but very occasionally I surprised them by exibiting pretty extreme physical violence - mainly against some a**hole who required putting in their place. Their surprise was I think a feature of our respective upbringings - mine was characterised by a lot more aggro and violence than theirs and my reaction to events - normal and indeed essential to me - was seen by them as completely off the wall. And my upbringing was benign in comparison to most people in the world.
Anyway, the point of me telling this tale is that IMHO if you import very large numbers of young boys and men into your society from cultures where violence and lawlessness is a way of existence - often war zones - then these so-called refugees are going to cause civilised societies some degree of problems. Indeed they will probably have deep seated pyschological issues that remain unaddressed - because to do so is defined as racism these days. This can all be exacerbated by other differences - culture, religion, language and skin colour. We do not accept these days that FIFO should be our mantra, but that we should celebrate these "cultural differences", even when they create chaos with our "garden" societies. Diversity is our strength, or so we must think.
Now that we have done all this, and starting from here, it is difficult to map out a solution to this problem. And part of this difficulty is even accepting that it might be a problem. Indeed, we are told the problem is "us". Now even having posted this many may think that I am some sort of racist. Not so. I am very liberal in the old fashioned meaning of the word, live and let live is my motto, and MLK is a hero. But modern society seems not to allow for legitimate dissent to be expressed if it goes against the establishment narrative. Witness the official action taken against Germany's AFD.
Anyway, IMO if you tolerate or even promote bad behaviour then you get more of it. I learnt that from a young age. So as I said, live and let live, but don't cross the line. That is my mantra. But alas not the way our woke western societies operate, and to the disadvantage therefore of the vast majority of people - who are like my pals - nice people who cannot understand that bad people do bad things and take advantage of weakness.
[Though oddly the Establishment does seem to recognise the evil Putin as a bad guy who, along with his horde of sub-human "orcs", needs to be defeated. Funny old world.]
And yet, the French government serves a loyal poodle to the United States in Syria and elsewhere, which seeks to topple the Syrian government and which protects ISIS.
European governments almost uniformly follow the US lead in its War On Russia.
"Its employment, though is quite rational, and the involvement of even adolescents has nothing to do with marginalisation or lack of opportunity: drug dealing is simply much better paid than moving cartons in a supermarket. "
Isn't that "lack of opportunity", though? Or strictly speaking, lack of desired opportunity, but I think that is what people usually mean by that anyway. It seems like a rational economic motive that your Liberals should have no trouble understanding.
I'd also note that the "society is to blame" discourse is hardly unique to Liberals. Dostoyevsky was hardly a liberal, but he often fell into this kind of thinking, sometimes in the same breath as when he condemned it. I think it's simply the belief, encountered in many cultures and ideological traditions, that people are good by nature (whatever is meant by good, whether it is rationality or piety or some other thing), and if acting badly, do so because they themselves must have been mistreated in some way.
No "society" is not to blame, whatever "society" means, but one has to see that without "the west" neither Al Quaida nor ISIS would exist.
I have yet to see where an example of an international terror cell which just pops up full of hatred against "the west" out of the void without any previous Intervention by western powers.
Yes. Liberals are not the only Rousseau-ists around.
I wonder if "Liberalism" is, in the sense that you're describing, really all that different from IS or the Nazis.
It may be true that, in theory, Liberalism has a more elaborate theory about how the universe operates (or "ought to operate") but it is often, if not, increasingly, invariably, detached from the reality, not only as an actual explanation but also as the basis of "real" motive for specific actions. The "real" motives, in fact, are often a mishmash of short term motives, cynical political calculations, and even downright inertia. Thus the idea behind "rules based order," or a batch of makeshift case-by-case justifications that vaguely appeal to some big principles, but really are incoherent on the whole, rather than real "rules" with some appearance of permanence. So are "big ideas" behind Liberalism, as it operates in practice, any different from the combination of mystical (and fictitious) nationalism/racialism mixed with racist pseudoscience of the Nazis or the incoherent appeal to the alleged principles of "original Islamic teachings" by the Islamic fundamentalism? I mean, it's not like they were open to alternate interpretations and "heterodox" intellectual arguments--I don't know about racialist pseudoscience, but certainly the history of Romantic nationalism and, especially, intellectual history of Islam, is full of them, all of which were bluntly rejected by the ideologues: how often do modern day Liberals seriously consider alternate arguments based, even on classical Liberal principles, rather than shout them down as manifestations of some evil thoughtcrime?
I suppose this is part of the point, but with a caveat that the pseudo-intellectualism of the Liberals adds more to the paradox: the Nazis and Islamic Fundamenatlists make no pretense of intellectualism and don't try to think and rationalise or justify their actions--they have just the enemies and they fight and repress. But we have seen this before, too, in form of another "religion," necessarily born in the West: the (late) Medieval Catholicism. It might be my ignorance, but I don't know of any comparable attempt (along with the effort to justify this) in the Far East, Middle East, or even in the Orthodox Europe. They all let mystical and religious be unexplained and were content with the separation. This has been offered (can't remember who exactly) as an explanation for why "science" emerged in the West, while the Rest were content with technology (Joseph Needham famously wrote about medieval and ancient Chinese "science," but, really, he only wrote about "technology," of which there were indeed plenty and impressive, but they were not weaved into a systematic explanation of the universe that people took seriously. In the West, a comparable development took place only during early to middle Middle Ages, when technological innovations were plentiful, but no corresponding "universalizing" intellectual development)--thus we call it the Dark Ages...
"The difference is that the Nazis—a group of not especially bright or talented individuals with a banally terrifying view of the world—managed to take control of a major country with resources and an Army"
Actually Nazi leaders had above average to very high IQ (half over 130), as was shown by the Nuremberg trial tests. To put into perspective, JFK had 119. I don't think it makes sense to bind intelligence to a particular political ideology.
As per US intervention in the Tutsi-Hutu wars, picking out Kagamé from the camps when he was an impressionable youngster
It appears the liberal minded US administrative/governing layer, ok class, has long had no qualms about violence and a relatively acute comprehension of it's usefulness
If you think the current iteration in a 'PMC identity' is distinct from the US governing class long practiced in war, one could say since scrambling up the beaches from their brit ships
You are mistaken
Your essays look acute, but lack any appreciation for class structures, and a tendency to attack easy targets, such as these poor misguided ideologues – the classical phrase is what ? ‘over educated and undertalented’ - trying to synthesise and update the age old US traits into a winning fashion for electoral success
To procure for themselves as secure a status and function as that of the CPC in China
Now wonder they fail
Pick on someone your own size
There is also another aspect which you would perhaps describe as liberal but I wouldn't. And that is that humans are inherently cooperating or social animals, and for that reason has very few violent instincts towards eachother. In fact, we shun away, as a rule, from violence as a part of our genetic setup. Even most soldiers in a battle don't shoot at all, and the majority of those who do shoot in the air. To aim at another human is repulsive and we get highly nervous about it when we have to.
According to sociologist Randall Collins there are only two situations when humans can do violence towards other humans:
- when there is a chain of command, and the one who gives the order doesn't have to face violence him/herself but those who do will have to face punishment if not,
- what Collins calls "forward panic" – that is, when a confrontation has been building up for some time and one of the parties suddenly collapses; the other party can then often not control his/her behaviour but excercises much more violence than really needed.
This is described in a highly readable book simply called Violence.
Even professional criminals, for example hitmen, get nervous from violence and have to invent tricks to carry it through, according to Collins (or rather the criminals he has interviewed). For example never think about the victim but ony of his/her own weapon as a king of artisanal tool, or of course get through a mind training to conceive the victim as a non-human.
So there is nothing liberal about the incredulity of IS violence, it is only too human. We can't understand humans who under influence of perverse ideologies or thought-constructs deny their pro-social genetical setup, it is too far from our everyday experience.
PS. Of course our incompetent rulers should know better. They should have an information system, perhaps through the universities, or at least some carriers that don't make a profit from tilting the answers. The military does, from representing the persons observed as more violent than they actually are, perhaps others do from representing them as less.
But the problem is an old one, as described in 1837 by Hans Christian Andersen: The emperor's new clothes. I suppose everyone will look for the information he likes best, and discard all other, whatever the information carrier.
Kagamé was not born in the camps, he went there forced into exile when 4 years old - I did not say he stayed, he went to Langley
The rest is history - no global citizen he
I disagree 360 degrees as the Euros say with your statement 'it's enough to go...'
The hand of the American is visible in every aspect - one example : they chickened out of the renaming or the maintaining the names of the streets, they wanted to 'turn the page' to usher in a new etc etc - they came up with the brilliant idea of the grid….7th and
Which US democrat needs to win an election with 99% of the vote? But it’s not that hard
His deal with the Army has held his nebula of companies and their’s carve up most the country
As for security where does the new Customs registration or coding of every item sold come from – to be recorded and presented on tax returns- this is indigenous ?
Rwanda is both killing field and testing ground –dry runs for the US to apply elsewhere, if not upon themselves
I was going to comment on your Syria comment at NC, but there’s no point in picking on you, people say plenty much more stupid stuff
Tried to reply to my own post, but the page won't respond, so further thoughts on the line: "The actual results of this strategy were scarcely encouraging, but because the theory was right, the results were assumed not to matter."
Further to this, I was just reading an interview by Grant Williams with David Dredge. Dredge refers to a Paul Tudor Jones phrase: "sharp world. It’s this sort of fantasy land where all the simplified mathematics and models, we pretend like they work and the regulators impose the sharp world regulation on the institutions and the institutions go and tell the capital owners that were following modern portfolio theory, capital asset pricing models, and everybody behaves like, “Well, that’s good enough.” The High X Nobel Prize lecture, the pretense of knowledge, we just carry on acting like this precision of wrongness is okay and everybody seems to be in on it, except maybe me." But there's also the reference to the George Costanza line: "It’s not a lie if you believe it..." It's the PMC in finance, and same same.
As always, an extremely thought-provoking essay. It'll take me awhile to process it in its various applications. One line that has been recurring to thought is this: "The actual results of this strategy were scarcely encouraging, but because the theory was right, the results were assumed not to matter."
I found this both entirely true and entirely depressing. I was raised, and perhaps everyone is, in a mind-set (a "theory" if you like) in which this is the default setting. It's a bedrock form of faith. No matter what the cultural or ideological or whatever environment, breaking out of it is a process of loss of faith, which entails all the stages of grief and fear and then some, and yet still we revert as if by mental muscle memory. This would apply to all sides of all points of view or methods of living in the world. Since we cannot live without some level of faith, even if it is only that life will continue and I'm prepared to stay in it, loss of faith is deeply undermining. And people will kill, literally and figuratively, to hang onto it. Which doesn't bode well for our species. On the other hand, how the hell have we survived this long? If it's only because we have, up to now, been able to escape each other, as surviving groups if not as individuals, then, again, it doesn't bode well.
That we have a rational side as well as the side dependent on a measure of faith, is a positive. Perhaps the balance between the two has always been precarious.
Not sure if this will make sense to anyone else, but it's up here FWIW.
You appear to adopt a more realistic attitude towards Kagamé and Tutsi initiated Genocide on the lower class Hutu, both in Burindi and in Rwanda
You neglect to mention that this is mrely the lastest in a constant cycle of class war, at least in Rwanda, the only exceptional element being that the Tursi are now supported and controlled by the US rather than being manipulated by the previous colonial power, with a view to speading war into the the DRC, to destabilse and steal precious minerals
See my comment above. It's Rwanda that is controlling the US.
An italian translation, here:
"Candele e Kalashnikov.
Aiutateci a non capire."
https://trying2understandw.blogspot.com/2024/11/candele-e-kalashnikov-aiutateci-non.html
Thatnk you as always Marco