There’s nothing particularly new or interesting per se in the 37 page indictment of 13 Russian nationals, including its head Evgeny Prigozhin, for “meddling” in the US elections through online trolling.
The existence of the Internet Research Agency – or “Olgino”, as it is known in Russia, after the location of the first “troll factory” (since moved to Savushkina Street, Saint-Petersburg) – has been widely known in Russia for half a decade, thanks entirely to Russian journalists. Novaya Gazeta published a report on them in 2013. It is headed by Evgeny Prigozhin, a shady figure who did 12 years in a Soviet prison for robbery and fraud, but rose rapidly in the lawless 1990s in the restaurant business, and in more recent years has been entrusted with “black work” for the Kremlin. The most serious investigation about its involvement in the US elections was conducted by the Russian RBC media group, which came up with a figure of $2.3 million (that’s almost three orders of magnitude less than the combined $1.6 billion that the Clinton and Trump campaigns spent).
Moreover, as with the sanctions list – and despite the high-profile, seven figure lawyers recruited by Mueller for his investigation – there is a distinct tinge of incompetence to this indictment, suggesting a lack of conscientiousness and/or Russia expertise at the Department of Justice.
Here is what Andrey Zakharov, one of the co-authors of the original Russian RBC report, had to say about this in an interview with WaPo:
The other staff mentioned are very incidental. I mean, it seems like they put down all the names they could get. Some were people who worked there in 2014 — but most of these guys didn’t work for the troll factory for a long time. They didn’t even work there during the elections. Like Krylova, she didn’t work there then. [Aleksandra Krylova is one of the two named Internet Research Agency employees the indictment said traveled to the United States in 2014.]
It looks like they just took some employees from the that American department whose names they could get. But the American department was like 90 people. So my reaction was that, for me, it was like that curious list of oligarchs and Kremlin authorities where they put the whole Forbes list and the whole Kremlin administration on it. It’s very strange.
So it’s easy to make fun of this and slot it down as just another episode in the slapstick sitcom that is American domestic politics. As Alexander Mercouris optimistically points out, the indictment is “entirely declamatory,” since (1) there is zero chance that any Russian named in the indictment will be extradited, and (2) there are no claims that any member of the Trump campaign colluded with any of the people in the indictment.
I am considerably more pessimistic.
First, at the end of the day, free speech is free speech – what difference does it make even if it is done on the Kremlin’s payroll, or with the help of botnets? (Neither of which, incidentally, has been rigorously proven). This represents a radical retreat from the principles of the First Amendment, and one of that isn’t just going to impact Russians in the US and foreigners. With this new normal, mocking and trolling politicians remains all well and good – but only so long as the Russians (Chinese, etc.) aren’t behind it. And to ascertain whether or not that is indeed the case, you need investigations – investigations that will be overwhelmingly targeted against enemies of the centrist establishment from both Left and the Right. There is already a lot of squealing from Blue Checkmark Twitter and /r/politics on how the Russians aided Jill Stein and even Bernie Sanders.
Second, it expands the claimed sphere of American global jurisdiction beyond just espionage (Wikileaks/Julian Assange) to include – for all intents and purposes – the criminalization of foreign commentary on American politics during election years.
This is not an exaggeration.
While the Kremlin is obviously supportive of the Internet Research Agency, it has taken care to keep itself at arms’ length from it, and as with Wagner, no formal ties have ever been demonstrated; consequently, the indictment itself stops short of naming Putin or any Russian official figures. The flip side is that since so many Russians apparently work for or coordinate with the Kremlin in an official capacity, there is a new norm getting established that all Russians are suspect, the burden of proof is on them to demonstrate otherwise. As Leonid Bershidsky points out, this may result in Russians in the US facing “increasing scrutiny when applying for jobs, bank accounts and other attributes of a normal life in the US – and the burden of proof that they are not Kremlin agents will be on them.”
However, one might argue that Russians in the US at least generally made their own decision to live in the US, which implies acceptance of All-American norms (and if that comes to include entrenched Russophobia, that’s too bad; they are free to leave if they don’t like it). The same cannot be said about Russians living in Russia, who never even plan to set foot in the US. But while Russia will not extradite anybody in the indictment, the same cannot be said of American satellite countries, which include most of Europe. The people working at the troll factory are young, Anglophone, and not poor; it is almost inevitable than sooner or later one of them will set foot in such a country, and presumably more likely than not that they will be arrested and extradited. In this scenario, Russia can be expected to do as little (that is to say, nothing) for them as it did for the Wagner mercenaries – coincidentally, another outfit “curated” by Prigozhin – murdered by Americans in Deir ez-Zor a couple of weeks ago.
And apart from monetary compensation, there’s ultimately not that much separating a Savushkina troll from any regular shitposter in Russia or anywhere else in the world outside the US.
PS. NBC News recently released a database of more than 200,000 tweets [.csv] that Twitter claimed constuted “malicious activity” from subsequently suspended Russia linked accounts during the 2016 US elections.
I notice that the “stars” of the Russia watching and Alt Right world get nary a mention. Noted Kremlin troll and bête noire of Western neoliberals Mark Sleboda gets 2 mentions. Mercouris – zero. Peter Lavelle – one. The journalist Bryan MacDonald – zero. Richard B. Spencer – twice (quite sad from Putler, “godfather of extreme nationalism” ala Hillary Clinton). His wife Nina Byzantina (Kouprianova) – twice. Valentina Lisitsa, the musician no platformed by the Toronto Symphony Orchestra for her support of Russian on the Crimea – a barely more respectable five times. Yours truly – zero times. In the meantime, affirmative action Kremlinologist and Russia truther Joy Reid was “boosted” by “the Kremlin” 267 times.
The whole thing looks like a farce, but I guess a lot of totalitarianism looked like a farce initially. No one took the Nazis or Bolsheviks seriously until they grabbed power, and for example the accusations against Trotsky or Bukharin never amounted to more than a ridiculous conspiracy theory. But what matters is how much power those wielding the accusations have and how far they are willing and able to go. If it stops where it is right now, then it might not be a big problem. But it has a chance of getting out of control. To an extent, it already is.
These 13 individuals will remain in Russia if they know what’s good for them. 😉 The rest of us really shouldn’t care. If the American society wants to go mad and self-destruct, I say let them.
It is about time someone got around to dealing with the “blame America first” crowd. 🙂
We are facing an unusual combination of the elite fearing loss of control, angry Clintonites, emotional public, media hysteria, outsized personalities, new technologies, and bad ‘laws’ that simply don’t work in 2017. The result is the absurd situation where free speech is redefined as ‘foreign meddling’ or ‘conspiracy’, ‘spreading discord’. By the way, freedom by definition means ‘discord’. This might be just the beginning.
Few questions:
– is the trolling after the elections (about half of the alleged activity) also illegal? Based on what?
– if foreigners expressing their views during an election is now considered criminal, how is that going to be enforced on millions of people around the world with access to internet? are they all going to be required to register?
if not, does the extreme enforcement selectivity make the law unconstitutional? laws targeted only at specific people or groups – e.g. only at Russians – are not allowed in most legal systems since Roman times.
– can other countries do the same thing? would that make almost all US-West activities ‘promoting democracy’ around the world potentially criminal? what are ‘NGOs’ in this new legal environment?
This is bordering on a back-door dissolution of hundreds of years of Western legal civilisation. Even if one assumes that it is all just for show – and that nobody will be charged in an actual court – it undermines the Western self-image and the core principle of ‘freedom of speech’.
Finally, a logical consequence of this escalation is another step on the road to war with Russia. How else can it be escalated? We might perish because Hillary Clinton could not take a defeat in an election. This is narcism on steroids.
“However, one might argue that Russians in the US at least generally made their own decision to live in the US, which implies acceptance of All-American norms (and if that comes to include entrenched Russophobia, that’s too bad; they are free to leave if they don’t like it).”
Have you met any Russians in America? They’re some of the most strident Russophobes you’ll ever meet. For one thing a lot of these Russians are Jews and to them Putin is the czar, Stalin, and Hitler rolled into one. They’re willing to believe anything bad about Putin and Russia and are willing to do anything to counter his influence, real and imagined.
The actual Russians usually don’t even care about Putin and may even recognize the current Russia scandal for the farce that it is, but they still don’t like Russia. In their case it’s more of a class issue. They see themselves as above the dumb, drunken, unambitious быдло they left behind and dedicate themselves to living a bougie, upper-middle class lifestyle. This is something that the Jews and Russians see eye to eye on.
Personally, I think the idea of Russians in America being persecuted because of all this nonsense is over the top. Even if it happens, don’t feel too bad for its victims. They’re mostly very well off and like you said, they chose their fate.
Oceania has always been at war with Eurasia.
Eh. Its been a kind of charade for some time. Perhaps a bit more of the farce will go away but I suspect that in the grand scheme of things, it doesn’t change much. Those who benefit from it can justify it in at least two ways:
1) As an exigency against an active, hostile threat against illiberal powers – the US also blocked Nazi propaganda during WW2.
2) That the digital commons, due to its anonymous nature and particular nature, is uniquely toxic and therefore cannot be included in traditional notions of free speech.
All in all, I think it just makes the echoes in various echo chambers louder. And that polarization arguably is the most dangerous part of this all.
Yes, but all of them I know sympathize with Russia on at least one point or two: that Crimea isn’t the US’ business, that the US shouldn’t have its navy in the Black Sea, that the NATO expansion isn’t helping the situation, etc. It could now be dangerous for them to voice any of those thoughts.
Having to actually parrot every single neocon position now has to be annoying.
Vaguely related:
US show of force sends Russia a message in Black Sea
My dad is seriously freaked out that I express opinions, online, about usa politics.
I think I’m pretty much nobody but who knows. Better make sure that I log out of twitter before any trip to the usa then ….
the media’s hysterical reaction to Trump is clearly very dangerous and could lead to WW3 as well as more school shootings but i think the media is also burning through their credibility at a very rapid rate so hopefully the latter will happen before the former.
That seems overly dramatic, I have not spotted any real ‘Nazis’ yet. The anonymity of internet is also not anything new, every new media advance from printing press to newspapers had their sudden increase in participation, and a lot of it is always ‘anonymous’.
I agree that we should avoid a hyperbole, it will calm down, it always does. But reputation – or what the West likes to call ‘soft power’ – is a fragile thing, easy to lose with wrong steps. At a minimum every preaching statement from Washington can now be met with ‘you criminalise free speech by foreigners about your elections, so what are you doing in our countries telling us about democracy?”
That’s is a serious egg on Washington face. And the polarisation is getting out of hand, it would be ironic if silly Facebook comments would help to trigger the end. Grown ups used to be able to distinguish what matters, and what is just inevitable social noise.
They don’t believe in this conspiracy. They’re all hardcore (quite simplistic) Trump supporters and this conspiracy is believed mainly by the Democrats – join some of their groups on social media and talk to them to find out, they are not giving a shit about Russia.
–
To believe the Russia conspiracy theories, you have to have a vastly higher estimation of the country’s power and influence, which is not particularly large in reality.
As for the rest of your comment about alleged ‘racism’. Of course you are right, Russian-Americans don’t face any racism or real discrimination (people that complain about this stuff in America, it’s usually just an excuse for their failure in life).
One positive is that there’s a good chance the Yanks will go too far at some point over the next few decades and lose control of Europe, or parts of it. Not certain, and obviously the creation of a confrontation with Russia is partly intended to make sure Europe has nowhere else to go, but there are likely limits to how far the US can go and get away with it. Brexit, if and to the extent it happens, will help to give Europe at least a chance at getting out from under.
Blithely optimistic comments about it being darkest just before the dawn seem called for here….
I’m more pessimistic about my own country, because the elite here is more closely tangled with the US elites and this country seems already irrevocably subservient to US dictats. Fortunately I’m old enough that I’m unlikely to see the worst, but it is going to get pretty grim for anyone thinking independently and unwilling to shut up.
I would say it is just American internal politics and mental breakdown. It affects us I guess, only to the extent that America is so powerful their internal issues impact every country, but this conspiracy theory won’t have concrete consequences, as even its propagators know there is nothing significant to it.
The American media is interested in the Russia conspiracy theory, to the extent they think they can undermine the Republican president through it. If it was the other way round, and they thought this conspiracy theory could be damaging to Democrat, the whole trivial story would have disappeared and likewise the ‘investigations’.
The danger is for the Americans, is that the pro-Democrat media bias is almost enough to put them into a kind of one party rule with permanent Democrat Party majority. In this case, they will be ironically converging with the situation in the Russia.
This double-standard is a natural posture for imperialists.
I think we already discussed about last week the hypocrisy in terms of language learning. Americans expect us all to speak to them in English (aside from the fact that it is a great language), but they place no such demands of themselves when appointing ‘Russian experts’, who are completely illiterate in the country and its language. It reminded me of the British attitude to Indians – where Indians were expected to speak English, but the British rulers of India don’t learn a word of Hindi.
English imperial hypocrisy was area much written about in the last phase of their empire:
https://books.google.ru/books?id=TgzKgvSGkIQC&pg=PA181&dq=english+hypocrisy+empire&hl=ru&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjM0aWDvrXZAhVJmeAKHTl8D2IQ6AEIJzAA#v=onepage&q=english%20hypocrisy%20empire&f=false
“The Yanks” have already lost control of the United States.
Consider for instance the famous use of pseudonyms in pamphlets by America’s “Founding Fathers”.
Usually after the ratchet has taken another turn towards tyranny.
Yes, it all helps to draw attention to the problem of US interference in other countries and to discredit it, and to justify the measures taken against it – nobody respects a cry-baby who dishes it out but cries when he gets a little back.
I’d recommend taking a separate phone and computer with you if you do go, not the ones you usually use.
That seems like a somewhat one-sided assessment of British rule in India, for all their faults the British did a lot for the study of Indian languages. They pretty much founded scientific study of Sanskrit and edited a lot of texts, preserving important parts of India’s cultural heritage (which is probably more than can be said for the previous Muslim rulers).
As for the whole “Russiagate” nonsense, one could laugh about it if the potential consequences weren’t so horrible.
Honest assessment of the British Empire is almost impossible without taking proper account of the dishonesty of many if not most of the “scholars” writing about it, especially in the early-mid C20th. These were mostly leftists profoundly ideologically (and treasonously in many cases) opposed to the empire and more than willing to lie about it, let alone misrepresent the facts about it.
Not to say there weren’t many problems with empire (and many benefits as well, for all concerned, including the ruled – otherwise Britain could never have taken over India in the first place in practice), or that it wasn’t overall something we’re better off without, but that leftist dishonesty is a huge factor to be taken into account.
As for language, it’s normal for ruling nations to look down upon the languages and culture of the ruled, but in fact many British upper class types going to India made a point of learning the relevant languages. Enoch Powell famously learned Urdu hoping to get a post as Viceroy, and it was expected of British officers commanding Indian troops in the late C19th and early C20th that they would learn the language of their men.
The flexibility and willingness to “go native” of many exceptionally high performing British (notoriously often Scots or Irishmen) individuals was one of the reasons why the British Empire succeeded in the first place. Even some of the men of questionable competence based upon the record were well educated in the local languages and cultures. Consider for instance:
In many upper class British quarters knowing Indian languages was seen as bestowing cachet and credibility, quite apart from its utility if you were going to actually live and work in India.
“Russia’s foreign ministry has confirmed that “several dozen” Russian citizens – not regular soldiers – were killed or wounded in a recent battle in Syria.”
Seems rather to vindicate you, Anatoly, if I recall the recent dispute correctly.
Doesn’t the 1A just apply to Americans? I hope you don’t think that the 2A applies elsewhere.
I know that there are probably not a lot of sports fans here, but perhaps someone can throw some light on the seemingly inexplicable situation of the Russian curler (sic) who has been disqualified for used a banned drug (meldonium, Maria Sharapova’s drug of choice).
While a few have tried to explain that the significant benefits of meldonium for the sport of curling (enhanced ice-brushing capabilities can add an extra 5 or 6 cm, which can be a game changer), the general reaction is one of hysterical laughter. Particularly since meldonium apparently has to be used on a long-term basis to have any real effect, and this is excluded by the results of early drug testing.
This “result” has significant political implications, and will likely be used to continue Russia’s Olympic ban (there was in fact a realistic chance they would have been reinstated before the closing ceremony, in which they could then have participated). And of course it just adds to the continual thrust of daily evidence of Russian perfidy.
The athlete involved has naturally protested his innocence, but of course they all do, don’t they?
Unlike the recently cleared US athlete who successfully argued that his high level of cocaine arose from kissing his girlfriend, it appears that there is no “innocent” explanation for high levels of meldonium.
So was the Russian athlete really so stupid as to have done this? The only alternative appears to be that it was a set-up, in which case the question is whether it was something personal (disgruntled teammate perhaps, although it is hard to believe that any fellow Russian would have done this) or had a more political motive.
Any enlightenment out there?
At a minimum, it applies to all American residents. (If I understand it correctly, at least one of the Russians was living in the USA for a while.) In any event, it would be strange if American laws allowed American residents to talk (or, in that case, comment on Facebook) as they like, but would prohibit foreigners living abroad to comment on Facebook discussions. It would also be strange if foreigners visiting the USA would be prohibited from doing the same. (I think a couple of the indicted Russians were visiting the USA at the time.)
But maybe it’s just me.
I imagine the whole Russian ban to be a setup, but of course who knows. I believe Russians are at least as likely to use illegal substances as others (and I know in the Eastern Bloc it was probably more widespread), even stupid substances (how likely was Ben Johnson using steroids during competition?), while they are now probably under extra surveillance.
Can’t help you with that particular slightly weird one, but it seems pretty clear there’s been a general policy of harassment of Russia and Russians in international sporting/games contexts for some years now, and it’s reasonable to assume a lot of the “evidence” against Russia and Russians is probably dirty. That’s how the Yanks and the poodle countries that want to curry favour with them work, after all. Those huge “black budgets” don’t spend themselves, you know.
It’s not just drugs, by any means:
World Chess Federation says Swiss accounts frozen over Syria sanctions
By the way Ben Johnson himself claimed he was set up in 1988. It made little sense to continue steroid use into the competition season, and he also claimed he preferred another substance. But maybe he was just stupid, who knows? A Hungarian weightlifter who was also tested positive in 1988 (after having won a silver medal) also claimed he was set up: he also pointed out how little sense it made to keep using steroids in competition season. But he said like all athletes, of course he also used steroids during training, so that he was not really innocent. He came across as reasonably intelligent in the interview (and his claim that their doping regimen was under the control of the team doctors anyway is also more than believable), so I believe him that he cannot possibly have used the steroid he was found out with.
I suspect many of the positive samples are results of some kinds of setups, Russian or not.
Simple logic says that if Russian athletes are tested more often than others, it in itself will result in more positive samples. Further, if a large portion of positive samples are setups anyway, then the Russian positive samples will also have a larger number of setups and weird positive samples as well.
My theory is that this has more to with internal politics of international sports than anything else. Everybody (well, everybody that matters, i.e. the Blue Checkmarks) agrees that Doping is Bad and it is contrary to the True Spirit of Sports™, and as such, must be banned (which conveniently provides another excuse to create yet another international bureaucracy that spends millions of dollars and employs a bunch of people who could either doing something better with their time [e.g. biochemists who could be developing better anti-cancer drugs for example] or who shouldn’t be doing anything at all with their time [e.g. anybody in HR and PR], but I digress) but it’s not fair (the rich should be able to take all the metals, right?) and it’s not natural (because the modern training regiments and the equipment of modern sports is quite natural).
The problem is that everybody does doping (well, everybody that matters, e.g. Kennan’s five centres of industrial power plus France, South Korea and China), because it works. China probably has an institutional, industrialized program akin to what went on the Soviet Union (and probably continued, in reduced form, with Russia) but better. Could also happen with SK and Japan, but they are probably more like the US and the West, which probably has a more privatized and diffuse system, where athletes get their drugs via informal systems, allowing the national governing bodies plausible deniability.
However, they can’t attack the Chinese and the Western doping systems as both are too rich and powerful (got to keep those ad dollars following in). So the Russians, weaken since the fall of Communism, serve as convenient scapegoat to demonstrate that (i) doping is occurring, and (ii) is pervasive, but (iii) the anti-doping organizations are effective in catching the bad guys, but (iv) requires constant vigilance to stop, so keep those dollars flowing.
Interestingly, both Ben Johnson and the Hungarian weightlifter (Andor Szanyi) were caught in 1988 in Seoul with stanozolol. Stanozolol is a substance which can be taken orally. But this also makes it easy to put into the food of someone without his knowledge. I cannot say if that’s what happened to them, but it certainly made no sense for them to use it at the Olympics.
But then it makes little sense to ban Russia altogether from participating at the Olympics. It removes those convenient scapegoats. It only makes sense as part of the all-pervasive anti-Russia campaign.
By the way I don’t think we can fully legalize doping, unless we’re fully prepared to see dozens of athletes dropping dead in the Olympic finals. Trying to cheat has been part of sports since ancient times, but we need rules or else swimmers would come equipped with engines and propellers. We need the bureaucracy to keep the competition interesting and the competitors human enough.
I don’t think you know who you’re dealing with.
The US Deep State is not the Nazis or the Bolsheviks. These people are utter morons who whole heartedly believe their own lies.
This is just typical Anatoly blackpilling here.
Also something needs to be kept in mind: Mueller isn’t saying that Russians aren’t allowed to use social media to promote various US Presidential candidates, rather he is saying that the Russians aren’t allowed to use social media to promote candidates hostile to the establishment wing of the Democratic party.
Mexico did much more than Russia to interfere in the US election but Mexico is getting a pass. This is not because Mueller likes Mexico or has a grudge against Russia, but instead is because Mexico interfered in favor of Hillary whereas Russia interfered against Hillary.
tl;dr: interfering for a pro war, pro Wall Street, pro immigration Democrat = good. Interfering for anybody else = bad.
By the way, I don’t know if you Euros/Russians have heard about that big school shooting we just had here but after the shooting, the Dems/media have gone all in a pushing gun control (they do this after every shooting) except this time they have the help of a few of the students from the school where this happened.
Predictably, many right wingers on social media have started attacking these kids with tasteless memes (I fully support this).
Anyway, on the the left wing message boards I frequent there is 100% consensus that all these memes are the work of Russian bots.
As a taxpayer in Russia, I am distressed that it seems there was no substantial Russian meddling in the US election. Damn it, I want my money back!
https://www.rt.com/sport/419227-wada-officers-disrupt-alina-zagitova-training/
“Zagitova took to the ice as was scheduled, but several minutes later she was forced to leave the skating rink, because a doping officer ordered her to take a doping test. The training turned out to be disrupted,” a member of the Russian figure skating squad told R-Sport.
Russian figure skating star Zagitova breaks Medvedeva’s newly-set world record in short program
https://www.rt.com/sport/419399-alina-zagitova-breaks-world-record/
Zagitova had been severely criticized by American figure skating pundits, outraged by the Russian athlete and reigning European champion’s decision to put all of her jumps in the second part of the program.
US figure skater Ashley Wagner, who failed to make the US Olympic team, said that Zagitova’s free skate routine was “not a program,” while USA Today columnist Christine Brenan suggested that the skater should be penalized for her “composition of the program.”
Despite the wave of criticism, Olympic debutante Zagitova continues on her winning path in PyeongChang, seemingly unfazed by the caustic remarks.
I’m pleased to say that not all of them are like that, as I’ve had way too many numerous exchanges to the contrary.
Keep in mind that the PC Russians in the US (whether Jewish or otherwise) are the ones more likely to get mass media space. There’s also the matter of some alternative venues not always putting the best feet forward.
I intellectually demolish these people in one on one situations that don’t favor one side in an overly discriminating way, with selective interrupting and off the subject personal attacks.
Russians in the US have faced plenty of bigotry. The NYT recently had another Juliet Macur like commentary. The bigotry in her piece is noted at the very end of this article:
https://www.eurasiareview.com/09022018-western-chauvinism-against-russia-gone-berserk-oped/
The Captive Nations Committee influenced Captive Nations Week is another example of anti-Russian bigotry in the US:
https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2017/12/12/countering-anti-russian-propaganda.html
A good number of people of Russian background aren’t so aware of the kind of bigotry that’s out there. I sense that many of them have been sedated in conjunction with not having been given a whole educated overview of what has been at play.
Part of the bias pertains to the overall manner of US based Russian studies programs:
https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2017/12/12/countering-anti-russian-propaganda.html
1.this interference is only in florida & newyork.(not the whole country) that is what i think the indictment says.no impact on blue wall states.
2.the russians should be very afraid as both kissinger & brezinski has warned about again confronting russia (cold war style)after the crimean take over.
Let’s see how this particular matter with the Russian curler plays out. He insists on not having willingly taken the drug/not knowing to have taken it.
There’ve been past instances where positive results have been overturned after hearing the explanation of the athletes in question.
As for the anti-Russian bigotry evident within the IOC and WADA, you’ll be hard pressed to find a better article on the subject:
https://www.eurasiareview.com/09022018-western-chauvinism-against-russia-gone-berserk-oped/
On this subject, there’s a lot of Trump bashing and calls for gun control. Omitted is an otherwise key matter, having to do with America at large needing to take a more critical look at itself.
I understand that there’re quite a few countries with a higher per capita of guns with the respective population, while not having such a high murder rate.
For years, Brennan has had a red, white and bull delivery. In private conversations, a number of figure skating aficionados have ridiculed her for having a poor knowledge of figure skating. Ashley Wagner comes across as a brat. No surprise to see Brennan lauding Wagner.
Thanks, yes – my initial estimate was pretty much spot on (“but a few dozen Russian casualties are credible“).
As opposed to both Martyanov/kremlinists (“most likely, however, there were no real Russian casualties“) and Strelkov/El Murid/etc. (300+).
Mueller is not a moron, certainly not more so than, say, Ribbentrop. The Bolsheviks and Nazis also usually wholeheartedly believed their own lies.
As to the second part of your comment, of course everyone is free to promote the same candidates that the deep state supports. But it’s a bit like the Soviet joke about being free to protest the American President.
Mueller is a moron in the sense of being rather ignorant about the world outside of the US. I agree with Greasy, in America, everything always comes back to domestic politics. Viewing the Russiagate farce through this prism is the only way to make any sense of the situation. Those of us who know Russia well or, really, anything about the world, will otherwise be flummoxed by the lack of facts and basic logic.
It appears as if this indictment was designed to make sure that no actual court processes, trial or otherwise, take place. Mueller knows there is no “there” there, but has to come up with something for political expediency, to keep the whole thing going or to make it look like he’s actually doing something productive. So I don’t see this turning into some larger campaign that will lead to the arrests of Russian bloggers on holiday in Europe.
The fact that it’s merely about US domestic politics is not quite relevant. The Soviet show trials were also about Soviet domestic politics, but they did arrest a few foreigners anyway. They were collateral damage.
Mueller knows nothing about the world outside the USA: how is that worse than Ribbentrop not understanding the world outside Germany? Except that Ribbentrop was a foreign minister.
Would Greasy bang any of the Russians? Or Mueller?
What lies exactly? Everything that was warned about the jews pretty much came to be. The realities of race were also true.
Setting aside the matter of immutable racial characteristics, most Nazi leaders apparently believed in the possibility of a Nazi victory, or at least of a draw, until perhaps early 1945. Even Speer seems to have believed in it until the loss of Silesia in January 1945. With Goebbels, propaganda and real thoughts got so deeply enmeshed that it’s hard to know when he realized the war was lost. Hitler is similar, while he already in late summer of 1941 made allusions to the fact that winning the war was a tall order, he apparently managed to convince himself again and again that, after all, he could at least force a draw if he remained hard as steel in the face of adversity.
Correction/Clarification:
I’m pleased to say that not all of them are like that, as I’ve had way too many numerous exchanges to the contrary – from what you say.
Hitler was also convinced that the only reason none of his enemies were willing to make a separate peace with him was Jewish influence. That his having broken all of his previous promises and thus being considered an incorrigible liar in possession of the most formidable military force in the world could have been a reason apparently never even occurred to him. No one trusted him anymore, even less than they trusted each other. It’s easy to see how even Stalin came to be seen as trustworthy by the Western allies relative to Hitler, and it had nothing to do with Jewish influence. Hitler apparently believed his own propaganda that it was only the Jews who could explain the grand alliance against him.
how is that worse than Ribbentrop not understanding the world outside Germany? Except that Ribbentrop was a foreign minister.
I think you are being somewhat unfair to Ribbentrop.
Almost any multiple shooting crime in the US is followed, as night follows day, by a chorus of leftie gun grabbers trying to exploit it to win by sentimental manipulation what they have repeatedly failed to win by rational argument. Recently they’ve seemed a little disheartened by repeated failures, though.
In this case, as you say, they seem to think they have found an extra-powerful method of sentimental manipulation by using the students themselves, who seem willing collaborators, doubtless some through conviction and some through just the human desire to feel important. It is one of the pervasive problems of a wealthy, soft society like those of the US sphere that people who lose loved ones have enough time, resources and energy on their hands to become obsessive, often lifelong, campaigners to give their own personal loss some kind of special meaning, resulting in the general safety fascism that pervades the US sphere.
It’s up to those who want to protect their gun liberty to resist with appropriate methods and determination. Hopefully the line will be held again.
This particular idiocy is new, of course, but I suppose it just replaces previous methods of delegitimising dissent from the obsessives’ ideologies – “they’re just gun lobby dupes/gun nuts” etc.
Characteristically American bad losers.
Those were the – from my point of view – good Yanks. The modern US are the bad Yanks. In my lifetime the US turned from being a mixed bag that on balance was good for the world, to being a huge net cause of or contributor to the main problems of the word. When the facts changed, I changed my opinion. Too many are simply incapable of doing so.
His Nazi salute was a never forgotten misstep.
Sometime during the war to celebrate some anniversary of being in office, his colleagues created a list of all major agreements signed by him. They found out that all of them were by that time broken. Both he and Hitler found it amusing. Neither suspected it had anything to do with the fact that the three by far most important powers in the world were now allied to each other and fighting a war against him, while all three of them explicitly ruled out the possibility of a separate peace or compromise with Germany.
As I said, they didn’t understand much how the world worked. The Polish commenter section will explain to anyone interested why the Polish government never seriously considered giving in to Hitler’s seemingly modest demands (Danzig and the corridor), acceding to which might have averted most of the destruction subsequently meted out to Poland.
That is not really telling a lie, the military situation was dire, but one cannot simply just surrender as soon as the war starts going badly, and the belief of getting a better peace deal is worth fighting for.
When Hitler said in September 1938 that the Sudeten was his last demand in Europe, it was a lie, and he knew it. When almost a year later he said the same thing about his demands for Danzig and the corridor, everyone in Europe knew it was a lie.
I don’t really understand what we are talking about, since people “believing their own lies” literally means they are not lying. Your argument is that they were essentially correct about race (really? that Slavs should be exterminated or be subordinate to Germans?) and that anything else they lied about was not really a lie.
In late 1944 it had been going badly at the very least for two years with no hope of changing that. As easily as Hitler jumped into the war, he was rather careful in waiting for the very last moment to stop it.
As easily as Hitler jumped into the war, he was rather careful in waiting for the very last moment to stop it.
Strictly speaking, of course, he never did. What seems particularly tragic, at least to me, was the Allies’ refusal of peace overtures by Admiral Canaris.
I am less repelled by the general idea of national socialism than most people. I think it at least had the chance of working better in Germany than what came afterwards. I also think some of its territorial demands were justified. (The Sudeten, Austria, Memel, and Danzig. I don’t think the corridor was ever justified. I also don’t think Danzig was worth a great European war.) A case could be made for some legal discrimination of non-Aryans or non-Germans (even if probably they went too far after 1934). I don’t like dictatorships, but I think their ideology was closest to reality in terms of human nature and human biology, at least among the realistic alternatives like liberalism or communism. Even if its understanding of race etc. was too rigid and ultimately quite unrealistic (e.g. Russians unable to develop culture or effectively fight a war – the latter assumption proved quite deadly).
But Hitler’s mistakes mean that, at least after the failure of communism, all of Western civilization’s eggs are now in the same rotting basket of race-denying liberalism. Why should we defend Hitler now, especially if you agree with some of his premises, when he is largely responsible for all of his ideas being discredited today? He could have stayed on his ass after 1938, and then maybe there would’ve been a nationalist greater power ever since. I guess they could’ve built the bomb quickly in peacetime.
Extreme anti-semitism was catastrophic to German science. It has never recovered.
“Indians were expected to speak English, but the British rulers of India don’t learn a word of Hindi”
That’s rubbish. Would a couple of thousand administrators have been able to rule a continent and not speak the local languages? In fact many were multilingual, speaking the language of their area as well as Hindi. India has hundreds of languages.
Go to India, look at the re-excavated ruins of earlier Indian civilisations (such as Sarnath) and you’ll find they were excavated by a Brit. And I have my father’s Hindi grammar from his army service there in WW2.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Cunningham#Archaeology
Maybe in the long term, but it’s a good win for the short term in my theory. Although I concede that the anti-Russia hysteria isn’t helpful.
Well, it wouldn’t being cheating if we legalized it, by definition. I would imagine under a legalization scheme, there would be some regulations to stop overuse. I’m not a libertarian oppose to all bureaucracy, just ones (among others) charged with completely futile tasks to unobtainable ideals.
“it is one of the pervasive problems of a wealthy, soft society like those of the US sphere that people who lose loved ones have enough time, resources and energy on their hands to become obsessive, often lifelong, campaigners to give their own personal loss some kind of special meaning”
But whether their campaigning gets on the nightly news or not depends on who’s holding the megaphone. How much coverage did the family and friends of Zemir Begic get?
Please, do you think that the proto cucks in France and Britain were acting in good faith? Germany had the right to get its lands back. I need to point out that the USSR took the Baltics, a part of Finland, a part of Poland and a part of Romania (more land than Germany took in fact), I didn’t see your heroes Churchill or Roosevelt making a fuss about that, I wonder (((why))).
On race, now you have the very real world implementation of the Camp of the Saints, all white lands are being targeted. No matter how fantastical the Generalplan Ost was supposed to be, the ethnic cleansing via third world immigration is way more destructive.
Its not really about reality or logic. To an unfortunate extent(and I’m sure liberals have their version of this), the conversation has been unduly influenced by pure derangement like this:
Russia creates airsoft and systema schools to create secret agents
Anne Applebaum is a nutcase. There’s not a lot of complexity to this and we could easily dismiss this off into the dustbin of other hilarious, ridiculous conspiracy theories of this magical land of “Russia” that only exists in her head. The problem is that this is in the Washington Post, and is read by mainstream liberals who also agree that this is fringey conspiracy thinking. But this is where the “foot in house” tactic as worked.
So let’s think as if we are typical liberals now.
So the idea that Russia is opening martial arts clubs to create Putin sympathizers is crazy, but then a more reasonable idea such as that Russia might engaged in some sort of information warfare against the “arc of history” seems much more relevant. After all, a gas station masquerading as a country must feel threatened by liberal, humanistic values and it must do what it can to injure the one country that has done more than any other to foster woman’s rights and equality for sexual and ethnic minorities, and perhaps had special venom for Hillary Clinton: a strong woman who be the most powerful person in the world.
So you moderate Applebaum’s insanity and take away something like this: Russia is an hostile world power that is using sophisticated social media tactics against your country, is recruiting ignorant deplorables who are too stupid to see they are being used against America, and probably intends you real harm(or at least lack of respect)…because being liberal, you’re probably a sodomite or at least have sympathy for them.
So now, we’ve consolidated it to basically: Russia is an active and hostile power. Of course, then, you cannot extend free speech to their agents. You might even think it is an act of war!
Cardin: Russia’s election meddling is ‘an act of war’
So this is the problem: the moderate liberal position, at this point, is detached from reality(at least). And the extremist position is unhinged beyond words.
Here’s a suggestion: it’s a face-saving indictment secured by a failing fishing expedition. The legal theories are sketchy and they wouldn’t have sought the indictments if they had an actual prospect of having to defend them in court. It’s PR.
Glenn Greenwald: A Consensus Emerges: Russia Committed an “Act of War” on Par With Pearl Harbor and 9/11. Should the U.S. Response Be Similar?
After reviewing my comment, I realized that I started almost each paragraph with a “So.”
So, hara-kiri.
Naturally, the correct response should be to have 13 Americans create vk accounts. I’m sure in the billions of NGO money that effectively serves as subversion could find a few dollars for that.
Maybe they could create a group for it, name it something like “Moscow Times.”
The real damage had already been done by WW1, mind you. Most likely the alternative to Hitler or an equivalent was a communist Germany, and ultimately quite possibly a disaster on the scale of WW2 anyway.
Your view of national socialism in general expressed here is reasonably balanced imo. A similarly balanced assessment of Hitler imo would recognise both his achievements and his good qualities along with his personal responsibility for ultimate failure and the personal mistakes that contributed to it. You describe here the latter without the former.
The reality is that his political achievement was remarkable, against literally incredible odds, in that he rose from the streets and the trenches, defeated liberalism and communism in his own country, built a ruling party from nothing and took absolute power for himself, in one of the world’s great power nations. Arguably this was one of the greatest personal political achievements in human history. He would not have been in the position to make the mistakes he made later, had it not been for his earlier achievements, including the dramatic military defeats of Poland and France for which he takes command credit as he takes command responsibility for the later defeats. If he had just chosen in 1940/41 not to attack the Soviets while still at war with Britain, things would probably have ended very differently.
It’s more acceptable imo to mention his qualities and achievements without mentioning his bad behaviour and his mistakes than to do the opposite, because he is a demonised figure for whom the general norm is to criticise (often cartoonishly) without mentioning redeeming aspects, or even to deny ab initio any possibility of redemption.
A blemish on the face of an otherwise excellent comment.
The underlying irony of all this, that you touch on here, is precisely that what the US liberals accuse Russia of is exactly what the US has been doing in spades to countries like Russia, Iran, etc.
Consider just one recent example:
U.S. Runs Headscarf Campaign Against Iran
The harsh reality being of course that the US has the wealth, power and technical capabilities (especially the propaganda infrastructure, built up over a century and more in Hollywood and the media giants) to do this effectively, whereas opportunities for retaliation are few and limited.
Targeted countries have little choice but to defend themselves in ways that tend to shut down free discussion, to their own disadvantage in other ways. Perhaps the triggering of such illiberal defences in the US sphere is the best they can hope for in response?
Anyway, the US hysteria over this seriously makes one wonder about the idea of a national guilty conscience, because the Americans surely are behaving as though they are neurotically beset with one on this topic and they certainly have more than enough to feel guilty about on this score).
There has been a definite hyping of US-Russian differences as detailed in this just released piece:
https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2018/02/21/overhyping-us-russian-differences.html
Best alternative would have been a right-wing military dictatorship under someone like von Schleicher, along the lines of the authoritarian regimes in Poland and other East European countries. Such a regime would have done away with liberalism and locked up communists and the most extreme Nazis, and would also have aimed at some territorial revision of the Versailles settlement, maybe fought a limited war…but in all probability it wouldn’t have recklessly caused a general European war or enacted a programme of mass murder.
I’m not convinced there was a real possibility of the communists taking power in Germany, and if it had happened maybe it wouldn’t have been that bad, at least Germans would have played a leading role in the world revolution.
What actually did happen was surely one of the worse outcomes imaginable.
Syria is Imperial Washington’s Waterloo. It’s bridge too far. The Neocons will suffer a crushing military defeat. Or they will destroy civilization altogether. But they will not withdraw.
The U.S. could have been a player in a multi polar world but it refused to play. So it gets nothing. We have yet to see the definitive event, the fall of the Berlin Wall event, that will define the end of Empire. It won’t be long.
There will be real hardship in real time for the people of the U.S. in the first years of post Imperial America. The winners of the American culture wars, the American Jacobin, or Maoist or Marxist or SJW’s if you prefer, will starve if their former countrymen in the hinterlands don’t feed them.
The lower 48 will balkanize. Post Imperial Washington will be powerless to prevent it. There is plenty of room for three or four new Republics. Old guys like me won’t live to see it. But the young and the strong may have an opportunity to build something new on the ashes of the old.
These are just my extrapolations based on what I think I see happening now. I have been puzzled in recent years that I have seen so little discussion of what Post Imperial America will look like. Normalcy bias I suppose. When the crash comes, I actually expect it this year, most Americans will be blindsided.
Personally I don’t believe the establishment had the strength in post-WW1 Germany to impose the kind of conservative military dictatorship you describe – that’s part of the reason why they chose to cooperate with the Nazis instead, though I agree that in the light of subsequent events it can’t really be disputed that it would almost certainly have been better for Germany, if only because it’s hard for anything to be worse.
Somebody like Franco in Spain was indeed probably what Germany needed, but the urban socialists were far more powerful in Germany than in relatively backward Spain (where it was a pretty close run thing), and the only reason the Communists in Germany were contained (imo) was that the Nazis fought them directly, and stole much of their thunder and their potential supporters.
I have little doubt that a war between Germany and the Soviet Union was coming, and if the Germans hadn’t attacked the Soviets then the Soviets would have attacked Germany, pretty much regardless of what regime was in power in Germany.
Perhaps there would have been a successful mutual deterrence standoff instead. But also perhaps the war would have been fought a little later, and with nuclear weapons.
Russians had that privilege. Not sure it was a great experience for them, and there were certainly “programmes of mass murder” involved.
I think it unlikely a communist takeover of Germany would have been anything other than bloodily disastrous. They would not have had the cooperation of the existing elites to the extent the Nazis did.
One of, for sure.
Indeed so. Though a lot of this stuff is not overtly political, except in the sense of generally increasing government powers and sapping personal responsibility and liberty.
Not sure about that. For sure the pro-Russian voices here and elsewhere make a good case for US military power being overrated and Russian power underrated, relatively, but not enough imo to make the outcome of any open conflict able to be confidently predicted as anything other than a costly US victory in theatre (assuming catastrophic escalation is avoided). We shall see how things develop.
What does seem clear is that the situation in the Levant is increasingly reminiscent of the Balkans pre-WW1, with local conflicts tied into external power involvement. If the Israelis decide to attack Lebanon (the likeliest single trigger), the routes to escalation ultimately to a US-Russia conflict are manifold and plausible.
All that could be needed might be an event, like the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand, which the Israelis believe can be used as a pretext to blame war on Hezbollah and Iran, and used by their colossal propaganda machine to (they hope) bring the US in on their side. Such a thing could be any kind of real or purported Hezbollah attack on Israeli forces, even one relatively minor and far less than the Israelis’ almost daily acts of aggression in Syria. It could be a false flag, or it could be an actual Hezbollah retaliation for an Israeli act of aggression that oversteps the tolerable.
Things could proceed very quickly once the missiles start flying.
It seems we are back in the situation we would have been in a year ago if Clinton had won the election, because Trump has failed to rein in the US military and neocons and get the US out of Syria.
If you don’t live in the US you don’t know what the atmosphere is like here.
You can literally feel the hatred between the different sectors of the population in the air. I’m not a very spiritual or tuned in or whatever you want to call it person and even I can feel it. There is no way the US can continue to function as a united country in the long term and probably not the medium term either.
and no I wouldn’t bang Mueller.
Look at the trajectory that Spain followed, it is now your stock standard liberal regime with low birth rates and mass third world immigration, a communist regime would have ended up in the same place eventually. The outcomes of all regimes that are not explicitly based on racial ideologies would all have ended up where we are now.
When Hitler wrote Mein Kampf his instincts on the future threats were correct, he mentioned how Africans in France will start becoming a significant demographic threat, unlike Sprengler this was not centuries away but decades. All outcomes logically should end up with the same result if ones core ideology is racial equality and universal values. Hitler tried to fight this trend so it is incorrect to say he created the worst possible if the (((people))) that were fighting him wanted this very outcome in the first place.
If anybody is interested on the internal breakdown of the US, read this article which explains it better than I ever could: https://www.vox.com/the-big-idea/2017/9/5/16227700/hyperpartisanship-identity-american-democracy-problems-solutions-doom-loop
I really recommend all of the non Americans here read it because it will give you a better perspective about how close to the brink the US really is.
“The danger is for the Americans, is that the pro-Democrat media bias is almost enough to put them into a kind of one party rule with permanent Democrat Party majority. ”
This is even more true than you may realize. Even when there is a “republican majority” in Congress the democrats seem to rule anyway. The media also give the democrats cover as they conduct massive vote fraud and regain actual majority status.
GOP congress members are so very worried about appearing to be unfair to the minority party when they do have the numbers that what comes out of a “republican controlled” Congress looks exactly like what comes out of a majority democrat Congress.
Spain followed that trajectory because of the overwhelming victory of the US sphere in western Europe in WW2 and thereafter. By the time Franco died, the country was totally integrated into the US sphere economically and there could have been no possibility of avoiding being dragged into the general liberal slum of social radicalism, socialist internationalism and economic globalism that permeates that sphere.
That said, it is quite plausible to argue that only blood and soil nationalism can resist internationalism effectively.
Islam, Judaism and Hinduism have resisted it too.
Blood and soil nationalism is gay.
I don’t see how the world view of the Israeli right or those Hindutva guys is any different from blood and soil nationalism. They want Israel for Jews, India for Hindus, and base their policies on an ultranationalist view of the past (the Israeli right with its references to ancient Israel and supposed divine promises; and the Hindu right-wingers can’t even admit the Aryan invasion happened because they want to be totally autochthonous).
Islam is just another expansionist, universalist ideology like communism…it needs to be contained.
If you talk to any religious Jew, they will tell you that the historical justifications for Jewish rule in the Land of Israel are nonsense. It is secular Jews, who will all be gone soon, that talk about history, not religious Jews.
I find Hinduism a very hard religion to understand so I don’t know if you’re right or not.
My point is that true, WWI style blood and soil nationalism isn’t necessary to resist Globalism. Islam, like you said, it is an extremely anti-nationalist religion (just look at what little regard Tahla has for his homeland) and yet Islam has frustrated Globalism more than anything else. Even in places like France, Germany and Scandinavia things are getting increasingly grim for women and gays thanks to the rise of Islam.
By the way, I was wondering something: since you consider yourself a blood and soil German nationalist, what are your thoughts on Alsace-Lorraine and Prussia? When/if Germany gets non traitor leaders, would you like to get those territories back? Do you want Austria to reunite with the rest of Germany?
Are you sure about that? My impression was there’s now a vigorous national-religious movement in Israel (the types who are really into the whole settlement enterprise) that combines religion and nationalism, seeing the reclaiming of biblical land for the Jewish people, demographic expansion etc. as a divinely mandated obligation.
Islam has been greatly aided by globalism, its spread in Western countries is almost totally due to globalist anti-nationalism and immigrationism; and the US with its stupid geopolitical schemes has for decades empowered the very worst elements in the Islamic world.
Islam is actually very weak by itself imo…Islamic societies are culturally stagnant and produce little of worth…if it weren’t for oil (a freak coincidence of nature) those Gulf countries would be totally unimportant…and they’re dependent on foreigners for exploiting those resources. Islam only looks relatively strong because Westerners have lost self-confidence, have become decadent relativists and have adopted stupid maladaptive ideas like universal “human rights”…but by itself Islam isn’t powerful at all.
Making life miserable for women isn’t a goal of mine, and I don’t care much about homos. Those issues also have nothing to do with globalism.
No, not at all, these are anachronistic issues, I want peace and friendship among European nations. My “blood and soil nationalism” is entirely related to non-European immigration…I don’t want to live in a society where Muslims, Africans or others who are likely to wish me harm for religious or racial reasons will have power over me or where one has to deal all the time with the issues alien low-IQ immigrants are likely to cause.
As for Germany, I’m actually increasingly interested in the idea of secession, even if that looks very unlikely now. Large parts of present-day Germany in the west and north are probably beyond saving, too contaminated by left-wing and Christian Democrat anti-national thought, and too full of recent migrants. If East Germany and maybe Bavaria could split off, it would be wonderful (obviously one would have to build something like the GDR’s border fortifications then, but this time to keep people out).
I don’t want to make life miserable for women, I just want to hit back. If the Left attacks us, we need to get them back any way we can. Going after women and gays is currently our best way of getting revenge.
Also, even if you like women and gays they have too much status in the West and need to be brought down a peg. My ideal is Russia or Japan, not Saudi Arabia. But I’ll take Saudi Arabia over our current set up.
Globalism doesn’t just mean an endless flood of third world immigrants into Western countries, it means spreading Leftist values everywhere. The Left will never be satisfied until their are gay pride parades in Karachi and the Saudi government is paying for children’s gender reassignment surgery.
I want the Left to suffer. Maybe you don’t. If it hurts the Left, I am in favor of it.
But we are only reclaiming it because we took it from the Canaanites in the first place. The Jews are not indigenous to the Land of Israel, the Canaanites are. When the Jews came out of Egypt they didn’t say to the Canaanites “you all need to clear out because we used to live here 400 years ago”. They said, “G-d gave this Land to us.”
Crackpot CIA counter intelligence chief, James Angleton, was convinced that Harold Wilson was a Soviet spy so the anti Labour faction of the CIA poisoned Gordon Banks’ food and concocted the stealing allegation against Bobby Moore so that we lost to W Germany in the 1970 WC. Harold Wilson had been hoping for a WC bounce to win the next election.
“I still wonder how I got food poisoning and missed it. We all sat down to eat at the same time, we all ate the same food. Why was I the only one who ended up with severe food poisoning? I find that all very strange.”
So still not really been explained. The Bogota Incident is even more concerning.
All charges were dropped but files released two years later suggest the incident was a deliberate sting on the part of the Colombian secret services. The Colombian secret services would have had very close ties to the CIA and the shop assistant accuser, Clara Padilla, ended up fleeing to the United States.
Well, the idea of the nation state is relatively recent, so I’m not sure people historically identified with such a thing until recently. The idea of ethnicity and tribe is far, far more ancient. In that sense, there is a balance in the religion for such things. The Prophet (pbuh) prohibited tribalism (asabiyyah) in no uncertain terms. but this is also reported:
“I said, ‘O Messenger of Allah, is it part of tribalism that a man loves his people?’ The Prophet (pbuh) said: “No, rather it is tribalism that he supports his people in wrongdoing.” – reported in Ibn Majah
So nothing wrong with loving your own people and feeling a sense of loyalty to one’s culture. But there is no doubt that one’s primary brotherhood is a spiritual one (one that transcends this life and will be carried into the next); blood and soil are material and your association with them end once the soil and taken hold of your body and drinks your blood.
I like the people of Pakistan for a few reasons (though some of these reasons apply just as well to the Muslims in India); they produce some of the best Hanafi scholars in the world (only the Syrians match them), Urdu (especially good poetry), their martial capabilities (especially that of the Punjabis), a culture that respects elders. But if they leave the religion and say the Ghanians and Thai embrace it, then it is pretty clear who I would call my brothers and who I would simply have a genetic association with by no choice of my own.
Correct, because it has its own idea of a global culture and thus it doesn’t take kindly to rivals. The brotherhood is spiritual, local culture is fine (as long as it adheres to principles) and encouraged. The Shariah gives legal status to local culture or what is known as the legal maxim, in jurisprudential terms, Al-‘Adah muhakkamah (“custom establishes legality”). It is principle #5 in this list that Prof. Alan Godlas compiled:
“Imam Ibn al-Qayyim (ra) writes:
‘On this basis, Islamic rulings are given throughout the ages. Whenever you find a custom in practice, you must take it into consideration, and whenever you find a custom has been abandoned, you must cease to consider it. You must not become unyielding all your life in adhering to what is recorded in the books. If someone comes to you from outside of your own region seeking a legal ruling, do not hold him to the customs of your land. Ask him about the customs of his own land and hold him to those and give your legal ruling accordingly. Do not apply the customs of your country that you find in your books. {I
lâm al-Muwaqqiîn (3/78)]'”http://islam.uga.edu/law_maxims.html
If you look up the the various people in the Muslim world in how they dress on the day of Eid, or how they celebrate it, it becomes clear how diverse things can get. You can even tell the Fulani and the Hausa apart just by how they tie their turbans:
http://www.nairaland.com/4082863/difference-between-hausa-fulani-turban
Peace.
Oh, I do want the left to suffer, very much so. But all that feminism and homo stuff has never interested me that much tbh, it’s somewhat of a distraction from the truly essential national issue imo. I have no time for cowardly “conservatives” who poke some harmless fun at the most demented manifestations of gender ideology, but flinch from taking a stand on immigration and asylum issues.
But maybe I’d see things differently in the US, homos and overly entitled, man-hating women are a problem in Europe, but they seem to be much worse in the US.
I don’t understand what you’re getting at here…a difference between claims based on history and ones based on religion? I don’t think those can be neatly disentangled. But sure, if your group cohesion is buttressed by religion, it’s probably even more powerful than a nationalism lacking that.
Aren’t there no more Canaanites to claim the land anymore, though? G-d told them to kill all of the Canaanites, even their women and cattle.
I don’t think that we’ll actually see civil war or anything like that. Massive dysfunction from parts of the country that increasingly ignoring each other? Yes. That’s basic Brazilification.
Going after women and gays is currently our best way of getting revenge.
You just have to have a bit of patience — polygamy is surely on the way, it seems it’s already de facto in GR’s home country.
It will be interesting to see how feminists react when they eventually are forced to confront what is going on.
I don’t think it was ever realistic. It was universally rejected by the whole establishment (including the social democrats), and even the Nazis only gained power because important parts of the establishment decided to give in to them. The communists had less voters (roughly a third only) and no support from any part of the establishment, so no hope of gaining power. The realistic alternative was going back to the Weimar system. Mind you, that’s what we have now, so that’d be a disaster, too. Another realistic alternative might have been a Franco type leader. I don’t know if that would be a better alternative, given the shape of Spain these days. I tend to be with neutral on this one: you need to be an explicit blood and soil nationalist to avoid being cucked. And in my especially pessimistic moments I imagine a leader in full Nazi regalia talking about how diversity has always been the strength of Germany, in front of huge swastika flags and a Hitler portrait. If there could be cuckservatives, why not national cuckialists?
I was talking to someone who didn’t think Hitler did anything wrong at all. Obviously you will emphasize different things when talking to normies.
Hitler’s aesthetic sensibilities were an important part of the appeal of national socialism. Of course he was smart and had many talents. He was also not quite evil per se. He wanted to create a utopia, and knew that to achieve that, he needed a cold heart and murder millions. He knew history wouldn’t ask questions later on. Who asks how many people were killed in Ceasar’s or Alexander’s wars, the hundreds of thousands killed and enslaved (out of a much smaller population), the years of suffering… In that, he somewhat resembled Lenin, though he hated his own society much less and reserved the evil deeds for outgroups.
But I think much of his political achievements were rushed and results of a reckless policy. In that, they were inextricably linked to his later failure. They created a pervasive fear of his quickly growing strength and his quickly breaking his own promises. His words became worthless, and eventually no one wanted to deal with him. When the utopia became impossible to achieve, he desperately needed someone to cut a deal with, but such a person was not forthcoming. Worse, he seems to have been temperamentally unable to cut permanent deals and let go of his utopian vision. He was a great fit to be a protagonist of an opera of his (and my) favorite composer, Wagner. A tragic hero, who, out of hubris, dispensed of traditional morality, only to find his dreams shattered anyway, but now also deservedly punished.
I often think the best possible outcome would have been if he died in late 1938 and his Reich fell into the hands of a somewhat more moderate and also more cautious leader, who stopped the aggressive foreign policy and built the bomb, while trying to build alliances against the Bolshevik menace. But I don’t know if it was possible.
Yeah but it seems like the Israelites failed to do that. It appears that they wiped out Jericho and then just stopped. I’m not sure if that’s because they lost the taste for killing, weren’t strong enough or were just too lazy. As best as we can tell, the Canaanites assimilated into Israel over the next several hundred years which would mean that Jews are primarily Canaanite in terms of genetics which would have to be one of the most ironic things ever.
Are you referencing the article I cited?
Brazilians don’t hate each other as much as Americans do.
I think that as long as Republicans are in charge, things will hold together because the Left has nothing to gain by a breakup of the US. Trump probably wins re-election easily on the back of the strong economy and the Dems being too overt with their white genocide platform, and then his successor wins in 2024. But somewhere in Cotton/Pence/Whoever’s 2nd term, a crippling recession, much worse than 2008 hits. The Dems win in 2028 and a constitutional crisis happens as the Dems clash with the now much more right wing judiciary. Communal violence erupts with real Americans killing liberals and immigrants and Antifa types killing real Americans. Right wing states start to openly flout the diktats of DC and the US becomes ungovernable and gradually breaks up over the course of the next 20 years.
Sounds like bad fan fiction, but it’s what I expect to happen.
The most depressing thing about that was the reaction of Social Democrat politicians and of numerous journalists on Twitter…they couldn’t see anything wrong with that case and wrote nonsense along the lines of “We couldn’t send a father of a family to his death!”.
The fact that this guy apparently traveled through three other safe European countries (Greece, France, Denmark) and pretty much chose Germany because it had the best benefits doesn’t seem to register with them…nor does the fact that in all probability this guy and his family wouldn’t face death or persecution even back in Syria (there’s no fighting in Aleppo anymore after all).
More fun facts: Ahmad is not only an unskilled worker…he’s actually illiterate, and has shown no inclination so far to look for work because he wants to spend time with his children.
He’s also said he’d eventually like to have four wives and 10-20 children (apparently he already had a 3rd wife back in Syria, but that one seems to have left him).
Great prospects…
Nothing to confront. Supporting mass Islamic migration is the entire point of contemporary Feminism. The 2nd wavers wouldn’t have liked this, but the current generation just sees Ahmad’s harem as the price of doing business.
Stalin never said those were his last demands. But you know what – even he spared some of the national cultures of the Baltic countries. His later conquests were kept as nominally independent nations. What Hitler did to Poland in 1939 already was abhorrent and people rightly recognized that it was worse (for Poland) than what Stalin ever could do. Hitler abolished Poland as a nation and tried to destroy its intellectual classes and national culture.
But the bigger issue was that Stalin was more trustworthy than Hitler. Hitler said in 1938 that the Sudeten was his last demand. Then he went on to occupy the rump Czech land anyway. Later on, he demanded some territories from Poland. How were the Poles to trust him that a few months later he won’t conquer the rest of their country? Or how could the British or the French or anyone else believe him? He seemed to love taking enormous risks. Stalin was a more cautious fellow, and everyone correctly recognized that.
G-d has a sense of humor.
I know quite a lot because my brother has been working in the United States (with a green card and a high-level job – not an illegal), and has found them friendly, with no racism experienced, including in their hiring practice. I’ve also visited the country for over month last year – again no racism, and the Americans seem a lot more friendly and less xenophobic to foreigners, than the image you get from their media.
I would not say that the impression if you’ve been in America, is of a country with any serious racism.
That doesn’t mean that on the media level, there isn’t biase against people with any indication of affiliation to Russia – despite my excellent English, I’ve experienced even trying to comment on their articles if you log in with your name, that the readership of certain respectable publications, respond with ‘Russian troll’ (which is kind of ironic in my case as I am highly sympathetic to America).
The issue on the national media takes place on another level though. It’s comparable to in Russia, where everyone is whining about Pindostan under the comments section, but the actual attitude day-to-day to Americans will be quite friendly.
Mueller should be in prison for his complicity in 9/11 cover up.
Anyone that takes money from Israel/Saudis AIPAC, lobbies should be arrested for treason.
Is anyone else sick of Israel picking our govt for us? The media being owned by the same entity with one agenda, and its not a pro-American agenda?
Mitt Romney is back running for office, WTF!!! Can we really not find anyone in America other than Israel first traitors to elect? All of them are hand picked, and not by Americans. If this is democracy, we need to find something else.
Bush a traitor, 0bama was a spineless coward, Trump is a coward, all are war criminals, congress is packed full of traitors. All refuse to go after those involved in 9/11. A lot of them are guilty themselves.
How many innocent people have been murdered? All because of lies. Get out and help spread the truth, go to Breitbart, Infowars, Intercept, places that lots of people read, and share your knowledge, we have to wake as many people up as possible, now is the time, lots of people are finally turning off the MSM/CIA TV box and turning to alt-media, we have to get these traitors out of office before they kill us all.
Incontrovertible – New 9/11 Documentary by Tony Rooke
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y5UyynjxAyw
I would argue it was the double blow of kicking out the Jews and losing the war and having the country almost totally destroyed that did them in. And German science is still vastly better than in most countries in the world. They could easily build the bomb or ICBMs even with their post-war decreased capabilities, and they would have been better than that had they not lost the war.
I think an argument could be made for legal discrimination of non-Germans even if it led to a decrease in scientific abilities (which I agree it probably did), at least for a country as advanced as Germany. Maybe a country like Hungary could less easily afford it. (But in Hungary there was the case of the 1919 communist government. It mostly consisted of Jews, with a lot of the rest coming from the German minority. Having a disloyal intellectual elite is arguably worse than not having an intellectual elite at all…)
Makes some sense.
Does sound like bad fan fiction and I certainly hope it doesn’t happen, but I’ve read enough of human history to know anything can happen.
Peace.
On the media as well as academic level. Agree that most people the world over are decent. Notwithstanding, there’s a good amount of anti-Russian bigotry in the US, which is quite hypocritical, given what happens when such negative stereotypes are applied to some others. Filed under selective sensitivity.
Feminism –> female hypergamy –> soft polygamy
So there won’t be. The convergence is both logical and inevitable.
Don’t see why not.
If Goering had come to power after Hitler – he was the likeliest successor – I suspect he would ruled Germany more like a classical junta.
I think an argument could be made for legal discrimination of non-Germans even if it led to a decrease in scientific abilities
And how would you have done that? With Nuremberg-type laws?
Exactly, polygamy as an evolutionary strategy is highly favorable to the female.
Sorry, the only part of your comment I meant to respond to was about Mueller being a moron. I don’t know enough about either him or Ribbentrop to compare the two. However, I would be very surprised if Ribbentrop was less worldly than Mueller if, for nothing else, by dint of him being a European as opposed to an American.
I think the most likeliest might have been Goebbels, a bit like Stalin did, he would have used his cunning to outmaneuver the rest. This along with his control of the propaganda organs the only way he could not have gotten power is if someone like Himmler ordered the assassination of all his rivals.
Hitler needlessly declared war on the US, FDR never had the votes to declare war himself. Surely the dumbest move in geopolitical history.
https://www.amazon.com/Conflicts-Fitness-America-Evolutionary-Psychology/dp/1483442845
It’s a very interesting read (highly recommended) and looks at various aspects of the Shariah from an evolutionary strategy perspective. First chapter is on polygamy – what I would also call “soft polygamy” in the sense that Islam actually limits it – all other systems are either against it or are wide open, with a man able to marry unlimited wives.
Anyway, he comes to the conclusion that polygamy is advantageous to the female in allowing the less “catchy” female in becoming a partner to an alpha male where she would have been cut off since he is already monopolized. The person at disadvantage is actually the lower tier males in that they have less prospects to compete for, thus they either up their game or lose out in a society where gender parity is about equal.
Peace.
Never any way of being certain about any of these events, but there’s more than enough smoke to be sure there’s a fire there.
One of the most shocking (because undisputably true) stories in relation to Angleton must be that of James Watkins (respectable Canadian diplomat), who was basically murdered by the Canadians and CIA based upon paranoid and probably unfounded suspicion, and the murder openly lied about afterwards.
Angleton’s career is well worth considering carefully in these days of hypocritical American hysteria about “Russian interference”.
No, blood and soil nationalism is just common sense, and the recognition of basic realities of human nature. Nations exist, and they are also shaped by their environment and location.
What’s gay is prancing around in faux-military uniforms, but that’s something all authoritarian movements tend to attract.
If you talk to any religious Jew, they will tell you that the historical justifications for Jewish rule in the Land of Israel are nonsense. I
No, you won’t, as there’s an ample supply of religious Zionists in Israel today and the number of religious Jews in the diaspora who think the State of Israel is a blasphemy could meet in convention in a linen closet.
Roosevelt had by 1940 persuaded Congress to re-institute conscription and begin the Lend-Lease program.
Mueller is a moron in the sense of being rather ignorant about the world outside of the US.
There is no ‘sense’ in which the term ‘moron’ is properly used as a term for what you’re describing. (That aside, if others are small, you had better be big, and few Unz denizens are).
Traditional societies are naturally inclined towards chauvinism, in-group solidarity and a good degree of “natural” xenophobia comes with the territory. The notion of race is typically not emphasized, ethnicity is, however- presumably because contact between close ethnicities was much more frequent than between distant races. Even in regions bordering racial frontiers, you often find gradients where the frontier ethnicity is the result of obvious admixture: Volga Tatars are often visibly white, several Central Asians peoples share Iranian and Turco-Mongol ancestry while Tuaregs are a mix between Berber and SSA populations. Mass contact between distant races for this reason would have been short and rare (often brutal) but quickly the lines would be blurred- so the populations revert back to thinking in term of ethnicity or just simply, this tribe, this village versus the others a few miles away who may look familiar or not entirely familiar.
Of course traditional society kept these attitudes because the masses are traditionally, ignorant and never had the chance to build or internalize narratives about their race, much less to form a coherent nation. Even when the traditional religion/ideology is keen to dissolve ethnic or racial divides on paper, such as Islam, in practice seeing attitudes to sub-saharian Africans or Indo-Pakistanis in Arab countries, you realize its effect on social norms has been shallow, to say the least.
So indeed, human nature needs a lot of indoctrination to abandon these deep-seated instincts. Presently this indoctrination is the result of the global strength and dominance of Anglo-Saxon philosophical liberalism, but it didn’t have to be so. I don’t believe industrial society necessarily leads to this, only peculiarities of the British and British settler culture. Along these lines a case can be made that protestant Northern Europeans, or even, peoples of Germanic stock essentially (northern French and Italians for example but not the southerners), were and still are the most fragile societies with regards to their ability to cope with multi-culturalism and diversity indoctrination. I don’t fear much for the future of most Meds, the Chinese, Japanese etc but man, the Hajnal line…High trust, civic sense and outbreeding are quite the double-edged sword.
Roosevelt had by 1940 persuaded Congress to re-institute conscription and begin the Lend-Lease program.
From there the step to passing a declaration of war against Germany, in the absence of a causus belli, would have been a huge one. The Conscription Act passed by 1 vote in the House, 203 to 202, and at least some of those voting in favor were “American Firsters”, who wanted a strong defense but were resolutely opposed to participation in a European war (absent a direct attack on the US).
This analysis seems spot on.
Mueller is in a mode now to show he’s “doing something” with all of the money and time (actual as well as media) spent on this witch hunt.
He’s decided to double down on the Manafort indictments (i.e. the low hanging fruit for the Feds) related to unrelated financial issues. This gives him cover against the claim that the whole thing was a waste of time from the never-Trump crowd he runs with.
This is a response to a question of yours from another thread.
http://balticworlds.com/a-pathbreaker-robert-conquest-and-soviet-studies-during-the-cold-war/
It is interesting, as the above article points out, that Conquest and Stephen Cohen (whose work is adored by The Saker and Martyanov) worked closely together for some time. All the books I have read by Conquest contain thanks to Stephen Cohen.
On that note, I would also recommend Cohen’s Soviet Fates and Lost Alternatives: From Stalinism to the New Cold War
In my opinion, Robert Conquest is one of the best and most detailed writers on the Soviet Union and Stalin. I would recommend:
Reflections on a Ravaged Century
The Dragons Of Expectation: Reality And Delusion In The Course Of History
The Great Terror: A Reassessment 40th anniversary Edition – is his masterwork originally published in 1969, I believe.
Maybe. Or maybe with the April 1933 laws. The problem was not depriving Jews of some civil rights (like expulsion from the military and civil service), though I’d have preferred a slower grandfathering process, but that it was accompanied by lawlessness from day one, and it didn’t stop there but went on to total expropriation and then mass murder. The original anti-Semitic program was about rolling back Jewish emancipation and giving them protection as aliens. I don’t think it’s impossible to argue for it.
I don’t like total expulsion and certainly not mass murder, because it is a very big crime even if you could create a perfect utopia as a result (I would argue it’d be impossible), but of course if you fail to create the perfect utopia (this is likely) you’ll just end up being a particularly bad mass murderer.
Roosevelt wanted war and he would have made sure that he got it. He would have provoked Germany and gone on provoking until he got a pretext for war. There were plenty of powerful people and institutions that would have helped him out. Hollywood was already in full-on war fever mode.
I imagine that Hitler had already figured out that war with the US was unavoidable.
There already was a shooting war between the US and German navies by the summer of 1941, with the German navy constantly prodding Hitler to declare war or at least allow them to conduct full scale operations, especially in the western part of the Atlantic, where the Americans had already declared they’d shoot at any German vessel without warning.
Anyway, military forces are largely fungible. The Americans could have provided military forces to British India and Australia and those British and Australian troops could have moved to the European theater. The British could have equipped a larger force if they were allowed to reduce their military production by receiving unlimited American supplies. While the Americans would have extended their navy to operate in the whole Atlantic. You’d already have everything up until 1943 with just British troops. Oh, actually, American troops could occupy Algeria without actually declaring war on Germany. They certainly didn’t think they needed to declare war on France for this…
I think somewhere along that point war between the US and Germany would have become inevitable. But if not, things wouldn’t have been much different until 1943 and maybe even 1944, by which time Germany lost the war anyway.
The problem was not depriving Jews of some civil rights (like expulsion from the military and civil service), though I’d have preferred a slower grandfathering process,
Yeah, Henry Kissnger’s father just had to be canned from his job. We’re all in grave danger from Yids teaching bookkeeping.
It’s the kind of emotional “argument” used in support of dreamers and similar.
There is no perfect utopia where no one is harmed at all. The idea here is that any society not explicitly rooted in blood and soil racial nationalism is vulnerable to cuckservatism. Ultimately, all Western societies became multiculturalist dystopias with hate speech laws. (In the US, speech is regulated more informally, but nonetheless effectively, so the lack of explicit hate speech laws makes little difference.)
So maybe it’d be better if there was at least one white society on the planet where only people of pure blood had the right to be citizens. Now arguably China could be such a country, but maybe we’d like a high IQ and relatively efficient and rich white greater power (Albania wouldn’t cut it) with such rules, because it’s not a great consolation that, after our own civilization goes down the drain, hey, some other civilization will make it.
So whatever the Art Decos of the world think about it, maybe such a Germany would not be worse than the coming multicultural dystopia. And, in light of what happened to Franco’s Spain, it’s likely that a more moderately right wing or conservative dictatorship would not cut it.
Of course I can wish Hitler’s system were a bit more humane (or at least less inhuman) than it was, and as I wrote it’s not great that right after it was created its leader decided to wage a very high risk war to exterminate some neighboring white nations.
I’m unconvinced though there really was a “Jewish problem” in Germany in the early 1930s that would have necessitated even such relatively mild legal discrimination based only on descent, without considering individuals and their personal record. It’s true that Jews were overrepresented in elite professions, and they probably also were disproportionately liberal/left-wing, so there were some points of friction with majority German society. But they still were a small minority, often highly assimilated, with high rates of intermarriage, and in many cases loyal service during WW1. That was a very different situation from Poland or other Eastern European countries where Jews were much more numerous, really nations within a nation, and where inter-ethnic conflict and competition was much more real and irresolvable.
And I don’t find the argument about Franco’s Spain that convincing tbh…Franco’s regime had to reinvent itself after 1945 due to the changed international situation (it would have faced total isolation if it hadn’t dropped the more “fascist” elements of the regime). Without Nazi Germany provoking and losing a world war that ended with two highly ideological, universalist powers (the US and the Soviet Union) in control of Europe, it could have turned out rather differently.
We don’t know if an explicitly racial blood and soil greater power was needed, but the chance to try that was certainly wasted. We also didn’t try the conservative nationalist version.
I’m also only half convinced that the racial discrimination was needed, but I’m at least skeptical of Franco style regimes. As I wrote, I could even imagine national cuckialism.
I dislike aspects of Franco’s regime myself (not a fan of ultra-Catholicism, or of his use of Moorish troops in the civil war), and am generally sceptical of the viability of authoritarian national conservative regimes based on alliance with the Catholic church (Franco himself felt somewhat betrayed by the church near the end of his life and was deeply disturbed by what he perceived as ingratitude by liberal priests). But I really have my doubts if it had come to our present situation without WW2 and the Nazi mass murders which discredited nationalism and empowered left-wingers and “antiracists” throughout the West, and also led to American hegemony over Western Europe. I guess Britain and France might have been vulnerable to mass non-white immigration in any case because of their colonial empires, but I just can’t imagine similar scenarios for most of Europe (though such alternative history is somewhat pointless of course, we have to deal with the world as it is).
Where there are many and visibly different Jews, you certainly need less legal discrimination, because people are well aware of the differences and the JQ is always on their minds. Even assimilated Jews will always be compared to the less sophisticated Orthodox. Because they have such an alien background, they will have to prove that they left them behind more thoroughly.
But as I wrote, I’m only at best half convinced it was a good strategy. I don’t think I would have supported legal discrimination of Jews then (it is not in accordance with my temperament, remember I was a leftist just fifteen years ago), and I certainly don’t support it now. If we can get back to an alt-right-friendly environment from where we are, when Jews are powerful, then obviously there’s no point in discrimination against them when they will no longer be powerful. If it’s even possible. So either no chance of discrimination, or no point in doing that.
But with retrospect knowledge I’d support blood and soil nationalism, to see if it’d work. Of course mass murder and starting world wars was a bad thing for nationalism everywhere, even in the US it had negative consequences for people like Lindbergh.
Also, blood and soil nationalism is not something that only applies to Jews in Germany. Also to other minorities, especially immigrant minorities. Actually, the then rather small immigrant minorities are the important point, and Jews themselves were more or less such an immigrant minority.
It’s important to think about what went wrong and how.
At least some German Jews had family roots in German territories going back centuries. There was also the problem that at the time there wasn’t a Jewish state Jews could have left for (a situation that should have been resolved by the creation of Israel…it’s just irritating that Jews with strong Zionist beliefs don’t leave for there and instead play their hypocritical “nationalism for me, but not for thee” games in Western countries). This is rather different from immigrant communities today who often have nation states of their own (just look at Turkey, a brutal nation state if ever there was one), maintain close links to their countries of origin and often dual citizenship, yet use all the benefits of their host countries to the full extent, cry racism at every opportunity etc…basically act like colonizers. This is a somewhat different phenomenon from that of long-established minorities (problematic as the latter often undoubtedly are like gypsies), and imo worse because it could have easily been prevented, and is so blatantly unfair towards the (former) majority population.
True, but it was a distinct minority. If I recall correctly roughly a third of them were first or second generation immigrants from areas then belonging to Poland.
But yes, I agree, that’d be certainly tough for them. But then again, the same is true of many dreamers and similar people. Kurds born in Germany only have shitholes to go back to, and shitholes ruled by hostile and brutal semi-dictatorships like Erdogan’s regime.
Also I didn’t say they should have been expropriated, much less murdered. Some legal discrimination is not the end of the world. These days there is arguably some legal discrimination against white males in most western countries, and we also don’t have anywhere to go.
True enough; in fact I’m pretty certain that we’d face serious trouble even for our little discussion here if it could be linked to our real life identities. So I can see where you’re coming from…my own capacity for sympathy with the suffering of other groups (admittedly never that great anyway) has definitely eroded over the last few years given what we’re subjected to. At some point one has to put one’s own interests first.
It’s the kind of emotional “argument” used in support of dreamers and similar.
No, it isn’t, you babbling poseur. Louis Kissinger was a German citizen whose pedigree in the German states extended at least to the early 19th century. He spoke German fluently as it was his 1st language. Jews in Germany constituted < 1% of the population of the whole at that time.
The Catholic Church is inherently anti-nationalist and was never going to be a reliable ally for a nationalist movement. Today of course the Catholic Church is a deadly enemy of nationalism. Which must have very very worrying implications for Poland.
Thanks
Maybe. Or maybe with the April 1933 laws.
I don’t understand this obsession with a very small minority, albeit one that was disproportionately successful in various professional fields. Surely Germany had greater problems to deal with in 1933 than that?
A personal question — you say that you are a “blood and soil nationalist”. But are you 100% Hungarian?
My wife is nonwhite, as I already wrote elsewhere, why the silly questions about “what would happen to you?” I wouldn’t have been born, because in an alternative universe my parents wouldn’t have met.
I think the argument is clear: liberalism, communism, but even any conservatism with strong links to Christianity are or at best are prone to become universalistic ideologies and so quickly get pozzed.
But maybe one ideology explicitly based on the idea of blood would not be so prone to becoming a multicultural dystopia. As we saw, it is prone to becoming another kind of dystopia, quickly burning itself out.
why the silly questions about “what would happen to you?” I wouldn’t have been born, because in an alternative universe my parents wouldn’t have met.
I wasn’t asking this at all, I think you must have misinterpreted the point behind my question. Moreover, what in the world does your wife’s ethnicity (of which I was unaware) have to do with it?
My question was motivated by a distant memory that you had said you had part non-Hungarian origin (Teutonic?) and I was simply curious how you reconciled this with support for discriminatory racial laws against those who were not 100% German.
Absolutely no offense intended.
In Nazi Germany (and probably in a racialist Hungary) people with nonwhite wives were under, put it that way, suspicion. Our daughter would have it even worse. (Though probably better than if my wife were Jewish.)
In Hungary assimilated Germans were I think mostly accepted by even the fiercest racialists (my grandparents could already not speak German at all, maybe a few words, their parents only talked German when they didn’t want them to understand it), but I may be wrong. The most racialists of the Hungarian “people’s writers” (roughly “völkisch” writers, though the connotations are a bit different than with the German expression, as they were often quite left-wing) and a number of politicians (most important Pál Teleki, who was prime minister in 1920 and 1939-41, he didn’t like the German alliance in part because he expected the Germans to lose eventually, but also because he just hated the Germans) railed not only against the Jews (Teleki was almost as strongly against Jewish presence in Europe as Hitler) but also against Germans (he wanted to deport them to Germany). But I’m unsure if assimilated Germans were to be included, because Hungarians are commonly known to be an admixed population anyway.
You have to understand that the current trajectory will lead to a dystopia with probably a lot of suffering for my descendants anyway. If it’s a lot of suffering, then at least there should be some kind of sustainable and more rational system instead of the whole civilization collapsing.
But as I wrote, we don’t have to think too hard about it: we wouldn’t even be born in the alternate reality.