De nouvelles révélations sur Stonehenge

De nouvelles révélations sur Stonehenge

The Assassination That Began the Century of War

The Assassination That Began the Century of War

By Bionic Mosquito

Ex: http://www.lewrockwell.com

And it isn’t the one that you are thinking of….

1939 – The War That Had Many Fathers, by Gerd Schultze-Rhonhof.

As mentioned in my first post on this book, the author has been dismissed in Germany regarding his historical views on the beginnings of the Second World War. From what I read in the preface, I found no reason to dismiss his views – and in any case, one can hold wrong views on certain subjects while providing valuable insights in others. It is for these hidden gems that I am reading the book. So, I continue.

I found one of those hidden gems in the first few pages – or is it a wacky assertion from a wrong-headed revisionist? If his point is valid, it provides a valuable insight – at least to me – into the manipulations by the elite at the turn of the last century and leading to the century of war.

The British – German Rivalry

The author begins by pointing to two mistakes by the German politicians prior to 1914 that led to the Great War:

They fail to extend the German – Russian Mutual Protection Pact, and they give to the economic upswing in Germany a maritime component.

The author sees in the first the opening for Russia to be drawn to France, and in the second a challenge to Britain on the seas. There is nothing terribly controversial here – many historians, mainstream and revisionist, have pointed to one or both of these factors.

From Britain’s view, Germany – post unification – was becoming the power on the continent with which it should have concern – replacing France. In various measures, Germany was growing into an economic powerhouse – the production of coal, iron, steel, etc. In 1887 in London, the “Merchandise Marks Act” was introduced, with the hope to attach stigma to products thereafter labeled “Made in Germany.”

Britain viewed it as good policy to keep a balance of power on the continent, thus freeing its hand elsewhere. Germany threatened not only that balance, but now could even threaten Britain itself. Britain’s views changed from seeing France as the primary continental threat to seeing this in in Germany:

On 1 January 1907 a top official of the British Foreign Ministry, Sir Eyre Crowe, drafts “an analysis of British Relations with France and Germany for his King.” … Now and in the future, Crowe concludes, Germany counts as England’s only opponent. (Page 22)

The British will therefore work to isolate Germany in the field of foreign policy, and the author suggests that German blunders provide the opportunity for this.

As mentioned, England previously saw France as its biggest competitor in the colonies; it now reached agreements with France on such matters. A 1904 treaty would coordinate colonial interests. In 1911, the British military promises France the support of six army divisions in the event of war with Germany. And without a proper treaty with Russia, this would one day place Germany in a strong vice.

Germaniam esse delendam to Protect Trade and Transport

Schultze-Rhonhof identifies comments coming out of England and against Germany almost immediately upon the formation of the German Reich in 1871. For example, he quotes Prime Minister Disraeli in a speech before the Lower House:

“The balance of power has been completely destroyed, and the country which suffers the most from this and feels the effect of this change most strongly, is England.” (Page 33)

Deputy Robert Peel adds that Germany has been united under a military “despotism.” (Page 33)

The author laments: “So Germany – just because unified – has already become a danger, and indeed for all of Europe.” (Page 34)

The press gets in on the act:

The London Saturday Review, an upper class journal, writes on 24 August 1895:

“We English have always waged war against our competitors in trade and transport. Our main competitor today is no longer France, but Germany…. In a war against Germany we would be in a position to win a lot and to lose nothing.” (Page 34)

On 1 February 1896 the same journal writes:

“If tomorrow every German were eliminated, there would be no British business nor any English enterprise which would not profit (lit “grow”). If every Englishman were to vanish tomorrow, the Germans would reap gains…. One of the two must quit the field. Get ready for the fight with Germany, for Germaniam esse delendam.” (Page 34)

Germany must be destroyed….

And again on 11 September 1897:

“Everywhere where the English flag has followed the Bible, and trade [has followed] the flag…the German trader fights the English…. States have waged wars for years over a town or rights to a throne; and should we not wage war when an annual trade of five billion is at stake?” (Page 34)

From the Belgian Ambassador in London to his ministry in Brussels on 24 May 1907, quoting Mr. Harmsworth (Lord Northcliffe), publisher of several daily papers in London:

“Yes we hate the Germans and that from the heart…. I will not allow my newspapers to print even the slightest thing that could hurt France. But I would not want them to carry anything at all that could be pleasant to the Germans.” (Page 38)

Is it a surprise to see the press doing the state’s bidding and leading the drumbeats to war?

Finally, Balfour is quoted, in response to the immorality of going to war for the purpose of protecting trade. It is suggested to Balfour: if Britain wants to keep up, work harder!

“That would mean we would have to lower our standard of living. Maybe a war would be easier for us.” (Page 38)

War is most certainly a racket! It is refreshing to know that there was a time when the politicians were more honest about this.

Why Not a British – US Rivalry?

Schultze-Rhonhof also examines the growth of production, trade, and naval resources of several other government powers. He concludes by asking: why does Britain fear Germany, when an even stronger opponent on the other side of the Atlantic, with far greater potential, was beginning to show its fangs?

Thus, the British fears of a threat could just as well have been ignited by North America’s fleet. The USA in regard to its industry and trade is also on track to overhaul England. And since 1898 it is acquiring colonies: Cuba, the Philippines, and Hawaii. (Page 31)

Yes, what gives? Schultze-Rhonhof provides his answer, and in it he identifies the assassination that helped to ensure the upcoming wars would be world wars – meaning the intervention of the United States.

Another reason lies in America’s apparent turning toward England. (Page 32)

By “apparent turning,” Schultze-Rhonhof here is describing what is called The Great Rapprochement:

The Great Rapprochement, according to historians including Bradford Perkins, describes the convergence of diplomatic, political, military and economic objectives between the United States and Great Britain in 1895-1915, the two decades before World War I.

This push for “convergence” was given widespread coverage on both sides of the Atlantic, influencing decision makers in both Britain and the United States.

At the turn of the last century, there was a powerful and well-known book, The Americanization of the World: The Trend of the Twentieth Century, by British celebrity journalist and editor of the Pall Mall Gazette, William T. Stead. In it, he predicted America’s inevitable – and providential – domination of the world.

From a conference paper outlining the book:

Stead, a tireless champion of Anglo-Saxon expansion, offered his prediction not in fear but in hope. Together, the United States and Britain would rule the world.

A century ago, Stead’s name was known to the public on both side of the Atlantic and to every prominent official in Europe and America.

As early as about 1870, in the immediate context of German unification, Stead advocated union between the British empire and the United States and came to defend what he called a “true Imperialism” aimed at the peace, security, unity, and humanitarian uplift of the world. In 1884 he campaigned for a larger Royal Navy. He wrote an article for the Pall Mall Gazette entitled “The Truth about the Navy,” attempting to provoke enough alarm over Britain’s vulnerability and Germany’s growing navy and colonial adventures to get Parliament to appropriate the necessary funds for a modern navy. Reading Sir John Seeley’s Expansion of England (1883) about this time inspired him with the idea of imperial federation. The scheme further expanded in his mind to bring the United States into an Anglo-Saxon union, reversing the blunder of George III. This proposal was similar to the campaign for Anglo-Saxon unification (or re-unification) waged by Stead’s friend Cecil Rhodes who famously said that he wanted to “paint the map red” with Britain’s empire. Other sympathizers included the industrialist Andrew Carnegie.

Given the determinism of history, Britain and Europe could either cooperate with the inevitable or wage a losing battle and end up Americanized against their will and without their consent. Germany and the Papacy seemed the most resistant to the Americanization of Europe. But the Kaiser’s bluster was as pointless as Canute’s command to the tide.

Stead saw war by the righteous as a means to bring about global peace.

The Assassination

Back to Schultze-Rhonhof:

Until McKinley’s presidency, the relations of the USA with the German Reich were always friendly and balanced. The English-American relationship, on the other hand, up to then is still burdened by the former British Colonial rule and England’s colonial wars in America.

With the assassination of McKinley in 1901 and the change to the presidency of Theodore Roosevelt a new kind of thinking arises in the USA. (Page 32)

Now this is where I struggled. Schultze-Rhonhof suggests that the change in US policy occurred after McKinley, not before. Yet all of the history I read suggests that McKinley is more like his successors than his predecessors – imperialism and all that. To further make this opaque, the Great Rapprochement is commonly dated as beginning in 1895.

Yet, Schultze-Rhonhof suggests this assassination was a turning point for US-German relations and US-British relations. Counter to McKinley:

Roosevelt and his successor Wilson are clearly anglophiles. They seek partnership with Great Britain. (Page 32)

So what gives? At this point, I had to go fishing.

McKinley vs. Roosevelt: What’s the Difference?

My first clue came here: Wall Street, Banks, and American Foreign Policy, by Murray Rothbard

William McKinley reflected the dominance of the Republican Party by the Rockefeller/Standard Oil interests. Standard Oil was originally headquartered at Rockefeller’s home in Cleveland, and the oil magnate had long had a commanding influence in Ohio Republican politics. In the early 1890s, Marcus Hanna, industrialist and high school chum of John D. Rockefeller, banded together with Rockefeller and other financiers to save McKinley from bankruptcy, and Hanna became McKinley’s top political adviser and chairman of the Republican National Committee. As a consolation prize to the Morgan interests for McKinley’s capture of the Republican nomination, Morgan man Garret A. Hobart, director of various Morgan companies, including the Liberty National Bank of New York City, became Vice-President.

The death of Hobart in 1899 left a “Morgan vacancy” in the Vice-Presidential spot, as McKinley walked into the nomination. McKinley and Hanna were both hostile to Roosevelt, considering him “erratic” and a “Madman,” but after several Morgan men turned down the nomination, and after the intensive lobbying of Morgan partner George W. Perkins, Teddy Roosevelt at last received the Vice-Presidential nomination. It is not surprising that virtually Teddy’s first act after the election of 1900 was to throw a lavish dinner in honor of J.P. Morgan.

 

So McKinley was a Rockefeller man, and Roosevelt (McKinley’s vice-president) represented the House of Morgan. This, at least, is one bit of information that differentiates McKinley from Roosevelt. Of course, it would be somewhat irrelevant had not McKinley met his fate on September 6, 1901 (surviving, and believed to be improving, for eight more days). He was assassinated by a lone gunman; a nut, an “anarchist.”

Here again, I turn to Rothbard: “Investigate the Vice President First”

Next president to die in office was William McKinley of Ohio, long-time Rockefeller tool. Another lone nut was responsible, the “anarchist” Leon Czolgosz, who, like Guiteau, was quickly tried and executed by the Establishment. Even though Czolgosz was considered a flake and was not a member of any organized anarchist group, the assassination was used by the Establishment to smear anarchism and to outlaw anarchist ideas and agitation. Various obscure anti-sedition and anti-conspiracy laws trotted out from time to time by the Establishment were passed during this post-McKinley assassination hysteria. Beneficiary? The vaulting to power of Teddy Roosevelt, longtime tool of the competing Morgan (as opposed to Rockefeller) wing of the Republican Party. Teddy immediately started using the anti-trust weapon to try to destroy Rockefeller’s Standard Oil and Harriman’s Northern Securities, both bitter enemies of the Morgan world empire. Exhume McKinley, and also start a deep investigation of the possible role of Teddy and the Morgans. Was Czolgosz only a lone nut?

Perhaps something bigger was afoot…. But I still did not find the connection to this changing attitude toward Britain.

Surprise, surprise. Rothbard provides the answer here as well, from A History of Money and Banking in the United States:

As the nations moved toward World War II, the Morgans, who had long been closely connected with Britain and France, rose in importance in American foreign policy, while the Rockefellers, who had little connection with Britain and France and had patent agreements with I.G. Farben in Germany, fell in relative strength. Secretary of State Cordell Hull, a close longtime friend of FDR’s roving ambassador and Morgan man Norman H. Davis, took the lead in exerting pressure against Germany for its bilateral rather than multilateral trade agreements and for its exchange controls, all put in place to defend a chronically overvalued mark. (Page 344)

Rothbard is speaking here of World War II, but the relationships fit the scenario suggested by Schultze-Rhonhof.

The assassination of McKinley – a Rockefeller man favorable toward Germany – ensured the replacement by Teddy Roosevelt, a Morgan man. Morgan, favorably disposed toward Britain, had his man in place – a move that would ensure the US moves closer to Britain.

This one action helped to ensure a transition of the tool of global power projection, from Britain to the United States – as I have previously describedhere (in the context of the Second World War). Of course, the roots of World War Two are many and deep – including the Great War, and perhaps including McKinley’s assassination.

This transition from Britain to the US is explored further in “The Peaceful Transition of Power from the UK to the US,” by Feng Yongping. In this, there is also further exploration of the evolving relationships amongst and between the United States, Great Britain, and Germany:

With regard to Great Britain, binding itself in friendship with the United States and avoiding the towering costs of conflict also stands out as extremely significant in preserving the nation’s colonial power, which was seemingly on the verge of decline. Germans were predicting during the 1880s or 1890s that the United States would be drawn into war, with Bismark confidently predicting that Great Britain would confront the American navy in the Atlantic Ocean, generating a British – German alliance with a union of naval and land powers of strategic political benefit. In contrast, Great Britain chose reconciliation with the United States.

In 1905, US President Roosevelt told a British diplomat not to let the nightmare of war between English-speaking democracies keep him up at night. Roosevelt said that in preparing for potential outbreaks of war, a fight against Great Britain was not an issue, since it was an impossibility.

The US also provided similar assistance for the British in the Boer War. After conflict broke out there, Theodore Roosevelt promptly expressed his position of support, saying the war completely aligned the interests of the two English-speaking democracies and in turn, the interests of the civilized world, and that English should become the language of southern Zambezia. During the war, the United States presented Great Britain with great amounts of military supplies and extended credit for about 20% of Great Britain’s war expenses.

Selborne, British Lord of the Admiralty, commented that all subjects of the British Empire knew that war with America would be a colossal failure of British diplomacy. Home Secretary A.H. Lee said that he could not even fathom the possibility of the US and Great Britain actually fighting a war. The US President Theodore Roosevelt spoke nearly the same words in 1905, when he stated his belief that the danger of another British – US dispute had not only passed, but was gone forever. Compared with other large nations, he believed the feeling of friendship to be more genuine with England than with any other.

As previously mentioned, Schultze-Rhonhof’s work was dismissed in Germany. Yet, so far, I am finding that he points to events that have import – events not even found in other revisionist works. This connection – McKinley’s assassination as one of the roots of the Great War – is one that I have not read elsewhere.

It is a connection that is supported by Rothbard’s work. Schultze-Rhonhof seems to keep good company. If he is dismissed for reasons similar to those offered to dismiss Rothbard, I certainly will continue with an open mind.

(I thank Charles Burris for being generous with his comments toward one aspect of this post. Any errors in interpretation or historical fact are completely my own.)

Reprinted with permission from the Bionic Mosquito.

The Best of Jonathan Goodwin

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Copyright © 2014 Bionic Mosquito

Previous article by Bionic Mosquito: The Industrial Revolution of the Middle Ages

Las ocho razones principales ¿Por qué el dólar controla la economía globalizada?

Las ocho razones principales ¿Por qué el dólar controla la economía globalizada?

por Manuel Freytas*

Ex: http://paginatransversal.wordpress.com

Cuando hablamos del dólar, hablamos (por extensión ) de la referencia más significante de un sistema capitalista globalizado que controla gobiernos, países, sistemas económicos productivos, bancos centrales, centros financieros, arsenales nucleares y complejos militares industriales. Las empresas y los grupos transnacionales que controlan los sistemas financieros especulativos y los sistemas económicos productivos a escala mundial (por encima de los gobiernos) realizan mayoritariamente sus volúmenes de negocios, inversiones y tomas de ganancias en dólares. Y este informe, detallamos las 8 razones principales por las que el dólar es el centro de referencia de toda la economía mundial globalizada.

Cuando hablamos de la “moneda patrón”, hablamos antes que nada de un diseño estratégico de poder mundial que lo protege, interactivo y totalizado, que se concreta mediante una red infinita de asociaciones y vasos comunicantes entre el capital financiero, industrial y de servicios que convierte a los países y gobiernos en gerencias de enclave.

EEUU, la primera economía mundial, Europa, la segunda economía mundial (como bloque) y China, la tercera economía mundial realizan la mayoría de su comercio en dólares.

Si la divisa estadounidense colapsara, colapsarían EEUU, la Unión Europea y China (los mayores vendedores y compradores del mundo), que juntos suman más de la mitad de la economía mundial.

Las empresas y los grupos financieros transnacionales que controlan los sistemas financieros especulativos y los sistemas económicos productivos a escala mundial (por encima de los gobiernos) realizan mayoritariamente sus volúmenes de negocios, inversiones y tomas de ganancias en dólares.

En la trama del sistema capitalista globalizado la moneda estadounidense cumple las funciones de reserva mundial, sirve de respaldo para la mayoría de las monedas, interviene en la mayoría de las transacciones comerciales y operaciones financieras, y hace de medio internacional de pago.

En el centro del modelo imperial-económico capitalista globalizado , y a modo de protagonistas centrales, se encuentran EEUU y la Unión Europea (los principales compradores mundiales), y China (el principal vendedor mundial), cuyas economías entrelazadas se proyectan como claves y dominantes en el funcionamiento de todo el sistema capitalista a escala global. Las operaciones se realizan mayoritariamente con el dólar como moneda de transacción. Además, China tiene el 70% de sus reservas en valores y títulos del Tesoro de EEUU.

En este escenario, su caída significaría el fin del patrón dólar, y generaría una mundialización de la crisis en la que ningún Estado capitalista podría sobrevivir. Si se cayeran EEUU y el dólar, sería como si una bomba nuclear estallase en la economía y en el sistema capitalista y nadie podría escapar con vida de la radiación que se desataría a escala planetaria.

Las ocho razones principales

Hay ocho razones principales por las cuales ninguna potencia (central o emergente) podría “desacoplarse” del actual modelo funcional del sistema capitalista estructurado alrededor del dólar como moneda patrón y de la hegemonía de EEUU como primera potencia imperial:

1) El dólar es la moneda de cambio y de reserva internacional, y los países de todos los continentes (Europa, Asia, Latinoamérica, Ausralia y África) la utilizan en sus transacciones comerciales y tienen la mayoría de sus reservas en dólares, por lo que el fin del dólar implicaría un derrumbe mundial generalizado del sistema capitalista de la que ningún país estaría a salvo.

2) Más de un 70% de las reservas mundiales están en dólares, frente a un 25% en euros de la Unión Europea, que también utiliza el dólar. China, la tercera economía mundial, después de EEUU y la UE, tiene sus reservas en dólares, según el Banco Mundial y el FMI.

3) El dólar está involucrado en el 86% de las transacciones diarias de divisas en el mundo, a menudo como paso intermedio en el intercambio de otras dos divisas, según el Banco Internacional de Pagos. Aunque esto constituye un descenso con relación al 90% que representaba en 2001, ninguna divisa se le acerca.

4) Casi dos terceras partes de las reservas de los bancos centrales del mundo están denominadas en dólares, a pesar del temor de que se produzca un éxodo masivo de la divisa. Según el Banco Internacional de Pagos, el banco central de los bancos centrales, el dólar continúa siendo la “moneda favorita de los bancos centrales” y representa un 55% de sus activos y pasivos en moneda extranjera.

5) Un 80% de las transacciones internacionales, un 70% de las importaciones mundiales y la casi totalidad del comercio petrolero se realizan en dólares, según el Banco Mundial y el departamento de Comercio estadounidense.

6) El sistema financiero especulativo internacional está “dolarizado”, y las bolsas y los mercados internacionales del dinero operan mayoritariamente con la divisa estadounidense a través de las acciones y bonos desparramadas a escala global por los grandes bancos y fondos de inversión que tiene su central operativa en Wall Street, EEUU. La Bolsa de Nueva York, o NYSE, es el mayor mercado de dinero del mundo y concentra el mayor volumen de operaciones financieras en dólares que realizan empresas trasnacionales cotizantes a escala global. En la bolsa neoyorquina cotizan las principales empresas trasnacionales de los EEUU y del mundo, y si colapsara el dólar como divisa, estallaría Wall Street y arrastraría consigo a todos los mercados del dinero a escala global.

7) Los países emergentes y las potencias económicas desarrolladas generan más del 75% del PBI mundial en dólares (el resto se genera en euros y otras monedas), según el Banco Mundial. Para los países con una fuerte dependencia de las exportaciones de materias primas como el petróleo, las cifras pueden ser incluso más altas. El dólar también está profundamente arraigado en el comercio mundial. Las empresas reducen sus costos de transacción al usar una divisa común.

8) Las empresas y los grupos financieros transnacionales que controlan los sistemas financieros especulativos y los sistemas económicos productivos a escala mundial (por encima de los gobiernos) realizan mayoritariamente sus volúmenes de negocios, inversiones y tomas de ganancias en dólares, por lo cual un colapso terminal de la moneda estadounidense (como vaticinan los partidarios de la teoría del “desacople”) produciría una parálisis de la actividad económica mundial en cuestión de horas.

En este escenario, una hipotética caída del patrón dólar generaría una mundialización de la crisis en la que ningún Estado capitalista podría sobrevivir. Si se cayeran EEUU y el dólar, sería como si una bomba nuclear estallase en la economía y en el sistema capitalista y nadie podría escapar con vida de la radiación que se desataría a escala planetaria.

(*) Manuel Freytas es periodista, investigador, analista de estructuras del poder, especialista en inteligencia y comunicación estratégica. Es uno de los autores más difundidos y referenciados en la Web. Ver sus trabajos en Google y en IAR Noticias. [e-mail]

Fuente: IAR Noticias.

The Americanization of the World

 

The Americanization of the World

By Bionic Mosquito

Ex: http://www.lewrockwell.com

The Americanization of the World, by William Thomas Stead.

With this post, I will begin a review of the above titled book, written in 1902.  In order to provide context as to my purpose for and approach in this review, I will begin by re-introducing and expanding upon my working hypothesis under which I have been considering various events over the last century and more.

1) There is a group of elite that operate above politicians and national governments, working through think-tanks and other global foundations and institutions.

2) The elite are not all of one mind, although in many ways their interests are aligned and the tools through which they leverage control are equally beneficial to all.

3) Until the turn of the 20^th century, much of this control was exercised through the British government and other British-based institutions.

4) Beginning as early as the late 19^th century (and perhaps the mid-nineteenth century), two things were becoming clear to this group:

a.The ability of Great Britain to be an effective tool for global reach would soon reach its limits.

b.The potential reach through the United States was untapped and, relatively speaking, unlimited.

5) The commonality in philosophical heritage and language of the people in Great Britain and the United States made the US population susceptible to similar tools of control – tools already established and proven effective.

6) Actions were taken beginning in the late 19^th century to effect the transition of this tool for global control from Great Britain to the United States.

7) These actions, through two World Wars, culminated in the United States moving to the position as the primary tool for control by the elite.

8) Winston Churchill – worshiped despite being the leading political figure during the entire span of the demise of the British Empire – played the key role in supporting this transition: both the decline of Great Britain and the ascendency of the United States as leader of this broader, English-speaking, elite controlled empire.

9) As opposed to looking elsewhere for world government, the United States has been the tool to implement world government – taking a leadership position in establishing the UN, IMF, World Bank, NATO, etc.

10) The good news?  Decentralization will win out: witness the break-up of the artificial conglomerations of the USSR, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia.  Witness similar events unfolding in Iraq, the inability to consolidate in Afghanistan.  Witness tiny Belgium, divided in two – yet somehow the entirety of Europe is going to meld into one?  Much more capable thinkers than I am write of the coming of the end of the nation-state (see especially the sections on Barzun and van Creveld).

Some of the visible actions taken to move the US into this leadership position include:

1) The creation of the Federal Reserve in 1913

2) The engagement of the US into the Great War, despite overwhelming public opinion against getting involved in this European conflict

3) The engagement of the US into the Second World War, again despite overwhelming public opinion against getting involved in this conflict.

4) Various purposeful actions taken by the British government to a) overcome the historical animosities between the two countries, and b) move the US toward the position of global primacy.

If you find this too tin-foil-hat for you, there is little reason to continue reading this post (if you haven’t stopped already).

While reading 1939 – The War That Had Many Fathers, I came across another event that seems to have helped move the US into a position to take the hand-off from Great Britain: the assassination of President McKinley in 1901.  As I explain here, this event helped to move the US from a negative or neutral posture toward Great Britain (and even somewhat favorable to Germany) toward a much more positive relationship with Great Britain through the presidency of Theodore Roosevelt.

This transition was but one step in what is known as the Great Rapprochement, the turning of US policy toward Great Britain in the period 1895 – 1915.

Also while reading the above-mentioned book I came across the name William Thomas Stead, and his book “The Americanization of the World.”  Given the title and description of the book, and that this book was initially published in 1902 (precisely at the beginning of this changing relationship), it seemed to me a worthwhile read given the hypothesis I identify above.

With that lengthy preamble out of the way, I offer an even lengthier introduction of Mr. Stead….

Who was Stead?  “William Thomas Stead (5 July 1849 – 15 April 1912) was an English newspaper editor….”

If his date of death seems familiar, it is because Stead died aboard the Titanic. Before this, he was a tremendously influential newspaper editor and author:

In 1880, Stead went to London to be assistant editor of the Liberal Pall Mall Gazette (a forerunner of the London Evening Standard), where he set about revolutionizing a traditionally conservative newspaper “written by gentlemen for gentlemen”.

Stead early on learned the power that the press could project over government action:

Stead’s first sensational campaign was based on a Nonconformist pamphlet, The Bitter Cry of Outcast London. His lurid stories of squalid life in the slums had a wholly beneficial effect on the capital. A Royal Commission recommended that the government should clear the slums and encourage low-cost housing in their place. It was Stead’s first success.

Despite being able to successfully move government to action, not every endeavor ended well; still, his reach and magnitude knew few limits:

In 1884, Stead pressured the government to send his friend General Gordon into Sudan to protect British interests in Khartoum. The eccentric Gordon disobeyed orders, and the siege of Khartoum, Gordon’s death, and the failure of the hugely expensive Gordon Relief Expedition was one of the great imperial disasters of the period.

 

Gordon was sent to evacuate British citizens from a troubled region and to otherwise abandon Sudan.  Once Gordon arrived, he apparently pursued a different course: he decided it was best to crush the Muslim uprising for fear that it would eventually spread to Egypt as well.  Gordon, with 6,000 men, began a defense of Khartoum.

On March 18, 1884, the Mahdist army laid siege to the city. The rebels stopped river traffic and cut the telegraph line to Cairo. Khartoum was cut off from resupply, which led to food shortages, but could still communicate with the outside world by using messengers. Under pressure from the public, in August 1884, the British government decided to reverse its policy and send a relief force to Khartoum.

“Under pressure from the public” a relief expedition force was sent, but failed to arrive in time to save Gordon and his men:

On January 26, 1885, Khartoum fell to the Mahdist army of 50,000 men. At that time of year the Nile was shallow enough to cross by wading and the Mahdists were able to breach the city’s defenses by attacking the poorly-defended approaches from the river. The entire garrison was slaughtered, including General Gordon. His head was cut off and delivered to the Mahdi. Two days later the relief expedition entered the city to find that they were too late.

Lord Kitchener later reconquered Sudan.

Forgive my diversion into this tale of late nineteenth century British imperialism; however it serves to demonstrate the power and influence that Stead possessed.  As cited above, “In 1884, Stead pressured the government to send his friend General Gordon into Sudan….”  It seems reasonable that he also was the one to apply pressure to send aid to “his friend” Gordon.

More on Stead and his influence:

1885 saw him force the British government to supply an additional £5.5million to bolster weakening naval defenses, after which he published a series of articles.  Stead was no hawk however; instead he believed Britain’s strong navy was necessary to maintain world peace.

Stead saw peace through war.  He saw the British Navy as a global force for good.  Consider how the tools used by the elite have not had to change a bit over the 125 years since Stead’s time, as the same tools used by Stead to help usurp wealth from the British middle class remain completely effective in the propaganda campaigns designed to usurp wealth from the middle class of the US today.

…he is also credited as originating the modern journalistic technique of creating a news event rather than just reporting it, as his most famous “investigation”, the Eliza Armstrong case, was to demonstrate.

Stead had other passions, showing an ability to understand future global consolidation well before any generally visible steps:

Stead was a pacifist and a campaigner for peace, who favored a “United States of Europe” and a “High Court of Justice among the nations”….

Stead held court in high places:

[Stead] was an early imperialist dreamer, whose influence on Cecil Rhodes in South Africa remained of primary importance; and many politicians and statesmen, who on most subjects were completely at variance with his ideas, nevertheless owed something to them. Rhodes made him his confidant….

Rhodes, of course, cornered the South African diamond market with the help of rather influential friends – call them the elite of the elite.  Rhodes was also quite influential regarding British Imperial policy:

Historian Richard A. McFarlane has called Rhodes “as integral a participant in southern African and British imperial history as George Washington or Abraham Lincoln are in their respective eras in United States history…

And Rhodes was influenced by Stead.

Stead found his influence ever-growing:

The number of his publications gradually became very large, as he wrote with facility and sensational fervor on all sorts of subjects, from The Truth about Russia (1888) to If Christ Came to Chicago! (Laird & Lee, 1894), and from Mrs Booth (1900) to The Americanisation of the World (1902).

And finally, to show the well-rounded character of the man:

Stead claimed to be in receipt of messages from the spirit world, and, in 1892, to be able to produce automatic writing.  His spirit contact was alleged to be the departed Julia Ames, an American temperance reformer and journalist whom he met in 1890 shortly before her death.  In 1909 he established Julia’s Bureau where inquirers could obtain information about the spirit world from a group of resident mediums.

As mentioned, Stead died on the Titanic.  His reputation survived:

Following his death, Stead was widely hailed as the greatest newspaperman of his age…. Like many journalists, he was a curious mixture of conviction, opportunism and sheer humbug. According to his biographer W. Sydney Robinson, “He twisted facts, invented stories, lied, betrayed confidences, but always with a genuine desire to reform the world – and himself.”

Why all of this background on Stead?  Well, it seems he was a rather influential fellow within the British elite at precisely the time when the United States began its turn toward Great Britain: an empire which (to say nothing of the spat in 1776) less than a century before burned the White House and much of the capitol, and only a few decades before, while officially neutral, aided the South in their war for independence – guilty enough to ultimately pay restitution of $15.5 million for building war ships for the Confederacy.

Great Britain was officially neutral throughout the American Civil War, 1861–65. Elite opinion tended to favor the Confederacy, while public opinion tended to favor the United States.

I will suggest it is elite opinion that counts when it comes to matters of politics, for example:

Diplomatic observers were suspicious of British motives. The Russian Minister in Washington Eduard de Stoeckl noted, “The Cabinet of London is watching attentively the internal dissensions of the Union and awaits the result with an impatience which it has difficulty in disguising.” De Stoeckl advised his government that Britain would recognize the Confederate States at its earliest opportunity. Cassius Clay, the United States Minister in Russia, stated, “I saw at a glance where the feeling of England was. They hoped for our ruin! They are jealous of our power. They care neither for the South nor the North. They hate both.”

Yet as early as 1895 – only 30 years after the end of the war – the US and Britain began their courtship.  And in the background was William Thomas Stead.

Finally, on to his book and the first chapter:

As it was through the Christian Church that the monotheism of the Jew conquered the world, so it may be through the Americans that the English ideals expressed in the English language may make a tour of the planet. (Page 3)

Setting aside the exaggeration of the claim, given the religion of statolatry (to borrow a phrase from Charles Burris), the comparison seems quite appropriate.

Stead saw the inevitability of the United States taking the preeminent position among the English-speaking nations.  He looked at population growth over the preceding 100 years (including empire), but also at differentiating the white population from the non-white (a recurring theme in his writing); he felt strongly that it was the white population that was of importance.

We are comparing the English-speaking communities.  The right of leadership does not depend upon how many millions, more or less, of colored people we have compelled to pay us taxes. (Page 5)

Stead, not shy, makes plain one purpose of colonizing people of color – compelling tax payments.  Stead also discounts the millions of British subjects in, for example, India, Africa, and the West Indies when it comes to considering the trends of population and future supremacy.

Population should be weighed as well as counted.  In a census return a Hottentot counts for as much as a Cecil Rhodes; a mean white on a southern swamp is the census equivalent for a Mr. J.P. Morgan or Mr. Edison.

A nation which has no illiterates can hardly be counted off against the Russians, only three per cent of whom can read or write. (Page 9)

He also sees no hope for reversal of this trend in favor of the US and to the detriment of Great Britain – not only in population but also industrial production and therefore capability of global reach.

Having presented this case, he suggests Britain embraces this inevitable change, restoring old bonds:

The philosophy of common sense teaches us that, seeing we can never again be the first, standing alone, we should lose no time in uniting our fortunes with those who have passed us in the race. Has the time not come when we should make a resolute effort to realize the unity of the English-speaking race?  …while if we remain outside, nursing our Imperial insularity on monarchical lines, we are doomed to play second fiddle for the rest of our existence.  Why not finally recognize the truth and act upon it?  What sacrifices are there which can be regarded as too great to achieve the realization of the ideal of the unity of the English-speaking race? (Page 6)

Stead sees continuous contention between the United States and Great Britain for control of global trade, with Britain eventually and ultimately the loser.  Stead is writing during the very early phases of the Great Rapprochement.  As regarding great sacrifices, considering the tremendous work done by Great Britain behind the scenes to create the propaganda in the US necessary to drag the American people into two world wars (as I view these wars as key to formalizing the transition of power), it seems reasonable to conclude that Stead’s suggestion that no sacrifices should be considered too great was taken quite seriously.

Stead goes on to outline the power and control available through a united US and British front: population, land mass, control of the seas and most navigable rivers.  And gold: “With the exception of Siberia they have seized all the best goldmines of the world.” (Page 7) Not a barbarous relic, apparently.

Between the two, they have seized the dominions of Spain, despoiled the Portuguese, the French and the Dutch, and left nothing but scraps to Italy and the Germans. (Page 7)  The only statistic in which these non-English-speaking nations hold the lead is in the amount of national debt! (Page 11)

Stead is looking for a savior, someone to lead in bringing these two – the US and Britain – into one, with the US taking the leading position:

The question arises whether this gigantic aggregate can be pooled.  We live in the day of combinations.  Is there no Morgan who will undertake to bring about the greatest combination of all – a combination of the whole English Speaking race?

The same motive which has led to the building up of the Trust in the industrial world may bring about this great combination in the world of politics.  (Page 12)

Presumably he is writing here of the work done by Morgan in consolidating the US steel industry.  Of course, Morgan also had connections with the same elite family that assisted Rhodes with diamonds in South Africa:

In 1895, at the depths of the Panic of 1893, the Federal Treasury was nearly out of gold.  President Grover Cleveland accepted Morgan’s offer to join with the Rothschilds and supply the U.S. Treasury with 3.5 million ounces of gold to restore the treasury surplus in exchange for a 30-year bond issue.

It should also be kept in mind: McKinley was a Rockefeller man; Rockefeller had ties to Germany.  Teddy Roosevelt, beneficiary of McKinley’s assassination, was a Morgan man; Morgan was a strong friend of Britain.  It seems the “Morgan” that Stead was looking for in the political combination was the same “Morgan” that he was referring to in the industrial combination.

Stead sees the impossibility of the American people accepting a combination where those in America would accept being subservient again to the crown:

It is, of course, manifestly impossible, even if it were desirable, for the Americans to come back within the pale of the British Empire. (Page 15)

Instead, he suggests Britain should accept reunion “on whatever terms may be arrived at.” (Page 15)

While not an overt political reunion, it certainly seems that a reunion was accepted by the British – and ultimately the U.S.  If one visible actor can be placed at the center of this “success,” I will suggest it is Winston Churchill.  For much of the first half of the 20^th century, Churchill played a leading role in British politics; even when not in an official position, he was communicating directly with Roosevelt behind the scenes in order to facilitate America’s entry into the Second World War – the final event in ensuring the transition.

During this time, Britain (or more precisely, the British population) certainly paid the price of reunion – “whatever terms necessary,” as Stead suggested in 1902: the terms for the British population can be seen in the blood of two world wars, inflation, a depression, a loss of manufacture and industry.  This price was paid over the next 50 years.  In the end, the United States clearly stood on top of the English-speaking world.

One politician, more than any other, stood in a position of leadership and influence while Britain was economically and physically bled: Winston Churchill.  Presiding (in various roles) over such a massive loss of Empire would normally result in the derision of the leader.  Yet Churchill is exalted.  Perhaps it has little to do with his role in the death of the British Empire, but because of his role in the birth of the larger, Anglo Empire.  For this reason, the gatekeepers of mainstream history frame Churchill in a praiseworthy manner.

And one writer, a man who traveled within and influenced the highest circles of the elite, wrote the book before the events even occurred: William Thomas Stead.

I will continue with further posts regarding this book as I find comments of import.  In the meantime, the examination of this one life and this first chapter has provided insights supportive of my working hypothesis regarding the transition of elite power and control from Great Britain to the United States.

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Copyright © 2014 Bionic Mosquito

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Un atlas géopolitique du monde actuel

Un atlas géopolitique du monde actuel

par Georges FELTIN-TRACOL

Il est toujours difficile de recenser un ouvrage qui l’a déjà été par nos soins. Aymeric Chauprade vient de publier la troisième édition, actualisée et augmentée, de sa Chronique du choc des civilisations. Intitulée « Civilisations en collisions » et mis en ligne sur le présent site le 9 octobre 2011, la précédente recension évoquait les qualités de cette deuxième édition qui valut l’éviction de son auteur de toutes les chaires universitaires à la suite d’une campagne de presse malveillante orchestrée par un de ces stipendiés par l’Oncle Sam.

 

 

Depuis 2011, l’ébranlement de la planète se poursuit avec de nouveaux conflits dont les fameuses révolutions arabes et le renversement de plusieurs régimes autoritaires laïques en Afrique du Nord, au Proche-Orient. Mais Aymeric Chauprade prend aussi en compte le déclin relatif des États-Unis d’Amérique, la montée en puissance de la Chine et la renaissance convalescente de la Russie. Il offre par conséquent au lecteur une vaste palette de textes et de cartes très éclairantes.

 

Le temps des civilisations

 

Favorable à une géopolitique culturelle (culturaliste ?), cet esprit aguerri aux sciences dures, les mathématiques en particulier, n’hésite pas à se référer à la longue durée chère à Fernand Braudel. Il replace dans un contexte politico-historique les heurts contemporains. Si l’ouvrage – le terme d’atlas serait plus approprié – s’ouvre sur un planisphère des civilisations, il ne faut pas se méprendre : Aymeric Chauprade n’est pas le disciple français de feu Samuel P. Huntington. Rappelons qu’en 1996, son premier essai portait sur L’Espace économique francophone. Pour une francophonie intégrale, vaine initiative de renouvellement des conceptions du gaulliste de la Francité, Philippe Rossillon. Il discerne ainsi quinze civilisations là où Huntington n’en distinguait que neuf !

 

« Le choc des civilisations, observe Aymeric Chauprade, traverse les siècles, et même, pour certaines civilisations, les millénaires; il s’apaise, qui reprend, et donne à l’histoire des chocs sourds et puissants, comme si des plaques tectoniques venaient à en découdre, causant d’immenses secousses dans l’humanité (p. 8). » Loin de se focaliser sur un seul antagonisme réducteur, il cherche plutôt à dresser un panorama précis de l’ensemble des territoires conflictuels tant aux confins qu’au cœur même des civilisations. Les dix chapitres géo-thématiques balaient dans le détail les cahots actuels.

 

Dégagé de tout subjectivisme, Aymeric Chauprade veut surtout montrer au lecteur la polymorphie des secousses civilisationnelles. Certes, il commence par évoquer l’affrontement islamo-occidental, mais il prend garde de ne pas sombrer dans un quelconque réductionnisme géopolitique ou de plaquer sur les événements ses propres représentations géopolitiques. Oui, l’islam concurrence le monde occidental. Mais, en dépit de l’exécution d’otages en Irak ou au Sahel, cette menace est maintenant moins terroriste – même si les risques persistent – que migratoire et démographique. La forte fécondité des immigrés d’Afrique subsaharienne prépare « une France dont la population serait majoritairement extra-européenne autour de 2040 (p. 58) ». Les bouleversements politiques sur les littoraux méridional et oriental de la Méditerranée font de cette aire géographique tricontinentale le point faible de l’Europe. Mais le péril mahométan se retrouve souvent instrumentaliser par les États-Unis d’Amérique notoirement anti-européens.

 

L’Europe doit lutter contre l’« Islamérique », cette alliance objective entre l’oligarchie étatsunienne, voire nord-américaine, et certaines tendances fanatiques de l’islam. Washington veut affaiblir l’Europe qui demeure la seule véritable rivale globale, d’où une longue et constante politique d’encerclement par des forces musulmanes hostiles soutenues en sous-main par l’hégémonie yankee. « Après l’Afghanistan (durant la guerre froide), puis les guerres de Bosnie, du Kosovo et d’Irak, après le soutien à l’A.K.P. en Turquie et aux Frères musulmans dans le monde arabe, l’Amérique offre en Libye un nouvel épisode de son alliance souterraine avec l’islam radical (p. 58). » Il s’agit par ailleurs d’entraver durablement la Russie qui retrouve son statut de grande puissance. Vladimir Poutine, l’homme le plus puissant du monde en 2013 selon le magazine Forbes, a compris que « l’énergie est le levier du redressement de la puissance russe (p. 101) ». Il faut par conséquent que Washington ou plus exactement l’« État profond » étatsunien – cette « structure de gouvernement à la fois invisible (par rapport à l’administration officielle) et continue (puisqu’elle survit aux changements de président), rassemblant des éléments et des moyens du Pentagone, de la C.I.A. et du F.B.I., des sociétés militaires privées et, plus globalement, du complexe militaro-financier (p. 13) » élimine dès le départ toute menace potentielle. La proximité et la connaissance, entre la haute-administration U.S. et les milieux financiers facilitent la privatisation de la guerre. Souvenons-nous que « la guerre d’Irak est directement à l’origine de l’exploitation capitalistique des S.M.P. Née d’un petit contrat de la C.I.A. de 5,4 millions de dollars en 2001, Blackwater (rebaptisée Xe en 2009) pèse, grâce à l’Afghanistan et l’Irak, 1,2 milliard de dollars. En 1995, Dyn-Corp ne pesait que 30 millions de dollars : c’est aujourd’hui la plus importante S.M.P. au monde, son chiffre d’affaires dépassant les 3 milliards de dollars (p. 25) ».

 

La pluralité de l’islam

 

Cependant, il ne faut pas considérer les islamistes comme de simples marionnettes aux mains des États-Unis. Les djihadistes savent nouer des alliances si l’exigent leurs intérêts. Et puis, l’islam est lui-même très varié, sinon l’Iran chiite, le Hezbollah libanais et leur allié baasiste syrien ne s’opposeraient pas avec un certain succès aux visées sunnites de l’Arabie Saoudite et du Qatar, appuyés par des puissances occidentales toujours aussi aveugles et bien corrompues par le pognon des hydrocarbures. Il traite aussi d’une donnée guère connue, à savoir « Les populations arabes de l’Amérique latine (p. 254) ». Issue de vagues d’immigration successives, cette population latino-américaine d’origine arabe « se situe dans la fourchette de 17 à 25 millions, ce qui représenterait 5 % de la population totale. […] Les Arabes d’Amérique, très majoritairement chrétiens, se sont fortement assimilés et ils se retrouvent même souvent dans les élites économiques, voire politiques, de leur accueil (p. 254) » comme le Mexicain Carlos Slim, le Chilien José Said ou l’Argentin Carlos Menem.

 

Si l’islam fait des convertis en Amérique latine, ce subcontinent, bastion du catholicisme romain, est surtout confronté « au défi des Églises pentecôtistes et évangéliques venues des États-Unis (p. 256) ». L’auteur mentionne les nombreuses méthodes de l’hégémonie yankee : l’action militaire, directe ou non, et/ou l’influence culturelle à travers les films, le non-art contemporain, les musiques dégénérées… Mais il attire aussi l’attention sur leur maîtrise élevée dans la dissimulation, la désinformation et l’intoxication. Tirant le bilan de l’invasion de l’Irak et l’avènement d’un gouvernement chiite proche de Téhéran, il prévient que « les Américains ont l’art de faire croire aux Européens qu’ils cumulent maladresses et erreurs (erreurs de la C.I.A., du Pentagone ou du département d’État), leur seul but étant en réalité de masquer ce que l’on appelle, dans le langage militaire français “ l’effet final recherché ” (p. 168) ».

 

Aymeric Chauprade examine avec soin tous les continents, hormis déplorons-le, l’Océanie dans laquelle est toujours présente au grand dam des Anglo-Saxons (Australie, Grande-Bretagne, États-Unis et Nouvelle-Zélande) la France, deuxième domaine océanique et maritime au monde et donc potentielle thalassocratie. À quand un Jeu de la France dans l’océan Pacifique, en partie traité par feu Hervé Coutau-Bégarie avec sa Géostratégie du Pacifique en 2001 ?

 

Vers l’ère des grands marchés intercontinentaux ?

 

La partie septentrionale de l’océan Pacifique aux portes de l’Extrême-Orient connaît un regain de tensions entre la Chine et le Japon. Y a-t-il un risque de guerre ouverte entre Pékin et Tokyo ? Sans répondre à cette difficile question qui nécessite des facultés de médium, Aymeric Chauprade relève que « les deux pays n’ont jamais été aussi interdépendants économiquement. La Chine est le premier partenaire commercial du Japon (elle représente plus de 20 % de son commerce) et le Japon est le premier fournisseur de la Chine (15 % des importations). Le Japon délocalise en Chine et, déjà, plus de 9 millions de Chinois travaillent pour le capital japonais. Cette intégration économique du Japon et de la Chine se fait de manière plus large dans le cadre du plus grand marché économique en formation dans le monde, le marché dit de l’A.S.E.A.N. + 3 (Chine, Japon, Inde), qui est devenu une réalité le 1er janvier 2010. Plus les années vont passer, plus la réalité économique du Japon va diverger de celle des États-Unis au profit de cette sphère de coprospérité asiatique (pp. 215 – 216) ». L’accélération des négociations entre Bruxelles et Washington pour constituer au plus tôt une grande zone de libre-échange transatlantique se comprend mieux quand on sait l’existence de ce  marché asiatique très étendu.

 

Cet atlas géopolitique est remarquable. Aymeric Chauprade met en perspective les problématiques géostratégiques avec leurs soubassements plus occultes. Pour preuve, depuis 2009, on a trouvé en Méditerranée orientale d’importantes bassins d’hydrocarbures dont la délimitation des zones d’exploitation en haute mer avive les querelles frontalières. La volonté des Occidentaux de contrôler ces ressources à peine découvertes explique leur ingérence en Syrie. Pis, l’atlas rapporte « en Grèce en 2012 et à Chypre en 2013 […] une tentative des milieux de la finance anglo-américaine (qui dominent le F.M.I. et l’Union européenne) de forcer les Grecs surendettés (pourtant assis sur des richesses considérables en hydrocarbures et en or) à céder les actifs qu’ils possèdent dans le secteur énergétique et les ports stratégiques (p. 107) ».

 

Avec un rare talent, Aymeric Chauprade ausculte les continents, explique les enjeux et identifie les manœuvres en coulisse, là où se joue vraiment à chaque instant le sort du monde.

 

Georges Feltin-Tracol

 

• Aymeric Chauprade, Chronique du choc des civilisations. Du 11 septembre 2001 à la guerre de Syrie, actualité, analyses géopolitiques et cartes pour comprendre le monde d’aujourd’hui, Chronique Éditions, (15 – 27, rue Moussorgski 75018 Paris), 2013, 272 p., 31 €.

 

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Article printed from Europe Maxima: http://www.europemaxima.com

 

URL to article: http://www.europemaxima.com/?p=3577

Intervention de Jean Haudry

XVIIIe TABLE RONDE de"Terre & Peuple"

Intervention de Jean Haudry

par terreetpeuple

Aymeric Chauprade aux Ronchons

Jeudi 20 février :

Aymeric Chauprade

aux Ronchons

 

The Ukrainian Dystopia

The Ukrainian Dystopia – Domestic and Foreign Factors

by Leonid Savin

Ex: http://www.geopolitica.ru

 

First of all, the situation in Ukraine is not as simple as it is being described by the Western media and Brussels/Washington politicians. The protest was started just before the Vilnius summit of the Eastern Partnership at the end of November 2013. Actually, most of protesters didn’t read the proposed agreement about the association with the EU, but were galvanized by leaders of the oppositional parties (Svoboda, Udar, Batkivschina). The slogan was that Ukraine is part of Europe (yes, of course, there was no doubt about this), but only a few interested individuals knew that such an agreement of association had previously been signed with… Jordan, Morocco, and some other countries.

 

This document was developed as tool of the EU’s soft power for engagement of the African and Eastern European markets. When President Yanukovich did not sign this agreement, the West initiated a colossal campaign against him: from political and diplomatic pressure to direct support of the Ukrainian opposition. We must take into account that the opposition, both nationalistic and liberal, was supported by the EU and USA years before through grant program.

 

Klichko’s Udar party was especially supported by Germany (he is also a resident of Germany). Russia has supported the decision of the Ukrainian president and provided a large discount for gas supplies and a loan of $15 billion. This gesture of good will was interpreted by the opposition and Ukrainian right-wing nationalists as the imperial ambitions of Moscow. From this point of view, Yanukovich is a puppet of Russia.

 

Some Ukrainian oligarchs also started to actually support the opposition because they are not pleased with Yanukovich and have their own funds abroad. Of course, there were long consultations between these oligarchs and Western politicians for how to better increase the pressure against the president, and the protests were intensified. We see that the general frontline of the protests was captured by ultra-radical groups similar to the Black Bloc of the antiglobalist movement a few years ago, but with a different political orientation.

 

These right-wing groups committed most of the violence during the protests (the destruction of Lenin’s memorial, attacks on police with Molotov cocktails, the ‘occupying’ of governmental building), and the political opposition was an umbrella that brought together these radicals. In reality, neo-Nazi radicals are strongly against the EU and European values and have no any road map for the future of Ukraine. They are funded by an umbrella of opposition groups (300 UAH for a day’s stay on Maidan and 2000 UAH for those who attacked police with Molotov cocktails. 1 $ US = 8 UAH) and both structures (the political opposition and neo-Nazi urban insurgents) choose the victims – it is the president, the Party of Regions, and the police.

 

After violent attacks near the ministers’ offices, parliament issued new laws pertaining towards addressing responsibility for such acts of protests and violence. But even these measures did not provide a cure for the crisis. On 25 December, three policemen were captured by extremists (one was wounded by a knife) and illegally held in one of the captured buildings in Kiev. The same day, Yanukovich proposed giving the post of prime minister to the leader of the Batkivshina party (Yatsenyuk) and the post of vice-prime-minister to Klischko (they refused).

 

Despite Western allegations otherwise, there really wasn’t much police violence, and the government does have the legal right to use such power if need be. In two words, we have a conflict between the established legal structures (president, parliament, other governmental structures) and those with self-proclaimed legitimacy (the opposition with mass support), as described by Carl Schmitt. The problem is that the opposition is very active, but the followers of the president, government, and order are passive. When the “Euromaidan” civil activists in Kiev and other regions began their street blockades and use of violence, the majority of Ukrainians did nothing and hoped that the police and the security service would intervene. But a paralyzed police force cannot perform their own standard functions because the opposition describes such measures as “violence against the people”.

 

The current problem is that the opposition umbrella does not have control over the violent neo-Nazi groups in Kiev and other regions, and some opposition leaders are nervous about their own place in any future political system in Ukraine. Another problem is that the “Euromaidan” activists have raised support from abroad (including from the Ukrainian diaspora) under the idea of “the people fighting against an authoritarian regime”. The masses do not usually understand the complexity behind such situations, and thus, they are profitably manipulated by those who are directing the destabilization.

 

The Strategic Landscape

 

The general context of these (and previous) protests may be found in the political system of Ukraine – it is liberal capitalism. For the last ten years, the social sector was destroyed, and Ukraine experienced a rapid rise in unemployment. Many citizens therefore needed to go abroad for work (Russia, Poland, and the European countries) or immigrate. When the “Orange Revolution” started in 2004, there was lots of optimism. The majority believed in changing the status quo and there were many calls of “Yes, we can!”. But this process of reorganization was twisted and stagnant.

 

The leaders were politically impotent, and corruption increased by leaps and bounds. The governmental system became more rotten than it had ever been before, and this process continued to accelerate. When Yanukovich returned to the presidency, he did not do enough to pursue radical changes to this trend. He cares more about his own “clan”, and this began the conflict between the oligarchs.

 

As I wrote above, some of them began to support the opposition (whereas they had supported Yanukovich in the past). The feeling of “yes, indeed” penetrated the minds of some oligarchs and they began to play their own game. Yet, they did not understand that another game was already in effect and that they were simply pawns within it!

 

Yanukovich understood that associating with the EU would be the last major political decision he would make. After the agreement, he would have to release Yulia Timosehnko (the former prime minister) from jail, and there is even a chance that he himself would then be sent to jail! Secondly, EU association would mean the implementation of protective tariffs from Russia. Russian gas would then be sold to Ukraine for the same price as it is to the EU. For example, in 2014 it would be about $370-380 per 1000 cubic meters, but Belarus would only be paying $175!!!

 

 

The difference can most certainly be felt, especially when one thinks about the economy’s industrial complex. In the process of building the Customs Union and the Eurasian Union, Russia will be very sensitive about any economic vectors near and around its own space. Ukraine would lose access to the huge Russian (but also Belarusian and Kazakh) market for its own goods, as well as the cheap goods coming out of the Customs Union. But the protesters do not think in geopolitical norms. They only rely on emotions…

 

European Involvement

 

European leaders are really confused. The European and US politicians need to stop and think before they continue to act, as they do not fully understand what it is they are doing. In the EU, we see much more police violence during protests than is the norm. When information about right-wing neo-Nazi groups in Ukraine entered into the Western media, there was cognitive dissonance. When Ukrainian Jews were attacked by the same protesters standing in Maidan, there was a strong reaction from the international Jewish community, but the European establishment once more expressed cognitive dissonance.

 

They wanted a planned and manipulated reality, but real life is different than their constructed images of it. They even wanted to present different images and pictures of what is happening. After two people were killed, new questions emerged: what is happening inside the opposition’s camp, and why can’t the opposition leaders control the radical groups under their own umbrella? I think that the European security services have knowledge and experience in dealing with leaderless resistance movements and insurgent anarchism, but the recognition of this occurring in Ukraine would also lead to the recognition that the Ukrainian government must use force to combat this extremist (even with European assistance)! In actuality, the EU does not have special think tanks or well-educated analysts that focus on Ukraine. Therefore, the European community does not have enough information about what is happening there, what its roots are, and what the possible tree of scenarios could be.

 

The Goals of the Ukrainian Opposition

 

The opposition wants to organize new presidential and parliamentary elections because that is the only legal way to change the power system. Because new presidential elections are scheduled for March 2015, this crisis is a serious test for Yanukovich. For the opposition, it is chance to get more publicity, because until now, they were supported only by some regions. And with the promotional aid of the EU and US, such a goal will be easier. On the other hand, they do not have a single leader to rally behind, so we could see an internal battle be waged inside the opposition’s camp in the future.

 

Ukraine actually has a very clear electoral map where one can see which region votes for the Party of Regions and which support the nationalists’ parties. If confidence in Yanukovich decreases, then he will lose support from the East and South of Ukraine (his classic base of electoral support). Nonetheless, Yanukovich is a legal president and he will not leave office before his term is over – this is certain. His post is guaranteed by the Constitution, and he has already proposed a plan for ending the crisis. The opposition does not have any such constructive ideas, and they speak with the language of ultimatums. This attitude is impossible to use in any normal negotiations, and the EU understands this very well. Therefore, they (the outsiders) cannot propose anything and just have to wait to see what happens.

 

The Role of the Media 

 

Most of the Ukrainian and European media take an incendiary position. There has been a lot of misinformation spread about the events in Kiev. Some US media outlets have used strategic rhetoric, for example, the Foreign Affairs magazine issued by the Council on Foreign Relations used the word “ceasefire” in an article about the process of ongoing negotiations between the authorities and the opposition.

 

Such a discourse is symbolic of a war of conscience against the state of Ukraine. Blogs and social networks are also effective in advancing this campaign. If one looks at a map of the “Euromaidan” hashtag, most activity will be seen as coming from three locations – Kiev, Washington, and London! Alternative media can also be of use in finding out more information about various figures of the opposition, for example, Oleg Tyagnibok of the Svoboda Party (formerly the Social-Nationalist Party of Ukraine), statements from his hate speeches (mostly against Jews, Russians, Poles, and communists), his background, and where he gets his money from to fund his current activities.

 

External Actors 

 

Ukrainian MPs, the prime minister, and even oppositional leaders (Klichko) already recognized that there have been manipulations and interference from abroad. This means that external influence has already happened. If regime change occurs, this will not mean anything good for Ukrainians. Radicals are radicals under any regime. They will use Molotov cocktails again, but this time, the target of their attacks will be the EU’s occupational regime, the degraded culture of the West, banks, and corporations (under the auspices of honor and Ukrainian independence, of course). This type of bourgeois right-wing nationalist that we currently see on Maidan will be emancipated in the near future.

 

Some oppositional leaders will get preferential treatment from the West, while a select few will be used as technical actors during the consequent engagement of Ukraine with the West. European institutionalism is a good tool for gradual reforms, but with the rise of Euroscepticism, especially in the neighboring countries of Hungary and Slovakia, this will no longer be as easy as before. The “Palestine-ization” of Ukraine could worryingly occur. There is a serious present crisis affecting the state system, political processes, national identity, geopolitical thinking, and sovereignty. I think that the key decisions that we see in the upcoming days will address each of these topics. Then we will see a test that can gauge the actual sovereignty of Ukraine.

 

The Geopolitical Scale 

 

In this crisis, the main geopolitical actors are trying to get new experience in order to use it for their own benefits. Russia is following a clumsy strategy of engagement and acts more reactively than proactively. The EU seems to be a timid actor, as the Ukrainian vector had been a fault line in the European strategy for many years. Because of the economic crisis and problems with its own identity within the EU, Ukraine is perceived as a difficult partner.

 

The homogenization of the Ukrainian space would not go as easily as previously planned, and Ukrainian society is divided in their vision of the future. The US continues to battle against Russia and the Eurasian Union. For this reason, Ukraine is a good place to wage such a campaign. The timing is on the side of the US, because the Olympic Games in Sochi may distract the global public (in a similar fashion as the 2008 Olympic Games in China provided a cover for Saakashvili’s regime to begin military aggression against South Ossetia). In this situation, Ukraine loses its geopolitical maneuverability very quickly. The moderate balance that served as a useful political tool for Ukraine’s external activities during the presidency of Leonid Kuchma no longer works. This is because in a geopolitical sense, Ukraine does not understand the necessity of a strong alliance with Russia and the Eurasian bloc, as without it, the country will be slowly devoured by the EU and manipulated by the US. Separatism could also possibly occur in Ukraine.

 

The first mirage of this processes emerged in 2004, but now the situation is more complex and there will be more than two separate pieces if this scenario becomes reality. The Zakarpatie region (bordering Hungary and Slovakia) does not want to be in an independent Western Ukraine. The Crimea has some Tatars who generally supported the “Euromaidan” events, so a conflict in the Crimea Autonomous Republic is also possible there, especially when we take into account that many Tatars have already been waging jihad in Syria and now have experience in military insurgency.

 

Conclusion 

 

Any results of “Euromaidan” will be negative both for the Ukrainian people and regional geopolitics. The society inside of the country is divided, and part of it thinks in the framework of revenge and resentment (both sides of the current conflict). The process of reconciliation will not be fast and easy. The only possible way for a positive political development would be innovation, but the Ukrainian political elites are lazy and do not have enough intellectual skills and experience to devise such innovations, as neither do the opposition. European and US advisors will not bring winning ideas to the Ukrainian opposition. The radical nationalistic sector thinks only about the realization of their own ideas which are similar to xenophobia and Nazism. Because of the activity of these aforementioned elements, there is no possibility to marginalize and “freeze” them.

 

The oligarchs will also try to use radicals as a frontline to further their own profit. It is very strange that the nationalists cooperate so closely with the cosmopolitan oligarchs and the neoliberals in Ukraine, because the doctrine of Ukrainian nationalism is against oligarchy and globalization. This alliance thus symbolizes nothing besides the hypocrisy that is standard for business interests involved in politics. Therefore, the new state of a hypocritical Ukraine is the most plausible scenario that we will have in the future.

Comprendre l'antiracisme

Non au redressement de la nature humaine !...

Non au redressement de la nature humaine !...

Nous reproduisons ci-dessous un point de vue de Philippe Bilger consacré à l'enseignement de la théorie du genre à l'école. Philippe Bilger anime le blog Justice au singulier.

Ex: http://metapoinfos.hautetfort.com

ABCD de l’égalité: non au redressement de la nature humaine

Cela a commencé avec le mariage pour tous. On pouvait penser que le mimétisme européen avait joué avec un engagement présidentiel à l’évidence plus facile à tenir que l’inversion de la courbe du chômage.

Cela a continué avec l’affaire Dieudonné et les injonctions du ministre de l’Intérieur qui dépassaient, et de très loin, le cadre de sa mission pourtant si difficile à assumer quand on constate les piètres résultats de la lutte contre l’insécurité en 2013. Ce n’était pas à lui d’intimider les spectateurs des représentations de Dieudonné en leur faisant la morale et en les stigmatisant quasiment. Devaient-ils demander à Manuel Valls la permission de sortir le soir?

Cela dure avec la conception de la justice socialiste qui, fuyant le réel et ses incommodités, rêve de l’avenir, fantasme sur le futur et élabore ses projets, qui le demeurent, pour un peuple imaginaire merveilleusement à l’écoute et détaché des misères humaines, des tragédies causées par les crimes et les délits.

Cela s’aggrave avec la théorie du genre et, même si les démentis des ministres sont sincères, il y a une aspiration de ceux qui nous gouvernent à faire de l’école et de l’enseignement tout autre chose que ce qu’ils devraient être. Apprendre, lire, écrire, calculer, s’imprégner de notre Histoire de France, se former à la passion des grands auteurs et de la littérature, apprivoiser les langues étrangères, autant d’objectifs et d’ambitions qui, pour être d’une heureuse banalité, sont aujourd’hui peu ou prou relégués au profit d’une éducation même plus civique mais bouleversante, destinée à constituer les établissements pour des lieux d’expérimentation et d’indifférenciation des sexes.

Dans 600 écoles de dix académies, si on n’apprend pas aux garçons à devenir des filles, les nouveaux ABCD de l’éducation, de la grande section de maternelle au CM2, s’assignent pour but de lutter contre les stéréotypes filles-garçons. “Nous voulons tout de même qu’il y ait égalité entre les hommes et les femmes au sein de la société, dans le choix d’un métier”, a déclaré Vincent Peillon (Le Parisien).

Soit, mais si une telle ambition est légitime, incombe-t-il à l’école de superposer sans cesse à ses missions fondamentales de plus en plus négligées des prises de conscience et des ateliers vecteurs d’une bouillie éthique et sociale difficilement assimilable ? L’enseignement est-il voué à diffuser une certaine conception de la morale qui se résume peu ou prou à un féminisme même plus raisonnable ? Serait-il absurde de laisser aux parents, aux familles, aux vies amoureuses et à l’influence aussi bien forte que subtile des hommes et des femmes dans leurs relations quotidiennes, la charge, l’honneur de se faire progresser, d’avancer en lucidité, en égalité ? La vie privée du président serait sacrée mais les intrusions dans notre sphère d’existence tolérables ? Est-il normal de poser la main de l’Etat, sa volonté orientée, son idéologie plus sectaire – une seule vision, toujours, de l’humain, de sa liberté, de sa responsabilité – qu’équitable, sur un monde qui appelle d’autres démarches, et surtout pas de la politique même déguisée en soie, en velours et en injonctions patelines à suivre ? Pourquoi s’immisce-t-il dans ce qui nous regarde au premier chef ?

Avec ces insensibles ou ostensibles dérives, je perçois l’émergence, dans la démocratie selon François Hollande, d’îlots de totalitarisme mou, d’un caporalisme collectif qui s’en donne d’autant plus à coeur joie qu’à défaut de changer le monde, de réformer la France, le pouvoir n’a plus que la ressource de s’en prendre aux “fondamentaux”, aux permanences, aux stabilités, à l’ordre, aux évidences de la nature.

Il y a de manière dévastatrice, sur tous les plans, une obsession de rupture. Si, en effet, parfois le naturel mérite d’être amendé ou complété par le culturel, nous n’en sommes plus là avec ce gouvernement. Pourquoi a-t-il une telle hantise devant ce qui coule de source, ce qui a été admis durant des siècles, ce qui a fait ses preuves et qui autorise une politique digne de ce nom ? Pourquoi la nature et ses leçons inspirent-elles autant de dégoût à ce pouvoir ? Parce que ce qui est proche, accessible, irréfutable, légitime fait peur ? Qu’on met le désordre et l’agitation là où on peut ? Que, dépassés par la nature, on a pris le parti de lui faire la peau ? Que la culture est un beau mot qui à force d’être exploité tourne à vide mais qu’on prétend s’en servir comme arme de guerre contre l’intolérable pesanteur des comportements et des déterminismes parce que ceux-ci seraient en eux-mêmes pervers ?

Parce que cette gauche ne sait plus quoi faire pour se faire remarquer. Alors elle change l’insupportable cohérence née du passé et du pragmatisme.

Ce totalitarisme qui pointe est soft, certes, mais clair et net. Logique aussi : la liberté est en effet une ennemie. Partout.

Pourquoi prétendre, à toute force ou à coups fourrés, dénaturer, confondre, enjoindre, ne pas succomber à l’immédiate compassion pour les victimes, détourner les institutions et les services de leur but, déséquilibrer une société, dégrader les identités, instiller de la mauvaise conscience dans des liens qui se sont toujours construits en s’opposant, qui s’opposent mais se complètent, quel besoin a l’Etat de venir s’immiscer dans ce qui ne le concerne pas ?

J’écoute, je lis Vincent Peillon et Najat Vallaud-Belkacem. Le premier : “La lutte contre les stéréotypes de genre – les opinions toutes faites sur les femmes et les hommes – et l’homophobie doit être menée avec force à tous les niveaux d’enseignement”. La seconde : “La théorie du genre, qui explique “l’identité sexuelle” des individus autant par le contexte socio-culturel que par la biologie a pour vertu d’aborder la question des inadmissibles inégalités persistantes entre les hommes et les femmes ou encore de l’homosexualité et de faire oeuvre de pédagogie sur ces sujets” (Le Figaro).

Pourquoi pas ? Mais il y a des politiques et des ministres pour cela. Ce prêchi-prêcha n’a pas sa place à l’école.

Les homosexuels se marient parce qu’il convenait de fabriquer une égalité artificielle. Des spectateurs sont réprimandés parce qu’ils croyaient avoir le droit, en démocratie, d’assister à des spectacles selon leur bon plaisir. L’angélisme gouvernemental s’obstine à faire céder les évidentes compassions pour les victimes et la rigueur qu’elles appelleraient en retour face aux constructions idéologiques gangrenées par la fuite du réel et fondées sur un autre peuple que celui, insupportable, réclamant sécurité et justice. L’école, les petits enfants et les enseignants sont embarqués dans un processus qui vise à déconstruire et à troubler. Le progressisme niais non seulement accable mais fait perdre son temps à un service public qui devrait pouvoir se concentrer sur l’essentiel.

Le naturel, partout, est chassé au galop.

Je suis contre le RNH. Contre le “redressement de la nature humaine” dont ce pouvoir s’est fait une dangereuse spécialité.

Philippe Bilger (Causeur, 3 février 2014)

Eurosceptische vloedgolf op komst

Europa van twee snelheden

Eurosceptische vloedgolf op komst

Ex: http://www.doorbraak.be

Europa lijkt steeds meer een continent op drift. Enorme schuldenbergen – zowel privaat als publiek -, hoge werkeloosheid en een stijgend risico op deflatie. Is er iemand die weet hoe het verder moet? En dan is er nog de vraag wie na de verkiezingen van 25 mei de voornaamste stuurman zal zijn. Een metershoge eurosceptische golf lijkt in aantocht.

- Lawrence Urbain (03.02.2014)

Afgelopen weekeinde verzamelden de Europese liberalen te Brussel. Guy Verhofstadt werd daar officieel gekozen tot kandidaat-voorzitter van de Europese commissie. Op zich was dat alles behalve een tour de force aangezien de Vlaamse liberaal binnen de ALDE-fractie als enige kandidaat werd voorgedragen. De degelijke Olli Rehn stapte eerder al uit de liberale wedloop. Het feit dat Verhofstadt binnen de eigen fractie minder dan 80% van de stemmen achter zich krijgt, doet her en der dan ook wenkbrauwen fronsen. De liberale fractie is een splijtzwam.

Binnen de ALDE zijn er enerzijds de partijen die volmondig inzetten op een supranationale staatsstructuur met bijbehorende federalisering. Progressief-liberale partijen als OpenVld en het Nederlandse D’66 maken deel uit van deze vleugel. Anderzijds is er een politieke groep die wil kiezen voor verregaande samenwerking, veelal op economisch vlak, zonder dat dit noodzakelijk dient uit te monden in een volledig gefedereerde Europese Unie. De Nederlandse conservatief-liberale VVD, alsook de Finse Centrumpartij van Rehn, alliëren zich veelal aan deze tweede, meer gematigde, groep. Ook het merendeel van de LibDems in het Verenigde Koninkrijk wenst een minder radicale koers te varen dan de lijn die Guy Verhofstadt voorstaat. Regelmatig komt er vanuit de brede basis van partijen dan ook tegenkanting ten overstaan van de Belgische oud-premier. Vaak komen deze geluiden uit landen als Nederland en Finland. Niet toevallig de nettobetalers van de EU. Denken we maar aan Mark Verheijen, EU-woordvoerder voor de VVD, die een tijd geleden Verhofstadt nog ‘een gevaarlijke man’ noemde. Ook een politieke coryfee als Frits Bolkestein, stelde meermaals dat ‘Verhofstadt blaft tegen de maan’.

Winst en verlies

Verwacht wordt dat de liberale fractie op 25 mei gedecimeerd zal worden. VVD in Nederland, Freie Demokratische Partei in Duitsland, LibDems in het Verenigd Koninkrijk, OpenVld bij ons… allen staan ze op (zwaar) verlies in de peilingen. De liberalen zullen zich bij een slechte uitslag achter de oren krabben en mogelijk hun politieke lijn ten overstaan van het EU-project moeten bijsturen. Het wordt tevens afwachten hoe goed de felste tegenstanders van een federale Europese Unie zullen scoren. Zowel de Ukip van Nigel Farrage, het Front National van Marine Le Pen en de PVV van Geert Wilders zullen winst boeken. Voorts is het zeker ook nuttig om met partijen als Alternative Für Deutschland en N-VA rekening te houden. Het lijkt bijzonder onwaarschijnlijk dat AfD aansluiting vindt bij de liberalen van Verhofstadt. De partij wil een splitsing van de eurozone, een voorstel dat voor zowat alle liberale partijen onbespreekbaar is. Eveneens is de positie van de N-VA binnen de veelal linkse fractie van regionalisten en groenen nagenoeg onhoudbaar geworden. Bart Staes (Groen) stelde onlangs dat de verzameling van regionalisten en groenen in het Europese parlement geen winkel is waar je zomaar binnen en buiten loopt. Als de N-VA deel wil blijven uitmaken van deze technische fractie, dan zal iemand als Johan Van Overtveldt zijn toon dienen te matigen.

Kortom: Er zal na 25 mei ferm geschoven en bijgeschaafd worden. Zowel binnen als tussen de fracties. Niet zozeer de uitslag van de verkiezingen is interessant, maar vooral de gevolgen die het de dagen en weken erna met zich zal meebrengen. Een splitsing van de Europese muntunie mag (momenteel) dan wel afgewend zijn, een eurofederalisme met mutualisering van de staatsschulden en eurobonds is nog niet voor morgen. Hoe graag de combattieve Guy Verhofstadt dat ook zou willen.

 

Greg Johnson’s New Right vs. Old Right

Foreword to Greg Johnson’s New Right vs. Old Right

By Kevin MacDonald

Ex: http://www.counter-currents.com

Perhaps it’s best to start off with what New Right vs. Old Right ^[2]is not. Greg Johnson does not assail his readers with statistics to prove the Jewish role in the decline and impending fall of whites in America and elsewhere. He does not discuss the corruption of the media and the academic world and how they got that way. He does not discuss data on race differences in IQ and criminality to explain the behavior of non-white America. He doesn’t aim to refute the current mantra that race is nothing more than a social construct designed to provide white people with unearned privilege.

Those intellectual battles are over, and we have won, although the mainstream media and academic world continue to promulgate cultural Marxist blather as if it were a set of truths set in stone. The starting point for NRvOR is that the media, the academic world, and the political process are hopelessly corrupt. So where do we go from here?

Greg Johnson’s basic point is that we must work to create a metapolitics of explicit white identity—that is, a movement that will develop “the intellectual and cultural foundations for effective White Nationalist politics in North America, so that we can ultimately create a white homeland or homelands on this continent.”

Greg is one of the reasons why I think this is a feasible project. A very great reason for optimism is that there are so many intelligent, well-spoken people who “get it”—who understand that whites around the world are in decline and that there will be dire consequences if whites are unable to establish white homelands. People like Greg Johnson are part of a hugely important trend. I have recently met a great many young, intelligent, well-educated, and well-spoken people at conferences dedicated to activism on behalf of the interests of white America—the exact opposite of the image of uneducated, violent males sporting swastikas and missing a couple of teeth that has been so carefully crafted by our hostile elites.

Despite growing up with a constant barrage of multicultural, anti-white propaganda beginning in elementary school, these individuals understand that at this point America is an unfolding disaster as whites are increasingly displaced throughout the economic and political spectrum. They are acutely aware that whites are a minority of births in America and that whites will be a minority within their lifetimes—a minority with diminished prospects and increasingly victimized by the non-white majority, many of whom retain historical grudges against white America. It is very likely that the America of the future will be beset with chronic conflict among different racial/ethnic groups. The idea that America or the West can avoid such conflicts as their societies become ever more factionalized is magical and utopian.

The goal, therefore, is not, a “supremacism” that is in any way invidious. Rather, “the best way to ensure peace and good will among peoples and preserve human racial, cultural, and religious diversity is to give each distinct group a homeland where it can live and develop according to its own distinct nature and destiny.”

This is an attitude that seems to me to be pervasive in the white advocacy movement. It at once defuses a very effective bit of rhetoric of the Left—repeated with predictable regularity by organizations like the Southern Poverty Law Center. We are white advocates, people who, as Greg phrases it in several places following Michael Polignano, “take our own side” in issues of racial/ethnic conflict. And in taking our own side, we are doing exactly what racial/ethnic groups have done from time immemorial. No one accuses the Koreans of “Korean supremacism” for adopting policies aimed at retaining Korean demographic and cultural predominance. And imagine the horror by Western elites at a proposal to flood African countries with whites so that native Africans cease to be a political majority.

Make no mistake about it. The policies that are making whites minorities in lands they have dominated for hundreds or (in the case of Europe) thousands of years are not driven by utopian dreams of a raceless future, except among gullible, intimidated whites. The non-whites who are so enthusiastically embracing the decline of white political and cultural power are driven by hatred toward whites as a people and as a culture. This is a major theme of my writing on Jewish influence, and apparent as well in a host of non-white intellectuals and activists.

Greg Johnson received his Ph.D. in philosophy, and it shows. His forte is the well-developed argument presented in a lucid, easily understood style. There will be no complaints about this book being filled with turgid prose. And I can’t find any major disagreements.

I was particularly struck by several points. For example, unlike the European New Right, Greg is an advocate of white racial nationalism:

insofar as the breakdown of European national identities and the blending of European stocks in our North American context forces us (1) to give greater place to biological race and other deep roots of common European identity, and (2) to put greater emphasis on the Jewish question, given the role of American Jewry in promoting anti-white policies both in the United States and in white countries worldwide.

Right. As a biologist, there is always the tendency to see matters like race as a decontextualized matter. DNA, after all, is DNA. But American whites are indeed a very intermixed lot—a successful example of a European melting pot. In effect, we have created a new biological reality not present in any European country.

Nevertheless, we must remember that Europeans are in general closely related biologically, particularly in the north and east of Europe, as recent data continue to show. Indeed,

typical pairs of individuals drawn from across Europe have a good chance of sharing long stretches of [identical genes] by descent, even when they are separated by thousands of kilometers. We can furthermore conclude that pairs of individuals across Europe are reasonably likely to share common genetic ancestors within the last 1,000 years, and are certain to share many within the last 2,500 years.[1]

The white race is indeed a biological as well as a cultural reality. This biological reality forms a powerful basis for a scientifically based understanding of a commonality of interests wherever whites are living, whether in Europe or in the European diaspora.

And, yes, although the organized Jewish community has pursued the same set of policies favoring displacement-level immigration and multiculturalism throughout the West, Jewish influence varies in different Western societies. This brings up the need for developing a good model of cultural diffusion within the West. For example, academic culture is self-consciously international. If indeed the main impetus for the leftward shift is Jewish involvement in the Left beginning in the United States with the movements described in The Culture of Critique, it is not at all surprising that this culture spread to other areas with less Jewish influence given the pre-eminence of the U.S. in the post-World War II Western world. An aspiring academic in, say, Norway or Finland, who subscribes to a White Nationalist worldview would find himself ostracized from international academic societies, while countrymen who subscribed to the reigning cultural Marxism would find international recognition.

The same phenomenon occurs in the political realm, as, for example, when Austrian politician Jörg Haider joined a coalition government in 2000. This resulted in huge international pressure, with EU member states refusing to cooperate with the Austrian government and Israel withdrawing its ambassador. The assault on the Golden Dawn party in Greece is a more recent example. Any Western government that opposed continued immigration and multiculturalism would be subjected to similar pressures.

The culture of Western suicide exists throughout the white world, and dominating the most powerful country in the West goes a very long way to dominating the entire Western world, particularly given the fact that Jews often control media even in countries with very tiny Jewish populations, as with the Bonnier family in Norway and Sweden.

Greg does not shy away from discussing difficult issues having to do with National Socialism, supporting the ideal of an organic, hierarchical, meritocratic society dedicated to advancing the interests of whites and rejecting “party politics, totalitarianism, terrorism, imperialism, and genocide.”

I agree entirely. It’s a very good strategy to confront such issues head-on rather than to leave them to be discussed solely by our enemies. It’s the same with the holocaust. The holocaust is simply not important for white advocacy, and whatever happened is not the responsibility of any living whites; it’s something that must be simply “stepped over,” to use Jonathan Bowden’s felicitous phrase. Even if the holocaust were proved to have never occurred to the satisfaction of one and all, there is more than enough resentment by Jews about their past in Europe and the United States to fuel the hostility toward the West that has been such a prominent feature of the organized Jewish community and so many influential Jewish individuals. The reality of Jews as a hostile elite aiming to displace white elites throughout the West would not change at all.

I should think that it would be uncontroversial that the white advocacy movement must be metapolitical, since there is a crying need to build up a self-confident, prideful culture than can eventually become mainstream. Greg’s argument that it is premature to pursue nationalist party politics—that at this point the money can be better used in education and organizing—will be more controversial. The question is whether these are really incompatible goals and, as Greg rightly notes, “We share the same broad aims, but we differ as to the best means of achieving them. We need to acknowledge these differences frankly, then divide our camp and pursue our common aims by the various paths that seem best to us.” Different ways should be attempted in the hope that eventually something will work. In the meantime, we must be as inclusive as possible.

In fact, nationalist parties have made substantial headway in Europe, and many observers are expecting a significant representation of nationalist parties to result from the 2014 European Parliament elections. With increasing success, the messages of these parties have inevitably become more widely known. Significantly, these parties have not developed with an explicitly pro-white or pro-ethnic nationalism agenda, but have rather attempted to stay under the radar of political correctness on race and on Jewish influence, basing themselves on an implicit ethnic nationalism that opposes immigration and multiculturalism for a whole host of reasons apart from the danger of ethnic swamping that is in fact lurking in the background. Not surprisingly, these messages are often most effective with the white working class, the group that has suffered the most from the immigration tsunami.

Indeed, I believe that model of change that I think most probable is that the revolution will begin in Europe with the success of one of these parties, particularly if it occurs in a pivotal country like France where there is a clear possibility that the Front National will obtain power, and in a context where other nationalist parties have substantial representation in other areas of Europe so that an effective countermovement of isolation and ostracism cannot develop. I think we are rapidly approaching such a situation now. Compared to America, Europe has the advantage of very ancient cultures and identities that are mortally endangered by this new dispensation. Once such a party gains power, then more explicit messages of ethnic and racial interests may become more acceptable, paving the way for more the dissemination of a theoretical framework based explicitly on ethnic interests.

I worry that in the absence of near-term political goals, a purely metapolitical movement is in danger of being a detached inward-looking, even self-serving elite. For one thing, the Left is completely in control of the academic scene and very actively— indeed passionately—polices any deviation from political correctness. This is quite unlike the situation in American universities where Franz Boas was able to control academic anthropology by the early 20th century, and several of the New York Intellectuals obtained positions at elite universities well before 1960. This is a very formidable barrier to the spread of an elite culture of white identity given the close relationship between universities and intellectual life in the West. There was no complaint from the academic world when the 1965 immigration law opened up immigration to the United States to all peoples of the world. Indeed, in several Western countries, Australia comes to mind, the movement to open up immigration to non-whites originated in the universities.

Even in America, with so many barriers against us, political action inside or outside the context of the electoral process could be a positive force for change. Americans need to see noisy, intelligent, attractive, committed white people marching in the street with signs opposed to immigration, multiculturalism, and the strident ethnic politics of other groups; there is a need for a steady drumbeat of political advertising where pro-white themes, whether explicitly white or not, are repeated over and over to the point that they become part of the furniture of life even if winning elections remains a distant goal.

Such movements may be particularly important for whites with less education who may be turned off by an elite culture of white identity. The white working class in fact has been the prime loser in the cultural changes promoted by our hostile elites. A great many of them are angry and, with less to lose than so many well-educated whites, they are an important natural constituency.

In any case, I wholeheartedly agree that we have to be open to a diversity of approaches.

Greg’s essay, “The Moral Factor,” raises the important issue of moral motivation which I think is an aspect of Western uniqueness. One does not see Chinese people agonizing over the fact that the Han Chinese greatly expanded their territory at the expense of other peoples. Nor does one see the Bantu peoples of Africa worrying about the ethics of displacing other African peoples as they spread far and wide from their homeland in Central Africa, including into South Africa where their treatment at the hands of white South Africans became Exhibit A for white evil during the apartheid era; nor do the Bantu-speaking peoples agonize about the widespread practice of slavery in Africa. Arabs do not apologize about their conquests in the name of Islam or their centuries-old role in slavery and the slave trade. As Greg notes, the Spaniards have apologized for the Reconquista that expelled the Muslims from Spain, but there are no apologies from the Muslims for the Conquista.

Whites are the only people to abolish slavery, and a great many of the activists and the fundamental popular sentiments so crucial in the ultimate victory over slavery were motivated by moral idealism, including especially empathy for slaves.[2] They did so despite very real costs to many individuals and to society as a whole, and all this occurred before the rise of the Jewish hostile elite. Indeed, this unique characteristic of whites is exploited by Jewish intellectuals for their own hateful ends. My basic theory is that this is a holdover of Northern European hunter-gatherer culture, where one’s status in a group is based on reputation for moral behavior (honesty, fair dealing) rather than on kinship relations—an aspect of Western individualism.

So I agree that “even if White Nationalism is politically meaningful, people will resist it if they think it is immoral. But they will move heaven and earth to establish white homelands if they think it is the right thing to do.” We must win the moral battle. The problem is that “our people overwhelmingly believe that our cause is unjust.” And yet, the moral argument for white survival is obvious and compelling. Fundamentally, our basic survival as a people and as a culture are threatened. As Greg notes, “the present system is not merely anti-white, it is genocidally anti-white.”

That’s enough for me to mark the present system as utterly depraved morally. It is profoundly immoral to inflict multiculturalism upon the white populations of the West, given that  ethnic conflict is absolutely predictable, based upon everything we know of the bloody history of ethnically divided societies. This is especially the case given that support for multiculturalism and support for their own demographic and political eclipse have never been majority views among whites. Whether in Australia or New Zealand, North America or Europe—in every case throughout the West, immigration and multi-culturalism have been projects of media, academic, and political elites. These changes have been top-down, not at all bottom-up.

We must pay more attention to the morality of infringing upon the legitimate rights and interests of the white majority. Everyone has rights and everyone has interests. The interests and rights of whites as a majority are no less morally legitimate than those of any other group. Whites must jettison the ideal of moral universalism and ask what is good for the future of whites.

On the basis of this collection of essays, Greg Johnson has a compelling vision of the impending disaster facing the people and culture of the West and what we can do about it right now. It is presented in a highly readable, well-argued manner that at once shows the power and confidence of the developing metapolitical culture of a Western renaissance. I wholeheartedly recommend it.

January 15, 2014

Note:

Greg Johnson’s New Right vs. Old Right is available for purchase here ^[2].

Notes

1. Ralph Peter and Graham Coop, “The Geography of Recent Genetic Ancestry across Europe,” PLOS Biology, vol. 11, no. 5 (May 7, 2013): e1001555. doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.100155

http://www.plosbiology.org/article/fetchObject.action?uri=info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pbio.1001555&representation=PDF ^[3]

2. Kevin MacDonald, “Empathy and Moral Universalism as Components of White Pathology: The Movement to Abolish Slavery in England,” The Occidental Quarterly, vol. 13, no. 2 (Summer 2013), pp. 39–63.

---

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URL to article: http://www.counter-currents.com/2014/02/foreword-to-greg-johnsons-new-right-vs-old-right/

URLs in this post:

[1] Image: http://www.counter-currents.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/NewRightOldRight1crop1.jpg

[2] New Right vs. Old Right : https://secure.counter-currents.com/new-right-vs-old-right/

[3] http://www.plosbiology.org/article/fetchObject.action?uri=info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pbio.1001555&representation=PDF: http://www.plosbiology.org/article/fetchObject.action?uri=info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pbio.1001555&representation=PDF

 

New Right vs. Old Right

Greg Johnson
Foreword by Kevin MacDonald
San Francisco: Counter-Currents, 2013
248 pages

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Dr. Greg Johnson draws upon the ideas of the European New Right to promote a new approach to White Nationalist politics in North America. New Right vs. Old Right collects 32 essays in which Dr. Johnson sets out his vision of White Nationalist “metapolitics” and distinguishes it from Fascism and National Socialism (the “Old Right”), as well as conservatism and classical liberalism (the “Phony Right”).

Dr. Johnson rejects the Old Right’s party politics, totalitarianism, imperialism, and genocide in favor of the metapolitical project of constructing a hegemonic White Nationalist consciousness within a pluralistic society. He argues that White Nationalists are too dependent on the model of hierarchical organizations and need also to work on creating resilient lateral networks. He offers New Rightist answers to a number of disputed questions within the White Nationalist community, including white culpability for our decline, Hitler and National Socialism, the Jewish question, the holocaust, the role of women, Christianity vs. paganism, and the relationships of populism, elitism, and democracy. He sets out some basic principles for creating a growing, resilient, networked movement. Finally, he criticizes distractions and dead-ends like “mainstreaming,” conservatism, “premature” populism, and political violence.

Engagingly written and constructively critical, Greg Johnson’s New Right vs. Old Right is an important contribution to the emerging North American New Right.

Praise for New Right vs. Old Right

“Greg Johnson’s basic point is that we must work to create a metapolitics of explicit white identity—that is, a movement that will develop ‘the intellectual and cultural foundations for effective White Nationalist politics in North America, so that we can ultimately create a white homeland or homelands on this continent.’ Greg is one of the reasons why I think this is a feasible project. . . . Greg received his Ph.D. in philosophy, and it shows. His forte is the well-developed argument presented in a lucid, easily understood style. Nobody can complain about this book being filled with turgid prose. And I can’t find any major disagreements.”

—Kevin MacDonald, from the Foreword

“In New Right vs. Old Right, Greg Johnson lays out his vision for a pro-white movement more focused on ideas, education, and communication than on politics or thuggery. True to this vision, his writing is extremely accessible. Throughout this collection, Johnson breaks down complex philosophical concepts and challenging ideas into tight, efficient sentences and effective explanations. Johnson doesn’t drone on trying to sound clever. Like an enthusiastic professor, he truly wants his readers to understand why he believes it is morally right for whites—and all peoples—to determine their own collective destinies.”

—Jack Donovan, author of The Way of Men

“Dr. Greg Johnson’s New Right vs. Old Right delineates the differences between two ‘Rights,’ without repudiating the common philosophical origins of both in opposing egalitarianism and other passé ideologies that continue to dominate much of the world. The primary value of this collection of essays, however, is that Dr. Johnson asks the perennial question, from our side: “what is truth?” In doing so he lays the foundations for a morality of the New Right. This book is therefore unique in the English-speaking Rightist milieu that was, for much of the post-1945 era, poorly served in comparison to its counterparts in Europe. As such, Dr. Johnson’s book will be of relevance to many beyond the North American New Right, of which he is a founding father.”

—Kerry Bolton, author of Artists of the Right

“Greg Johnson’s New Right vs. Old Right is an important compilation that describes the North American New Right and explains how ‘this thing of ours’ differs from both the Old Right and the European New Right.

“Old Right terms like ‘National Socialism’ and ‘fascism’ do not accurately describe what we believe. We reject the narrow nationalism of the Old Right in favor of pan-Europeanism, and we also reject the totalitarianism and apocalyptic visions of bloodshed and genocide that are associated, rightly or wrongly, with Old Right thought and that are promoted by modern-day Nazis.

“On the other hand, the North American New Right differs from our European New Right counterparts: we reject their emphasis on narrow nationalist particularisms, their Continental existentialism that eschews Anglo empiricism, their naïve knee-jerk anti-Americanism, and their weakness on biological race and ‘the JQ.’

“The North American New Right is a new movement, neither constrained by a reactionary idealization of the nationalist past, nor beholden to the intellectual errors of the today’s Old World nationalists.

“You may not agree with everything in this volume. But there is no rigid ‘party line.’ There’s much room for discussion, disagreement, and debate as we articulate our worldview. We are still feeling our way around in the dark that precedes the new dawn, attempting to find our way on the proper path.

“This work represents an important signpost along that path. So, agree or disagree, I am confident that the readers will find this volume useful and illuminating. I invite the reader to join us in our crusade to reshape the future.”

—Ted Sallis

CONTENTS

Foreword by Kevin MacDonald

1. Introduction

Politics and Metapolitics

2. New Right vs. Old Right
3. Hegemony
4. Metapolitics and Occult Warfare
5. Theory and Practice
6. Reflections on Carl Schmitt’s The Concept of the Political
7. The Relevance of Philosophy to Political Change
8. The Moral Factor
9. The Psychology of Conversion

Disputed Questions

10. Our Fault?
11. The Burden of Hitler
12. Dealing with the Holocaust
13. White Nationalism & Jewish Nationalism
14. The Christian Question in White Nationalism
15. Racial Civil Religion
16. That Old-Time Liberalism
17. The Woman Question in White Nationalism
18. Notes on Populism, Elitism, & Democracy
19. The Perils of Positive Thinking
20. The Politics of Resentment
21. “Worse is Better”

Building a Movement

22. Learning from the Left
23. Explicit White Nationalism
24. Secret Agents
25. The Psychology of Apostasy
26. First, Do No Harm

Distractions and Dead Ends

27. White Nationalists and the Political “Mainstream”
28. Why Conservatives STILL Can’t Win
29. Status Competition, Jews, and Racialist Mainstreaming
30. The Laugh Test
31. Premature Populism
32. On Violence

Index

About the Author

Greg Johnson, Ph.D., is the Editor-in-Chief of Counter-Currents Publishing Ltd. and its journal North American New Right. He is author of Confessions of a Reluctant Hater (San Francisco: Counter-Currents, 2010) and Trevor Lynch’s White Nationalist Guide to the Movies (San Francisco: Counter-Currents, 2012).

 

L’Europe de la bourgeoisie "libérale", de ses juristes et moralistes

L’Europe de la bourgeoisie "libérale", de ses juristes et moralistes

 

Un monde acéphale et sans pensée politique

Jacques-Yves Rossignol
Ex: http://metamag.fr 

Dans ses grandes lignes, l'histoire économique, contrairement aux théories professées par doctes enseignants en grandes écoles, experts  es-médias ou hommes politiques sortis de l’ENA, est très simple à comprendre. Evidemment, ici, ce sera un résumé dense et serré. Et un peu inhabituel.

Du mercantilisme au libéralisme

Autrefois, jadis, l'enrichissement était bon enfant. Tout comme la guerre ou la torture d'ailleurs. On ne pensait pas  faire du mal par sadisme ou par perversion. On pensait encore moins s'enrichir par des moyens compliqués et tortueux. On serrait simplement son trésor (que l'on avait par exemple raflé à celui dont on avait fracassé le crâne) envers soi.  Parfois on troquait ou achetait ce qu'on ne pouvait pas fabriquer ou dérober.

Un beau jour, on s'est aperçu que le capital s'accroissait par sa circulation. Par exemple : il n'est pas catastrophique d'acheter des marchandises à un prix exorbitant à A si je peux les revendre à un prix invraisemblable à B. Tout a changé : l'économie est devenue morale. Ce nouveau mode de fonctionnement parfaitement hypocrite n'étant possible que si l'on s'efforce d'entretenir de "bonnes relations" avec ses "partenaires économiques". On ne pille plus : on temporise, on berce, on flagorne.  Ainsi est née la mentalité à l'intérieur de laquelle nous vivons toujours : l'hypocrisie à fondement économique. Cette hypocrisie généralisée va même devenir une science : ce sera l'économie politique, la science de la duplicité morale, la seule science incapable d'avouer son fondement ultime (la défense inconditionnelle de la propriété privée, la cupidité portée à son point d'incandescence). Cette science va apprendre à tous et à chacun l'art de temporiser, de supporter et de flatter les gens que l'on rêve d'escroquer, de piétiner et d'anéantir.

Alors naîtra cette étrange idée d'humanité : l'humanité" c'est finalement l'ensemble des gens que l'on peut tenter d'escroquer, de tromper ou de voler d'une manière hypocrite et indicible. Et le discours humanitaire suivra : c'est l'ensemble des bavardages emphatiques chargés de dissimuler cette réalité d'une concurrence généralisée aussi épouvantable et décivilisatrice que souriante et imperturbable. La religion s'adaptera enfin à ces nouvelles nécessités : de naïve et candide, elle deviendra onctueuse et hypocrite, une façade permettant de dissimuler tout ce qui doit être dissimulé dans l'ordre de l'usure et de la pingrerie. 

En un mot comme en mille : on surenchérira constamment sur la morale dans les buts les plus immoraux. Ceci explique le flot de bavardage moral auquel nous sommes soumis aujourd'hui en capitalisme pourrissant. Le jeu habituel consistait à mener de vastes opérations de police contre ceux qui refusaient plus ou moins de participer à la sympathique hypocrisie décrite ci-dessus (les vendéens, les indiens d'Amérique, par exemple, ont bien connu ceci) puis à être pris soudain d'une commotion morale poignante à propos d'événements sans véritable rapport avec l'affaire en cause. Les braves gens n'osaient alors pas trop poser de questions face à une telle démonstration de moralité. Et l'on pouvait recommencer l'opération : dressage intensif à l'économie "libérale", épanchement de bons sentiments.

L'économie mécanisée : le crétinisme

Mais peu à peu les choses se sont compliquées : la surproduction de marchandises à écouler (à "réaliser") est devenue chronique. Il a fallu tromper les peuples les plus solvables d'une nouvelle manière, encore moins avouable que le baratinage moral. Il a fallu très exactement les crétiniser. Le seul moyen de continuer à faire des profits, c'était en effet le maintien des consommateurs solvables en situation d'aliénation permanente par l'industrie culturelle ("les médias"). Triste mais véridique !

Changement total de paradigme ! Bientôt on n'aura plus besoin d'hypocrisie affectée et compliquée : il n'y aura plus que des crétins consommant mécaniquement la pacotille imposée par le capitalisme pourrissant, même dans les pays de vieille civilisation ! Mais là, les occidentaux sont carrément les grands perdants. Parce que notre domaine, là où l'on était à l'aise, c'était quand même quelque chose de l'ordre de la pensée. 

Le capitalisme classique n'avait pas entièrement porté atteinte à la pensée. En capitalisme culturel ("médiatique"et surtout "musical'), la pensée cohérente est devenue impossible. Alors nous nous retrouvons dans une situation imprévue : abrutis et incapables d'identifier les conflits, les guerres menées contre nous. Incapables même d'identifier nos véritables assassins : la bourgeoisie "libérale", ses juristes et ses moralistes.

Nous nous retrouvons acéphales et donc sans pensée politique et çà, c'est quand même très ennuyeux.

«L’échec des élites menace notre avenir»

Martin Wolf :

«L’échec des élites menace notre avenir»

Ex: http://fortune.fdesouche.com

Le divorce entre responsabilité et pouvoir porte atteinte à la notion même de gouvernance démocratique.

Les européens commémorent cette année le centenaire du déclenchement de la Première Guerre mondiale. Ce désastre a été le point de départ de trois décennies de sauvagerie et de stupidité, qui ont en grande partie détruit ce que la civilisation européenne recelait de positif au début du XXe siècle. Pour finir, comme Churchill le prédisait en juin 1940, “le Nouveau Monde, avec tout son pouvoir et sa puissance”, devait venir “à la rescousse libérer l’ancien”.

Les échecs des élites politiques, économiques et intellectuelles de l’Europe ont produit la catastrophe subie par leurs peuples de 1914 à 1945. C’est leur ignorance et leurs préjugés qui l’ont permise : des idées erronées et des valeurs négatives étaient à l’œuvre. Figurait parmi celles-ci la croyance atavique que les empires étaient non seulement brillants et rentables, mais que la guerre était glorieuse et contrôlable. C’est comme si une envie de suicide collectif avait saisi les dirigeants des grandes nations.

Les sociétés avancées comptent sur leurs élites pour que les choses, à défaut d’aller bien, ne deviennent au moins pas pire. Lorsque les élites échouent, l’ordre politique a de bonnes chances de s’effondrer, ce qui s’est produit pour les puissances vaincues à l’issue de la Première Guerre mondiale. Les empires russe, allemand et autrichien ont disparu, laissant à leur place de faibles héritiers, bientôt remplacés par les dictatures.

Le premier conflit mondial a également détruit les fondations de l’économie du XIXe siècle : le libre-échange et l’étalon-or. Les tentatives de les restaurer ont entraîné de nouveaux échecs des élites, autant américaines qu’ européennes cette fois. La Grande Dépression a fortement contribué à créer les conditions politiques de la Deuxième Guerre mondiale. Suivi de la Guerre froide, affrontement des démocraties avec une dictature engendrée par la Première Guerre mondiale.

Les conséquences épouvantables des échecs des élites ne sont pas surprenantes. Un contrat implicite existe entre les élites et le peuple : les premières disposent des privilèges et avantages liés au pouvoir et à la propriété ; le peuple, en échange, a droit à la sécurité et, à l’époque contemporaine, à une certaine prospérité. Si les élites échouent, elles courent le risque d’être remplacées.

Le remplacement des élites économiques, bureaucratiques et intellectuelles qui ont échoué est toujours tendu. Mais du moins le remplacement des élites politiques est-il rapide et propre dans une démocratie. Sous la dictature, cela prend d’habitude beaucoup de temps et c’est presque toujours sanglant. Il ne s’agit pas que d’Histoire.

C’est toujours vrai aujourd’hui. Si l’on veut tirer des enseignements de la Première Guerre mondiale pour le monde que nous connaissons, ce n’est pas à l’Europe actuelle qu’il faut nous intéresser, mais au Moyen-Orient, à la frontière de l’Inde et du Pakistan, et aux relations tendues entre une Chine en plein essor et ses voisins. Dans tous ces cas, un mauvais calcul aux conséquences meurtrières est possible, bien que le militarisme et l’impérialisme soient fort heureusement des idéologies bien moins présentes qu’il y a un siècle.

De nos jours, les nations puissantes acceptent l’idée selon laquelle la paix est plus propice à la prospérité qu’un illusoire butin de guerre. Mais cela ne signifie pas pour autant, hélas, que les pays occidentaux sont à l’abri des échecs de leurs élites. Ils sont au contraire en train de les vivre. Mais leurs échecs sont ceux d’une paix mal gérée, pas ceux de la guerre.

On peut constater trois échecs

Tout d’abord les élites économiques, financières, intellectuelles et politiques ont en grande partie mal apprécié les conséquences d’une libéralisation financière précipitée. Bercées par l’illusion de marchés financiers capables de se stabiliser d’eux-mêmes, elles ont non seulement permis, mais encouragé un gigantesque et profitable pari (pour la finance) sur l’expansion de la dette.

L’élite des décideurs n’a pas su évaluer correctement les perspectives de gain en jeu et, par dessus tout, les risques de crise systémique. Lorsque celle-ci s’est produite, elle a eu des conséquences désastreuses à plus d’un titre : l’économie s’est effondrée, le chômage a bondi, et l’endettement public a explosé.

L’élite dirigeante a été discréditée par son échec à empêcher cette catastrophe. L’élite financière a été discréditée parce qu’elle a dû être secourue.

L’élite politique a été discréditée par son empressement à financer ce sauvetage. L’élite intellectuelle (à savoir les économistes) a été discréditée par son échec à anticiper la crise et à se mettre d’accord sur ce qu’il fallait faire une fois qu’elle a eu lieu. Le sauvetage était nécessaire.

Mais ceux qui croient que les puissants ont sacrifié les contribuables aux intérêts des coupables ont raison. Ensuite nous constatons depuis trois décennies l’émergence d’une élite économique et financière mondialisée. Ses membres ont de moins en moins d’attaches avec les pays qui l’ont produite.

Cette évolution s’accompagne de l’affaiblissement de ce qui cimente la démocratie : la notion de citoyenneté.

La redistribution limitée des profits de la croissance économique renforce cette évolution. Elle conduit à une société de plus en plus ploutocratique.

Une certaine dose de ploutocratie est inévitable dans des démocraties bâties, comme il se doit, sur des économies de marché. Mais tout est toujours une question de dosage. Si la masse de la population considère que ses élites économiques gagnent beaucoup pour des résultats médiocres et qu’elles ne pensent qu’à elles-mêmes, en misant sur l’aide publique lorsque les affaires vont mal, les liens se rompent. Il est bien possible que nous soyons au début de ce pourrissement.

Enfin en créant l’euro, les européens ont fait passer leur projet des travaux pratiques à quelque chose de bien plus important pour les gens : le destin de leur monnaie. Rien n’était plus prévisible que les frictions entre européens sur la façon dont leur monnaie était bien ou mal gérée.

La crise financière, qui était probablement inévitable, entraîne à présent une foule de problèmes qui ne sont pas encore résolus. Les difficultés économiques des pays touchés par la crise sont évidentes : forte récession, chômage extrêmement élevé, émigration massive et dette trop lourde sont des menaces.

Tout cela est connu. Pour le moment c’est le désordre institutionnel de la zone euro qui est le moins souligné. Le pouvoir y est à présent concentré dans les mains des gouvernements des pays créanciers, principalement l’Allemagne, et d’un trio de bureaucraties non élues : la Commission européenne, la Banque centrale européenne et le Fonds monétaire international.

Les citoyens des pays touchés par la crise n’ont aucune influence sur celles-ci. Les responsables politiques qui leur doivent des comptes n’ont aucun pouvoir. Ce divorce entre responsabilité et pouvoir porte atteinte à la notion même de gouvernance démocratique. La crise de la zone euro n’est pas seulement économique.

Elle est aussi institutionnelle. Aucun de ces échecs ne ressemble en quoi que ce soit aux folies de 1914. Mais ils sont suffisamment importants pour semer le doute sur nos élites. La conséquence en est l’apparition d’un populisme menaçant dans les pays occidentaux, en particulier le populisme xénophobe de droite. La caractéristique des populistes de droite, c’est qu’ils sont rétrogrades.

Si les élites continuent d’échouer, les populistes en colère continueront leur progression.

Les élites doivent faire mieux. Sinon la fureur populaire risque de tous nous submerger.

Le Nouvel Economiste