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22:33 Publié dans Entretiens, Histoire, Livre, Livre | Lien permanent | Commentaires (0) | Tags : saint-empire, empire, reich, allemagne, histoire, entretien | 
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20:56 Publié dans Entretiens, Histoire, Livre, Livre | Lien permanent | Commentaires (0) | Tags : entretien, histoire, livre, andalousie, espagne, islamisme, dario fernandez-morera, reconquista | | del.icio.us | | Digg | Facebook
The very mention of the Silk Roads creates an instant image: camel caravans trudging through the high plains and deserts of central Asia, carrying silks, spices and philosophies to Europe and the larger Mediterranean. And while these ancient routes may remain embedded in our imagination, they have, over the past few centuries, slowly faded inIMPORTANCE
. The region today is home to despotic regimes, failing states and endless conflict. But historian Peter Frankopan thinks that the Silk Roads "are rising again."
In his new book, The Silk Roads, Frankopan has created something that forces us to sit up and reconsider the world and the way we've always thought about it. Western scholarship, he argues, has long ignored the routes linking Europe to the Pacific, the areas he calls "the axis on which the globe spun." So he has chosen to focus firmly on the Silk Roads, for what he calls "a new history of the world."
The book takes us by surprise right from the start: It begins not with the Greeks or the Romans, but with the Persian Empire — Frankopan writes that the Greeks and Romans, when they thought to expand, moved east toward the riches of Persia, rather than north or west into Europe. In an email conversation, Frankopan tells me that he wanted to explore exchange between the East and the West of everything from ideas and beliefs to food andFASHION. "Incidentally, it's not just luxury goods that I track — silks, textiles, spices, ceramics and slaves — but violence and disease, too," he says. "For example, the pathways followed by the Mongols and the Black Death were identical."
As you worked on this book, what struck you as the most important contributions the Silk Roads made to world history?
One thing that I was particularly interested in is the spread of faith along the Silk Roads. All the great global religions — Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism and Hinduism, as well as lots of otherIMPORTANT but less well-known belief systems — spread along the web of routes crisscrossing the spine of Asia.
I was also very struck by the scale of the white slave trade in the early Middle Ages — huge numbers of men, women and children were trafficked from Europe to the east in return for silver. I think readers will be surprised by that. But most of all is the fact that the Silk Roads keep on being involved all the time in more or less everything: they play the lead role in the expeditions of Columbus, who was trying to connect to the trade routes of the east; they were crucial to the origins of World War I — whose origins were firmly based in Asia, even though the trigger came from the assassination of Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo.
There is a profound significance to the origins of the Holocaust, too, for example: Documents relating to German agricultural production and needs show that the decision to invade the Soviet Union was closely linked to taking control of the wheat fields of the rich lands lying north of the Black and Caspian Seas. The failure to "extract" the expected harvests from what is now Ukraine and Southern Russia led to discussions first about how to feed back in German controlled territories and then about who to feed. Those in prison camps found their calories reduced and then cut altogether; the jump to genocide was directly linked to the failure of the campaigns in the east.
We just don't look at this region at all — so have never thought to join up all these dots before.
You write, "We are seeing the signs of the world's center of gravity shifting — back to where it lay for millennia." But some argue that the world's center is shifting not toward the Silk Roads but farther East — toward China, Southeast Asia and India.
I can't speak for those who believe that the center of gravity is moving elsewhere. Many seem to think China and/or India exist in a bubble and can be looked at on their own. But I am much more interested in how China engages with Russia, with Iran, with the Middle East and with Central Asia — as well as with Southeast Asia. And that, by the way, is how China itself sees the world. China's signature foreign policy for the next 30 years is ... essentially the construction of a series of new Silk Roads.
China has dramatically rising energy needs as its middle classes grow in number and prosperity. So pipelines bringing oil and gas from mineral-rich countries like Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Iran have been or are being built to help fuel China's growth. And as a historian, it gives me no small pleasure to realize that those pipelines follow the same paths that traders bringing goods followed 2 1/2 thousand years ago.
Nishant Dahiya is NPR's Asia Editor
17:42 Publié dans Entretiens, Eurasisme, Géopolitique, Histoire, Livre, Livre | Lien permanent | Commentaires (0) | Tags : route la soie, asie, europe, affaires asiatiques, affaires européennes, eurasisme, livre, peter frankopan, entretien, asie centrale, histoire | | del.icio.us | | Digg | Facebook
Hunderttausende bluten für Napoleons Russlandfeldzug
Preußens Niederlage bei Jena und Auerstedt markierte das vorläufige Ende der Souveränität des Staates, welcher in kurz darauf vollständig von Frankreich besiegt wurde und unter die Herrschaft von Napoleon kam. Nach dem Frieden von Tilsit wurde das Königreich in seiner Ausdehnung kurzerhand halbiert und die Grande Armée marschierte siegreich durch Berlin, während das Königshaus von Preußen den Rückzug in die beschnittenen Gebiete im Osten antreten musste. Die Demütigungen, wie beispielsweise der Diebstahl der Quadriga vom Brandenburger Tor, enden nicht mit symbolischen Akten. Anders als die Rheinstaaten im Rheinbund, welche auf Napoleons Seite standen und dessen Monarchen von ihm profitierten, leistete Preußen lange Widerstand. Sowohl rhetorischen als auch militärischen. Für diese Impertinenz sollte es büßen, so wollte es Bonaparte. Für die nationalen Kräfte in den deutschen Landen war die Unterjochung durch Frankreich nicht hinnehmbar. Heinrich Friedrich Karl von und zum Stein, Carl von Clausewitz, Gerhard von Scharnhorst und andere preußische Reformer, die man den aufklärerischen und nationalen Kräften zuordnen könnte, waren wenig angetan von der Unterordnung unter die französische Kaiserkrone. Es folgte die innere Erneuerung Preußens, sowohl die kulturelle als auch die technologische und zivilgesellschaftliche. Nicht alle Ideen der französischen Revolution wurden östlich des Rheins abgelehnt oder für schlecht befunden. Der springende Punkt war der Frondienst, den man als Deutscher plötzlich zu leisten hatte. Gegenüber einem Staat und Kaiser, den man weder kannte noch liebte. Napoleons Streitkräfte schlugen nach Preußen auch die Österreicher und alsbald wandte er seinen Blick auf das gigantische Russland, welches immer noch als die letzte kontinentale Großmacht gegen Napoleon stand. Wenn Russland besiegt worden wäre, gäbe es keine Macht mehr in Europa die dem französischen Kaiser Paroli hätte bieten können. Das französische Imperium würde dann vom Atlantik bis zum Ural reichen. Oder noch weiter.
Im Jahr 1812 überquerten die Streitkräfte Napoleons die Memel. Zu diesem Zeitpunkt bestehen die Truppen des Kaisers nicht mehr nur aus Franzosen, sondern zur Hälfte aus Polen, Deutschen, Italiener, Balkanvölkern und anderen Hilfstruppen, welche er aus allen eroberten Gebieten zusammengerufen hatte. Die genauen Zahlen sind heute Gegenstand der Debatte. Aber etwa ein Drittel der fast 700.000 Soldaten waren deutschsprachige Landeskinder aus Preußen, Württemberg, Bayern, Sachsen, Österreich, Baden und anderen deutschen Landen, wo die Ablehnung gegenüber Napoleon nicht zuletzt wegen der zehrenden Kampagne im Osten immer größer wurde. Man muss das im historischen Kontext betrachten. Preußen und die meisten anderen europäischen Staaten hatten bereits mehrere Jahre Krieg hinter sich und eine ganze Generation von Männern und auch Frauen war im Rahmen dieser Kriege verletzt, getötet oder anders geschädigt worden. Große Teile der mitteleuropäischen Staaten waren von Schlachten verwüstet und vom Durchmarsch der französischen Armee ausgeplündert worden. Napoleons Truppen bedienten sich auf ihrem Weg durch Europa stets im Umland und erpressten, kauften oder plünderten, um sich zu versorgen. Das war eine gängige Praxis zu dieser Zeit und auch in späteren Kriegen. Viele Familien in den deutschen Staaten hatten mehrere Söhne bereits in den Krieg (egal welchen) gegeben und nicht wenige bliebe auf dem Schlachtfeld. Es ist umso leichter die Ressentiments zu verstehen, wenn das Hinterland das französische Heer weiterhin wirtschaftlich unterstützen muss. Vor allem da es gegen Russland ging, den man eigentlich zu den deutschen Verbündeten zählte. Der preußische König schrieb hierzu am Vorabend des Russlandfeldzuges einen Brief an den Zaren mit dem Inhalt : „Beklagen Sie mich, aber verdammen Sie mich nicht. Vielleicht kommt bald die Zeit, wo wir in engem Bunde vereint handeln werden.“
Auch im preußischen Offizierskorps war die Stimmung eher gedrückt. Als gute und treue Soldaten fühlten sich Offiziere wie Ludwig York von Wartenburg ihrem Eid und Herren verpflichtet. Dieser war der preußische König, von dem jedoch alle wussten, dass dieser nicht Befehle im Interesse der Deutschen oder Preußens gab, sondern reiner Befehlsempfänger Napoleons war. Der Verlust deutscher und preußischer Souveränität war den Männern im Felde also durchaus bewusst. Preußen war dem französischen Kaiser verpflichtet – gegen seinen Willen und gegen den Willen des Volkes, welches sich in den preußischen, aber auch in den westlich der Elbe liegenden anderen deutschen Ländereien immer wieder gegen französische Besatzungstruppen erhob. Die Zeit von 1807-1812 war durchweg geprägt von sporadisch aufflammenden kleinen Konflikten innerhalb des gigantischen, von Napoleon eroberten Europas. Die teils sehr blutigen Auseinandersetzungen waren kein Geheimnis und nie war die Herrschaft über Europa für Napoleon eine besonders solide Angelegenheit. Dieser Zustand verschlimmerte sich nur, als seine Truppen nach der Erreichung des von den Russen in Brand gesteckten Moskaus den Rückzug antreten mussten. Für den russischen Winter war man nicht vorbereitet. Der Zar nutzte diese Chance um die napoleonische Armee immer wieder in kleine und größere Gefechte zu verwickeln und zu schwächen. Für die Männer im Dienst des französischen Kaisers waren die Monate der Rückzugsgefechte und Eiseskälte demoralisierend, wie wir es uns kaum noch vorstellen können. Während Hunderttausende für Napoleon starben, wurde auch den an ihren Diensteid gebundenen preußischen bzw. deutschen Offizieren etwas klar. Wenn nicht gehandelt wird und keine Befreiung von der Führung Napoleons vollzogen wird, könnte dies das Ende für die eigenen Soldaten und auch für die deutschen Lande bedeuten. Die desaströse Situation, in welcher sich die Grande Armée befand, war nicht mehr zu leugnen und um zu verhindern, dass man mit Napoleons Größenwahn untergehe, fassten einige mutige Männer einen skandalösen Entschluss.
Skandalös und doch treu – Die Entscheidung von York und ihre Implikationen
Der deutschstämmige Generalmajor Hans Karl von Diebitsch diente Zar Alexander und der russischen Armee. Unerwähnt möchte ich nicht lassen, dass ein nicht unerheblicher Teil der russischen Soldaten ebenfalls zumindest teilweise deutscher Sprache und Abstammung waren, sodass nicht ignoriert werden kann, wie nah sich deutsches Preußen und Russland über die Jahrhunderte hinweg standen. Von Diebitsch war der General, welcher am 30. Dezember in Poscherun (heute Litauen), den preußischen York empfing. Im Vorfeld und im Hintergrund hatten bereits jene Verschwörergruppen, zu denen auch Clausewitz, Seydlitz und andere gehörten, an einem ungeheuerlichen Akt des Verrates gearbeitet. Zumindest empfand es Napoleon als einen solchen Verrat, als York den Waffenstillstand zwischen preußischen Korps und russischer Armee unterzeichnete. Es ist insofern ungeheuerlich, dass ein hoher Offizier, also ein Staatsdiener, es wagt die Außenpolitik seines Staates zu bestimmen. York war sich der Konsequenzen und der illegalen Natur seines Handelns voll bewusst, rechtfertigte sich jedoch auf für uns nicht uninteressante Art und Weise. Im Vordergrund stand zunächst die Rettung der eigenen Soldaten. Denn gegenüber diesen hatte York als Kommandeur eine Fürsorgepflicht, die missachten würde, wenn er sie weiterhin durch den russischen Winter auf französischer Seite trieb, während russische Truppen die seinen von hinten beschossen. Das Leben der eigenen Soldaten zu retten hatte also Gewicht bei seiner Entscheidungsfindung. Danach kommt die Verantwortung vor dem Staat und dem König. York argumentiert so, dass er im erweiterten Sinne des Königs gehandelt habe, der das Bündnis mit Napoleon zutiefst ablehne, aber jetzt aufgrund der Lage nicht anders handeln könne. Da sich die Lage aber an der Front zum Nachteil für Napoleon entwickelt habe, sei nun der Moment gekommen, das Bündnis aufzukündigen und Preußens Unabhängigkeit wiederherzustellen. Er sagte :
„„Die Armee will den Krieg gegen Frankreich. Das Volk will ihn, der König will ihn, aber der König hat keinen freien Willen. Die Armee muss ihm diesen Willen freimachen.“
Für ihn ist klar, dass wenn Preußen Napoleon weiterhin folgt, seine Auslöschung als politische und unabhängige Einheit bald darauf eintreten könnte. Dass Napoleon verlieren würde, war also absehbar und ebenso, dass die Sieger über Napoleon darüber bestimmen würden, was mit den Besiegten geschah. Hier erkenne ich einen Dienstethos, der sowohl edel, als auch treu ist. York erkennt, dass jeder weitere Kampf gegen Russland sinnlos ist und nur mit dem Tod enden kann. Die Freiheit und das Überleben Preußens und damit auch ein Stück deutsche Souveränität sind ihm wichtig. Seine Loyalität gegenüber Napoleon basiert auf einem Kontrakt, den sein König unter Zwang unterzeichnen musste und welcher nicht im Sinne des deutschen Volkes ist. York beruft sich bei seinem Verrat also darauf, dass er eben kein Verräter ist. Zumindest verrät er nicht seinen eigentlichen Dienstherren, das Volk. Ähnlich wie Friedrich der Große, der sich als Erster Diener des Volkes sah. So ist auch York als Staatsdiener nur dem obersten Diener und seinem Träger, dem Volk, verpflichtet. Die Verpflichtung gegenüber Napoleon, einem Fremdherrscher, ist für ihn damit nichtig. Eine Loyalität sticht also die andere aus. Obwohl Napoleon theoretisch sein oberster Befehlshaber gewesen wäre, erkennt er dessen Autorität nicht an, da sie nicht mit dem Willen des eigenen Volkes im Einklang steht.
Der preußische König ist zunächst überrascht, sogar ein wenig erbost über die Anmaßung Yorks. Aber dieses Wagnis ist es, welches in Preußen und dann in ganz Europa die Mühlen einer neuen Erhebung anwirft. Beim Bekanntwerden dieses ungeheuerlichen und unerwarteten Bündnisses zwischen preußischen und russischen Soldaten bricht in Norddeutschland und in Ostpreußen eine nationale Widerstandsbewegung hervor, die nur auf diesen Moment gewartet hat. Zar Alexander kann dieses historische Momentum nutzen um Napoleons Truppen aus Russland heraus zu drängen und mit dem preußischen König den alten Bündnisvertrag mit neuem Leben zu erfüllen. Ein Jahr später stehen dann deutsche und russische Soldaten Seite an Seite in der schicksalhaften Konfrontation bei Leipzig.
19:07 Publié dans Histoire | Lien permanent | Commentaires (0) | Tags : histoire, allemagne, prusse, 1813 | | del.icio.us | | Digg | Facebook
Ex: http://tercerapn.blogspot.com
Bombardeo a Plaza de Mayo
Las Veinte Verdades Peronistas
12:37 Publié dans Histoire | Lien permanent | Commentaires (0) | Tags : péronisme, justicialisme, argentine, juan peron, evita peron, amérique latine, amérique du sud, théorie politique, politologie, sciences politiques | | del.icio.us | | Digg | Facebook
Erich Körner-Lakatos :
1944 : le corps expéditionnaire brésilien en Italie
Plusieurs congrès panaméricains ont eu lieu dans les années 1939 et 1940. Les négociateurs se sont mis d’accord pour respecter le principe de la « solidarité hémisphérique », laquelle consistait en une nouvelle doctrine de Monroe, assortie de l’interdiction de toute menée belliqueuse dans une zone de 300 miles autour du Nouveau Monde. Toute attaque perpétrée par un Etat non américain contre un pays de l’hémisphère occidental serait considérée comme une attaque contre l’ensemble des Etats signataires.
Dans la nuit du 22 août 1942, les torpilles d’un sous-marin allemand envoient au fond de la mer cinq vapeurs brésiliens patrouillant le long des côtes. Il y a 610 morts. Quelques heures après ce terrible incident, le Brésil déclare la guerre à l’Allemagne et à l’Italie. Le parallèle avec la première guerre mondiale saute aux yeux. A cette époque-là, en 1917, le torpillage de navires civils, dont le navire amiral de la flotte commerciale brésilienne, le Paranà, par des sous-marins de Guillaume II, fut aussi considéré comme un casus belli par le Brésil.
En déclarant la guerre aux puissances de l’Axe Rome-Berlin, le plus grand Etat d’Amérique latine met un terme à sa politique de neutralité. Dans le fond, le Président brésilien Getùlio Vargas préfèrerait garder son pays hors du conflit. Depuis des mois, cet excellent tacticien évite de faire le jeu des Etats-Unis et fait monter les enchères pour monnayer sa participation à la guerre.
Au Brésil, à l’époque, il y a beaucoup de sympathisants de l’Axe : le chef de l’état-major général, Goes Monteiro et une bonne part du corps des officiers refusent toute participation à la guerre mondiale. Le ministre de la guerre Enrico Gaspar Dutra rejette la proposition américaine de construire des bases sur le territoire brésilien. Dutra parle un langage sans ambigüités : « Si Washington débarque des troupes sans en avoir reçu l’autorisation préalable, les militaires brésiliens ouvriront le feu ».
Vargas, habile tacticien, donne à réfléchir à ses généraux : si le Brésil participe au conflit, des capitaux américains couleront à flot dans le pays, permettant notamment de construire le gigantesque complexe sidérurgique de Volta Redonda dans l’Etat de Rio de Janeiro, ce qui constituera un atout majeur pour le développement futur du Brésil. Grâce à la construction de ce complexe, il sera possible d’exploiter les immenses réserves de minerais de l’intérieur du pays. L’économie brésilienne recevra là un formidable coup de fouet et les 93.000 hommes des forces armées feront l’expérience du combat sur le théâtre des opérations en Europe.
Cette expérience acquise sera de toute première importance face au rival du Brésil, l’Argentine, où un gouvernement militaire intransigeant et favorable à l’Axe maintient le pays dans la neutralité. En effet, il a fallu attendre les toutes dernières semaines de la guerre en Europe pour convaincre enfin Buenos Aires d’envoyer une déclaration de guerre toute formelle à l’Allemagne. Ce sera fait le 27 mars 1945. L’Argentine sera ainsi le dernier pays à avoir déclaré la guerre au Reich. D’autres pays latino-américains avaient déclaré la guerre à Berlin en février 1945, notamment le Venezuela, le 16 février. En revanche, les pays plus inféodés aux Etats-Unis en Amérique centrale et dans les Caraïbes avaient déjà formellement déclaré la guerre aux puissances de l’Axe les 11 et 12 décembre 1941 (Cuba, la République Dominicaine, le Guatemala, le Nicaragua, Haïti, le Costa Rica, le Honduras et El Salvador). Ce qui fut le plus mobilisateur dans ces déclarations de guerre fut bien sûr la possibilité de confisquer les avoirs allemands et italiens.
En entrant en guerre aux côtés des Etats-Unis, Vargas, de figurant instable, se mue automatiquement en un allié important. Même Churchill change d’opinion à son sujet : il le méprisait et le traitait de « caudillo aux petits pieds » ; en un tournemain, il devient le « combattant d’avant-garde de la solidarité panaméricaine ».
En très peu de temps, le Brésil se transforme en l’une des principales bases de ravitaillement et d’approvisionnement des alliés occidentaux. Natal, la ville située sur la pointe extrême-orientale du pays, devient l’aéroport militaire le plus vaste du monde. Le gouvernement de Rio livre des matières premières stratégiques (du fer, du manganèse, du nickel, du zinc) et des quantités impressionnantes de viande et de céréales aux belligérants occidentaux.
Ce ne sera pas tout. Vargas met également des troupes à disposition. Equipé et entraîné par les Anglo-Américains, un contingent s’embarque pour l’Italie entre juin et septembre 1944 et engage le combat aux côtés de la 5ème Armée américaine du Général Clark. La « Força Expeditionària Brasileira » (FEB) sera placée sous les ordres du Général Mascarenhas de Morais et comptera dans ses rangs 25.300 hommes d’infanterie et un escadron de chasseurs de la force aérienne.
La FEB s’est bien battue contre les troupes solidement éprouvées de la Wehrmacht, toutefois après avoir subi des pertes sensibles au début des engagements. A l’automne 1944, l’avance des troupes alliées est bloquée au nord de Florence. Les Allemands se replient et s’arcboutent sur la « Ligne Gothique » entre La Spezia et Rimini et tiennent le front jusqu’à la Pâque 1945.
Les soldats brésiliens passeront l’hiver sur leurs positions dans les Apennins. Le climat est rude pour ces soldats venus des tropiques et la FEB enregistre de nombreuses pertes dues aux gelures. Le 9 avril 1945, les Américains lancent leur contre-offensive du printemps. Les troupes brésiliennes y participent et avancent, lors de la phase finale de la campagne d’Italie, en direction d’Alessandria et de Turin. A la fin du mois d’avril 1945, la 148ème Division d’infanterie de la Wehrmacht se rend aux Brésiliens.
Les combats de la FEB se sont étendus sur huit mois et ont coûté la vie à 454 soldats. 2722 autres ont été blessés. Les morts de ce corps expéditionnaire reposent dans un cimetière militaire à Pistoia, une petite ville de Toscane. Au Brésil, un monument à Rio rappelle leur sacrifice, de même qu’un musée à Curitiba (dans l’Etat de Paranà).
Erich Körner-Lakatos.
(Article paru dans « zur Zeit », Vienne, http://www.zurzeit.at , n°36/2016).
L’Estado Novo de Vargas
Getùlio Dornelles Vargas est arrivé au pouvoir au Brésil en 1930. Fin novembre 1935, les communistes se soulèvent à Rio. Leur rébellion est rapidement anéantie. Le Président n’est pas plus tendre avec l’extrême-droite : les activistes de l’Açao Integralista Brasileira (Action Intégraliste Brésilienne : AIB), vêtus de chemises vertes, essaient en mai 1938 de renverser le président, en prenant son palais d’assaut. Vargas n’admet pas cette rupture de la paix civile, considère que cette rébellion est un affront à sa personne et mate cruellement l’insurrection dirigée par Plinio Salgado, théoricien et animateur du « fascisme intégraliste ».
Le 10 novembre 1937, Vargas proclame, par décret, l’instauration de l’ Estado Novo (l’Etat nouveau), aux traits autoritaires et corporatistes : l’article 180 de la nouvelle constitution admet très nettement le « principe du chef ». Le modèle de Vargas est celui de la mère patrie portugaise, dirigée par Antonio de Oliveira Salazar. Il y a néanmoins une différence : Salazar tient son autorité de Dieu, sans fausse modestie. Vargas, lui, dit se contenter de tenir la sienne du peuple.
Vargas se pose comme un nationaliste brésilien. C’est pourquoi, dès avril 1938, il interdit les activités de la NSDAP allemande à l’étranger qui connaissait un indéniable succès au sein de la minorité allemande. L’Etat nouveau entend « brasilianiser » les immigrants. Tout enseignement en une langue autre que le portugais est interdit pour les enfants de moins de 14 ans. Les autorités reçoivent l’ordre d’éviter toute concentration d’immigrants de même nationalité. Ces mesures concernent également les minorités allemandes dans le sud du pays (EKL).
19:35 Publié dans Histoire | Lien permanent | Commentaires (0) | Tags : histoire, deuxième guerre mondiale, seconde guerre mondiale, brésil, amérique latine, amérique du sud, panaméricanisme, estado novo brésilien, getulio vargas | | del.icio.us | | Digg | Facebook
The Alemanni (also known as the Alamanni and the Alamans, meaning "All Men" or "Men United") were a confederacy of Germanic-speaking people who occupied the regions south of the Main and east of the Rhine rivers in present-day Germany. Many historians claim that the Alemanni first enter the historical record in 213 CE when Cassius Dio records the campaigns of Caracalla and his duplicitous dealings with the Alemanni. It is true that the name "Alemanni" first appears in Cassius Dio but, if one accepts that the Alemanni and the Suebi (or Suevi, who appear in earlier records) were the same (as not all do), then their first mention comes in 98 CE in Tacitus' Germania. They were a constant threat to the Roman Empire from 213 CE until they were defeated by Julian at the Battle of Strasbourg in 357 CE and then again by Valentinian I in 367 CE. After the Battle of Strasbourg, Julian entered into treaties with the Franks of Gaul who were then left alone by Rome. They were able to stabilize their communities and grow in power until, in 496 CE, the Frankish king Clovis conquered the Alemanni tribes and absorbed them into his kingdom. After this, their name lived on in the language of the region they had once inhabited and in the name given to Germany, Allemagne, in French and other languages.
The Roman senator and historian Tacitus (56-117 CE) wrote of the Suevi in the 1st century CE, claiming they controlled the better part of the region known as Germania. He links the Alemanni with the Hermunduri, another Germanic tribe, but this claim has been contested by modern-day scholarship. The Suevi Tacitus depicts sound very much like the later Alemanni, in that they were a confederation of different tribes, which may have even included the Cherusci (famous for their leader Arminius' destruction of Varus' three legions in Teutoburger Wald in 9 CE). Tacitus is the first writer to note the Suevi's distinctive hair styles and religious practices. He writes:
We have now to speak of the Suevi; who do not compose a single state, like the Catti or Tencteri, but occupy the greatest part of Germany and are still distributed into different names and nations, although all hearing the common appellation of Suevi. It is characteristic of this people to turn their hair sideways, and tie it beneath the poll in a knot.
By this mark the Suevi are distinguished from the rest of the Germans; and the freemen of the Suevi from the slaves. Among other nations, this mode, either on account of some relationship with the Suevi, or from the usual propensity to imitation, is sometimes adopted; but rarely, and only during the period of youth.
The Suevi, even till they are hoary, continue to have their hair growing stiffly backwards, and often it is fastened on the very crown of the head. The chiefs dress it with still greater care and in this respect they study ornament, though of an undebasing kind. For their design is not to make love, or inspire it; they decorate themselves in this manner as they proceed to war, in order to seem taller and more terrible; and dress for the eyes of their enemies (Germania, 38).
Regarding religion, Tacitus writes that the Suevi were pagan and seem to have practiced a form of Druidism. Their chiefs were drawn from a tribe in the confederation known as Semnones who also served as high priests:
The Semnones assert themselves to be the most ancient and noble of the Suevi; and their pretensions are confirmed by religion. At a stated time, all the people of the same lineage assemble by their delegates in a wood, consecrated by the auguries of their forefathers and ancient terror, and there by the public slaughter of a human victim celebrate the horrid origin of their barbarous rites. Another kind of reverence is paid to the grove. No person enters it without being bound with a chain, as an acknowledgment of his inferior nature, and the power of the deity residing there. If he accidentally falls, it is not lawful for him to be lifted or to rise up; they roll themselves out along the ground. The whole of their superstition has this import: that from this spot the nation derives its origin; that here is the residence of the Deity, the Governor of all, and that everything else is subject and subordinate to him. These opinions receive additional authority from the power of the Semnones, who inhabit a hundred cantons, and, from the great body they compose, consider themselves as the head of the Suevi (Germania, 39).
The religious practices centered on chthonic locales, then, where a central deity held sway. Rivers, streams, glades, and valleys were often chosen as sacred ground for the energies which manifested themselves in these locales. As with many other ancient civilizations, the Suevi believed the soul had to cross a body of water to reach the afterlife and that the soul lived on after death. Suevi/Alemanni grave excavations have revealed that they were buried fully dressed and with personal items that they would need in the next world. These burial practices continued after they converted to Christianity sometime between the 6th and 8th centuries CE although, of course, their religious practices changed dramatically.
Although the Suevi have been identified with the later Alemanni, historians caution against equating the two without recognizing their differences over the centuries which separate Tacitus' account (98 CE) from Cassius Dio's (c. 229 CE). The scholar Guy Halsall writes, "It is unlikely that the situation which pertained in the mid-first century was at all relevant to the late Roman period. Tacitus' Germania is a minefield probably best avoided [in this regard]" (121). The scholar Peter Heather comments on this also, stating how unified the Alemanni appear in the work of Ammianus Marcellinus (c. 325-391 CE) while, "One of the central points brought home by even the quickest read of Tacitus' Germania is just how fragmented, in political terms, the Germanic world was at that date" (36). It is for this reason that historians usually cite Cassius Dio's account as the first mention of the Alemanni and ignore Tacitus' earlier description of the Suevi.
By the time of Dio's account, the Alemanni were largely Romanized from their long acquaintance with the Romans. Halsall writes how, in the border region of the Danube and the Roman Empire,
some of the Alemanni, who it has been suggested were formed at least partly by the Romans themselves from inhabitants of the agri decumates [a term possibly meaning 10 agricultural regions]and authorised barbarian settlers, occupied former Roman villa sites, such as at Wurmlingen in Baden Wurttemberg (128).
The Alemanni at this time wore Roman attire and emulated Roman social customs. Even so, they were not 'Romans' in the accepted sense of that word and maintained their own language and culture. Therefore, when they asked the emperor Caracalla for help against a neighboring tribe in 213 CE, he saw no reason why he should not conquer them instead. Cassius Dio writes:
Antoninus [Caracalla] made a campaign against the Alamanni and whenever he saw a spot suitable for habitation, he would order, "There let a fort be erected. There let a city be built." And he gave these places names relating to himself, though the local designations were not changed; for some of the people were unaware of the new names and others supposed he was jesting. Consequently he came to feel contempt for these people and would not spare even them, but accorded treatment befitting the bitterest foes to the very people whom he claimed to have come to help. For he summoned their men of military age, pretending that they were to serve as mercenaries, and then at a given signal — by raising aloft his own shield — he caused them all to be surrounded and cut down, and he sent horsemen round about and arrested all the others (78.13.4).
Whether the Alemanni were particularly hostile to Rome before this is not known, but they became one of Rome's most bitter enemies afterwards.
The defeat of Chnodomarius did not mean the total destruction of the alliance at whose head he had stood, as the defeats of his first-century counterparts such as Arminius and Maroboduus had done three centuries before. Not only were many of the lesser Alamannic kings who had participated in the battle left in place by Julian's diplomacy, but, within a decade of the battle, a new pre-eminent leader, Vadomarius, was worrying the Romans. He was skillfully removed by assassination, but then a third appeared in his place: Macrinus. Ammianus records three separate attempts by one of Julian's successors, Valentinian I, to eliminate Macrinus by capture and/or assassination, but eventually, pressed by events further east, the emperor gave in. Roman and Alamann met in the middle of the Rhine for a water-borne summit, where the emperor acknowledged Macrinus' pre-eminence among the Alamanni. Unlike in the first century, even major military defeat was not enough to destroy the larger Alamannic confederation (40-41).
The "major military defeat" Heather refers to is not only the Battle of Strasbourg but the later Battle of Solicinium in 367 CE, in which Valentinian I defeated the Alemanni in the southwestern region of Germany. Even though he was victorious, the Alemanni were by no means broken and were still a formidable force some 80 years later when they joined the forces of Attila the Hun and took part in the Battle of the Catalaunian Plains against the Romans under Flavius Aetius in 451 CE. Even so, the Battle of Strasbourg severely limited their abilities to threaten Rome for years after. The historian Roger Collins writes,
This single battle really turned the tide as far as the Alaman penetration of Gaul was concerned. It broke the Alamannic confederacy of tribes that had largely been built up and held together by the military credibility of Chnodomar, and for the first time enabled the Romans to take the initiative…Threatened with a Roman invasion of their own territory, the Alamans sought a truce (35).
Again, however, it must be noted that the confederacy was not disbanded nor did the Alemanni seem to consider themselves a conquered people.
First Julian, and then Valentinian I, entered into treaties with the confederacy of the people known as the Franks ("the fierce people"). In an effort to maintain the newly restored Roman city of Cologne, Julian blockaded the territory of the Franks, depriving them of much-needed trade goods, until they agreed to his terms. Collins comments on this, writing:
It is notable that Julian made no attempt to penetrate the marshy lands north of the Meuse that the Franks had occupied, and their continuing occupation of this area was tacitly accepted by the Romans. From this small start the subsequent Frankish occupation of all of Gaul would develop. This, it might be said, was `the birth of France'. In 357/8, however, what was achieved was a treaty of federation: Frankish occupation of Roman territory was accepted in return for their helping to defend the region (35).
This arrangement was good for the Franks, who began to steadily flourish, but not as beneficial to the Alemanni. By the time the Alemanni fought alongside the Huns in 451 CE at the Catalaunian Plains, the Franks had become powerful enough to be counted as allies of the Romans under Aetius. The Franks were united under the reign of their first king, Clovis I (466-511 CE), who then expanded the boundaries of Gaul to conquer western Europe. The Alemanni continued to inhabit the region of Germania until they were defeated by Clovis I at the Battle of Tolbiac in 496 CE and were subjugated by the Franks. Afterwards, some were assimilated into Frankish culture and took up residence in Gaul, while others continued to live in their former region under Frankish rule. Their name is remembered today in the Alemannic dialect of German, and the word for 'Germany' (Allemagne, Alemania) in many modern-day languages.
17:15 Publié dans archéologie, Histoire | Lien permanent | Commentaires (0) | Tags : archéologie, alamans, tribus germaniques, germanie antique, germanie, germains, histoire, rome antique, antiquité romaine | | del.icio.us | | Digg | Facebook
17:36 Publié dans Histoire, Militaria | Lien permanent | Commentaires (0) | Tags : malte, siège de malte, 16ème siècle, histoire, ordre de malte, ordre de saint jean, chevalerie, militaria | | del.icio.us | | Digg | Facebook
17.50€
¿Quién fue realmente el Rey Pelayo?
¿Qué ocurrió en la batalla de Covadonga?
¿Qué acontecimientos vivía la península durante el siglo VIII?
http://editorialeas.com/shop/argos/la-luz-del-norte-por-c...
La historiografía tradicional da por establecido y concluido el relato sobre don Pelayo, noble astur que resistió a la conquista de la península Ibérica por los musulmanes, frenó la expansión del Islam en este territorio e inició la dinastía de los reyes asturianos. El asunto, sin embargo, no puede (ni debe) afrontarse desde una perspectiva única, la que sitúa a Pelayo como figura épica providencial que tras derrotar a los ejércitos africanos en Roncesvalles da inicio a la saga de nuestra Reconquista.
Carlos X. Blanco ha elegido la versión de don Pelayo, muy extendida y bastante plausible, de la Crónica Albeldense, conciliándola con la leyenda que lo traslada a Tierra Santa para huir de las intrigas de Witiza, sobre quien recaían sospechas de haber urdido la muerte de Favila, padre de nuestro protagonista. Adscrito a una sociedad iniciática fuertemente cohesionada por la fe cristiana y el convencimiento legitimista de la civilización hispano-romana, Pelayo vuelve a Hispania (el regresado del mar), e inicia su aventura, la diplomacia, la guerra y los dramáticos juegos del poder, hasta convertirse en adalid de la resistencia contra el Islam y primus inter pares entre la nobleza goda y astur.
José Vicente Pascual (escritor)
AUDIO:
http://play.cadenaser.com/audio/1474022512_758888/
Carlos X. Blanco. Autor de La luz del norte. Pelayo, revisitado |
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Escrito por Lupercio González Ex: http://fuionasturias.com |
| Es asturianista declarado, y va más allá: se considera covadonguista. 'Y no me avergüenzo. Cuando voy a Covadonga, reconozco mi identidad en aquella cascada y aquella gruta'. Como niño asturiano, se familiarizó con el mito de Pelayo y el inicio de la Reconquista. Como adulto, ha querido recrear aquellos escenarios y hechos históricos, rindiendo su particular homenaje al héroe astur.
Foto: Fusión Asturias
"Los que hemos estudiado la cultura y la lengua asturiana también somos culpables del mal momento actual. No hemos sabido transmitir un mensaje de autoestima y conocimiento" -¿Cuánto de invención y cuánto de narración histórica hay en esta novela?
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09:49 Publié dans Histoire, Livre, Livre | Lien permanent | Commentaires (0) | Tags : don pelayo, wisigoths, asturies, espagne, reconquista, histoire, livre | | del.icio.us | | Digg | Facebook
Seven decades after Japan’s surprise attack on Pearl Harbor some truth is finally beginning to emerge from the miasma of propaganda that still clouds our vision of World War II.
It seems clear by now that President Franklin Roosevelt’s White House knew from deciphered codes that Japan was planning an attack on America’s key naval base in Hawaii. Shamefully, the senior US Navy and Army commanders at Pearl Harbor were not informed of the impending attack. The US Navy’s three aircraft carriers were coincidentally moved far from harm’s way before the attack, leaving only obsolescent World War I battleships in port as sitting ducks.
Roosevelt was eager to get the United States into war against Germany at all costs. But Americans wanted no part of Europe’s war, recalling how British propaganda had deceived America into World War I. The single largest ethnic group in America was of German origin. In the 1880’s, my native New York City was the third most populous German city on earth after Berlin and Hamburg.
Roosevelt, whose sympathies lay far to the left in spite of his patrician background, understood that only a surprise attack would provoke Americans into war.
At the time, the US supplied 80% of Japan’s oil, 100% of its aviation fuel, and much of its metal. Roosevelt demanded Japan vacate China that it had invaded, or face an embargo of these vital strategic materials on which Japan’s industry depended. Japan’s fascist military government refused, as Washington knew it would. A US embargo ensued.
Japan had a one-year strategic reserve of oil. Its stark choice was either run out of oil, fuel, and scrap steel over 12 months or go to war while it still had these resources. The only other potential source of oil for Japan was the distant Dutch East Indies, today Indonesia.
In 1991, then US President George H.W. Bush claimed that the US had a right to go to war with Iraq to assure its supply of oil.
Japan’s leading naval strategist, Adm. Isoroku Yamamoto, gloomily predicted before Pearl Harbor that Japan was going to war for oil and would be defeated because of it. He was absolutely correct. America was ten times more powerful than Japan and had a huge industrial capacity.
It was a suicidal war for Japan in all aspects. Japan’s powerful army, deployed to occupy China and perhaps fight the Soviet Union, cared nothing for the Pacific. By contrast, the Imperial Japanese Navy had no interest in China. Its goal was the conquest of the oil-rich Dutch East Indies, British-ruled Malaya, French-ruled Indo-China and the US-ruled Philippines and Pacific territories. Making matters worse, Japan’s navy and army ran separate wars, without any coordination, unified industrial policy or common strategy – in short, two different wars for a nation that was not even up to one conflict at a time.
Japan claimed it was waging a crusade to ‘liberate’ Asia from the Western imperial rule. But few Asians bought this argument due to the brutality and arrogance of their Japanese occupiers.
Looking back, it was indeed an old-fashioned imperial war: the Japanese Empire versus the American, British, French and Dutch empires. The last empire, the Soviet Union, did not get involved until its smashing victory against Japan’s Kwantung Army in 1945, one of WWII’s greatest campaigns but now totally forgotten.
Why did the Japanese, an intelligent, clever people, think they could defeat the US and its allies? My view after long studying this question is that Japan’s militarists, boxed into a corner by Roosevelt’s crushing embargo, had to choose between a humiliating surrender to the US and giving up China, or a suicidal war.
Japan’s samurai culture that infused its armed forces saw surrender as the ultimate shame. Death in battle was preferable to surrender and the only honorable course for warriors.
Japanese militarized society had a belief in the ‘nobility of failure’ that was unknown to other peoples.
For Japan’s warriors, the highest glory and honor lay in choosing to fight a battle against greatly superior forces in which defeat and death were clearly inevitable. This was the ultimate expression of the knightly code of ‘bushido’ that guided Japan’s warrior caste.
By June 1944, Japan’s imports of strategic material and food were cut off by US submarines. Half its cities were burning. The population was starving. Meanwhile, the US was assembling its atomic bombs.
In a final act of folly, right after Pearl Harbor Adolf Hitler declared war on the United States, presenting Roosevelt, whose government had numerous high-ranking Soviet agents, the war he had so long wanted.
11:14 Publié dans Histoire | Lien permanent | Commentaires (0) | Tags : histoire, états-unis, japon, extrême-orient, océan pacifique, deuxième guerre mondiale, seconde guerre mondiale | | del.icio.us | | Digg | Facebook
19:14 Publié dans Actualité, Géopolitique, Histoire, Islam | Lien permanent | Commentaires (0) | Tags : arabie saoudite, wahhabisme, salafisme, histoire, géopolitique, politique internationale, moyen orient, islam, fondamentalisme islamiste | | del.icio.us | | Digg | Facebook
16:24 Publié dans Histoire, Théorie politique | Lien permanent | Commentaires (0) | Tags : histoire, russie, théorie politique, sciences politiques, politologie, philosophie politique, anarchisme, pierre kropotkine | | del.icio.us | | Digg | Facebook
Ex: http://www.elespiadigital.com
Enrique J. Refoyo
¿Quién puede pensar que hay alguna conexión entre el continente americano y el enorme espacio de la inmensa Siberia rusa? Hay conexión, conexión geopolítica, y de hecho está en la historia. Hagamos un repaso histórico rápido.
América en las guerras napoleónicas (1799-1815)
A principios del siglo XIX, en el contexto de las guerras napoleónicas, el territorio europeo de España se vio ocupado por el ejército francés de Napoleón. Durante los 6 años de la guerra en España contra las fuerzas napoleónicas (1808 – 1814), no hubo una guerra simplemente en el ámbito europeo, también hubo choques por todo el mundo. El imperio británico aprovechó esa oportunidad para su máximo beneficio, pues en vistas de que había caído la monarquía española lanzaron otro ataque en el continente americano contra el imperio español. Además el imperio británico había lanzado constantes ataques con piratería e invasiones frustradas contra la América española en los siglos XVII y XVIII. Así que desde el liderazgo británico, siendo bien conscientes de su posición geopolítica como potencia naval, sabían que para construir su poder, siempre lo han de levantar sobre la división de las potencias rivales, tanto terrestres como navales.
En este contexto, el imperio británico, en vistas de su incapacidad para invadir militarmente la España americana, pasaron a una guerra indirecta, cuya oportunidad vieron y aprovecharon durante la guerra en España anteriormente mencionada. Hay que recordar que los imperios español y francés, también se unieron a los revoltosos de las 13 colonias para debilitar la influencia británica en América, y desde luego, la eficacia de la acción quedó probada en las victorias militares y subsiguiente expulsión del imperio británico de las mismas 13 colonias fundadas por colonos ingleses. Si bien es cierto que también hubo precondiciones basadas en desigualdades legales y económicas de la metrópoli inglesa respecto a sus 13 colonias.
Los dirigentes británicos aprendieron bien de la lección que recibieron en su pérdida territorial a finales del siglo XVIII. De modo que, aprovechar oportunidades geopolíticas y hacer la guerra indirecta les parecieron buenos elementos a tener en cuenta, y así los usaron en su particular guerra geopolítica contra el imperio español. Por un lado, desde el imperio británico se aprovecharon de cualquier tipo de desigualdad o directamente aprovecharon la avaricia de las élites hispanas en América para crear división y motivos por los que rebelarse y declarar la independencia, todo ello en un momento histórico en que España carecía de gobierno ya que el rey Carlos IV y el príncipe heredero Fernando VII habían sido depuestos y llevados por la fuerza a Francia con la invasión napoleónica.
Así mismo, en el contexto de dicha guerra en España (1808 – 1814), el paso del ejército británico por España fue del todo devastador. Allá donde pasaban, no sólo procuraban expulsar a las tropas francesas, sino que también arrasaban toda la incipiente industria española, así como infraestructura civil y militar, e incluso incendiando deliberadamente ciudades y pueblos. Aquella guerra dejó tres lecciones en España:
¿A quién benefició la independencia de la América española?
Antes de continuar, es necesario echar un vistazo lejano en tiempo pero cercano en contenido ¿Conocen la historia de Viriato? Fue antiguo caudillo de diferentes tribus ibéricas a mediados del siglo II a.C, que tras vencer a los invasores romanos en todas las batallas, se cuenta que fue asesinado por 3 miembros de una tribu aliada de Viriato, los cuales habían recibido la promesa romana de recibir grandes riquezas, con tierras y otros privilegios a cambio de que asesinaran a Viriato. Cuando los 3 traidores asesinaron a Viriato y fueron ante los romanos para pedir la recompensa, lo que recibieron de los romanos fue: “Roma traditoribus non praemiat”, Roma no paga a traidores.
Regresando a la pregunta de este epígrafe, parece que tal pregunta se responde de manera sencilla, la independencia benefició a los americanos. Pero eso no es cierto. De un territorio unido, de repente apareció una decena de países, que a su vez nacieron entre inestabilidad interna y deudas con el banco de Inglaterra, ese banco propiedad de los Rothschild, que financió a los insurrectos americanos para que ‘supuestamente’ se liberasen del yugo español, pero en realidad, el siglo XIX se vio sembrado de numerosas y sangrientas guerras en esos nuevos países o entre ellos. Unas guerras que siempre iban unidas al sello -principalmente- del imperio británico, que a su vez, no deseaba que ningún nuevo Estado en América pudiera conseguir un poder geopolítico importante y rivalizador.
Como ejemplos, los tenemos por todo el continente americano: La disolución de la república centroamericana, la reducción al máximo de Méjico (pérdidas del norte entre 1836 y 1848), la división de la gran Colombia en tres países, el enfrentamiento entre Chile contra Perú y Bolivia, la división de Argentina mediante la creación de Uruguay, la invasión de la tripe alianza contra Paraguay, etc. Esos son ejemplos del significado geopolítico real que tenía la promoción de la independencia de los territorios imperiales españoles en América para los dirigentes del imperio británico, un simple y efectivo ‘Divide et impera’ (Divide y vencerás).
“El gran juego” del siglo XIX
La lucha geopolítica entre el imperio ruso y el imperio británico durante el siglo XIX en Asia es conocida como “el gran juego”. Los líderes británicos, no sólo buscaron la contención, división, y supresión del poder español en América, también lo buscaron frente al imperio ruso, con el que incluso hacían frontera en el noroeste del continente americano (actual Alaska). De nuevo, los líderes británicos buscaron -en primer lugar- la contención del imperio ruso mediante la conquista o influencia territorial desde la que pudieran frenar el avance ruso desde los enormes territorios entre Europa y Asia. Y en segundo lugar, buscaron la hostilidad hacia Rusia, para poner a otras potencias regionales o mundiales contra el imperio ruso, y así presionarlo o incluso atacarlo, como sucedió en la guerra de Crimea (1853 – 1856), en que los imperios británico y francés se unieron al otomano para frenar el avance ruso por las costas orientales y occidentales del mar negro.
Algo que parecía imposible en el siglo XIX, una alianza entre los británicos y los rusos (y los franceses), se vio en la primera guerra mundial (1914 – 1918). Pero aquello sólo fue una alianza temporal ya que ambos imperios tenían un mismo enemigo en el pujante e industrial imperio alemán en Centroeuropa que además en aquella época contaba con colonias en África y Asia, las cuales proporcionaban grandes recursos a la industria alemana. Con la derrota del imperio ruso en la guerra (1917), y la posterior guerra civil (1918-1923) entre las facciones normalmente resumidas en rojos y blancos, se vio la naturaleza imperecedera de los dirigentes del imperio británico: No tienen aliados, sólo tienen intereses en función de la situación geopolítica.
Y así, de la mano de geógrafos políticos ingleses como Halford Mackinder, aparecieron los planes con las verdaderas intenciones hacia Rusia: Contener, dividir, y vencer. Mackinder propuso que en el marco de la debilidad rusa tras su derrota y guerra civil, se tenían que crear al menos 3 países para hacer un tapón entre Rusia y Europa: Bielorrusia, Ucrania y Transcaucasia. Así mismo, también proyectaron la creación de otro país más “Lenaland”, en la zona oriental de Siberia, entre la cuenca del río Lena y la costa del pacífico, para así aislar a Rusia de todos los mares importantes, dejándola reducida a unos pequeños enclaves marítimos siempre limitados por el paso a través del espacio marítimo de otros países, como en los mares báltico y negro que deben pasar entre territorio de Dinamarca-Suecia, y de Turquía respectivamente, quedándole a Rusia el acceso libre a mares árticos de escasa o nula utilidad. En este sentido, los enormes territorios rusos, principalmente la inmensa Siberia, son equiparables a la América hispánica, es decir, un inmenso territorio que le otorga una ventaja geopolítica inigualable al poder que lo mantenga. Dicha ventaja para rusos y españoles respectivamente, resultaba algo intolerable para el poder marítimo británico que nunca podría mantener una dominación global mientras que hubiera grandes potencias terrestres manteniendo extensos territorios.
“Divide et impera”, el axioma eterno
En este sentido, para los dirigentes británicos y posteriormente hasta la actualidad, para los dirigentes estadounidenses, Siberia en particular y Rusia en general, les parece ese territorio demasiado extenso como para que sólo lo tuviera un país, y por eso, siempre han actuado para contener, dividir y someter a cualquiera que gobierne en Rusia. La geopolítica no se trata de ideologías, se trata de conseguir y retener poder a nivel geográfico, por ello, tanto al imperio ruso, la unión soviética o la actual federación de Rusia, mantuvieron las mismas líneas geopolíticas. Y el imperio británico, posteriormente sustituido en importancia internacional por Estados Unidos en el siglo XX, también mantiene las mismas directrices en pos de contener, dividir y someter a cualquier potencia que pueda hacerles frente.
Es más, cuanto mayor sea la división que provoquen, mayor será su poder. Así se vio en América, que no fue una liberación frente a España, sino que era la pugna por conseguir la máxima división y enfrentamiento interno, para obtener un control más sencillo por parte del poder imperial británico. Los dirigentes de Estados Unidos han seguido la misma fórmula. Basta con ver lo sucedido en Yugoslavia desde 1990, con la serie de guerras que desembocaron en la máxima división y enfrentamiento de esos territorios para su uso geopolítico por Estados Unidos. La entonces Federación Socialista de Yugoslavia pretendió mantener una posición equidistante entre Este y Oeste, pero tal cosa fue imposible. Cuando cayó el lado soviético, y los líderes yugoslavos no quisieron seguir la vía de la ‘americanización’ que otros países del antiguo bloque soviético estaban realizando, entonces, Yugoslavia se vio asolada por la peor guerra europea desde 1945. De nuevo, cualquier división fue explotada externamente para crear una guerra brutal que acabase con un país que se creía geopolíticamente independiente, y ahora está convertido en 7 Estados, algunos más y otros menos dependientes de Estados Unidos o su sucursal de la Unión Europea.
Indigenismo “made in USA”
Actualmente, en diversos países iberoamericanos hay una nueva ideología conocida como “indigenismo”, con la que algunos dirigentes políticos pretenden reivindicar el pasado pre-hispánico a la par de una especie de unidad panamericana. Eso tiene tanto sentido como una ideología que pretendiese unir a todos los países mediterráneos con un idioma de origen romano mientras que odian a los romanos y reivindican un pasado pre-romano a la carta (quedándose con la tecnología moderna europea pero llenándolo todo de historias sobre los “buenos y pacíficos indígenas” frente a los “malvados invasores españoles”), ya que fueron los romanos precisamente quienes unificaron el área del mar mediterráneo, y en consecuencia, el elemento romano es la única línea continua entre los diferentes pueblos que conquistaron, al igual que el elemento hispánico es ese elemento común por encima de todas las diferencias. Además, los mismos creadores del indigenismo desde EEUU, defienden el mantenimiento de los supuestos “pueblos originarios” en América como un elemento de justicia, pero si son los Europeos quienes se defienden a sí mismos como pueblos originarios de Europa, tal cosa es racismo. Ahí se puede ver la mano del capitalismo globalizador, siempre creando desigualdades a favor de sus intereses.
Desde luego que los romanos hicieron su dominio por las armas, y desde luego que las tribus e imperios que conquistaron, también eran belicosos, y también se enfrentaban unos a otros, esta es la historia de absolutamente todo el mundo. Pero en Europa, no se duda de que el pasado romano, o en extensión, de que pasado greco-romano, es la base histórica de todos los países europeos. Pero en América, la base de esos países, que es el pasado hispánico, recibe todos los ataques posibles desde los creadores de ideologías de EEUU. Para los dirigentes de EEUU, como lo era para los dirigentes británicos, la división del continente americano entre muchos países enfrentados es una prioridad geopolítica. No pueden tolerar el surgimiento de ninguna potencia fuerte y con independencia en su “patio geopolítico”.
Y el indigenismo, fuera de todos los lemas y pancartas, representa ese elemento de continuación en la división y enfrentamiento interno más que de unidad, ya que ¿si no fuera en español y por la demás herencia hispánica, en qué idioma se comunicarían, y la unidad de qué cosa reclamarían los líderes supuestamente indigenistas americanos? Así mismo, ¿qué ocurriría en Washington DC, si de repente en Iberoamérica se reclamase la creación de un polo geopolítico propio y americano, sobre los fundamentos hispánicos comunes? De repente, se podría formar una enorme potencia de unos 600 millones de habitantes (el doble de EEUU), con inmensos recursos naturales con que sostenerse por sí misma de la guerra económica que les sobreviniera.
Conclusión
El pasado romano es a Europa lo mismo que el pasado hispánico es a América, su pasado que no volverá, porque sucedió en un momento histórico por una serie de circunstancias concretas e irrepetibles, pero siempre será la base fundamental que marque el devenir continental en el pasar de los siglos. Y como bien saben las élites dirigentes en el actual Estados Unidos, atacar el pasado de los pueblos mientras que se les inunda con una ‘cultura’ del materialismo, es la mejor forma que conocen los dirigentes estadounidenses para dominar países enteros.
Cualquier ínfima división o desigualdad será aprovechada por estas élites para crear una cuña desde la que introducirse allá donde marquen sus intereses. Y del mismo modo pueden recibir en el mismo Estados Unidos. Toda división o desigualdad, si es enorme o si se la exagera lo suficiente, puede ser un motivo de conflicto. La falta de liderazgo capacitado para entender las necesidades de su pueblo y las necesidades geopolíticas, estará más próximo al desastre.
Por otro lado, Siberia fue y sigue siendo esa gran región rusa, que existe precisamente por la mano de miles de rusos siglos atrás. Dicha área es una prioridad geopolítica de influencia y división para la potencia marítima estadounidense: Sin Siberia, Rusia perdería la salida directa al océano pacífico así como enormes y variadas cantidades de recursos naturales. Por eso desde EEUU están interesados en que haya fuerte emigración de población china a Siberia, para crear tensiones entre rusos, y chinos y mientras tanto, que el poder estadounidense vaya copando los medios de comunicación y también tal poder vaya cooptando a una élite siberiana fiel a los postulados estadounidenses. Con todo ello dispuesto para que, algún día concreto, los puedan activar y disparar en una revolución de color o guerra no-convencional contra el gobierno ruso.
Fuente: Katehon
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Christian Brosio interroge Youssef Hindi
Christian Brosio interroge Youssef Hindi au sujet de ses deux ouvrages sur l'histoire du sionisme et le choc des civilisations publiés chez SIGEST. La fin de l'entretien porte sur Donald Trump, et ce que l'on peut en attendre. L'histoire des Etats-Unis est hélas peu encourageante, les présidents isolationnistes ont souvent été entraînés à la guerre à la suite de coups montés...
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Frederick the Great
Exposé du gouvernement prussien, des principes sur lesquels il roule, avec quelques réflexions politiques
Berlin, 1775-1776[1]
One often encounters people who have no faith in the ability of a small nation to achieve anything worthwhile.[2] Yet one typically does not have the luxury of choice. One may prefer to live in a large and populous country, but in any event one must work with what one has. Furthermore, the fact is that small states can and do on occasion “punch above their weight” and influence the course of history. In support of the proposition that even the smallest of nations may dare to be ambitious, I give a most powerful example: the Kingdom of Prussia.
When Frederick the Great became King of Prussia in 1740, the population of his little north German realm numbered just over 2 million. This was only a third of the population of England, itself a rather small European power, and Frederick’s kingdom did not enjoy the protection of the English Channel. Instead, Prussia, also a land poor in natural resources, was protected solely by the sheer will to organize all of the little state’s means into the mightiest army possible. The gambles were huge, the threats of annihilation repeated, and yet through it all it was little Prussia which emerged victorious. The machine set in march by Frederick would double in population by the conquest of Silesia and, a century later, give Bismarck the means to unite Germany. Thus Prussia shows how a small principality may become the greatest of European powers.
The lessons of Prussian statecraft are then of interest to all those, be they leaders or citizens of nations great or small, who wish to maximize their potential and fulfill a great project. How did Frederick go about building his machine of state? For this, we may turn to the Great King himself, for he was a prolific writer. In the mid-1770s, he wrote a private[3] Report on the Prussian Government, on the Principles on Which It Operates, with some Political Reflections. The work, as so often with Frederick, is of an admirable lucidity and clarity. I will provide an overview of the Report, which apparently has never been published in English, with translations of substantial passages.
Frederick argues for a unitary state in which all the branches of government — military, budgetary, and political (under which he refers exclusively to foreign policy) — are continuously and harmoniously united towards a single goal. For the insecure Prussia of Frederick’s day, that goal was above all maintaining military preparedness and a “rainy day” war-chest, to both guarantee the state’s security and seize any opportunities which, by the vagaries of international politics, should present themselves. Frederick asserts that the prince must himself give the example, carefully monitoring all aspects of his state’s operation and personally ensuring that military merit is honored above money. Good manners must be promoted among the citizens and fertility encouraged. Above all else, one must concentrate one’s efforts on the decisive, always being thrifty, and not wasting resources on side-projects. The bolder one’s enterprises, the greater the gains.
In short, Frederick’s politics are the antithesis to the bourgeois democratic politics we have grown used to in the postwar era. We may say that Western politics have tended to be ever-more obsessed with materialist consumerism (welfare, purchasing power, GDP; and our politicians even fail to deliver these) and egalitarian “victimocracy” (symbolic and real spoils for various aggrieved groups, namely ethnic minorities, sexual minorities, and women). In both cases, individual and sectional interests are taken as the frame reference, rather than the interests of the community as a whole.
Finances: Frugality Above All
Frederick begins: “To have a general idea of this government, one must examine in detail all the government’s branches, and then combine them together.” These branches are finances, the military, and international politics/foreign policy (la politique). Frederick emphasizes the importance of the budget, which he often compares to an organism’s nervous system: “I begin by finances, which are like the sinews of the human body, which move all its members.”[4] Public finances should be as frugal as possible — notwithstanding spending on fortifications, infrastructure, and foreign allies — so as to amass a healthy war chest that can last until peace is signed:
But one must remark that if we draw all extraordinary war funds from the treasury, we will last only four campaigns, which means that by necessity we must take hold of Saxony, husband as best we can the treasury, which must specifically only serve to fill the emptiness of a few provinces invaded by the enemy. Here is the bottom of things, which shows that one must practice the greatest economy to have the last écu[5] in one’s pocket when one negotiates the peace.
Frederick argues that a substantial budget surplus is justified economically because Prussia had a trade surplus twice as big, thus money was still entering circulation. This surplus, which the Germans do seem to have a knack for, was achieved thanks to “establishing many manufactures, and especially with the help of Silesia.” Frederick emphasizes the need for the most careful monitoring of public spending:
This is why one must not lose sight of manufactures: though them, this [trade] balance can still be increased in our current possession by some hundred thousand écus. But what is important above all is to conserve the good order now established in the management of public monies and the supervision of all funds; without which the people pays very much, and the sovereign is robbed.
Thanks to this thriftiness, Prussia then had enough money for four military campaigns and enough grain for three, including purchases from Poland.
Military Affairs: Preparedness & Honor
Frederick’s description of the Prussian army is worth quoting at length. He argues that Prussia’s militarization is warranted given her insecure geographical position and the size of her neighbors. The Prussian army, based (after the conquest of Silesia) on a country of 5.2 million, was by no means large compared to its neighbors’. Frederick argues then that Prussia can only distinguish itself militarily by the quality and discipline of its armed forces. The commander-in-chief himself must personally give the example “or all is lost” for the little country. Frederick strikes a decidedly conservative note, arguing that if aristocratic officers should prove inadequate, “the recourse to commoners, would be the first step towards the decline and fall of the army.”
ON THE ARMY.
The situation of this State forces us to maintain many troops, because our neighbors are Austria, Russia, France, and Sweden. The war-footing numbers 220,000 men, including the freelance battalions and the increase in cavalry. From this number we will be able to campaign with 180,000 men; but as soon as we need to form three armies, it becomes quite apparent that we do not have many compared to our neighbors. I believe that discipline must remain on the current footing, as must the introduced reforms, unless war should change, because then one may only side with adapting to circumstances and to change with them; but to equal our enemies or surpass them, one needs to do so through order and discipline, to encourage the officers to distinguish themselves, so that a noble emulation encourages them to surpass the enemies they must fight. If the sovereign does not himself get involved in military affairs, if he does not give the example, all is lost. If one prefers courtly layabouts [fainéants de cour] to military affairs, one will see that the entire world will prefer this laziness to the strenuous military profession, and then, instead of our officers being nobles, we will have to have recourse to the commoners, which would be the first step towards the decline [décadence] and fall of the army. We have at present only 70 citizens[6] per company; one must not stray from this principle, to husband the country, which, by the increase in population, will be able to furnish resources or recruits, if war makes it necessary. [. . .] Our population counts 5.2 million souls, of which about 90,000 are soldiers. This proportion may suffice; but one must not take from the cantons more than 840 for each infantry regime and 400 for each cavalry regiment.
Foreign Policy: The Art of Opportunity
Frederick then writes very cogently on foreign policy under the heading “la politique.” This puts the Prussian military theorist Carl von Clausewitz’s later famous definition of war as “politics by other means” in an interesting light. In his great work On War, Clausewitz rarely discusses politics as such but it seems he too supported the primacy of foreign policy, which is to say the overriding interest of the state in maintaining its own existence and security, over liberal and constitutional niceties.[7]
Frederick clearly takes an unsentimental view of international relations as Realpolitik. The goal is to ensure the security of the state, this means: maintaining good relations and an alliance with the state which can most harm us (in this case Russia), acquiring more secure borders (by annexing Saxony as buffer territory), and being ever-prepared so as to be able to seize any unforeseeable opportunities to reach this goal. Frederick emphasizes caution however: given the country’s limited resources, war should only be pursued if there really is something to be gained, one must not overextend one’s territory to indefensible borders, and one must use both modesty and secrecy so as to not disturb the European balance of power and stoke general hostility against us.
ON POLITICS.
One of the first principles of politics is to work to ally oneself with whoever among our neighbors can inflict the most dangerous blows against the State. It is for this reason that we are allied with Russia, because it frees up our back concerning Prussia,[8] and that, as long as this relationship lasts, we have need not fear that Sweden will dare to attack in Pomerania. The times may change, the strangeness of circumstances can force us to take other commitments; but never will we find with the other powers the equivalent of the advantages that we find with Russia. The French troops are worth nothing, and the French are used to only feebly assisting their allies; and the English, made for paying subsidies, sacrifice their allies, to the peace, to favor their own interests. I do not speak of the house of Austria, with which it seems almost impossible to form solid bonds. Concerning the political prospects for acquisitions appropriate for this monarchy, the States of Saxony are indisputably those which would be the most appropriate, by rounding it off and forming a barrier by the mountains which separate Saxony from Bohemia, and which would need to be fortified. It is difficult to foresee how this acquisition could be made. The surest way would be to conquer Bohemia and Moravia, and to trade them for Saxony; or finally that this could be done by other trades either of the Rhenish possessions, adding Juliers or Berg, or by any other way that it could be done. This acquisition is an indispensable necessity to give this State the consistency which it lacks. For, as soon as we are at war, the enemy can march directly to Berlin without finding the slightest opposition on his path. I do not speak of the rights of succession in the countries of Ansbach, Juliers and Berg, and Mecklenburg, because these claims are known, and one must wait for their occurrence. As the State is not rich, we must take care above all else to not get involved in wars where there is nothing to be gained, because one exhausts oneself at a pure loss, and when a good opportunity follows, one cannot take advantage of it. All distant acquisitions are a burden to a State. A village on the border is worth more than a principality 60 leagues away. It is a necessary measure to hide as much as possible these schemes of ambition, and, if one can, to awaken Europe’s envy against other powers, on the occasion of which one strikes one’s blow. This can occur, and the house of Austria, whose ambition goes unconcealed, will needlessly attract the envy and jealousy of the great powers. Secrecy is an essential virtue for politics as well as for the art of war.
I note with amusement the statements on the value of a Russian alliance, the unreliability of a French guarantee, and the perfidy of Albion, observations which would no doubt resonate with many people in later centuries. Plus ça change !
Frederick briefly discusses the laws of Prussia [2], describing them as “fairly wisely made.” He argues no changes are needed, but that there must be regular visits to provincial courts to punish malfeasance, for “the parties and the lawyers work to elude the best laws.” There should also be a review every 20 years to ensure the appeals process is not abused through endless trials. These highlight the importance of regular, mindful care for one’s state.
Harmonious Government: All Branches Working Towards the Same Goal
Frederick then discusses finances, the military, and foreign policy as forming the coherent whole which government must be. He again emphasizes frugality and a healthy war chest:
TOTAL COMBINATION OF GOVERNMENT.
Given that the country is poor, and has no resources, it is necessary for the sovereign to always have a well-furnished treasury, to bear at least a few campaigns. The only resources which he may find when in need consist of a loan of 5 million from the Landschaft [a bank decreed by Frederick, made up of noblemen, allowing the state to borrow from the Prussian population itself], and about 4 million which he can draw from the bank; but that is all.
Public money, he says, should be spent on various development projects such as fortresses, manufactures, or infrastructure “in order to make the State’s constitution more solid.”
The sovereign should then be frugal with his subjects’ blood and treasure. He must himself be an example of rectitude, or his subjects will also become wasteful. Frederick emphasizes “especially” the maintenance of good morals, which can only be achieved if the power of money is kept in check. It must be impossible for the wealthy to buy honors, as they do in France. Frederick advocates a muscular natalism in order to produce more citizens and soldiers:
These reasons which I have just put forward demand that this country’s sovereign be economical and a man who maintains the greatest order in his affairs. An equally valid reason as the first is also joined to this: it is that if he gives the example of profusion, his subjects, who are poor, want to imitate him, and ruin themselves. One must especially, to support manners, grant distinctions only according to merit and not for wealth; the poor observation of this principle in France has meant the loss of the of the nation’s manners, which previously knew only the path of honor to achieve glory, and which believes at present that it is enough to be rich to be honored. As the wars are an abyss into which men fall, one must be watchful that this country be as peopled as possible, from which another good results, which is that the countryside is better cultivated and landowners are more at ease.
Frederick denies the utility of a navy for Prussia for this would divide the country’s efforts and anyway be too small to be useful. Instead, one should concentrate one’s efforts on the most decisive point, in this case the army:
I do not believe that this country should ever be persuaded to form a military navy. Here are the reasons. There are in Europe great navies, that is: that of England, those of France, Spain, Denmark, and Russia. Never will we be able to equal them; hence, with a few ships, remaining always inferior to other nations, the expense would be useless. Add to this that, to maintain a fleet, the money this would cost would force us to reform land troops, that this country is not sufficiently populated to provide recruits for the army and sailors for ships, and finally, that sea battles are rarely decisive; from which I conclude that it is better to have the best army in Europe than the worst fleet of the maritime powers.
Frederick argues that policy must “look as far as possible into the future” but recognizes that unforeseen circumstances will always arise. As such, the best one can do is to be ever-prepared so as to be able seize opportunities. Interestingly, Frederick explicitly affirms that political control of the military must serve to radicalize warfare to ensure it reaches the given political objectives: “War itself must be conducted according the principles of policy, to inflict the bloodiest blows against one’s enemies.” Frederick advises great enterprises, even if these are risky, rather than wars for trifling objectives:
Policy must look ahead as far as possible into the future, and judge the circumstances of Europe, either to form alliances, or to counter the projects of one’s enemies. One must not believe that it can bring about events; but when these present themselves, it must seize them to take advantage of them. That is why finances must be in order. It is for this reason that there must be money saved up, so that the government is ready to act as soon as political reasons indicate the moment. War itself must be conducted according the principles of policy, to inflict the bloodiest blows against one’s enemies. It was according to these principles which prince Eugene [of Savoy, an Austrian commander] acted, he who made his name immortal by the march and the battle of Turin, by those of Höchstädt and of Belgrade. These great projects of the campaign do not all succeed; but when they are vast, there always results more advantages than by these little projects where one limits oneself to taking an insignificant town [bicoque] on the border. That is how the count [Maurice] of Saxony [a French commander] gave battle at Rocoux to be able to execute the winter according to his designs upon Brussels, which succeeded.
Frederick stresses that foreign policy, the military, and finances must form a coherent whole. Otherwise they are vain, as in the case of France, which as Europe’s largest state could afford to become flabby and incoherent. Prussia did not have this luxury:
It is obvious that, from all that I have just said, that policy, the military, and finances are branches which are so tightly bound together, that they cannot be separated. One must carry them out all at once, and by their combination, subject to the rules of good policy, there results the greatest advantages for the State. In France, there is a king which manages each branch separately. There is a minister who presides, either to finances, to war, or to foreign affairs. But the rallying point is lacking, and these branches, not being united, diverge, and the ministers are each busy with only the details of their department, without anyone uniting the objects of their works to one fixed goal. If such a thing happened in this State [Prussia], it would be lost, because great monarchies go on despite excesses, and support themselves by their weight and intrinsic strength, and small States are soon crushed, if all in them is not strength, life, and vigor.
Frederick concludes that a small and insecure state such as Prussia must always be led by a watchful prince:
Here are a few reflections and my ideas on the government of this country, which, so long as it has not taken greater consistency and better borders, must be governed by princes who are always watchful, ears pricked, to observe their neighbors, ready to defend themselves from one day to the next against the pernicious projects of their enemies.
Conclusion: Power Through Will
Of Western and European states today, only the United States of America and the Russian Federation can be considered even moderately “big” in a world in which we face China’s 1.4 billion, India’s 1.25 billion, and, in another mode, the endless hordes to come from an Africa destined to number 4 billion this century [3]. Furthermore, any European-American successor states to the current U.S.A. would likely number around 150 million. Frederick’s directives for maximizing the power of small states through a frugal and martial government, characterized above all by a coherent will, are then very relevant to us.
The Greater-European World is made up dozens of states, each of which could, under enlightened leadership, work for the salvation of our people. The means of a small state are necessarily modest, but let no one say that these are worthless. Prussia began as a small enterprise. But by the luck of having successive great princes, a political “germ-cell” was set, the logic of which was favorable to growth, turning a minor principality of 2 million into a Great Power of 5 million, and then into a united Germany preeminent on the Continent, fit for two awesome bids for regional hegemony. The example of Prussia shows that even small states, when armed with unity and will, can maximize their potential and, when the stars align, achieve wonders.
Times have changed since Frederick’s. We, for the most part, do not need to be so mindful of military security as in the past. Indeed, most traditional military conflict in our lands, lamentably, is intra-European. The inherent disorganization of the Third World, nuclear weapons, and the diminishing returns of military occupation in the modern era mean that there are few conventional threats to our security.[9] The Western World’s conflicts with the Arab nations and Iran, far from being motivated by any objective threat, have largely been driven by a hypertrophied U.S. imperial establishment and the malignant influence of the Israel Lobby in Washington, Paris, and London.
The lasting insight in Frederick’s Report on the Prussian Government is the need for a coherent will: that government should concentrate on its core objectives, that all the parts work in harmony towards this, and that this will be steadily maintained over long periods of time. Frederick’s goal was the security of his state and as such he concentrated on maximizing military capability and constant readiness to seize opportunities in foreign affairs. Other objectives may be served by these Prussian virtues: constant mindfulness, frugality, preparation, and setting a good example for one’s citizens.
Frederick emphasizes the importance in politics of encouraging family-formation and maintaining public morals, which is to say shape the society’s culture and enforce positive social norms. The nation and state must always be carefully tended and cultivated that it, like a beautiful garden, flourish and grow. Frederick organized his entire state towards the goal of military power and security. Perhaps we may say that the endangered Europeans of today must similarly organize their states, through systematic cultural and population policies, towards the goals of demographic expansion, genetic quality, and unity within our great family of nations.[10]
Frederick’s patriotic prince can in our times seem something like an alien. We have grown used to living under governments dedicated above all to individual caprice and equalizing victimhood. Our people are so demoralized, that even the idea that our men and women, especially the best of them, should be expected and encouraged to raise children is considered outright offensive by many. Frederick shows that such misguided doctrines do not favor national survival.
We are used to “politics” meaning only more-or-less loathed electoral politicians winning office by publicly pandering to the mob’s bottomless appetite for consumerism and narrow sectional interests, while actually serving the hostile, increasingly post-national oligarchs who finance their political parties and control the mass media who significantly determine the public’s views. In Frederick’s time, the manners of the average citizen, be he farmer, burgher, or nobleman, were shaped by a hard life, national laws, and a state church. Today, besides the general slouching, the education of the youth and the public at large is largely left, to a small, rootless international clique of media moguls, from Carlos Slim and Rupert Murdoch, to Michael Eisner and Sumner Redstone. These men pursue their particular financial, ideological, and ethnic[11] interests, rather than the national good.
This is not inevitable however. At the close of Frederick’s reign, the population of Prussia approached that of England. The two countries in later centuries would enjoy similar rises in power and greatness. We may say that Anglo-America is what northern Europeans tend to when plenty and security afford them the luxury of individualism and egalitarianism. Prussia is what northern Europeans tend to when, driven by poverty and insecurity, they must organize and discipline themselves for collective survival.
The European peoples, we can be sure, will suffer ever-greater insecurity in the twenty-first century with their dwindling numbers, their swamping by outsiders, and the rise of Asia and Africa. By this suffering, the Europeans will painfully learn from their mistakes and again know the true worth of things. No doubt, we will see Prussians again.
In the twentieth century, the logic of Europe and the West had been one of unbridled expansion. From a small appendage of Eurasia, we burst forth and conquered virtually the entire world and multiplied to become a full third of humanity. Since the catastrophic world wars, we have been in headlong decline and, in time, we will have lost not merely our empires, but of even our own historic homelands. By the end of this century, we will be lucky if we still make up 5 percent of humanity. We must arrest our decline by again establishing, by will and discipline, a logic of expansion. The Great King provides us with a powerful model. Every European nation must play its part.
Notes
1. As published in Johann Preuss (ed.), Œuvres de Frédéric le Grand, vol. 9 (Berlin: Royal Printer, 1848), pp. 209-220. http://friedrich.uni-trier.de/fr/oeuvres/9/toc/ [4]
2. On the recurring controversy concerning pan-European political unity: small states’ options and character are indeed, in the long run, generally determined by great geopolitical blocs and empires, often of a continental scale. But it is also true that the larger a polity is, the less cohesive and coherent it is likely to be. In any event, one must not confuse a unitary empire with a multinational and multistatal confederation. The latter is necessarily prone to impotence as each state holds a de facto and/or de jure veto and each nation does not identify with the others. Thus, while a confederation may be a useful thing, one should not place exaggerated hopes in it or believe this to be the critical locus of politics. The locus of politics is always the actual sovereign. Nationalists understand the sovereign acting through the nation-state: mass consciousness is only possible in a nation; political action is only possible through a state. An empire may or may not be preferable, but that is always founded through the spilling of blood, never by signing bits of paper. For the truth of this, I refer you to the history of the United States before Lincoln, of the German Confederation before Bismarck, of Austria-Hungary, Canada, Belgium, and the European Union. (Concerning the latter two, there has been amusing example of paralysis in recent weeks as the region of Wallonia vetoed Belgian support for a major EU-Canada free trade agreement. Thus multinational polities were leading to vetocracy squared: Wallonia vetoed Belgian policy, and Belgium vetoed EU policy. And yet, one finds a thousand people in the political mainstream who believe the permanently paralyzed EU is the primary answer to European decline . . .) I also, again, direct you the very eloquent statements explicating these matters in De Gaulle’s press conferences and Hitler’s Second Book.
3. That it remained unpublished during his lifetime is unsurprising: Frederick is quite frank about his coveting neighboring Saxony in order have more buffer territory on his vulnerable southern border. These ambitions, he insisted, had to remain secret. Prussia would indeed acquire 40 percent of Saxon territory at the Congress of Vienna in 1815.
4. I would add that finance and culture can be said to make up an entire society’s nervous system. Which begs the question: what does it mean if a particular ethnic group, especially if hostile to the majority, achieves commanding influence in a society’s financial and cultural institutions?
In the natural world, the principles and examples [5] from which should always be in our minds, we observe Ophiocordyceps unilateralis, a parasitic fungus able to hijack ants’ behavioural system and turn them into “zombie ants.” According to Wikipedia:
Infected hosts leave their canopy nests and foraging trails for the forest floor, an area with a temperature and humidity suitable for fungal growth; they then use their mandibles to affix themselves to a major vein on the underside of a leaf, where the host remains until its eventual death. The process leading to mortality takes 4–10 days, and includes a reproductive stage where fruiting bodies grow from the ant’s head, rupturing to release the fungus’s spores.
5. An archaic French currency.
6. Presumably Bürger commoners.
7. Certainly, the continued existence of the state is a sine qua non of any policy, but we as nationalists add: policy must serve the existence and cultivation of the people from which the state derives.
8. Here, presumably meaning East Prussia.
9. There are exceptions obviously: Turkey is a threat to Greece, and China is a threat to Russia. In the long term, we also cannot exclude that Africa’s population explosion will eventually form a conventional military threat. What would a Spain reduced to aged pensioners and effeminate young leftists be able to oppose to a few million Islamized Africans led marching upon Europe, no doubt led, according to their genius, by a new Mahdi or General Butt Naked?
10. I observe one prominent “willful state” active in the world today: the Jewish State of Israel. This country has, through a cross-partisan political and social consensus, consistently pursued policies of demographic and territorial expansion, for the security and power of the Jewish people and against the Arabs, whom Orthodox Jewish consider subhuman. The Jews’ fertility rate in Israel is now well above replacement with over 3 children per woman, equaling the Arab rate. (Admittedly, Israel has been successful in large part thanks to its diplomatic and financial parasitism upon the Western nations, to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars and thousands of European lives, through the tireless efforts of the Jewish-Zionist lobby. But that is but another example successful ethnic activism, only possible because we are not yet ethnically organized.)
11. Unless, obviously, they are of European descent . . .
19:33 Publié dans Histoire, Théorie politique | Lien permanent | Commentaires (0) | Tags : histoire, allemagne, prusse, frédéric ii de prusse, 18ème siècle, théorie politique, politologie, sciences politiques, philosophie politique, gouvernance | | del.icio.us | | Digg | Facebook
Galvanisée par la dégradation progressive de ses relations avec l’Occident à la suite de son action en Ukraine et en Syrie, la Russie de Vladimir Poutine a toujours voulu voir en la Chine un partenaire “alternatif” sur lequel elle pourrait s’appuyer, à la fois sur les plans économique et international. Cette ambition se heurte toutefois très souvent à la réalité des objectifs de Pékin, dont les dirigeants n’ont jamais été particulièrement enthousiasmés par le concept d’un bloc anti-occidental au sens strict du terme. Les notions de “partenariat stratégique” ou même d’“alliance”, si elles sont devenues très à la mode dans les dîners mondains, ne recouvrent donc que très imparfaitement la logique du fait sino-russe.
Nous vous proposons cette analyse des relations sino-russes en deux parties, voici la première.
« Nous ne sommes ni de l’Orient, ni de l’Occident », concluait sur un ton particulièrement pessimiste le philosophe russe Tchaadaïev dans l’une de ses plus célèbres Lettres philosophiques. Principal précurseur du bouillonnement intellectuel de la Russie impériale de la seconde moitié du XIXe siècle, celui-ci fut l’un des premiers à théoriser l’idée d’une spécificité russe qui justifierait le fait qu’elle n’ait d’autre choix que de s’appuyer sur deux “béquilles”, dont l’une serait occidentale et l’autre orientale. Comme si le génie politique et industriel de l’Europe ne pouvait qu’être associé avec la créativité et la rationalité organisatrice de la Chine, qui partageait déjà avec la Russie la problématique de l’immensité du territoire et de sa bonne administration. Peine perdue pour Tchaadaïev, qui considérait que nul espoir n’était permis tant que le pays resterait engoncé dans l’archaïsme des tsars indignes de l’œuvre de Pierre le Grand, alors même que la Russie ne connaissait pas encore la violence anarchiste qui marquera la seconde moitié du XIXe siècle. Dans Apologie d’un fou, publié en 1837, il écrit et se désole : « Situés entre les deux grandes divisions du monde, entre l’Orient et l’Occident, nous appuyant d’un coude sur la Chine et de l’autre sur l’Allemagne, nous devrions réunir en nous les deux grands principes de la nature intelligente, l’imagination et la raison, et joindre dans notre civilisation les histoires du globe entier. Ce n’est point-là le rôle que la Providence nous a départi. »
De manière générale, la prophétie de Tchaadaïev s’est confirmée. L’équilibre qu’il appelait de ses vœux n’a jamais pu être trouvé, en particulier dans les relations de la Russie avec la Chine. Lorsque l’on “efface” le relief donné par la perspective historique, on a en effet tendance à voir dominer l’image d’un rapprochement constant et inexorable entre Moscou et Pékin, dont l’alliance servirait de contrepoids dans un monde dominé par la vision occidentale des relations internationales. Cette impression s’est particulièrement renforcée avec le discours de Vladimir Poutine donné à la 43e conférence de la sécurité de Munich en 2007, où ce dernier fustigea l’unilatéralisme qui avait présidé au déclenchement de la guerre en Irak en 2003 ainsi que le projet de bouclier antimissile prévu par l’Otan en Europe orientale. Ce serait toutefois négliger le fait que le premier mandat du président russe (2000-2004) fut marqué par un mouvement marqué d’affinité avec l’Occident, à tel point qu’il fut l’un des premiers à contacter George W. Bush à la suite du 11 septembre 2001 pour l’assurer de son soutien. Ce serait aussi oublier hâtivement que la relation sino-russe fut dominée pendant cinq siècles par l’importance des litiges territoriaux et que la Guerre froide fut pour les deux pays un théâtre d’affrontement pour le leadership du camp socialiste, ce qui annihila toute perspective d’un bloc unifié.
Si elles semblent très éloignées de par la langue et la culture, la Russie et la Chine ont toutefois toujours eu en commun de partager une réalité géographique similaire, dont l’immensité du territoire est la pierre angulaire. Une proximité également traduite dans les institutions, le modèle impérial historiquement développé par les deux pays ayant constitué un facteur favorable à une tradition administrative très fortement centralisatrice. Il y a aussi la question de la diaspora, particulièrement prégnante pour Moscou comme pour Pékin, avec 25 millions de Russes en dehors des frontières – principalement dans les anciens États de l’Union soviétique – et 20 millions de Chinois sur la seule île de Taïwan. Des nationaux “du dehors” souvent considérés comme des compatriotes perdus qu’il conviendrait a minima de protéger, et au mieux de faire revenir dans l’escarcelle nationale. Il y a enfin cette immense frontière commune de 4250 km qui s’étend de la Mongolie jusqu’aux rives de l’océan Pacifique, et dont la définition exacte n’a, jusqu’à récemment, jamais été arrêtée.
Les premiers contacts diplomatiques entre les deux pays sont traditionnellement datés de la délégation envoyée par la Chine au tsar Michel en 1618. Si le traité de Nertchinsk de 1689 abordera pour la première fois la question des litiges territoriaux avec le tracé d’une première frontière, la relation entre les deux pays n’en restera pas moins toujours teintée de méfiance. La question territoriale gagnera en importance dans la deuxième moitié du XIXe siècle et au début du XXe siècle, quand le Premier ministre Piotr Stolypine lancera un vaste plan de modernisation de l’Extrême-Orient russe. Entre 1906 et 1913, plus de 3,5 millions de paysans russes traverseront l’Oural pour s’installer dans les terres inhospitalières de la Sibérie orientale, dont certaines parties attirent grandement la convoitise de Pékin.
Mais le véritable rapprochement entre les deux pays ne s’imposera qu’à la faveur de la proximité idéologique offerte par les effets conjugués de la révolution russe d’octobre 1917 et de la prise de pouvoir du Parti communiste chinois (PCC) emmené par la figure emblématique de Mao Zedong en 1949. Le 14 février 1950, un premier traité d’amitié, d’alliance et d’assistance mutuelle est signé entre les deux États. L’URSS de Staline, auréolée de l’immense prestige de sa victoire sur l’Allemagne nazie en 1945 et forte d’un important savoir-faire en matière industrielle, envoie dans ce cadre plus de 10 000 ingénieurs en Chine afin de former le personnel local. Malgré la divergence fondamentale avec les conceptions économiques de Mao Zedong, qui privilégiait le développement agraire massif et pas l’industrie lourde, cette coopération se poursuit jusqu’au milieu des années 1950. Portée par l’espoir de Moscou de pouvoir constituer avec la Chine un grand bloc socialiste qui lui permettrait de peser de manière plus importante sur les affaires internationales, cette politique se heurte toutefois à la dégradation progressive des relations entre les deux pays. Ces discordances croissantes sont, en grande partie, liées au refus de Nikita Khrouchtchev de transférer la technologie nucléaire au régime chinois, à la publication du rapport portant son nom sur les crimes du stalinisme et à son choix de dialoguer régulièrement avec Washington dans le cadre de la “coexistence pacifique”, une véritable hérésie conceptuelle pour un Mao Zedong resté très attaché à l’orthodoxie marxiste-léniniste.
La rupture est finalement consommée entre 1961 et 1962, notamment après une gestion de la crise des missiles de Cuba jugée calamiteuse par Pékin. Dans la conception maoïste, la Chine possédait une légitimité au moins équivalente à celle de l’URSS pour assurer le leadership du camp socialiste. C’est la raison pour laquelle le pays chercha à se détacher du grand-frère soviétique en dégageant une voie qui lui était spécifique. En ce sens, la Chine est incontestablement parvenue à certains résultats : obtention de l’arme nucléaire en 1964, reconnaissance par la France la même année et admission au Conseil de sécurité de l’Onu en 1971, en lieu et place de Taïwan. Elle développe dans ce cadre la doctrine du “tiers-mondisme” afin de concurrencer Moscou dans le soutien aux États attirés par l’idéologie marxiste, politique dont Pékin tirera bien peu de fruits puisque seule l’Albanie d’Enver Hoxha finira par s’y rallier à la faveur de la rupture avec l’Union soviétique en 1961.
Un pic de tension avec l’URSS est atteint en 1969, lorsque l’Armée rouge et l’Armée populaire de libération s’affrontent à l’occasion de plusieurs escarmouches aux abords du fleuve Amour, sur l’affluent de l’Oussouri. Si l’enjeu tient dans le contrôle de l’île de Damanski (Zhenbao en mandarin), ces incidents illustrent principalement le problème plus large des différends frontaliers entre les deux pays, abordés plusieurs fois par la voie des traités, mais jamais véritablement réglés et toujours présents à l’esprit des deux parties.
Seule la mort de Mao Zedong en 1976, qui entraînera en Chine un certain recul de l’impératif de “pureté marxiste”, permettra d’engager un premier rapprochement. Son successeur, Deng Xiaoping, a longtemps été considéré comme un acteur majeur de la réconciliation sino-soviétique, dans un contexte où le traité d’amitié signé en 1950 était sur le point d’expirer (en 1979). Mais le Deng Xiaoping “réconciliateur” des années 1980 fut aussin aux côtés de Mao, l’un des plus solides partisans de la “ligne dure” face au révisionnisme soviétique initié par Khrouchtchev. Il définira même, en 1979, l’URSS comme « l’adversaire le plus résolu de la République populaire de Chine », avant même les États-Unis. Deng Xiaoping posa donc trois préalables au rapprochement avec Moscou : le retrait des divisions de l’Armée rouge encore stationnées en Mongolie, l’arrêt du soutien soviétique aux opérations militaires que le Vietnam menait au Cambodge depuis 1977 et le démantèlement de toutes les bases militaires situées dans les pays avoisinants la Chine. S’il s’éloigna radicalement du maximalisme de Mao Zedong, il prouva en revanche que la logique de blocs ou le suivisme idéologique n’avaient rien d’automatique dans un contexte où l’URSS redoublait d’activité sur la scène internationale. L’invasion de l’Afghanistan initiée en 1979 par la Russie a d’ailleurs mis fin à ces premières négociations. Cette situation n’a guère connu d’amélioration dans une Union soviétique minée par des difficultés économiques structurelles et une forte instabilité politique interne, avec une première moitié des années 1980 où se succèdent pas moins de quatre dirigeants différents (Brejnev, Andropov, Tchernenko et Gorbatchev). Seul le retrait partiel d’Afghanistan, initié en 1986, permettra d’ouvrir la voie à ce qui constitue le véritable tournant du rapprochement sino-russe : la “parenthèse Eltsine” dans les années 1990.
Paradoxalement, la chute de l’URSS en 1991 et l’émergence d’une Fédération de Russie la même année ne constituent pas – du moins dans un premier temps – un facteur de rapprochement avec la Chine. Dans son choix d’une rupture radicale avec un passé soviétique dont le deuil ne sera jamais véritablement fait par la population russe, Boris Eltsine s’appuie sur de jeunes cadres formés dans les années 1980. C’est par exemple le cas de Boris Nemtsov, dont l’assassinat à Moscou le 25 février 2015 a fait grand bruit, en Russie comme dans les médias occidentaux. Sous le patronage du Ministre de l’économie Iegor Gaïdar, ces nouveaux cadres résolument libéraux conduisent la Russie à opérer dans un premier temps un certain alignement sur la politique de l’Union européenne et des États-Unis, dans la continuité des choix effectués par Mikhaïl Gorbatchev pendant la Guerre du Golfe. Autant d’éléments qui ne laisseront qu’une place limitée à une politique ambitieuse de rapprochement avec la Chine, alors que celle-ci cherchait dans le même temps à améliorer ses relations avec Washington, considérablement dégradées par la question latente de Taïwan et la répression des manifestations de la place Tian’anmen en 1989.
Il est assez coutumier de désigner Vladimir Poutine, arrivé au pouvoir en 2000 mais dont l’ascension a été permise par Boris Eltsine, comme l’artisan fondateur du repositionnement russe dans la politique internationale, et en particulier du rapprochement avec la Chine. Il serait toutefois plus juste d’attribuer ce rôle au Ministre des affaires étrangères nommé par Eltsine en 1996, Evgueni Primakov. Brillant arabisant et ancien officier des services de renseignement soviétiques, il se distingua par une saille restée célèbre dans le pays : « la Russie doit marcher sur ses deux jambes ». Il s’agissait déjà d’une référence – massivement réutilisée par la suite par Vladimir Poutine – au positionnement central occupé par la Russie dans l’espace eurasiatique, mais aussi à cette “particularité” chère à Tchaadaïev et dont elle devrait user afin de poursuivre la voie qui est la sienne. Le rapprochement avec Pékin apparaissait alors comme une évidence dans un contexte où l’économie russe était minée par le choc brutal des privatisations impulsées par Iegor Gaïdar, tandis que le gouvernement et les autorités militaires subissaient l’humiliation de leur défaite dans la Première guerre de Tchétchénie.
Du côté chinois, le nouveau président Jiang Zeming cherchait quant à lui à construire pour la Chine une stature à sa mesure sur le plan international, alors que le pays se trouvait encore sous le coup de plusieurs sanctions européennes et américaines en réponse aux évènements de la place Tian’anmen. Sur le plan régional, les autorités chinoises se trouvaient de plus en plus préoccupées par le “pivot Pacifique” engagé par les États-Unis au milieu des années 1990, et qui avait conduit Washington à intervenir militairement dans la crise de Taïwan en 1995 ou encore à se rapprocher de son allié japonais.
Pour les deux pays, les conditions du rapprochement étaient donc assez largement réunies, ce qui aboutira à la signature par Boris Eltsine et Jiang Zeming d’un premier partenariat en avril 1996. Il est d’ailleurs très intéressant d’observer le subtil changement sémantique opéré par la diplomatie russe dans la définition de sa relation avec Pékin : qualifié dans la première moitié des années 1990 de « partenariat constructif » (« konstrouktivnoyé partnerstvo »), le lien avec la Chine est désormais défini comme un « partenariat stratégique » (« strategitcheskoyé partnerstvo »), une formule nettement plus offensive proposée par Evgueni Primakov, qui s’inscrit dans une certaine stratégie de communication vis-à-vis des autres partenaires de la Russie. Ce qui commence déjà à prédominer, c’est bien la nécessité d’une certaine convergence pratique dans la gestion des relations internationales, ce qui sera confirmé par la déclaration conjointe sino-russe de 1997, conçue pour compléter le partenariat de 1996. On y retrouve avec intérêt tous les éléments de langage qui sont encore aujourd’hui utilisés par Pékin et Moscou dans leur traitement des affaires internationales : « nécessité d’un monde multipolaire », « refus de l’hégémonie », « primauté du droit et de la coopération entre les peuples », « non-intervention et respect de la souveraineté nationale »… La “multipolarité” en particulier est ainsi transformée en un quasi-slogan de principe pour Moscou, qui y voyait un concept efficace pour contester la prééminence américaine dans la limite des moyens dont disposait le Kremlin dans les années 1990.
La gestion du dossier particulièrement complexe de la Yougoslavie ne fait qu’accentuer ce sentiment de dépossession et d’impuissance. La Russie se révèle incapable de soutenir son alliée serbe en empêchant une intervention militaire de l’Otan au Kosovo entre mars 1998 et juin 1999. Pékin comme Moscou adopteront par ailleurs une position similaire sur le dossier, l’action de l’Alliance atlantique en Serbie étant perçue comme une atteinte au principe de souveraineté nationale orchestrée avec un contournement du système décisionnel du Conseil de Sécurité de l’Onu – l’opération fut effectivement déclenchée sans mandat. Même à quinze ans d’intervalle, le précédent du Kosovo continue de résonner – à tort ou à raison – pour Pékin et Moscou comme la preuve indéniable que le système de concertation offert par l’Onu est vicié dans son principe même.
Cette idée justifie un rapprochement des deux capitales sur des questions plus sensibles liées à la sécurité régionale et internationale, déjà engagée par la réunion des “Shanghai Five” en 1996 (Chine, Russie, Kirghizstan, Kazakhstan, Tadjikistan). Même l’institution militaire russe, encore très imprégnée par un personnel majoritairement issu de l’establishment soviétique et très conservatrice vis-à-vis du secret industriel, accepte des transferts de technologies militaires de plus en plus nombreux en direction de Pékin. Ce choix ne fut d’ailleurs pas uniquement pris pour des raisons purement politiques : il a été rendu impérativement nécessaire par le délitement complet du complexe militaro-industriel russe et par la perte de ses principaux clients en Europe centrale et orientale (Allemagne de l’Est, Hongrie, Tchécoslovaquie, Bulgarie, Roumanie, Pologne, etc.). La Chine s’est alors rapidement imposée comme un débouché naturel, en particulier pour une industrie de l’armement dont le revenu reposait à 80 % sur les recettes des exportations d’armes.
À l’échelle de l’histoire longue, le rapprochement sino-russe pourrait donc être considéré comme un épiphénomène, particulièrement lorsque l’on sait l’importance des litiges territoriaux qui ont régulièrement empoisonné les relations entre les deux pays, de même que leur lutte acharnée pour l’hégémonie sur le camp socialiste durant la Guerre froide. La rapidité de l’évolution du monde après la chute de l’empire soviétique – que presque aucune âme n’avait été capable de prédire – a favorisé un rapprochement devenu non pas naturel, mais légitime pour deux pays dont les intérêts géopolitiques et la conception antilibérale des relations internationales constituent, en apparence au moins, les deux piliers d’une relation potentiellement “stratégique”. La Russie de Vladimir Poutine, très largement enfantée par celle de Boris Eltsine, exploitera ainsi cet héritage et tentera – avec un succès parfois assez largement contestable – d’en faire un des principaux vecteurs de son “retour” sur la scène internationale.
15:15 Publié dans Actualité, Affaires européennes, Eurasisme, Géopolitique, Histoire | Lien permanent | Commentaires (0) | Tags : russie, chine, europe, affaires européennes, asie, affaires asiatiques, eurasie, histoire, politique internationale | | del.icio.us | | Digg | Facebook
21:35 Publié dans art, Histoire, Littérature | Lien permanent | Commentaires (0) | Tags : futurisme, vorticisme, wyndham lewis, ernst jünger, lettres, littérature, lettres allemandes, littérature allemande, lettres anglaises, littérature anglaise, avant-gardes, fascisme, histoire, italie, grande-bretagne, allemagne | | del.icio.us | | Digg | Facebook
Perhaps the most impressive Western tradition of statecraft, at least in the modern era, is that of Prussia. To be sure, the liberal-democratic tradition launched by the United States [2] and France is formidable, and it is not without reason that it today dominates our world. But the greatness of America and France also relied upon a prosaic factor: sheer demographic and geographic size. Little Prussia in contrast accomplished feats with absolutely miserable resources, raising herself up among the great powers and founding the German nation-state through sheer force of will. The Prussian “authoritarian” tradition, with its emphasis on hierarchy, community, and martial prowess, is then a useful counterpoise to the liberal-democratic one we take for granted today. Clausewitz and Carl Schmitt must be read beside Jefferson and Tocqueville [3].[1]
The most illustrious of all the Prussian leaders was Frederick the Great, a great political reformer and military commander who also cultivated a reputation as a philosophical thinker in his own right. Given how rare it is for generals and politicians to be particularly thoughtful, Frederick the Great merits all the more to be read by young Westerners in search of their heritage and a usable past. I propose then a reading of some of Frederick’s quite substantial philosophical and political writings.
Frederick’s Dissertation on the Reasons to Establish or Abrogate the Laws (Dissertation sur les raisons d’établir ou d’abroger les lois, 1750),[2] written after a decade in power and the hard-won conquest of Silesia, is admirably clear in its writing (how rare that can be!) and showcases wide reading and historical knowledge.[3] Many of Frederick’s themes and arguments retain all their relevance to this day. As this text is apparently unavailable in English, I will quote from it at length.[4] Unusually for a reigning monarch, the Dissertation was made public, thus showcasing the King’s philosophical credentials and stirring European debate.
Frederick’s ideal government is an enlightened patriarchy. He notes that “family fathers” have played an enormous role in the law throughout history, both as lawmakers and as legal masters of the household. For Frederick, the laws should serve to shape custom and enforce public morals, with the interests of the community overriding those of individuals. But this firm law must also be humane, rational, and moderate. Social conventions should be examined in this light and reformed accordingly. Frederick concludes with two proposals as examples: ending the stigma of bastardy, so as to prevent illegal abortions leading to the deaths of both the bastard and the mother, and a pan-European ban on dueling, the latter often causing the death of valuable citizens.
To know how to make laws, the practical Frederick advises looking to history:
Those who wish to acquire an exact knowledge of the way in which the laws must be established and abrogated can only look to history. We see there that all nations have had particular laws, that these laws were established in succession, and that much time has always been necessary for men to reach something reasonable. We see there that the legislators whose laws have lasted the longest are those who had as their goal public happiness, and who best knew the genius of the people whose government they regulated.
According to Frederick then, history teaches that the establishment of good laws requires patience, public-spiritedness, and harmony with “the genius of people,” which might also be termed national character. He shows an optimistic faith in reason typical of the Enlightenment: men require time to establish good laws, but once reached, these tend to spread. This accounts for the pervasiveness of Roman law: “These laws were found to be so admirable that after the destruction of the empire, they were embraced by the most civilized peoples.”
Frederick’s Dissertation provides a fairly impressive overview of the evolution of law from ancient to modern times, covering the Ancient Egyptians, Greeks, Romans and the modern European nations of England, France, and Germany. He draws from numerous sources, mentioned in the marginalia, including Herodotus, Plutarch, Livy, Cicero, and Tacitus for the Ancients and mainly French historians for the Moderns.
Frederick’s highlights from this enormous historical period are obviously not disinterested. These generally could be considered to subtly reinforce his position as an “enlightened despot” and pragmatic reformer, particularly interested in maximizing his state’s population and military power. In addition to “family fathers,” Frederick places a strong emphasis on the role of religion and, interestingly, usury in the development of the law. Hence, he expounds at length on Sparta, a martial state to which Prussia was often compared:
Lycurgus, king of Lacedaemon, used the laws of Minos, to which he added some of Osiris, which he collected himself from a journey he made to Egypt; he banished gold from his republic, silver, all sorts of currencies, and superfluous arts; he equally shared lands among the citizens.
This legislator, who intended to shape warriors, did not want any sort of passion to weaken their courage; he allowed for this effect the community of wives among citizens, which peopled the State, without excessively attaching private citizens to the sweet and tender bonds of marriage; all children were raised at public expense. When parents could prove that their children were born unhealthy, they were permitted to kill them. Lycurgus believed that a man who was not fit to bear arms did not deserve to live.
He ruled that helots, a kind of slave, would cultivate the soils, and that the Spartans would only busy themselves with the exercises which would render them fit for war.
The youth of both sexes wrestled; they exercised completely naked, in the public square.
Meals were regulated, where, without distinction of orders, all citizens ate together.
It was forbidden for foreigners to stay in Sparta, in order that their manners not corrupt those which Lycurgus had introduced.
Incompetent thieves were punished. Lycurgus had the intention of forming a military republic, and he succeeded in this.
The Aim of Law: Good Manners & Public Safety
Frederick asserts that laws should aim to promote “[g]ood manners and public safety.” He is enormously concerned with civil peace, saying French chancellor Michel de l’Hôpital’s efforts to increase tolerance and defuse tensions between Catholics and Protestants during the Wars of Religion “worked for the salvation of the fatherland.” Laws may deal with politics (government), manners (criminal), and civil matters (contracts, usury).
But for Frederick, laws do not merely have the negative goal of suppressing crime and instability, but also the positive one of fostering good habits. Hence the laws have an important cultural role. He says “the laws are dikes against the overflowing of vices, they must be made respected by the terror of punishments,” but these should also be humane. The sovereign must protect “the majesty of the laws” if these are to have any power. This sometimes fails. Under the Roman Republic “the corruption of manners . . . led to an endless multiplication of laws.”
Frederick cites the Twelve Tablets of Rome, inspired by Solon, among the best laws. These had notably legalized posthumous recognition of children (in cases where the alleged father died before birth) and divorce: “These laws, so equitable and so just, restrained citizens’ freedom only in the cases when their abuse of it could harm the calm of families and the security of the republic.”
However, in judging what individual liberty and equal rights citizens should have, Frederick stresses that the aim must always be the public good. Many restrictions on individual liberty and “discriminations” against classes of citizens might at first appear unjust, but are actually upon closer examination found to serve the general welfare. Frederick cites the German practice of primogeniture in this regard:
Whoever has bothered to the examine the laws with a philosophical spirit will have no doubt found many which at first appear contrary to natural equity, and which however are not so. I content myself with citing the right of primogeniture. It seems that nothing is more just than sharing the paternal estate equally among all children. However experience proves that the most powerful inheritances, subdivided into many parts, reduce over time opulent families to indigence; which has led father preferring to disinherit their younger sons rather than prepare their house for a guaranteed decadence. And for the same reason, laws which appear bothersome and harsh with certain individuals are not less wise, so long as they tend towards the entire society’s advantage; this is a whole to which the enlightened legislator will constantly sacrifice the parts.
Thus, discrimination against younger sons, while unfair for those concerned, can be justified by its strengthening of the continuity of the family house. (I note in passing that some have claimed this passing on of the family household to the first-born son has contributed to the strong German tradition of family businesses [the famous Mittelstand]. Conversely, the French Revolution’s egalitarian law of succession overrode the father’s will and equally distributed property among sons. Thus, estates tended to disintegrate over time. Some have blamed the catastrophic and lasting decline of French fertility in this period on these provisions, bourgeois fathers seeking to reduce their offspring to maintain their households.)
Certainly the American and French revolutionaries would not deny the importance of the general welfare, but Frederick is more explicit: the public good must come before the individual interest and narrow “rights.” In this he echoes the wisdom of classical philosophy, as when the Roman emperor and Stoic philosopher Marcus Aurelius [4] wrote: “What brings no benefit to the hive brings none to the bee. [. . .] What causes no harm to the city causes no harm to the citizen.”
Patriarchy: A Realistic Ideal
Frederick ascribes an enormous role to the père de famille, the family father, both in the historical foundation of law and in establishing good laws in the present. He begins his historical account as follows:
It seems probably that family fathers were the first legislators: the need to establish order in their houses no doubt forced them to make domestic laws. Since these first times, and when men began to assemble in cities, the laws of these particular jurisdictions were found to be inadequate for a more numerous society. [. . .]
Disorders accrued in the cities, news vices were born, and the family fathers, as those with the greatest interest in repressing them, agreed, for their security, to oppose this excess.
Towards his conclusion, Frederick presents patriarchy as one of the best forms of government given humanity’s imperfect nature. He describes first a utopia in which government and laws would perfectly regulate society like clockwork:
A body of perfect laws would be the masterpiece of the human spirit concerning the government’s policy: one would observe there a unity of plan and rules so exact and proportioned, that a State driven by these laws would resemble a watch, whose springs have been made for one same goal; one would find there a deep knowledge of the human heart and the genius of the nation; punishments would be tempered, so that by maintained good manners, they would be neither light nor harsh, clear and precise rulings would never lead to legal dispute; they would consist in an exquisite choice of all that has been best in civil laws, and in an ingenious and simple application of these laws to the customs of the nation; all would be foreseen, all would be combined, and nothing would be subject to inconveniences: but perfect things do not pertain to humanity.
Human beings being imperfect, Frederick instead offers patriarchy as a realistic regime. Under patriarchy, the government’s public-spiritedness is ensured by a sense of family belonging with the people:
The peoples would have reason to be satisfied, if legislators placed themselves in their regard in the same mental dispositions of these family fathers who gave the first laws: they loved their children; the maxims they prescribed had as their goal only the happiness of their family.
This perspective largely resonates with evolutionary psychology’s later view that feelings of kinship enable in-group altruism and more generally on the centrality of family to human psychology.
Frederick highlights numerous examples throughout history of the importance of the father in law: parricide was so unthinkable to Solon he made no mention of it in his laws, while the Romans made the mere intention of parricide punishable by death. This did not mean the father should enjoy unlimited and tyrannical power, as Frederick also writes:
No laws revolts humanity more than this right of life and death which fathers had over their children in Sparta and Rome. In Greece, a father who was too poor to provide for the needs of a too numerous family allowed the children born in excess to perish; in Sparta and in Rome, if a child came to the world poorly-shaped, this sufficiently authorized the father to deprive him of his life.
It is worth observing here that if the killing of infants was not for an arbitrary individual purpose such as a father’s whim, but rather for a rational public purpose such as eugenics, this might meet Frederick’s criteria for a good law, given his previous assertion of the public good over individual interest.
Frederick’s advocacy of paternal authority is all the more poignant and significant in that his own father, Frederick-William, also known as the Soldier King, had been a harsh one. Frederick-William had often beaten his son and executed before Frederick’s eyes his youthful best friend (and possible lover), Hans von Katte, for “desertion.”
Undivided Authority
Frederick’s apology of patriarchy fits well with his arguing that the sovereign should enjoy undivided authority, free notably from parliaments. This enabled the sovereign to concentrate without distraction and formulate coherent laws. Coming from an absolute monarch, this was obviously not a disinterested position, but it was forcefully argued. Frederick stresses the dissensions between Senate and people which paralyzed the Roman Republic and writes on England:
Although England has many wise laws, it is perhaps the European country where they are the least in effect. Rapin Thoyras [a French historian] remarks very well that, by a vice of government, the power of the King is constantly in opposition to that of the parliament; that they watch each other, either to conserve their authority, or to extend it; which distracts the King and the representatives of the nation from the care which they should expend to maintain justice; and this turbulent and stormy government changes endlessly its laws by acts of parliament, according to whether the current situation and events forces it to do so; hence It follows that England is in the situation of more requiring reform of its jurisprudence than any other kingdom.
Frederick argues elsewhere that laws made by different authors will tend to contradict one another and be incoherent:
When in a State the laws are not assembled in a single body, there must be some who contradict each other; as they are the work of different legislators who did not work on the same scheme, they will lack unity which is so essential and so necessary to all important things.
He notes that nothing is worse for respect for the laws than internal contradiction. Hence, Frederick strongly argues for legal codification, citing many examples, from Justinian through Alfred the Great to Louis IX of France.
Frederick then explicitly rejects any doctrine of divided sovereignty or separation between executive and legislative authority, as found in the writings of Montesquieu and the American Constitution. No doubt Frederick would not be surprised by the often vague and incoherent texts produced by divided sovereigns, whether the representatives in the U.S. Congress or the heads of state of European summits.
To be continued . . .
Notes
1. My ability to directly study the Prussian tradition is sharply limited by my very inadequate knowledge of German. Concerning Frederick however, I am fortunate, as a blessed son of France, for the Great King wrote overwhelmingly in French. This reflected the preeminence of French as the European lingua franca of the eighteenth century and Frederick’s enthusiastic embrace of the French Enlightenment, or les Lumières. On other benefits of learning the French language, see Guillaume Durocher, “Learning French with Jean-Marie Le Pen,” [5] Counter-Currents, November 20, 2015.
2. As published in Johann Preuss, Œuvres de Frédéric le Grand, vol. 9 (Berlin: Royal Printer, 1848). http://friedrich.uni-trier.de/fr/oeuvres/9/toc/ [6]
3. Montesquieu is a possible but uncertain influence. Frederick makes clear in a letter that he had read Montesquieu’s Considerations on the Greatness and Decadence of the Romans. However, there is no mention of the French writer’s more famous Spirit of the Laws, which were published around the same time as the Dissertation’s writing. There is confirmation that Frederick read the Spirit of the Laws afterwards. Anne Baillot and Brunhilde Wehinger note a number of parallels: on the law as representing the progressive development of human reason (Montesquieu: “The law, in general, is human reason.”), on the need to adapt law to “national genius” and circumstances, on a gentle approach to abortion, and in supporting the ban of torture. Anne Baillot and Brunilde Wehinger, “Frédéric II, Roi-philosophe et législateur,” HAL.archive-ouvertes.fr (2013). https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-00788671/document [7]
4. Frederick’s works appears to be largely unavailable online in English. French and German versions of his complete works are available in scanned and text formats from the University of Trier. However, these are only available page-by-page rather than by chapter or book, which make referencing somewhat obnoxious.
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Alison Weir's relatively short book covers the history of Zionism in the United States from the last decades of the 19th century until the creation of the state of Israel in 1948. (She is working on a second volume that will carry this history to the present.) Its brevity does not mean, however, that it is in any sense superficial, as it brings out key historical information, all well-documented, that sets the stage for the troubled world in which we now live. While histories of Zionism have usually focused on Europe, Weir shows that American adherents of this ideology have been far more important than generally has been recognizedThe basic theses of this book are encapsulated in the title and subtitle. The history of how American Zionists used America to create Israel was “hidden” in two respects. First, it was “hidden” in the sense that American Zionists often worked behind the scenes. More importantly, however, that history is known but has been kept hidden from the general public, who rely on the mainstream media, and exists almost exclusively in works produced by small publishers—often of a scholarly bent—read by only a few. As Weir points out, those who have tried to bring this information to the general public have suffered both venomous verbal attacks and economic threats that quickly silence the message and often destroy the messenger. This treatment obviously serves to prevent others from doing likewise—“Pour encourager les autres.”
America’s support for Israel ran “against our better judgment” in the sense that American foreign policy experts of the era covered by this work recognized that support for Zionist goals would damage American national interest and that this support only came about because of the political power of American Zionism.
While Weir is not a professional historian, she has intensively studied the literature on this subject for years, much of it rather arcane, as well as spending considerable time traveling in the region. Having a Ph.D. in history myself, I would like to point out that the writing of history does not require any specialized talents as are needed in such fields as theoretical physics or medicine, so that intelligent, hardworking laypersons can often produce works of great value. Weir does not purport to have pored over primary sources to discover new information, which is the hallmark of the professional historian’s craft, but rather synthesizes information from existing published studies that are largely unknown to the general public. Moreover, she brings to her work knowledge of the land and the peoples which she has picked up from her travels.
For those who still might find her background insufficient for her task, it should be further added that Israel apologist Alan Dershowitz, who lacks as far as I can tell any college degree in history, manages to produce works on Israel that are picked up by major publishers who would not think of publishing anything done by most academic historians. It might be added that academic historians, who specialize in monographs, would be loath to produce a comparable account of this subject from Weir’s perspective, since it would do little for their careers and might serve as their professional death knell.
While the book’s narrative is very readable and the key points can easily be digested by the average reader, it is nonetheless well-documented. To satisfy the more academic reader, the book has a section of extended endnotes longer than the narrative. I found the endnotes section valuable not only for confirming and expanding upon the content of the narrative but also in serving as a point of departure for additional research. I often switched from my Kindle book to a Web search, coming up with names of related books and articles that I would like to peruse, should I ever have the time to venture to a research library.
The work goes over a large number of little known but very important topics to demonstrate the powerful influence of Zionism over American foreign policy. Space, naturally, precludes me from discussing all the topics in detail so I have focused on those which seem to deal most directly with the major themes of the book.
The early political influence of Zionism is illustrated by the fact that in 1887 a Jewish American was made ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, which then controlled Palestine and was thus considered by Zionists as the key country with which to deal. This set the precedent of a Jewish ambassador to this country that was continued for the next 30 years, by which time the Zionist search for outside support had turned elsewhere.
The book brings up the central importance of Louis Brandeis and his disciple Felix Frankfurter in advancing the interests of Zionism. Brandeis was a noted social and economic reformer who was a Zionist and happened to be very close to President Wilson, who would put him on the Supreme Court in 1916, the first Jew to hold such a position. Even after joining the Supreme Court, Brandeis used this access to Wilson to promote Zionist interests, sometimes acting as a go-between for Wilson and British Zionists.
Brandeis would head the international Zionist Central Office during the teens but, perhaps even more significant, he would be a leading member of a secret society, the Parushim, the Hebrew word for “Pharisees” and “separate,” which covertly advanced the interests of Zionism in the United States and Europe. The Parushim was founded in 1913 by a University of Wisconsin philosophy professor, Horace M. Kallen, who ironically is considered to be the father of cultural pluralism in the United States. Obviously this idea conflicted completely with his support for the creation of a Jewish exclusivist state, but it is a contradiction that is rather commonplace among many Jews and liberal gentiles alike.
Kallen was regarded by some as first promoting the idea for what became the Balfour Declaration, which would set the stage for the modern state of Israel. He promoted this scheme in 1915 when the U.S. was still a neutral. He told a British friend that this would serve to bring the United States into World War I. It should be pointed out that at that time, despite serious diplomatic issues regarding German submarine warfare, the great majority of the American people wanted to avoid war and Wilson would be re-elected president in November 1916 on the slogan “He kept us out of war.” Kallen’s idea for advancing the Zionist goal, however, soon gained traction.
Frustrated in their efforts to achieve a Jewish homeland in Palestine from the Ottoman Empire, the American Zionists turned toward Britain to bring this about. In 1916 as World War I dragged on indecisively, Zionist leaders promised the British that in return for a Jewish homeland in Palestine—which the British could expect to gain from the Ottomans as one of the spoils of a victorious war—American Zionists would work to bring the United States into the war on behalf of Britain and its allies. Many British strategists at the time, such as Winston Churchill, believed that such an event would turn the tide for victory. Weir holds that it “appears” that the Zionists’ activity was one factor in bringing America into the war [1] and cites a number a number of reputable books and leading contemporary figures—such as then-British Prime Minister Lloyd George—that held that Zionists carried out their side of the bargain by pushing the United States into war.
The Balfour Declaration was a letter, dated November 2, 1917 (and coming out in the press one week later), from British Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour to Walter Rothschild, a British Zionist leader, officially stating that Britain would use its “best endeavours to facilitate the achievement” of a Jewish Homeland in Palestine.
Now even to give attention to the Balfour Declaration in a history of World War I is somewhat outré; to claim that it caused the United States to enter war is one of those ultra-taboos. Although my Ph.D. was in American history with a focus on diplomacy (and a minor in 20th Century European history), never did I come into contact with anything about the Balfour Declaration in my college studies (which, granted, did not deal with the Middle East). I only knew about it from reading what the mainstream historical profession would regard as disreputable authors.
Reference to the Balfour Declaration and the Zionist role in it was considered one of the daring things done by the iconoclastic Israeli “New Historian” Tom Segev who discussed it in his book, One Palestine, Complete: Jews and Arabs Under the British Mandate (2000). In a lecture on his book that I heard at the University of Maryland in 2002, Segev, though acknowledging that the British goal was winning over Jews to their side [2], derided the idea of any real Jewish power, attributing that mode of thinking to “anti-Semitism.” In 2010, Segev expressed this view in a review of a new book on the Balfour Declaration: “Obviously there was no ‘Jewish power’ controlling world affairs, but Weizmann [3] successfully pretended that the Jews were in fact turning the wheels of history. For once, the anti-Semitic image of the Jews proved useful — they were believed to be so maliciously dangerous that one would do best to acquire them as allies rather than as enemies.”[4]
Although Segev is a daring historian who often rejects the Zionist myths on the creation of Israel, in this case he essentially relies on a classic Zionist-constructed strawman, which involves greatly exaggerating the view that the Zionists (and Jews in general) don’t like. It is highly doubtful that the British foreign office believed that Jews were so powerful as to be “turning the wheels of history.” (If that had been the case, one would think that the British would have offered Jews much more than Palestine from the very start of the war.) Furthermore, as noted earlier, Weir does not subscribe to anything like this Zionist strawman in regard to the Balfour Declaration, or anything else, I should add.
However, what is important is not only whether the American Zionists were able to bring the United States into a war, but that they made a solemn promise to a foreign country that they would try to do so. As a matter of fact, since Zionists such as Brandeis knew much about Wilson’s thinking and undoubtedly were kept abreast on what Germany was likely to do (it being well-known that Germany was suffering from the British “starvation” blockade and that politically powerful voices there wanted to retaliate by pursuing a harsher submarine policy toward neutrals such as the U.S.), they may have realistically thought in 1916 that there was a good chance that the United States would shortly go to war whether they interceded or not, which meant it would be a wise move to make such a deal and be able to get credit for a result that was not of their own making.[5]
It is also of significance that the American Zionists promised to push the U.S. into war not because they believed that it was in their own country’s national interest—as was the case for a number of prominent Americans such as former President Theodore Roosevelt—but solely for what they considered to be in the interests of world Jewry. Ascribing “dual loyalty” to any Jews is regarded as a classic anti-Semitic canard. In this case, however, the American Zionists’ position did not even rise to the level of “dual loyalty,” being purely singular in that it evinced no apparent concern whatsoever for American interests.
Linked to the Balfour Declaration, Weir points out that “American Zionists may also have played a role in preventing an early peace with the Ottoman Empire.”[6] In 1917, the U.S. State Department had heard that the Ottomans were becoming weary of the war, and it decided to send a secret mission to explore the possibility of detaching the Ottoman Empire from its alliance with the other Central Powers. Such a separate peace would likely leave the Ottoman Empire (or Turkey as it would become shortly)[7] in control of its Asian possessions, which would mean that since Britain would not gain Palestine, no home for Jews could emerge there.
This mission was headed by former Ambassador Henry Morgenthau, who, though Jewish, was not a Zionist. However, he was persuaded by Zionists such as Brandeis protégé Felix Frankfurter, who was a member of the mission’s delegation, to abandon the effort. In a meeting with Morgenthau, Chaim Weizmann, a leading British Zionist who was alerted by American Zionists as to the danger posed by Morgenthau’s mission, also played a major role in stopping the potentially-peacemaking mission, as is indicated in Weir’s endnotes.[8]
Other obstacles to the Zionists’ goal in Palestine would also arise soon after the end of the war in November 1918. Important Christian Americans who were intimately involved in the Near East and supported self-determination for the Arabs recognized that this could not take place if the Zionists were able to set up an ethnic Jewish enclave on Arab land. They went to the Paris Peace Conference which, among a number of issues stemming from World War I, would deal with the territorial settlement.
As a result of the divergent views on the future status of the territory to be given up by the Ottoman Empire, President Wilson decided to send an investigatory commission to the region, which became known as the King-Crane Commission.[9] In line with Wilson’s goal of national self-determination, the commission sought to discover how the region’s inhabitants wanted to be governed, and they overwhelmingly expressed opposition to a Jewish home in Palestine.
Weir points out that “Zionists through Brandeis dominated the situation, however, and the report was suppressed until after the Peace Accords were enacted.”[10] At the Paris Peace Conference, Weir writes, “[t]he U.S. delegation was forced to follow Zionist directives.”[11]
One minor criticism here is that the reader might incorrectly get the impression that the King-Crane Commission dealt solely with Palestine, while it actually involved all the territories severed from, or expected to be severed from, the Ottoman Empire (Turkey).[12] The issue of Palestine made up about half of the report on “Syria,” which also included present day Syria and Lebanon. The other two geographical sections of the report were “Mesopotamia” and “Non-Arabic speaking portions of the Former Ottoman Empire (Asia Minor).”[13] Thus the suppression of the commission’s report was likely due not only to opposition by Zionists, but also to other interested parties disturbed by its findings in areas other than Palestine. These parties would include the British, French and Greeks.
In regard to the report’s description of Palestine, however, Weir’s presentation was completely on the mark. The King-Crane report reflected extreme opposition to Zionism expressed by those Muslims and Christians who lived in Palestine as well as by those who lived in neighboring areas.
Weir points out that during the inter-war period, when Palestine was governed by Britain under a League of Nations mandate, which was intended to prepare the country for eventual independence, the American Zionists moved away from openly pushing for the establishment of an exclusivist Jewish state in Palestine since this ran counter to the temper of the times—which reflected American opposition to militant nationalism and dual loyalty, and respect for majority rule and national self-determination. Instead, Zionists focused on the development of Jewish institutions in Palestine, which would serve as a basis for a Jewish state. Zionist leaders, such as David Ben-Gurion, still viewed American support as key to their establishment of a Jewish state.
With World War II on the horizon, Zionists began to return directly to their goal of a Jewish state. A precursor of the current Israel lobby, the American Zionist Emergency Council (AZEC), began in 1939. In order to pressure the U.S. government to support a Zionist state, AZEC worked to establish more than 400 local committees under 76 state and regional branches to promote this goal. These committees distributed Zionist pamphlets, circulated petitions, and engaged in letter writing campaigns to promote the Zionist cause. AZEC also funded books, articles and academic studies for this same purpose.
By the end of World War II, Zionist efforts gave them considerable power in American politics. In order to appeal to the general American populace, they stressed the needs of the many Jewish European refugees, connecting the refugee problem to Palestine, the latter destination purportedly being the only solution to their existing homelessness. By this humanitarian argument, Zionists could thus appeal to many Americans who did not necessarily believe the Zionists’ contention that Jews had a historical right to control Palestine.
As Britain opted to turn over the troublesome issue of Palestine to the United Nations in 1947, Zionists pushed for a partitioning of Palestine between Jews and the indigenous Palestinian population. The partition plan discriminated in favor of the Zionists, since while the Jewish population comprised about 30 percent of Palestine’s population, the plan would award them with 55 percent of the land. And the Zionists’ real goal was not to be content with that amount but to also grab the remainder.
U.S. State Department officials strenuously opposed the partition plan, looking upon this approach as both contrary to America’s professed principle of national self-determination and its vital interests in the Middle East, where a vast majority of the governments and their people were vehemently opposed to Zionism. A leading State Department official in this opposition was Loy Henderson, Director of the Office of Near Eastern and African Affairs. Zionists viciously attacked him, demanding his removal and even threatening his family. The State Department chose to move him elsewhere and in 1948 President Truman named him Ambassador to Nepal, which kept him far away from anything to do with Palestine.
Removing Henderson, however, did not make the State Department favorable toward transforming any part of Palestine into a Jewish state. Among the higher level opponents were the head of the State Department‘s Division of Near Eastern Affairs, Gordon P. Merriam; Undersecretary of State Dean Acheson, who later became Secretary of State; and George F. Kennan, the State Department‘s Director of Policy Planning, noted as the architect of America’s containment policy against Soviet Communism.
The State Department was not the only part of the executive branch of the United States government that opposed the Zionist goal for Palestine. The newly-created CIA reported in 1947 that the Zionists were seeking goals that would be harmful to both Jews and “the strategic interests of the Western powers in the Near and Middle East.”[14] The Joint Chiefs of Staff opposed partition and expressed the prescient fear that the Zionist aim was to involve the U.S. in their conflict with their Middle East enemies.
Despite this opposition from a consensus of foreign policy and national security experts within his own government, Truman opted to support the Zionist partition plan for political reasons, relying heavily on the views of his domestic political advisor, Clark Clifford, who maintained that the Jewish vote and financial backing were necessary to win the presidential election in 1948. Truman‘s Secretary of State George Marshall, noted for the famed Marshall Plan that helped to rebuild devastated Western Europe, and Secretary of Defense James Forrestal remained staunchly opposed to what they regarded as Truman’s willingness to sacrifice vital national security interests on the altar of domestic politics.
Weir points out that a number of wealthy Zionist Jews provided financial support for Truman’s presidential campaign in 1948, which may put us in mind of Zionist mega-donors of today such as Sheldon Adelson. One of these backers was Abraham Feinberg who funded Truman’s epic whistle-stop train campaign. Truman would give Feinberg credit for his victory. As quid pro quo, the Truman administration remained inert when the CIA later reported that Feinberg was involved in illegal gun-running to Zionist groups in Palestine.
I should add that while Truman has become something of an idol for recent historians, he was looked upon during his time as being driven by what would benefit his own political interest. As the redoubtable journalist H. L. Mencken quipped about Truman’s 1948 campaign: “If there had been any formidable body of cannibals in the country he would have promised them with free missionaries, fattened at the taxpayer’s expense.” In Truman’s defense, however, it should be pointed out that two of his key opponents in the 1948 presidential election, Republican Thomas Dewey and the left-wing Progressive Party candidate Henry Wallace, Franklin Roosevelt’s former Vice-President, were both staunchly pro-Zionist.[15]
Weir describes a number of Zionists who maintained personal contact with Truman and likely played a role in shaping his policies. David K. Niles, Truman’s executive assistant, was regularly briefed by the head of the Washington Office of the Zionist Organization of America and was believed to be passing top-secret information to the Israeli government. Truman’s long-time friend and former business partner, Eddie Jacobson, was a staunch Zionist with close access to Truman who would describe his information to be of “decisive importance.”[16] Sam Rosenman, a political advisor to Truman, screened State Department memos to Truman.
Although the United States had announced its support for the partition of Palestine, it was apparent that the partition plan still lacked the necessary two-thirds vote to pass in the UN General Assembly. Consequently, the Zionists were able to get a delay in the vote and used that time to intimidate or bribe opponents to reverse their positions.
For example, Weir notes that Wall Street financier and perennial presidential adviser Bernard Baruch threatened war-torn France that it would be denied aid from the United States if it voted against partition. David Niles was able to get rubber baron Harvey Firestone to tell the Liberian president that he would terminate his planned expansion in his country if it did not vote in favor of partition. Haiti was promised economic aid if it would change its vote and support the measure. Costa Rica’s President Jose Figueres was said to have received a blank checkbook to get his country’s vote.
As a result of this behind the scenes skullduggery, the UN General Assembly on November 29, 1947, voted in favor of the adoption and implementation of the partition plan as UN General Assembly Resolution 181. Although this resolution is widely believed in the United States to have created Israel,[17] Weir correctly points out that it “was of limited (if any) legal impact” since General Assembly resolutions, as opposed to those of the Security Council, are not binding on member states. Although the resolution recommended that the UN Security Council implement the partition, it never did.[18]
The effect of the General Assembly’s resolution, however, was to increase the fighting in Palestine. While the Zionist myth would have it that the Jews in Palestine were simply a peaceful community set upon by violent Arabs intent on genocide, Weir points out that Zionist military forces had been covertly preparing for war for some time. They had amassed extensive armaments, some of it coming illicitly from the U.S., and their troop numbers exceeded those of their foes even after five Arab governments had joined the fray. The traditional Zionist portrayal of Israel’s war for independence (which, of course, prevented independence for the Palestinians) as a David versus Goliath conflict in which the Jews miraculously overcame overwhelming odds is pure fiction, but it is still believed in many quarters today and continues to generate sympathy for Israel. On May 15, 1948, Zionists announced the establishment of their new state of Israel, for which they did not establish any boundaries.
A quick aside here: somewhat ironically, in my view, Weir barely touches on the United States decision to recognize Israel. Moreover, what does exist is largely in the endnotes. Although there will be a second volume to Weir’s history, and the cut-off point for this volume has to be somewhere, still the fact that the book does make reference to events in 1948 would seem to have made it appropriate to discuss in some detail the issue of America’s quick recognition of Israel.
A number of interlocking organizations operated in the U.S. to raise money for Zionist paramilitary groups in Palestine, though this goal was kept secret. These organizations were under the direction of the leader of the Irgun Delegation, Hillel Kook, who operated under the name of Peter Bergson. During World War II, these organizations purported to be trying to alert people to the genocide of European Jews and trying to rescue those still alive. By promoting this purpose these organizations were able to attract substantial public support, including from those who would be repulsed by their funding of terrorist activities, which, Weir implies, was their real intent. The latter, she maintains, was made manifest by the organizations’ failure to actually rescue Jews from Europe.
The Irgun group engaged in numerous public activities to raise money, one of the most successful being a pageant entitled “We Will Never Die!” which, woven within the backdrop of the Nazi genocide, celebrated the Jewish contribution to Western civilization. Written by Ben Hecht, an Academy Award-winning screenwriter, the pageant included such Broadway and Hollywood celebrities of the era as Edward G. Robinson, Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra, and Leonard Bernstein. Forty thousand attended the extravaganza’s New York performances. It went on to play in a number of other large American cities. The group produced a number of other plays and rallies, one of which featured a young Marlon Brando, and raised $1 million.[19]
Some American Zionists, Weir observes, actually planned terrorist activities outside of Palestine in order to influence developments there. One such terrorist activity conceived by a group of American Zionists headed by an Orthodox Rabbi named Baruch Korff consisted of a plan to drop bombs along with threatening leaflets on the British foreign office in London, or anywhere in London if that were too difficult. The airplane pilot sought for this task, however, went to the Paris Police—he and Korff both being in France at the time—and Korff was arrested. Powerful people rushed to Korff’s defense and the charges were dropped. Korff thus was able return to his former activities in America as if nothing had happened. With this particular event thrown down the Orwellian “memory hole,” Korff resurfaced over two decades later as a public figure close to President Richard Nixon, influencing the latter’s Middle East policies.
The amount of money raised for Zionist groups during in the United States during these years is impossible to calculate accurately, but it would be enormous. Weir writes that between 1939 and May 1948 the Jewish Agency for Israel alone raised the equivalent of $3.5 billion in today’s dollars.
David Ben-Gurion, then de facto leader of the Jewish community in Palestine, realized that the international concern for Jewish refugees could be used to advance the cause of a Jewish state by making it appear that no other safe refuges for Jews existed. Weir illustrates this deception by a discussion of the famous ship Exodus, which carried Holocaust survivors to Palestine when the British were not allowing illegal immigration there.
Weir points out that what is generally unknown to the public is that the French were willing to take in those Exodus refugees but Ben-Gurion rejected that solution, forcing those survivors to remain on board the ship for seven months. Weir quotes historian Baruch Kimmerling on the significance of the Exodus affair: “Ben-Gurion‘s strategy in the Exodus affair paid off. The fate of the refugee ship attracted considerable and sympathetic attention around the world, and served the Zionist cause well. Few observers at the time knew that many of the refugees from the Exodus had applied for immigration visas to the United States, and were hardly anxious to settle in Israel . . . . By dramatizing the fate of the survivors, in whom he had little interest except as future residents of the state he was building . . . Ben-Gurion helped to make Israel the world’s chief power broker over Jewish affairs.”[20]
Weir includes a brief reference to Leon Uris’s bestselling 1958 novel on the Exodus ship, and though it falls outside the chronological purview of this volume, I would add that the impact of the already mythologized Exodus event was greatly magnified by Uris’s book, which sold over 7 million copies and was turned into a blockbuster movie in 1960 by Otto Preminger, a leading film director of the era. The film has been identified by many commentators as having greatly enhanced support for Israel in the United States by Jews as well as gentiles and in the view of some scholars this movie has had a lasting effect on how Americans view the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. Weir even acknowledges that it had initially shaped her thinking on the subject.[21]
While the pro-Zionist propaganda that inundated the American media played up the existence of Jewish refugees who allegedly sought to come to Israel, there was little popular attention paid toward the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who were being driven from their homeland as a result of Zionist massacres and other forcible expulsion measures. A State Department study in March 1949 found the American public was “unaware of the Palestine refugee problem, since it has not been hammered away at by the press or radio.”[22]
To underscore the importance of what Weir presents on this subject, it should be pointed out that until fairly recently, Israel’s denial of ever having expelled the Palestinians dominated the public discourse in the U.S. It was alleged that when Arab armies were about to invade the newly-declared state of Israel, Palestinians left their homes in the new Israel at the behest of their leaders, expecting to return with the victorious Arab armies. Beginning in the 1980s, however, Israel’s so-called “New Historians,” relying on newly released Israeli documents, exploded this myth. They concluded that the major cause of Palestinian flight was Israeli military action, which included terrorist massacres and the fear of them.
Even without the discovery of this Israeli documentary evidence, or any other documentary evidence for that matter, the use of the cui bono test would strongly point to Zionist culpability for the removal of the native Palestinians. For the Zionists planned to create a state that was both democratic and Jewish. This would be impossible if a large number of non-Jewish people, who were largely hostile to Zionism, resided within the country. From this fact, it would seem reasonable to conclude that the emptying of Palestine in 1948 was not a serendipitous development from the perspective of the Zionists, but one that was intentionally brought about by them.
Weir observes that U.S. State Department experts at the time were aware of Israel’s inhumane actions and sought to take action to at least moderate Israel’s effort to achieve a permanent removal of Palestinians. The State Department threatened to withhold $49 million of unallocated funds from an Export-Import Bank loan to Israel if it did not allow at least 200,000 refugees to return to their homes. Although Truman sympathized with the Palestinians’ plight, and in early 1948 even briefly considered backtracking from the partition and supporting a UN trusteeship for the entirety of Palestine, he ultimately prevented the State Department’s move from being implemented.
Weir points out that those in the mainstream media who attempted to alert the American people to the reality of the dispossession of the Palestinian people were effectively prevented from doing so by pro-Zionists. The latter relied on hurling the career-destroying charge of “anti-Semitism” and threatening economic measures to harm any media outlet that would dare to disseminate information they deemed to be too negative toward Israel.
The individual whom the Zionists caused to fall the farthest was Dorothy Thompson. Weir deserves much credit here for pulling this once well-known figure out of the Orwellian memory hole. Thompson happens to have been one of the principal figures in my doctoral dissertation titled, ”The Intellectual Wellsprings of American World War II Interventionism, 1939-1941.”[23] And I have added a few additional points to what Weir has in her book to illustrate the high reputation Thompson had at one time.
Thompson was an early and persistent critic of Nazism. She had an interview with Hitler in 1931 before he had become German Chancellor, which was made into a book. Thompson portrayed Hitler and Nazism in a negative light and in 1934, the now Nazi government of Germany expelled her when she attempted to visit the country. From 1934 onward, the bulk of her writing dealt with the danger posed by Nazism to the Western democracies. After the start of World War II in Europe in September 1939, Thompson was a staunch interventionist who initially advocated greater American aid to the allies but by the latter part of 1941 she was advocating American entrance into the war.
In 1939, Time Magazine named Thompson the second most popular and influential woman in America behind Eleanor Roosevelt.[24] She spoke out about anti-Semitism and the plight of the Jews in Europe, and urged a relaxation of immigration restrictions so the U.S. could be a safe haven for Jews under threat in Europe. She also was a strong supporter of Zionism.
In early 1945 she took a trip to Palestine where she saw firsthand Jews oppressing Palestinians. She came to realize that the Zionists sought to create a Jewish exclusivist state, not one that would include all of its current inhabitants. Her criticism of Zionism led to charges against her of “anti-Semitism” and even pro-Nazism, as absurd as that was given her background.[25] As a result of this all-out Zionist attack, newspapers began to drop her columns. Especially harmful was her loss of an outlet in New York City—where she had received a large proportion of her income—when the New York Post dropped her column with no other major New York City daily being willing to pick it up. Her radio program and speaking engagements also disappeared. Despite these problems, Thompson would not back away from her criticism of Zionism. And she continued to do so in the dwindling number of newspapers that still took her column, which did not end until 1958.
It is significant that the black-out of Dorothy Thompson has continued after her death, and perhaps even become worse. In the effort to make the subject of American history more inclusive, recent historians have often added women who were little known in their own eras, whereas Thompson who had been an important figure remains unmentioned. It seems likely that she has remained largely unmentioned both for what she had to say about Zionism and also by the fact that she was blacklisted by pro-Zionists, the power of whom one is not allowed to publicly acknowledge. (This contrasts with those Americans who were blacklisted for being pro-Communist, who are now often praised as martyrs because of this treatment.)
To conclude the review, it should be emphasized that this concise book should be of value to a wide audience. The general reader with little background knowledge should easily pick up a number of key points that serve to dispel the many myths that loom large today in the mainstream media, while even those individuals familiar with the subject are almost guaranteed to profit from little known facts, especially in the notes section, that should augment their knowledge. And it is essential that many more Americans become aware of this knowledge if America’s position is to change regarding Israel and the Middle East in general. Such a change is essential not only to bring about some degree of justice for the Palestinians but in order to extricate the United States from the debilitating regional conflicts that its close connection with Israel has entailed. It will be interesting to see how Weir, in her forthcoming volume, deals with the problems America has faced in more recent years that ineluctably derived from the events described in this work.
[1] Alison Weir, Against Our Better Judgment: The Hidden History of How the U.S. Was Used to Create Israel, (CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2014), Kindle Edition, Kindle Location 364. Weir contends that there were a number of factors that caused the United States to enter World War I in April 1917, some of which she lists, and that “Zionism appears to have been one of those factors.”
[2] Some historians have diluted this Jewish factor, attributing motivation to British foreign policy goals in the Near East. A Jewish homeland allegedly could serve as a buffer zone that would protect the Suez Canal.
[3] Chaim Weizmann was a leading figure in the Zionist movement who served as President of the Zionist Organization and later as the first President of Israel.
[4] Tom Segev, “‘View With Favor’, Review of The Balfour Declaration: The Origins of the Arab-Israeli Conflict by Jonathan Schneer, International New York Times, August 20, 2010, accessed December 13, 2015, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/22/books/review/Segev-t.ht...
In other parts of his review, Segev’s analysis is impressive. For example he writes: “The Balfour declaration thus finds its place among a multitude of fruitless schemes and indulgent fantasies, except, of course, that in this case, surprisingly, the British by and large kept their word. For at least two decades they allowed the Zionist movement to bring hundreds of thousands of Jewish immigrants into Palestine, and these new arrivals set up hundreds of settlements including several towns, as well as the political, economic, military and cultural infrastructure of the future state of Israel. But if Israel’s existence originated with the British, so did the Palestinians’ tragedy.”
[5] The controversial House-Grey memorandum, developed with Britain in February 1916, stated that at an appropriate time Wilson would call for a peace conference. If the Allies accepted the offer and Germany rejected it or acted intransigently at the conference, the United States would go to war against Germany. And if Germany accepted the offer and a peace conference did take place, the settlement would not be unfavorable to the Allies. Wayne S. Cole, An Interpretive History of American Foreign Relations (Homewood, Ill.: Dorsey Press, 1968), 363
[6] Weir, Against Our Better Judgment, Kindle Location 449.
[7] The Wikipedia entry for “Ottoman Empire,” states that the “’Ottoman Empire’ and ‘Turkey’ were often used interchangeably, with ‘Turkey’ being increasingly favored both in formal and informal situations. This dichotomy was officially ended in 1920–23, when the newly established Ankara-based Turkish government chose Turkey as the sole official name,” accessed December 13, 2015, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ottoman_Empire .
[8] Weir, Against Our Better Judgment, Kindle Locations 2668-2669 .
[9] The King-Crane Commission was originally created as the American Section of the Inter-Allied Commission on Mandates in Turkey, which was also to include British and French members, and be like a number of other fact finding missions stemming from the Paris Peace Conference of 1919. These two countries failed to participate. Ken Grossi, Maren Milligan, and Ted Waddelow, Restoring Lost Voices of Self-Determination: Background to the Commission, August 2011, Part of the King-Crane Commission Digital Collection, Oberlin College Archives, accessed December 13, 2015, http://www.oberlin.edu/library/digital/king-crane/intro.h... .
[10] Weir, Against Our Better Judgment, Kindle Locations 502-503.
[11] Weir, Against Our Better Judgment, Kindle Location 505.
[12] The King-Crane Commission Report, August 28, 1919, http://www.hri.org/docs/king-crane/. The report includes discussions of territory intended to have been taken from Turkey in the Treaty of Sevres, which Turkey never accepted and was not implemented.
[13] Ibid.
[14] Quoted in Weir, Against Our Better Judgment, Kindle Location 798.
[15] Wallace had no chance of winning the election but Truman’s backers feared that he could syphon off enough liberal votes in large Northern and Midwestern states to enable Dewey to win the election. The issue of Israel did not play a role in Strom Thurmond’s 1948 campaign in the South, which focused on states’ rights and racial issues.
[16] Quoted in Weir, Against Our Better Judgment, Kindle Location 894.
King-Crane Commission Report, August 28, 1919.
[17] Jeremy R. Hammond, “The Myth of the U.N. Creation of Israel,” Foreign Policy Journal, October 26, 2010, accessed December 13, 2015, http://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/2010/10/26/the-myth-o...
[18] More than this, the UN General Assembly, after the vote, created another committee that came to quite different conclusions. Jeremy Hammond writes: “The Ad Hoc Committee on the Palestinian Question was established by the General Assembly shortly after the issuance of the UNSCOP report in order to continue to study the problem and make recommendations. A sub-committee was established in turn that was tasked with examining the legal issues pertaining to the situation in Palestine, and it released the report of its findings on November 11. It observed that the UNSCOP report had accepted a basic premise ‘that the claims to Palestine of the Arabs and Jews both possess validity’, which was ‘not supported by any cogent reasons and is demonstrably against the weight of all available evidence.’ With an end to the Mandate and with British withdrawal, ‘there is no further obstacle to the conversion of Palestine into an independent state’, which ‘would be the logical culmination of the objectives of the Mandate’ and the Covenant of the League of Nations. It found that ‘the General Assembly is not competent to recommend, still less to enforce, any solution other than the recognition of the independence of Palestine, and that the settlement of the future government of Palestine is a matter solely for the people of Palestine.’’’ Hammond, “The Myth of the U.N. Creation of Israel.”
[19] Marlon Brando was very close to Jews before he became a movie star and later donated a considerable amount of money to Zionist causes. He expressed more negative views of Jews toward the end of his life. See: Allan M. Jalon, “How Marlon Brando Became Godfather to the Jews,” Forward, September 16, 2015, accessed December 13, 2015, http://forward.com/culture/320671/how-marlon-brando-becam...; Danielle Berrin, “Marlon Brando and the Jews,” Jewish Journal, July 30, 2014, accessed December 13, 2015, http://www.jewishjournal.com/hollywoodjew/item/marlon_bra....
[20] Weir, Against Our Better Judgment, Kindle Locations 1249-1256.
[21] The movie had an all-star cast (and a very popular, award winning theme song), which included: Paul Newman, Eva Marie Saint, Peter Lawford, Sal Mineo, and Lee J. Cobb.
[22] Weir, Against Our Better Judgment, Kindle Locations 1370-1371.
[23] Stephen John Sniegoski, “The Intellectual Wellsprings of American World War II Interventionism, 1939-1941,” (PhD diss., University of Maryland-College Park, 1977).
My research on Thompson included a visit to the archival collection of her papers at the George Arents Research Library at Syracuse University in Syracuse, New York, in 1976, where I perused some material dealing with her break with American Jews, which was outside the scope of my dissertation.
[24] Thompson’s correspondence in her manuscript collection at Syracuse University illustrates her importance. The Overview of the Collection states: “Correspondents include authors (John Gunther, Wallace Irwin, Alfred M. Lilienthal, Edgar A. Mowrer, Vincent Sheehan, Johannes Urzidil), literary figures (Jean Cocteau, Rose Wilder Lane, Thomas Mann, Rebecca West), politicians and statesmen (Bernard M. Baruch, Winston Churchill, Ely Culbertson, Ralph E. Flanders, Felix Frankfurter, Charles de Gaulle, Cordell Hull, Clare Boothe Luce, Jan Masaryk, Gamal Abdel Nasser, Franklin D. and Eleanor Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman).” Overview of the Collection, Dorothy Thompson Papers, Syracuse University Libraries, accessed December 13, 2015, http://library.syr.edu/digital/guides/t/thompson_d.htm.
[25] Thompson’s relationship with American Jews actually began to sour toward the end of the war before the emergence of the issue of Zionist mistreatment of Palestinians. She differed with the Jewish establishment regarding her opposition to the Anglo-American incendiary bombing of German cities, which involved the killing of tens of thousands of civilians, and also the demand for a Carthaginian peace with Germany that was reflected in the Morgenthau Plan. She viewed these actions as violating the alleged idealistic purpose of the war, whereas many Jews sought punishment of the German people because of what the Nazis had done to their co-religionists.
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À l’heure où les passions religieuses, de nature irrationnelle et parfois mortifère, s’imposent dans le débat politique quotidien, pourquoi ne pas lire Ernest Renan ?
Breton, né en 1823 à Tréguier (Côtes d’Armor), dans une famille à la fois terrienne et maritime et descendant d’émigrés gallois, Ernest Renan, destiné à l’Église catholique romaine, développa, plutôt que d’entrer en religion, la libido sciendi, c’est-à-dire la soif de connaître.
Entre foi et raison, entre dogme et logos, Ernest Renan entreprend une histoire des religions. L’analyse du prophète chrétien dans La vie de Jésus (1863), premier tome d’une Histoire des origines du christianisme qui comprend sept volumes, lui vaut les foudres de Rome. Malgré les qualités recensées de Jésus, qu’il considère plus comme un homme divin qu’un dieu fait homme, La vie de Jésus soulève les passions. Pour Renan, la biographie de Jésus doit être comprise comme celle de n’importe quel autre homme, et la Bible doit être soumise à un examen critique comme n’importe quel autre document historique.
L’abbé Lambert, qui a personnellement connu Renan lors de son séminaire à Saint-Sulpice, à Paris, déclare s’être lavé les mains après avoir mis le livre au feu… Le pape Pie IX lui-même le déclare « blasphémateur européen ». Le mouvement anti-Renan est puissant mais la diffusion de son ouvrage prend de l’ampleur.
Entre l’Orient, où est né le christianisme, où il a longuement voyagé et l’Occident européen, Renan retrouve la paix intérieure devant l’Acropole d’Athènes l’année suivante, en 1864. Il adresse une prière au « souverain Jupiter » dont parlait Dante. La Prière sur l’Acropole paraîtra en 1876.
Profondément européen, il prôna l’alliance de la France avec l’Angleterre et l’Allemagne, anticipant le temps des empires.
Honni par les cléricaux et les républicains, ce « conservateur libéral » donna à la fin de sa vie (1882, Qu’est-ce qu’une nation ? ), cette célèbre définition de la « nation », véritable « plébiscite de tous les jours » sans oublier le lien entre le peuple qui la compose : « Ce qui constitue une nation, c’est d’avoir fait de grandes choses dans le passé, et de vouloir en faire encore dans l’avenir », affirma-t-il.
En mai 1892, ce régionaliste avant l’heure (il a publié L’Âme bretonne dès 1854), préside un « dîner celtique » tout en se préparant à la mort. Il quitta son écorce terrestre sans les derniers sacrements.
Ce membre de l’Académie française (1873), candidat malheureux aux élections législatives de Meaux en 1869, biographe de Jésus-Christ (!) ne mériterait-il pas d’être (re) découvert ?
Théoricien du nationalisme comme ciment patriotique plébiscitaire, européen avant les guerres civiles européennes du XXe siècle, homme enraciné dans sa Terre dont le discours repose plus sur la raison que la foi, Ernest Renan est à la croisée de l’ensemble de nos questionnements contemporains.
En 1949, Prosper Alfaric fonda le Cercle Ernest Renan. Cet ancien prêtre, historien spécialiste des religions, fut excommunié en 1933 après avoir publié son ouvrage Le Problème de Jésus et les origines du christianisme pour ses thèses sur l’inexistence historique de Jésus de Nazareth et de Marie. L’œuvre de cet érudit, à l’origine de la plupart des théories mythistes (thèse de l’inexistence historique de Jésus) a été remise à l’ordre du jour par le philosophe normand Michel Onfray qui a préfacé en 2005 la publication d’un regroupement des articles d’Alfaric sous le titre Jésus-Christ a-t-il existé ?
Depuis sa fondation, le Cercle, sans reprendre la thèse mythiste, poursuit la mémoire, au moins littéraire, du philologue et philosophe breton. Il s’évertue à approcher le religieux de la manière la plus large possible, y compris au niveau géopolitique.
Les Cahiers d’Ernest Renan viennent de faire place aux « Nouveaux cahiers ». Dans la première livraison (été 2016) des « Nouveaux cahiers », le président du Cercle Renan, Dominique Vibrac, qui vient de succéder à Guy Rachet, nous livre la deuxième partie de sa réflexion sur le thème de Transcendance et immanence dont la première partie est parue dans le dernier numéro des anciens cahiers (le n°273 tout de même…). Roger Warin revient, quant à lui, sur le séjour des Hébreux en Égypte avant la formation des royaumes d’Israël et de Juda et tente de rapporter la preuve de cette présence, condition sine qua non de l’exil emmené par Moïse et de la descente d’Abraham sur cette même terre. Enfin, Terry Bismuth évoque La religion dans le royaume de Juda. Ces deux derniers travaux illustrent la nécessaire étude du phénomène religieux à travers l’histoire, l’archéologie, les sciences…
Les prochains numéros des Nouveaux cahiers du Cercle Ernest Renan se donnent pour mission l’étude des religions à travers la rationalité scientifique.
Bien entendu, cet aspect n’aura pas un caractère exhaustif, Ernest Renan fut aussi un homme politique, un défenseur de l’identité celtique, un véritable patriote et un précurseur de l’ensemble européen.
Les Nouveaux cahiers ne feront donc aucune impasse sur l’homme Renan, qui avait fait de l’Acropole le centre de notre monde.
Un numéro de la première livraison des Nouveaux cahiers sera adressé sous format pdf pour toute demande à l’auteur de ces lignes : franck.buleux@orange.fr
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EuroLibertés n’est pas qu’un simple blog qui pourra se contenter ad vitam aeternam de bonnes volontés aussi dévouées soient elles… Sa promotion, son développement, sa gestion, les contacts avec les auteurs nécessitent une équipe de collaborateurs compétents et disponibles et donc des ressources financières, même si EuroLibertés n’a pas de vocation commerciale… C’est pourquoi, je lance un appel à nos lecteurs : NOUS AVONS BESOIN DE VOUS DÈS MAINTENANT car je doute que George Soros, David Rockefeller, la Carnegie Corporation, la Fondation Ford et autres Goldman-Sachs ne soient prêts à nous aider ; il faut dire qu’ils sont très sollicités par les medias institutionnels… et, comment dire, j’ai comme l’impression qu’EuroLibertés et eux, c’est assez incompatible !… En revanche, avec vous, chers lecteurs, je prends le pari contraire ! Trois solutions pour nous soutenir : cliquez ici.
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This article was written for the Unz Review: http://www.unz.com/tsaker/the-ancient-spiritual-roots-of-...
Introduction
The term “russophobia” (the hatred and/or fear of things Russian) has become rather popular in the recent years, courtesy of the anti-Russian hysteria of the AngloZionist Empire, but this is hardly a new concept. In his seminal book “Russie-Occident – une guerre de mille ans: La russophobie de Charlemagne à la Crise Ukrainienne” (“The West vs Russia – a thousand year long war: russophobia from Charlemange to the Ukrainian Crisis”) which I recently reviewed here, Guy Mettan places the roots of russophobia as early as the times of Charlemagne. How could that be? That would mean that russophobia predates the birth of Russia by a full two centuries? And yet, Mettan is correct, although even he does not paint the full picture.
What I propose to do today is not to discuss modern russophobia which has numerous causes and forms, but to look far back into history for the ancient spiritual roots of this relatively modern phenomenon.
My thesis will probably trigger even more condescending smirks, expression of outrage and accusations of bigotry and racism than usual. That is fine. In fact, I will welcome them as a visceral reaction to what I propose to uncover below. One glaring weakness of my argument will be that I won’t bother presenting numerous sources as evidence for my assertions. Not only am I not writing an academic paper here, I simply don’t have the time and space needed to substantiate all my claims. Still, all the facts and claims I make below are easily verifiable for anybody with an Internet connection. My goal today is not to convince the naysayers, but to offer a few hopefully useful pointers to those seeking to connect the dots and see the full picture. This being, said, let’s now go far back in time.
A 2000 year old dispute
Those who believe that the Romans crucified Christ better stop reading here and go back to the comfort of ignorance. Those who have actually read the New Testament or, for that matter, the basic Judaic texts on this topic, know that Christ was accused and executed for the crime of blasphemy: He claimed to be the Son of God, the Son of Man (a messianic title), the messiah announced by the prophets and that He was God: “Verily, verily, I say unto you, Before Abraham was, I AM” (John 8:58) (this “I AM” is a direct reference to Exodus 3:14). This claim is what split the Jewish people into those who accepted Christ’s claims and believed Him and those who did not. What is interesting here, is the view which the Jews who did accept Christ had of those Jews who did not. As we all know, Saint John the Theologian wrote the famous words “I know the blasphemy of them which say they are Jews, and are not, but are the synagogue of Satan” (Rev 2:9). And Christ Himself said “If ye were Abraham’s children, ye would do the works of Abraham” (John 8:39). What we see here is the basis for a claim which was first made in the Apostolic times and which was later fully endorsed and further developed by the Church Fathers: those Jews who rejected Christ thereby lost their “Jewishness” and the “new Jews” are the Christians, regardless of ethnicity, which now have become the new “chosen people”. In our modern times of hyper-political correctness and generalized “ecumenical dialogs of love”, Christians are mostly ignorant of theses facts and, when they are, they dare not mention them in public. At a time when Popes declare that Jews are their “older brothers”, that they need not accept Christ and that Christians and Jews are awaiting the same 2nd coming of Christ, saying that Christianity denies Jews their very Jewish identity is definitely “mauvais ton”. But before the 20th century, this Christian claim that modern “Jews” were not really Jews anymore was common knowledge, both amongst Christians and amongst Jews.
[Sidebar: as I explained it in some details here, modern “Judaism” is not the religion of “Abraham, Isaac and Jacob” but the religion of Maimonides, Karo and Luria and has its roots in the teachings of the sect of the Pharisees, the Talmud and the Kabbalah. The closest modern heir to Christ-rejecting Jews of the times of Christ would be the Karaite sect. Modern “Judaism” really ought to be called “Phariseic Talmudism”. For a traditional Patristic look at Phariseic Talmudism, please see here and here]
Conversely, Judaic teaching about Christ are not sympathetic either. A quick read of the Toldot Yeshu or, for that matter, the passages about Christ in the Talmud, will convince anyone in need of convincing that the Pharisees’ hatred for Christ was not satiated with His crucifixion. And lest anybody think that this is all racist drivel by blue-eyed Nazis, here is a good article on this topic from Ha’artez corroborating it all.
Nowadays an uninformed observer might erroneously conclude that there is a big love-fest between Judaics and Christians, but to the extend that this is true, this is solely due to the fact that most modern Christians and Judaics have long ceased to believe, think and act in accordance to their own traditions. The reality is that for traditional Christians, modern Judaics are fallen, lapsed, people who have failed to live up to their election by God and who now are determined to take by force what had been promised to them by God. For traditional Judaics, Christians are idolaters of the worst kind, as they worship a blaspheming magician, born of a promiscuous hairdresser and a Roman legionnaire, who was justly executed for his crimes and who now forever is confined to hell where he boils in excrements. And lest anybody believe that this hostility is only a matter of a long gone past, I would add that while the Judaics are still waiting for as their messiah, the Christian consensus patrum indicates that this Judaic messiah will be the very same person whom Christ and the Apostles called the Antichrist.
Why does all this matter? It matters because at the very core of it all is the claim that Gentiles have replaced Jews as the chosen people of God, that Christians are the “new Jews” and that modern day Jews are simply not Jews at all, not only because most of them are more Khazarian than Jewish, but because their faith, traditions and beliefs are not the ones of the ancient Jewish people as described in the Old Testament. In other words, Christianity says that Jews are not Jews.
A 1000 year old dispute
Western history books usually say that Rome was sacked in 410 and fell in 476. The former is true, but the latter is completely false as it conflates the city of Rome and the Roman Empire. Only the city of Rome and the western Roman Empire came to an end in the 5th century, but that very same Roman Empire continued to exist in the East for a full 1000 years (!), until the 1453 when the Ottomans finally captured the city of Constantinople. In fact, the imperial capital of the Roman Empire had been moved from Rome to the city of Constantinople, the “New Rome”, by the Emperor Constantine in 320. Thus, the Rome which, at various times, Visigoths, Vandals and Ostrogoths sacked was no longer the capital of the Roman Empire.
These two crucial dates, 476 and 1453, are often used to mark the beginning and the end of the Middle-Ages (along with other dates between the 5th and the 15th century). And since I am setting up the crucial dates for my argument, I will add another one here: 1054, the “official” date for the so-called “Great Schism” between, on one hand, Rome (the city) and, on the other, the other four Patriarchates founded by the Apostles: the Patriarchates of Alexandria, Antioch, Jerusalem, and Constantinople.
At this point, things get complicated and a halfway decent explanation of what really took place would require no less than 100 pages, including a discussion of dogmatic theology, culture, sociology and, of course, politics. The best I can provide at this point are a few bullet-point style sentences summarizing what happened:
The Franks, especially Charlemagne, decided that they would re-create the Roman Empire. To be truly Romans, the Franks also wanted to make their own, original, contribution to Christian theology. They did so by making an addition to the so-called “Symbol of Faith”, or “Credo” in Latin, a text which summarizes the key Christian beliefs. Furthermore, since they were now occupying Rome, the former imperial capital of the Empire, the Franks felt that they were in control of the spiritual capital of the Christian world and that, therefore, the rest of the Christian world ought to accept the primacy of the bishop of Rome – called the “Pope” – and his right to impose a new dogma on the entire Christian world. Following roughly 200 years of tensions between the (Frankish-occupied) Rome and the (still free) eastern Roman Empire the final separation took place in 1054 when the Pope excommunicated the Patriarch of Constantinople who then returned him the favor. What is important for our purposes is this: not only did the Frankish invasion of Rome mark the end of the Roman civilization in the West, it also cut-off the western world from the Roman Empire which continued to exist for another ten centuries. The process of severance between the two parts of the Empire began in the 5th century following the fall of the city of Rome and continued throughout the following centuries. During the 10th century, Rome suffered during the so-called dark ages (saeculum obscurum) and the so-called the “Rule of the Harlots” (pornokratia). At a time when the Roman Empire in the east was almost at the apex of its glory, the Franks were indulging in an orgy of destruction and corruption which completely changed the face of the western part of the European continent and completely severed the vital cultural and spiritual ties which had kept the Roman Empire together in the past centuries.
During the following 1000 years while the Roman Empire continued its existence in the East, the European Middle-Ages slowly and painfully gave birth to a new civilization, the West European civilization, which really took its first mature shape during the Renaissance with it’s re-discovery of the ancient Greek and Roman world. Whatever form this so-called “re-discovery” took, it is a fact that the 1000 years of the Middle-Ages separate modern western civilization from the Roman civilization and that modern Europe was born not of the Romans, but of the Franks. The (Orthodox) East, however, has never known any “Middle-Ages” and has maintained a cultural and religious continuity to the ancient Christian world and the Roman Empire.
In the West, the so-called “Roman Catholic Church” (another misnomer – there is nothing Roman or “catholic” – meaning “universal” – about the Papacy as it is Frankish and local) likes to present itself as the original Church whose roots and traditions go back to the Apostolic times. This is simply false. The reality is that the religion which calls itself “Roman Catholic” is a relatively new religion, younger than Islam by several centuries, which was born in the 11th century of a rejection of the key tenets of the 1000 year long Christian faith. Furthermore, from the moment of its birth, this religion has embarked on an endless cycle of innovations including the 19th century (!) dogmas of the Papal infallibility and the Immaculate Conception. Far from being conservative or traditionalists, the Latins have always been rabid innovators and modernists.
Nowadays there are many Christian denominations out there, but only the Orthodox Churches can testify to the fact that the Frankish local Church is neither Roman, nor Catholic, that it’s roots are not in the Apostolic times, but in the (dark) Middle-Ages and that far from being a heir to the 2000 year old faith “which the Lord gave, was preached by the Apostles, and was preserved by the Fathers” to use the words of Saint Athanasios, the Latin faith is nothing but a collection of deviations from the original Christian faith.
The feared and hated witness
Now we see a pattern here. Both for the Judaics and for the Latins, the Orthodox Christians are the only witnesses out there who can (and do!) openly challenge not only their legitimacy, but their very identity. From an Orthodox perspective (and here I am referring to the traditional, Patristic, point of view) modern Jews are not Jews and the Catholics are not catholic. In both cases, we are dealing with very successful frauds, but frauds nonetheless. Orthodox Christians believe that they, and they alone, are both the real Jews and the real Catholics. Modern Jews are nothing but Pharisees while Latins are simply heretics. Jews were called to be the Chosen People while Rome used to be recognized as the “first amongst equals” by the other Patriarchates. Alas, in both cases a tragic fall from grace occurred in a manner reminiscent of Lucifer’s fall from Heaven (“How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning!” Isa 14:12). And to those who would say that such a claim is preposterous, Orthodox Christians would simply point at the immense corpus of Patristic writings which has always supported that claim. The only option for somebody rejecting this claim is to reject Christianity itself.
My argument here is not a historical or theological one. Regardless of whether one accepts or not the Orthodox view of modern “Judaism” and “Roman Catholicism” – it is certain that both Judaics and Latin were quite aware of this view (there were plenty of polemical texts written over the centuries by all sides to this dispute) and that this challenge to their very legitimacy and identity was perceived as a monumental affront and, when supported by an immense and powerful empire like the Russian one, a mortal enemy which had to be either conquered or eliminated.
[Sidebar: Islam. It is interesting to note here that Orthodox Christianity, which Muslims called “Rum” as in Rome, in no way challenges the legitimacy or identity of Islam. While Islam and Christianity have plenty of irreconcilable theological differences, Muslims do not claim to be Jews or Christians. As for Orthodox Christians, they obviously do not claim to be the true or original, Muslims. Thus the co-existence of these two religions is not logically mutually exclusive even if their theologies are fundamentally incompatible].
The modern dispute
It would be ridiculous to claim that the cause(s) modern fear and/or hate of things Russian can all be explained by ancient theological arguments. In reality, neither Russia nor the West are all that religious nowadays. And while there is definitely a religious rebirth taking place in Russia, it remains also true that only a minority of Russians are truly religious or well-versed in Orthodox theology. Furthermore, there are plenty of reasons why some hate/fear Russia which have absolutely nothing to do with religion, including the fact that Russia is, and has always been, an unconquered military superpower, that the Soviet regime has oppressed millions of people in Eastern Europe and in the Soviet Union and that any more or less sovereign and independent regime in Russia stands as the main obstacle for the West to take control of Russia’s immense resources and many other reasons. As for (truly religious) Judaics and Latins, they are a small minority compared to the vast majority of largely agnostic people around them. In reality, modern russophobia has numerous independent “vectors” all contributing to a grand “sum vector” expressed in the West’s current policies towards Russia. And yet.
Regardless of the actual level of religiosity in Russia, Russia remains the objective historical and cultural heir to the Roman Empire: the First Rome fell in 476, the Second Rome fell in 1453 while the Third Rome fell in 1917.
[Sidebar: A Fourth Rome cannot happen simply because, unlike what happened with the First and Second Rome, the Third one could not “pass on” its role to a hypothetical Fourth one. Seventy years of Communist rule will forever remain and unsurmountable barrier between Russia the Third Rome and modern Russia and no true succession is now possible]
To ignore the historical importance of a Christian Roman civilization which lasted from the 4th to the 20th century would be a major oversight. Those 16 centuries have had a huge impact on the Russian culture, even upon those Russians who are only superficially religious or outright agnostic, and they still can be felt today. The same is true for what is called the “West” nowadays: what is the AngloZionist Empire if not the cultural continuation of the British Empire with the Zionist (and, thus, Judaic) element recently added to it? And don’t let the fact that Protestants and Anglicans are not “Roman Catholics” distract you from the reality that Protestantism itself is just the offspring from the spiritual intercourse between its Latin and Judaic parents, just as Freemasonry – the dominant ideology and worldview today – is the offspring resulting from the spiritual intercourse between of Protestantism and Phariseic Judaism. Whether we are aware of it or not, we live in “civilizational realms” which have ancient roots and our worldview and outlook on life are often shaped by a past which we often know very little about.
Conclusion
There is a clash of civilizations taking place. It does not primarily oppose a putative “Christian West” to Islam. For one thing, the modern “West” has long ceased to be Christian and should now be categorized as post-Christian. Furthermore, the Muslim world is not united and does not have the resources to meaningfully oppose the AngloZionist Empire. Until China, Latin America or some other civilization truly rises up to be able to challenge the current world order, Russia is the only country which will dare to openly challenge the very legitimacy of the western political system and the ideology it has been built upon. Modern Russia is both capable and willing to challenge the dominant western ideology (from Capitalism to the belief that homosexuality is a normal and healthy variation of human sexuality) precisely because of her position as the heir to, and continuator of, the Christian Roman Empire. True, for the past 300 years or so, Russia has been ruled by a generally westernized ruling elite, but that elite itself has always remained a foreign superstructure imposed upon the Russian nation which never truly identified with it. With Putin Russia has finally found a leader who does not represent the interests of the elites, but rather the interests of the vast majority of the population – hence Putin’s stratospheric popularity ratings. And that too frightens the West, especially the western elites who now feel that their rule is threatened by a nuclear superpower which is determined not to let them take over our entire planet. It is impossible to predict what will happen next. But it does appear likely to me that this ancient conflict between two fundamentally opposed spiritualities and civilizations will come to some kind of a resolution, for better or for worse, in the near future.
The Saker
09:12 Publié dans Histoire | Lien permanent | Commentaires (0) | Tags : histoire, russophobie, russie, europe, affaires européennes | | del.icio.us | | Digg | Facebook
Dans l’histoire de l’humanité, politique et transcendance sont intimement liées. A la lecture du dernier essai de Christophe Levalois, on découvre même que ce lien est commun à bien des sociétés et des civilisations : de la Chine à l’Egypte, de l’Inde ancienne au Moyen-Orient jusqu’à l’Europe moderne, royauté et sacré ne font qu’un. C’est cette unicité, ce lien entre royauté et sacré que Storiavoce vous propose de découvrir. Qu’est-ce qu’un roi ? Au nom de quoi règne-t-il ? Quelles relations entretient-il avec ces autres pouvoirs que sont le clergé, l’armée, le peuple ? Et, surtout, peut-on édifier une théorie de la royauté par-delà la diversité des temps et des lieux ? S’appuyant sur les fondements et les légendes, les récits et les rites de la monarchie, mais aussi sur les faits de l’histoire, Christophe Levalois répond à ces questions avec simplicité, pédagogie et érudition.
Christophe Levalois, La royauté et le sacré, Editions du Cerf, Coll. Lexio, 128 pages, 10€.
En savoir plus…
12:04 Publié dans Histoire, Livre, Livre, Théorie politique, Traditions | Lien permanent | Commentaires (0) | Tags : christophe levalois, royauté, sacré, tradition, traditionalisme, monarchisme, royalisme, théorie politique, politologie, sciences politiques, philosophie politique | | del.icio.us | | Digg | Facebook
Joseph Rossé, député alsacien, est décédé le 28 octobre 1951 au bagne d’Eysses, Lot et Garonne. Il avait été condamné en 1947 par un tribunal de l’Epuration à 15 ans de travaux forcés à l’issue d’un procès éminemment politique. Il a connu les centrales de Fontevrault et de Clairvaux. Dans celles-ci, il a rencontré d’autres épurés célèbres : Maurras, Esteva, de Laborde, Xavier Vallat ainsi que Cousteau, Rebatet, Algarron.
Pourtant, il avait été blanchi par la même Cour pour les faits intervenus avant 1940. Ceux-ci lui avaient valu, avant-guerre, une précédente incarcération dans la prison militaire de Nancy. Après l’armistice, il avait été remis aux Allemands avec seize autres « Nanziger », autonomistes alsaciens arrêtés avec lui pour suspicion d’espionnage dès le début de la seconde guerre mondiale.
Singulière fin de parcours pour ce catholique farouchement opposé au nazisme alors qu’il avait abandonné toute activité publique durant la Seconde Guerre mondiale. Il l’a passée en Alsace à la tête de sa puissante maison d’édition l’Alsatia transformée en bastion anti-nazi. Il était entré en 1943 dans le complot contre Hitler organisé par la résistance allemande.
Mais de ses contacts avérés avec le colonel von Stauffenberg, le porteur de la bombe qui devait tuer le Führer le 20 juillet 1944, la justice politique de la Libération n’en tiendra nul compte. Il ne sera pas plus porté à sa décharge l’intense activité de Rossé pour venir en aide à ses compatriotes alsaciens victimes de l’hitlérisme ou pour éditer clandestinement les auteurs chrétiens interdits dans l’Allemagne nazie.
Pour la première fois, 70 ans après les faits, une biographie apporte une vue complète sur cet Alsacien, toujours interdit de mémoire, dont le nom n’est (encore ?) porté par aucune rue, aucune place, aucune école alsacienne. Écrite par Michel Krempper à qui l’on doit également « Aux sources de l’autonomisme alsacien », livre récemment paru chez le même éditeur, elle est titrée « Joseph Rossé 1892-1951 ».
À l’encontre d’une certaine historiographie officielle – et jacobine – elle retrace en sept chapitres, documents à l’appui, l’itinéraire d’un homme politique hors-pair : enseignant sundgauvien révoqué pour ses positions autonomistes, syndicaliste chrétien à la tête de la plus puissante organisation de fonctionnaires alsaciens, pilier du groupe de l’Alsatia et de sa presse, porte-voix de la Volkspartei (le principal parti alsacien d’avant-guerre) et député de Colmar (trois fois élu), Nancéien puis Nanzinger, résistant anti-hitlérien, victime expiatoire de l’Epuration (à qui ses compatriotes feront de grandioses funérailles).
Nicolas de Lamberterie
Joseph Rossé 1892 – 1951 – Michel Krempper – 20€ – Yoran Embanner (à commander ici)
00:05 Publié dans Histoire, Terres d'Europe, Terroirs et racines | Lien permanent | Commentaires (0) | Tags : alsace, joseph rossé, europe, affaires européennes | | del.icio.us | | Digg | Facebook
Ex: http://www.theatrum-belli.com
Le célèbre auteur des Réprouvés, cadet prussien qui racontera sa perception presque romantique de l’histoire des corps-francs d’après-guerre et du terrorisme des groupuscules nationalistes, a également publié en 1951 un livre fameux, Le Questionnaire, que Gallimard a la bonne idée de rééditer.
L’architecture générale du livre s’appuie sur les quelques 130 questions auxquelles les Américains demandèrent aux Allemands de répondre en 1945 afin d’organiser la dénazification du pays, mais en les détournant souvent et prenant à de nombreuses reprises le contre-pied des attentes des vainqueurs. A bien des égards, le livre est ainsi non seulement à contre-courant de la doxa habituelle, mais camoufle également bien des aspects d’une réalité que l’Allemagne de la fin des années 1940 refusait de reconnaître : « Ma conscience devenue très sensible me fait craindre de participer à un acte capable, dans ces circonstances incontrôlables, de nuire sur l’ordre de puissances étrangères à un pays et à un peuple dont je suis irrévocablement ». Certaines questions font l’objet de longs développements, mais presque systématiquement un humour grinçant y est présent, comme lorsqu’il s’agit simplement d’indiquer son lieu de naissance : « Je découvre avec étonnement que, grâce à mon lieu de naissance (Kiel), je peux me considérer comme un homme nordique, et l’idée qu’en comparaison avec ma situation les New-Yorkais doivent passer pour des Méridionaux pleins de tempérament m’amuse beaucoup ». Et à la même question, à propos des manifestations des SA dans la ville avant la prise du pouvoir par les nazis : « Certes, la couleur de leurs uniformes était affreuse, mais on ne regarde pas l’habit d’un homme, on regarde son coeur. On ne savait pas au juste ce que ces gens-là voulaient. Du moins semblaient-ils le vouloir avec fermeté … Ils avaient de l’élan, on était bien obligé de le reconnaître, et ils étaient merveilleusement organisés. Voilà ce qu’il nous fallait : élan et organisation ». Au fil des pages, il revient à plusieurs reprises sur son attachement à la Prusse traditionnelle, retrace l’histoire de sa famille, développe ses relations compliquées avec les religions et les Eglises, évoque des liens avec de nombreuses personnes juives (dont sa femme), donne de longues précisions sur ses motivations à l’époque de l’assassinat de Rathenau, sur son procès ultérieur et sur son séjour en prison. Suivant le fil des questions posées, il détaille son éducation, son cursus scolaire, son engagement dans les mouvements subversifs « secrets », retrace ses activités professionnelles successives avec un détachement qui parfois peu surprendre mais correspond à l’humour un peu grinçant qui irrigue le texte, comme lorsqu’il parle de son éditeur et ami Rowohlt. Il revient bien sûr longuement sur les corps francs entre 1919 et 1923, sur l’impossibilité à laquelle il se heurte au début de la Seconde guerre mondiale pour faire accepter son engagement volontaire, tout en racontant qu’il avait obtenu en 1919 la plus haute de ses neuf décorations en ayant rapporté à son commandant… « un pot de crème fraîche. Il avait tellement envie de manger un poulet à la crème ! ». Toujours ce côté décalé, ce deuxième degré que les Américains n’ont probablement pas compris. La première rencontre avec Hitler, le putsch de 1923, la place des élites bavaroises et leurs rapports avec l’armée de von Seeckt, la propagande électorale à la fin des années 1920, et après l’arrivée au pouvoir du NSDAP les actions (et les doutes) des associations d’anciens combattants et de la SA, sont autant de thèmes abordés au fil des pages, toujours en se présentant et en montrant la situation de l’époque avec détachement, presque éloignement, tout en étant semble-t-il hostile sur le fond et désabusé dans la forme. Les propos qu’il tient au sujet de la nuit des longs couteaux sont parfois étonnants, mais finalement « dans ces circonstances, chaque acte est un crime, la seule chose qui nous reste est l’inaction. C’est en tout cas la seule attitude décente ». Ce n’est finalement qu’en 1944 qu’il lui est demandé de prêter serment au Führer dans le cadre de la montée en puissance du Volkssturm, mais « l’homme qui me demandait le serment exigeait de moi que je défende la patrie. Mais je savais que ce même homme jugeait le peuple allemand indigne de survivre à sa défaite ». Conclusion : défendre la patrie « ne pouvait signifier autre chose que de la préserver de la destruction ». Toujours les paradoxes. Dans la dernière partie, le comportement des Américains vainqueurs est souvent présenté de manière négative, évoque les difficultés quotidiennes dans son petit village de haute Bavière : une façon de presque renvoyer dos-à-dos imbécilité nazie et bêtise alliée… et donc de s’exonérer soi-même.
Au final, un livre qui doit être lu, car au-delà même de ce qu’il raconte de von Salomon et de l’entre-deux-guerres, il est également très éclairant sur la façon dont une partie non négligeable de la population allemande s’est en quelque sorte « auto-protégée » en 1945.
Gallimard, Paris, 2016, 920 pages. 18,50 euros.
Source : Guerres & Conflits
15:13 Publié dans Histoire, Littérature, Livre, Livre, Révolution conservatrice | Lien permanent | Commentaires (0) | Tags : ernst von salomon, allemagne, histoire, dénazification, révolution conservatrice, lettres, lettres allemandes, littérature, littérature allemande, livre | | del.icio.us | | Digg | Facebook
Ex: http://www.blauenarzisse.de
Am 12. Oktober 1936, fast drei Monate nach Beginn des Spanischen Bürgerkriegs, kam es in der Universität Salamanca zu einem Eklat.
Der berühmte Philosoph und Rektor der Universität, Miguel de Unamuno y Jugo, erklärte sich offen gegen die aufständischen Rechten und Militärs des Generals Franco. Salamanca war zum damaligen Zeitpunkt Hauptstadt der „Nationalen“ in ihrem Kampf gegen Volksfrontregierung und Zweite Spanische Republik. Der 12. Oktober, der Tag der Entdeckung Amerikas, war der spanische Nationalfeiertag. Die Begehung dieses Feiertags seitens der Rechten, die im Namen der nationalen Einheit Spaniens, des Katholizismus und überhaupt der „spanischen Sendung in der Welt“ zu den Waffen gegriffen hatten, musste, mitten im Bürgerkrieg, besonders symbolträchtig aufgezogen werden. Und tatsächlich wurde er zum Fanal in mehr als nur einem Sinne.
Einer der Gründe, weshalb Salamanca als Hauptstadt in Frage kam, war die politische Stärke der dortigen Rechten: eine ruhige, ländlich geprägte Provinzhauptstadt, fast ohne Industriearbeiterschaft, und in der die lokale Oligarchie und die Kirche noch fest im Sattel saßen. Der Bischof von Salamanca, Monseñor Enrique Plá y Deniel, war es gewesen, der den Aufstand der Rechten zum „Kreuzzug“ gegen den Bolschewismus und für die christliche Zivilisation erklärt hatte. Auch er war es, der den augustinischen Symbolismus der „zwei Reiche“ der Situation anpasste: Die Republik bedeutete den weltlichen Staat, gegenüber dem die Aufständischen den Staat Gottes zu behaupten hatten. Diese Auslegung der „Zwei-Reiche-Lehre“ rechtfertigte theologisch als eine dringend benötigte höhere Weihe den Aufstand.
Die Universität Salamanca war als Ganzes beileibe nicht „rechts“, doch hatte sich in ihren internen Streitigkeiten der ultraklerikale Sektor immer wieder erfolgreich gegenüber den Verfechtern des „Fortschritts“ durchgesetzt. Von „linken“ und fortschrittlichen Elementen „gesäubert“ und einmal offen zu den Aufständischen übergegangen, war es ihre Aufgabe, am Nationalfeiertage ihren Beitrag zur Legitimation des frisch aus dem Bürgerkrieg hervorgegangenen Regimes zu leisten.
Ein Risikofaktor war der betagte Rektor der Universität, Miguel de Unamuno y Jugo (1864−1936). Wie viele andere in der spanischen Öffentlichkeit hochgestellte Persönlichkeiten hatte auch Unamuno die Republik einst begeistert begrüßt, um sich später geekelt von ihr abzuwenden. Genauso wie José Ortega y Gasset war nämlich auch Unamuno schnell von ihrem rasenden Antiklerikalismus, ihrer Pöbelhaftigkeit und ihrem freimaurerischen Fortschrittsglauben abgestoßen.
Der bei der spanischen Intellektualität vom Anfang des zwanzigsten Jahrhunderts beliebte Ruf nach einer gewalttätigen Lösung der Probleme Spaniens klang bei Unamuno nach, als dieser sich bei Ausbruch des Bürgerkriegs spontan auf die Seite der Putschisten stellte. Kurzerhand wurde er von der Volksfrontregierung vom Amt des Rektors der Universität Salamanca abgesetzt, doch währte diese Absetzung nicht lange: die Aufständischen belohnten seine Parteinahme zu ihren Gunsten flugs mit der Wiedereinsetzung.
Als der Nationalfeiertag sich näherte, hatte Unamuno sich aber bereits von den „Nationalen“ – den aufständischen Militärs sowie ihrer faschistischen Anhängerschaft von der Falange-Partei – distanziert. Die Militarisierung Salamancas war nicht ohne Blutvergießen vonstatten gegangen: Kurz nach dem Militärputsch hatten Soldaten auf dem „Plaza Mayor“, dem weltberühmten Rathaus-Hauptplatz, eine Gruppe Demonstranten zusammengeschossen. Fünf von ihnen kamen dabei ums Leben. Auch die politischen Säuberungsaktionen wurden vom ersten Tag an mit wahrem Übereifer betrieben: Alles, was einen „republikanischen“ Hintergrund hatte oder nicht offen zu den Aufständischen übergegangen war, hatte gute Chancen, mit oder ohne Prozess erschossen zu werden. Der politische Terror wurde für viele Menschen zum Alltag. Zu den Opfern gehörten von vornherein auch viele Freunde von Unamuno, wie der protestantische Geistliche Atilano Coco: Als junger Mann war Unamuno republikanischer Liberaler gewesen, später wechselte er zum „Sozialismus“ der Spanischen Sozialistischen Arbeiterpartei (PSOE). Diese Bekanntschaften standen jetzt alle auf der Abschussliste oder waren bereits erschossen worden.
Der Festakt der Universität Salamanca zum „Tag der Rasse“ – d.h. des Tags der welterobernden und zivilisierenden „Rasse“ der Spanier – sollte, mitten im Bürgerkrieg, eine Kampfansage und ein Bekenntnis zugleich sein. Als höchste akademische Autorität war die Teilnahme Unamunos eine Formalität, wenn auch eine bedeutungsschwere. Dass Unamuno eine Rede halten würde, war nicht eingeplant. Mit den ersten drei Rednern, die allesamt bekannte Gelehrte waren, hielten die Freund-Feind-Kategorien des Bürgerkriegs Einzug in den Festssaal. Dieser wurde zum Szenario der eigenen nationalen Verklärung sowie der Dämonisierung des Gegners. Besonders die zur Republik haltenden und, folglich, „von Spanien abtrünnigen“ Katalanen und Basken wurden zum Sinnbild eines krebsartigen „Antispanien“ gemacht.
Letzteres wurde Unamuno zum Stichwort. Er ergriff das Wort, um den selbsternannten Verteidigern von Christentum, Zivilisation und Spaniertum den Spiegel vorzuhalten. In Anwesenheit der sich auch ideologisch im Kriege befindenden katholischen Hierarchie fragte Unamuno nach den christlichen Werten der Gnade, der Verzeihung und der Barmherzigkeit. Danach führte er aus, dass die These, dass Katalanen und Basken das „Antispanien“ seien, dieselben Katalanen und Basken getrost so umdrehen könnten, um aus den „Nationalen“ das Antispanien zu machen. Die Aufständischen seien nämlich weder des Christentums, das der im Festsaal zugegene katalanische Bischof Plá y Deniel ihnen gelehrt hatte, noch der spanischen Sprache, die er, der Baske Unamuno ihnen gelehrt hatte, mächtig.
Während seiner Rede kam Unamuno auf die Formel: „Siegen ist überzeugen, und was man vor allem tun muss, ist überzeugen. Nicht überzeugend ist der Hass, der dem Mitleid keinen Raum lässt, nicht überzeugend ist Hass gegen diejenige Intelligenz, die kritisch und differenziert ist, die inquisitiv-fragend ist, aber nicht fragend im Sinne von Inquisition.“ Die versammelten Gäste, in der Mehrzahl Falangisten und Militärs, waren schon längst gegen Unamuno aufgebracht, vor allem der alte Haudegen General Millán Astray war hochgradig erregt. Dieser fuchtelte die ganze Zeit über nervös an seinem Pistolenhalfter herum, letztendlich quellte aus ihm in faschistischer Manier „Tod den Intellektuellen! Es lebe der Tod!“
Das gab Unamuno Gelegenheit, Millán Astray auf seine eigene, intellektuelle Art, und nicht ohne Gebrauch zahlreicher Sophismen, vorzuführen: Millán Astray sei nur ein armer Kriegsinvalid, ähnlich Cervantes, nur dass Cervantes bei allem persönlichen Unglück sich seinen geistigen Großmut bewahrt habe. Er, Unamuno, habe sein Leben lang Paradoxien fabriziert, doch die soeben vom General Millán Astray vorgebrachte sei ihm ekelhaft und lächerlich. „Das klingt genauso, als ob man sagen würde: Tod dem Leben!“
Darauf folgten Unamunos bewusst prophetisch gewählte Worte, die so auch in die Geschichte eingehen sollten: „Ihr werdet siegen, doch überzeugen werdet ihr nicht. Ihr werdet besiegen, weil ihr mehr als genug rohe Kraft dazu habt, aber überzeugen werdet ihr nicht, weil überzeugen überreden bedeutet. Und um zu überreden benötigt ihr etwas, was euch in diesem Kampf fehlt, und zwar Vernunft und Recht …“
Die ganze Szene hatte sich in einer von der nationalistischen Erregung extrem aufgeladenen Atmosphäre abgespielt. Das Publikum, ohnehin Unamuno feindlich gesinnt, folge Millán Astray im Chor in der rituellen Größenbekundung Spaniens: „Spanien!“ „Eines!“ „Spanien!“ „Großes!“ „Spanien!“ „Freies!“. Eine Gruppe Falangisten grüsste ein Portrait General Francos, das den Saal präsidierte, mit dem faschistischen Gruß.
Einige aufgeregte Offiziere machten es gleich Millán Astray: sie drohten Unamuno mit der auf dem Pistolenhalfter aufgelegten Hand. Namentlich der Ehefrau General Francos, Carmen Polo, ist es zu verdanken, dass Unamuno nach diesem Auftritt unversehrt blieb und sicher nach Hause gebracht werden konnte, indem sie ihn offensiv am Arm packte und aus dem Saal führte. Bis zu seinem Tode, am 31. Dezember 1936, blieb Unamuno unter Hausarrest. Bereits am 22. Oktober unterschrieb General Franco die endgültige Absetzung Unamunos als Rektor der Universität Salamanca.
Wie verhalten sich Intellektuelle, wenn sich die gesellschaftlichen Zustände zuspitzen? Können sie dann besonderen Einfluß nehmen oder drohen sie zwischen die Fronten zu geraten?
Allgemeingültige Antworten darauf gibt es natürlich nicht, aber einzelne Beispiele sind sehr lehrreich. Viele Intellektuellen fühlen sich von radikalen Gesellschaftsexperimenten angezogen und finden diese dann doch sehr häufig abstoßend, sobald sie umgesetzt wurden. Auf Miguel de Unamuno, sein Verhalten im Spanischen Bürgerkrieg und die mutige Rede vom 12. Oktober 1936 trifft dies auch zu. Warum das so typisch ist, erkennt man nur, wenn man sich die Lebens– und Denkwege der Intellektuellen ansieht.
Unamuno entstammte dem Großbürgertum der baskischen Hauptstadt Bilbao. In seiner Jugend war er entscheidend beeinflusst von der für dieses Bürgertum typischen liberalen Romantik. Diese bezeichnete fortan seine geistige Entwicklung als ein ununterbrochenes Ringen um den Glauben. Unamuno kam so zu einem bei ihm charakteristisch ausgeprägten Mystizismus und Spiritualismus.
Diese besondere Geistigkeit Unamunos verhielt sich zu den verschiedensten Gegenständen im Sinne des „ewigen Gesprächs“ der Romantik. Im Mittelpunkt desselben konnten bei Unamuno unterschiedslos die „Essenz eines urwüchsigen Baskentums“ genauso stehen wie die alle hispanischen Völker verbindende „Hispanidad“. Seine romantische Geistigkeit erlaubte ihm zudem ein Aufgehen in einem überindividuellen „Höheren“ genauso wie einen genialen Ichkult. Als politischer Romantiker konnte er sich sowohl für die „Werte der Tradition“ erwärmen als auch für moderne sozialistische Anschauungen.
Anstatt nun diese höchst gegensätzlichen Positionen in sich selbst zur Versöhnung zu bringen oder sich auf eine einzige Position festzulegen, hielt Unamuno diese absichtlich aufrecht. Unamuno übernahm bald diesen, bald jenen Gegensatz, ohne Scheu vor all den Widersprüchen zu verspüren. Er verfuhr hier kasuistisch, also von Fall zu Fall, bzw. je nach Gelegenheit, „occasionalistisch“, wie es nach Carl Schmitt geradezu typisch für den Romantiker ist. Diese inneren Konflikte, die bei Unamuno nie zu einem Ende kamen, sind nun für seine „geistige Unabhängigkeit“ und, speziell im Bürgerkrieg, für seine oft bewunderte couragierte Haltung zuständig.
Wie jeder soziale Konflikt, so fordert auch der Bürgerkrieg, dass jeder Einzelne sich festlegt. Das erfordert aber wiederum, dass man sich im Frieden mit sich selbst befindet. Oder, wie der Soziologe Gabriel de Tarde ausführt, „nur wenn der individuelle Zweikampf beendet ist, beginnt der soziale“. Für Unamunos nie enden wollende geistige Entwicklung aber waren als stärkste aller Spaltungsmotive religiöse Glaubenskämpfe verantwortlich. Aufgrund dieser inneren Spaltung war es ihm deshalb nicht möglich, sich der äußeren Bürgerkriegssituation angemessen zu stellen. Diese Unfähigkeit und auch der Unwille Unamunos machen sein eigentliches Dilemma aus: sein Freiheitsstreben hätte sich niemals damit abgefunden, sich einfach in sein Schicksal zu ergeben. Letzteres hätte Unamuno als knechtischen Fatalismus empfunden, der etwas als „sein“ Schicksal annimmt, was es eigentlich nicht ist. Die Imperative des Bürgerkriegs duldeten aber keine Ausnahme.
Unamunos zweifellos couragierte, einer hochgradig erregten Versammlung entgegen geschleuderte Worte „Ihr werdet siegen, überzeugen aber werdet ihr nicht!“ werden damit nur seiner persönlichen Entrüstung, nicht aber der objektiv gegebenen, der faktischen Bürgerkriegssituation gerecht. Eine solche intellektuell zu meistern ist nur mit Denkmitteln möglich, die in der machiavellistisch-nietzescheanischen Tradition stehen. Unamuno aber stand, wenn auch über anarchistisch-liberalistische Vermittlung, in der Tradition des Christentums.
Während sein „rechter“ Gegenüber – die klerikale Rechte, die Militärs, die Falangisten – im letzten Jahrzehnt vor dem Bürgerkrieg zumindest praktisch bei Machiavelli und Nietzsche in die Schule gegangen war, war Unamunos Auftreten, wie es bei seinem „Occasionalismus“ anders nicht sein konnte, willentlich widersprüchlich geblieben. Missverständnisse waren daher von vornherein vorprogrammiert. Und tatsächlich waren es um Unamuno wenig bekümmerte, durch den Bürgerkrieg in Rage versetzte Leidenschaften sowie ein Rattenkönig von Missverständnissen gewesen, die dafür gesorgt hatten, dass Unamuno als Rektor der Universität Salamanca wiedereingesetzt und, in dieser Eigenschaft, zu den „nationalen“ Feierlichkeiten des „Tags der Rasse“ geladen worden war. Seine vom „nationalen“ Publikum als anstößig empfundene Rede für Menschlichkeit und Nächstenliebe im Bürgerkrieg war deshalb in Wahrheit ein der Zuhörerschaft als solcher unkenntlicher Monolog und ein Glaubensbekenntnis noch dazu.
Heute wird Unamunos Rede oftmals interpretiert als ein Einstehen für „Intelligenz“ bzw. „Vernunft“, im Gegensatz zur Gewalt. Diese Interpretation bewegt sich aber nur im Bereich der Mittel, nicht aber der Zwecke. Denn die „Intelligenz“ bzw. „Vernunft“ war Unamuno genauso Mittel in seinem Kampf, wie die nackte Gewalt den Aufständischen ein Mittel in „ihrem“ Bürgerkrieg war. Dass aber eine unüberwindbare Kluft herrscht zwischen dem inneren Kampf, den einer in sich selbst durchmacht, und dem äußeren Kampf, der sich gnadenlos aufzwingt, ist Unamuno niemals klar geworden.
Sein Glaube wollte das nicht hinnehmen, nicht „wahr“ haben. Unamuno war zwar durchaus, wie er selbst sagte, Prophet im eigenen Land. Aber er predigte auch unzweifelhaft in der Wüste. Nicht Intelligenz und Gewalt standen sich nämlich im Großen Saal der Universität Salamanca gegenüber, sondern es stand Glaube gegen Glauben. Das ist aber das unvermeidliche Schicksal gerade des bürgerlichen Intellektuellen, bei aller Freiheitsliebe und auch geistigen Unabhängigkeit sich in den Wirbel der Ereignisse hineingesogen zu sehen, um letzten Endes nichts anderes verteidigen zu können als eben seinen eigenen Glauben.
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Was kann eine Revolution entzünden? Um hierauf eine Antwort zu finden, schildert Manuel Ionas das Leben und die Gedankenwelt des russischen Anarchisten Peter Kropotkin.
Das revolutionärste Buch der Bibel ist ihr letztes, die Apokalypse des Johannes. In einer ekstatischen Schau wird der Seher Johannes Zeuge kommender, gigantischer Umstürze, welche die Autorität Gottes gegen alle anderen Autoritäten, allen voran Babylons, der Großen, durchsetzen. Alles Gute kommt von oben, und das Heil arbeitet sich durch ein monumentales Zerstörungswerk an allem Mächtigen und Festgefügten voran.
Bei Peter Kropotkin (1842-1921) und anderen namhaften Anarchisten kommt alles Gute von unten. Kein Gott kümmert sich um die Unterdrückten, kein Herr der Herren oder König der Könige auf Wolken wird es richten, sondern sie, die bis dahin passiv Hinnehmenden tun es selbst. Wollte man die anarchistische Bewegung als kirchliches Mysterienspiel persiflieren, so wäre der berserkernde Wander-Revolutionär Michael Bakunin (1814-1876) Johannes der Täufer, der wohlerzogene Peter Kropotkin wäre Paulus. Und der Heiland?
Der Welterlöser wäre die Revolution. Keine Gestalt, nicht einmal eine Lehre oder ein Dogma, sondern einzig und allein ein Ereignis wurde zum Hoffnungsträger hochstilisiert und messianisch erwartet. Man hat die anarchistische Bewegung gern als religiöses Phänomen gedeutet und (ab)gewertet. Sie galt strengen Kommunisten marxistisch-leninistischer Prägung gleichsam als die pubertäre Phase des Sozialismus. Noch der letzte große, marxistisch orientierte Geschichtsschreiber Eric Hobsbawm bewegte sich ganz in dieser Tradition. Schwer taten sich die Bescheid-Wisser der bolschewistischen Kaderpartei mit dem unbedingten Freiheitsdrang, der vermeintlichen Fortschrittsfeindlichkeit sowie vor allem der konsequenten Anti-Staatlichkeit der sozialistischen Stiefbrüder.
Was aber gerade der Anarchismus, der nie eine einheitliche, geschlossene Bewegung gewesen ist, uns Heutigen in puncto Revolution bzw. Revolutionserwartung zu sagen hat, soll im Fortgang dieses Artikels am Beispiel eines scharfsinnigen Pamphlets Kropotkins aus dem Jahr 1880 vor Augen geführt werden.
Freiwillig in Sibirien: Lehrjahre eines russischen Aristokraten
Der oben gewagte Vergleich Kropotkins mit dem Völkerapostel Paulus erklärt sich aus dem radikalen Bruch mit dem Herkunftsmilieu, den beide vollzogen haben, um allein ihrer Mission gegenüber loyal zu sein. Peter Kropotkin war Spross eines Zweigs der altrussischen Herrscherdynastie der Rurikiden und behielt trotz Bekehrung zum Anarchismus stets die feinen Manieren seiner Klasse bei.
In seiner Haftzeit in der berühmten Peter und Paul Festung erhielt er einmal hohen Besuch vom Bruder Zar Alexander II., Großfürst Nikolai, der mit eigenen Augen sehen wollte, dass ein Mitglied der Aristokratie und ehemaliger Page de Chambre des Zaren tatsächlich als Staatsfeind einsaß. Seine Abstammung sorgte anfangs auch für anhaltendes Misstrauen im sozialrevolutionären Tschaikowski Kreis in St. Petersburg, in den der 30-Jährige 1872 um Aufnahme gebeten hatte. In einem Brief von 1878 wird ihm übellaunig das Fehlen jeder Führungs- und Organisationsfähigkeit attestiert. Ein Fanatiker der Ideen sei er, so lautet das Verdikt eines Kampfgenossen über den ersten umfassenden Theoretiker anarchistischer Ideen.
Doch war Peter Kropotkin keineswegs ein Stubenhocker, der vor der Anschauung in die heile Welt der Theorie floh. Schon in jungen Jahren vollzog er einen Schritt der Emanzipation, der allenthalben für Kopfschütteln gesorgt hatte: 1862 ersuchte er um eine Versetzung in den Stab des Militärgouverneurs von Ost-Sibirien. Es war eine Flucht vor einer Karriere am Hofe des Zaren, zu dem er zuvor noch als Page aufgeblickt hatte, da Alexander II. als Befreier der Bauern galt. Es war aber auch eine Flucht vor dem allmächtigen Vater, der auf seinen Ländereien wie ein Kasernenkommandant regierte, obwohl er nicht einmal zu den grausamsten seiner Klasse gehörte. Bei den Bauern seines Vaters hatte der sensible Junge schon früh den Zusammenhalt und die menschliche Wärme einer unterdrückten Gruppe kennengelernt.
Diese Eindrücke vergaß er nie und nahm sie mit in die Amur-Region. Dort, entrückt von Zivilisation und Hofglanz, vollzog sich seine Bekehrung zu anarchistischen Grundideen. Später wird Kropotkin, der sich in dieser Zeit intensiv mit Geographie und Biologie beschäftigte, immer wieder auf soziale Phänomene in sibirischen Stammesgesellschaften wie auch in der Tierwelt zu sprechen kommen.
Bei den Tschuktschen im fernen Osten formten sich die Eckpfeiler seiner Überzeugungen, wie sie von Anarchisten vertreten wurden. Zu ihnen gehören: Tradition statt Zivilisation, Gemeinschaft statt Staat und Freiheit statt Autorität. Angeleitet vom ähnlich empfindenden Gouverneur, einem Sympathisanten Bakunins, und ergänzt durch Lektüre westlicher Philosophen vollzog sich in Peter Kropotkin die Wandlung zum libertären Revolutionär.
Rechts vor Links oder: Das Volk zuerst
Dass rechts auch da ist, wo der Daumen links ist, trifft bisweilen sogar auf dem Feld des ideologischen Kampfes zu, oftmals zur Überraschung der beteiligten Protagonisten. Nicht erst seit Karl Radeks Schlageter-Rede aus dem Jahr 1923, in welcher der originelle Bolschewik die national empfindenden Massen Deutschlands im Lager der Arbeit und nicht im Lager des Kapitals verortete, kann man bei antistaatlichen Revolutionären Schnittmengen ausmachen.
Und so nimmt es nicht Wunder, dass sich seit dem 19. Jahrhundert in den Chor sozialistisch-libertärer Stimmen auch Rufe nach nationaler Unabhängigkeit mischten. Kein Geringerer als Michael Bakunin war von den Slawophilen beeinflusst und sah, vereint mit allen russischen Revolutionären jeder Couleur, in Preußen-Deutschland das Symbol allen Übels, dessen ein Staat fähig war und dies, obwohl die Prägung durch den deutschen Idealismus auch bei ihm nicht wegzudenken ist.
Peter Kropotkin, dessen ideelle und geographische Wanderschaft ihn Anfang 1872 zur Jura-Föderation der Ersten Internationalen geführt hatte, zu der sich die anti-marxistischen Sozialisten zusammengeschlossen hatten, konnte dem nationalen Aufbegehren ebenfalls Positives abgewinnen.
Im Einklang mit seinen Überzeugungen von notwendiger Abschüttelung aller Autoritäten konnte er etwa 1897 zur angespannten Lage der Balkanvölker schreiben, dass der Befreiungskampf gegen eine auswärtige Tyrannei als Auftakt zur Befreiung von sozialen Tyranneien angesehen werden müsse. Dem Internationalismus erteilte er in einem anderen Schreiben eine Absage, solange nicht jede Nation wirklich unabhängig wäre. Freiheit galt für Individuen, Gruppen sowie für ganze Nationen. Nach anarchistischer Ansicht dürfte nicht einmal der Seele eine Herrschaft über den Körper (und umgekehrt) zugestanden werden. Einem vorauseilenden Kosmopolitismus wurde ebenso eine Absage erteilt, wie dem Imperialismus.
1880 erschien in der Genfer Zeitschrift Le Révolté ein Artikel Kropotkins, der später als Pamphlet in französischer Sprache herauskommen sollte. In ihm wird eine konzise Diagnose einer revolutionären Situation erstellt, die in vielem an unsere aktuelle Befindlichkeit erinnert. Dem naturwissenschaftlich interessierten und bewanderten Autor erscheinen Revolutionen wie Naturgewalten, die periodisch auftreten, alles mit sich reißen und ein neues Gleichgewicht herstellen. Ähnlich einer Krankheit geht ihnen eine Inkubationszeit voraus. In letzterer kommt es nach Kropotkin zu einer Art Umwertung aller bisher gültigen und anerkannten Werte.
Was früher Recht war, stellt sich nun als schreiendes Unrecht heraus. Die Untätigkeit der Regierenden beschleunigt diesen Prozess. Die Spannungen nehmen überall in der Gesellschaft zu und reichen bis in das Innere der Familien. Die soziale Zersplitterung schreitet voran und wird durch eine Ökonomie der fieberhaften Profitmaximierung gesteigert. Die Regierung ist schnell überfordert und wird von den Problemen überholt. Sie funktioniert allenfalls mechanisch und ist nicht einmal mehr in der Lage, offensiv reaktionär zu agieren.
Eine einzige missglückte Unterdrückungsmaßnahme
Jedes Entgegenkommen seitens der Herrschenden ist nun zu spät und stachelt das revolutionäre Fieber eher noch an. Die Massen beginnen, sich ihrer Stärke bewusst zu werden. Die Revolution bricht aus. Zwar glaubt Kropotkin, anders als der Psychologe Gustave Le Bon, dass auch in dieser Phase die meisten Menschen den Stimmen der Mäßigung zugeneigt sind, doch dauert dieses retardierende Moment des Aufruhrs nicht allzu lang. Die warnenden Stimmen nämlich haben seit je her die kleine mutige Elite diskreditiert, die auf dieses Ereignis hingearbeitet hat, ohne dass jemand ernsthaft Notiz nahm.
Nach seiner Meinung genügt in dieser Situation nur eine einzige verunglückte Unterdrückungsmaßnahme seitens der Regierung, um den Revolutionären die Sympathien der Massen zu garantieren. Der Stachel der Revolution bohrt sich nun unaufhaltsam bis in die herrschenden Klassen hinein, deren Einheit nun zerbröckelt. Peter Kropotkin ist davon überzeugt, dass diejenige Partei in einer Revolution Gehör findet, die am meisten und am härtesten für sie gearbeitet hat. Aus ihren Reihen kommen die wenigen Mutigen, die eine Masse von bis dahin Ängstlichen mitreißen können, denn, so sein Credo „Mut, Hingabe und Opferbereitschaft sind ebenso ansteckend, wie die Feigheit“ (Peter Kropotkin „The spirit of revolt“).