Un « Maidan » à Erivan?

Un « Maidan » à Erivan?

Par Bernard Tomaschitz

On veut pousser à un changer de régime en Arménie et détacher le pays de tous ses liens avec la Russie

L’Arménie vient de subir des journées politiquement très turbulentes. Au bout de deux semaines d’agitation, avec des manifestations assez violentes, le premier ministre Serge Sarguissian a démissionné. La population appauvrie reproche amèrement à l’ancien président de la république de n’avoir pas tenu sa promesse de quitter les plus hautes fonctions de l’Etat après deux mandats. Serge Sarguissian « a surestimé ses capacités à demeurer au sommet du pouvoir » estime le politologue Nikolaï Zilayev, actif au sein d’un centre d’études sur les problèmes du Caucase.

Les affaires du chef du gouvernement sont désormais gérées par le représentant du premier ministre Karen Karapetyan, tandis que le chef de l’opposition Nikol Pachinyan, un journaliste qui critique les œuvres du gouvernement, exige de nouvelles élections. Il avait été condamné, il y a quelques années, à un an de prison pour avoir incité les foules à l’émeute. Pachinyan (photo) espère sans aucun doute améliorer les scores de son alliance électorale libérale, le « Yelk », qui n’avait glané que 7% des voix lors des législatives de 2017.

La politologue Zilayev pense que ceux qui ont organisé les dernières manifestations en Arménie sont « pour une bonne part des personnes ayant reçu un appui financier de l’Occident ». De fait, à l’appui de l’hypothèse de Zilayev, on constate que, depuis des années, des fondations semi-étatiques américaines, dont l’objectif est soi-disant de promouvoir la « démocratie », comme le « National Endowment for Democracy » (NED) et la fondation « Open Society » (OSF) du spéculateur George Soros, sont actives dans la petite république caucasienne qui compte trois millions et demi d’habitants. Les observateurs ont notamment constaté que le NED et l’OSF ont soutenu très souvent des projets médiatiques pour favoriser l’éclosion d’opinions pro-occidentales. Ainsi, le NED a soutenu au printemps dernier un programme de télévision soi-disant « indépendant » à hauteur de 42.000 dollars américains, programme qui devait montrer aux Arméniens combien la république voisine de Géorgie profitait avantageusement de son rapprochement avec l’Union Européenne, alors que l’Arménie, inféodée à l’Union économique eurasienne, ne récoltait pas autant d’avantages. L’Arménie est membre tout à la fois de l’Union économique eurasienne, pilotée par la Russie, que de l’OTSC (« Organisation du Traité de la Sécurité Collective »), où Moscou donne également le ton.

Les derniers événements d’Arménie pourraient donc bien être les signes avant-coureurs d’un changement de cap politique, comme ce fut le cas avec les incidents de Maidan en Ukraine, qui ont déclenché la révolte soutenue par l’Occident en 2014. Sarguissian et Karapetyan entendent rester fidèles à Moscou, tandis que Pachinyan est clairement hostile aux Russes. Le Washington Post écrit à ce propos, que si Pachinyan obtient les succès qu’il escompte, « l’Arménie se joindra à un petit groupe de républiques ex-soviétiques, comme, principalement, l’Ukraine et la Géorgie, qui ont pu imposer à leurs dirigeants une révolution pro-démocratique, un quart de siècle après l’effondrement de l’Union Soviétique ».  Le journal américain limite toutefois son euphorie, en admettant que la révolte arménienne de ces dernières semaines « n’est pas portée par le désir de s’affranchir de l’influence russe ». Cela explique aussi pourquoi le Kremlin a réagi de manière sereine et se borne à garder un « œil vigilant » sur la situation de son petit voisin du sud. Le porte-paroles du Kremlin, Dimitri Peskov a déclaré : « Nous constatons que les événements qui secouent l’Arménie ne conduisent pas à une déstabilisation. Ce qui se passe en Arménie concerne exclusivement nos amis arméniens ».

Cependant, les rapports amicaux entre Moscou et Erivan sont quelque peu troublés à cause du conflit du Nagorno-Karabakh, où l’armée arménienne a conquis et tenu quelques régions appartenant de jure à l’Azerbaïdjan mais peuplées majoritairement d’Arméniens. A la grande déception d’Erivan, les Russes veulent conserver de bons rapports aussi bien avec les Azéris qu’avec les Arméniens. Cette attitude conciliante de Moscou a forcément déplu aux Arméniens. Le géopolitologue russe Andrew Korybko explique la situation : l’Arménie « en dépit de ses obligations institutionnelles envers la Russie dans le cadre de l’Union économique eurasienne et de l’OTSC, s’est rapprochée de plus en plus de l’UE (et, lato sensu, de l’OTAN et des Etats-Unis), parce que l’attitude conciliatrice et équilibrante de la Russie dans le conflit arméno-azéri a généré de la méfiance dans le pays, traditionnellement allié à Moscou.

Si l’on suit le raisonnement de Korybko, des « éléments hypernationalistes » ont profité de plusieurs facteurs pour appeler la population à manifester violemment, dont, surtout, ceux qui ont suscité la colère populaire contre les dirigeants, posés désormais comme corrompus et contre les erreurs qu’ils auraient commises. Cette colère sert de prétexte à certains pour se hisser au pouvoir, à d’autres pour transformer l’Etat arménien en un pays antirusse, à l’exemple de l’Ukraine.

La conséquence de tout cela, c’est que l’Arménie risque dorénavant de basculer dans le « camp unipolariste », c’est-à-dire dans le camp américain. Korybko est convaincu que les Américains profiteront pleinement de l’occasion : « L’Arménie se rapproche à grands pas de l’UE et de l’OTAN et Washington ne va pas perdre du temps à engager là-bas des moyens militaires pour soutenir un nouveau régime contre l’ennemi azéri, posé comme pro-russe ». En fin de compte, l’Arménie, pays dont les contours ressemblent à une faucille, sera comme un poignard à proximité des régions qui sont au cœur de la nouvelle alliance russo-irano-turque. Les événements récents en Arménie ont donc une signification importante sur l’échiquier géopolitique international.

Bernhard TOMASCHITZ.

(article paru dans « zur Zeit », Vienne, n°18/2018, http://www.zurzeit.at .

Color Revolutions as an Element of Net-Centric Warfare

SouthFront: Analysis & Intelligence is offering a new exclusive analytical series “Clandestine Warfare of the 21th Century”.

Written by Prof.Dr. Vladimir Prav exclusively for SouthFront 

Ex: https://southfront.org

Contemporary geopolitical struggle concepts invariably include provisions concerning the creation and functioning of “networks.” The sense of a “net” or a “network principle” lies in the exchange of information, the maximum possible expansion of information production, access, distribution, and feedback. The “net” is the main element of information space, in which information operations are carried out with the aim of achieving political, economic, informational, technical, and military objectives. “Network” as a system in the global understanding of the term includes several elements which earlier used to be viewed as strictly separate phenomena.

The basic principle of conducting modern geopolitical struggle is “net-centrism.” This principle based on three postulates.

1. The modern world is defined not only by transport corridors with associated flows of goods and services, but also informational and communications networks, which form the skeleton of the global information space.

2. The global historical process is a unified, global process of conflict, mutual help, or neutral coexistence of human societies organized along hierarchical (vertical) and also network (horizontal) principles, with the net-centric (horizontal) possibly becoming dominant in the future. Vertical and horizontal network structures, with varying origin, purpose, numerical strength, geographic and temporal boundaries, and legal status, are both the objects and subjects of the global historical process whose interaction facilitates the emergence of new structures and connections.

3. The dynamically developing of artificial (electronic) networks which intertwine and interact with psycho-social networks and amount to a qualitatively new social phenomenon, are a unique feature of the informational network skeleton of the future global society. That phenomenon is identified within the net-centric information war concept as SPIN—Segmented, Polycentric, Ideologically integrated Network. We should note that Microsoft offered a more precise definition of this phenomenon, namely “electronic nervous system,” or ENS.

The main global actor systematically using the net-centric principle in geopolitical struggle is the USA. Its executive actors are the mutually intertwined state agencies, corporations, and international network structures.

The international networks structures, which are usually referred to as “behind the scenes actors”, and which are the basic initiators of the process of globalization, are essentially a network of highly influential NGOs which form the Euro-Atlantic’s globalists (or Western) ideological “super-community” and which are closed to outsiders. Such network structure can exert serious pressure on the whole of global political environment, financial system, economy, through its representatives and lower-rank international entities. They can also make and implement decisions to effect a change of regime and course of development of selected countries.

Relying on the mobilization of net-centric assets located under the control of these representatives, the Euro-Atlantic’s globalists “super-community”can effect a “soft” resolution of a wide range of clearly defined and coordinated domestic and international political problems.  Global direction and control can be effected thanks to the existence of such a distributed and hierarchically ordered meta-net-centric organization whose upper echelons are represented by networks which belong to the Western “super-community”. The individuals being directed may not even understand that he is being directed, and even if he does, he will not be able to figure out from where the directions are emanating and who bears responsibility for it.

The main content of all “net-centric wars” consists of “effects-based operations” (EBO). This is the most important concept in the entire net-centric warfare theory developed in the US. EBO are defined by US specialists as a “combination of actions aimed at forming a specific model of behavior among friends, neutral forces, and enemies during peace, crisis, and war.” (Edward A. Smith, Jr. Effects based Operations. Applying Network centric Warfare in Peace, Crisis and War, Washington, DC: DoD CCRP, 2002.) EBO’s main result is the establishment of full and absolute control over all parties to the conflict (including armed conflict), and their complete manipulation under all circumstances. Including when the conflict is ongoing, when it is threatening, and when there is peace.

The essence of “net-centric warfare” is that it does not have a beginning or an end, it is being conducted on a permanent basis, and its objective is to ensure that the parties conducting the war have the ability to effect comprehensive control over all international actors. Embedding the “network” deprives countries, nations, armies, and governments of all vestiges of independence, sovereignty, and even separate existence, transforming them into closely controlled, programmed objects. It allows the implementation of a new model of direct planetary control, of global dominion of a new type, where the content, motivation, actions, and intentions of international actors are all subject to outside direction.

It’s a design for global manipulation and total control on a world scale. That is apparent from the EBO definition. EBO tasks include forming a behavior structure not only among friends, but also neutrals and enemies, in other words, both enemies and neutrals act in accordance with a scenario imposed on them and are driven not by their own will but by the will of the EBO executors. If enemies, friends, and neutrals do that which the Americans want them to do, they become puppets even before their ultimate defeat. The battle is won before it even begins. EBO are conducted concurrently with military operations, during crises and during peacetime, which reflects the total character of net-centric wars.

A net-centric war’s strategic objective is the absolute control over all the participants of the political process on a global scale. Its tactical objective is to establish the geopolitical aggressor’s control over the victim state’s assets, with the “transfer” largely taking place in a willing and voluntary manner since the attack is not perceived as aggression but rather as an impulse toward further development.

This makes net-centric war far more complex to implement than a traditional “hot” war, but it is also vastly more effective. Results of “hot wars” are usually challenged and dissipated over time (as shown by World Wars I and, especially, II). The effects of net-centric wars can last for centuries, until the aggressors and their basic needs change.

Net-centric war’s main front is located in the mental space, with the enemy’s goal being the destruction of traditional basic values of a given nation and implanting its own. The existence and structure of this type of war cannot be perceived on the level of mass consciousness. If the political elite of a society that is being targeted by net-centric war is not sufficiently qualified to identify this type of aggression and organize suitable response, the society itself is doomed to a crushing geopolitical defeat.

Specialists note another characteristic peculiar to net-centric wars, namely the absence of a rigid structure within the aggressor entity. We’d like to point out that it is due to the high degree of heterogeneity among the entity’s institutional elements. Individual and comparatively autonomous state and non-state elements of the aggressor are not part of some vertical hierarchy, instead they are connected by irregular horizontal interactions. The absence of hierarchy and regularity of interaction makes it difficult to clearly identify the existence and activities of the aggressor.

Due to the peculiar nature of NCW (Net-Centric Warfare), its technological structure (or the sum total of social technologies used to attack the target society) is very complex. NCW technologies include “multi-step combinations and intrigues whose instigators are not evident, a wide spectrum of means of influence, and using individuals who are ignorant of their role.”  Most importantly, according to US experts, NCW is a post-industrial informational post-modern era differ from ordinary wars of industrial modern era by their desire to achieve an outwardly bloodless reapportionment of territories and resources. The objective is to sustain the image “developed democracies’” which are conducting NCWs in a wide variety of geopolitical contexts under the slogan of protecting human rights. In an era of total “humanization”, conducting combat operations is viewed as a flawed option. The world society sleeps better if outwardly everything looks fine. Thanks to modern technologies and gathered experience, even genocide can be pursued without gas chambers and mass shootings. It’s enough to create conditions to reduce birth rates and raise death rates. Success can also be achieved by dumbing down the nation through changing its stereotypes and behavior norms so that even an escalation of events to the level of violence is perceived as natural.

Today one of the characteristic manifestations of NCW in a globalizing world are “color revolutions”. A Color Revolution (CR) is a net-centric operation whose objective is the removal of existing political regimes in another country. It is based on “non-violent struggle” methods developed by George Sharp in the 1980s (a US product, one of net-centric technologies). The CR concept implies establishing full control over a country and its territory without the use of armed force, if possible. It can be achieved by applying “soft power” which US political scientist Joseph Nye Jr. defines as a state’s (or alliance’s or coalition’s) ability achieve desired international results through persuasion and not suppression, imposition, or compellence, which is characteristic of “hard power.” Soft power achieves its effect by inducing others to adhere to certain international norms of behavior, which leads to the desired outcome without applying compellence.

Color Revolution consequences.

For states and political systems, CRs contain aspects of colonialism. The interests of the target society are not taken into consideration, it is expendable “spare change.” The “revolutionaries” are the first to vanish from stage and, often, from life itself. People who sincerely begin to believe in CR ideals without suspecting that those ideals have been induced are the fuel for such revolutions, and are also expendable. The society itself is destabilized, social foundations are undermined, the respect for government disappears, dissatisfaction increases, and economy is in anything but a normal state. These are the ideal conditions to impose Western social models. US enters the country.

CR brings no benefit to the country’s political forces or society. The only beneficiary is the USA, which establishes a painless, non-violent, “soft” control over its new territory.

Modern Georgia is an example. It lost its sovereignty after the “Revolution of Roses” triggered serious transformations, destabilized the society, and led to the loss of about 20% of the country’s territory. Georgia is the most important US bridgehead in the Caucasus. It is so for a number of reasons:

– Georgia is an element of the Caucasus isthmus through which Russia obtains direct contact with Iran with which it wants to establish a strategic relationship.

– Georgia is a base for a force build-up and projection throughout the entire Caspian region, including Russia.
– Georgia is a transit country for energy resources from the Caspian to Europe.

Pursuing the main task of US geopolitics related to Russia and Caspian, the US took Georgia from under the last vestiges of Russia’s geopolitical influence and subjected it to its own direct geopolitical control. Georgia adopted an Atlanticist development vector and lost the last remnants of its sovereignty.

There are a number of other important factors.

1. The US seeks to establish direct military and strategic control over Azerbaijan and Armenia. Leaders of Azerbaijan are certain that the opposition demonstrations in March of 2011 and the planned attempts to oppose the existing constitutional order were organized from outside the country.

2. In order to ensure partnership with the EU, and particularly with Germany, the US created a cordon sannitaire extending from the cold northern seas through the Baltic States, Ukraine, Moldova, toward Georgia. Belarus is at the moment a breach in the cordon, with Poland filling that breach. The belt, consisting of Ukraine, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Moldova, and Georgia, which cuts Russia off from Europe, was created by the US in order to achieve their top geopolitical objectives through the sequential initiation of CRs in these countries as part of the NCW against Russia.

In the last 20 years, US and NATO transformed Ukraine into a country hostile to Russia also through the application of net-centric technologies. The 2014 coup and 2014-2015 civil war were initiated by the US, which also provided informational, financial, and military support. Ukraine’s domestic and foreign policies are strictly anti-Russia in character.

3. Uzbekistan and Kirgiziya will remain key US geopolitical presence platforms in Central Asia. US will never abandon the intent to establish full control over the region. It will periodically destabilize the situation there in order to take Uzbekistan and Kirgiziya under control.

Usually such unsuccessful “velvet” coup attempts of the sort we observed in Uzbek Andijan or in the somewhat confusing “revolution cascade” in Kirgiziya are followed by harsher scenarios. The level of pressure is gradually increased. The “velvet” scenario is replaced by a harder line, including clashes with police, first casualties, pogroms, and then, as a rule, the situation is destabilized along ethnic lines since it is the hardest type of conflict to resolve. These actions are accompanied by a parallel creation of several social instability epicenters, the rise in economic problems, disruptions of the social situation, and a general domestic political polarization. The goal is to force these countries’ leaders to agree that they have lost control, that they no longer have power.

The outcome is the country’s territory passing under US control. The CR, should it be successful or semi-successful, is followed by more direct approaches which can ultimately lead to military operations as in Iraq and Libya.

Being a nuclear weapons state, Russia is considered by the US and NATO one of its main geopolitical adversaries. The current key geopolitical US objective is a regime change in Russia consisting of removing Vladimir Putin and his team from power. Analysis suggests that at the moment Ukraine, Caucasus, and Central Asia are the most advantageous places for the US to use in order to ratchet up pressure on Russian leadership. Maintaining the potential for violence in these locations will continue until they find a new, fresher source of conflict on Russian territory, with a potential for successful separatism, which could become a constant source of externally induced political pressure on Russian leadership.

Ahora revolución colorada en Hong-Kong

Siempre el mismo método: Ahora revolución colorada en Hong-Kong

Ex: http://paginatransversal.wordpress.com

Medios chinos: EE.UU. exporta “revoluciones de colores” a Hong Kong

Las agencias de inteligencia estadounidenses están tratando de exportar la exitosa experiencia de las “revoluciones de colores” a Hong Kong, escribe la prensa china.

Según el periódico chino ‘Huanqiu Shibao’, citado por la agencia Itar-Tass, los líderes del movimiento de protesta Occupy Central, que desde el junio de este año organiza diversas acciones de masas con el objetivo de democratizar el sistema del poder en Hong Kong, participaron en seminarios en el centro Hong Kong-America Center (HKAC por sus siglas en inglés).El objetivo de esta organización sin fines de lucro consiste en “promover el entendimiento mutuo entre los chinos y los americanos”.Según ‘Huanqiu Shibao’, durante estos eventos, a los que asisten también los miembros del Consulado General de EE.UU., a los activistas estudiantiles les exigieron “promover cambios democráticos”, prometiendo apoyo de Washington, incluso la oportunidad de estudiar y vivir en Estados Unidos.

Durante los seminarios, algunos expertos internacionales les enseñaron tácticas de acciones de protesta y estrategias de negociación con las autoridades durante manifestaciones, acentuando las exigencias políticas a las que en ningún caso hay que renunciar.El director del HKAC, Morton Holbrook, nombrado para este cargo a finales del año pasado, es “un espía importante” que trabajó cerca de 30 años en las agencias de inteligencia de Estados Unidos. Como señala ‘Huanqiu Shibao’, Holbrooke, igual que el magnate Jimmy Lai, que financia a la oposición de Hong Kong, es cercano al exministro de Defensa estadounidense Paul Wolfowitz.”Uno tiene la impresión de que el Centro HKAC, fundado por Estados Unidos, está tratando de aplicar la experiencia de las ‘revoluciones de colores’ en Hong Kong con el fin de influir en la situación interna”, subraya el periódico chino.

Fuente: RT

Extraído de: Tribulaciones Metapolíticas

Open Society or Survival

By Mark Hackard

Ex: http://www.alternativeright.com/

Of all the idols of our age, none has demanded so much blood sacrifice and the dissipation of resources as that of democracy. From the Hindu Kush to our television screens, the liberal order betrays its totalitarian nature. We send armies and airborne robots into Asia’s wastelands to kill for the universal rights of man. Mass democracy can never be recognized for the deviant political philosophy it is, nor can it be restricted to the West alone; equality must reign everywhere unchallenged. Modern man is infallible, and in his militant faith he pursues no less than the entirety of the world subjugated to his will. How else may a New Jerusalem of pleasure and profit be realized, if not through the monumental force of a united humanity?

Eurasia remains the key to fulfilling this mad dream. Even as the United States continues its grinding and bloody counterinsurgency in Afghanistan and across Dar al-Islam, Washington has found the cash to promote “civil society” and “the rule of law” in Russia. The Obama Administration is looking to apply $50 million to NGOs and similar initiatives in Moscow and other regions throughout the country. Thus stated Ambassador Michael McFaul:

We have proposed to the US Congress to create a new civil society fund for Russia. We proposed that 50 million dollars in a neutral way, by the way, in terms of new money. That’s what I hear in Moscow that when you talk to real human rights organizations and what they really need, they need that kind of support.

 

While $50 million would be negligible in sustaining the Pax Americana’s military operations, it makes for a tidy sum when directed toward political subversion. (Among other projects, expect a new stream of nauseating parades and Pussy Riot church provocations.) Vladimir Putin’s third presidential term will begin this spring, but U.S. policy planners have been emboldened by a recent surge in opposition activism in Russia. Along with continuing pressure on Moscow’s peripheries, their strategy is still centered on creating the infrastructure for revolution, the most cost-effective way that an embattled Third Rome could fall to American power. After all, the United States seeks to destabilize Russia with an ultimate view to her dismemberment and exploitation by the lords of international usury.

The Freedom Agenda grants Washington carte blanche to undermine sovereign nations on whim in the name of “human rights” and a long-term mandate for global governance. Exporting to the world its model of social chaos, the United States aims for the establishment of a unified, market-driven Open Society across the earth. Should some insolent tribe refuse the imperial model, it must prepare for the inevitable assault- if not by bombardment or sanctions, then at the very least through intelligence operations and psychological warfare.

Peoples who would defy postmodern Mammonism must have a clear ideological framework for resistance. In the case of Russia, such a basis for thought and action is conspicuously absent among ruling elites. Popular legitimacy can only derive from the quantitative “will of the people”; the Kremlin carries out elections in imitation of Western stage-management and assiduously tracks approval ratings from the middle class. Putin and his assorted clans will have nothing to counteract a deadening reductive-materialist worldview if they share it with their geopolitical adversaries.

Russia spent a century enacting the social experiments of the modern West; she can afford neither lives nor time for yet another ruinous undertaking. Babel and its missionaries must be repudiated. War for the national soul begins at the visceral level of shared faith and kinship; these values form the traditional organic state, guardian of sacred heritage and culture. And there is no greater weapon in this struggle than the loyal heart.

Rendering judgment on democracy, the White émigré leader Ivan Ilyin gave us a principled and articulate rejection of the liberal dispensation and its incipient totalitarianism. It is no accident that today’s Free World is on the fast track to tyranny. The bloodless abstractions of liberty and equality bequeathed to us by Locke, Rousseau and their disciples have birthed mechanisms of control undreamt of by ancient despots. “Government by the people” has in fact served to corrupt and dissolve whole peoples according to the design of an antitheist and anti-human Money Power. Is escape from the democratic Panopticon even possible? Yes, though it demands of us a fateful choice: languishing toward oblivion in the Open Society, or our arrival at the harsh conclusions necessary to chart a future.

 

*** 

On Formal Democracy

Essay by Ivan A. Ilyin. Taken from the collection “Nashi Zadachi” and translated by Mark Hackard.

There are two different understandings of the state and politics: the mechanistic and the organic. The mechanistic asserts instinctive man and his private interests; it measures life quantitatively and formalistically. The organic derives from the human spirit and ascends to national unity and its common interests; it is qualitative, searching out spiritual roots and solutions.

We shall first examine the mechanistic view.

It sees in man first and foremost the instinctive individual with its “desires” and “needs”: every person wishes to work less, enjoy himself more and relax; procreate and accumulate; maintain his irresponsible opinions and express them without hindrance; to find the like-minded and associate with them wherever they may be; to depend upon no-one and wield as much power and influence as possible. After all, men are born “equal”, and hence each of them must be provided equal rights for the assertion of their desires and needs: these are the inalienable rights of liberty which cannot abide restriction. Therefore every person should have an equal voice in affairs of state. For so many people there will be so many equal voices. Whatever a man may fancy is to be affirmed, and let there be no interference in this. Allow like-minded men of all nations to unite freely; let the votes be counted; the majority will decide…

As to the quality of the desires, plans and enterprises of all these men of one mind, and especially the motives and intentions of voters, no-one may concern himself. All of this is protected by inviolable “freedom”, equality and the secret vote. Every citizen as such is considered already reasonable, enlightened, well-intentioned and loyal, incorruptible and honorable; each man is given the opportunity to discover his “valor” and veil all his designs and schemes with words about “the common good”.

Until he is caught, this man is not a thief; until taken red-handed, he demands complete respect. He who has not been implicated at the scene of a crime (for example, treason, foreign espionage, conspiracy, bribes, waste, fraud, call-girl rings, counterfeiting) – is considered a political “gentleman” independent of his profession and a full citizen. Most important are liberty, equality and vote-counting. The state is a mechanical equilibrium of private (personal and group) agendas; the state is built as a compromise of centrifugal forces, played out in the performances of political actors. And politics should move according to the results of mutual distrust and competing intrigues.

Unfortunately this view (as much as I know) is nowhere expressed in such a frank and precise form. It is not a doctrine; it is simply an unspoken political dogma, rooted in the world and taken as the self-evident essence of democracy. All men are formally free; all men are formally equal and contend with each other for power, for the sake of their own interests, yet under the pretense of a common benefit.

Such a formal and quantitative conception of the state renders its fate dependent on whom, how and what shall fill a vacuum of content, as well as that indifferent-drifting quality people afford themselves through formal “liberty”. State and government are but a mirror or arithmetic sum of what is made in the soul of the human mass and its sense of justice. Something stews within this at once opaque and unassailable cauldron: any interference is forbidden as “pressure”, and any constraint or action is denounced as “an infringement upon freedom”. Every citizen is secured the right to crooked and deceptive political paths, to disloyal and treasonous designs, to the sale of his vote, to base motives for voting, to underground plots, unseen treachery and secret dual citizenship- to all those crudities which are so profitable to men and so often tempt them.

The citizen is given the unlimited right to temptation and the corruption of others, as well as the subtle transactions of self-prostitution. He is guaranteed the freedom of disingenuous, lying, and underhanded speech, and the ambiguous, calculated omission of truth; he is granted the liberty to believe liars and scoundrels or at least pretend to believe them (in self-interest simulating one political mood or its complete opposite). And for the free expression of all these spiritual seductions he is handed the ballot. Motivations for voting must be free; the formation of parties tolerates no constraint; to limit political propaganda is to exercise coercion.

To judge and condemn for “political views” is not permitted: this would signify an assault upon another’s “conscience” and persecution of his beliefs (in German, Gessinungsjustiz). Freedom of opinions should be total; government officials will not dare infringe upon this or attempt its curtailment. And the most stupid, most harmful, ruinous and foul “opinion” is sacrosanct, already by virtue of the fact that there is a destructive fool or traitor who has proclaimed it, all the while hiding behind its inviolability. Is it possible to make him only passively hold his beliefs? How are we to keep him from putting these thoughts into action, through whispers, conspiracy, secret organizations, and the covert accumulation of arms?

It is understood that all of this immediately disarms the state before enemies and subversives; at the same time it guarantees these enemies and subversives total liberty and impunity. The government is obliged to secure the people the freedom to be seduced, while revolutionaries and traitors are assured the freedom to seduce. It is natural that another election’s results will show the success of this guaranteed seduction. And so the regime will continue until the seduction undermines the very idea of voting and readiness to submit to the majority (for according to the recently stated revolutionary formula of the Belgian Spaak: “The minority is not required to submit to the majority”). Then voting is replaced by rebellion, and the organized totalitarian minority seizes power.

This means that the formalistic-quantitative concept of the state opens the doors wide open to every political adventure, coup and revolution, as we observe from year to year in South America, for example. And in truth, the scoundrels of the world would have to be complete fools if they did not notice and exploit this excellent opportunity for the seizure of power. Admittedly, American gangsters did not reach this point and kept their atrocities out of politics, and the Sicilian Mafiosi have also been satisfied with private income. But to arrive at such a conclusion is not at all difficult. Nature abhors a vacuum; as noble motives (religious, moral, patriotic, and spiritual) weakened and withered in human souls, into the empty space of formal liberty would inevitably surge ridiculous, evil, perverse and avaricious plans advanced by totalitarian demagogues of the Left and Right.

Formal liberty includes the freedom of secret treason and overt destruction. From the very beginning the mechanistic and arithmetical competition of private desires prepared within people’s hearts the possibility of blind escalation and civil war. As long as centrifugal forces agreed to moderate their demands and find a compromise, the state could maintain balance over the chasm; but the prophets of class struggle rebelled and brought upon us the moment of civil war. How can the formal-mechanistic conception of the state oppose them? By the urging of great persuaders? Cries over our perishing freedom? Or ideas of sentimental humanitarianism, forgotten conscience and trampled honor? But this would mean “interference”, thereby denouncing formal liberty and the mechanistic conception of politics! This would entail a loss of faith in political arithmetic and a fall into pure democratic heresy!

For formal democracy does not allow any doubt as to the good intentions of the free citizen. Jean-Jacques Rousseau once taught that man by his nature is rational and good, and the one thing he lacks is freedom. We need only to not hinder him in drawing from his good-natured heart the guiding “general will”, wise, unerring and salvific…Just don’t bother him, and he shall draw it forth!

People came to believe this two centuries ago. The French Encyclopedists and revolutionaries believed, and after them anarchists, liberals and proponents of formal democracy around the world. They believed to such a degree that they even forgot about their faith and its dangers: it was decided that this system is the truth most undoubted, and that in politics it demands veneration before liberty, a respectful formalism and an honest count of the votes. And now two centuries of this practice have set contemporary politicians before the greatest political earthquake in world history…

What can they do? Curtail formal liberty? Reject the mechanism of private desire? Abolish the arithmetic of voting? But this would mean to doubt the sacred dogmata of modern democracy! Who shall risk such a feat? Who will disavow himself? And how will he oppose totalitarians from both the Left and the Right?

If this is a dead end, then what next? Assent to the deformations and atrocities of a totalitarian regime?! Impossible!

 

Mark Hackard

Mark Hackard has a a BA in Russian from Georgetown University and an MA in Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies from Stanford University.