In this new essay published on May 1st, John Pilger recalls the ‘electric’ opposition of writers and journalists to the coming war in the 1930s and investigates why today there is “a silence filled by a consensus of propaganda” as the two greatest powers draw closer to conflict.
Dec. 20, 2008: Protesters in Montreal threw shoes at a target poster of President George Bush outside the U.S. Consulate to show support for the Iraqi journalist Muntadar al-Zeizi , who threw his shoe at the real Bush. (Anirudh Koul, Flickr, CC BY-NC 2.0)
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There is a war coming shrouded in propaganda. It will involve us. Speak up
In 1935, the Congress of American Writers was held in New York City, followed by another two years later. They called on “the hundreds of poets, novelists, dramatists, critics, short story writers and journalists” to discuss the “rapid crumbling of capitalism” and the beckoning of another war. They were electric events which, according to one account, were attended by 3,500 members of the public with more than a thousand turned away.
Arthur Miller, Myra Page, Lillian Hellman, Dashiell Hammett warned that fascism was rising, often disguised, and the responsibility lay with writers and journalists to speak out. Telegrams of support from Thomas Mann, John Steinbeck, Ernest Hemingway, C Day Lewis, Upton Sinclair and Albert Einstein were read out.
The journalist and novelist Martha Gellhorn spoke up for the homeless and unemployed, and “all of us under the shadow of violent great power”.Martha, who became a close friend, told me later over her customary glass of Famous Grouse and soda:
“The responsibility I felt as a journalist was immense. I had witnessed the injustices and suffering delivered by the Depression, and I knew, we all knew, what was coming if silences were not broken.”
Her words echo across the silences today: they are silences filled with a consensus of propaganda that contaminates almost everything we read, see and hear. Let me give you one example:
On 7 March, the two oldest newspapers in Australia, the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, published several pages on “the looming threat” of China. They coloured the Pacific Ocean red. Chinese eyes were martial, on the march and menacing. The Yellow Peril was about to fall down as if by the weight of gravity.
No logical reason was given for an attack on Australia by China. A ‘panel of experts’ presented no credible evidence: one of them is a former director of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, a front for the Defence Department in Canberra, the Pentagon in Washington, the governments of Britain, Japan and Taiwan and the west’s war industry.
“Beijing could strike within three years,” they warned. “We are not ready.” Billions of dollars are to be spent on American nuclear submarines, but that, it seems, is not enough. “Australia’s holiday from history is over”: whatever that might mean.
There is no threat to Australia, none. The faraway ‘lucky’ country has no enemies, least of all China, its largest trading partner. Yet China-bashing that draws on Australia’s long history of racism towards Asia has become something of a sport for the self-ordained ‘experts’. What do Chinese-Australians make of this? Many are confused and fearful.
The authors of this grotesque piece of dog-whistling and obsequiousness to American power are Peter Hartcher and Matthew Knott, ‘national security reporters’ I think they are called. I remember Hartcher from his Israeli government-paid jaunts. The other one, Knott, is a mouthpiece for the suits in Canberra. Neither has ever seen a war zone and its extremes of human degradation and suffering.
“How did it come to this?” Martha Gellhorn would say if she were here. “Where on earth are the voices saying no? Where is the comradeship?”
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Post-Modernism in Charge
The voices are heard in the samizdat of this website and others. In literature, the likes of John Steinbeck, Carson McCullers, George Orwell are obsolete. Post-modernism is in charge now. Liberalism has pulled up its political ladder. A once somnolent social democracy, Australia, has enacted a web of new laws protecting secretive, authoritarian power and preventing the right to know. Whistleblowers are outlaws, to be tried in secret. An especially sinister law bans ‘foreign interference’ by those who work for foreign companies. What does this mean?
Democracy is notional now; there is the all-powerful elite of the corporation merged with the state and the demands of ‘identity’. American admirals are paid thousands of dollars a day by the Australian tax payer for ‘advice’. Right across the West, our political imagination has been pacified by PR and distracted by the intrigues of corrupt, ultra low-rent politicians: a Johnson or a Trump or a Sleepy Joe or a Zelensky.
No writers’ congress in 2023 worries about “crumbling capitalism” and the lethal provocations of ‘our’ leaders. The most infamous of these, Tony Blair, a prima facie criminal under the Nuremberg Standard, is free and rich. Julian Assange, who dared journalists to prove their readers had a right to know, is in his second decade of incarceration.
The rise of fascism in Europe is uncontroversial. Or ‘neo-Nazism’ or ‘extreme nationalism’, as you prefer. Ukraine as modern Europe’s fascist beehive has seen the re-emergence of the cult of Stepan Bandera, the passionate anti-Semite and mass murderer who lauded Hitler’s ‘Jewish policy’, which left 1.5 million Ukrainian Jews slaughtered. “We will lay your heads at Hitler’s feet,” a Banderist pamphlet proclaimed to Ukrainian Jews.
Stepan Bandera torchlight parade in Kiev, Jan. 1, 2020. (A1/Wikimedia Commons)
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Today, Bandera is hero-worshipped in western Ukraine and scores of statues of him and his fellow-fascists have been paid for by the EU and the US, replacing those of Russian cultural giants and others who liberated Ukraine from the original Nazis.
In 2014, neo-Nazis played a key role in an American bankrolled coup against the elected president, Viktor Yanukovych, who was accused of being ‘pro-Moscow’. The coup regime included prominent ‘extreme nationalists’ – Nazis in all but name.
At first, this was reported at length by the BBC and the European and American media. In 2019, Time magazine featured the “white supremacist militias” active in Ukraine. NBC News reported, “Ukraine’s Nazi problem is real.” The immolation of trade unionists in Odessa was filmed and documented.
Spearheaded by the Azov regiment, whose insignia, the ‘Wolfsangel’, was made infamous by the German SS, Ukraine’s military invaded the eastern, Russian-speaking Donbas region. According to the United Nations 14,000 in the east were killed. Seven years later, with the Minsk peace conferences sabotaged by the West, as Angela Merkel confessed, the Red Army invaded.
A march of Azov veterans and supporters in Kiev, 2019. (Goo3, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons)
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This version of events was not reported in the West. To even utter it is to bring down abuse about being a “Putin apologist”, regardless whether the writer (such as myself) has condemned the Russian invasion. Understanding the extreme provocation that a Nato-armed borderland, Ukraine, the same borderland through which Hitler invaded, presented to Moscow, is anathema.
Journalists who travelled to the Donbas were silenced or even hounded in their own country. German journalist Patrik Baab lost his job and a young German freelance reporter, Alina Lipp, had her bank account sequestered.
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Silence of Intimidation
In Britain, the silence of the liberal intelligensia is the silence of intimidation. State-sponsored issues like Ukraine and Israel are to be avoided if you want to keep a campus job or a teaching tenure. What happened to Jeremy Corbyn in 2019 is repeated on campuses where opponents of apartheid Israel are casually smeared as anti-Semitic.
Professor David Miller, ironically the country’s leading authority on modern propaganda, was sacked by Bristol University for suggesting publicly that Israel’s ‘assets’ in Britain and its political lobbying exerted a disproportionate influence worldwide – a fact for which the evidence is voluminous.
The university hired a leading Queen’s Counsel to investigate the case independently. His report exonerated Miller on the “important issue of academic freedom of expression” and found “Professor Miller’s comments did not constitute unlawful speech”. Yet Bristol sacked him. The message is clear: no matter what outrage it perpetrates, Israel has immunity and its critics are to be punished.
A few years ago, Terry Eagleton, then professor of English literature at Manchester University, reckoned that “for the first time in two centuries, there is no eminent British poet, playwright or novelist prepared to question the foundations of the western way of life”.
No Shelley spoke for the poor, no Blake for utopian dreams, no Byron damned the corruption of the ruling class, no Thomas Carlyle and John Ruskin revealed the moral disaster of capitalism. William Morris, Oscar Wilde, HG Wells, George Bernard Shaw had no equivalents today. Harold Pinter was alive then, “the last to raise his voice”, wrote Eagleton.
Where did post-modernism – the rejection of actual politics and authentic dissent – come from? The publication in 1970 of Charles Reich’s bestselling book, The Greening of America, offers a clue. America then was in a state of upheaval; Nixon was in the White House, a civil resistance, known as “the movement”, had burst out of the margins of society in the midst of a war that touched almost everybody. In alliance with the civil rights movement, it presented the most serious challenge to Washington’s power for a century.
On the cover of Reich’s book were these words: “There is a revolution coming. It will not be like revolutions of the past. It will originate with the individual.”
At the time I was a correspondent in the United States and recall the overnight elevation to guru status of Reich, a young Yale academic. The New Yorker had sensationally serialised his book, whose message was that the “political action and truth-telling” of the 1960s had failed and only “culture and introspection” would change the world. It felt as if hippydom was claiming the consumer classes. And in one sense it was.
Within a few years, the cult of ‘me-ism’ had all but overwhelmed many people’s sense of acting together, of social justice and internationalism. Class, gender and race were separated. The personal was the political and the media was the message. Make money, it said.
As for “the movement”, its hope and songs, the years of Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton put an end to all that. The police were now in open war with black people; Clinton’s notorious welfare bills broke world records in the number of mostly blacks they sent to jail.
George Floyd protesters in Miami react to police firing chemical irritants on May 30, 2020. (Mike Shaheen, CC BY 2.0, Wikimedia Commons)
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When 9/11 happened, the fabrication of new “threats” on “America’s frontier” (as the Project for a New American Century called the world) completed the political disorientation of those who, 20 years earlier, would have formed a vehement opposition.
In the years since, America has gone to war with the world. According to a largely ignored report by the Physicians for Social Responsibility, Physicians for Global Survival and the Nobel Prize-winning International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, the number killed in America’s “war on terror” was “at least” 1.3 million in Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan.
This figure does not include the dead of US-led and fuelled wars in Yemen, Libya, Syria, Somalia and beyond. The true figure, said the report, “could well be in excess of 2 million [or] approximately 10 times greater than that of which the public, experts and decision makers are aware and [is] propagated by the media and major NGOS.”
“At least” one million were killed in Iraq, say the physicians, or five per cent of the population.
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No One Knows How Many Killed
The enormity of this violence and suffering seems to have no place in the western consciousness. ‘No one knows how many’ is the media refrain. Blair and George W. Bush – and Dick Cheney, Colin Powell, Donald Rumsfeld, Jack Straw, John Howard et al – were never in danger of prosecution. Blair’s propaganda maestro, Alistair Campbell, is celebrated as a ‘media personality’.
In 2003, I filmed an interview in Washington with Charles Lewis, the acclaimed investigative journalist. We discussed the invasion of Iraq a few months earlier. I asked him, “What if the constitutionally freest media in the world had seriously challenged George W. Bush and Donald Rumsfeld and investigated their claims, instead of spreading what turned out to be crude propaganda?”
He replied. “If we journalists had done our job, there is a very, very good chance we would have not gone to war in Iraq.”
I put the same question to Dan Rather, the famous CBS anchor, who gave me the same answer. David Rose of the Observer, who had promoted Saddam Hussein’s ‘threat’, and Rageh Omaar, then the BBC’s Iraq correspondent, gave me the same answer. Rose’s admirable contrition at having been “duped”, spoke for many reporters bereft of his courage to say so.
Their point is worth repeating. Had journalists done their job, had they questioned and investigated the propaganda instead of amplifying it, a million Iraqi men, women and children might be alive today; millions might not have fled their homes; the sectarian war between Sunni and Shia might not have ignited, and Islamic State might not have existed.
Mock coffins placed near the offices of military contractors during a protest against the Iraq war in and around Washington. March 21, 2009. (Victor Reinhart, CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons)
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Cast that truth across the rapacious wars since 1945 ignited by the United States and its ‘allies’ and the conclusion is breathtaking. Is this ever raised in journalism schools?
Today, war by media is a key task of so-called mainstream journalism, reminiscent of that described by a Nuremberg prosecutor in 1945: “Before each major aggression, with some few exceptions based on expediency, they initiated a press campaign calculated to weaken their victims and to prepare the German people psychologically… In the propaganda system… it was the daily press and the radio that were the most important weapons.”
One of the persistent strands in American political life is a cultish extremism that approaches fascism. Although Trump was credited with this, it was during Obama’s two terms that American foreign policy flirted seriously with fascism. This was almost never reported.
“I believe in American exceptionalism with every fibre of my being,” said Obama, who expanded a favourite presidential pastime, bombing, and death squads known as “special operations” as no other president had done since the first Cold War.
According to a Council on Foreign Relations survey, in 2016 Obama dropped 26,171 bombs. That is 72 bombs every day. He bombed the poorest people and people of colour: in Afghanistan, Libya, Yemen, Somalia, Syria, Iraq, Pakistan.
Every Tuesday – reported the New York Times – he personally selected those who would be murdered by hellfire missiles fired from drones. Weddings, funerals, shepherds were attacked, along with those attempting to collect the body parts festooning the “terrorist target”.
A leading Republican senator, Lindsey Graham, estimated, approvingly, that Obama’s drones had killed 4,700 people. “Sometimes you hit innocent people and I hate that,” he said, “but we’ve taken out some very senior members of Al Qaeda.”
In 2011, Obama told the media that the Libyan president Muammar Gaddafi was planning ‘genocide’ against his own people. “We knew…,” he said, “that if we waited one more day, Benghazi, a city the size of Charlotte [North Carolina], could suffer a massacre that would have reverberated across the region and stained the conscience of the world.”
This was a lie. The only “threat” was the coming defeat of fanatical Islamists by Libyan government forces. With his plans for a revival of independent pan-Africanism, an African bank and African currency, all of it funded by Libyan oil, Gaddafi was cast as an enemy of western colonialism on the continent in which Libya was the second most modern state.
Destroying Gaddafi’s “threat” and his modern state was the aim. Backed by the US, Britain and France, Nato launched 9,700 sorties against Libya. A third were aimed at infrastructure and civilian targets, reported the UN. Uranium warheads were used; the cities of Misurata and Sirte were carpet-bombed. The Red Cross identified mass graves, and Unicef reported that “most [of the children killed] were under the age of ten”.
When Hillary Clinton, Obama’s secretary of state, was told that Gaddafi had been captured by the insurrectionists and sodomised with a knife, she laughed and said to the camera: “We came, we saw, he died!”
On 14 September 2016, the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee in London reported the conclusion of a year-long study into the Nato attack on Libya which it described as an “array of lies” – including the Benghazi massacre story.
The NATO bombing plunged Libya into a humanitarian disaster, killing thousands of people and displacing hundreds of thousands more, transforming Libya from the African country with the highest standard of living into a war-torn failed state.
Under Obama, the US extended secret “special forces” operations to 138 countries, or 70 per cent of the world’s population. The first African-American president launched what amounted to a full-scale invasion of Africa.
Reminiscent of the Scramble for Africa in the 19th century, the US African Command (Africom) has since built a network of supplicants among collaborative African regimes eager for American bribes and armaments. Africom’s “soldier to soldier” doctrine embeds US officers at every level of command from general to warrant officer. Only pith helmets are missing.
It is as if Africa’s proud history of liberation, from Patrice Lumumba to Nelson Mandela, has been consigned to oblivion by a new white master’s black colonial elite. This elite’s “historic mission”, warned the knowing Frantz Fanon, is the promotion of “a capitalism rampant though camouflaged”.
In the year Nato invaded Libya, 2011, Obama announced what became known as the “pivot to Asia”. Almost two-thirds of US naval forces would be transferred to the Asia-Pacific to “confront the threat from China”, in the words of his Defence Secretary.
There was no threat from China; there was a threat to China from the United States; some 400 American military bases formed an arc along the rim of China’s industrial heartlands, which a Pentagon official described approvingly as a “noose”.
At the same time, Obama placed missiles in Eastern Europe aimed at Russia. It was the beatified recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize who increased spending on nuclear warheads to a level higher than that of any US administration since the Cold War – having promised, in an emotional speech in the centre of Prague in 2009, to “help rid the world of nuclear weapons”.
Obama and his administration knew full well that the coup his assistant secretary of state, Victoria Nuland, was sent to oversee against the government of Ukraine in 2014 would provoke a Russian response and probably lead to war. And so it has.
I am writing this on 30 April, the anniversary of the last day of the longest war of the twentieth century, in Vietnam, which I reported. I was very young when I arrived in Saigon and I learned a great deal. I learned to recognise the distinctive drone of the engines of giant B-52s, which dropped their carnage from above the clouds and spared nothing and no one; I learned not to turn away when faced with a charred tree festooned with human parts; I learned to value kindness as never before; I learned that Joseph Heller was right in his masterly Catch-22: that war was not suited to sane people; and I learned about ‘our’ propaganda.
All through that war, the propaganda said a victorious Vietnam would spread its communist disease to the rest of Asia, allowing the Great Yellow Peril to its north to sweep down. Countries would fall like ‘dominoes’.
Ho Chi Minh’s Vietnam was victorious, and none of the above happened. Instead, Vietnamese civilisation blossomed, remarkably, in spite of the price they paid: three million dead. And the maimed, the deformed, the addicted, the poisoned, the lost.
If the current propagandists get their war with China, this will be a fraction of what is to come. Speak up.
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Click here to read John Pilger’s article as it originally appeared on his official website.
And here to find the same piece on Consortium News with images and links retained above.
Independent journalist Vanessa Beeley recently interviewed Steve Sweeney, international editor of The Morning Star. An anti-imperialist who founded Media Workers for Palestine, Sweeney is widely travelled and prefers to report on events directly from the ground. Here he speaks about his recent experiences during his time in Lviv which has been Nato’s hub for military training, the main route for western arms shipments and is the historical home of the most extreme “ultranationalist” factions in Ukraine [audio improves at about 15 mins].
Sweeney relates that: “My friend joked with me before I came in – he’s an American journalist and he’s based in Berlin and he laughed and told me, ‘Steve, you know your body is illegal in Ukraine!’ My body’s been many things, but illegal? That’s not one of them!
“I didn’t think about this at the time, but he said, ‘Well, you’ve got a tattoo.’ And well I didn’t think about this. You know I’m a communist so I have a tattoo of Marx, Engels and Lenin on my arm. I mean this is illegal because, you know, all communists been banned across Ukraine, and we know the communist party has been banned. And all this you know: the communists and the left and any sort of political opponents [are banned].
“So they knew that I was a communist and they said, ‘We know why you’re here’ and I said, ‘Okay why am I?’ They said, ‘You’re a spy.’ And you know I’m not a spy – I’d be a pretty useless spy I think – but no, I mean I’m not a spy. And they said, ‘You will be tortured. You will be arrested.’ And indicated that I would be executed. And they told me that I would never make it out of the country.
“Now obviously I did because I’m here speaking to you, but I think I was incredibly lucky to get out, and I got out in amongst a group of refugees actually. And I just decided not to speak. I took a package of food and water and walked through, and managed to get out. Then I escaped across the border and made it – I made it eventually to Berlin although there was a hairy moment when the armed police came on the train before we crossed into [Poland], but they seemed a little bit interested in me for a minute, but…
“But I mean my kind of treatment is nothing compared to the many thousands of leftists and journalists operating in the country at great risk, who are being disappeared or killed – placed on list like Eva [Bartlett]. So my situation doesn’t compare. But what I did find in the country when speaking to people – I mean what they were very clear about – I spoke to a woman called Maria from Mariupol (or just outside Mariupol) and she spoke to me in kind of broken English and… the first thing she did was she showed me a picture of what was her apartment block [now] completely obliterated. She was distraught, but she pointed and she said ‘Azov.’
“She told me then who was responsible for destroying her home. And she managed to get out of Mariupol with her daughter. Her son and her husband had remained in the city. I’m hoping that everything is okay with them, because you know the situation is very bad. But she explained that the people living in Mariupol were not afraid of the Russians – she said Russian soldiers gave them food, gave them water and helped them. They brought medicine, you know. I don’t think they had much of it, but they gave them. They felt safe. And, as she said, it was the Ukrainians they were terrified [of]. I mean you could see the fear and you could hear it in her voice.
“And she said that they tried to leave much earlier than they did when they got out, but they were threatened that they would be shot dead if they tried to leave by Ukrainians not by Russians. She told me that most people in that part of the country are fleeing to Russia because they feel safe, and she didn’t feel safe in Lviv because she’s a Russian speaker – she knows, I mean this is her country: she knows very well, but she was very clear that in Mariupol they’ve been terrorised for eight years by Nazis.” [from 19:00 mins]
Click here to watch the same interview as it appears in the original post on Vanessa Beeley’s The Wall Will Fall website.
Russian President Putin has claimed that he ordered the invasion of Ukraine to “denazify” its government, while Western officials, such as former U.S. Ambassador to Moscow Michael McFaul, have called this pure propaganda, insisting, “There are no Nazis in Ukraine.”
In the context of the Russian invasion, the post-2014 Ukrainian government’s problematic relations with extreme right-wing groups and neo-Nazi parties has become an incendiary element on both sides of the propaganda war, with Russia exaggerating it as a pretext for war and the West trying to sweep it under the carpet.
The reality behind the propaganda is that the West and its Ukrainian allies have opportunistically exploited and empowered the extreme right in Ukraine, first to pull off the 2014 coup and then by redirecting it to fight separatists in Eastern Ukraine. And far from “denazifying” Ukraine, the Russian invasion is likely to further empower Ukrainian and international neo-Nazis, as it attracts fighters from around the world and provides them with weapons, military training and the combat experience that many of them are hungry for. 1
The paragraphs above form the introduction to a comprehensive and insightful piece written by Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies entitled “How the U.S. Has Empowered and Armed Neo-Nazis in Ukraine” published by Counterpunch on Friday 11th.
I will return to the conclusion of the article below but also encourage readers to follow the link to read it in full.
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In the summer of 2019, TIME Correspondent, Simon Shuster travelled to Ukraine to investigate the white supremacist militias that are recruiting people to join their fight:
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Embedded below is a speech made by Yevhen Karas, the leader of Ukraine’s neo-Nazi faction and youth wing C14 that he delivered on February 5th about a fortnight ahead of the Russian invasion.
Sat beside an effigy of notorious Nazi collaborator and war criminal Stepan Bandera, Karas brazenly dispels many of the narratives promoted by the mainstream media, European Union and US State Department claiming amongst other things that Ukraine is being armed as pawns of the West in order to destabilise Russia because “we have fun killing and we have fun fighting”:
“LGBT and foreign embassies say ‘there were not many Nazis at Maidan, maybe about 10 percent of real ideological ones,’” Karas remarked. “If not for those eight percent [of neo-Nazis] the effectiveness [of the Maidan coup] would have dropped by 90 percent.”
The 2014 Maidan “Revolution of Dignity” would have been a “gay parade” if not for the instrumental role of neo-Nazis, he proclaimed.
Karas went on to opine that the West armed Ukrainian ultra-nationalists because “we have fun killing.” He also fantasized about the balkanization of Russia, declaring that it should be broken up into “five different” countries.
During the Maidan “Revolution of Dignity” that ousted Ukraine’s elected president in 2014, C14 activists took over Kiev’s city hall and plastered its walls with neo-Nazi insignia before taking shelter in the Canadian embassy.
As the former youth wing of the ultra-nationalist Svoboda Party, C14 appears to draw its name from the infamous 14 words of US neo-Nazi leader David Lane: “We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children.”
By offering to carry out acts of spectacular violence on behalf of anyone willing to pay, the hooligans have fostered a cozy relationship with various governing bodies and powerful elites across Ukraine. 2
The extracts above are taken from a recent Grayzone article which also reminds us of events that took place in early 2018 after Karas’ C14 gang signed an agreement with Kiev’s city government to patrol its streets. Months later it began a campaign of pogroms against Romani camps:
A March 2018 report by Reuters stated that “C14 and Kiev’s city government recently signed an agreement allowing C14 to establish a ‘municipal guard’ to patrol the streets,” effectively giving them the sanction of the state to carry out pogroms.
As The Grayzone reported, C14 led raid to “purge” Romani from Kiev’s railway station in collaboration with the Kiev police.
The C14 Nazi terror gang signed an agreement with the Kiev municipal government to patrol its streets. This footage taken just a few months later in 2018 shows them carrying out a pogrom against a Romani camp. pic.twitter.com/9aAA86K8TQ
Karas has claimed that the Ukrainian Security Serves would “pass on” information regarding pro-separatist rallies “not only [to] us, but also Azov, the Right Sector and so on.”
“In general, deputies of all factions, the National Guard, the Security Service of Ukraine and the Ministry of Internal Affairs work for us. You can joke like that,” Karas said.
Click here to read the full article entitled “How Ukraine’s Jewish president Zelensky made peace with neo-Nazi paramilitaries on front lines of war with Russia” written by Alexander Rubinstein and Max Blumenthal published on March 4th by The Grayzone.
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Eight years ago as the ugly truth about the Maidan slowly began to emerge even BBC Newsnight featured a handful of reports on the rise and influence of the “ultranationalists” including this segment (currently still available on Youtube) in which reporter Gabriel Gatehouse investigates the tightening links between the new Ukrainian government and neo-Nazis:
Halfway into his report, Gatehouse actually interviews Yevhen Karas about the role of his C14 movement when visiting its new base which had been the former headquarters of the Communist Party, but that had since been occupied by the far-right. Following the coup, the political party Svoboda, which is affiliated with C14, actually controlled four ministries in the new government including the Ministry of Defense. Two of its MPs had also been photographed brandishing well-known Nazi paraphernalia [5:00 mins into the report].
Karas told Gatehouse:
“Our general mission is to totally ruin chains that connect our country with the imperial power from the past.”
Gatehouse then prompts him: “… and that being Russia?”
Yes, said Karas, “Weaken the Russians – not only Russia, Soviet Union.”
“Are you a Nazi?” Gatehouse asks directly. No, Karas replies smiling, “I don’t think I’m a Nazi – I’m a Ukrainian nationalist.”
Gatehouse prompts again: “And what does that mean?”
Karas continues: “The main confrontation is about that some ethnic groups have control: many business structures; some economics and political forces.”
Gatehouse again: “Which ethnic groups?”
Karas: “Russians and Jews. And it may be some non-Ukrainian group control a huge percent of some economic or political power.”
Finally, Gabriel Gatehouse rounds off the Newsnight report essentially confirming the opinion of Yevhen Karas with respect to the pivotal role played by neo-Nazis in the success of the coup:
“It’s clear that it was the radical groups who kept up the pressure on Viktor Yanukovych and many of them feel that this really is their victory – the question is how much power will that give the far-right in the new Ukraine.” [from 5:35 mins]
He adds: “With their anti-Russian rhetoric, events in Crimea will almost certainly play into the hands of the nationalists. No one knows exactly how strong they are in terms of numbers, but the influence of the far-right in Ukraine is growing.”
Eighteen months on, Gabriel Gatehouse then presented a follow-up BBC Newsnight report from Ukraine featuring arguably the most extreme “ultranationalist” group Pravyi Sektor (or Right Sector) as they marched on Kiev with neo-Nazi banners and chants of “Glory to Ukraine!”
At one point a commander of the Right Sector militia tells him: “I know the Chief of General Staff and all the armed forces, apart from a few generals; in principle they support us. The army will never go against us.” [from 7:00 mins]
Towards the end of his report, Gatehouse inspects a Right Sector banner which bears the Wolfsangel insignia saying “That’s a Nazi symbol, isn’t it?”
No, Dmytro Semen tells him disingenuously, “It means ‘idea of the Nation’, it’s not Nazi.” [from 7:35 mins]
As Gatehouse also acknowledges: “The revolution which is known here as Maidan overthrew the government and then set this country hurtling towards war. Just as it did during Maidan, the Right Sector has played a key role in the fighting in the east. Its members are more motivated than Ukraine’s conscripted regular army and the government relies on them to bolster their strength. Now they’re flexing their muscles.” [from 2:15 mins]
In April 2018, BBC Newsnight correspondent Jonah Fisher also reported on the increasing visibility of far-right groups in Ukraine. The National Militia brown shirts patrolling the streets and smashing up the premises of local businesses shouting “Glory to Ukraine”. Fisher acknowledges:
“The National Militia tell us they’re working alongside the police, but they have also on several occasions fought them. Here they brawled and used pepper spray on officers as they tried and failed to pressure a judge into keeping an allegedly corrupt politician in custody.”
Continuing:
“The National Militia are part of a group called Azov. Initially a volunteer military battalion, it has well established links to the far-right. Its founder this man Andriy Biletsky has in the past expressed racist and antisemitic views, and its logo [the Wolfsangel and Black Sun] has clear Nazi overtones.” [from 3:50 mins]
Vyacheslav Likhachev of the National Minority Rights Monitoring Group tells Jonah Fisher sardonically: “My favourite quote from Andriy Biletsky is that: ‘the destiny of the Ukrainian nation is to be in a vanguard in holy war of white people against under-humans [i.e., untermenschen] led by semites.’” [from 4:25 mins]
Fisher then explains that Biletsky “now denies he ever said that, but as this oath-making ceremony shows he’s not running away from the dubious imagery.”
Continuing: “Azov has now started a political party as well as launching the National Militia. The toxic racism has in public, at least, been replaced by patriotic nationalism.”
Speaking with leader of the National Militia, Ihor Mykhailenko, Fisher asks: “Do you now reject those values that you had in the past?”
Mykhailenko replies: “It’s been a long time, a lot has changed in Ukraine. We have always declared our lawful demand and desire that the country is governed by indigenous people.” [from 5:00 mins]
Deputy of Cherkasy City Hall, Olesksander Radutskyi, who has witnessed the takeover of his own council assembly by a gang of National Militia thugs, tells Fisher: “Cherkasy is now a training ground for a military coup in Ukraine.”
He continues: “This sort of thing can’t exist in Ukraine without the Interior Ministry’s approval. If [Arsen] Avakov decided that the National Militia with their balaclavas and uniforms shouldn’t exist, then it wouldn’t exist.” [from 6:45 mins]
Fisher points out that “Ukraine’s ambitious Interior Minister… links to the Azov group are well known. He’s put their fighters on the payroll of his ministry and appointed one of their commanders, Vadim Troyan, as his deputy.”
He continues: “The National Militia may well be the extreme right’s first move ahead of Ukraine’s elections next year, but it’s the uncertainty over who’s behind them that’s worrying people. Confidence in politicians and the police here is low, and for whatever reason the National Militia appear to have been given the nod to act outside the law.
Deputy of Cherkasy City Hall, Olesksander Radutskyi tells Fisher:
“History is repeating itself. If we look what happened in Germany when fascism was just rising up in the 1930s. That’s what I would compare this to.” [from 9:35 mins]
And Fisher concludes the report saying: “It’s an apocalyptic warning but, it’s a reminder that four years after Ukraine turned away from Russia towards Europe the struggle for its soul is far from over.”
*
Here’s a report by Vice International released in May 2018 with the description: “In 2014, Ukraine was under siege and the military was unprepared. Desperate, the government urged anyone to get to the front and fight the Russian-backed separatists. As the war drags on, Ukraine claims their military is now in control and the volunteers have all been disbanded. But we tracked down some rogue volunteers still out there fighting, not prepared to hand over their weapons anytime soon.”
What the description above and the report curiously fails to mention is that these “rogue militia” and “volunteer brigades” are actually Right Sector neo-Nazis. The reporter, Ben Makuch, somehow manages to skirt around this issue entirely, even while showing fighters who are openly flaunting their “Blood and Soil” red and white flags and banners. Moreover, Oleksandr Turchynov who is interviewed close to the beginning of the film is a bit more than just “a controversial guy” who served as acting Ukrainian Prime Minister (2010) and then Chairman of the Verkhova Rada (Ukrainian parliament) in 2014 under President Poroshenko. In 2014 Turchynov also founded the ultranationalist People’s Front party along with Andriy Parubiy (Chairman of the Rada 2016–2019), who in turn had previously founded the Social-National Party of Ukraine (yes, the clue is in the name!) together with Oleh Tyahnybok.
Concluding his report, Ben Makuch joins a torchlight procession through Kiev on the annual “Day of the Defender” with thousands marching beneath neo-Nazi Right Sector and Svoboda banners, but still he only sees “a lot of angry yelling youths in masks and various forms of balaclava”. “What could possibly go wrong?” he asks rhetorically, while taking a selfie!
*
And this is a Guardian report uploaded in September 2017 with the description: “In Ukraine, the far-right Azov militia is fighting on the frontline – and running a summer camp for children. The Guardian visited the camp and followed 16-year-old Anton through his experiences. Is Azov really a modern Hitler Youth organisation, or is it trying to prepare young Ukrainians for the tough reality that awaits them?”
*
As Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies remind us in their latest Counterpunch article:
Despite Svoboda’s declining success in national elections, neo-Nazi and extreme nationalist groups, increasingly linked to the Azov Battalion, have maintained power on the street in Ukraine, and in local politics in the Ukrainian nationalist heartland around Lviv in Western Ukraine.
After President Zelensky’s election in 2019, the extreme right threatened him with removal from office, or even death, if he negotiated with separatist leaders from Donbas and followed through on the Minsk Protocol. Zelensky had run for election as a “peace candidate,” but under threat from the right, he refused to even talk to Donbas leaders, whom he dismissed as terrorists.
Continuing:
During Trump’s presidency, the United States reversed Obama’s ban on weapons sales to Ukraine, and Zelensky’s aggressive rhetoric raised new fears in Donbas and Russia that he was building up Ukraine’s forces for a new offensive to retake Donetsk and Luhansk by force.
The civil war has combined with the government’s neoliberal economic policies to create fertile ground for the extreme right. The post-coup government imposed more of the same neoliberal “shock therapy” that was imposed throughout Eastern Europe in the 1990s. Ukraine received a $40 billion IMF bailout and, as part of the deal, privatized 342 state-owned enterprises; reduced public sector employment by 20%, along with salary and pension cuts; privatized healthcare, and disinvested in public education, closing 60% of its universities.
Coupled with Ukraine’s endemic corruption, these policies led to the profitable looting of state assets by the corrupt ruling class, and to falling living standards and austerity measures for everybody else. The post-coup government upheld Poland as its model, but the reality was closer to Yeltsin’s Russia in the 1990s. After a nearly 25% fall in GDP between 2012 and 2016, Ukraine is still the poorest country in Europe.
As elsewhere, the failures of neoliberalism have fueled the rise of right-wing extremism and racism, and now the war with Russia promises to provide thousands of alienated young men from around the world with military training and combat experience, which they can then take home to terrorize their own countries.
The Soufan Center has compared the Azov Battalion’s international networking strategy to that of Al Qaeda and ISIS. U.S. and NATO support for the Azov Battalion poses similar risks as their support for Al Qaeda-linked groups in Syria ten years ago. Those chickens quickly came home to roost when they spawned ISIS and turned decisively against their Western backers.
Right now, Ukrainians are united in their resistance to Russia’s invasion, but we should not be surprised when the U.S. alliance with neo-Nazi proxy forces in Ukraine, including the infusion of billions of dollars in sophisticated weapons, results in similarly violent and destructive blowback.
Click here to read the full article by Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies entitled “How the U.S. Has Empowered and Armed Neo-Nazis in Ukraine” published by Counterpunch on Friday 11th.
***
The following piece written by independent journalist Saj Awan was originally published on his website Burning Blogger on Saturday March 5th. It is reprinted below in full with all links and images retained.
In December 2021 – just a few weeks before the Russian military incursion into Ukraine – something incredibly interesting happened.
A United Nations resolution was presented, its purpose being to condemn Nazism or the ‘glorification of Nazism’. Only two countries voted AGAINST the resolution. Guess which ones? It was the United States and Ukraine.
Meanwhile, Britain, Australia, Canada and the countries of the European Union were among those who abstained.
Just process this again, please. The US and Ukraine refused to condemn Nazism. While Canada, the UK and various European nations simply ‘abstained’ from having to do so. Fascinating, isn’t it?
Mere weeks later, Vladimir Putin is making a speech about ‘denazifying’ Ukraine (for which he was widely ridiculed in Western media), Russian forces were invading, and this whole disastrous situation unfolding.
Why would any government or nation, in this day and age, refuse to condemn Nazism – or even abstain from such a vote? Shouldn’t it be a simple, cut-and-paste matter? Apparently not.
Weeks later, all the world’s attention was fixed on the imminent Russian invasion of Ukraine.
In the wake of the Russian military operation in Ukraine, a concerted and calculated propaganda programme has encompassed all of Western media and commentary: one that has sought to completely whitewash Ukraine of any controversies or of any unsavoury elements – and to present all of Ukraine, including its militias and armed groups and its politicians, as absolute Good Guys and the Russians as the Absolute Villains.
The programme, in short, has been to present Ukraine as entirely untainted and those within the Ukrainian state and its society as being entirely devoid of any failings, wrongdoings or blame for the state of affairs that preceded the current crisis.
This is all about Russia’s aggression and Putin’s mania – and nothing else. Putin is the new Hitler.
That’s the programme: and every single major news broadcaster, media outlet or newspaper has adopted this narrative. Across all of both mainstream/corporate media and online social media, this whitewashing operation has been in full swing.
*
Now, I will preface this article the same way as every other I publish on this subject: which is to clarify that I am not being a Putin apologist and I am not endorsing or defending the military violation of one sovereign state by another.
This article isn’t about endorsing the military offensive in Ukraine: or all of the destruction and casualties that inevitably go along with such an operation.
What it is about is exposing and confronting the mass media whitewashing of the Ukraine situation: and the highly selective narrative that is being presented by both media and governments.
In this article, we will establish that:
this mass media whitewashing is deliberate; and even could be considered sinister, given that,
there absolutely is a Nazi presence in Ukraine, and
NATO governments absolutely know this: and are in fact covering for it.
Anyone reading this is of course entitled to disagree with those conclusions: but you will probably find it very difficult to.
*
As for this whitewashing, it is absolute: every measure has been taken to present a highly sanitised image of Ukrainian society and politics.
In recent days, Facebook has reversed its ban on posts praising the Azov Batallion: it had previously (and correctly) regarded Azov as being in the same category as groups like Islamic State and the Ku Klux Klan – but, of course, the recent onset of pro-Ukraine mania in the West has seen the social media giant change its mind, apparently.
Moreover, Facebook and Instagram have both been hosting dozens of accounts that are raising funds and selling merch for openly Nazi and extremist groups. As reported, ‘the network of accounts’ promoting Nazi and white supremacist merchandise are ‘linked to two extremist groups operating out of Ukraine: Azov Battalion and Misanthropic Division’.
Here are a couple of fine examples: note the Nazi/SS ‘wolfsangel’ symbol in the second item.
You can buy your Azov merchandise all over the place these days, by the way: try here or here, for example. Now that everyone is all about celebrating the Ukrainian heroes, I suspect some of this merchandise is going to be selling really well.
Get your Azov merch, folks: it’s the hip new thing.
I’ve written about Azov before: here, for example. An openly Neo-Nazi organisation that has been involved in violence, hate crime and the Russia conflict ever since the events of 2014, in which the US/Western-backed ‘revolution’ helped create the situation that has existed in Ukraine to the present day.
When we’re talking Azov Battalion, remember that this is the same organisation whose mission (according to its founder) is to “lead the white races of the world in a final crusade… against Semite-led subhumans”.
Remember that. When someone says ‘oh, but they’re patriots and nationalists who are fighting for Ukraine’s independence’. Sure: and how precisely does fighting for Ukraine’s independence relate to leading ‘the white races of the world in a final crusade against sub-humans’…?
I mean, just a suggestion here: but couldn’t you fight for Ukrainian independence and, you know, NOT lead the white race in a final crusade against sub-humans?
And, just a reminder, get more Azov merch here. And here. Support the Heroes of Ukraine!
*
Alright, so let’s recap a little bit about the Azov Battalion.
Azov was apparently founded by Andriy Biletsky, who – during the Maidan Revolution in 2014 – was actually freed from prison to take part in the ‘revolution’: having been otherwise serving a sentence for murder. So that’s a good start right there, isn’t it?
Among various other ultra-right-wing groups in Ukraine (Right Sector, Svoboda, National Corps, etc, all of which are basically connected), the Azov Battalion stood out because of its brazen brandishing and adoption of Nazi imagery and because of some of its reportedly brutal behaviour.
Ukrainian officials, Azov supporters and apologists, all like to say the regiment is misunderstood.
This is clearly bullshit. The regiment’s symbols, including wolf’s hook (or wolfsangel) and black sun, were Nazi SS symbols during World War II. Everyone knows this. Azov members have frequently been shown wearing Nazi insignia, riding around with swastika flags or patches, and making Nazi salutes.
Apologists like to say the Azov and other Nazi militias are not state actors, but individuals and rogues. A few bad apples, right? Not true. Azov Battalion was formally incorporated into the National Guard and operates under the Ukrainian Ministry of Internal Affairs.
Azov and other Nazis are therefore part of the state apparatus, legitimised by elements of the Ukrainian state.
If officials in Ukraine were embarrassed by or ashamed for the Nazis in their midst, why the hell would they incorporate them into the state? How can they be ‘rogue’ if they’ve been made part of the system?
Azov ‘patrols’ and the like also became commonplace, with members of the militia basically acting like a police force: in some cases to enforce the law, while in other cases to (predictably) intimidate or persecute ethnic minorities (including ethnic Russians).
If this is sounding a lot like a white/European version of ‘ISIS’, that’s something I’ve pointed out before: I argued back in 2018, in fact, that Ukraine is being turned into a European Syria-like situation, with Azov and other white nationalists being empowered to be the ‘white power’ equivalent of ISIS and other jihadists. Only instead of waving the ISIS black flag, they’ll be waving swastikas and wolfangel symbols.
‘Azov is trying – as one of their higher-ups has told me personally – to build a far-right “state within the state,” running everything from nationalist study groups and mixed martial arts training to free gyms for youth and programs for the elderly. They’re also trying to turn Kiev into a capital of the global far-right, inviting neo-Nazis and white supremacists from around the world to visit…’
Apologists also like to say that the Neo-Nazi militants and white supremacists are a minority and have very little influence. This is also bullshit.
As this article from TIME magazine as recently as January explained:
It has its own political party; two publishing houses; summer camps for children; and a vigilante force known as the National Militia, which patrols the streets of Ukrainian cities alongside the police… [Its military wing] has at least two training bases and a vast arsenal of weapons, from drones and armoured vehicles to artillery pieces
This isn’t some small network of troublemakers. Azov and its related far-right groups have connections across Ukraine’s institutions: including security services, police, military and government. They are prevalent across the society.
The Nazi-inspired ideology has apparently been quite prevalent too. Whether a group like Azov is a minority presence or not, it obviously has supporters and collaborators in all the places that matter – not just in Ukraine, but abroad.
But the involvement of foreign intelligence services and governments is something we’ll come to shortly.
And Azov, in fact, is only the most blatant and visible tip of the Nazi iceberg: this isn’t just about Azov.
Ukraine’s Ministry of Youth and Sports is funding the neo-Nazi group C14 to promote “national patriotic education projects” in the country.
The authors advised:
Government agencies at all levels should stop cooperating with far-right groups. In addition to the Youth Ministry’s problematic funding, C14 and a Kyiv city district recently signed an agreement allowing C14 to establish a “municipal guard” to patrol the streets; three such militia-run guard forces are already registered in Kyiv, and twenty-one operate in other cities as well…
While we’re on the subject of ‘C14‘, the group’s leader, Yevhen Karas, was filmed giving a speech in early February at a Svoboda event.
You really need to listen to what he’s saying here, as it really does reveal the true nature of the Maidan events in 2014 and what’s happening now: because the media is certainly not going to show any of this type of stuff (“we have fun killing” is my favorite part). Basically, among other things, he boasts about all the weaponry Western allies have sent to them, gets excited about all the fighting that’s going to happen, and – crucially – explains that the ultra-right really was the chief beneficiary of Maidan.
Svoboda, for the record, is widely acknowledged as a Neo-Nazi party, and was founded by Oleh Tahnybok and Andriy Parubiy, the latter of whom was the chairman of Ukraine’s parliament until 2019 (and was invited to address the US Congress three years ago), and the former having been famously photographed with Senator John McCain during the events of 2014.
*
To demonstrate just how omnipresent the fascist element is, the current Ukrainian President (and now worldwide hero) Volodymyr Zelensky (originally a comedy actor playing the fictional president of Ukraine in a TV show and then subsequently becoming the real president of Ukraine) has been presented as a heroic leader and figure since the events of the Russian incursion.
And not without justification. His actions have been admirable, brave and – for ordinary Ukrainians – inspiring. It’s no surprise he has suddenly becoming an iconic figure worldwide.
However, it was reported as recently as April 2021 that the ostensibly ‘liberal’ Zelensky wanted to appoint one Serhiy Sternenko (a former leader of the Neo-Nazi ‘Right Sector‘) as the head of the SBU (the Secret Service in Ukraine).
This despite Sternenko being under investigation for murder and for involvement in a massacre during the events of 2014.
If even Zelensky – the current and apparently ‘liberal’ president – is willing to be in alliance with Nazis and murderers (let alone to seek to place a Nazi and murderer in charge of, of all things, the Secret Service), then how much of a ‘minor problem’ or ‘minority’ presence can the Neo-Nazis and ultra-nationalists really be?
So then you might argue, ‘well, okay, there’s Nazis – but Ukraine isn’t a totalitarian state, at least’.
Well, sure, okay.
But, as the Georgetown Security Studies Reviewreminds us:
[I]n 2015 Ukraine passed a law recognizing controversial nationalist groups… as “independence fighters” and making it illegal to question the legitimacy of their actions.
It’s illegal to question the legitimacy of groups linked to white supremacy and Nazism? Well, that doesn’t sound promising, does it?
It’s not as if this stuff has been well hidden.
A key figure in Azov’s political wing, the National Corps Party, is Volodymyr Zelensky: who has been photographed with the swastika flag and doing a Hitler salute. She was invited to be a visiting fellow at the Vienna-based Institute for Human Sciences.
Ukraine’s right wing political party National Corps secretary Olena Semenyaka has become a visiting fellow at the Vienna-based Institute for Human Sciences. The photo shows Olena with Nazi salute and Nazi flag. pic.twitter.com/hWi9OGaUfz
The evidence of Nazism or fascism in the Azov group and other related groups in Ukraine is endless: there’s been so MUCH of it that it became impossible to cover up or deny a long time ago. Hell, its members and supporters don’t even bother covering it up, they’re open about it, proud of it: that’s the whole point – for them, it’s all part of the glorious national (and racial) struggle.
They’ve held public marches and gatherings – out in the open. Often with state officials in attendance. These people aren’t in hiding. On January 1st this year, hundreds gathered in Kiev to celebrate World War II Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera, for example.
Yet, somehow, Western media and commentators are managing to ignore it entirely right now: the media line that been adopted since Russia’s build-up of military forces has been to pretend none of this is significant.
As Fair.org has pointed out, Western media has almost completely whitewashed the fascists from their coverage of the Ukraine crisis. As I’ve said, they’re presenting only a very measured and binary narrative of Russian aggression and Ukrainian heroism.
Remember the images of Valentyna Konstantynovska, the 79-year-old Ukrainian grandmother learning to handle an AK-47? Those images went viral in mid-February, as everyone applauded the brave Ukrainian citizens taking up arms to help defend their country.
And what could be more poignant than a sweet old lady doing it? It was practically begging to go viral, right? And of course it did – with hundreds of thousands of people sharing the story.
But, as discussed in the article here on Friday, almost all of the media outlets running the story failed to mention that the sweet old lady was being instructed by members of the Azov Battalion.
The BBC (2/13/22), for instance, showed a clip of “civilians lining up for a few hours’ military training with the National Guard,” with International Correspondent Orla Guerin describing Konstantynovska endearingly as “a granny with a gun.” Though Azov Battalion insignia was visible in the report, Guerin made no reference to it, and the report ends perversely with an NGU combatant helping a child to load an ammunition magazine…
It continues:
The printed press fared little better. On February 13, UK newspapers the London Times and the Daily Telegraph ran front-page spreads showing Konstantynovska preparing her weapon, without any reference to the Azov Battalion running the training course.
As the article points out, this is all the more perverse because both The Times and the Telegraph, along with the BBC and other organisations, had already in the past reported on the Nazi presence in Ukraine’s security apparatus and its militias, as well openly calling the Azov group a Nazi organisation.
I can attest to this: having read numerous mainstream news outlets in 2014 and 2015 acknowledging the true nature of groups like Azov and the involvement of Nazi groups and ideology in the new Ukraine. This included a number of BBC Newsnight reports from the time (which can still be found on YouTube: here’s an example).
And, again, if something as mainstream as TIME published an article on the matter as recently as January, then clearly the mainstream media establishment cannot claim ignorance. The Guardian, The New York Times, and various other major media companies have – at various times in the last several years – published articles addressing this fascist element in Ukraine: and yet, suddenly, no one wants to acknowledge the issue anymore.
Which means simply that they’ve all decided – in lockstep – to omit that information and context as of February 2022 and the Russian invasion.
To be clear, this means that the major media organisations across the Western world are acting in unison to present a manufactured and incomplete narrative. In effect, this is war-time propaganda we’re now seeing: where broadcasters like the BBC were once at least willing to acknowledge the presence of Neo-Nazis and white supremacists in this equation, now they’re covering it up completely.
This can only be policy: a policy of omission that has apparently been adopted across all Western media – in order to make sure this Russia/Ukraine conflict is presented in only a very specific way.
Not that the disease of Nazi-inspired ideology in Ukraine is in itself a justification for Russian invasion: but when Putin referred to the Nazi issue in his speech a week ago, the media and Western politicians decided to mock his claims and essentially suggest Putin is mentally unhinged – instead of confronting or debating the issue.
In effect, the argument is that any time Putin mentions ‘Nazis’, he is obviously either delusional, suffering from psychological issues, or a fantasist living in the Soviet past.
As a case in point, while both social media and mainstream media is presently filled with stories about Russian aggression (somewhat justifiably, given that Russia has launched an invasion: though it’s worrying that even the term ‘war crimes’ is being used a lot now too) and being contrasted to the apparently heroic struggle by the Ukrainian resistance, possible dynamics that don’t fit this neat-and-tidy narrative are being removed from all discussion.
For example, during the Russian assault on Mariupol, which has a strong ethnic Greek population living there, one Greek resident toldGreek City Times that ‘Ukrainian “fascists” are killing people for trying to leave the city.‘
Regarding the ongoing siege in Mariupol (where Azov is based), other claims to a similar effect have been reported: albeit mostly from Russian media sources, which admittedly makes them biased and unreliable. But the Greek source quoted above seems to be more independent.
Now, of course we don’t know if those stories are true or not: but, if they were true, would the media tell us about it? Or would they cover it up and keep bombarding us with headlines about indiscriminate Russian shelling and civilians being targeted, etc?
Again, in the fog of war and under war-time propaganda conditions, the truth is always difficult to ascertain. And, regardless, none of this necessarily justifies Russia’s military assault on Ukrainian cities: invading a sovereign state is still a breach of international law.
And what is happening to ordinary people in Ukraine, caught in the midst of all of this, is terrible.
*
But why is the fascism problem in Ukraine being covered up?
And, coming back to the question we started this article with, why did Ukraine, the United States, Britain, Canada, Australia and others refuse to condemn Nazism in the UN in December?
Meanwhile, the reality – and obvious danger – of the Azov Battalion and other white supremacist groups that are pervasive in the Ukrainian sphere isn’t just limited to Ukrainians. The Azov group and related fascist entities in Ukraine have been attracting foreign recruits for years.
We talked about this before: about Russia in fact complaining to various European states about the ‘volunteers’ going over to Ukraine to fight alongside the militias.
As explored in this older piece on the subject, this included people like Brenton Tarrant – the Australian who would go on to carry out the Christchurch Massacre in New Zealand: an act (a massacre at a mosque) that is entirely in keeping with ideology of Azov and other white supremacist militias.
Security expert Ali Soufan toldTIME magazine that more than “17,000 foreign fighters have come to Ukraine over the past six years from 50 countries.”
Remind you of anything? Yeah, the Islamic State again, right? Hell, they even look the same, don’t they?
As for the foreign fighter element, that’s going to increase exponentially now that the war is happening in Ukraine: and now that Zelinsky has called on foreign ‘volunteers’ from everywhere to come to Ukraine to help in the fight against the Russians. One British security expert has warned, in response to Foreign Secretary Liz Truss’s apparent encouraging of British ‘volunteers’ to go fight in Ukraine, that the danger of far-right terrorism coming back to the UK as a result of this is significant.
That is in fact precisely the scenario I predicted in this older article: that Ukraine would become the white supremacist equivalent of the ISIS ‘caliphates’ – a bloody battleground in which militants belonging to the same ideology can come and get real-world experience of warfare and violence… and then export that violence across the continent.
Whereas the ISIS fanatics did it in the name of the fundamentalist Islamo-fascist ‘caliphate’, the Neo-Nazis will do it to, as Biletsky said, “lead the white races of the world in a final crusade…”
Everything I’m seeing right now, as this current crisis unfolds, is reinforcing my longstanding suspicion that this has been part of the long-term plan of the various agencies or parties involved in this business.
Michael Colborne, writing for Foreign Policy in 2019, seemed to agree, and described Ukraine as “a dangerous neo-Nazi-friendly extremist environment” with “global ambitions“.
And remember that earlier quote too: that they are ‘trying to turn Kiev into a capital of the global far-right, inviting neo-Nazis and white supremacists from around the world to visit…’
You can probably see then, if you didn’t already, why I was so bitchy the other day about the ‘Glory To Ukraine’ memes and hashtags that are all over social media since the Russian military operations began. Again, “Slava Ukraini, heroyam slava!” (“Glory to Ukraine, glory to the Heroes!”) is a slogan that goes back to the 1930s and Ukraine’s Nazi collaborators who, among other things, were involved in genocide.
As this Georgetown Security Studies Review article from 2018 explains:
Rather than leave it as the people’s unofficial rallying cry, the Ukrainian government pushed to have it become the official greeting of the Ukrainian Armed Forces’: a proposal that was made law in October of 2018.
While it’s worrying enough, given all of the other context laid out in this article, that this phrase – with its connotations – has literally been made the official greeting of Ukraine’s Armed Forces: it’s even more disturbing to now see it being nonchalantly adopted by so many people around the world, most of whom don’t understand the context.
But then that brings us back to the fact that the mass media is deliberately failing to inform the general public of the full context of these things: and, more generally, the full context of the present crisis that we’re seeing reported on every day and night on our televisions.
*
As for any notion that the Maidan Revolution or the ousting of Victor Yanukovych (whether he was a corrupt oligarch, a Russian puppet or whatever else) was a purely domestic affair, this was contradicted from the very beginning by the United States’ Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs, Victoria Nuland.
Nuland, who was on the scene for the Maidan protests (not unlike how the likes of Hillary Clinton were on the scene in Libya, parading with Libyan rebels), was public about the fact that America had spent five billion dollars on the regime change programme in Ukraine.
And everyone knew about the fascists and Nazis in the midst of things. Again, ignorance cannot be claimed.
The ‘revolution’ was co-opted and guided by those very groups: and it was always the fascists and ultra-nationalists who benefited most from those events. And just as the likes of Hillary Clinton and John McCain were in Libya meeting with so-called Libyan Rebels (often Al-Qaeda) trying to overthrow Gaddafi in 2011, in 2014 McCain was pictured in Kiev with Oleh Tyahnybok, a Nazi-saluting founder of the Svoboda party.
Like a great many Syrians and Libyans before them, any progressive or well-intentioned Ukrainian protesters involved in Maidan in 2014 were always going to be disappointed to find that the ‘revolution’ in fact was being stolen from them: that it didn’t really belong to them at all.
Ever since then, it’s been the thugs and militias that have had the run of the roost.
As Atlantic Council noted in this 2018 article, Amnesty International had warned that:
“Ukraine is sinking into a chaos of uncontrolled violence posed by radical groups and their total impunity. Practically no one in the country can feel safe under these conditions.”
Also it has to be borne in mind that the current state of affairs – the conditions created by the Russian military incursion – are exactly the kind of scenario the Neo-Nazi groups and militias have been waiting for. This situation – and the urgent need to defend Ukraine – will give them the opportunity to fully expand their influence and position within the society: even beyond that which the events of 2014 had already given them.
It’s exactly the same model by which Al-Qaeda, ISIS and other jihadist groups were able to thrive in the chaos and subsequent violence brought about by the so-called ‘Arab Spring’.
Remember what C14 leader Yevhen Karas said in the video from earlier: ‘We have fun killing, we have fun fighting…’
And now it’s all about the fight: the ‘heroic struggle’. These fighters – and their foreign backers – have been preparing for this Russian incursion for a long time.
As far back as May last year, Arsen Avakov, the Minister of Internal Affairs (and affiliated with the Azov Battalion and other Nazis) was calling for ‘patriots’ to prepare to protect the Motherland from Russia. This Russian operation was clearly fully expected.
Moreover, the Nazi or fascist elements in Ukraine are not a rogue factor being overlooked by Western governments or intelligence services. The mass media’s current whitewashing of the Ukrainian situation is precisely to provide cover for our covert operations involving groups like the Azov Battalion and other fascists.
Research by the Institute for European Russian and Eurasian Studies at George Washington University revealed – as recently as September last year (PDF here) – that Canadian military were training Ukrainian students connected with the fascist organisation called ‘Centuria‘.
‘In April 2021, Centuria’s leaders boasted on Ukrainian social media that they “actively cooperate with foreign colleagues… participating in military exercises with France, Great Britain, Canada, the USA, Germany and Poland…” The same month, the group participated in a march glorifying the exploits of the 14th Division of the Nazi Waffen-SS, the “Galicia Division,” which was comprised of Ukrainian fascists. It honors this Nazi division because it “beat the Bolshevik contagion…”…’
Let’s reiterate that last bit: a march glorifying the Nazi Waffen-SS and its Ukrainian fascists. And again, this march – and others like it – have been held openly in Ukraine. These aren’t covert.
The same group also attacked an LGBTQ event in 2019, claiming to be defending the streets “from perverts”.
Concerning this Canadian and foreign military operation in Ukraine, WSWS.orgreports that:
[T]he Ottawa Citizen reported that military and Defence Department officials attempted to conceal a 2018 meeting between a group of Canadian “officers and diplomats” and members of the Azov Battalion, an openly fascist group with members embedded in the Ukrainian National Guard. Fully briefed in 2017 on its Nazi ideology, Canadian officials were concerned only that the meeting remain secret. It was exposed when Azov boasted about it via social media…
We’re further informed that the ‘Ukrainian Canadian Congress, which openly defends these Nazi veterans and glorifies the fascist World War II Ukrainian leader Stepan Bandera, wields considerable influence in Ottawa. The Deputy Prime Minister, Chrystia Freeland… is the granddaughter of one of the Waffen-SS Galicia division’s principal promoters, Mihailo Chomiak, the editor of a pro-Nazi newspaper in occupied Poland...’
This is true, about Chrystia Freeland – Canada’s Deputy Prime Minister: I didn’t know that until recently.
So Canadian military and defense officials not only were engaged with the Nazi Azov Battalion, but tried to cover it up.
Something virtually identical also happened with the British military.
Declassified UK revealed that ‘Ukraine’s National Guard says that in meeting last year the UK military agreed to start training its forces…’
As the piece shows, photos and details concerning this meeting in Kiev were published on the website of Ukraine’s National Guard – which includes the Azov Battalion. Despite this, the UK Ministry of Defence was angry that this ‘private’ meeting was publicised in Ukraine. And, as the Declassified UKarticle tells us, ‘There is no mention of the meeting in any UK records that are publicly available.’
This too was published in September 2021 – just a few months before this current Russian invasion.
Not that Western military agencies’ collaborations with Azov and other Ukrainian militias is new. In March 2015, Interior Minister Arsen Avakov had announced that the Azov Regiment would be among the first units to be trained by United States Army troops in their Operation Fearless Guardian training mission.
In fact, the US State Department has classified the Azov Battalion as a terrorist group. In 2018, the US House of Representatives passed a provision blocking training of Azov members by American forces, due to its Neo-Nazi links. However, extraordinarily, this ban was quietly lifted due to pressure from the Pentagon.
Obama had in fact blocked armed sales to Ukraine, presumably worried about the arming of Neo-Nazi units: but Trump and now Biden reversed this policy. Trump in fact approved the $39 million sale of defensive lethal weapons to Ukraine.
As noted in my 2018 article here, Israel was also reportedly selling weapons directly to the Azov group: that’s Israel selling weapons to Neo-Nazis. What a world.
Now, of course, in light of the current events, all kinds of weaponry is being openly sent to Ukraine. Everyone is sending weapons to Ukraine now (just look at this list) – even including countries like Germany and Finland.
Which is logical on one level – obviously everyone wants Ukraine to be able to defend itself against an invading aggressor. But you also have to ask precisely whose hands all the weapons are going to end up in: because, as we once saw with the Islamic State group, it’s usually the worst-case scenario.
It is clear, at any rate, that Western intelligence and military groups have been supporting and engaging with groups like the Azov Battalion: in spite of their openly Nazi ideology. No one is under any illusions about this.
It is now looking increasingly like Special Forces from various countries are arriving in Ukraine to fight the Russians. Israeli special forces, it is reported, are in Ukraine: so are Canadian special forces. And British SAS personnel are said to be headed to Ukraine. You know, let’s just assume everyone’s ‘special forces’ are arriving in Ukraine.
My question. given everything else, is how many of them are going to be colluding with the likes of Azov.
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To conclude here: no, Ukrainians aren’t all Nazi-loving white supremacists. Of course they’re not. It’s a country of 40 million people: most of them I’m sure have no affinity with the extremists, just as most people in Mosul had no affinity with the Islamic State militants.
But the evident and obvious Nazi presence in the affairs of the Ukraine/Russia/NATO conflict is too big and too significant to be so completely removed from the equation in the way the media is doing. The general public in most Western nations are not particularly versed in the details of the Ukraine/Russia situation or the recent history leading up to this present state of affairs: and generally do not know much about the Nazi resurgence or about the nature of groups like Azov – or our governments’ collusion in these matters.
And the mass media is making sure it stays this way: presenting the general public only with the context and ‘information’ that suits the present propaganda agenda. This policy of omission is either stupidly short-sighted or it’s actually sinister: draw your own conclusion as to which it is.
Click here to read the same article as it was originally published by S. Awan on his official website Burning Blogger on March 5th.
2 From an article entitled “How Ukraine’s Jewish president Zelensky made peace with neo-Nazi paramilitaries on front lines of war with Russia” written by by Alexander Rubinstein and Max Blumenthal published in The Grayzone on March 4, 2022. https://thegrayzone.com/2022/03/04/nazis-ukrainian-war-russia/
The Assembly next took up the report on “Elimination of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance”, containing two draft resolutions.
By a recorded vote of 130 in favour to 2 against (Ukraine, United States), with 49 abstentions, the Assembly then adopted draft resolution I, “Combating glorification of Nazism, neo‑Nazism and other practices that contribute to fuelling contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance”.
By its terms, the Assembly expressed deep concern about the glorification of the Nazi movement, neo‑Nazism and former members of the Waffen SS organization, including by erecting monuments and memorials, holding public demonstrations in the name of the glorification of the Nazi past, the Nazi movement and neo‑Nazism, and declaring or attempting to declare such members and those who fought against the anti‑Hitler coalition, collaborated with the Nazi movement and committed war crimes and crimes against humanity “participants in national liberation movements”.
Further, the Assembly urged States to eliminate all forms of racial discrimination by all appropriate means, including through legislation, urging them to address new and emerging threats posed by the rise in terrorist attacks incited by racism, xenophobia and other forms of intolerance, or in the name of religion or belief. It would call on States to ensure that education systems develop the necessary content to provide accurate accounts of history, as well as promote tolerance and other international human rights principles. It likewise would condemn without reservation any denial of or attempt to deny the Holocaust, as well as any manifestation of religious intolerance, incitement, harassment or violence against persons or communities on the basis of ethnic origin or religious belief. [Emphasis added in original article]
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The United States has been the only country on Earth to consistently vote against a UN resolution condemning the glorification of Nazism and racism, since it was first introduced in 2013. US allies Canada and Ukraine have at times joined, but Washington stands alone in defense of fascism:
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In Ukraine, support for the Ukrainian nationalist divisions who fought alongside the Nazis has become, over the last eight years, the founding ideology of the modern post 2013 Ukrainian state (which is very different from the diverse Ukrainian state which briefly existed 1991-2013). The full resolution on nazism and racism passed by the General Assembly is lengthy, unnzaires but these provisions in particular were voted against by the United States and by the Ukraine.
6. Emphasizes the recommendation of the Special Rapporteur that “any commemorative celebration of the Nazi regime, its allies and related organizations, whether official or unofficial, should be prohibited by States”, also emphasizes that such manifestations do injustice to the memory of the countless victims of the Second World War and negatively influence children and young people, and stresses in this regard that it is important that States take measures, in accordance with international human rights law, to counteract any celebration of the Nazi SS organization and all its integral parts, including the Waffen SS;
7. Expresses concern about recurring attempts to desecrate or demolish monuments erected in remembrance of those who fought against Nazism during the Second World War, as well as to unlawfully exhume or remove the remains of such persons, and in this regard urges States to fully comply with their relevant obligations, inter alia, under article 34 of Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions of 1949;
…
10. Condemns without reservation any denial or attempt to deny the Holocaust;
11. Welcomes the call of the Special Rapporteur for the active preservation of those Holocaust sites that served as Nazi death camps, concentration and forced labour camps and prisons, as well as his encouragement of States to take measures, including legislative, law enforcement and educational measures, to put an end to all forms of Holocaust denial
As reported in the Times of Israel, hundreds took part in a demonstration in Kiev in May 2021, and others throughout Ukraine, in honour of a specific division of the SS. That is but one march and one division – glorification of its Nazi past is a mainstream part of Ukrainian political culture.
In 2018 a bipartisan letter by 50 US Congressmen condemned multiple events commemorating Nazi allies held in Ukraine with official Ukrainian government backing.
There are no two ways about it. The Ukrainian vote against the UN resolution against Nazism was motivated by sympathy for the ideology of historic, genocide active Nazis. It is as simple as that.
The United States claims that its vote against was motivated by concern for freedom of speech. We have the Explanation of Vote that the United States gave at the committee stage:
The United States Supreme Court has consistently affirmed the constitutional right to freedom of speech and the rights of peaceful assembly and association, including by avowed Nazis
That sounds good and noble. But consider this – why does the United States Government believe that avowed Nazis have freedom of speech, but that Julian Assange does not? You can have freedom of speech to advocate the murder of Jews and immigrants, but not to reveal US war crimes?
Why was the United States government targeting journalists in the invasion of Iraq? The United States believes in freedom of speech when it serves its imperial interests. It does not do so otherwise. This is the very worst kind of high sounding hypocrisy, in aid of defending the Nazis in Ukraine.
The second reason the United States gives is that Russia is making the whole thing up:
a document most notable for its thinly veiled attempts to legitimize Russian disinformation campaigns denigrating neighboring nations and promoting the distorted Soviet narrative of much of contemporary European history, using the cynical guise of halting Nazi glorification
The problem here is that it is very difficult to portray the Times of Israel or 50 bipartisan US congressmen as a Russian disinformation campaign. There is no historical doubt whatsoever of Ukrainian nationalist forces active support of Nazism and participation in genocide, not just of Jews and Roma but of Poles and religious minorities. There is no doubt whatsoever of the modern glorification in Ukraine of these evil people.
It is of course not just Ukraine. In Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania the record of collaboration with Nazis, of active participation in fighting for Nazis, and in active participation in genocide is extremely shaming. Throughout Eastern Europe there is a failure in these “victim nations” to look history squarely in the eye and to admit what happened – a failure the United States in actually promoting as “a campaign against Russian disinformation”.
I recommend to you the website www.defendinghistory.com, run by the admirable David Katz, which is a large and valuable resource on this website from a Lithuanian Jewish perspective that cannot remotely be dismissed as Russian or left wing propaganda. The front page currently features the December 2021 naming of a square in the capital after Lithuanian “freedom fighter” Juokas Luksa “Daumantas”, a man who commenced the massacre of Jews in Vilnius ahead of the arrival of German forces.
These are precisely the kind of commemorations the resolution is against. There has been a rash of destruction of Soviet war memorials and even war graves, and erection of commemorations, in various form, of Nazis throughout the Baltic states. That is what paras 6 and 7 of the resolution refer to, and there is no doubt whatsoever of the truth of these events. It is not “Russian disinformation”.
However the European Union, in support of its Baltic states members and their desire to forget or deny historical truth and to build a new national myth expunging their active role in the genocide of their Jewish and Roma populations, would not support the UN Resolution on Nazism. The EU countries abstained, as did the UK. The truth of course is that NATO intends to use the descendants of Eastern European racists against Russia much as Hitler did, at least in a cold war context.
You won’t find that in the Explanation of Vote.
Click here to read the same article as it originally appeared posted on Craig Murray’s official website on December 21st.
Mike Howard was the Jewish son of a family that escaped the Nazi pogroms in what is today Lithuania and Poland to settle in the East End of London. At school he suffered constant racist abuse being teased as “a fat little Jew boy”. Irrespective of his background and his longstanding commitment to international socialism, in June 2020 he received an email from the Labour Party accusing him of antisemitism on the basis of a few pro-Palestinian posts on Facebook, and in spite of the fact that many of these posts had actually included his own back story.
Mike Howard was outraged but more so for knowing that the letter had very probably come from people inside Labour HQ who were not even Jewish, but anonymously making false accusations when his own family had actively fought the fascists before, during and after the war, and had fought racism the whole of their lives. A very active member of the party, coincidentally, he had just been reselected to run for councillor in the May elections – previously he was elected and served as councillor on two occasions. He immediately appealed against his suspension but heard nothing.
Mike Howard became one of seven members known as Labour Activists For Justice (LA4J) who took the Labour Party to court over its disciplinary process for investigating complaints of antisemitism:
The members of the group, four of whom are Jewish, have all had disciplinary action taken against them and are currently under investigation over alleged rule breaches relating to antisemitism, which they strongly reject. They know that many other members are in similar situations. They are making this High Court claim because the suggestion in many cases, including their own, that there is anti-Semitic content in the evidence provided by the Labour Party is unfounded and offensive. They want a fair disciplinary process to be implemented for ALL Labour Party members where the criteria by which they will be judged are clear and public and the procedures are fair.
When they lost their case at the High Court in July, Jewish Voice for Labour issued a statement that begins:
It’s difficult not to get the impression that the recent judgment, on the claim against the Party by several members accused of antisemitism, is one of those cases where the judge decided what he wanted to do and then thought of some reasons to justify it. In fact, his comment at the end of his judgment, where he declared that it’s effectively the policy of the courts not to intervene in disciplinary proceedings, meant that he was never going to agree with the claimants.
And concludes:
The difficulty for anyone challenging the Labour Party on anything to do with antisemitism allegations is that they are fighting what has become an entrenched conventional wisdom i.e. that there is rampant antisemitism in the UK in general and in the Labour Party in particular. Indeed, the way the judge listed the draft charges against one of the claimants (unnamed) seemed intended to indicate what a dreadful bunch they must be.
After a short illness, yesterday [Nov 11th 2021] Mike passed away with his family around him. He was still suspended from the Labour Party.
Click here and here to read each of the reports published by Jewish Voice for Labour (JVL).
On October 11th, Labour Campaign for Free Speech organised an online meeting to discuss the background to Prof. David Miller’s sacking and how to resist the ongoing Zionist campaign to restrict free speech and academic freedom.
David Miller spoke first, and other speakers included Jewish mathematician, philosopher and socialist activist, Moshé Machover; pro-Palestinian activist, Natalie Strecker, who served as a human rights monitor in Hebron in 2018; rapper and political activist, Lowkey; doctor of medicine, author and academic, Dr Ghada Karmi; and British student, activist and writer with Palestinian and Iraqi heritage, Huda Ammori, who is co-founder of the solidarity group Palestine Action.
Lowkey’s contribution is so well-informed and powerfully expressed that I have cued the video to begin there, however, the discussion is excellent throughout (although there are audio problems in some parts) but in particular I also direct readers to listen to David Miller’s introduction, Huda Ammori’s call for direct action [from 58 mins] and Natalie Strecker’s [from 24 mins] courageous defiance of Labour’s adoption of the IHRA definition of anti-semitism which conflates Judaism with Zionism in assuming that all Jews are Zionists, and that the state of Israel in its current reality embodies the self-determination of all Jews:
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The University of Bristol has fired Professor David Miller, a leading UK critic of Israel and its lobby.
After a years-long campaign of smears by that same lobby, the university said on Friday [Oct 1st] that, “Professor David Miller is no longer employed by the University of Bristol.”
The statement said only that Miller “did not meet the standards of behavior we expect from our staff,” though it did not elaborate.
Miller told The Electronic Intifada he would be appealing and “fighting it all the way.”
From a report written by Asa Winstanley, published by The Electronic Intifada.
It continues:
The university said in its statement that Miller “has a right of internal appeal which he may choose to exercise and nothing in this statement should be taken to prejudge that.”
The university “does not intend to make any further public comment at this time,” it said.
Bristol University further claimed that it was committed to an environment preserving “academic freedom.” But in what seemed a Freudian slip, it also said that “we take any risk to stifle that freedom seriously.”
At the end of February, Israel itself also got involved, mobilizing one of its online troll armies to flood social media conversations with calls for Miller to be fired.
Act.IL – which is directed and funded by an Israeli ministry – issued a mission calling for attacks on an opinion piece published by Al Jazeera defending Miller.
However, David Miller has also received a great deal of support including statements of solidarity from filmmaker Ken Loach and comedian Alexei Sayle and many hundreds of academics and relevant others including Noam Chomsky, Ilan Pappé, Norman Finkelstein, Ronnie Kasrils and John Pilger who have signed an open letter of support which is reprinted in full below.
Britain is in the grip of an assault on its public sphere by the state of Israel and its advocates.
Meaningful conversations about anti-Black racism and Islamophobia have been drowned out by a concerted lobbying campaign targeting universities, political parties, the equalities regulator and public institutions all over the country.
Earlier this month, the newly elected secretary-general of the Muslim Council of Britain, Zara Mohammed, was set upon by two of the most energetic Zionist campaigners in British public life (Laura Marks and BBC presenter Emma Barnett) within days of taking up her position.
This month American commentator Nathan J. Robinson revealed how The Guardianfired him as a columnist for a mere tweet referencing US military aid to Israel.
And this week, Israel’s lobby in Britain has traineditsguns on me.
Adding:
In February 2019, I delivered a lecture for a course I teach at Bristol explaining the five pillars theory of Islamophobia.
The theory details the mechanisms by which certain states, far-right movements, the neoconservative movement, the Zionist movement and the liberal New Atheist movement promote Islamophobia.
Within weeks, the pro-Israel Community Security Trust complained to Bristol university about the inclusion of the Zionist movement in my teaching.
There can be no doubt, too, about the threat Israel’s campaign of censorship poses to Arab and Muslim students, who are silenced from expressing how the racism that targets them actually works.
Also speaking was Yossi Kuperwasser, the former “head of research” of Israeli military intelligence and former director general of the Ministry of Strategic Affairs, the department in charge of overseeing manufactured anti-Semitism allegations internationally and of targeting pro-Palestinian activists around the world.
The Israel lobby’s attack on me lays bare what is actually going on – a weaponization of bogus anti-Semitism claims to shut down and manipulate discussion of Islamophobia.
But the lobby’s tactics are only so effective because they are rarely challenged. It is time for those who are concerned about Islamophobia, racism and academic freedom to make their voices heard.
Click here to read David Miller’s full article entitled “We must resist Israel’s war on British universities” published by The Electronic Intifada on February 20th.
And here to read Asa Winstanley’s full article published by The Electronic Intifada on October 1st.
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Additional: Educators and researchers in support of Professor Miller
Public intellectuals, educators and researchers speak out against the censorship campaign targeted at Bristol’s David Miller
Professor Hugh Brady
President and Vice-Chancellor
University of Bristol
Re: Academic freedom and the harassment and victimisation of Professor David Miller
Dear Professor Brady,
We wish to express our serious concerns about the unrelenting and concerted efforts to publicly vilify our colleague Professor David Miller.
Professor Miller is an eminent scholar. He is known internationally for exposing the role that powerful actors and well-resourced, co-ordinated networks play in manipulating and stage-managing public debates, including on racism. The impact of his research on the manipulation of narratives by lobby groups has been crucial to deepening public knowledge and discourse in this area.
The attacks on Professor Miller stem from a lecture on Islamophobia that he gave to students at the University of Bristol two years ago. In the most recent instance of this harassment, Professor Miller was approached to provide a statement on Israel-Palestine. When he responded honestly to the query, well-orchestrated efforts were made to misrepresent these responses as evidence of anti-Semitism. A call was then made to the University of Bristol to deprive him of his employment.
We oppose anti-Semitism, Islamophobia and all forms of racism. We also oppose false allegations and the weaponisation of the positive impulses of anti-racism so as to silence anti-racist debate. We do so because such vilification has little to do with defeating the harms caused by racism. Instead, efforts to target, isolate and purge individuals in this manner are aimed at deterring evidence-based research, teaching and debate.
Prolonged harassment of a highly-regarded scholar and attempts to denigrate a lifetime’s scholarship cause significant distress to the individual. Such treatment also has a broader pernicious effect on scholarship and well-informed public discourse. It creates a culture of self-censorship and fear in the wider academic community. Instead of free and open debate, an intimidatory context is created and this can be particularly worrying for those who do not hold positions of seniority, influence or stable employment, particularly in times of job uncertainty and in a sector with high levels of casualised employment. As a result, important scholarship is omitted, and this curtails the public’s and students’ right to learn and to engage in thoughtful debate.
At a time when the Black Lives Matter movement has reinvigorated public consciousness about the structural factors entrenching racism, attempts to stifle discourse on Islamophobia and anti-Palestinian racism are particularly regressive and inconsistent with the values the University of Bristol espouses.
As public intellectuals and academics, we feel duty-bound to express our solidarity with Professor Miller and to oppose such efforts to crush academic freedom. Given your roles within the University and your responsibilities to the wider academic community, we urge you to vigorously defend the principle of academic freedom and the rights to free speech and to evidence-based & research-informed public discourse. We hope that you will uphold the integrity of academic debate.
cc:
Professor Simon Tormey, Dean, Faculty of Social Sciences and Law
Professor Sarah Purdy, Pro VC (Student Experience)
Professor Tansy Jessop, Pro VC (Education)
Professor Judith Squires, Provost
Mr Jack Boyer, Chair, Board of Trustees
Dr Moira Hamlin, Vice-Chair, Board of Trustees
Ms Jane Bridgwater, Director of Legal Services
Yours truly
Professor Noam Chomsky, University of Arizona, Linguistics
Dr Ahdaf Soueif, Writer and Retired Professor in English at Cairo University
Professor Sami Al-Arian, Istanbul Zaim University, Director, Center for Islam and Global Affairs
Professor Ilan Pappé, University of Exeter, Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies
Mr John Pilger, Journalist, Author and Filmmaker
Dr Norman G Finkelstein, Political Scientist and Author
Mr Ronnie Kasrils, Author and Former South African Government Minister (1994-2008)
Dr François Burgat, Emeritus Senior Research Fellow at French National Centre for Scientific Research
Professor Deepa Kumar, Rutgers University, Communication and Information
Dr Françoise Vergès, Political Scientist, Historian and Feminist
Professor Emeritus Seamus Deane, University of Notre Dame
Mr Sami Ramadani, London Metropolitan University, Social Sciences (Retired)
Professor Peter Kennard, Royal College of Art, Photography
Professor Salman Sayyid, University of Leeds, Sociology and Social Policy
Professor Augustine John, Coventry University, Office of Teaching & Learning
Professor Emeritus Joseph Oesterlé, Sorbonne University, Paris, Mathematics
Professor Ad Putter, University of Bristol
Professor Alf Nilsen, University of Pretoria, Sociology
Professor Aeron Davis, Victoria University of Wellington, Political Science and International Relations
Professor Ali Rattansi, City, University of London, Sociology
Professor Anand Pillay, University of Notre Dame, Mathematics
Professor Andreas Bieler, University of Nottingham, Politics and International Relations
Professor Anna Gilmore, University of Bath, Health
Professor Bryan McGovern, Kennesaw State University, History
Professor Cahal McLaughlin, Queen’s University Belfast, School of Arts, English and Languages
Professor Chris Knight, University College London, Anthropology
Professor Craig Brandist, University of Sheffield, Languages and Cultures
Professor Cyra Choudhury, Florida International University, Law
Professor Daniel Boyarin, University of California at Berkeley, Near Eastern Studies and Rhetoric
Professor Daniel Broudy, Okinawa Christian University, Rhetoric and Applied Linguistics
Professor David H. Price, St Martin’s University, Society and Social Justice
Professor David Randall Roediger, University of Kansas, American Studies
Professor David Whyte, University of Liverpool, Sociology
Professor Des Freedman, Goldsmiths, University of London, MCCS
Professor Elizabeth Poole, University of Keele, Humanities
Professor Eshragh Motahar, Union College, Schenectady NY, Economics
Professor Frank García Hernández, Juan Marinello Cuban Institute for Cultural Research
Professor Hagit Borer, QMUL, Fellow of the British Academy
Professor Haim Bresheeth-Zabner, SOAS, Palestine Studies Centre
Professor Hamish Cunningham, University of Sheffield, Computer Science
Professor Hans Klein, Georgia Institute of Technology, Public Policy
Professor Harry Hemingway, UCL, Institute of Health Informatics
Professor Hatem Bazian, Zaytuna College and University of California, Berkeley, Islamic Law and Theology
Professor Helen Colhoun, University of Edinburgh, IGMM
Professor Iain Munro, Newcastle University, Business
Professor Iftikhar H. Malik, Bath Spa University, History
Professor Izzat Darwazeh, University College London, Engineering
Professor James Dickins, University of Leeds, Languages, Cultures and Societies
Professor Jane Wheelock, Newcastle University, Geography, Politics and Sociology
Professor Janet C.E. Watson, University of Leeds, Languages, Cultures and Societies
Professor Jared Ball, Morgan State University
Professor Jawed IA Siddiqi, Sheffield Hallam University, Computing
Professor Jeff Goodwin, New York University, Sociology
Professor Jeremy Keenan, Queen Mary University London, Law
Professor John Parkinson, Maastricht University, Philosophy
Professor John Womack Jr, Harvard University, History
Professor Julia O’Connell Davidson, University of Bristol, Sociology, Politics and International Studies
Professor Julian Petley, Brunel University London, Social Sciences
Professor Julian Williams, University of Manchester, Education
Professor Kate Alexander, University of Johannesburg, South African Research Chair in Social Change
Professor Kevin O’Neill, Boston College, History
Professor Mario Novelli, University of Sussex, Education
Professor Maurice L. Wade, Trinity College, Hartford, Connecticut, Philosophy
Professor Megan Povey, University of Leeds, Food Science and Nutrition
Professor Michael Rowlinson, University of Exeter, Business
Professor Michael Wayne, Brunel University London, Media
Professor Miguel Martinez Lucio, University of Manchester, Humanities
Professor Mohan Dutta, Massey University, Culture-Centered Approach to Research & Evaluation
Professor Mujahid Kamran, Former Vice-Chancellor of Punjab University
Professor Nacira Guénif, University of Paris VIII, Education Sciences
Professor Natalie Fenton, Goldsmiths, Media, Communications and Cultural Studies
Professor Nigel Patrick Thomas, University of Central Lancashire, Social Work, Care and Community
Professor Patrick Bond, University of the Western Cape, Government
Professor Paul McKeigue, University of Edinburgh, Medicine and Veterinary Medicine
Professor Penny Green, QMUL, Law
Professor Pilar Garrido Clemente, Murcia University, Arabic and Islamic Studies
Professor Rafik Beekun, University of Nevada, Management and Strategy
Professor Ray Bush, University of Leeds POLIS
Professor Richard Jackson, University of Otago, New Zealand, National Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies
Professor Salim Vally, University of Johannesburg, Education
Professor Sam Ashman, University of Johannesburg, Economics
Professor Sandra Eldridge, QMUL, Institute of Population Health Sciences
Professor Saoirse Nic Gabhainn, National University of Ireland Galway, Health Promotion
Professor Schneur Zalman, Newfield CUNY, Social Sciences
Professor Siobhan Wills, Ulster University, Law
Professor Steve Tombs, The Open University, Social Policy and Criminology
Professor Susan Newman, The Open University, Economics
Professor Tariq Modood, University of Bristol, Sociology, Politics and International Studies
Professor Tim Hayward, University of Edinburgh, Social and Political Science
Professor T. J. Demos, UC Santa Cruz, History of Art and Visual Culture
Professor Tom Cockburn, Edge Hill University, Social Sciences
Professor Yosefa Loshitzky, SOAS, University of London, Media Studies
Professor Emeritus Alex Callinicos, King’s College London
Professor Emerita Avery F Gordon, UC Santa Barbara, Sociology
Professor Emeritus Bill Rolston, Ulster University, Transitional Justice Institute
Professor Emeritus Chris Roberts, University of Manchester, Health Science
Professor Emeritus Colin Green, University College London, Surgery and Interventional Sciences
Professor Emeritus Colin Webster, Leeds Beckett University, Social Sciences
Professor Emeritus Daniel Cornford, San Jose State University, History
Professor Emeritus David Emmons, University of Montana, History
Professor Emeritus David Moshman, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Educational Psychology
Professor Emeritus Dennis Leech, University of Warwick, Economics
Professor Emeritus G Rex Smith, University of Manchester, History
Professor Emeritus Hartmut Logemann, University of Bath, Mathematical Sciences
Professor Emeritus Henry Maitles, University of the West of Scotland, Education and Social Sciences
Professor Emeritus Jennifer Birkett, University of Birmingham, Modern Languages
Professor Emeritus John Marriott, University of Oxford, History
Professor Emeritus Kerby Miller, University of Missouri, History
Professor Emeritus Laurence Dreyfus, University of Oxford, Faculty of Music
Professor Emeritus Leslie Sklair, London School of Economics, Sociology
Professor Emeritus Mark Duffield University of Bristol, School of Politics and International Studies
Professor Emeritus Mike Gonzalez, University of Glasgow,Latin American Studies
Professor Emeritus Mike Tomlinson, Queen’s University Belfast, Social Sciences, Education and Social Work
Professor Emeritus Moshé Machover, King’s College London, Philosophy (Retired)
Professor Emeritus Oliver Boyd-Barrett, Bowling Green State University, Journalism and Public Relations
Professor Emeritus Paddy Hillyard, Queen’s University Belfast, Sociology
Professor Emeritus Patrick Williams, Nottingham Trent University, Media and Cultural Studies
Professor Emeritus Phil Scraton, Queen’s University Belfast, School of Law
Professor Emeritus Stan Smith, Nottingham Trent University, English
Professor Emeritus Timothy Gorringe, University of Exeter, Theology
Professor Emeritus Vivien Walsh, University of Manchester, Innovation Research
Professor Emeritus William Nolan, University College Dublin, Geography
Adjunct Professor Matthew MacLellan, Mount Saint Vincent University
Associate Professor Anthony J Langlois, Flinders University, Business, Government and Law
Associate Professor Claire Blencowe, University of Warwick, Sociology
Associate Professor Issam Aburaya, Seton Hall University, Religion
Associate Professor Jesús David Rojas Hernández, Universidad Nacional Experimental Simón Rodríguez
Associate Professor Mark Taylor, University of Queensland, Modern Languages
Associate Professor Yusuf Ahmad, University of the West of Bristol England (Retired)
Assistant Professor Tim Kelly, Coventry University, English
Honorary Professor Iain Ferguson, University of the West of Scotland
Former Honorary Visiting Professor Roy Greenslade, City, University of London, Journalism
Click here to read the original letter with the complete list of signatories.
And here to add your own name to support David Miller
All chapters are available (in sequence) by following the link above or from category link in the main menu, where you will also find a table of contents and a preface on why I started writing it.
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The first truth is that the liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism – ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power…. Among us today a concentration of private power without equal in history is growing.
Talk of revolution is very much out of vogue. Instead, we look back on the late sixties, when its prospect was the brightest in living memory, with nostalgia and wistful detachment. Certainly it is true that we pay homage to the civil rights movement and tribute to its lasting achievements, but little else remains – that sexual liberation happened to coincide with the invention of the pill was surely no coincidence!
Tragically, what started up as glorious peaceful sedition: an anti-war, anti-establishment, anti-capitalist upwelling that had genuinely threatened the existing order; finished up largely as a carnival – ultimately the dark carnival of Altamont 2 and the depravity of the Manson Family murders 3 – and with this, the path to social justice was promptly cordoned off. The revellers mostly went home, cut their hair, removed the flowers and beads to keep as mementos, and then looked ahead to another fad. All of which is unsurprising. After all, why jeopardise the comforts and security won during the heated post-war struggles in the slim hope of a resoundingly radical victory?
If history teaches anything – other than its central thread that empires rise and fall – is it not that the toppling of entrenched political regimes or even of diabolical tyrannies, whether by violent means or more peaceable ones, ends too often with the emergence of new regimes as tyrannical and entrenched as the ones they replaced? True or false (and how to decide anyway?) what matters is that the modern tendency is to believe this is the case: thus contrary to Marx’s bold forecast, the age of revolutionary upheaval appears over, or – in the West at least – perpetually stalled with political quietism established as the norm – don’t worry, I shall go on shortly to contradict myself!
Indeed, our acquired taste for conservatism has usefully served the interests of the ruling establishment throughout my adult life, a period lasting three decades in which time its creed became ever more rapacious. ‘Conservatism’ has in fact been transformed well beyond any easy recognition. Adapted in the eighties, it came to serve the demands of a rising corporatist class which, like various species of shark, is itself compelled to move restlessly forward or perish. As the Red Queen tells Alice in Through the Looking-Glass, “it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place.” 4
To these ends traditional conservatism, which tries to engender forms of social stagnation, has been entirely superseded by neo-liberalism; today’s predominant, in fact unrivalled, politico-economic ideology with its overarching quasi-conservative doctrine of minimal ‘state interference’. In practice this involves a combination of wholesale privatisation with swingeing cuts to public services and welfare. Inculcated by economics departments throughout the land, it has been implanted as a monoculture within our institutions of government, as within the plethora of foundation-funded think tanks and policy forums from whence it originally sprang (most notably The Adam Smith Institute and the Aspen Institute).
All distinguished economists, senior politicians, civil servants and mainstream journalists (the latter three more than likely indoctrinated through courses on Philosophy, Politics & Economics (PPE) at Oxford – with stress here very much placed on the ‘E’ of neo-liberal economics 5) are attuned to the belief that, in the words of its great trailblazer, Margaret Thatcher, “there is no alternative”. And luminaries of the new economics turn to historical precedents to buttress their pervasive doctrine; every kind of planned redistribution of wealth and resources (i.e., any conceivable alternative to their own ‘free market’ absolutism), irrespective of competency or goodwill, they say, has been doomed to failure.
The communist experiments of the Soviet Union and Mao’s China – examples they single out (continuing to do so long after the fall of both regimes) – did indeed result in catastrophes both at the level of production and due to lack of supply of goods. And if, indeed, the only foreseeable alternatives to neoliberalism were thoughtless reruns of a Soviet model or Maoism, this line of criticism could hardly be gainsaid; in reality, however, the vast majority of the world already subsists, living in dire poverty and likewise deprived of basic resources, although not under socialism, but in strict adherence to ‘free market’ directives extolled by the self-same experts. China, on the other hand, which remains autocratic and to a great extent a centrally planned economy, is evidently booming – but that’s for a different debate (suffice to say here, I certainly do not propose we follow their example).
In reality, neo-liberalism is an exceedingly cruel doctrine, and its staunchest proponents have often been candid about administering what they openly describe as their economic ‘shock therapy’ – although this label is generally attached when the treatment is meted out to the poorest nations. To soften its blow in other instances, a parallel ideology has arisen. The principle of so-called meritocracy provides the velvet glove when this same iron fist of laissez-faire fundamentalism is applied throughout western democracies. You get just as much as you deserve and this is best ensured by market mechanisms.
But finally, the socio-economic pendulum has moved in extremis. Today, even in the comfortable West, income and wealth inequality have grown to unprecedented levels. Our societies appear to be in the process of rupturing just as they did less than a century ago on the eve of the most destructive war in history. Meanwhile, the ‘progressives’, who long ago ditched the dog-eared pamphlets of revolutionaries, remain captivated by the spell of the more glossy portfolios of the meritocracists.
Having inveigled both political wings – becoming the new left and new right – they now hope to persuade us that ‘centrism’, founded on strict meritocratic principles, remains the single viable – since least ‘extreme’ – vision for democracy. Mostly stuck on the lower social rungs, however, we, the people are clearly restless. For the moment we moan and groan impatiently, but that moment is set to pass. Calls for fundamental social change are gaining strength and I dare to predict that we are on the brink – for better or for worse – of an altogether seismic shift.
Jordan Peterson is famously critical of ‘ideology’. He has a particular distain for Marxism, Stalinism, Nazism, Postmodernism, Feminism, in fact, any ism. Instead, he argues, that the individual is sovereign, ideology should be renounced, and that, quote, “If we each live properly, we will collectively flourish.” So what is ideology? And what leads Jordan Peterson (and others) to believe he is somehow above it all?
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So how do we break free of the spells that bind us – the increasingly entangled entrapments of technology, money and work? There are really only two approaches we can take. Either we turn inwards, as an increasing number are doing, to try to rediscover who we are through methods of deep introspection. Or, confronting external reality head-on, we engage in collective acts of defiance, since our true strength lies in numbers.
There are good arguments for both approaches. The boundary between the subjective and objective is infinitely thin and I address this more fully in the chapters ahead. To repeat an old rallying slogan: the personal is the political! This cannot be said often enough.
My greatest concern is that we should not remain passive. Clear and unshakeable demands are urgent, since power concedes nothing without. But again, introspection is invaluable in this regard – for how can we better understand what we truly want without solidly comprehending who we really are? Any hope of shaping a better future nevertheless lies in collective hands and depends upon acts of solidarity.
The alternative is grim. Besides the prospect of new kinds of techno-tyranny, failure or refusal to react decisively will exacerbate the troubles that already plague us; ones forecast by Erich Fromm in the conclusion to his book The Sane Society:
In the 19th century inhumanity meant cruelty; in the 20th century it means schizoid self-alienation. The danger of the past was that men became slaves. The danger of the future is that men may become robots. True enough, robots do not rebel. But given man’s nature, robots cannot live and remain sane, they become “Golems”; they will destroy their world and themselves because they cannot stand any longer the boredom of a meaningless life. 6
Fromm’s vision is the best outcome, not the worst. For it wrongly presumes, as many still do, that the ruling class has no agenda of its own. In fairness, he lived in a different age: a time before the significant rise of today’s postmodern, globalist (supranationalist as opposed to internationalist), corporatocratic, neo-feudal, technetronic, technocratic age – I have chosen each of these words with care, since each reveals a different facet of the grand design. Hold the thought, because I’ll come back to it.
In Europe, America and much of the rest of the Western world, the entire political system is captured by variants of what would traditionally be labelled ‘right-wing’ or even ‘extreme right’. However, this is not the old-style extremism of Hitler or Mussolini, which was built upon the foundations of bombastic nationalism, but a new brand that cleverly disguises itself as non-ideological, tolerant or even moderate – I heard political commentator Tariq Ali once refer to it as the ‘extreme centre’. This is actually the best description we have.
This new extremism chooses new methods to promote and protect its crony insiders. It says sorry but we (meaning ‘you’) just have no choice – there is no alternative! – and these other chaps are more valuable, and simply “too big to fail”, before confirming, more or less as an aside, that democracy wasn’t working in any case. Meanwhile, it also finds new justifications for engaging in aggressive foreign wars that we are told have no relationship to the old wars of conquest and exploitation. War today becomes nothing more than a matter of preemption, or if that fails to impress the grumbling populous, a means of humanitarianism. However, the new extremism finds old and very well-tested excuses when it comes to clampdowns on our individual freedoms at home, with the main one being, ironically enough, to protect us from ‘extremists’.
Were the ruling class more candid about their truer intent (and the broader agenda is gradually emerging as an open secret) then we would have heard plenty by now about the coming dawn of what ought to be straightforwardly called fascism (Trump was not an aberration, but a symptom), except that aspiring tyrants, for self-evident reasons, cannot be expected to speak too loudly about their grandest ambitions. Even so, the quickening steps on our road to serfdom are becoming harder to deny.
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Some years ago I had been thinking up names for an envisaged progressive political movement, when, after realising that all of the traditional labels ‘people’s’, ‘popular’, ‘democratic’, ‘freedom’, ‘revolutionary’, etc were already irreparably sullied, it occurred to me that in our mimetic age something snappier might be more suitable. Something along the lines of ‘system reset’, although without the Maoist overtones! Briefly that led me to consider the familiar 3-fingered salute on every computer keyboard, Ctrl-Alt-Del: a consideration that altogether stopped me in my tracks.
In fact, picking apart the elements, Ctrl-Alt-Del already represents the three-pronged assault we are increasingly subjected to: the plutocrats using these precise three strategies to oppress and dominate. First through Ctrl by means of propaganda and censorship, with the steady encroachment of mass surveillance in all areas of our lives (the panopticon), and arguably too with the mental health crisis and widespread prescription of ‘chemical cosh’ opiates and more Soma-like SSRI antidepressants.
In a recent study by scientists at University of Chicago, it was found that rats given anti-anxiety medications were less inclined to free a companion in distress, presumably because they didn’t have the same ability to feel empathy:
Next is Alt (i.e., alteration) with rollout of GMO in agriculture and transhumanism which opens the door to many developments including the advent of designer babies by means of gene editing and the literal rewiring of human consciousness. Finally there is Del (delete) by virtue of ‘population control’ which is a shorthand euphemism for the desire to dramatically reduce human numbers.
Nick Bostrom is a philosopher with deep scientific and technical training 7, who aside from being Director of the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford University is also co-founder of the World Transhumanist Association (renamed Humanity+, Inc.) as well as an acknowledged inspiration for Elon Musk and Bill Gates. 8
Bostrom clearly stands at the forefront of methods of Ctrl and Alt being a leading proponent of total surveillance and for transhumanism, which is basically eugenics 2.0 enhanced by virtue of refined genetic manipulation and accentuated through interfacing with machines. As Bostrom’s Humanity+ announces its own intentions:
What does it mean to be human in a technologically enhanced world? Humanity+ is a 501(c)3 international nonprofit membership organization that advocates the ethical use of technology, such as artificial intelligence, to expand human capacities. In other words, we want people to be better than well. This is the goal of transhumanism.
‘Better than well’ is putting it extremely mildly. If you read past the opening statements then you quickly appreciate that the final goal is nothing short of total mastery of biology in order to achieve absolute control of human life and everything in the biosphere. Advocates of such godlike dominion over Nature should perhaps attend to the writings of Mary Shelley and Johann von Goethe. For Bostrom with his outspoken desire to install mass surveillance to save the world, I also recommend a healthy dose of Orwell.
It is almost tempting to think that the choice of Ctrl-Alt-Del was meant to be a piece of subliminal predictive programming, except that the man credited with its origins is an IBM engineer called David Bradley, who says it was not intended for use by ordinary end users but helpful for software designers. Curiously, however, as Bradley also says (see interview embedded below): “I may have invented control-alt-delete, but Bill Gates made it really famous.” 9
Civilisation stands on the brink. A radical transformation is coming; that is inescapable. The old patterns can no longer sustain us either materially or spiritually, and this seldom confessed truth is perfectly well understood by the ruling class who have already constructed the road ahead to an envisioned future and presented us with roadmaps.
Eager to keep as much control over everything as possible – call it ‘full spectrum dominance’ as the military arm of their military-industrial-financial complex does – they have long-since spread their tentacles into every conceivable area of politics and society more generally. This has been achieved primarily through the agency of huge foundations which indirectly support a network of think tanks, policy forums, NGOs and so forth: a stealth takeover, spreading into every nook and cranny of public life. By cloaking their real intentions under the guise of internationalism (or “globalisation”, or “global governance”) and environmentalism (or “sustainability”) since the 1970s and long before, the mainstream left is today as sold out to the same ruling powers and, in consequence, has become as unimaginative and non-progressive, as the right.
And the ruling class is the master of illusion that has slowly perfected its talent for deception and manipulation. Unlike the Wizard of Oz, who has a certain homespun wisdom, it has nothing real to offer in exchange for our deepening servitude. But the racket persists because the majority of us have become so intellectually impoverished we somehow cannot imagine any better alternative.
But finally, the system is crumbling apart altogether. One way or another, and very soon, it will have to be replaced. The ruling class, interested first and foremost in maintaining and increasing their power and privilege, already understand and acknowledge this, seeing that they must resort to some form of neo-feudalism, or creeping fascism, if you prefer (more below), which in any case they also see as “the natural order”.
The onslaught facing those of us in the West already seems a relentless one. As we enter the most important period of world history since the Second World War, this immediate fight is political, and involves us in the perennial Marxist dispute over control and allocation of material resources. By contrast, the longer-term battle assaults our humanity at the most fundamental levels since it threatens to hold autonomy over our minds and bodies; policing our thoughts and finally altering our biology down to the molecular level. This last step of transhumanism seeks the literal melding of humans to artificial technology. Bizarre, certainly, like the worst science fiction dystopia, yet this is what the billionaires are seriously into, and what they are beginning to discuss publicly at gatherings like the World Economic Forum.
The infrastructure for this coming era of tyranny has already been installed, or else is close to completion: a mass surveillance panopticon; the arming and privatisation of the police (in America this militarisation is now more starkly evident); the emergence of secret courts and draconian legislation (America’s NDAA 2012 arguably the most egregious example so far). In short, we see the emergence of a revised judicial framework that prosecutes whistleblowers for treason and charges dissenters as terrorists.
It is a shift that also coincides with our “age of austerity”, which once again is gamed to ruin the already destitute, while simultaneously it slowly undermines the middle class. The crash of 2008 was really an economic coup de grâce following four decades of more gradual decline: incomes continue to be reduced in real terms thanks to stagnant wages and zero interest on savings, neither of which can keep up with the demands of rising costs of living. But all stages of this ongoing decline – a more or less controlled collapse – are facilitated by the most sophisticated systems of mass propaganda ever devised. The internet is essentially owned by the same billionaires, as is the bulk of the corporate media. Free speech was snuffed out years ago.
Incidentally, for those who feel that ‘fascism’ is too strong a word, or too vague, and too freely bandied around by the doom-mongers who proffer nothing but “a council of despair”, there is another post (which is essentially the book’s final extra chapter) where I try to explain at greater length why we need to keep using the word, no matter how badly misappropriated and damaged it has become over time.
A brief aside: the vitally important lesson to be learned from the rise of the Nazis (as well as the other fascist governments of the twentieth century) is not that monsters are sometimes capable of holding an otherwise educated if unwitting public in their thrall, but that fascism is most vigorous when it feeds on the pain and fear of a desperately struggling population. It is when economies are ruined that fascism almost spontaneously arises, just as flies rush to a rotting corpse. As for the monsters, it may be that many of them do not appear much like monsters at all. As Hannah Arendt, who is best known for coining the phrase “the banality of evil”, wrote after she saw Adolf Eichmann testify at his trial in 1961:
The trouble with Eichmann was precisely that so many were like him, and that the many were neither perverted nor sadistic, that they were, and still are, terribly and terrifyingly normal. From the viewpoint of our legal institutions and of our moral standards of judgment, this normality was much more terrifying than all the atrocities put together, for it implied — as had been said at Nuremberg over and over again by the defendants and their counsels — that this new type of criminal, who is in actual fact hostis generis humani [“enemy of mankind”], commits his crimes under circumstances that make it well-nigh impossible for him to know or to feel that he is doing wrong. 10
Today, Hitler strikes us as an absolutely ridiculous and grotesque figure. He is the epitome of evil; the devil incarnate. His chubby pal Mussolini appears no less ranting and raving mad. The very fact I have included any reference to them in my argument already weakens it: the first person to mention Hitler being the loser in all our debates today.
Indeed, when it comes to any appraisal of Hitler and Mussolini, an extraordinarily difficult task presents itself in simply disentangling the caricatures from the men themselves. So unfortunately, we are unable to see these demagogues through the eyes of their contemporaries. We ought to be periodically reminded therefore – pinching ourselves if necessary – how throughout Europe and America both men were not only presented as respectable, but feted as great statesmen. Hitler was lauded by Time magazine and the Daily Mail; he was good friends with Henry Ford and King Edward VIII; financially supported by Prescott Bush, father of George H. W., and by the then-Governor of the Bank of England, Montagu Norman. Prior to – and also during the war – fascism met with great favour amongst the highest echelons of the ruling class: aristocrats and plutocrats falling in love with fascism, because fascism is inherently plutocratic and aristocratic. 11
But fascism is not just the dirty secret of a staggeringly recent past, all mention of it as a political force now seems anachronistic. Few outside the thuggish gangs of neo-Nazis and white supremacists will openly call themselves fascist today. But tragically, fascism as a mainstream political force did not expire with the deaths of Hitler and Mussolini; it changed its name and its modus operandi, but little else.
So while any mention of fascism as a major political force seems anachronistic, and no-one outside the thuggish gangs of neo-Nazis and white supremacists openly calls themselves fascist today, it remains the dirty mainstream secret of an astonishingly recent past. Tragically, its mainstream political force did not expire, however, with the deaths of Hitler and Mussolini; it changed its name and its modus operandi, but little else.
The steady rise of this postmodern, globalist, corporatocratic, neo-feudal, technetronic, technocracy is, as I say, an open secret. Saying you don’t like my characterisation is a bit like saying you don’t like the colour of the sky! Indeed, half of these identifiers are ones coined, or at least preferred, by the world shapers themselves – the globalist plutocrats who so love technocracy. Certainly, you may raise a challenge that we are now beyond postmodernism, the irony of which ought to raise a little smile if not a full-blown chuckle, whilst it may also be admitted that ‘corporatocracy’ and ‘neo-feudal’ are pejorative terms. What is harder to ignore is the stench of decay under our peasant noses, although dutifully the pliant hoards will often hold their noses with considerable gratitude.
The majority has always behaved this way, although history was reshaped regardless and in spite of such widespread propensity for Stockholm syndrome. As Goethe wrote: “None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.” 12
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Addendum: A republic of the new malarkey
A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth even glancing at, for it leaves out the one country at which Humanity is always landing. And when Humanity lands there, it looks out, and, seeing a better country, sets sail. Progress is the realisation of Utopias. 13
— Oscar Wilde
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“What is the meaning of life?” is an unintentionally hilarious question. So abstruse and rarified that it awkwardly bumps into the authentic experience of being alive before meandering off with eyes barely lifted from its own navel. It is just too damned philosophic! And yet there is a related though ineffable question that does respectfully and more intelligently seek an answer, and so at a primordial and existential level a kind of paradox confronts us daily. This paradox is indeed a source of much merriment.
But then, this question, which is hardly raised in polite company, finds a more permissible everyday enquiry: “what is the purpose of life?” A question, I think, we all ask ourselves from time to time, and one that takes its lead from the Socratic challenge: the search for self-improvement through self-examination. More confrontationally, you may have faced interrogation along the lines of: “so what are you doing with your life?” The implication here, of course, is that something purposeful needs to be done in life, whereas just drifting along without a clear purpose or goal is completely unacceptable.
In the modern world this belief is common sense. By contrast, pre-modern humans mostly live from day-to-day – as we all did until comparatively recent times – but still we forget how ‘purpose’ is not an ordinary and natural consideration, and not one that those in primitive societies would actually understand, but a later invention. Civilisation gave birth to ‘purpose’ in the abstract, and then once we had acquired aspirations of ‘purpose’, ‘meaning’ arose as a more diffuse back-projection.
And formerly, religion was the wellspring we drew upon to make determinations about our ultimate significance and so answers to questions of ‘purpose’ and ‘meaning’ were entirely contingent upon ordained beliefs about the divine and of morality. Today, with no gods to bother us, we might suppose the invitation simply to eat, drink and be merry would be sufficient enough, and yet few appear fully satisfied in following this straightforward directive; a nagging doubt persists that we may still be here for some higher purpose – or failing that that we can reinvent one anyway. Put differently, we have a tremendous longing for ‘worth’.
Unfortunately in our valiant attempt to save the world from the most egregious of religious doctrines, the cure becomes rather too clinical. In practical terms utilitarianism has stolen religion’s mantle and this numbs us in a peculiar way. With notions of ‘purpose’ and ‘worth’ necessarily adapted to fit the new paradigm, and with no better yardstick these have become equated, almost unavoidably, with notions of being socially useful in one way or another. Finally, morality, which is inherently unquantifiable, might be conveniently cut away too leaving usefulness above all else apprehended as good, virtuous and valuable. This is where utilitarianism logically leads and it is how modern society trains us to feel. What is your contribution? This is really the measure of man today.
Of course, tracing the lineage, we see utilitarianism is actually the bastard child of science – a quasi-Newtonian calculus misapplied to happiness such that all human relations can be narrowly reduced to a cost-benefit analysis. We have adopted this approach primarily because of its origins: science works! But science in turn depends upon reductionism. It maps reality, and as with every other map, does this by craftily omitting all of the detail of the actual territory; this refined attention to very specific elements is what makes all maps and scientific models useful. Utilitarianism reduces everything to usefulness.
Moreover, by successfully measuring all of creation, including each particle of our own nature, in the strict but narrow terms of what is scientifically quantifiable, we have accidentally impaired ourselves in another way. Through the high-magnification lens of science, we have learned to see trees, flowers, birds and all other creatures as cellular machines programmed and operating purely to survive and reproduce. This is a partial truth, of course, for no matter how high our magnification, science sees the world through its glass darkly, and at another level we remain keenly aware that the universe is not a wholly dead and lifeless automaton that endlessly recycles itself through ingestion and procreation. That there is more ‘meaning’ to life.
Back in the real world, the trees, the birds, the sky and the stars above that enthralled us as children, are no less wondrous if as adults we remain incurious to reflect upon their immanent mysteriousness. Indeed, not only life, but sheer existence is absolutely extraordinary and beyond all words. This we know at one level – call it ‘the unconscious’ for lack of a better term – with unflinching certainty. Importantly, and aside from death, it is the only substantial thing we can ever know for sure. The poets keep vigil to this spectacularly simple truth and are endlessly enraptured by it.
Thus the gauche and frankly silly question “what is the meaning of life?” has actually never gone away, but now hides out of bemused embarrassment in the more or less unconscious form of “what is my social function in life?” Life may be just as meaningless as it is mechanical, the acceptable view goes, but we can surely agree on the seriousness of this meaninglessness and on importance of making a worthwhile contribution. Robots in particular just need to get with the program!
When philosopher and spiritual teacher Alan Watts advises that “The meaning of life is just to be alive”, what does he mean precisely? Iain McGilchrist, who first studied literature before retraining in biology and becoming a expert is brain lateralisation, tackles this question and also considers more broadly how our pursuit of meaningful goals is related to happiness and a fulfilled life:
McGilchrist is also concerned by how meaning has been crushed through the ultra-capitalism of the West with its destructive obsession about the efficient use of ‘human resources’ and by the commensurate micro-management of the modern workplace:
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A few years ago a friend said that, like him, I too was fed up with the old malarkey. What you want, he proposed, is “a republic of the new malarkey”! Well, since life always involves a certain amount of malarkey, then maybe this is the best we can finally hope to achieve. But then, continuing the theme, I wondered, why not aim instead for “a republic of the least malarkey”? After all, ask most people (myself included) if the world might be improved and they will generally say yes, but then ask how, and answers typically become trite and (for want of a better word) utopian. ‘Make poverty history’ is a perfect example. Remember that one? Some of us once marched under banners demanding that we ‘make poverty history’ – yes, but how? ‘Give peace a chance’, we might add – but again, getting no closer to ending the daily carnage of the forever wars.
Ask most people (again myself included) to explain the nitty-gritty of how we might make our societies better and we probably feel dumbstruck by the complexity and overwhelmed by the confusion of potential outcomes. We simply don’t quite know precisely what we want, or, better put, how to bring about the necessary changes – or at least never precisely enough to outline effective measures. Our problem, in one sense, is that positive action becomes difficult. After all, the world is a deeply and inherently puzzling place and so figuring the best course can be an inordinately difficult task.
But then ask an alternative question and you immediately receive better answers. Ask, for instance, what our society least needs and many people can instantly pull up a fairly detailed list of complaints. Pointing out stupidities, asinine rules, debilitating conventions, especially wherever our personal development is stunted or our lives are hamstrung; this comes perfectly naturally. Finding faults is just so much easier than offering details for improvements or formulating solutions. “It is very easy to criticise”, people often say, which is itself a criticism! But why? Why the eagerness to dismiss this one faculty common to all? Wouldn’t it be better to exploit it?
Which brings me to establishment of “a republic of the least malarkey”: a society constructed with the very deliberate intention of avoiding too many negatives: negatives being that much easier to put your finger on, and, crucially, to agree about. So why not make this our ambition? To set forth boldly to junk all nonsensical burdens and impositions because, aside their counterproductivity, any such transparently pointless impediments are generally as tedious as they are odious. Time is too precious to be needlessly wasted on nonsense.
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A corresponding political movement would aim at an intelligent and humane transformation, turning away from the current drive for structuring societies on the proclaimed basis of the optimisation of efficiency and productiveness, with rigidly imposed structures that inevitably hamper the human imagination whilst infringing our most basic right: the inalienable right to be free-thinking human beings. Surely this is the most fundamental of all rights. So what of our other inalienable right, so far as practicable without infringing the freedoms and rights of others, which is to be freely-acting creatures?
All of this is a kind of ‘liberalism’, although of a very rough, unpolished form. Together with the Golden Rule, ‘liberalism’ of some kind is vital presuming we wish to live in a freer, saner and more tolerant society. Indeed, if we ever seriously decide to construct a better world for ourselves then freedom for the individual must remain the paramount concern, but so too is ensuring a nurturing and protecting society. I feel obliged therefore to add a few important caveats. As the poet and English civil war polemicist John Milton wrote:
For indeed none can love freedom heartily, but good men: the rest love not freedom, but license: which never hath more scope, or more indulgence than under tyrants. 14
The great danger of liberalism, as Milton says, is that inadvertently or otherwise, licence may be granted to tyrants, and then one man’s ‘freedom’ offers legitimacy, since it is reliant upon, another’s debasement and servitude. Sadly, this has been the primary mode of liberalism as it has existed until now, and in spite of the warnings of more thoughtful liberals who, from the outset, asserted loudly that unfettered individual liberty is entirely at odds with freedom that serves any common interest.
Elizabeth Anderson, Professor of Philosophy at University of Michigan, is the author of “Private Government: How Employers Rule Our Lives (and Why We Don’t Talk about It)” about the tyranny of the corporate workplace from non-disclosure agreements to punitive, restrictive work conditions and censorship. Here she discusses with journalist Chris Hedges how the libertarian model is cruel and why liberalism has historically defended the rights of capital above the rights of the individual:
Today’s self-proclaimed (neo-)liberal thinkers are misguided in another crucial and related way. Their emphasis on freedom of the market has dispelled one system of serfdom only to replace it with another that, although superficially different, is comparably repressive: the exaltation of the market to the rank of our new lord and master brings tyranny of more cleverly concealed designs.
What the liberal too often and rather too conveniently overlooks is that money, besides being an inherently utilitarian artifact, is a thoroughly and indivisibly social instrument too. That money is not some product of private contracts since these do not supply and protect its value, but that since society creates it to lubricate its means for production and distribution of goods and services, then society maintains, in principle at least, complete autonomy over it. Taxation, therefore, isn’t reducible to theft of private property since money isn’t strictly speaking either private or property.
Nor should money or the profit-making engines called corporations be put on a pedestal: money has no rights at all, only sentient beings can have rights, and likewise, having money ought to accord no special rights or privileges other than in enabling the procurement of stuff. This is what it does and nothing else. Money has been our terrible master, but now we must transform it into a useful servant, striving to break its links to power in every way this can be achieved.
In fact, the decline of money is already happening, and this is rather crucial to understand. Once industrial production becomes fully automated, and services follow, money will lose its primary function, which is as a token of exchange for labour. Without labour there will be no need to reward it. In order to ensure a smooth and humane transition to this future post-wage society (and the robots are coming sooner than we think), we need an honest reflection of our values: values entirely without any pound or dollar sign attached. If we are serious about our collective futures, this fundamental reevaluation of life has to happen without delay and in earnest, long before we are completely freed from treadmill of work itself.
James Suzman, author of “Work: A History of How We Spend Our Time”, here discusses how work as we know it is really a modern concept that didn’t exist until recently:
But then, final and complete individual freedom (as we often claim to desire) is only attainable once the reins that harnessed us to work have begun to slacken. Meanwhile, unbridling ourselves of the work ethic, as unavoidable as it is, is no straightforward matter, since it requires the tackling opponents on all sides. Both left and right, for contrary reasons, are mindful to keep the workers hard at it.
Indeed, all that ultimately stands between us and this gateway to an unprecedented age of freedom and abundance are two abiding obstructions. The first of these: further advances and refinements to our technology, are certain to arise whatever we decide to do; whereas, the second, that invisible but super-sticky glue which binds money to political power, can never be fully dissolved unless we act very decisively to see that it is.
This second obstacle is virtually immoveable, and yet we must finally meet it with our truly irresistible force, if only because tremendous concentrations of wealth and power are overbearingly anti-democratic. In fact they reinforce themselves entirely to the exclusion of the dispossessed, and as the tie between money and power continually tightens, so the world is made captive to a tiny privileged coterie in what are already de facto plutocracies where the lives of workers increasingly resemble those of more visibly bonded slaves – held captive by chains of debts rather than steel. So long as the economic system is not reformed, we will head unswerving to a time when the current labour resource is made totally redundant. If no action is taken, this future prospect leaves us infinitely worse off again.
Moreover, the obstacles we face are interconnected, since for so long as a few moneyed interests hold such an iron grip on political power (as is currently the case), all technological development must remain primarily directed to serve and maintain these special interests. Rather glaringly, government money is today ceaselessly pumped into the giant hands of the military-industrial complex.
Suppose instead that this enormous expenditure on the weapons industry, and thus into weapons research, was redirected to transform methods of energy production and transportation systems. Imagine then how more wonderful our lives would be had this wasteful investment in destruction already been funneled into peacetime projects. And here I mean real investment in the fullest, truest sense of time and human ingenuity, rather than simply investment of money – which is only ever a tool remember.
Full and final severance of financial and political power is extremely hard to achieve, of course, but there is a great deal that could be done to remedy the present crisis. However, to begin to move in the right direction we are compelled first to organise. This is as urgent as it is imperative. Seizing power from the one-percent must become the primary goal for all who sincerely wish to usher in a better age.
Here is Comedian Lee Camp considering the same issue in one of his “Moments of Clarity”:
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Effing utilitarianism
If we require a more ideologically framed foundation then I also half-jokingly make the following proposal: our new approach can be futilitarianism. 15 That is, a full one-eighty degree U-turn against utilitarianism and its consequentialist basis in which ends alone purportedly justify means. Let us instead turn this inculcated foolishness entirely on its head such that, and aside from properly disconnecting moral value from mere usefulness, we remind ourselves, as Gandhi correctly asserted, that ‘means’ are also ‘ends in the making’. Thus we grant that, conversely, ‘means’ really can and do justify themselves, intrinsically, without regard to whatever the ‘ends’ may to turn out to be. 16
In other words, emphasis should be correctly placed on a person’s sincere endeavour “to do the right thing”, since this is inherently virtuous. In all ethical matters, reciprocity then becomes the touchstone again: that maxim of the Golden Rule, which holds that each should treat the other as one wishes to be treated in return. For the most ancient of all ethical rules remains the wisest and most parsimonious; and it is always better not to fix things that were never broken. 17
Futilitarianism involves an item-by-item elimination of each of our extant but inessential sociopolitical complications: an unravelling of the knots that hogtie us little by little. Beginning from the top, to first free up our financial systems, although not by so-called ‘deregulation’, since deregulation is precisely how those systems became so corrupted; but by dispelling all that is so toxic, craftily convoluted, nonsensical and plain criminal (the last ought to go without saying but evidently doesn’t!). Whilst from the bottom, the goal is to bring an end to the commercialisation of our lives on which our debt-riven (because debt-driven) economies depend: to unwind our ever-more rampant and empty consumerist culture.
In the futilitarian future, security – that most misappropriated of words – would ensure that everyone (not just the super rich) is fully protected against all conceivable forms of harm that can feasibly be eradicated, or – if eradication is not completely realisable – then greatly diminished and/or ameliorated. It will mean the individual is protected from persecution by all agents including the state itself, and will guarantee both the freedom and privacy which permit us to think and act as individuals.
From the outset, therefore, a social framework must ensure basic freedoms by acknowledging and guaranteeing not only civil liberties, but economic rights too. A living income for all and one that is eventually independent of earned salary. Such unconditional basic incomes are now under consideration, but I advocate a steady move in this direction through instituting a range of measures including extended holidays, reductions in working hours, and the lowering of the pension age. All of this should be achieved on a voluntary basis, since nobody ought to be compelled to remain idle any more than we must be compelled to work. In pursuing this goal it is also vital to maintain equivalence or preferably to increase levels of income.
Ensuring essential economic rights requires universal provision of the highest quality healthcare and optimum social entitlement. Homes and food for all. Clothing and warmth for all. Unpolluted air and clear water for all. In fact, such universal access to every necessity and much else besides is already inscribed in the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) under Article 25, which reads:
Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control. 18
The overarching aim is to reconstruct every society (beginning with our own) to eliminate the ills of poverty because there is ample energy, food, and even non-essential but desirable material goods for everyone alive in the world today and much more again.
Emphatically, this does NOT require any form of imposed population controls, since prosperity automatically correlates with population stability (as proved by the steadily declining populations in the Western world), and so we should resolutely reject the scaremongering about imminent global scarcity of food or other vital resources. In fact contrary to all the neo-Malthusian prophesies of doom, just as the population of the world is peaking 19 we still have a great plenty of food to go around (lacking only the political and economic will to distribute it fairly) 20, with official UN estimates indicating that we shall continue to have such abundance both for the immediate future and far beyond. 21
Likewise, problems associated with energy production and hazards like pollution need to be tackled as a priority. To such ends, the brightest minds should be organised to find daring solutions to our energy needs – a new Manhattan Project, but this time to save lives. For technology justly configured is the essential key to humanity’s continuing betterment.
In short, the futilitarian cry is “Basta!” Enough is enough! Enough of poverty, and of curable sickness. Enough of excessive hard labour. An end to so much insanity.
The long-term vision might see an international community no longer perpetually at war, nor hypnotised and zombified by the infinitely-receding baubles of our faux-free markets nor the limiting and phoney promise of “freedom of choice”. Likewise, it marks a sharp retreat from our red in tooth and claw ‘meritocracies’, offering genuine hope (that most shamelessly abused of all words!) to millions in our own societies, who devoid of respect and finding little evidence of compassion, exist in abject desperation having long since turned their backs both on politics and society. Numbing their hardships with recourse to narcotics (criminalised by virtue of that other war against the dispossessed) or, more permissibly, since corporately profitable, they fill the emptiness with lifelong dependence upon doses of fully legally sanctioned opiates.
Besides the regular bread and circuses of TV, Hollywood and wall-to-wall professional sport, the rush of high-speed editing and ceaseless agitation offered through CGI, we also have nonstop access to more and more digital pacifiers thanks to iphones, Candy Crush, and TikTok. Driven to worship the tawdry, there was never a more distracted and narcissistic age than ours. It is self-evident however that we are hooked on painkillers because we are so deeply racked with pain. No amount of such distractions can ever satisfy us: the emptiness persists.
Lastly, and should we find a requirement for some pithy and memorable slogan, I propose recycling this one: “people before profits”. Generously acted upon, the rest follows automatically. Or, if such a slogan smacks too much of pleading, then let’s be more emphatic saying, “Power to the people!” Hackneyed, yes, but risible – why risible? “Power to the people” speaks to the heart and soul of what it should literally mean to live in any democracy. Our greatest tragedy is that the people have long since forgotten their birthright.
As playwright Harold Pinter said in the final words of his magnificent Nobel Lecture speech delivered in late 2005 when he was already dying from cancer:
I believe that despite the enormous odds which exist, unflinching, unswerving, fierce intellectual determination, as citizens, to define the real truth of our lives and our societies is a crucial obligation which devolves upon us all. It is in fact mandatory.
If such a determination is not embodied in our political vision we have no hope of restoring what is so nearly lost to us – the dignity of man.
Please note that for the purposes of ‘publishing’ here I have taken advantage of the option to incorporate hypertext links and embed videos – in order to distinguish additional commentary from the original text all newly incorporated text has been italised.
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1 A warning to Congress that the growth of private power could lead to fascism, delivered by Franklin D. Roosevelt on April 29, 1938.
2 The Altamont Free Concert was held in northern California in December 1969. The security had been given over to a chapter of Hells Angels. It is mostly remembered for violence and a number of deaths, including the murder of Meredith Curly Hunter, Jr.
3 The Tate–LaBianca murders were a series of murders perpetrated by members of the Manson Family during August 8–10, 1969, in Los Angeles, California, under the direction of Tex Watson and Charles Manson.
4 Quote from Chapter 2 entitled “The Garden of Live Flowers” of Through the Looking-Glass (1871) by Lewis Carroll.
5Wikipedia devotes an entire entry to “List of University of Oxford people with PPE degrees which begins:
Philosophy, Politics and Economics (PPE) at Oxford University has traditionally been a degree read by those seeking a career in politics, public life (including senior positions in Her Majesty’s Civil Service) and journalism. This list does not include those notable figures, such as U.S. President Bill Clinton, who studied PPE at the university but did not complete their degrees.
Bostrom, a 43-year-old Swedish-born philosopher, has lately acquired something of the status of prophet of doom among those currently doing most to shape our civilisation: the tech billionaires of Silicon Valley. His reputation rests primarily on his book Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies, which was a surprise New York Times bestseller last year and now arrives in paperback, trailing must-read recommendations from Bill Gates and Tesla’s Elon Musk. (In the best kind of literary review, Musk also gave Bostrom’s institute £1m to continue to pursue its inquiries.)
10 From the Epilogue of Eichmann in Jerusalem: A report on the Banality of Evil written by Hannah Arendt, published in 1963.
11 The word ‘fascism’ is beginning to be usefully reclaimed. Reattached with careful deliberation and appropriateness to the situation we find unfolding today. For instance, veteran journalist and political analyst John Pilger writes:
Under the “weak” Obama, militarism has risen perhaps as never before. With not a single tank on the White House lawn, a military coup has taken place in Washington. In 2008, while his liberal devotees dried their eyes, Obama accepted the entire Pentagon of his predecessor, George Bush: its wars and war crimes. As the constitution is replaced by an emerging police state, those who destroyed Iraq with shock and awe, piled up the rubble in Afghanistan and reduced Libya to a Hobbesian nightmare, are ascendant across the US administration. Behind their beribboned facade, more former US soldiers are killing themselves than are dying on battlefields. Last year 6,500 veterans took their own lives. Put out more flags.
The historian Norman Pollack calls this “liberal fascism”: “For goose-steppers substitute the seemingly more innocuous militarisation of the total culture. And for the bombastic leader, we have the reformer manqué, blithely at work, planning and executing assassination, smiling all the while.” Every Tuesday the “humanitarian” Obama personally oversees a worldwide terror network of drones that “bugsplat” people, their rescuers and mourners. In the west’s comfort zones, the first black leader of the land of slavery still feels good, as if his very existence represents a social advance, regardless of his trail of blood. This obeisance to a symbol has all but destroyed the US anti-war movement – Obama’s singular achievement.
In Britain, the distractions of the fakery of image and identity politics have not quite succeeded. A stirring has begun, though people of conscience should hurry. The judges at Nuremberg were succinct: “Individual citizens have the duty to violate domestic laws to prevent crimes against peace and humanity.” The ordinary people of Syria, and countless others, and our own self-respect, deserve nothing less now.
12 In the original German: “Niemand ist mehr Sklave, als der sich für frei hält, ohne es zu sein.”
From Book II, Ch. 5 of Die Wahlverwandtschaften (‘Elective Affinities’ or ‘Kindred by Choice’) by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, published in 1809.
13 From The Soul of Man under socialism, an essay by Oscar Wilde published in 1891.
14 From Tenure of Kings and Magistrates written by John Milton, published in 1649.
15 I recently discovered that there is already a name for the kind of social philosophy I have tried to outline here. Apparently it’s called “metanoia” and that fine with me… a rose by any other name. In any case, the term futilitarianism was originally coined as a joke by a friend. Suggested as a useful working title to encapsulate the views of our mutual friend, James, the economist, who gets a mention earlier in the book. It was a great joke – one of those jokes that causes you to laugh first and then to think more deeply afterwards. I have kept the word in mind every since simply because it fit so comfortably with my own developing thoughts about life, the universe and everything – thoughts fleshed out and committed to the pages of this book. Of course, neologisms are useful only when they happen to plug a gap, and futilitarianism serves that function. Once I had the word I wanted to know what it might mean. The joke became a matter for playful contemplation, and that contemplation became what I hope is a playful book – playful but serious – as the best jokes always are.
16 After writing this I came across a quote attributed to Aldous Huxley (from source unknown) as follows: “But the nature of the universe is such that the ends never justify the means. On the contrary, the means always determine the end.”
17 There are many formulations of the Golden Rule. A multitude of philosophical attempts to refine and more strictly formalise the basic tenet to the point of logical perfection. Kant’s concept of the “categorical imperative” is one such reformulation. But these reformulations create more confusion than they solve. There simply is no absolutely perfect way to state the Golden Rule and recast it into a solid law. The Golden Rule better understood and applied as a universal guideline. Acting in accordance with the spirit of the rule is what matters.
18 The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) is a declaration adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on 10 December 1948. It consists of 30 articles which have been elaborated in subsequent international treaties, regional human rights instruments, national constitutions and laws. Eleanor Roosevelt, first chairwoman of the Commission on Human Rights (CHR) that drafted the Declaration, stated that it “may well become the international Magna Carta of all men everywhere.”
19 We have now reached what is called “peak child”, which means that although the overall population of the world will continue to grow for a few moire decades, the number of children in the world has already stopped rising. The global population is set to reach at 10 billion people, due to the “Great Fill-Up”. World-famous statistician Professor Hans Rosling explains this using building blocks to illustrate the point [from 10 mins in]:
After 30 years of rapid growth in agricultural production, the world can produce enough food to provide every person with more than 2 700 Calories per day level which is normally sufficient to ensure that all have access to adequate food, provided distribution is not too unequal
“[However,] the slowdown [of worldwide agricultural production] has occurred not because of shortages of land or water but rather because demand for agricultural products has also slowed. This is mainly because world population growth rates have been declining since the late 1960s, and fairly high levels of food consumption per person are now being reached in many countries, beyond which further rises will be limited.” – “This study suggests that world agricultural production can grow in line with demand, provided that the necessary national and international policies to promote agriculture are put in place. Global shortages are unlikely, but serious problems already exist at national and local levels and may worsen unless focused efforts are made.” – “Agricultural production could probably meet expected demand over the period to 2030 even without major advances in modern biotechnology.”
Extracts from the Executive Summary of the FAO summary report “World agriculture: towards 2015/2030”, published in 2002. http://www.fao.org/3/y3557e/y3557e.pdf
Important note: It is well past the period spanning the end of May and beginning of June when Bilderberg meetings are ordinarily scheduled, so it should be observed that the home page of the official Bilderberg website still declares in bold capitals:
THE MEETING 2020 IS POSTPONED.
It does not say for how long.
“The illusion of freedom will continue as long as it’s profitable to continue the illusion. At the point where the illusion becomes too expensive to maintain, they will just take down the scenery, they will pull back the curtains, they will move the tables and chairs out of the way and you will see the brick wall at the back of the theater.”
— Frank Zappa
This is the seventh and last of a sequence of articles based around the ‘key topics’ at last year’s Bilderberg conference discussed here in relation to the prevailing political agenda and placed within the immediate historical context.
This piece focuses on issues relating to the future of humanity and including ‘The Ethics of Artificial Intelligence’:
A schematically enhanced version of last year’s ‘key topics’
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The new normal
In May 2017, Forbes magazine published a piece by financial analyst and writer John Maudlin that bears the prophetic title: “Brace Yourself For ‘The Great Reset’”. Interestingly, the piece is not concerned with climate change or forthcoming pandemics, but simply addresses what Maudlin describes as “the largest twin bubbles in the history of the world”:
These promises add up to hundreds of trillions of dollars. That’s vastly larger than global GDP.
These are real problems we must face. It will mean forging a new social contract. It will also require changes to taxes and the economy. I believe that within the next 5–10 years, we have to end the debt and government promises.
The banking crisis that broke in 2008 has festered ever since; western economies today are continually propped up thanks to vast injections of cheap money: non-stop rounds of quantitative easing with interest rates maintained at levels close to zero. Maudlin was right therefore to forewarn of the ramifications of what have been systematic failures; ones that by the time of publication of his article had already generated a global debt-to-GDP of 325%.
Moreover, he was far from alone in sounding the alarm. As recently as last July, the New York Federal Reserve’s own in-house model, which predicts the probability of a US recession occurring in the next 12 months and is regarded as critical indicator, recorded its highest level since 2009: a reading of 32.9% for June. As Business Insider reported:
“That could mean tough times ahead, considering the measure has breached the 30% threshold before every recession since 1960.” 1
Then in October (still in the months before covid), former Bank of England Governor, Mervyn King, went on the record to say that he believed the world was sleepwalking into another crash:
Giving a lecture in Washington at the annual meeting of the International Monetary Fund, King said there had been no fundamental questioning of the ideas that led to the crisis of a decade ago.
“Another economic and financial crisis would be devastating to the legitimacy of a democratic market system,” he said. “By sticking to the new orthodoxy of monetary policy and pretending that we have made the banking system safe, we are sleepwalking towards that crisis.”
He added that the US would suffer a “financial armageddon” if its central bank – the Federal Reserve – lacked the necessary firepower to combat another episode similar to the sub-prime mortgage sell-off. 2
Nor is Maudlin isolated when it comes to questioning whether levels of public spending are sustainable, although here he is necessarily buttressing his own ideological stance and keen to advocate further neoliberal reforms as a matter of unavoidable necessity. Thus, he continues:
What I mean by government promises are pensions and healthcare benefits. 3
Yet beyond the title of Maudlin’s piece, so far his forecast has been rather less than impressive. Instead of policies of stringent austerity, the crisis we now face has in fact resulted in a sudden flood of government spending. It transpires that ‘magic money trees’ aren’t really so hard to find after all.
Moreover, a sizeable fraction of that money has gone directly into the pockets of ordinary people through elaborate schemes set up to compensate for the shutdown of our societies. Meanwhile, a great deal more is being siphoned off into the coffers of global corporations – in America especially, this grand theft has been brazen, whereas in Britain the transfer of public money is a stealthier affair: a prime example being the £100 million wasted on privatised track-and-trace systems run by Serco.
Peter Geoghegan of OpenDemocracy discloses how the Tory government has exploited the coronavirus crisis and handed over multiple millions of pounds of public money in the form of contracts to friends of the party:
Of course, the situation is a temporary one and so the current economic measures are stopgaps, but still this easy availability of public money puts an immediate lie to simplistic arguments that previously justified a decade of austerity. Governments are not constrained to live within their means like households. Austerity is always an ideological choice and never an inescapable inevitability – as I have argued many times before, it is in any case counterproductive because it stifles growth.
That said, historically high levels of government debt do provide a perfect and very nearly irresistible excuse for waves of future austerity and for the sell-off of public assets. This is how disaster capitalism works.
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On October 7th, economists Michael Hudson and Steve Keen were invited to discuss the current state of western economies and how the so-called ‘K-shaped recovery’ is now dividing the world into haves and have-nots with Peter Lavelle on RT’s Crosstalk.
Michael Hudson explained the ‘new normal’ as follows:
“What has become normal since 2008 has been completely different from the old normal. People have the idea that with ‘normal’ you go back to a balance. But really the economy hasn’t grown at all since the 2008 crisis. All of the growth in GDP, all of the growth in wealth, has accrued to the financial sector, to the real estate sector, and to the one percent. For the ninety-nine percent of the people, they’ve gone down and down and down.
“So the ‘new normal’ is you can’t get rich again by buying housing and joining the middle class like you used to. The ‘new normal’ is paying all of your increase in wages on debt service, in rents, and in monopoly prices. And so the ‘new normal’ is that the market is going to shrink and shrink until we look like Greece looks in the last five years. Think of the ‘new normal’ as looking like Greece: debt deflation and rent deflation.” [from 2:10 mins]
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The great reset
Today, if you visit the website of the World Economic Forum, you will come across an article by its founder and Executive Chairman Klaus Schwab that likewise calls for “a great reset”. From the main page, there is then a link to what WEF calls its “Great Reset microsite”, where the blurb reads:
As we enter a unique window of opportunity to shape the recovery, this initiative will offer insights to help inform all those determining the future state of global relations, the direction of national economies, the priorities of societies, the nature of business models and the management of a global commons. Drawing from the vision and vast expertise of the leaders engaged across the Forum’s communities, the Great Reset initiative has a set of dimensions to build a new social contract that honours the dignity of every human being.
Time for the Great Reset – screenshot of WEF website
Schwab, a former member of the Bilderberg group steering committee, writes that:
We must use it [the COVID-19 crisis] to secure the Great Reset that we so badly need. That will require stronger and more effective governments, though this does not imply an ideological push for bigger ones. And it will demand private-sector engagement every step of the way.
Dressed up as a synthesis of capitalism and socialism, here the thinly-veiled intention is to amalgamate the worst elements of both systems with an ever-tightening alliance between global corporations and governments, and the replacement of any meaningful representative democracy with greater accountability going instead to so-called “stakeholder” interests. Schwab continues:
The Great Reset agenda would have three main components. The first would steer the market toward fairer outcomes. To this end, governments should improve coordination (for example, in tax, regulatory, and fiscal policy), upgrade trade arrangements, and create the conditions for a “stakeholder economy.” At a time of diminishing tax bases and soaring public debt, governments have a powerful incentive to pursue such action.
Combined with these market-orientated reforms the public can also look forward to enjoying “socialism” in the form of restrictions on individual freedom for reasons of “sustainability”, “intellectual property” rights, green taxes, and, within an overarching plan for the ‘Fourth Industrial Revolution’, the growth of “smart cities”:
Moreover, governments should implement long-overdue reforms that promote more equitable outcomes. Depending on the country, these may include changes to wealth taxes, the withdrawal of fossil-fuel subsidies, and new rules governing intellectual property, trade, and competition.
The second component of a Great Reset agenda would ensure that investments advance shared goals, such as equality and sustainability. […]
[F]or example, building “green” urban infrastructure and creating incentives for industries to improve their track record on environmental, social, and governance (ESG) metrics.
The third and final priority of a Great Reset agenda is to harness the innovations of the Fourth Industrial Revolution to support the public good, especially by addressing health and social challenges. 4
Click here to read the full piece by Klaus Schwab entitled “Now is the time for a ‘great reset’”.
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AI is key to the NWO transformation
Meanwhile, as long ago as April 3rd – albeit with his crystal ball firmly in hand – Bilderberg’s most illustrious war criminal wrote this in an op-ed by The Wall Street Journal:
When the Covid-19 pandemic is over, many countries’ institutions will be perceived as having failed. Whether this judgment is objectively fair is irrelevant. The reality is the world will never be the same after the coronavirus.
Adding:
Global leaders have learned important lessons from the 2008 financial crisis. The current economic crisis is more complex: The contraction unleashed by the coronavirus is, in its speed and global scale, unlike anything ever known in history. 5
Kissinger’s solution to this impending crisis when boiled down (and seeing through all of the cant about “ameliorat[ing] the effects of impending chaos on the world’s most vulnerable populations” and “defend[ing] and sustain[ing] their Enlightenment values”) is this: to “safeguard the principles of the liberal world order.” Where for “liberal” we must read “neo-liberal”, and for “world order” we should prefix with the adjective “new” (as Kissinger himself has done on countless past occasions).
Indeed, here is Kissinger presenting a keynote conversation just last year at the George W. Bush Presidential Center beneath the very title “The New World Order” (not that he elucidates much on what he envisions for the NWO):
Kissinger’s view of ‘the shape of things to come’ might be better gauged from an article published August last year and provocatively entitled “The Metamorphosis” that was co-authored by Bilderberg confederate, former executive chairman of Alphabet Inc and current chair of the US Department of Defense’s Defense Innovation Advisory Board, Eric Schmidt, along with fellow techie and former director of Amazon, Daniel Huttenlocher. In it they write:
If AI improves constantly—and there is no reason to think it will not—the changes it will impose on human life will be transformative. Here are but two illustrations: a macro-example from the field of global and national security, and a micro-example dealing with the potential role of AI in human relationships.
The first of these examples relates to the development of new weapons and strategies, and implications for arms control and deterrence. The second is headed simply “Human Contact” and begins as follows:
Google Home and Amazon’s Alexa are digital assistants already installed in millions of homes and designed for daily conversation: They answer queries and offer advice that, especially to children, may seem intelligent, even wise. And they can become a solution to the abiding loneliness of the elderly, many of whom interact with these devices as friends.
The more data AI gathers and analyzes, the more precise it becomes, so devices such as these will learn their owners’ preferences and take them into account in shaping their answers. And as they get “smarter,” they will become more intimate companions. As a result, AI could induce humans to feel toward it emotions it is incapable of reciprocating.
Already, people rank their smartphones as their most important possession. They name their Roombas, and attribute intent to them where none exists. What happens when these devices become even more sophisticated? Will people become as attached to their digital pets as to their dogs—or perhaps even more so?
All of which tiptoes very lightly indeed around the major concern when it comes to our routine installation of hi-tech surveillance equipment inside the home; Alexa already far exceeds the intrusion of Orwell’s telescreens in his dystopian nightmare Nineteen Eighty-Four – and there is something else to worry about here (mention of it is again buried away in the middle of the text):
AI algorithms will help open new frontiers of knowledge, while at the same time narrowing information choices and enhancing the capacity to suppress new or challenging ideas.
As Eric Schmidt is perfectly well aware, of course, this is precisely what the Google algorithm already does. Social media platforms have also been installing filters to censor content, narrow opinion and condemn us to engage in ever decreasing bubbles of discussion. When one echo chamber then rubs up against another no light is shed, but only increasing levels of heat. Obviously, it isn’t AI as such that narrows and suppresses public debate, but the actions of the tech giants with their more or less unregulated control over content.
Then, finally, they get to the crux of the matter:
The technological capacity of governments to monitor the behavior and movements of tens or hundreds of millions is likewise unprecedented. Even in the West, this quest can, in the name of harmony, become a slippery slope. Balancing the risks of aberrant behavior against limits on personal freedom—or even defining aberrant—will be a crucial challenge of the AI era. 6
But once again, it isn’t AI that defines “aberrant” either, it’s whoever operates the AI and has control over the algorithms – and to understand who that is, I recommend studying the lists of Bilderberg participants throughout the past decade. Ever more prominent amongst the ranks of the great and good you will find many of the biggest names in Silicon Valley – one of whom, Reid Hoffman, also happen to sit on Eric Schimdt’s Defense Innovation Advisory Board alongside owner of Amazon and The Washington Post, “the richest man in modern history”, Jeff Bezos.
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Klaus Schwab and the fascist new deal
“We are at the threshold of a radical systemic change that requires human beings to adapt continuously. As a result, we may witness an increasing degree of polarization in the world, marked by those who embrace change versus those who resist it.
“This gives rise to an inequality that goes beyond the societal one described earlier. This ontological inequality will separate those who adapt from those who resist—the material winners and losers in all senses of the words. The winners may even benefit from some form of radical human improvement generated by certain segments of the fourth industrial revolution (such as genetic engineering) from which the losers will be deprived. This risks creating class conflicts and other clashes unlike anything we have seen before”
Those who believe the multi-billionaire class of plutocrats who gather annually at Davos and more “privately” at Bilderberg do so in pursuit of “socialism” are either delusional or else miss the point for more deliberate reasons. In fact, the primary agenda set forth by these exclusive clubs is rather more straightforward and perfectly understandable if we adjust to see the world through the jaundiced eyes of its membership. The goal is to forge an ever-tightening relationship between the corporations (which they already own and control) and governments (where political power ultimately resides) until eventually there will be no distinction.
This process of public-private convergence has been underway for many decades with groups like Bilderberg and WEF at the vanguard. If and when the merger they seek is completed, our society will be governed wholly in accordance to a political regime known as corporatism, which is a form of fascism (of the type first implemented by Mussolini).
As Winter Oak explains in a very recent article entitled “Klaus Schwab and his Great Fascist Reset”:
In other words, fascism and socialism (at least ‘state socialism’ which first emerged in the Soviet Union) are superficially similar but mainly because they are both statist, while in other ways they are diametrically opposed. That said, fascists have historically used “socialism” for left-cover, and this trend continues today.
The same article then breaks down how Schwab’s plans for a “stakeholder society” (with its leftist overtones) can be rolled out in order to achieve the kinds of fascist (or corporatist) ends desired:
[I]n 1971 [Schwab] founded the European Management Forum, which held annual meetings at Davos in Switzerland. Here he promoted his ideology of “stakeholder” capitalism in which businesses were brought into closer co-operation with government.
“Stakeholder capitalism” is described by Forbes business magazine as “the notion that a firm focuses on meeting the needs of all its stakeholders: customers, employees, partners, the community, and society as a whole”.
Even in the context of a particular business, it is invariably an empty label. As the Forbes article notes, it actually only means that “firms can go on privately shoveling money to their shareholders and executives, while maintaining a public front of exquisite social sensitivity and exemplary altruism”.
But in a general social context, the stakeholder concept is even more nefarious, discarding any idea of democracy, rule by the people, in favour of rule by corporate interests.
Society is no longer regarded as a living community but as a business, whose profitability is the sole valid aim of human activity.
Schwab set out this agenda back in 1971, in his book Moderne Unternehmensführung im Maschinenbau (Modern Enterprise Management in Mechanical Engineering), where his use of the term “stakeholders” (die Interessenten) effectively redefined human beings not as citizens, free individuals or members of communities, but as secondary participants in a massive commercial enterprise.
The aim of each and every person’s life was “to achieve long-term growth and prosperity” for this enterprise – in other words, to protect and increase the wealth of the capitalist elite.
Winter Oak then highlights and discusses at length admissions made by Schwab in his writings for public consumption and in particular his 2016 book The Fourth Industrial Revolution [the same term is often abbreviated to 4IR]:
Schwab waxes lyrical about the 4IR, which he insists is “unlike anything humankind has experienced before”.
He gushes: “Consider the unlimited possibilities of having billions of people connected by mobile devices, giving rise to unprecedented processing power, storage capabilities and knowledge access. Or think about the staggering confluence of emerging technology breakthroughs, covering wide-ranging fields such as artificial intelligence (AI), robotics, the internet of things (IoT), autonomous vehicles, 3D printing, nanotechnology, biotechnology, materials science, energy storage and quantum computing, to name a few. Many of these innovations are in their infancy, but they are already reaching an inflection point in their development as they build on and amplify each other in a fusion of technologies across the physical, digital and biological worlds”.
He also looks forward to more online education, involving “the use of virtual and augmented reality” to “dramatically improve educational outcomes”, to sensors “installed in homes, clothes and accessories, cities, transport and energy networks” and to smart cities, with their all-important “data platforms”.
“All things will be smart and connected to the internet”, says Schwab, and this will extend to animals, as “sensors wired in cattle can communicate to each other through a mobile phone network”.
He loves the idea of “smart cell factories” which could enable “the accelerated generation of vaccines” and “big-data technologies”.
These, he ensures us, will “deliver new and innovative ways to service citizens and customers” and we will have to stop objecting to businesses profiting from harnessing and selling information about every aspect of our personal lives.
“Establishing trust in the data and algorithms used to make decisions will be vital,” insists Schwab. “Citizen concerns over privacy and establishing accountability in business and legal structures will require adjustments in thinking”.
At the end of the day it is clear that all this technological excitement revolves purely around profit, or “value” as Schwab prefers to term it in his 21st century corporate newspeak.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Schwab also writes with tremendous enthusiasm about the use of the blockchain (the distributed ledger behind cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin) and 5G technology, and then, having pronounced that “a world full of drones offers a world full of possibilities”, he spells out what the “revolution” means at a human level, saying “Already, advances in neurotechnologies and biotechnologies are forcing us to question what it means to be human”
The following passage is quoted directly from his more recent book Shaping the Future of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (2018):
“Fourth Industrial Revolution technologies will not stop at becoming part of the physical world around us—they will become part of us. Indeed, some of us already feel that our smartphones have become an extension of ourselves. Today’s external devices—from wearable computers to virtual reality headsets—will almost certainly become implantable in our bodies and brains. Exoskeletons and prosthetics will increase our physical power, while advances in neurotechnology enhance our cognitive abilities. We will become better able to manipulate our own genes, and those of our children. These developments raise profound questions: Where do we draw the line between human and machine? What does it mean to be human?”
This is where Schwab turns to a favourite subject: transhumanism – and please bear in mind that he was raised in Germany (born in 1938) during the last years of The Third Reich – which as Winter Oak reminds us was “a police-state regime built on fear and violence, on brainwashing and control, on propaganda and lies, on industrialism and eugenics, on dehumanisation and ‘disinfection’, on a chilling and grandiose vision of a “new order” that would last a thousand years.”
The article continues:
A whole section of this book is devoted to the theme “Altering the Human Being”. Here he drools over “the ability of new technologies to literally become part of us” and invokes a cyborg future involving “curious mixes of digital-and-analog life that will redefine our very natures”.
He writes: “These technologies will operate within our own biology and change how we interface with the world. They are capable of crossing the boundaries of body and mind, enhancing our physical abilities, and even having a lasting impact on life itself “.
No violation seems to go too far for Schwab, who dreams of “active implantable microchips that break the skin barrier of our bodies”, “smart tattoos”, “biological computing” and “custom-designed organisms”.
He is delighted to report that “sensors, memory switches and circuits can be encoded in common human gut bacteria”, that “Smart Dust, arrays of full computers with antennas, each much smaller than a grain of sand, can now organize themselves inside the body” and that “implanted devices will likely also help to communicate thoughts normally expressed verbally through a ‘built-in’ smartphone, and potentially unexpressed thoughts or moods by reading brain waves and other signals”.
“Synthetic biology” is on the horizon in Schwab’s 4IR world, giving the technocratic capitalist rulers of the world “the ability to customize organisms by writing DNA”.
The idea of neurotechnologies, in which humans will have fully artificial memories implanted in the brain, is enough to make some of us feel faintly sick, as is “the prospect of connecting our brains to VR through cortical modems, implants or nanobots”.
It is of little comfort to learn that this is all – of course! – in the greater interests of capitalist profiteering since it “heralds new industries and systems for value creation” and “represents an opportunity to create entire new systems of value in the Fourth Industrial Revolution”.
Click here to read the full article by Winter Oak entitled “Klaus Schwab and His Great Fascist Reset”.
And here to read an extended post about the nature of fascism and how historically it has repeatedly disguised its true intentions with recourse to ‘left cover’.
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The future of humanity
“Evolution moves towards greater complexity, greater elegance, greater knowledge, greater intelligence, greater beauty, greater creativity, and greater levels of subtle attributes such as love. In every monotheistic tradition God is likewise described as all of these qualities, only without limitation: infinite knowledge, infinite intelligence, infinite beauty, infinite creativity, infinite love, and so on. Of course, even the accelerating growth of evolution never achieves an infinite level, but as it explodes exponentially it certainly moves rapidly in that direction. So evolution moves inexorably towards this conception of God, although never quite reaching this ideal. We can regard, therefore, the freeing of our thinking from the severe limitations of its biological form to be an essentially spiritual undertaking.”
Nick Bostrom is a philosopher with deep scientific and technical training 9 ,who aside from being Director of the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford University is also co-founder of the World Transhumanist Association (renamed Humanity+, Inc.) as well as an acknowledged inspiration for Elon Musk and Bill Gates. 10
A self-confessed utopian, Bostrom is strangely religious in that way only scientific materialists can be: so he has dreams of constructing a future heaven by wholly technological means and with ethical foundations grounded and held firm by pure reason. Inspired, he says, by a youthful acquaintance with the philosophies of Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, his envisioned Utopia will be a brave new world that is infinitely more delightful, more pleasurable, and finally more pristine than Huxley’s arch conception – a place without death and, in all likelihood, devoid of all corporeality. Subscribing to an increasingly fashionable opinion that the physical universe is just some kind of digital simulation (it used to be clockwork), Bostrom’s Utopia, is set to be the best of all possible simulations: the matrix par excellence! 11
That said, Bostrom is amongst first to acknowledge that unavoidably the road to hell is also paved with good intentions. Indeed, lurking just beneath his sometimes optimistic and occasionally exuberant facade, it is hard not to discern a rather desperate almost pathological desire to escape the horrors of the material world.
During an interview conducted by the Guardian in 2016, he was asked about membership of Alcor, “the cryogenic initiative that promises to freeze mortal remains in the hope that, one day, minds can be reinvigorated and uploaded in digital form to live in perpetuity.” The conversation with Tim Adams then proceeded as follows:
“I have a policy of never commenting on my funeral arrangements,” he says.
But he thinks there is a value in cryogenic research?
“It seems a pretty rational thing for people to do if they can afford it,” he says. “When you think about what life in the quite near future could be like, trying to store the information in your brain seems like a conservative option as opposed to burning the brain down and throwing it away. Unless you are really confident that the information will never be useful…”12
Bostrom was one of a handful of academics and another of the new faces who made it on to the guest list at Bilderberg last year. A few months prior to his attendance, in January 2019, he had also been invited to chat with head of TED and business entrepreneur, Chris Anderson, about his “Vulnerable World Hypothesis”.
As Business Insider reported:
Philosopher Nick Bostrom is known for making scary predictions about humanity.
Over 15 years ago, he made the case that we are all living in a Matrix-like simulation run by another civilization. The idea, though difficult to swallow, is well-regarded by some philosophers, and has even been sanctioned by Elon Musk.
Many years later, Bostrom isn’t done outlining frightening scenarios.
On Wednesday, he took the stage at the TED 2019 conference in Vancouver, Canada, to discuss another radical theory. While speaking to head of the conference, Chris Anderson, Bostrom argued that mass surveillance could be one of the only ways to save humanity from ultimate doom. 13
The full discussion is embedded below:
What Bostrom goes on to outline is a world threatened by ever more sophisticated future technologies whether from advances in nuclear arms; bioweapons research; development of drone swarms; or from other applications of AI: all of which do indeed have the potential to destroy civilisation.
What he says he fears most is that one of these future technologies might become ‘democratised’, accidentally enabling rogue individuals who are without compunction to deliver a Samson-like attack that brings the world down on our heads. In preempting such an existential catastrophe Bostrom therefore presents four solutions.
The first is simply to control the development of such dangerous new technologies; an approach that Bostrom quickly dismisses (for reasons that are hard to fathom). The second, subtitled “eliminate bad actors”, is already more sinister and accompanied by a strange image of a drone sending love bombs (presumably) to dissuade some future assailant. Bostrom half jokes “I think it’s like a hybrid picture: I think ‘eliminate’ could mean incarcerate or kill, or it could persuade them to a better view of the world.”
He continues:
“Suppose you were extremely successful in this and you reduced the number of such individuals by half. And if you want to do it by persuasion I mean you’re competing against all other powerful forces that are trying to persuade people: [political?] parties, religion, education systems; but, suppose you could reduce it by half: I don’t think the risk would be reduced by half, it would maybe be reduced by five or ten percent.” [from 14:45 mins]
Response 2: Eliminate bad actors
That brings him to ‘Response 3: Mass Surveillance’ – Chris Anderson fittingly describes this as the “Minority Report option”:
“So I think there are two general methods that we could use to achieve the ability to stabilise the world against a whole spectrum of possible vulnerabilities. Probably we need both. So one is an extremely effective ability to do preventive policing, such that if anybody started to do this dangerous thing, you could intercept them in real time and stop them. This would require ubiquitous surveillance – everyone would be monitored all the time… AI algorithms, big ‘freedom centres’ that were reviewing this, you know, etc, etc. [from 15:30 mins]
Response 3: Mass Surveillance
Referring to the accompanying picture (see screenshot above), he adds:
“Yes, so this little device there – you might have a kind of necklace that you would have to wear at all times with multidirectional cameras. But to make it go down better just call it ‘the freedom tag’ or something like that.” [from 16:15 mins]
And finally we have ‘Response 4: Global governance’.
Bostrom says, “Surveillance would be kind of [plugging the] governance gap at the micro-level – preventing anyone ever doing something highly illegal – then there is a corresponding governance gap at the macro-level, at the global level. You would need the ability reliably to prevent the worst kinds of global coordination failures: to avoid wars between great powers; arms races; and cataclysmic commons problems. [from 16:55 min]
Asked in summary what the likelihood is that we’re all doomed, he replies:
“On an individual level I mean we seem to be kind of doomed anyway just with a timeline from rotting and aging and all kinds of things.” [from 20:00 mins]
As Business Insider points out:
Under Bostrom’s vision of mass surveillance, humans would be monitored at all times via artificial intelligence, which would send information to “freedom centers” that work to save us from doom. To make this possible, he said, all humans would have to wear necklaces, or “freedom tags,” with multi-directional cameras.
The idea is controversial under any circumstance, but especially at TED, which has focused this year on strategies to ensure privacy in the digital era.
Even Bostrom recognizes that the scenario could go horribly wrong.
“Obviously there are huge downsides and indeed massive risks to mass surveillance and global governance,” he told the crowd. But he still thinks the ends might justify the means.
“On an individual level, we seem to be kind of doomed anyway,” he said.
Click here to read the full article published by Business Insider entitled “An Oxford philosopher who’s inspired Elon Musk thinks mass surveillance might be the only way to save humanity from doom”.
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In this video essay Tom Nicholas contextualises Muskian futurism to ask what its appeal is and what other social, political, economic and cultural movements it might have something in common with. In the final segment he discusses the ramifications of some of Musk’s specific projects – his is not a vision of egalitarian prosperity for all, but one of gilded corridors for an elite few:
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Final, final thoughts: Ctrl-Alt-Del
“Humans will be able to evolve by harnessing the super-intelligence and extra abilities offered by the machines of the future, by joining with them. All this points to the development of a new human species, known in the science-fiction world as ‘cyborgs’. It doesn’t mean that everyone has to become a cyborg. If you are happy with your state as a human then so be it, you can remain as you are. But be warned – just as we humans split from our chimpanzee cousins years ago, so cyborgs will split from humans. Those who remain as humans are likely to become a sub-species. They will, effectively, be the chimpanzees of the future”
Some years ago I had been thinking up names for an envisaged progressive political movement, when, after realising that all of the traditional labels ‘people’s’, ‘popular’, ‘democratic’, ‘freedom’, ‘revolutionary’, etc were already irreparably sullied, it occurred to me that in our mimetic age something snappier might be more suitable. Something along the lines of ‘system reset’, although without the Maoist overtones! Briefly that led me to consider the familiar 3-fingered salute on every computer keyboard, Ctrl-Alt-Del: a consideration that altogether stopped me in my tracks.
In fact, picking apart the elements, Ctrl-Alt-Del already represents the three-pronged assault we are increasingly subjected to: the plutocrats using these precise three strategies to oppress and dominate. First through Ctrl by means of propaganda and censorship, with the steady encroachment of mass surveillance in all areas of our lives (the panopticon), and arguably too with the mental health crisis and widespread prescription of ‘chemical cosh’ opiates and more Soma-like SSRI antidepressants.
In a recent study by scientists at University of Chicago, it was found that rats given anti-anxiety medications were less inclined to free a companion in distress, presumably because they didn’t have the same ability to feel empathy:
Next is Alt (i.e., alteration) with rollout of GMO in agriculture and transhumanism which opens the door to many developments including the advent of designer babies by means of gene editing and the literal rewiring of human consciousness. Finally there is Del (delete) by virtue of ‘population control’ which is a shorthand euphemism for the desire to dramatically reduce human numbers.
Bostrom clearly stands at the forefront of methods of Ctrl and Alt being a leading proponent of total surveillance and for transhumanism, which is basically eugenics 2.0 enhanced by virtue of refined genetic manipulation and accentuated by means interfacing with machines. As Bostrom’s Humanity+ announces its own intentions:
What does it mean to be human in a technologically enhanced world? Humanity+ is a 501(c)3 international nonprofit membership organization that advocates the ethical use of technology, such as artificial intelligence, to expand human capacities. In other words, we want people to be better than well. This is the goal of transhumanism. 15
‘Better than well’ is putting it extremely mildly. If you read past the opening statements then you quickly appreciate that the final goal is nothing short of total mastery of biology in order to achieve absolute control of human life and everything in the biosphere. Advocates of such godlike dominion over Nature should perhaps attend to the writings of Mary Shelley and Johann von Goethe. For Bostrom with his outspoken desire to install mass surveillance to save the world, I also recommend a healthy dose of Orwell.
It is almost tempting to think that the choice of Ctrl-Alt-Del was meant to be a piece of subliminal predictive programming, except that the man credited with its origins is an IBM engineer called David Bradley, who says it was not intended for use by ordinary end users but helpful for software designers. Curiously, however, as Bradley also says (see interview embedded above): “I may have invented control-alt-delete, but Bill Gates made it really famous.” 16
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Additional: ‘Against Transhumanism: the Delusion of Technological Transcendence’
Richard Jones is a Professor of Materials Physics and Innovation Policy at the University of Manchester. Jones is an experimental physicist, whose research centres around the properties of polymer molecules at interfaces and ultrathin polymer films.
Between 2007 and 2009 he was the Senior Strategic Advisor for Nanotechnology for the UK’s Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council; he was also Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Research and Innovation at the University of Sheffield from 2009 to 2016.
In this discussion with futurist and transhumanist enthusiast Nikola Danaylov, Jones covers a variety of topics including his own work in nanotechnology and his book and blog on the topic; technological progress and whether it is accelerating or not; Ray Kurzweil and technological determinism; Platonism and Frank J. Tipler‘s claim that “the singularity is inevitable”; the strange ideological routes of transhumanism; Eric Drexler’s vision of nanotechnology as reducing the material world to software; the over-representation of physicists on both sides of the transhumanism and AI debate; mind uploading and the importance of molecules as the most fundamental unit of biological processing; the quest for indefinite life extension and the work of Aubrey de Grey; and the importance of politics and ethics in technology.
Richard Jones’ scholarly book Against Transhumanism: the delusion of technological transcendence is available free for download: Against Transhumanism, v1.0, PDF 650 kB.
Bostrom, a 43-year-old Swedish-born philosopher, has lately acquired something of the status of prophet of doom among those currently doing most to shape our civilisation: the tech billionaires of Silicon Valley. His reputation rests primarily on his book Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies, which was a surprise New York Times bestseller last year and now arrives in paperback, trailing must-read recommendations from Bill Gates and Tesla’s Elon Musk. (In the best kind of literary review, Musk also gave Bostrom’s institute £1m to continue to pursue its inquiries.)
The 66th Bilderberg Meeting is set to take place from 7 – 10 June 2018 in Turin, Italy. As of today, 131 participants from 23 countries have confirmed their attendance. As ever, a diverse group of political leaders and experts from industry, finance, academia and the media has been invited. The list of participants is available on www.bilderbergmeetings.org.
I am so bored with writing about Bilderberg. I mean just look down the published agenda and read between the lines. It’s blatant isn’t it? Item by item – with one or two exceptions – we already know the thinking.
Take for instance “the inequality challenge”. In what sense does ‘inequality’ represent a challenge to the dozen or so offshore billionaires who put the agenda together? As potential danger, presumably. As inequality worsens so does the fear of pitchforks at the castle gates.
And should we suppose these same authors suspend judgement when it comes to preferencing “Saudi Arabia and Iran”? No. Saudi Arabia is “our key ally”, Iran is “a rogue state”. That both states here receive equal billing means absolutely nothing.
discussing "Saudi Arabia and Iran" at this year's #Bilderberg conference in Turin: two members of the neocon think tank / lobby group, United Against Nuclear Iran: Radoslaw Sikorski (@sikorskiradek) & Walter Russell Mead (@wrmead) pic.twitter.com/Xnhb39fwLc
Bilderberg, as we know, is founded on the unholy alliance of economic neo-liberalism and neo-conservative imperialism. This reliably forms the unstated agenda for every meeting. The bigger mystery is surely Bilderberg’s growing obsession with AI and futuristic technologies:
With AI high on the agenda, Demis Hassabis, who runs Google’s London-based DeepMind project, has also been invited back. He will be joined by his fellow AI luminary Hartmut Neven, the head of Google’s Quantum Artificial Intelligence lab.
The guest list also features researchers from the fields of biotech, robotics, stem cell research and human-machine bio-integration. 1
That’s taken from the latest piece by reporter Charlie Skelton – more from him in a moment.
Five years ago this secretive group led by plutocratic globalists seemed poised on the brink of fuller exposure when a thousand people turned up to protest its surprise appearance at Watford. Corralled inside our Orwellian “free speech zone” a quarter of a mile from the hotel, we were hardly likely to storm the G4S-patrolled barricades let alone a distant and newly erected twenty-foot fence, but at least the corporate media were compelled to give Bilderberg unwanted airtime. Alex Jones, the gun-toting, Islamophobic big mouth, was duly dispatched to rant at Andrew Neil on the BBC. Jones did his best to ruin any nascent awakening.
This year’s meeting is taking place right now in Turin, and, as reliable as ever, the corporate media has linked arms and sworn an oath of silence (in the name of Chatham House). No, not even that. Saying nothing would be bad enough, but the media is a more responsive gatekeeper. So it presents us with empty nonsensical articles intended to turn the tables by playing up the weirdness (real or supposed) of those who raise suspicion about this perennial gathering of billionaires, corporate CEOs, senior politicians, military top-brass and former heads of intelligence. If we insist on tugging at the veils of Bilderberg then we must expect to be ridiculed and vilified apparently. How dare anyone question the motives of the great and the good?
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One exception to the mainstream rule is occasional Guardian correspondent Charlie Skelton, who provides what restricted insight he can in his annual ‘Bilderblog’ reports. This year he writes:
At the top of the conference agenda are the dire words: “Populism in Europe.” The EU, already given a black eye by Brexit, is facing another thumping from Italy’s populist coalition, and the transatlantic alliance is groaning under the strain of Trump. Which is why Turin is the perfect choice for the 2018 summit.
The city is the spiritual home of Fiat and the Agnellis: the flamboyant Gianni Agnelli was a mainstay of Bilderberg throughout the last few decades of the 20th century, and a close friend of Kissinger (not, in this instance, a euphemism). His grandson, John Elkann, runs Exor, the holding company for the Agnelli billions, and sits on Bilderberg’s steering committee.
Agnelli attended 37 conferences: his spirit will loom large over the Turin gathering, which is being held at the old Fiat HQ. 2
Gianni Agnelli is the very epitome of a Bilderberg grandee. His grandfather Giovanni came from an exceedingly well-to-do background, and following in the footsteps of his father before him, had dabbled in politics when he became mayor of his local town Villar Perosa. Giovanni was also the pioneering industrialist and the man best remembered for founding automobile giant Fiat.
When old man Agnelli stepped aside, his son Edoardo was given the reins of the family business. Already phenomenally rich and powerful, Edoardo further consolidated the family fortune when he married Princess Virginia Bourbon del Monte. Which brings us to the Second World War.
Before continuing the story of the Godfather-esque rise and rise of the Agnellis, it worth noting that this year’s Bilderberg venue, the NH Lingotto Hotel, is in part of the Fiat factory originally built by Giovanni. Famed for the sleek modernist architecture so beloved of Le Corbusier, the factory finally ceased production in the early eighties and was renovated into a modern complex with theatres, concert halls, shopping arcades and the hotel. Only the rooftop test track survives, perhaps best remembered for a short scene in entertaining heist caper The Italian Job.
When opened in 1923, the state-of-the-art assembly line at Lingotto began chugging out Fiats at prodigious rates. So just imagine for a moment how a 1920s audience might marvel at promotional film footage (embedded below); mesmerised especially by that closing sequence in which a never-ending procession of (even by today’s standards) comparatively modern-looking Fiat automobiles race by:
At the very same time as the Lingotto factory was opened in Turin, Benito Mussolini and his fascist blackshirts were taking power in Rome. This was good news for the House of Agnelli:
Back in 1914, [Giovanni] Agnelli decided that a little-known demagogue called Mussolini was going places, a good guess which served Fiat excellently through the Fascist period.
By now, the Agnellis were hugely rich. Soap-like events began to happen. Giovanni’s son, Edoardo, a party-goer whose only achievement was to finance Juventus into a great football team, was killed in a seaplane crash in 1935. His widow, [Princess] Virginia, embarked on an affair with the writer and adventurer Curzio Malaparte. Giovanni responded by kidnapping her children, until Mussolini personally intervened to stop him. Virginia died in a car crash in 1945, a few months before the death of old Giovanni.
From a profile of Gianni Agnelli written by Neal Ascherson published by The Observer in late 2000. Ascherson continues:
One of those children was Gianni, the oldest son. (Another was his clever, merry sister, Susanna, who ended up as a Senator and junior Minister in Rome.) Gianni grew up pampered, with the cool charm of a young man who had never been denied anything. He once asked Susanna: ‘In love? I thought only servants fell in love!’ Then war came; he fought for Fascism on the Russian front and then, when Fascism collapsed, for the Allies against the Germans.
He was the presumed heir to his grandfather – but when? Old Giovanni had decided on a regency. Before he died, he had left Fiat in the charge of the dwarfish, imperious Professor Vittorio Valletta, who held on to it for 21 years until – aged 81 – he was induced to hand over to Gianni Agnelli. 3
Click here to read the full article entitled “Under the Turin cloud”.
In fact with the fall of Mussolini, the closely-connected Agnellis had been removed from Fiat by the post-war National Liberation Committee. But oligarchies, like fungal infections, are in the habit of resurfacing and Gianni duly got the company back in 1963.
After becoming head of Fiat in 1966 Gianni thereafter opened factories across the world (including inside the Soviet Union) while meantime he smashed the trade unions at home. A close associate of archetypal globalist and Bilderberg founder member David Rockefeller, for three decades of this same period he was also invited on to the International Advisory Committee of Chase Manhattan Bank.
Today the president of Fiat Chrysler Automobiles is Gianni’s grandson John Elkann. He too is married into Italian aristocracy and he too sits at the high table at Bilderberg. Small wonder that this year’s Bilderberg agenda is headed “populism is Europe”.
For as history shows, it is not as if anyone pulling the levers at Bilderberg need fear the rise of a future Mussolini – demagogues are one thing. Populism on the other hand needs to be given short shrift for a different reason, because true populism acting in accordance with the real democratic will of the people would certainly spell the end for Bilderberg.
Click here to read Charlie Skelton’s first report on this year’s Bilderberg event.
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Once again Bilderberg held back the tease of its agenda and list of participants until the eleventh hour. As news drifts out, I will endeavour to write at greater length, looking to pick up on any clues the mainstream media will be studiously avoiding. My guess is that Bilderberg, which has a well-established record as kingmakers (see this previous post), is again looking to groom acceptable candidates for a number of key and soon-to-be-vacant positions. So let’s see who turns up for the Conservatives and who turns up for Labour. The official list of participants is sparse when it comes to candidates from any British political parties. The only parliamentary participant officially attending this year’s gathering is Amber Rudd whose odds of becoming Conservative leader currently stand at 33-1. Perhaps those odds will be shortening.
Amber Rudd MP enjoying a private tour of Turin courtesy of Agnelli heir, John Elkann. A lovely day, done a bit of shopping. Time to get back to the corporate lobbyists & billionaires at the conference. Hurry along, Amber. There's deals to be done. Pic @Smallaxmedia. @AmberRuddHRpic.twitter.com/zeUhOlW32u
But as on every occasion we can expect important guests to sneak inside by the trademan’s entrance. I’ll be keeping a special eye out for Greg Clark, Anna Soubry, Dan Jarvis and (as the potential leader of a future UK centrist party) David Miliband – all of which is complete guesswork of course. (I wrote the above list prior to any official announcement and none of those named have appeared so far.)
I have little else to add here other than offering encouragement to the mostly unhappy voters of Italy and people in neighbouring countries to gather outside Bilderberg’s heavily-policed gates. Instead of the usual dozens, we really need a hundred thousand to show up. Any comparatively large protest at Bilderberg would unquestionably send a shiver through the establishment.
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Additional: other notable attendees
Senior politicians:
Rutte, Mark (NLD), Prime Minister
Michel, Charles (BEL), Prime Minister
Brnabic, Ana (SRB), Prime Minister
Ratas, Jüri (EST), Prime Minister
Sáenz de Santamaría, Soraya (ESP), Deputy Prime Minister
Simsek, Mehmet (TUR), Deputy Prime Minister
Leyen, Ursula von der (DEU), Federal Minster of Defence
Other politicians:
Mitsotakis, Kyriakos (GRC), President, New Democracy Party
Rivera Díaz, Albert (ESP), President, Ciudadanos Party
Representatives of international organisations:
Stoltenberg, Jens (INT), Secretary General, NATO
Brende, Børge (INT), President, World Economic Forum
Oettinger, Günther H. (INT), Commissioner for Budget & Human Resources, European Commission
Central bank executives:
Carney, Mark J. (GBR), Governor, Bank of England
Rossi, Salvatore (ITA), Senior Deputy Governor, Bank of Italy
Other familiar faces:
Baker, James H. (USA), Director, Office of Net Assessment, Office of the Secretary of Defense
Rubin, Robert E. (USA), Co-Chairman Emeritus, Council on Foreign Relations; Former Treasury Secretary
And the man from the Vatican!!!
Parolin, H.E. Pietro (VAT), Cardinal and Secretary of State
Fascism Inc., released in 2014 and embedded below, is Aris Chatzistefanou’s third film. † Beginning with the birth of fascism in Italy and Germany during the lead up to World War II, the film then scrutinises the Greek era of fascist rule, before inspecting the tell-tale signs of the return of fascism in our contemporary political scene both in his native Greece and further afield.
This is the most disturbing of the series of Chatzistefanou’s documentaries to date, and arguably his most important. Two years after its release, his message is more prescient than ever:
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Contrary to a repeated myth, Chatzistefanou reminds us how the deepest origins of fascism lie not in grassroots popularism – Mussolini’s March on Rome provided only the semblance of a mass uprising and was mainly pretence, whereas Hitler’s notorious Beer Hall Putsch in Munich had been, of course, a truly shambolic disaster. But as the economic turmoil of the early decades of the Twentieth Century worsened, fearful of the strengthening trade union movement and the potential for socialist revolution, the major industrialists and bankers turned to fascism in last ditch efforts to survive. Thus, rather than seizing power, the fascists were handed it.
As our current financial crisis deepens, within countries on ‘the periphery’ of Europe, the grotesque spectre of fascism is emerging again: the far-right is on the rise in Poland, in Slovakia and perhaps most menacingly in Hungary, where nationalist PM Victor Orbán, is under pressure from the still more extreme Jobbik party. But the far-right is also simultaneously re-emerging in Austria, Holland and other parts of western Europe, including across the Channel where Marine Le Pen’s Front National have taken the lead in polls in France.
Meanwhile in Ukraine, America, the EU and the IMF turned a blind eye as neo-Nazi parties Svoboda and Right Sector led the coup of 2014 which in turn permitted the western imposition of a new ‘liberal’ economic and geopolitical order. And then we turn to Greece once again, where as the documentary reveals, the neo-Nazi party Golden Dawn and the far-right LAOS are even today openly backed by the major ship-owners and media corporations (the same organisation and families that flourished under Greece’s military junta).
At heart, as Chatzistefanou explains, fascism is capitalism’s vilest and most depraved manifestation. It is what the modern slave trade becomes once stripped of the last vestiges of modesty. Yet in order to gull the masses, it sees fit to put on worker’s uniforms and wrap itself in any flag of national convenience. Inevitably today’s postmodern variants adopt camouflage better suited for our own political climate.
Click here to visit the official website of the documentary.
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Additional:
On July 21st, Paul Jay of The Real News interviewed editor-in-chief of Truthdig, Bob Scheer, who spoke about the presidential contest and the rise of neo-fascism in America:
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* Referring to Arturo Ui (representing Adolf Hitler), in The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui (1941)
† Five years ago Greek journalists Katerina Kitidi and Aris Chatzistefanou released the ground-breaking documentary Debtocracy in which they drew important comparisons between the debt crisis facing Greece and earlier crises in Argentina and Ecuador. A year later, the same filmmakers produced a sequel Catastroika which revealed parallels between the fire sale of Greek public assets and the rush to post-Perestroika privatisation and economic ruination of the former Soviet Union.
Click here and here to read earlier reviews of both films and to watch versions with English subtitles.
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